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Chapter Text

The stones beneath Zuko’s cheek are moist. The whole damn prison is wet, water seeping everywhere, a creeping, constant dampness, mold in the air he breathes. The perfect punishment for a creature of fire and sun.

He tastes blood in his mouth, feels the throbbing pain from his last beating.

“Zuko, really I did underestimate you for so long, I admit it. Failed to see your true potential.” His father’s silky voice echoes in the heavy shadows of the prison cell. He’s been here for hours, just watching as the guards beat him. That’s usual. For him to talk – that’s different.

Zuko turns his head slowly. There’s one torch in a corner, flickering low now, but still enough to see Ozai. The long robes, the metal flame of the Fire Lord in his topknot again, gleaming gold in the torchlight.

Just over three years. That’s how long Zuko was able to hold the throne with his father in a prison rather than in a grave. So fucking helpful of Aang to find a way to hold his own precious morals, to think that an Ozai without bending was somehow a snake without its fangs.

Ozai kneels down on the filthy stones, and runs a finger along Zuko’s scar, smiling when Zuko shudders. “I understand, of course, my son,” he croons. “I killed my own father for the throne. I see now that you were only following your nature. My true child.” Zuko grits his teeth, feels his father place his hand against the scar fully, his hand fitting perfectly. When he was first thrown into this prison he would’ve fought to the death if his father had ever tried to touch him like this, in that fucking spot. Later, he would’ve at least tried to bite that hand, to draw blood.

Now, he lies quietly and waits. How many times in his life has suffering been his teacher? Now it has taught him the value of submission.

“Aligning with the Avatar to gain an ally that could destroy me and leave you with a clear path to the throne. Defeating your sister in an Agni Kai. Truly, Zuko, I am proud of you.”

Zuko closes his eyes, feeling that dripping of his father’s poison into his mind. He’s just so damn tired. And the constant cold and damp from the prison feels like it has wound its way inside his bones.

“You’ve had some time to consider your position, I think.”

Two years. He’s been in this cell for two years. Hasn’t seen the sun in this lightless hole, just endless days of feeling the weight of these wet stones all around him, this prison deep under the ground. He’s felt the hope of rescue slip away, day after day. Inside him, his fire is barely an ember.

“I think, my son, it is time to discuss your future.”

Zuko’s cheek scrapes against the stone as he lifts up his head, really looks at his father’s pale face. He’s a handsome man, really, still well in his prime. Before he gave Zuko a severe and permanent facial burn across half his face, everyone in court used to talk about how much Zuko looked like his father – how handsome he was going to be when he was all grown up. Hard to even see the three years of his own prison time – of course, Zuko had been so fucking humane in his father’s prison accommodations. Clean linens. Books. Not even a single beating.

What a fucking fool he’d been.

Zuko clears his throat, painfully, and, very slowly, rasps, “My future?”

They both know then that Zuko has truly given up. That Ozai has won.

The smile stretches across Ozai’s face, as pleased as a cat watching a bird bleed out in front of it. “Indeed. After all, you are the crown prince. My heir.”

Zuko’s eyes narrow. “What about Azula?”

His father makes a soft tsk. “Such a disappointment. I was too distracted by her bending, her delightful bloodthirstiness. But you defeated her, my son. And she is, really, not quite fit to rule anymore, wouldn’t you agree? Even after all your tender care?”

He’d ended up entrusting her to the Fire Sages, and she still lives in a monastery, tended by a number of skilled nurses. She never found the cracked pieces of herself after the Agni Kai.

“Perhaps a useful marriage,” Ozai muses.

Zuko laughs, hollowly, and his throat feels raw. This is the most that he’s talked in… fuck, he doesn’t even know, and his vocal cords feel strained already. “You’d better not need her bridegroom. He won’t survive very long.”

“Precautions would have to be taken, of course.” That reptilian smile flashes in the flickering light. “But so much is already in motion. So much that you would be able to assist me with. After all, I must deal with the board that you have set for me.”

Zuko feels a brief stab of satisfaction. Three years had been enough for him to demobilize. To grant the colonies independence, to begin shifting the economy, sending men back from the military to their home villages, to change factory production to focus on trade goods, to rebuild their own food cultivation. The taste of financial prosperity for more than just the military had been enough to whet the appetite of a nation locked into war for a century. Even Ozai had to be cautious not to disturb that delicate balance.

Not that it had gone well for Zuko. How easy it had been for Ozai to swear to uphold all the treaties that Zuko had bled for, to say that a change in the head of state was a purely internal matter, an issue between father and son, and no business for an outside nation to interfere with. Not if they wanted the larger peace to be maintained, of course.

How easy it had been for Ozai to lock the Avatar into place. To make certain that no other nation would lift a finger for Zuko.

The peace was bigger than one life, after all.

Admittedly, Zuko had not quite expected it to go this way.

Still. Even a broken Zuko has to give a choking laugh, to ask, roughly, “And are you enjoying the new world order, Father?”

Ozai is impossible to bait, and just continues smiling at him. “There are opportunities. You have taught me a great lesson as well, my son. About how far I had overextended our forces. There are other ways to assure Fire Nation dominance. After all, your actions made certain that our cities were never burned, never conquered. The Earth Kingdoms still rebuild. The South Pole is still depopulated, the North still crouches behind its walls and clings to isolation. Peace could, surprisingly, go so well for us.”

Zuko stares at him. For most of his conversation he has been assuming that the executioner was waiting outside the door, sharpening his ax, and his father’s mood would determine how many swings it took to take Zuko’s head from his body. It suddenly occurs to him that something else might be brewing.

He can’t trust this. There’s nothing Ozai loves better than to bait a trap with hope.

His father traces his scar one last time, then leans back, his long silk sleeves brushing against the filthy straw. “Would you like to come out of this cell, Zuko? Your room at the palace is waiting for you. You can take a bath. Have a fine dinner. Put on clean clothes. There is a meeting of the ministers tomorrow afternoon, and I would be so glad if my heir would attend.”

Maybe the executioner really is waiting, and this is all a trap.

But, maybe not.

Zuko has always been a survivor.

And he has been in this cell long enough to know that no one is coming for him.

**

Five levels up, they pass the first window, and the sunlight after two years below ground slices through Zuko’s brain, sends him nearly to his knees in a terrible combination of the agony in his eyes and the desperate, clawing relief of finally feeling it on his skin again, feeling it soak in and call to that fluttering ember inside him.

He wishes he could stand and just absorb it for hours, but he continues stumbling forward in his father’s wake.

After all, he has learned the necessity of obedience.

**

Before they leave the prison, Zuko’s rough prison robe is removed and he is subjected to the indignity of a full delousing process, buckets of water emptied over his head and a truly noxious liquid scrubbed roughly through his ragged, matted hair, then over his bony, emaciated body. Whenever it hits an open wound, of which there are quite a few to choose from, the burning agony of it makes him suck in a breath on a gasp, barely holding back the screams that build in his throat.  

Ozai sits in a chair and takes in the whole fucking show, a look of almost delighted interest across his face as he watches his heir get deloused like a stray puppy.

Zuko is fairly sure that this is the first time in his whole life that his father has seen him bathed – the rumor in the palace was that his father hadn’t visited the nursery a single time for the first three years, preferring to wait until Zuko was fully toilet trained and presentable before he bothered to check in on his progress in person.

Apparently Ozai has decided to take a much more hands-on approach to parenting.

**

Zuko doesn’t sleep the first night — he is sitting and waiting for his father’s soldiers to arrive and throw him back into his prison cell. It would be so very Ozai, after all, to deliberately make him think that he was safe, and then start the misery again.

The feeling of the silk of his robes against his skin is foreign after so long. His hair is combed out, falling well past his shoulders now, more than enough for a very princely topknot. The bed in the room is plush and loaded with silken sheets and plump pillows, covers folded back invitingly for him to crawl between them and sleep.

He doesn’t dare. It will make the dirty straw of the prison cell that much worse if he gets into that bed now.

These aren’t the rooms he slept in the last time he was in this palace. Then, he slept in the Fire Lord’s suite, and that belongs to his father again.

These are the rooms he slept in as a child, then a teenager. The Crown Prince’s suite. And it’s all as he left it the day he fled the palace when he was seventeen, the Day of Black Sun. Off to join the Avatar and overthrow his father.

Well, that worked out like fucking shit, didn’t it.

When morning comes, he is still in his room, still seated in the same chair. Servants arrive to draw him a bath. His father is waiting to have breakfast with him.

After so long in prison, Zuko can barely eat anything before his stomach cramps shut in protest. He’s been surviving on too little, for too long, and now he has to be careful with food or he’ll end up vomiting it all up.

He learned that in his first meal after prison, curled up next to the table, puking his guts out, while his father just sat and smiled.

It is a week before he sleeps through the night, and that is just sheer exhaustion finally winning out. The next morning, his father gives him that small, reptilian smile, and notes that Zuko is looking well rested. And that night he can’t sleep again.

