Twenty-Eight Days After Sozin's Comet

What came next could only be described one way. And that was a haze of pure, unadulterated, non-stop, twenty-four seven fucking.

"Keep going, Zuko, don't you fucking stop—"

Katara was laying it on thick, with the guard being in direct earshot. She was slick with sweat as I took her from behind, making a point to keep thrusting into her as the guard dropped off our meal tray and tried to avoid looking in our direction.

For all of the antics we'd gotten into while we'd been imprisoned, that was the only real change we'd made, since getting Uncle Iroh's message.

While we'd previously made a point to be clothed and relatively polite—or, at the very least, not actively having sex while the guards were around—for the last six days, every time they came to drop off breakfast, we made damn sure to give the guards one hell of a show.

Whether Katara was faking it or secretly got off on the exhibitionism, I couldn't really tell—but whatever conflicted feelings I'd initially had about her plan (how it was wrong, crude, we were teenagers, what guard in their right mind would want to watch us have sex?) had long been offset by just how fucking hot it was.

She had that effect on me, I was realizing. Whatever parts of our relationship were strategic, mechanisms of self-preservation, and whatever parts of it were real—I didn't care.

I just wanted her.

"I'm gonna come," I managed, timing it so I spilled inside of her just as the guard managed to leave the room. Immediately afterwards, we both slumped over, heaving as we stared at the ceiling.

We lay next to each other for a moment before she broke the silence.

"Word's got to have gotten back to Azula by now, right?"

I smirked, turning to face her. I lazily draped an arm around her chest, and leaned over to kiss her shoulder. "Either that, or all of the guards she's sent us are blind." I paused before adding, "Blind and deaf, actually."

Katara stifled a laugh. She sighed, bringing her hands up to rub her temples. "God. This is so beyond fucked up."

I shrugged. "It was your idea, remember?"

She groaned. "Don't remind me," she muttered, as she exhaled and nestled her head into the crook of my neck.

Katara's plan was simple enough, and reluctant as I was at first, I was on board—partially because we didn't really have a choice. But if I was being completely honest, the fact that her plan essentially boiled down to constant, uninterrupted sex certainly didn't hurt.

First: try as we might, there wasn't any realistic way for us to force our way out of our cell.

Firebending was a non-starter, with the magnetically charged metal, and Katara and I were so severely malnourished that her bloodbending wasn't anywhere close to full strength. Whatever feeble attempts Katara had made at bloodbending the last couple of days hadn't been enough to get the guards to move their fingers more than a few inches, before her bending stopped working and they'd regained control.

So, for us to have any hope of making it to Ba Sing Se, someone would have to physically— voluntarily, for that matter—let us out. And that "someone" could only be a guard, acting under Azula's direct orders, or Azula herself.

Second: we were still being kept alive, for whatever reason. And since we had a working theory as to why that was, we might as well test it.

This, of course, lead to the "uninterrupted, non-stop, twenty-four seven visible sex" part of our plan, with the added emphasis of having sex in front of the guards because we needed Azula to know, without a shadow of a doubt—not only we were going at it, but we were going at it . All. Of. The. Fucking. Time. And with reckless abandon.

Azula needed to know — at the rate we were going, it was a matter of when Katara got pregnant, not if.

And thus came the final part of our plan: Katara actually would get pregnant.

If our theory was right-–that Azula was keeping Katara and I alive so she could produce an heir-–then we figured that if and when Katara missed her period, or started displaying symptoms, if Azula had any interest in Katara actually carrying that baby to term, she would have to arrange for Katara to see a healer, or a doctor, or someone. Because with the way we were being fed, in our current conditions, there was absolutely no way any pregnancy of Katara's would make it past the first trimester. So unless Azula planned to turn our prison cell into a maternity ward, Katara would have to be let out, at least temporarily.

From there, though, the rest of our plan was left almost entirely up to chance.

We had some contingencies, sure—but it was hard to know exactly where to go afterwards. Because as much as I wracked my brain for any signs that could help us pinpoint where we were being held, nearly a month into our imprisonment, I still didn't have the faintest clue. We didn't know how Iroh slipped us his message, much less if he was on his way to come get us. We didn't know where in the Fire Nation we were being kept, if we had any allies close by, or how the hell we were actually going to get to Ba Sing Se.

But I knew my Uncle's handwriting anywhere. He'd written us that message himself. And that meant that Uncle Iroh was alive–and not only that, but if he was telling the truth, that Ba Sing Se was free.

And as long as Ba Sing Se stood strong, that meant the War wasn't over. So as long as we had a fighting chance, we had to do our part to help defeat the Fire Lord–and we sure as hell couldn't do anything from the depths of our Fire Nation prison cell.

