Chapter Text
**
It took another month of setting the court back into order, reassuring the nobles, the population. A month of talking, a month of carefully calibrated and planned appearances, a month of sitting with his decision, looking at it over and over to make sure that it was the right one.
And on one endless night, waiting alone for the sun to rise again, Zuko decided that it didn’t matter whether it was the right one, just that it was his, and that it was clear that it wasn’t going to change.
The head of the army had heart palpitations when Zuko appointed Uncle as regent in his absence, but the man was elderly and in poor health, and he chose not to take it too personally. To the very great confusion of his servants, he packed only a single bag of his simplest travel clothing, and walked onto the fastest ship that his navy could boast.
Perhaps the nicest part of being an autocratic ruler was that no one was able to argue very much with his decision, except the navigator of the vessel, who delayed their departure by two hours in order to wait for the turning of the tides. As a man who had spent three years of his life almost entirely at sea, and who had strong feelings about not being involved in a shipwreck, Zuko immediately listened.
Two hours to the minute, the ship cast off, and Zuko set sail for the South Pole.
**
Captain Akio did not exactly throw a tantrum when Zuko ordered the ship to stop nearly five miles off-shore, and expressed his plan to row the remainder of the way, alone, in a small boat. Captain Akio was, after all, a highly decorated and trusted officer in the Fire Nation navy, which was why he expressed his concerns respectfully – if at considerable length, volume, and with a certain amount of creative language.
Zuko listened respectfully, nodded appreciatively, and then did exactly what he wanted. Because, again, he was the Fire Lord, and sending black snow down over Katara’s village without warning was not how he wanted to begin this visit.
Three miles into his trip, though, he did reflect that his last trip to the South Pole had been in the summer, and autumn, even early autumn, was a rather different season. Even rowing his boat single-handedly through the ocean, wearing the heaviest coat he owned, and with judicious use of his bending to keep his body temperature up, Zuko could feel the impact of the temperature as he shivered. Particularly once the sun set, and both the night wind and the change in tide started to have a negative impact on his forward progress.
Unpleasant, but manageable. Zuko kept rowing.
A mile from shore, his boat was abruptly encased in ice, and Zuko turned to see the scowling and wholly unwelcome face of Master Pakku, sitting at the prow of a Water Tribe canoe.
That neither man had remotely missed the company of the other in the almost two years since they’d last seen each other was immediately apparent.
“Sokka sent word that we could probably expect you,” Pakku said. It was very clear that he had hoped that Sokka was mistaken. He sighed, heavily. “Did you not listen to a single thing I told you?”
Zuko attempted to remember the advice that Pakku had conveyed to him, very much against his will. “About… turtle-seal grease?”
Pakku grunted and did not roll his eyes, as such a thing was obviously beneath the dignity of a master waterbender, but managed to also convey that he wanted to. The man had a true range of disgusted expressions. “That is to use on your wife’s breasts during infant nursing to prevent nipple abrasion. Which it seems unlikely you will need, given that my granddaughter has moved back home.”
The master’s glare increased, as did the pressure of the ice on his boat, and Zuko could hear the creaking of the wood in protest. He ignored it and glared right back at the old man. “I came to talk to Katara.”
“You could’ve sent a letter.”
“And I didn’t.”
It was another long standoff, and but eventually Pakku gave another of those nuanced grunts, and told Zuko to get into his canoe. Zuko would’ve continued rowing his own boat out of sheer stubbornness, but there was the primary issue of it still being locked into an ice floe, and the secondary issue that he was having a very hard time feeling his hands on the oars due to the cold. So, with absolutely no suggestion of gratitude, Zuko climbed into the canoe.
For the rest of the trip to Wolf Cove, Pakku complained without pause about Zuko’s ‘ridiculous approximation of cold weather gear’ and seemed to be taking some kind of deep, cultural insult from the insulative deficiencies of Zuko’s coat and gloves. Zuko gritted his teeth and tried to focus on the positive, which was that Pakku’s bending, applied to the propulsion of his canoe, was functioning rather like an outboard motor, and they were making rather incredible time.
**
It was fully dark when Pakku led him to the door of a small hut, knocked roughly on the door, and then walked away – presumably to his own home.
Zuko waited.
And waited.
And waited.
But the door remained closed.