**

The doctors come and go silently. They are draining infected wounds, putting poultices on deep bruises, and doing very little good at all.

It’s not that they aren’t good doctors. They’re no Water Healers, but none of those can be found outside the Poles or a few neighborhoods in Republic City.

It’s just that having doctors come in two years after the beatings started is a bit more about standing back and assessing the permanent damage and less like doing any real mending.

**

Zuko stands in the training courtyard that is reserved for the crown prince, and he struggles to bend.

He has smoke and sparks, but not fire. He struggles to remember what it was like to stand beneath the dragons when he was seventeen, to watch their fire and all its colors and strength, to move with Aang through the motions of the dragon dance.

He can’t. It used to feel so sharp and immediate, the sheer wonder of it permanently carved into his brain. Now it feels muffled and distant.

After two days of trying, Zuko takes a deep breath and thinks about the prison instead, about being locked away and every day waiting for his friends to come and save him, about spending two years never begging his father for mercy because he was so sure that his friends would come any day now. And it turns out that he should’ve just started begging the first week, because all Ozai really wanted was his complete submission, and no one was coming. Ever.

His fire is like an explosion in the training yard.

When he was seventeen, Zuko decided that he didn’t want the spark of his fire to come from rage and hatred anymore, but it appears that he was wrong about a lot of things at that age.

**

He could, if he wanted to, get laid.

He has been in a prison cell for two years, and is very aware that he had been missing out on more than just a soft mattress and a clean bathroom (though those are definitely not to be dismissed lightly – the closest he came to crying at any point after getting out of prison was when he was able to sit down on an actual toilet rather than a cracked bucket that he would be smelling for the next few days). His father even makes a few silky suggestions, but while Zuko has followed all the rest of his father’s ‘suggestions’ like an obedient son, this one he doesn’t.

It’s not from any moral objection. He never visited a brothel as a teenager, and from the time he was seventeen to his overthrow he was usually at some point in the cycle of break-up-get-back-together that typified dating Mai, but at the moment he is twenty-two and has no personal objections to putting down money and getting exactly what he wants.

The problem is that he doesn’t actually want anything. His body feels utterly hollowed out, dry and empty, and even if he had any physical desire (which at the moment is a resounding no), the thought of someone else putting their hands on him right now is utterly revolting. The doctors examining the wreck of his body were bad enough, and he dismissed them as soon as the last of the infected pus in his wounds was cleared. He makes sure that even the servants are out of the room before he drops his robes, and he had the mirrors removed from his suite early on.

He makes a mild comment to his father about following the Fire Sage teaching of personal discipline, and his father gives one of his rare chuckles, the one that always makes Zuko feel like spiders are running up his spine.

Right now the feeling of taking a bath in hot water, then lying down on a large mattress, is about as much physical relief as Zuko needs.

**

Two months pass. He hasn’t been sent back to prison yet, but he waits for it every night. Or would his father wait until the morning? There are a lot of possibilities.

Zuko moves through his days — there are council meetings to attend, then a hundred small tasks to perform, ministers and budgets to oversee. He must act as his father’s agent, eyes, and ears, always aware of the hundred small traps his father has scattered in his path to test whether his leash has become too long.

Zuko has no intentions of allowing his leash to be shortened in any way, so he is careful to always report any whisper of rebellion, any hints of mismanagement. What is planted, what is real, who could be trusted — he doesn’t know, so is careful to note and report it all. He is the perfect Crown Prince, a useful tool in his father’s knowledgeable hands.

He never felt really comfortable in social situations. Azula was the one who could work a room, could find the weak spots in people and exploit them. Other than the half a year when Zuko was traveling with Team Avatar, he never really even had friends. There was his mother, then Uncle, and now both are long gone, one in a grave and one in a tea shop in Ba Sing Se, which right now feels about the same.

He is alone in the court, always feeling the yawning vulnerability of his own back.

How many ministers and functionaries does he speak with now who once knelt and called him Fire Lord? A surprising amount, actually, and whenever he catches any of them in some oversight, or a petty little piece of graft, it gives him a distinct pleasure to give them an icy glare and mention how very disappointed his father will be to hear of this transgression, and see their cold sweat and fear, to know that Ozai is the Fire Lord they wanted, so they can damn well deal with the consequences.

Was anyone ever truly loyal to him? He assumes, if they were, then they are either very far from court now or extremely dead. Whenever someone makes a subtle hint to him, attempts to reference the time when he was in power, he is swift to shut it down. Reading people, manipulating them, collecting up a hundred leashes with soft political power, that was never his strength. He can use a blade, he can burn with a skill few other firebenders can match, he can scan through rows of figures and see the hints of funds being siphoned away, he can read reports and treaties for eight hours and still keep plowing through until he sees the coy little clause tucked away like a sleeping viper and strike it through with a slash of ink, but, most importantly, he can focus on his own fucking survival this time.

**

In the private courtyard for his bending, when Zuko is done training with fire and steel, he often just sits in the sun, trying to soak in enough that he can drive the damp and the chill of two years of prison from his bones and lungs, but it never seems to be enough.

**

Five months after Zuko’s release from prison — a delegation from the Southern Water Tribe arrives, led by the Water Tribe siblings.

Now they come, he thinks, every thought like acid. Now that he doesn’t need them, but they want something from the Fire Nation. They were once so close that he would’ve happily died for either of them, and now he just wishes he could get away with killing them both.

Two years waiting for the rescue that never came, and they come with a fucking diplomatic delegation. To talk with his father.

Zuko is fairly sure that this incident will be enough to feed his fire for the rest of his fucking life.

They are both formally dressed. Zuko hasn’t seen Katara in a long time, and never like this. Her dress falls to the floor, periwinkle blues and lilacs. She is wearing makeup, skillfully applied to turn her blue eyes into bottomless pools, and her hair tumbles down her back, with just the small loops at her temples, and those blue beads. A careful touch of what is exotic to a Fire Nation eye. The prettiness that she had at fifteen is now fully realized, and at twenty she is absolutely stunning, and there’s a ripple of double-takes through the Fire Court as she walks beside her brother. Zuko used to spend so much of his time trying not to look at her, but now he only feels that hollowness inside himself, and her beauty is just one more reason to hate her.

Time has also passed over her brother. Sokka is much taller, his shoulders wider now, the whiplike frame he had at seventeen fully filled in with heavy Water Tribe muscle. He’s also formally dressed, a long blue tunic with fine embroidery. Did his sister sew it, or have the children of the Southern Water Tribe’s chief moved up in the world enough that they no longer have to make their own clothes?

Prison has left Zuko caustic, has sharpened all the edges of his personality until on some days he just feels like a blade that wants to draw blood. Preferably someone else’s, if only for a change of pace.

When the prison door had first slammed shut, he’d already known better than to expect Aang to come. There had been too many arguments, too many summits where the Avatar was too busy rebuilding the air temples, seeking new acolytes, to attend. The peace gave Aang the space he needed to focus on his own people. When he’d been reading scrolls about the Avatars past, in the years on his ship, Zuko had seen that criticism before. No Avatar truly moved beyond their own element — they always favored their own people. A nation’s time with their own Avatar always led to their own ascendance. Roku had been no different — an Earth or Water Avatar would’ve dealt with Sozin years before he’d truly become a threat.

But it had taken years before Zuko had stopped waiting for the others. How many nights did he go to sleep and dream of a rescue led by Sokka’s planning, fueled by Katara’s whips of ice? Toph would’ve had no problems with the bars of his cage.

The siblings aren’t looking at Zuko, who stands below and to the side of his father’s throne, a perfect prince. Minus the scar, minus the way he’s still too thin under his robes, two years of deprivation not easily shrugged off. The silk of his robe hides the damage so well. His father had left orders that his face be left alone – had Ozai already been thinking ahead to moments like this, or did he just not want to detract from his own excellent handiwork displayed on Zuko’s face?

It doesn’t really matter.

Sokka looks up, his face perfectly expressionless as he addresses Ozai on his throne. “We are here to formally ratify the treaty between our two nations, and we thank the Phoenix King for his grace in upholding the negotiated reparations.”

King of the Jerkbenders, Sokka used to call Ozai. Now Phoenix King slips off his tongue with such ease. At least Zuko isn’t the only one who has had to learn to crawl in the last two years, and he feels the edge of a nasty smile curl at his lip.

“Of course.” Ozai is so smooth, as if Sokka didn’t bring his airship army tumbling from the sky. “My son’s wisdom was great. For too long has there been strife between our nations. How prescient of my heir to see a better way.”

As if Ozai had never ordered the Southern Fleet to slaughter the waterbenders and drive the South to its knees. As if Ozai’s orders hadn’t led to Sokka’s mother being burned to death in her own home.

