One of the greatest ironies of married life, Katara finds, is that her husband is difficult to intercept on the best of days. Elusive as a dragon, Hakoda once said of his son-in-law's dodging habits. But when she wants a reprieve from it—and him—he fortuitously chooses this moment to find her.
"Yes, it will be a short one," comes his imperious tone. The rasp peters through the cavernous maw. "No—no, don't, unless it is absolutely necessary. Tell Councilor Omori his proposal is on my desk, it will be read, after I…" his words go muffled, followed by the sound of robes crumpling onto the dusty ground.
Work. Always work, even when bathing.
Katara sinks lower. The boiling water, its cerulean depths shimmering like liquid sapphires beneath the dappled stalagmites, rises to her breasts, her chin, and finally the dubious depths swallows her whole.
The underground hot springs are a pleasant perk of the job. More than the man in question, even, at the moment. The chamber glistens in the slick glow while roiling steam turns the air musky. It's an otherworldly oasis that her grandmother could have been impressed by—but Katara would never know.
Not never. She's being dramatic.
Regardless, she touches the cold ground, sighs out a stream of bubbles, and creates an air helmet of sorts. Her vision sharpens to reveal the rocky floor. Above, the undersides of the fire lilies spin like wind chimes.
A blue—he's so pale that his skin absorbs color—foot dips into the water. She breaks through the surface.
Zuko yelps and stumbles backwards. Tiny rocks crumble from the force of his back hitting the wall.
"Hi," she says. She's unable to keep the bite out of her voice.
"Katara—"
The oily voice of Zuko's attendance nears. "My Lord, are you—"
He shouts. "Don't come in!"
"But I heard—"
"Everything's fine!" he barks. "And I'm not dre—" he stops abruptly and seems to realize she's in the same state of undress as he.
On the rare occasion she wakes first, and is offered a moment to study him unaware and stress lines smoothed over, she thinks him a god. Close to a god. Agni's son, maybe. Burnished mane of hair, patrician nose. He typifies a sort of ethereality, one she begins to understand as unearthly.
Zuko's belt threatens to fall away. She eyes it as he scrambles to tie it, lets it go as he seems to realize she's his wife, then realize she's his upset, taciturn wife, and finally lets his hands rest loosely atop the band keeping his wraps in place.
She holds back a rueful smile at the bruise flaring up his shoulder.
"I thought you were at the clinic," he says finally.
"I lied. Aren't you supposed to be securing imports?"
Poisoned wells near Roku's Island and a subsequent outbreak of disease had prevented them from leaving to the Southern Water Tribe for the second half of their wedding—wedding celebrations, really, as the formal wedding was in the Fire Nation, as most things are going to be for the rest of her life. Worsening conditions drove Katara's emergency appeal to Chief Arnook to send Northern Waters Tribe healers. Meanwhile, Zuko, besieged with requests to scavenge for all medical herbs in existence, turned to the Earth Kingdom. But facing their own monumental task to rebuild, Ba Sing Se was unwilling to trade, leaving the Fire Nation to scramble for reparations and restore the diplomatic ties that his father had destroyed along with nearly a million lives.
Peace is a fickle thing.
"I didn't lie. You know how Councilor Omori is. And I don't imagine the Fire Sages would like to see me without following their five principles of incense."
Zuko's eyes flicker to where water sloshes precariously at the tops of her breasts. Her lips part on a slow exhale.
"No, I don't suppose they would."
A moment of commiseration over pedantic tradition passes between them. It's over too soon; he reassembles his worn expression into nonchalance. Something indiscernible lurks underneath.
Three months, he promised. Three months to settle his nation into accepting a waterbending Fire Lady committed to lead them into a new era; petitioning the Fire Sages and overturning tyrannical Ozai-era restrictions on her movement, her being, her sense of self. But an epidemic and his people's suffering consumed them both, until Sokka's letter arrived, detailing the upcoming Winter Solstice that might be Gran-Gran's last.
Soon, the waters near the south would freeze, and she would be unable to enter for months. Airships were impossible to fly near the poles, Appa and Aang were unavailable for reasons painful to dwell on, and the Captain of Zuko's fastest ship estimated she needed to leave within two days to bypass the frost in time. Two days to decide if she wanted to spend her first winter season—four months —away from people the Summit asked her to make hers.
Between duty and home, the quintessential problem of married women since the world's creation, Gran-Gran wrote her once.
"You're bleeding," she says.