**
It must’ve been past midnight when Katara’s father, Hakoda arrived to find Zuko huddled against Katara’s door, his forehead pressed against his knees as he focused on using his bending to prevent himself from freezing.
It wasn’t that Hakoda stopped to introduce himself, but rather the profound level of disgust in his expression that rather immediately marked him out as one of Katara’s male relatives, and process of elimination and Zuko’s own rather consistent luck indicated that this was obviously how he would meet her dad.
Also that his first words were, “Sokka said you were an overdramatic one,” and he then began banging on his daughter’s door, incredibly loudly. “Katara! Your husband is out here, and he’s not going anywhere! Better decide if you want to be a widow or not!”
From inside the hut there was the sound of sudden footsteps, then the door was sharply yanked open, and in the weak lamplight that spilled out around her he could see Katara – wearing easily the most clothing he’d ever seen her in, minus her boots, and they stared at each other for the first time in months.
Her jaw was agape, and she just looked down at him as if unsure he was really there, while he just looked up and drank her in – it was possible that this was the last time he’d ever see her, and he wanted to memorize exactly how she looked.
Then her eyes narrowed as she looked at him, and how she looked was profoundly vexed. “Zuko, do you not own a real coat?”
Clearly this was a cultural thing. Zuko’s teeth were chattering as he snapped, “I’m wearing a coat.”
Which, in fairness, was not the opening line that he had workshopped on the voyage there.
Highly judgmental and nearly identical snorts from both Katara and her father, and at a nod from Katara Hakoda leaned down and, without hesitation, hooked Zuko under the arms and dragged him bodily into his daughter’s house, which would’ve been much more upsetting if Zuko hadn’t been starting to suffer from full-body shaking.
The hut was small, but tidy. There were framed drawings on the walls – a few that looked like antique bending scrolls, some landscapes from the Earth Kingdom, and a few that were clearly her brother’s work. He could see her books, her sewing, pots and pans, various pieces of equipment – everything had its place and was in order. A small firepit was built in the middle of the single room, and Hakoda dragged him next to it and dropped Zuko onto a pile of fur and blankets.
“Need any help?” This was directed entirely at Katara.
“I can handle it,” Katara said, crouching down and beginning to efficiently unlace Zuko’s boots. Automatically he reached down to shoo her away, and she smacked his hand firmly.
“Fine.” There was a deep unhappiness in Hakoda’s face, and an expression when he shot one last look at Zuko that suggested that he was having serious regrets about just leaving him out in the cold, but her father left, closing the door carefully behind him.
Then it was just the two of them.
Katara was focusing on tugging apart the ties of Zuko’s coat, avoiding any eye contact.
“I’m sorry.”
She said nothing, but there was the slightest pause in her hands before she began unlacing again, even faster than before.
“I was wrong.”
The coat was thrown with derision across the room, and then she was unlacing and removing his shirt.
“I missed you.”
With his coat and shirt off the shivers were even worse, and when her hands dropped to his pants and began pulling aggressively, Zuko considered for the first time whether she was planning on just leaving him to die of exposure.
Possible, he decided, then decided to just ignore it.
“Please come back to me,” he said, never looking away from her.
When she pulled the furs and blankets around Zuko’s shoulders, a spark of hope lit inside of him. The spark leapt higher as Katara, with a truly impressive speed, started shucking off all of her clothing until, totally naked, she crawled into the blankets with him and tucked the pair of them efficiently into a kind of cocoon of fabric and fur. Zuko hissed at the heat of her skin against his, the feeling of her pressed against him so completely, her arms looping around his chest without hesitation, and he pulled her even tighter. He didn’t care if this had been just to save his life – he would court hypothermia every night if that was what it took to lie next to her like this again.
“Please,” he repeated. “I had so many fucking conversations with my family.”
Her forehead pressed against his, the tip of her nose brushing his, and her eyes were all that he could see. When she spoke, he could feel the warm puffs of breath against his mouth. “And did actually talking with people help?”
Perhaps his core body temperature was beginning to go up, but the shaking slowed, and he could feel his muscles loosen. “Every second of it was horrible, but yes. You were right about talking to Uncle, I just couldn’t admit it.”
“And the part about talking to me before inciting a coup?” Clearly she intended this to be a very thorough conversation, which he supposed was fair.