Sokka’s face twitches, hard, but he never looks away from Ozai. Not fucking once at Zuko. Is he ashamed? Zuko hopes so. He hopes that Sokka knows that Zuko is a living symbol of that fucking man’s cowardice. He once walked into the most notorious prison in the Fire Nation with Sokka, and then Sokka returned the favor by letting him rot. “How true. And the South is grateful. So grateful that we would propose even closer ties between our nations.”

Ozai’s voice is so silky, and his mask is almost perfect. Zuko is sure that he’s the only one who knows Ozai well enough to see that spark of greedy interest in his father’s eyes. “Oh? How so?”

Sokka’s blue eyes narrow. “An alliance.”

The hair on the back of Zuko’s neck stands up, and he feels every muscle in his body freeze.

Sokka keeps talking. The court is silent – a pindrop could be heard right now as everyone stares at the Water Tribe man. “The Southern and Northern Water Tribes are united in this action. A marriage between the only chief’s daughter left alive, and the Crown Prince.” He looks right into Ozai’s eyes. “We wish to do this to show that we will not raise arms again against the Fire Nation. Not when our most precious daughter and sister is wed.”

What.

What the fuck.

What the fuck are they DOING.

What the hell are they offering — to Ozai? A deal he’d never pass on — a promise not to fight if Ozai turned on the Earth Kingdom — a repudiation of their own ties in the war — why? Why?

Across from Zuko, Katara slowly lifts up her chin, and looks directly at him for the first time since she walked into the room. He knows that look on her face. He’s seen it before too many times to ever mistake it –  and his heart starts pounding in his chest as he realizes with a gut-churning lurch the why —

They didn’t forget him.

Somehow this is their plan.

A shudder runs up his spine.

This is a terrible fucking plan.

Chapter Text

Ozai is so delighted at this deal that he would probably tie a ribbon around Zuko’s neck and have a Fire Sage called in that afternoon, but that would be a bit too eager. Instead Zuko finds himself in his father’s office after the audience is concluded, watching as Ozai reads through the written treaty that the Water Tribe siblings provided, already signed by the chiefs of the North and the South, and openly gloats.

Zuko sits quietly in a chair on the opposite side of his father’s desk, careful to keep his face neutral. Too much has just happened in the last few hours, and he hasn’t had a chance to process half of it. Or even grapple with the fact that Sokka and Katara are in the palace, unpacking in distant guest quarters.

Ozai runs a finger almost lovingly over the scroll in front of him, with its preferential terms. “What good ties you made, Zuko.” The smile on his face makes Zuko’s guts twist into a knot.  “What they’re willing to give up, for you! No other explanation. A stupid deal for them, just to ensure your safety.” He laughs, very low, and Ozai’s golden eyes flick up to meet Zuko’s. “As if I would throw away my own heir.” And then Ozai gives that small, mean smile that Zuko knows so well.  “Without a reason.”

Zuko looks back, controlled and never flinching from Ozai’s gaze. He has no idea what the fuck Sokka and Katara think they’re doing right now, but the pair of them can fuck right back to the South Pole, because he does not need whatever help they think they’re offering. The time for shenanigans like this was two years before – when he needed a damn rescue. Now he can handle this shit situation himself, without involvement from amateurs.

Amateurs who know how to write a treaty in a way that can snag his father’s attention, unfortunately. Zuko keeps his voice calm and controlled. There are plenty of potential downsides to this treaty – he just needs to present them to his father in the right way. Ozai can be maneuvered, if care is taken. Zuko has seen that much over the last few months. “A marriage to a Water Tribe woman, Father? You think the people will accept that?” To say nothing of Zuko’s own profound disinterest in being thrown onto the matrimonial pyre for whatever it will buy his father – but that’s clearly not an argument that would sway his father, so Zuko doesn’t even bother to raise it.

Ozai waves a careless hand, looking back down at the scroll. “The terms are too good to let them slide through our hands. And why worry so much.” That smile, like the flash of a knife in an alley. “You will have so many years with my support and protection, after all.”

Years of this existence, walking across a wire strung over the volcano, knowing that one wrong placement of a foot will mean his own destruction. What a fucking thought.

Zuko’s hopes sink as he turns his father’s words over in his head. Another reason for his father to be thrilled. A marriage that brings an alliance, but weakens Zuko’s position in the court. A marriage to someone like Mai, a noble girl with a powerful family, would be dangerous for Ozai — giving Zuko supporters and a power base, allies that would grow particularly dangerous for Ozai the moment the first child drew breath. Katara brings Zuko nothing, and Ozai everything.

Zuko narrows his eyes, tries again. “Do you really want a waterbending grandchild? A Fire Lord with blue eyes?” His father married solely to increase the luster of their already glittering pedigree, surely an appeal to his father’s xenophobia and genealogical fixations will prove effective.

He cannot fucking believe it when Ozai just looks up and gives another smug smile. He sees what Zuko is doing and is just amused at seeing him attempt to slide out of this marriage like a cat slinking toward an open window. “Keep her breeding and you should eventually end up with a suitable enough brat. They say Water women are fertile. The royal family has been stingy with heirs for many years. I stopped your mother at two, just to keep the infighting under control, but you could have far more.” Zuko’s stomach is churning at his father’s casual references, even moreso because it dances all too close to what Zuko is working so hard to avoid thinking about – that the Water Tribe woman on the other side of this treaty, the one his father is describing right now, is Katara.

“Why so glum, Zuko? She’s pretty enough, and apparently desperate to help you.” Ozai’s expression is amused, and particularly nasty. “Are you going to try to pretend you’ve never been between her legs before?”

Zuko has had so much practice smothering his temper in the last months, but that comes breathtakingly close to snapping his leash, and he can’t control the spasm of his face, or the enraged hiss of words that break through his lips. “She was my friend.”

His father’s smile only widens. He loves these moments, after all. Loves seeing whether he can push Zuko over that line. “Oh, so you haven’t.” So silky, so delighted with his own cruelty. “Well, a lucky day for you, my son, because now you’re going to get a taste of something you very, very clearly wanted.” His face slides into a disgusting pantomime of fatherly concern, as if they both don’t know his game. “It’ll be good for you. A firebender must always be disciplined, of course, but you’ve taken it several steps too far.”

It’s by his fingertips that Zuko wrestles himself back under control, forcing his breathing to slow down, his expression to smooth out, to exude only calm obedience once more. Inside him, everything is still churning, his fire begging for the kind of release that he used to indulge in when he was sixteen and throwing tantrums on his ship. Instead Zuko exhales slowly, feels and masters his rage, and his words are perfectly tempered again when he speaks. “Of course, Father.”

Ozai watches it all, missing no details. “…and?”

If Zuko could go back in time, it would be to slit his father’s throat the moment he set foot on Fire Nation soil after the conclusion of the war. Then maybe slit Aang’s for good measure, and tell everyone else that he was doing them a fucking favor.

“And I am your grateful son,” Zuko says, bowing his head slowly, giving his father what he wants –  complete submission.

**

Later in his room, knowing that he should be dressing for dinner, he paces, nearly crawling out of his own skin.

Because that’s the problem, isn’t it.

Ozai is right.

He did want her.

And, it turns out, even with time and prison and even fucking betrayal, he still wants her.

**

No announcements have been made yet, but when Zuko and Katara are seated next to each other at the massive state dinner that evening, Ozai is making his decision rather clear.

Both Katara and Sokka are still dressed in what they arrived in. Clearly the Water Tribe has absolutely no idea how society operates. He wonders if they’re surprised that no one had to go outside and club a baby penguin-otter for dinner, and if they actually even know how to use chopsticks.

He knows they do, of course. He’s the one who fucking taught them how.

Zuko makes a polite show of standing when Sokka walks his sister over to her assigned seat, then sits after she does, settling himself carefully, picking up his napkin and positioning it just so across his lap. He knows what Ozai wants, and was careful to dress accordingly – not a hair out of place, robes that settle in perfect folds. The perfect prince, ready to wed and bed whoever his father selects, without question or complaint.

He leans over, carefully, as the first course arrives and there’s a useful buzz of conversation around them. He can see the long line of Katara’s throat, the dip of brown skin before her neckline rather belatedly begins, and he leans even closer, stopping just short of where their bodies would touch, but he can still feel the heat coming off of her, and he whispers into the shell of her ear.

“What the fuck are you even DOING. What are you THINKING.”

He is careful to let nothing show on his face, but she has to know from his voice that he is seething right now. The last time he felt this enraged near her it was beneath Ba Sing Se and they were trying to murder each other. If she wasn’t completely necessary to that fucking treaty that his father is so fixated on right now, he would rather gleefully murder her right now. Just for this stupidity.

Katara turns her neck very slowly and carefully, and her expression is perfectly calm and nearly placid, as long as no one actually looks into her eyes, because those blue eyes are like a storming sea, with a powerful undertow. “I am thinking,” she says, just as quietly as he did, her words barely audible and meant for him and him alone, “that I refuse to leave you in a prison, alone, for one more minute.”