As I looked at Katara, the thought snuck up on me insidiously, as it often did whenever I thought about my part in the War.

I wonder what Aang would think about all of this. That because I couldn't help him to master firebending in time, my role in "ending this war" might come down to me intentionally getting his girl pregnant.

It had crossed my mind several times. I tried my best to stuff it down, to shut it out. Because even though he was gone—dead, from what Azula had told us—I couldn't help but feel guilty, every time I thought about him.

I tried not to talk about him too much, for both Katara's sake and my own. But while I was normally pretty mindful to hide it, in that moment, she could tell—I was a million miles away.

"What's on your mind?" she whispered.

I swallowed the lump in my throat, and shook my head. I couldn't go there. Not then, while we lay next to each other naked, after having sex for the third time that morning.

"It feels wrong to talk about," I managed.

She furrowed her brow for a moment. She measured her words carefully. "You mean Aang, don't you?"

I didn't say anything, but I didn't have to. It wasn't all that surprising. We'd been alone together in prison for almost a month. At that point, Katara could read me like a book.

"Zuko," she started, her voice soft. "There's nothing you could've done differently…"

I shook my head. "It's not that. Not this time."

I sat up, and turned to face her. I studied her expression for a moment.

It was so easy to forget sometimes, with everything that we'd been through, especially those last few weeks, and how I'd gotten to see such an adult side of her—she was only fifteen. She had her whole life ahead of her, and if things had been different on the day of the Comet—if we hadn't been thrust into a prison cell together, awaiting certain execution, if we'd hadn't ever had sex, if whatever unspoken connection we'd had before had remained just that, unspoken, not something we'd acted on … who knew?

I knew what she'd told me, at least, our first few days imprisoned together. How Aang had kissed her, during intermission, when we saw the Ember Island Players. How it wasn't the first time, and he'd kissed her before. How he told her he thought they would be together after the invasion.

She even told me the response she'd given him. That she was confused, that she had a lot on her mind with the War, that she didn't know how she was feeling.

And then came the Comet.

I'd bit my tongue for weeks. I'd oscillated between wanting to know, and deciding that I would be better off leaving the question of Aang and Katara unanswered. It wasn't like it mattered anymore, anyway—Aang was dead. It was a moot point.

But still—it lingered.

Fuck it, I decided.

"What do you think would've happened between you two," I asked, the words spilling out of my mouth before I could think better of it, "if things had gone differently that day?"

She didn't say anything for a moment.

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"If—if he'd defeated my father. If Aang was alive, if we weren't in here…do you think…"

My words hung in the air, the implication obvious. Please, Katara. Don't make me spell this out for you.

"Are you asking…do you really want to know the answer to that?"

I laughed, and immediately shook my head. "God, no, of course I don't." I swallowed the lump in my throat. "But I feel like I need to."

"Why?"

I let my gaze travel from her eyes down her body, from the valley between her breasts to her stomach to her womb.

I wondered if she was pregnant yet—even if the first time we had sex I'd managed to get her pregnant, we wouldn't know for at least a few more days, at the absolute earliest. But if she was…

I placed a hand on her stomach, right below her navel. "If we do wind up bringing a child into this world… if this was the kind of life you wanted, I think I could live with that. And if you wanted that with him, I think I could find a way to live with that, too."

I paused for a moment. I debated whether or not to say it, before I looked back into her eyes.

Fuck it. I had to know.

"I just…I need to know. If this is something you never wanted."

"…what part?" she asked.

I laughed. It was a fair enough question, given the circumstances. "Me. Us. Having a kid together, all of the above. I just—"

She cut me off by crashing her lips against mine, pulling me into her arms, as I melted into her kiss. She lingered for a moment before she pulled away.

"I—I'm confused."

The corners of her mouth turned up into a smile.

"Honestly, Zuko," she ran her fingers through my messy mop of hair as she spoke. "I don't know what would've happened with Aang and I, if things had gone differently that day. I knew he had feelings for me—and if I'm being completely honest, I think I probably would've felt like we owed it to ourselves to give things a shot, after everything we'd been through."

On their own, those words would normally be enough to make my stomach drop. But the look on her face, the way she held me close, and the twinkle behind her eyes made me feel anything but.

"But for what it's worth—I saw you then, before all of this." My heart skipped a beat as she continued. "I knew there was something inside of me, going all the way back to the first time we really got to know each other, back in Ba Sing Se."

And with that, it shattered around me. The fears, the doubt, the feelings of guilt and insecurity—it shattered like broken glass.

And she wasn't done.