He studies her carefully. She looks askance at the gentle whirlpools her hands are creating at each side, juts out her chin.
"Come here."
Zuko is slow to untie his belt. Katara turns, gnawing at her lip. Splashes brush against her back as she hears him near. First comes the notes that curl into her nose every night when he slips in late, thinking her asleep: candle smoke and pinewood. Then the subtle undertones, like the smell of seacress soap she gifted him as part of the courtship ritual and the sea blubber hair masks Gran-Gran sent for him in lieu of her absence at their wedding.
She lifts her feet, treading once, twice, and braves a look.
Braves. There is nothing about this man to fear. He cocks his head in response to her glowing hands, giving her full view of the bruise marring his pale shoulders. She works methodically. It is a small injury, but Zuko doesn't know healing times like she does, so her fingers linger over the top of his shoulder and half swim, half dance around to his back.
"Your muscles are knotted. They're too tense."
"I know. It's—"
"Work. I know."
He inhales. "Katara…"
Her knuckles trail along his back. They leave a trail of goosebumps. "I don't want to talk about it."
"We haven't not talked about it for so long. It's not helping either of us."
She feels the water boil.
"But your solution is the same."
"I promise—"
She can't help it. The words are siphoned out of her. "You never said anything about any of this. You say we could do whatever we want, but you and I both know," she takes a quiet, shuddering breath, "we can't do what we want. And I—obviously if I knew, exactly, what this all would cost, without your empty promises—"
She stops. Her words are unfair, and she knows it, but it doesn't give her any satisfaction to feel his muscles go hard. She imagines stone in his eyes.
Necessity begets terrible marriages. Her grandmother knew, his mother knew, and the Summit should have but were too enamored by Oma and Shu and whatever legends drove ridiculous people to arrive at ridiculous conclusions.
But they sought her agreement. The worst crime was her acceptance, for the consequences it wrought on their relationships.
And she is right: when he turns his eyes are hard and flat. He watches her until the water stills. Not for the first time she wonders if occasional letters exchanged as friends were written by a secretary. Because the gentle affability and assurances in the written word that she owes him nothing for the scar on his chest, are nothing like the man she married. They speak together for careful deliberations and live-saving measures, but not with each other. A wall is shuttered over his heart and she doesn't know if it's because of her or the burden weighing him down. He is like the sun; magnificent, but unreachable.
That's her problem, isn't it; unselfish Master Katara, burdening others with her need to fix. Need to save. Sometimes, she wants to ask if Zuko thought her acceptance a mercy or proof he alone was not enough to save the Fire Nation.
She is his wife, not his friend. Not anymore.
"I would sooner fight the head of my security than let them stop you. I promise on my," he amends hoarsely, "the throne's honor."
"Zuko, I didn't mean—"
He's moving to leave, but she's in her element and is facing him before he can rebuff her. "Zuko," she tries again, but he grabs her wrists. His hold is not painful.
"You don't apologize," he snaps hotly. "My problems put you in this mess, I will get you out."
She snarls, incensed.
"It's called a marriage, not a mess. You aren't going to send me out of my home."
"The—Fire Nation is your home," he says, disbelieving.
"When have I ever abandoned people in need?" Sokka and her once had the chance to reunite early with her father and turned around to stay with Aang. It was the Water Tribe way. It was her way.
"No one would blame you if you left."
"They would, and they would blame you. You know as well as I do that I need to be here. Was our contract for show?"
"Martyring yourself when your family needs you was never an expectation."
"And my Tribe's wants matter, when I am Fire Lady?"
His voice goes low. Dangerous, challenging her to implicate his honor again. "They do to me. I promised Chief Hakoda the protection of your physical and mental well-being. I take my word very seriously."
She's close to slapping him, she swears, but he kisses her. Each of his hands go to her temples and pulls. At first, their teeth meet, and after a moment he shifts and they slot into place. It's hot, brief, and nothing like the one given on their perfunctory consummation on their wedding night, after he slid into her—at the time there were hopes the marriage would turn genuine, one day, and during the courtship he had hinted at the same, but in the rushed wedding and following months, intimacy was given little attention, if at all.
Tui and La, his body burns her. Solid but soft, molded from a dragon.
Zuko lets go. His hands return dutifully to his sides. Moisture beading across his glossy hair drop to the surface.
"Sorry."
"Really?"
A few moments pass. A corner of his mouth eventually quirks upwards. "Not for that, no."