Murder is too simple. Zuko is going to slaughter everyone in this fucking room, starting with her and ending with her brother, with all the guests, his father, and the servants making up the middle of the carnage. “I’m not in a prison right now, Katara, believe me — I know what prison is like.”

“Of course you’re in prison.” Oh, he knows that tone. When Katara digs her heels in on something she’s about as easy to dislodge as an earthbender, and that tone tells him that she is dug in.

Zuko can’t stop his lip from curling. There are covert glances coming their way from everywhere around them, but he can’t stop it. “And somehow getting into it with me will help?”

Katara takes one small, precise bite of food, then a long sip of her wine. Then she taps her finger once on the table between them, almost but very carefully not touching the back of his hand, and then she’s speaking softly, carefully enough that even he has to bend down to catch her words, and each one hits him like he’s standing in ocean and feeling waves crash directly into his face. “No one could tell us where you were, or if you were even still alive. Piandao is dead. Ozai rolled up all the White Lotus networks within a day of the coup, and no one could get us any information. We went looking. We broke into Boiling Rock to look for you, Zuko, but you weren’t there. We got into the palace prison, which was substantially easier than getting out was, and Suki has the scars to prove it. But you weren’t there, either. That was the first six months. Then your father started baiting traps, just for us, letting rumors spread about possible places that he’d stashed you. Toph almost died in the first one — we made it to the bottom of a nightmare prison and there was a dark-haired man with a scar all right, but apparently our prince was in another castle. He could definitely firebend, though, and Toph is still up in the North recovering.” Her eyes are almost burning into his as she keeps talking, and around them is the sound of political chatter, the soft sounds of utensils on plates, of glasses being refilled, of distant music, but that’s all very far away, because nothing matters but her voice, whispering about the other half of the last two years. “None of the governments were willing to commit to a fight when your father was holding to the treaty terms, and Ozai wouldn’t even confirm that you were alive, let alone discuss a trade.”

She leans even closer, and he feels the fabric of her sleeve drag across his – so scandalous, what they’re doing, how close they are, and it’s probably a good thing that his father is already planning to marry them off, is so hungry for that treaty that he would truss Zuko up naked and drop him at Katara’s feet at this point.  They’re sitting at a table four feet from Ozai, he’s having to keep his court mask up, but Zuko can feel a muscle in his cheek twitch, hard. He’d really believed that they’d left him, and it’s like she’s breaking up the ground that he’s been standing on this whole time. Her voice is soft, and he realizes that she is fucking apologizing to him – that’s what this is. And it’s both everything and fucking nothing in this moment, and his heart might actually beat out of his chest right now as sweat starts to drip down his back, beneath the heavy silk of his robe. “We tried, Zuko. We didn’t stop. We would never have stopped.”

There’s not enough air for Zuko’s lungs in this room right now. He breathes in, slow and shallow, processing what he has heard, fighting to maintain the emotionless mask on his face.

Well. Most of them apparently tried. He gives her a long look, and it’s in his softest voice, almost tender, when he says, “And Aang?”

For just an instant Katara’s expression has all the violence of a winter storm in the South Pole, and she hisses, “I haven’t spoken to Aang since the day he told me that the Avatar couldn’t be seen taking a side in an internal conflict.”

It all sinks in.

Servants sweep through the room, and the plates are picked up and carried away. Between the two of them, he’s pretty sure there was a total of one bite, and it was hers. A fresh plate of some different delicacy is placed before him, and Zuko doesn’t even bother to check to see what it is. Neither does she.

He stares at her, at her face – changed with the last few years, but fundamentally still the same. Prettier, but also cut a bit harder now. They’re both older. The years have drawn blood – from him, especially, but a lot of the old idealism is gone from her eyes.

Not all of it. Not enough. After all, she’s sitting here right now, isn’t she.

“This is marriage,” Zuko says.

“Yes.” Not even a flicker of concern.

“Marriage.” Does the woman not get it?

“I did hear you the first time. Still yes.” Oh, she’s going to take that prim little tone with him?

He glares at her, which is not particularly politic, but is, he supposes, better than what he’d like to do, which would burn down half the palace. “Royal wives have been killed before, Katara, this isn’t a game.”

That finally gets a reaction – just not quite what he was intending. She takes a long sip of her wine, then leans in against him – all the way this time, her shoulder pressed fully against him, and teasingly presses her cup against his bottom lip, her eyes glittering as, trapped, he opens his mouth and accepts a sip of the profoundly floral variety of wine that is being served tonight. There’s a soft titter from the other guests around them at her actions, and even more when she puts her mouth against his ear – people are assuming that she’s whispering some sweet nothings, angling hard for this marriage, but what she’s whispering is quite literally rocking his world. “It is a game, Zuko,” she breathes, and he can feel the warmth of each word against his ear. “And since you are the prize, I fully intend to win.”

And she draws back, just a bit, but not so far that he still isn’t conscious of every line of her body, of that unrelenting eye contact, of the fact that she and her fucking brother are hanging her out as bait for a dragon.

It’s everything she’s said, the way she’s looking at him, how close she is and having all of her attention – every fucking bit of it, all directed at him – abruptly, Zuko feels his body suddenly wake up after the numbness — and he is angry and hurting, which is not exactly helpful in the situation, but every nerve in his body is aware and screaming right now. He wants to crawl all over her, to pull her down into this fucking nightmare that he’s in and let her drown with him, just as long as she’ll hold on and never let go. He’s been alone so damn long, far longer than two years, and he needs her, and apparently she’s right there for the taking.

No, fuck that shit. He has endured years of this misery, and he can endure years more. If there’s one thing he can do, it’s survive and keep moving forward, ignoring all the blood and flesh he leaves behind. He doesn’t need anyone, let alone her.

He pulls back, getting an actual distance between them, as much as can actually happen when they’re seated next to each other at a formal diner, and his voice is harsh and rasping. “Knock it off, Katara. Go home. I don’t want your help, I don’t want you, so you can just pack yourself and Sokka up and go home.”

She doesn’t even flinch. “No.”

Fuck this woman. This isn’t a spirit oasis, this isn’t beside a river in the darkness with a stolen scroll, this isn’t a cave dotted with crystals, and he needs her to, for just once in their fucking lives, back the hell down.

From down the table, he hears his father’s voice, slipping under his skin and yanking like the barb on a hook. “You are monopolizing our guest, Zuko. Do remember your manners.”

“Of course, Father,” Zuko says immediately, smoothly. “Forgive me.”

Katara drops her eyes, so very modestly. But, under the table, Zuko feels her hand, against his knee, and she slides it up until she reaches his hand, and she grips it, tightly. None of it shows on her face, but he just stares at her for a long minute. He doesn’t hold her hand back, or move at all – but the shock of her touch is rattling through his whole body.

His hand is shaking, and he can’t help it. Can’t stop it.

Too much uncontrolled emotion is bad for firebenders. That’s why he meditates every morning, why there are so many rules about sex before marriage – not that he followed them with Mai, but it’s not like they did it very often, regardless – it wasn’t often that they found windows between arguments, and they had an unfortunate tendency to put each other into bad moods with very little effort. To always say the exact wrong thing at the wrong time, and then the other person would get set off, and then it would be days of slinking around and avoiding each other until they’d both cooled down. Then a muttered apology, and a few days before the whole cycle began again.

His hand is sparking – it’s an almost adolescent action, shameful, as well as a distinct fire hazard, but Katara just holds on tighter, and he feels a sudden coolness, chilling, refreshing, like an icy rag on a brutally hot day. How many times did she walk up to him on Ember Island, when he was sweating after a long training session, and drape a wet towel over his head, then drop its temperature with a twist of bending. He can still remember the way she’d laugh at the smothered groan he always made. He never asked her to do it – but he always looked forward to it.

Ozai is watching them, and she turns to talk quietly with the minister to her right. Zuko forces himself to turn and ask a polite question of the functionary on his left – he has no idea what is even being said, but forces himself to nod at appropriate junctures and make noncommittal sounds. For the rest of the meal they don’t speak or look at each other, but she doesn’t drop his hand.

After dinner is over, she stands and walks back to her brother, and Zuko looks down at his hand – he can still see the slightest tracing of the frost she left behind.

**

It’s a small chamber where the agreements are thoroughly reviewed – the Water Tribe siblings on one side of a table, Ozai on the other, practically oozing delight, and Zuko standing just behind Ozai’s left shoulder, watching as the names are signed, the accords agreed to.

And the guards, of course. Swordsmen, firebenders, and a full compliment of chi-blockers. Some very visible, others that he knows are tucked away in hidden little pockets and behind tapestries. Ozai is always very careful to have defenses, no matter how submissive Zuko is careful to remain. And in a room with a master waterbender and her very capable brother? In the small chamber, it’s actually a bit crowded.

All they need now is to be bound with a wedding, which Ozai is in no mood to delay.