"I thought I hated you. And then I realized that I didn't, and then you betrayed me, and then—and then you came back. And then you joined our group. And then I really fucking hated you, except the thing is, I knew I was fooling myself—" she was rambling, her voice shaking as she spoke, "—because it's such a fine line, and when you hate someone that much, it's only because there's a part of you that cares, and doesn't want to get hurt again. And, I just…"

"Katara…"

"—I knew, after our trip to the Southern Raiders. Deep down, I just, I fucking knew. And then we went to see that stupid fucking play, with those god awful actors—it was so fucking awkward, because I'll be honest, it wasn't complete bullshit—"

This time, it was my turn to shut her up with a kiss, to spare her from rambling any more. It was pure ecstasy, the confirmation that whatever it was I felt for her wasn't one-sided—and what she'd told me was more than I needed, or had even hoped for.

But evidently, she still wasn't done. Because she pulled away briefly, if only to whisper on my lips.

"—all I know, Zuko, is that whatever I'd felt before, I didn't want to admit it to myself then—but I can't ignore it now. Not anymore."

"Katara," I breathed against her lips, as I feverishly kissed them to shut her up. "Just shut up and let me love you."

It was the mother of all Freudian slips—I was hard as a rock again, ready to go for round four. I was practically bursting at the seams for her, and I'd one-hundred percent meant to say "fuck you."

But there it was, out in the open, the words I'd been biting my tongue from saying those last three weeks. And as I froze, and Katara looked me in the eyes, she didn't miss a beat.

"Show me, then," she teased, grinding her hips up against the tip of my cock. Then she leaned over, and whispered in my ear, "Show me how much you love me."

"Fuck, Katara—"

I didn't hesitate before I buried myself inside of her. She giggled as I thrust into her, a feral grunt escaping the back of my throat. All the while, she dug her nails into my back, moaning as she trailed kisses down my neck and collarbone.

"You make me feel so fucking good," she breathed.

I pulled back, bringing a hand around her neck to gently clasp around her throat. She yelped in pleasure as I picked up the speed, her legs shaking as she doused me in her cum.

While it might've been an accident, a slip up in the heat of the moment—her and I both knew, I damn well meant it. I wasn't fooling her, or myself.

If it's already out there, you might as well say it with some conviction.

I opened my mouth, ready to say the words I'd been holding back for weeks. I fucking love you, Katara.

But as I did, she bucked her hips against mine, and wrapped her legs around my waist. And as she looked me in the eyes and cupped my face in her hands, I knew I couldn't do it. I knew that the second those words came out of my mouth, if there was even a small part of her, a sliver that wasn't fully ready to say it back—knowing Katara, she would say it anyway, if only to spare my feelings. And then I would spend the rest of my life—however short that might be—wondering if she'd actually meant it.

No. It wasn't fair, for me to drop a bomb like that on her, in the heat of the moment, when she quite literally had no escape. If I was going to tell her I loved her, it would need to be at the right time. It would need to be on her terms.

Still, though. It took everything I had not to shout it out, as I came in white hot spurts inside of her.

"You're so fucking hot," I managed instead, as I heaved next to her afterwards.

She laughed, nuzzling her forehead into my chest as she kissed my collarbone. "You would be the expert on that, wouldn't you?" she teased.

I couldn't help but smile. "Y'know, it's funny—you say that, and the first thing that pops into my head is how Aang would always call me 'Sifu Hotman.'"

And with that, we both burst out laughing. We laughed so hard we started crying, and at a certain point, the laughing ended, and all we were left with was the crying.

"I miss him too, you know," I managed, once the tears had run dry.

Katara sniffled, and wiped her nose as she looked up at me. "I know you do." She took my hand in hers, and gave it a small squeeze. "But for what it's worth-–if he were looking down on us, I really think he would be okay with this."

I raised an eyebrow. "You think?"

She shrugged. "I mean, I'm not saying he would, y'know, enjoy watching us go at it like we have been—" I shuddered at the thought, which earned me a chuckle from Katara, "—but I think he would support us doing whatever we had to, if it meant getting out of here."

It occurred to me then, as she spoke–there was a chance he was looking down on us, what with the Avatar having one foot in our world, and one foot in the Spirit World.

And as invasive as what we were doing in front of the guards felt, the idea of going at it in front of Aang, of all people, was on a completely different level.

I swallowed the lump in my throat. "I hope you're right," I muttered, as I kissed the top of her head.

As she drifted off to sleep, I was suddenly aware of every shadow that danced across the walls. And maybe it was how malnourished we were, or the weeks of compounded stress, or the post-sex addled haze, or a combination of all of the above.

But I could've sworn that at one point, in the middle of the night—I saw what looked like the shadow of an Airbender, gliding across the prison walls.