“You had a good point,” he admitted. He moved one hand up and very lightly stroked the line of her jaw, then traced up to her cheek. This was perhaps not quite the position he’d expected, but he took a deep breath and just went for it. “I don’t want to be without you. Please, just marry me again. I love you, okay? Fuck, I meant to say that better. Fucking shit, I memorized some lines from a poem, hold on, let me try that again, I—”
Wherever that would’ve devolved to, he never had to know, since Katara stopped him by kissing him, and there was nothing perfunctory about it – her lips, her tongue, and her hands curling into his hair to make absolutely certain that he didn’t go anywhere, letting up only when they were both panting for breath, and he could feel her smile against his mouth before he pulled back enough to see it, and the way her happiness lit her up completely.
“That’s what I needed, Zuko. Your words. It doesn’t have to be pretty, or right, it just has to be real and honest.”
Zuko had spent most of his life accepting that he had been born with no luck – now, he realized that he had just been saving all of it for this woman, who apparently had absolutely no standards at all when it came to romance.
Thank fucking Agni.
This time it was Zuko who kissed her, pulling back after long minutes to gasp out, “Okay. Then – I love you, and I want to marry you.”
Katara’s smile was outright playful now. “But I can’t agree to that, since I never stopped being your wife in the first place.”
He stared. “But… the Fire Sages brought me the divorce papers. I fucking signed them.” Zuko braced for the impact of that.
Instead, Katara just nodded agreeably. “Right. Well, I know you weren’t even paying attention during our wedding, but it was a dual ceremony. We’re still married in the Southern Water Tribe. And let me tell you, our divorce proceedings aren’t some paper document shit. It involves ice.”
A laugh forced itself out of Zuko’s throat, followed immediately by another as he processed what she was saying. Grinning, he peppered her face with kisses. “Don’t even tell me what the process is, because I don’t even want to know how to get a divorce from you.”
She wound her hands tighter into his hair, and leaned in for a slow, gentle kiss. “I missed you.”
Another kiss. “I’m sorry that I hurt you.”
And another. “I love you.”
They lay against each other, breathing in each other’s air, hands slowly reacquainting and remapping the contours and lines of each other’s bodies, as the fire slowly died down. Outside, the wind whipped loudly, but inside the small hut, wrapped in blankets and his wife, Zuko felt perfectly warm.
Just as his eyes started to droop closed, Katara lifted her head again and looked at him expectantly. “Also, do you need us to head right back, or do we have some time? I could show you around the village tomorrow. I made you a parka, so you’ll be nice and toasty.”
It was completely in character for Katara (his wife) to immediately become focused on practicalities, but Zuko stared at her, thinking about the mechanics of what she’d just said – I made you a parka. “You, what? When? When you were at the palace?”
She laughed. “How exactly was I supposed to get a tiger-walrus pelt in the Fire Nation? Dad and GrandPakku went on a hunt after I arrived, I scraped and tanned it with Gran-Gran, then I did the major sewing during the summer, I just finished the last of the embroidery earlier this week.”
“You knew—”
She corrected him immediately, her eyes gleaming. “I hoped. I hoped so much, Zuko.” A small sigh. “And then you arrived and decided to court hypothermia rather than just knock on my door. Do you realize that I was sleeping and didn’t even know you were there?”
Zuko took a long, slow breath. “Come home with me. Not for a treaty, not for a duty, but because I love you, and because I need you.”
“Because you need a Fire Lady?”
He shook his head immediately. “Because I need you.” Zuko pressed his cheek against her hair. “I married you because Uncle told me to, but now I have the choice, and I’m choosing you.”
“I don’t want some court marriage,” she whispered, her words pressed against his skin. “That would’ve been enough for me before I knew you, before I loved you. Now I want a Water Tribe marriage or nothing. All your truths, all of my truths, and both of us together against the winter storms.”
It was impossible to hold her any closer, but he tried anyway. “Yes.”
**
Much, much later, so close to dawn that he could feel the approach of the sun in his veins, Zuko asked, “So, how am I supposed to start a discussion about having babies?”
“Tui and La, Zuko! Give me another year or two! Do you have any idea how much sewing I have to do to even think about being ready for a baby?”
“Katara, we live in a palace—”
“Diapers don’t sew themselves, Zuko.”
**
The End.