Ozai suggests that tomorrow afternoon ought to be enough notice for the palace staff to hang some flowers and sort out a few items of suitable décor – after all, he doubts that the Water Tribe has much taste for pomp and exhibition anyway. The siblings murmur their agreement.

Zuko bites his tongue so hard that his mouth fills with blood. No one bothers to ask if he minds about the rush.

**

Zuko doesn’t sleep that night, but not, for once, because he’s expecting to be shipped back to prison.

He is stalking around the bed, knowing that tomorrow night Katara is going to be in it with him, and that hollow feeling in his body is gone, replaced by rage and hunger.

He comes fairly close to climbing out his window and over the roof in the hopes of somehow locating the Water Tribe siblings’ room and yelling at them in person, but it is almost certain that his father has a truly excessive number of guards posted around his rooms.

**

The wedding is an awkward mix of Fire Nation and Water Tribe, a strange amalgamation of customs being lined up in a hurry in order to appease the legality of both sides, because that’s all this is about — both Ozai and the Water Tribe siblings are making absolutely certain that this cannot be picked apart by either side.

Zuko’s finely crafted wedding robes have been pulled out of some storage chest and were actually, in a particularly disgusting twist, his father’s, since they are close enough in height and build for him to fit into them, since there was no time to make a custom set. The tailors were up all night making adjustments as it was, with the last thread snipped literally when Zuko began walking out to go stand at the altar. Katara is wearing her dress from the previous day, freshly pressed, which he supposes makes sense, since he’s heard her use the phrase “wedding parka” at some point over the years, and heatstroke would be a ridiculous way to start even this catastrophe of a marriage. She still looks almost insultingly pretty in it.

They share the cup of rice wine, each taking three sips as the Fire Sages speak over them. He thinks about the previous night, when she made him take a drink from her wine, and watches her lips as they close around the edge, the subtle movements of her throat as she swallows.

Then Sokka steps forward, and Katara reaches up and begins taking the blue beads out of her hair. Her loose hair falls in a curling mass practically to her hips, and now she undoes the little loops at her temples. Sokka hands her a leather cord, and holds it as she ties the beads onto it carefully, making a quick braid and loop.

Katara looks up at Sokka. “Brother, these no longer match the path that I walk.”

He nods. Zuko knows absolutely jack shit about Water Tribe marriage customs, but this is the kind of call and response that screams tradition, and he hopes that they plan to handle this whole part themselves, because he lacks either cue cards or a single idea of what is going on. “Then let me keep them safe for your first daughter.” Sokka takes the loop with the beads and tucks it into his pocket, almost reverently.

Katara looks at Zuko now, and the level of satisfaction on her face is downright rude. “You’re my husband,” she says, then leans forward and her lips brush against his cheek. She turns back to Sokka and says, extremely firmly, “He is my husband, and your brother.”

Now Sokka leans in and kisses Zuko’s cheek, in the same damn spot as his sister did, and, come on. Zuko should’ve expected this of the Water Tribe, who are unrelenting huggers, but he still feels distinctly pissed off. He’s just been practically sold to Katara, but it doesn’t mean that he should then have to get smooched by her brother.

Oh, shit, Sokka still has more to say. It seems so utterly typical that a Water Tribe wedding would have more to do for the bride’s brother than for the groom. “Husband of my sister, father of her children, brother to me and all my tribe.”

Sokka’s eyes are noticeably damp. Zuko would’ve bet quite a bit of money that Sokka would be openly sobbing his way through his sister’s wedding, but he has really kept it together. Probably because of the presence of Ozai, standing five feet from Zuko’s shoulder. He has seen the way Sokka looks at his father – he’s been judging distance, presence of guards, and whether or not he’d be able to get a killing blow in quickly enough. Zuko understands. He makes that same mental calculus every single time he sees his father.

Then, horribly, literally every Water Tribe member who came on the boat with them, from guards to sailors, walks up, kisses Zuko on the cheek, and affirms that he is now Katara’s husband and a member of the tribe. Zuko is not a fan of physical contact on good days, this is absolutely not a good day, and he is wondering how this could possibly be the abbreviated ceremony he was promised.

At the conclusion of the seemingly endless parade of kisses, Sokka mutters, “Right-hand pocket,” and Zuko comes back from the mental disassociation he has been practicing to get through this part of the ceremony. Zuko gives a small grunt, puts his hand in the right pocket of the robe, and there’s a small, fabric-wrapped package. He takes it out and hands it to Katara.

She unwraps it and… hair beads. Darker blue than the set she just handed to Sokka. Zuko is sure that there must be some significance to this, but at this moment, he mostly just needs a drink and for this ridiculous farce to be over.

No such luck. Katara is looking at him, and there’s a gleam to her eyes that he almost recognizes, from back on Ember Island. But that was years ago, and they were literal children, and he flicks his eyes away – unfortunately, to his father, who is just standing and watching, so smooth and pleased. Fuck.

Katara’s voice is calm, and it calls him back. “Thank you, husband. These are right for the path I now walk.”

And, finally, it’s over.

Well. The ceremony, at least.

**

There would normally be a long feast, but both Ozai and the Water Siblings, in their distinct eagerness for legal certainty, agreed that the married couple could skip this part and get right to the consummation part of the process. Again, no one even bothered to ask for Zuko’s opinion, really reinforcing that feeling of being an ostrich-horse put out for stud that every young boy aspires to when thinking about his wedding day.

The ceremony ended forty minutes ago, and he’s in his room again. Servants left a tray of food for him on a side table, but the last thing he can do right now is sit down and calmly eat, so he has just ignored it.

Zuko is in his fine bed robes, having hurled the wedding robes into a corner of his closet, barely restraining himself from setting them on fire. He’s sitting on the end of his bed and is drinking, throwing back longs gulps of alcohol. Not the fine plum wine, but the whiskey that he had a servant bring him. Not the good stuff, but the kind that scrapes his throat going down. Finally, one fucking thing today that is what he needs.

The door opens and Katara walks in, in a long, finely woven blue robe. Her hair is still down, but those  little twists at the front have been redone – and she’s wearing the new beads there, darker and still with an oiled gleam to the wood. They look at each other, and she walks across the room to stand in front of him.

She reaches over, takes the glass, sniffs, and raises her eyebrows.

“I’m not going to make you do something you don’t want to. This would be a very elaborate setup just to get into your pants.”

Her voice is soft, but the room is too damn quiet.

He glares at her. “But you knew that this was going to be involved.”

“Obviously.”

Zuko takes the glass back and swallows the rest, feeling it burn down his throat and into his chest. Deliberately, he sets it on the bedside table and looks back at her. “Was it pity?” He’d meant for it to be almost conversational, but there’s no hiding the savage bite in his voice. “A savior complex?” The sun is still blazing through the windows. No one even had the courtesy to let this wait until evening, until darkness could be wrapped around what is going to happen here. Zuko’s voice goes mean, because the desire creeping through his skin is so fucking unwelcome, and it is setting his temper on fire. He wants to put his hands on her, and wants every damn thing that’s going to happen and more, but the fact that she is here, about to lie down and spread her legs, because of some plan she cooked up with her brother is just unbearable, and he wants to hurt her, to make her bleed right now, even if it’s just with his words. “Is that something that gets you wet, Katara?  Having someone need you this badly, owe you so much? Is that what it was with you and Aang? The girl who saved him, was always there to tend to him and make his dinner, the only girl he ever wanted to reach down and grab his cock—”

Katara’s face is completely set as she listens to him run his mouth, and she reaches over and puts her hand on the front of his chest, directly on top of the lightning scar. She knows its placement – she spent weeks with her hands all over him, healing him for hours every day, healing him until she was soaked with sweat and swaying from exertion, and then she’d eat so fast she’d nearly choke and start healing him again. Her palm presses against the silk of his robe, and his hands fist the sheets on the bed as his jaw snaps shut. “Do you think you were the only one who would’ve jumped, Zuko?” She leans in, whispers in his ear, even though there’s no one else to hear them this time. It’s just him, and her, and a locked door, and a bed. “Now it’s my turn to jump.”

Drinking was a mistake. She’s too close. Her words are echoing in his head, and he puts his hands on her face and pulls her down, kisses her desperately. She straddles him and kisses him right back.

Maybe it doesn’t matter why she’s here, what vicious combination of obligation, guilt, and pity led to this, because her lips are against his, that’s her tongue sliding right into his mouth as if this is actually real, actually happening, and there have been too many nights where he thought of this – when she was his enemy, when she was his reluctant ally, then, worst of all, when she was his friend and that friendship was something so treasured, and he didn’t dare ruin something that precious with a thing as fucking base as how badly he wanted his hands on her body and his tongue in her mouth.