Her heartbeat is slow, like molasses churning in her chest. The constant drip, drip, drip, the crackling sound of hissing steam, and cocktail of sensations on her bruised lip fill the silence.
He studies her like a scroll of firebending forms. He had dragged her higher than she meant to ever show him, her nipples pebbling in the cool air. The taste of honeyed candy and spiced tea saturates her mouth.
Her fingers brush against the surface of the water, sending ripples through its depths in tandem with the droplets from his hair. But they began to slow down, only a few stubborn ones clinging to hair plastered against his forehead. He looks more awake than he has in weeks.
Her breaths quicken. Maybe he smells the cloying pleasure raking her spine or sees something on her face, because the pulsating candle flames arch above for a short moment. It sets the cavern aflame with golds and oranges. If possible, his expression deepens into appraisal. Mischievous, even, and she is horrified to know she enjoys the prospect of being chased.
Under his studious assessment, her nipples remain painfully stiff. The languid sweeping of his gaze, his throat bobbing the further down it went, ignite a thrill sinking lower in her body.
Zuko summons a small flame and gently traces the contours of Katara's body. She sways backwards to maintain a respectable distance from her assigned husband.
"Why are you still here?"
He cants an arch brow. "It's nice."
"There's two other hot springs."
"I meant talking to my wife, while we're naked."
She ices him to the ground.
A mix of surprise and thrill warring on his face draws her closer. "What— "
She takes a deep breath and bobs under. What she sees makes her pleased, and she doesn't want to ponder why. When she grips him, stroking once, twice, a muffled hiss filters from above. He stops her hands in their ministrations and yanks her to him. He is thick and rigid against her belly, searing her skin.
She clears the water from her eyes. His scar is coarser than usual; it is as gruesome as it is roguish, but not the way Jet was. Zuko is softer around the edges.
His eyes vacillate, as though trying to confirm something. Whatever he sees in her extinguishes the last of his inhibitions. As his lips trails a path of kisses along her neck and collarbone, he coils an arm her back to press her flush against him. There is no space between their chests. Their lungs breathe in and out in sync. He nips her lip where she had been gnawing just minutes ago and wonders how often he watches her mouth to know hers so well; his tongue slides along hers and an explosion of stimuli dredges something carnal from an undiscovered recess of her brain.
She twists free from his grasp, unleashing a torrential downpour over him and revels in the way his heated skin sizzles beneath the cascade. The steam is dense. It distracts her enough that his silhouette disappears, and then he is lunging forward, walking Katara into a nearby wall.
"Are you going to fight me on this?" He drops a peck to her jaw. And another one. And then grazes his teeth into a particularly sensitive dip, and she makes a noise she didn't think was possible of making. It's too much. She wants to stop before leaving this all behind is never an option.
"On not going to the Tribe or—" she rolls her head, panting, and juts her knee. He catches her thigh and holds it in place. "Something else?"
"I'm giving you what you want."
Yes, he is. No he isn't. She's confused and tries again, her fingers yanking his hair. "I want to belong here. Not jostled around like a prized foreign wife. Where my husband comes with me to visit family and," when he grinds his pelvis into hers it turns her words dissolve into a whimpered moan for a moment, "he sees me dance at solstice and we talk to each other like we're friends."
"You'll dance for me?"
"I could."
Zuko's tongue is thorough in its perusal of her jaw. She tastes ash and somehow her mouth remains, "wet," she finishes out-loud, ridiculously, and the amber in his eyes are swallowed by pupil.
"You're wet?"
Katara cants her aching hips. His touches grow more fevered. He grasps at a breast, then the other, and groans when he touches her low. Inside. He knows how to handle a dangerous weapon, methodical and languid before growing ferocious.
She chases his fingers with her hips, rolling them as she clutches desperately at his shoulders, itching to put out the flame he's set in her in some other way. But there is no other way. Her husband is pale marble and entirely too stubborn. He chased a myth for three years out of a kernel of hope; now that she's already given him a taste, he will chase her to the end.
They grow wilder. It's then she strains to stop, recognizing the cadence of her own sultry gasps echoing in the cavern and his groans encouraging her climax.
He mistakes her pause of realization for one of hesitation. "No?"
"More. Please."
A small smirk rises to his mouth. "More fingers?"
"You."
He thrusts inside. At first it's a slow pinch and stretch, before he spreads her thighs wide and he's sheathed completely, panting. Full, is the first word she uses. There's no time to find another because he starts to mold them into a rhythm, and her thoughts are left behind in tatters, disbelieving that she's ended up like this, in his hold, impaled on him, drawing her pleasure from him like water from a stream.