She’s still kissing him, and he lets his hands drop down, to her knees, and then he’s running his palms up the soft linen of her robe that covers her legs. She doesn’t stop him, makes a little sound in her throat that actually sounds like encouragement and then he’s gripping her hips for dear life. Surely he’s going to leave bruises, and he just doesn’t care because he needs to know that she’s real, actually here and straddling him, and that he’s not in his cell, in the middle of a full-on hallucination.

He’s too distracted by the feeling of her under his hands, and he misses that she’s loosening the tie of his bed robe, sliding the fabric, and then he suddenly realizes what she’s doing but it’s too late – she  pushes his robe down, reveals —

His back and chest are a mess of scars. Overlapping, ripping down. Sometimes it was a whip, sometimes it was a knife, and sometimes it was fire. It was always something, though. For two fucking years.

She stops everything, just staring. He can see the tears starting to gather in her eyes as she takes it all in.

“Oh, Zuko—” her voice is so soft, so pained, and she reaches down to touch.

The anger roars through him, completely unrestrained, and Zuko flips them over so that he’s on top, pushing her into the bed.

“That’s not what I want from you,” he hisses.

“Zuko—” she doesn’t get it, is still trying to touch him.

“No.” He runs his mouth over her neck, finds a spot that makes her gasp, and bites it, deliberately, feels her shiver. “Strip.”

Finally she’s looking significantly less sure of herself, her expression almost dazed. “What—”

So much anger, for so many years, and it’s left him with a mean streak. And, worse, he’s remembering that melting, hot look in her eyes back in the old days, when he would take his shirt off during training and she would just stare. His face was a wreck, a nightmare, but he could see how much she liked looking at the muscles of his back, of his chest, and he remembers the shivering, delicious feeling inside him when he’d look up and catch her eating his body up with her eyes.

Well, now that’s a wreck, too.

But he has spent too many nights over the years thinking about Katara, when he was absolutely not supposed to, and now she is here, and he is not going to waste one fucking second on her damn pity.

His voice is low, almost growling. “You wanted to be my wife, this damn badly? Then I want to see every fucking inch of your skin. Show me.”

She looks up at him, blinking, then reaches down, undoes the tie of her robe, then pulls opens the panels, letting them fall to the side.

Zuko stares. She is completely naked under it. No nightgown. No sarashi wraps. She walked down the hallway from her room to his and all she was wearing was that linen robe.

“Shit, Katara.” And he looks, because for the first time in their lives, he’s allowed to look. More than look, he remembers, and his hands are moving without conscious thought, and he runs his hands down, everywhere. Her curves are even better than when she was fifteen. He can’t get enough of her breasts, and after a long minute she reaches for him again. Fast, he pins her hands down, and snarls. “No. Stay right where I put you. Wait until I give you permission.”

She looks up at him with drowning eyes and a hint of that familiar crackling of temper. “Then you’d better do something.”

Just that quickly, his temperature rises. “What? Like this?” Zuko moves his hand down deliberately, presses a finger against her crotch, and feels it slide inside, no resistance at all, just a slick glide, and it’s very possible that part of his brain just snaps in that moment, because there are some pretty significant implications to this level of moisture. “Fuck. You are soaking, Katara.” He pushes harder, strokes, and hears her make a delicious little whimper, can feel the muscles throughout her body tense as her hips shift down, chasing his hand. “When did that happen? When did you get this wet?” The logistics alone of this are wrecking him.

Katara leans up, and locks eyes with him. “Before I even walked in the door.”

His shoulders jerk.

She’s watching him, not wavering. “Knowing you were in here. Waiting for me.” She presses a kiss against his arm, all she can reach with his off hand still pinning her down. “That’s all it took.”

 Zuko starts rubbing harder, feels her arch up, pushing herself against him. Her hands are gripping the sheets, twisting them, he can see the effort it takes for her to stay down, and he tightens his grip on her wrist, even knowing that he’s being too hard, but she doesn’t seem to be complaining. He adds a second finger and pushes deep, seeks and presses with his thumb, finding the spot that pulls a loud yell from her, then even more sweet sounds as she writhes, falling apart while he watches her, staring, wanting to savor every expression on her face as he finally matches reality to fantasy, and it’s even better than he imagined. He doesn’t let her fully come down before he starts working her up again, and she tilts her hips, shoving shamelessly against his hand, and he hears her saying his name when she comes a second time, soaking his hand.

“Damnit, Katara,” he mutters. “Perfect. You are fucking perfect.” He’d known she would be, and he’s an insane knot of anger, desire, and sheer pleasure right now.

“Please.” Katara does not sound even remotely conflicted at the moment, as she puts some serious effort into trying to get into some kind of position that will give her access to what she wants. “Please, please, please—”

Zuko is in absolutely no mood to make this easy on her at all, and rolls her onto her stomach, moves his hand to the back of her neck, pinning her, holding her. She’s scrabbling back, desperate, but he has weight and positioning, and it’s ridiculously easy to keep her pinned. “What do you want? You need to tell me.” His need for her is too much, he hates it, and he needs to know that she’s weak for him as well, that he isn’t the only one in this room with a knife of vulnerability pressed to their throat.

The Water Tribe has an impressive range of curse words, apparently, but eventually she runs out and snaps, “You, damnit—”

His heartbeat hitches. “No, you need to be more specific.” He’s taunting her, dragging his fingers through her folds again, over that spot, but deliberately too light.

Katara looks over her shoulder, eyes wild. “Your dick, Zuko, put it inside—”

He’s moving before she even finishes, wild at what she is saying, shoving into her as hard as he can, no preparation other than the two orgasms she already enjoyed, and she is moaning and pushing back, tilting her hips to take him even deeper, whispering his name like a damn mantra as he pounds, his mouth buried at the back of her neck and chasing his own finish like a man possessed. He needs both hands at her hips, pressing so hard that he knows there are going to be bruises that match his fingers, and when she slides her own hand down to rub herself, he is done, beyond done. He is not quiet as his orgasm takes him, and she isn’t far behind, he can feel her tighten and flutter and drench him while he’s still holding himself inside her, giving her every last drop.

He manages not to collapse onto her, catching himself on extended arms, but when he rolls onto his side he can’t stop himself from hauling her into his arms. Then he’s kissing her, tasting the sweat on her skin, and he can’t get enough. He doesn’t ever want to let her go, or let her get away. She crawled in here with him, well she is not getting out. She had her damn chance to run. She has no one to blame but herself.

Long minutes pass while they’re both panting and clinging, minds muddling through the hazy afterglow.

Lucid thought starts to trickle back. And it isn’t the only thing trickling.

“Shit.” His voice is a harsh rasp.

Katara is still functionally a puddle next to him, and manages a moderately inquisitive, “Hmm?”

He glares at her. “I should’ve pulled out.” Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

Katara slowly, with clear effort, hauls herself up to her elbows, and shoves about half of her hair out of her face. She props her chin on his chest and gives him a long look. “Don’t worry about it.”

Zuko’s temper, momentarily assuaged by a mind-blistering orgasm, flares again. “Don’t worry about it? Are you that eager to hand my father another fucking hostage?”

She makes a small, disgruntled sound, then holds up one hand and makes a small, twisting motion with her wrist. Zuko feels something… really wet on his leg, still tangled between hers.

He stares at her.

She stares right back at him. Absolutely daring him to say something. “Lots of things are fluids other than water, Zuko. And there isn’t a waterbender alive who became a parent when they didn’t want to.”

Zuko clears his throat. “…okay.”

She pulls herself closer to him, almost nose to nose now. “And it wasn’t pity. Not any damn part.” She reaches a hand up, and traces her finger across his lips. “Go ahead. Uncover every damn kink I have. That’s not one of them.” One leg slings over his hips, and then she’s crawling on top of him. Her hair hangs like a curtain, but he sees the gleam of her eyes, staring down at him. She cups Zuko’s face in her palms and then she’s leaning down to kiss him, deep and passionate, but with an edge of something he can’t identify until she pulls back and sits up, right on top of him, her ass brushing back against his dick.

She always cared too much about people, and she’s looking at him like he is important, precious, almost… and his whole brain skitters anxiously away from what is written across her beautiful face when she looks at him head on, giving him no chance of hiding the scar on his face or the ruin of the rest of him, and she runs her thumbs along his jaw, then down, across his collarbone and down, until she’s tracing the lightning scar like she owns him, and it makes his heart pound and his dick, which just had more excitement than it’s had in— well, fuck, a lot longer than two years— is suddenly, very decisively, ready for more.

“Now. I thought of you for two fucking years, Zuko. I am not done with you yet.” There is some very serious intent on her face now. “And I believe that it’s my turn to get my way.”

**

Afterwards.

Katara pushes up, wipes her hands over her hair, sweat dripping. She stands up, a little wobbly. Zuko just lies back on the bed and watches her under hooded eyes.

She does a quick bend, flicking the sweat away. Then she walks to the small sideboard and gives his whiskey another sniff, and gives Zuko a look over her shoulder.

“If I’d know that this was where your tastes in liquor ran, Zuko, I would’ve brought a few bottles of brine moss vodka with me.”  She pours two glasses, brings them back, hands him one. He sits up slowly and tosses it down his throat. She’s sipping hers. Both of them are still completely naked, and he lets his eyes drift down her body.

“Never tried it. Is it any good?”

“In the South Pole we believe that our booze should also be able to double as a cleaning agent, which Suki has assured me is a purely acquired taste.” She kneels down on the bed next to him, and he reaches up a hand, runs it down her side, looking at all that dark, smooth skin, which technically he now has not just permission, but an actual duty to touch on a regular basis. The Water Tribe side of the vows were frankly quite explicit.

“So.” He should be fucked into some semblance of mellowness at this point. Agni knows she certainly just made a hell of an effort if taking the edge of his temper was the goal, but there’s really no fucking end to the anger in him, and he finally asks the question. “What’s Iroh been up to? Tea shop turning a profit?” He feels ashes on his tongue.

He hates the compassion in Katara’s eyes, in equal amount to how much he thirsts for it. “He offered to trade himself for you.” Zuko flinches, but says nothing. Feels her hands along his shoulders, stroking firmly, knowing how many scars she’s touching, but lets it happen. He has a serious lack of unmarked skin left at this point, but he likes the feeling of her touching him — he has a suspicion that she’s using the sweat on his skin to work away at some of the damaged muscles from the deeper scar tissue in a subtle bit of water healing, but it feels good, so why the fuck should he make a fuss at this point. “A month after the coup, Iroh somehow talked his way onto a delegation from Ba Sing Se. He got all the way to your father’s throne room and made the offer.”

Zuko breathes out, heavily, picturing it. “Ozai wouldn’t do it.”

Katara takes both of their glasses and sets them aside, then takes his hand and rests it against her collarbone, then nestles against him. Zuko gives a small grunt, but lets her, adjusts to curve around her a bit, drops his hand down to her hip, traces the marks he can already see forming. “He laughed. Asked what value a broken, lazy old fool could possibly bring him.”

Zuko’s eyes narrow, and his mouth twists. “If Iroh hadn’t stayed in Ba Sing Se, I would’ve had more of a chance. Made fewer errors. Had at least one fucking ally.”

Katara just nods, acknowledging it. “Yes. That’s true.” He feels her hand slowly run up his spine. “Iroh burned down the tea shop when he got back. Right to the ground.”

There’s a long pause.

Finally. “A nice gesture, but didn’t do shit for me, did it.” He pulls her to him, finds her mouth, and she opens for him without hesitation.

And, nope. Apparently he still has another round in him.

And it’s his turn again.

**

Later.

The bed is a fucking wreck. Half the sheets are on the floor, and there is definitely some laundering that will need to happen here. It’s a handy thing to have a waterbender who can pull moisture from fabric with barely an effort, because otherwise half the bed would be soaked.

“What happened with you and Aang?” Maybe he is feeling mellower at this point. He’s actually curious about this one, because either there was a rather definitive breakup, or he is having the distinct pleasure of fucking the Avatar’s Forever Girl. Given his feelings about Aang at the moment – win-win, actually.

“We went back to the South Pole.” Oh, fuck, she took that very literally. He should be grateful that she didn’t just start at the iceberg. “The tribe was rebuilding Wolf Cove, three of the children revealed as benders. I was training the kids and working with Pakku on advanced forms.” She shifts a little, and sighs. “Aang was supposed to be working with Master Pakku as well, trying to complete his work on water. He had years of studying left, even before he was going to have to move on to earth and fire.” Zuko nods. They’d all been rushing, but Aang was a master of air. A user of others. Nowhere near close to finished, no matter how much they’d tried to cram into him during those months on the run and at Ember Island. Only in the Avatar state could Aang wield everything with mastery. “He got bored that first winter. No— no, that’s not fair. He wanted to start rebuilding the air temples. Rebuilding his people. He wanted me to go with him, and I had responsibilities at home. I said no, that we could travel later, in a few years.” She shrugs. “That’s really when it was over, for me, at least. I saw him sometimes. He still thought we were dating, and I was busy, didn’t really want to have the conversation, so I let him. But he was never at the summits. Never thought of anything beyond the Air Nomads. When I had to go to the North to negotiate a trade route, he swung by the South and was really angry. Asked if I was willing to travel for the Water Tribe, but not for him. And then there was the coup…” She looks at Zuko, and he sees the edges of what must have been some very epic rage on her part. He remembers her temper well, in those rare times when she let it fully off the chain. “I ended it. When he told me and Toph and Sokka that he couldn’t interfere, wouldn’t get involved with the Fire Nation’s internal business unless Ozai started breaking treaties. That was the end, and even he knew it after I was done screaming at him.”

There’s a long pause, then she shifts, tilts her head inquisitively. “What happened with you and Mai?”

Zuko makes a small, distinctly rude sound. “On again. Off again. On again. She didn’t have any interest in statecraft or ruling — it was all boring to her. Well, that was about ninety-nine percent of my waking hours. We tried. Her family wanted it to work more than either of us ever did, but I needed her family’s support. Finally it was off again, and that time her family believed that it was for good.” The bitterness is still sharp, and his hands clench. “And, given that the coup happened about two months after she left for Republic City, I guess her family really meant it that their support depended on their daughter becoming Fire Lady.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Yeah. Me too. I probably would’ve worked a lot harder on that relationship if I’d realized how serious they were.” His voice is grim. “Agni, if I’d known then what I know now, I would’ve married her that first fucking week, when I was still limping from the lightning.”

She curls closer, and he lets her, letting his hand linger over her curls, enjoying the silky weight of her hair in his palm. He’s spent a lot of years thinking about what her hair would feel like. There’s a deep satisfaction in actually being able to reach out and touch it.

“But,” and Katara’s voice is, for the first time since she arrived at court, actually a bit cautious. “You and Mai did—”

“Hm?” It takes him a second to figure out what she’s referring to, and he gives her a curious look. She makes a distinctly explicit gesture, and he gets it. “Oh. Yeah. A few times, when we were on.” He gives her a sidelong look. “Not sure you should be judging, since clearly you and Aang—”

She makes a sound like an overheating teapot and her eyes narrow dangerously. “Thank you so much, Zuko, for assuming, like the rest of the damn world, that I am a child molester.”

He stares, trying to parse that out, because that makes literally no sense, particularly given that he used to share a campsite with Sokka and Suki, and knows for a fact that the Water Tribe, or the Southern branch at any rate, has literally zero taboos about premarital sex. Frankly, at the campsite, with Sokka’s noise level, he’d seriously wished they’d had a few. “But—”

Katara sighs. Heavily. “Zuko. I just told you, very clearly. I was done with thinking that I could go along with being Aang’s forever girl by the time I was sixteen. He was fourteen, and kind of an immature fourteen at that, if we’re being brutally honest about this. Air Nomad society didn’t really do sex outside of procreation purposes, so other than giving him a few kisses that were honestly only a few steps further than what I give Sokka, and letting him introduce me everywhere as the Avatar’s girlfriend—”

Zuko’s jaw drops. “Procreation only? How—”

“It’s a lot of meditating and rejecting earthly attachments. He explained it to my father one time and I think Dad nearly had an aneurism.”

“Then—” He’s been all over Katara, and clearly she has been with someone at some point, and if it wasn’t Aang—

The question is written pretty obviously on his face, and she snorts a little. “Jet.”

Now it’s Zuko’s turn to make an indignant sound. “Hold on, you were how old—”

“He’s dead, Zuko, and it was a long time ago. Just let it go.”

**

Even later – it’s getting close to morning, but neither is asleep.

Katara is running her hand over his back, and it’s soothing. Zuko is feeling distinctly on the pleasantly limp and thoroughly fucked out end of things, and is just lying there and letting her. He could drowse, probably. He just doesn’t want to, yet. The darkness outside is starting to shift, more toward the soft grey of just before dawn.

 “I wanted you. Before.” Katara’s voice is very soft.

“What?” He blinks at her, brain trying to process what exactly she means.

“Before the coup. For years.”

Well, that sure wakes him all the way up. Zuko rolls over fast and just stares at her, his mind struggling to absorb this latest bombshell. “Why didn’t you say anything?”

“Because you were with Mai.” Like it’s obvious, or an actual answer.  

Zuko makes a sound of pure frustration. “We were broken up at least half the time!” Half might even be a generous understatement, actually.

She sighs. “Yes. You were either newly broken up, or about to get back with her, or back with her. None of those breakups seemed real, Zuko.”

He stares at her. “You were with Aang.”

“I already told you, not really.”

His voice is harsher, with a distinct edge to it now, the more he really lets this sink in, all the way to his bones. This fucking shit, is what it is, which would’ve changed exactly nothing and absolutely everything at the same time. “No, you were letting everyone, including him and including me, think that you were dating him. So you were never single, and it would’ve been a pretty dickish thing of me to even look at you, much less say or do anything, so—”

She blinks at him. “Oh. Would you have?” She actually looks surprised right now.