"You like that, Katara?" he's murmuring. Her whines embolden his confidence. "Feeling me deep inside you?"
It's obscene, seeing his pelvis meet hers and snap up right before her pleasure can crest. The grimy wall roughens her back as he bounces her lightly. It embarrasses her. She steadies her gaze at the cavern's opening, this palace hot spring the Fire Lord and Lady are defiling, and the heat in her cheeks escalate.
Katsura is worn. Is she allowed to want her husband? Why shouldn't she want this?
She knows everything about him. She knows what clothes he wears for each function, how he takes his tea in the morning. She knows what it takes for him ending a meeting and expel everyone into the courtyard. What plagues his nightmares when he's restless at night and how many spars he's won on his best days.
She knows him so well she knows he doesn't love her, not in all the ways that matter. They married to protect their peoples—he has made her his lady so she must be dutiful to him, but he has also made it so she need not obey anyone else.
Maybe this is the only thing she can defy everyone in. Her little secret. She can find a way to breathe in this palace if she can be his.
"You drive me insane." His voice is not quite a growl. She discerns his words somewhere in the fog.
"It—so good, yes, Zuko—" she slurs.
"You belong here." The pace slows to long and drawn out. His grip on her is possessive. He is gentler now, slowing to kiss her again, and she twitches and writhes, nearly vibrating with the force of an inferno unspooling. "In our bed. Agni, Katara. So tight."
She can imagine it now: two little ones chasing each other outside. Lunch in the gardens. Arching against him under the night, whispering his name and falling asleep against his warm chest.
His eyes go in and out of focus. His rhythm shudders and her hold on him tightens. She is falling and the splash below catches her in a white flash. Raw pleasure shakes limbs. He's still going, quickening the haphazard pace and his hot mouth finding hers in a frenzy of tongue and teeth. Too soon his savage gasp breaks them apart. She feels him pulsing inside, warm and sticky.
His lips are tender when she kisses him. His embrace squeezes her whole by the time she's done with him.
The hot springs continue to bubble. Yet silent in the aftermath. She can't help it; she feels hysterically sultry and the thought of what they've done sends the room spinning. She's still so aroused it's painful. Her thighs rub together in a movement that doesn't go unnoticed.
He ducks his head to drop a kiss to her jaw, rubbing circles into her shoulders. "Was that…"
"No. Not painful."
"I see."
Suddenly shy, she untangles from him. His touch is tender in pulling her hair over her shoulder and she pivots in time to see his hands returning to his sides, as if they were outstretched to touch her.
She wades out of the water. She forces her expression neutral although her legs wobble for a moment. "We can talk tonight. If you have time."
"I will make time," he promises in a low voice.
Dressed to an acceptable degree, she passes by Zuko's attendant, Yuen, further down in the winding halls.
The round-bellied man betrays no surprise at her sight. "I positioned myself upon realizing the Fire Lord was with you. I assure you I did not hear anything."
Liars, all of them. The heat in her veins could melt a Water Tribe winter.
He keeps his word. It's late—not a problem for her anyway—and she's in the middle of reviewing a new treatment plan when he arrives in their shared chambers, but he is there as promised. Zuko plops onto her chair and watches her as she reads on the bed, her preferred choice of work location. She reclines further into the pillows and lifts a hand to massage her neck.
Her skin is extra soft and polished from the long bath, her ladies in waiting had assured her. But the remainder of the day—working in the clinic, saving an infant just barely from fatal progression of symptoms—worsened anxiety-driven flare-ups.
He notices. "Did you heal yourself?"
"I didn't have time."
He looks grave. She begins to pull water out of the cup on the desk, a wisp scarcely missing his ear, but he stops her.
"Let me."
Her incredulity doesn't stop him; suddenly his hand is on her back, firmly nudging her to make space, and he and his enormous formal robes occupy her side of the bed as he slips long fingers around her neck. He presses practiced divots into her flesh.
"Did you learn to do this when banished?"
"Father didn't let a masseuse join my boat."
Katara makes a giggle-like sound. She tries to focus on the remaining papers in her hands but the rhythmic pressure lulls her close to sleep. When his fingers tire, he switches to his palms. The feel of warm lips feathering across her nape startles her.
"Just surprised," she explains away.
Brazen. He is brazen, because a fundamental hiccup has been mutually introduced to their convenient turning not-so-convenient relationship. She can no longer look at him without the lingering idea of interaction evolving into something covetous. Whether they agreed to never go that route is irrelevant; the possibility is there. She knows what he looks like when he comes in her. It will not be an easy memory to scrub, because her flesh will remember. If she touches herself she will moan his name to the thought of sinking onto him.
And the permanency of never pinched her gut.
He hesitates. "No, that was inappropriate." His hands fall to his lap.
She braves a brazen scoot closer and skits her fingers around his scar. His half-lidded eyes watch her warily.
"Not if I like it."
He gives her the same, "I see."
It's strange to reorient the already shifting dynamics. Suki was the first to tell her, after Katara agreed to that Summit proposal all those months ago, that marriage isn't merely friendship. At the time Katara felt Suki—and Aang—overthinking the situation, but if they were referring to this: she thinks she can understand their concerns (on Aang's part, vehement objections and finally resentful acquiescence).
She likes Zuko. She's always liked him. The issue then, isn't whether she likes him; but when she started to like him like this.
"And—and if you want to."
The look he levels at her makes her doubt the color of the sun.
"I think I said something to the effect of going insane."
"When—oh." She flushes. She had tried not to think of it at all during work. A feat she failed disastrously at.
Zuko's expression is deceptively neutral, a new skill she realized he had developed in the three years since the war ended, but the color rising gives him away. She's not alone. He is thoroughly off-kilter.
"It's always been impossible to not like you."
"I—"
"Let me finish," he says, as though he will lose his courage otherwise. "I shouldn't have avoided you. But I don't know how to be around you without wanting you. You're angry and I didn't know what to do." He rubs his wrist. It's a tick she notices he does when he's thinking over a problem. "I wrote to Kanna—"
"You wrote to Gran-Gran? And didn't tell me?"
"She wrote to me first," he explains. "She told me to stop worrying about her and help my people. I sent her an update on all the work you've been doing. They're all very proud of you."
She wants to fling herself at him. "Oh," she says instead.
He nods slowly. "So. It's your choice. The Northern Water Tribe healers are decent. I can't lie and say it's ideal, but don't do something that'll leave you resentful." And he is an expert in resentment.
"There's no way you can come see her too." She knows, but a small voice of hope always accompanies her.
"I'll pray everyday that we'll be able to meet during the Summer solstice. I need to ask her forgiveness for...the last time we met."
"That was years ago. I'm sure she forgives you." Katara shakes her head. Kanna never objected to her marriage, even when Sokka reminded her once or twice about that boy with the ugly hair.
"I know."
"Sokka says she doesn't have long."
"I know."
"You're not sending me away forever."
"Forev—you're my wife."
She shrugs. "Maybe there's another man waiting there. Chief Arnook's still hopeful I'll defect and some Fire Nation nobles might be colluding with him."
"Who gave you that idea?" he demands. "My ministers? They can go fuck themselves."
"You can't swear at everyone you dislike."
"I make the rules."
"You do not."
"Where it relates to my wife's physical and mental well-being, I do, actually."
How many times has he called her his wife today? Three? It was nice. Better than Fire Lady. The association to an honorable man, instead of a constructed regime.
"Zuko?"
"Katara."
She scratches her cheek. Waits for the turbulence inside to settle.
"I think I'll leave tomorrow. I'll prepare as much as I can to help the healers handle treatment. The new protocol's slowed down infection in the last week, and," she takes a break in her babbling, tasting her next words, "thank you. I meant what I said before our wedding, and earlier today, about being friends."
Zuko looks to mull over this. In a half-crawl, she nears what is questionably inappropriate for platonic relationships, and goes further and is definitely inappropriate. For friends.
She settles squarely in his lap, trying to keep her legs from twisting and reigniting the delicious fervor waiting to be provoked in her core. "But friends don't look after this kind of physical well-being, right?"
"Not really, no." His jaw snaps close. She squirms. His lap is not uncomfortable, but he is decisively clothed and she expects it to feel far better unclothed. "The term wife is appropriate, I think."
For now, she can live with that. "Okay. Can you touch me? For my—physical well-being."
He chokes out an incredulous laugh, tilts his hips and falls back on the pillows, arms outstretched. She crawls up his body so her knees dig into his sides, her hips squarely reachable, and waits. He is slow, much slower than earlier, now that he is assured she is his to touch, even though she's about to leave for a time longer than they've been married, but she is sure of it. She will want him and make it work.