He looks away. It probably wouldn’t have done anything except move his father’s coup timeline up a bit, or give him one more thing to feel like a moody bastard over, really, but he still feels distinctly pissed off. “You weren’t single, and that was a long time ago. I was a nicer person then.”

Katara tilts her head. “And now?”

He moves fast, and is on top of her before she even fully processes what he’s doing, and he sees that mixture of surprise and excitement in her eyes.  Apparently he is somehow finding the energy for one more, and after that distinctly bullshit conversation this is absolutely going to be his turn again, because clearly he is owed. “I’m not nice at all.”

She looks up at him. “That’s fine.” And she reaches down without hesitation to wrap her hand around him, and his hands clench in the sheets, his shoulders tightening as she guides him inside her, pushing herself down and making those fucking sounds, soft, sweet, and warm, that rattle in his brain, in his chest, sparking and feeding his hungry fire with something other than rage. “I just need you to be you.” She rolls them over, never letting him slip out, and now she’s on top again, leaning down to press her hands against his. “Be alive. Be here.” Katara’s mouth presses against his ear, an enticing croon, and maybe this whole night has been the seduction that led to this moment. “Be here with me.”

Afterwards he falls asleep, wrapped around her, and maybe it’s sheer exhaustion piling up, or his body waving a flag of surrender after that much sex, or it’s the feel of her skin and the smell of her hair, but his sleep is, blessedly, dreamless.

**

Many, many hours later, it’s breakfast. Technically a very late brunch, actually. He and Katara are eating on the terrace outside his room, both wearing their robes, having a very slow start to the day, given how late the night ended up going.

The door opens, and Sokka enters. For the first time there aren’t any guards, there isn’t his fucking father, and Sokka isn’t trying to hide anything on his face this time. The Water Tribe man walks straight to him and wraps him in a hug. Tears are running down his face.

“I’m so sorry, Zuko.” His voice is almost too choked for the words to be comprehensible. “We tried to get you out, but we couldn’t. We tried everything.”

For a second he is just limp, letting his friend hug him, then there’s an explosion of movement and Zuko goes for Sokka’s throat, slamming him to the stone patio. “And this was the fucking plan you came up with? THIS? Throw your damn sister in the pit with me? Are the two of you insane?”

Sokka has a distinct weight and muscle advantage over him right now, and Zuko is operating on minor sleep, so the Water Tribe manages to, after a decent amount of struggling and rolling around, get to the top and pull Zuko’s hands away from his throat. Hacking and coughing around a bruised throat, he chokes out: “Big feelings, man. Big feelings.”

Katara is still sitting at the table, still eating breakfast, having continued the whole time they were rolling around the floor. “The wedding yesterday really commits us here, Zuko. Welcome to the glorious Plan Thirty-Seven.”

Still pinning Zuko to the flagstones, clearly not trusting him to make a second attempt at brother-in-law murder, Sokka gulps air. “Long may it reign.”

**

Zuko eventually relents enough for Sokka to pull up another chair and dish himself up a plate.

When they’re all settled and eating, Sokka looks over at his sister and raises an eyebrow. “Action item completed?”

She takes a long sip of tea, and nods. “Action item completed.”

Zuko looks from one to the other, then slowly realizes what they’re talking about. He sets his utensils down, ominously. “Sokka. Please say that me fucking your sister was not on some to-do list for your damn plan.”

Sokka gives him a flat look. “I’m not the one whose legal system allows for an annulment for non-consummation of a marriage, Zuko. So, please, let me assure you that I will stab you to death with this butter knife if you give me the details, but for the sake of the plan, yes, Katara had better have fucked you into the damn floor.”

Katara just takes another sip of tea and glares indiscriminately. “It is so early for this kind of bullshit.” Yes, this is a woman who still rises with the moon, not the sun.

**

Later, after breakfast and Sokka taking the clear hint to head back to his own rooms, the robes have come off again. 

Zuko is still vacillating wildly between being pissed at Katara and being profoundly grateful for having her with him right now. About all Zuko is certain about, though, is that since this stupid plan (Plan Thirty-Seven, apparently) appears to be running with or without his participation or agreement, then he is going to at least console himself by fucking Katara in every position he can think of, on every flat surface he has access to. And she seems remarkably agreeable about this course of action, and he has suspicions that she’s working through some kind of mental list of her own.

They’re both sweating and panting, and Zuko can cross both hands and knees and the floor off his own list. 

“You shouldn’t have done this.”

Katara is hoisting herself back onto the bed. “Yes, you made that really clear when you tried to choke out Sokka.”

“No. really. You handed yourself to my father as a second hostage, and tied the hands of the North and the South as a bonus. What exactly are you planning on doing?”

A slow smile curls across her mouth, and she leans against him. “Surviving. With you.” Then she pulls him much, much closer, and breathes into his ear.  “And killing your father, of course.”

He freezes, and her voice continues, almost purring now. “How long until we see him under a full moon, Zuko? You thought I could bend at fifteen? I can bloodbend a whole room of people now. So when you’re ready for us to move, and Sokka has his pieces in place, I’ll freeze your father and all his guards, and you can just walk up and slice him open.”

Zuko looks at her, at the glitter in her eyes. She means it. This is the plan.

His smile isn’t nice at all, but it is extremely sincere. He brings both hands up to cradle her face, and brushes a kiss across her lips. “What a very, very sweet wife you are.”

She smiles right back at him. “I know.”

He’ll definitely need a nap after this, but there is only one possible, reasonable reaction to having his new wife offer to help him commit both patricide and regicide, and clearly that is to rail her into the damn mattress, and it’s quite clear that Katara is profoundly on board with this course of action.

Chapter Text

Zuko is toweling his hair off. There are literally fleets of servants who would do this, but he has never allowed any of them near him after the prison. He can do all of this himself — he didn’t have servants on his ship, after all, and he managed a far more elaborate hairstyle that involved daily, precise head shaving.

Katara comes up behind him, nudges his shoulders. He looks back, grunts a little, but lets her maneuver him into a chair. She plucks the comb from his hand, then starts running it through his hair. As she combs, he can feel her slowly pulling the water out with her bending, drop by drop. One section at a time, carefully and thoroughly, she combs and dries his hair.

She came prepared — she has one of his hair wraps in her pocket, and she begins arranging his hair into a tidy topknot.

Zuko lets his eyes close. It feels nice to have her hands running through his hair, to know she’s doing this for him. Not because it’s her job, but because she wants to do it. For him.

She hums a little as she finishes. “I always wanted to do this before.”

Zuko opens his eyes and peers up at her. “When?”

“Take your pick, really,” she fusses a little with his topknot and there’s a small flush of embarrassment in her cheeks. “Ember Island. After the lightning. That time we all saw each other in Ba Sing Se for the peace signing after the war.”

He snorts and rolls his eyes. “You didn’t get enough mommying with chasing Aang around? You needed more?”

She leans down, rubs a finger down the back of his neck, then trails it down his back. She’s still blushing, but now there’s a smile pulling at her mouth and a familiar look in her eyes. “Oh, believe me, nothing about what I wanted to do to you was maternal.”

Zuko turns quickly, catches her around the waist, and pulls her over onto the small writing table in front of him. She sits, legs slightly parted, cheeks flushed, and an expression that makes it clear that she is very interested to see where he plans to take this. Her hair is still down, but she’s dressed for the day. He puts his hands on Katara’s ankles, making small circles with his thumbs.

Katara shifts a little, impatient, but he tugs her gently back into place, and he sees her hands curl tightly along the edge of the writing desk.

“When we first arrived, walked into the throne room, you looked like you were carved out of ice. Not a hair out of place, not a single reaction on your face, no matter what we said.” She shivers as his hands drift higher, pushing her skirts as he goes, now he’s at her knees. “It was driving me insane,” she admits.

Zuko gives her a small smirk, the one that he knows always gets a reaction out of her – probably she still has too many memories of him smirking at her in those old days, when he was chasing them around the world and trying to kidnap Aang, but they’re only on the second day of their marriage and he’s noticed that her reaction to it is a whole lot more complicated than just annoyance – and sometimes it can take them to some rather interesting places. “Good.” He looks down, watching his own pale hands slowly pushing her skirts, eyeing every inch of skin revealed. “You looked nice. Is it a bit late to say that? I was seriously considering killing you both, but the dress probably would’ve made me hesitate.”

Katara gives a small laugh, but clearly a lot of her attention is still focused on what he’s doing with her skirt, and her voice is almost breathless.  “We were about to propose that I fuck you for the wellbeing of two nations. Seemed like a timely moment to break out some eyeshadow. The treaty was the real bait, but it seemed like a good idea to look a bit tasty as well.”

He snaps his teeth at her chin, playfully, keeps pushing. The material is at her hips, and he slides one hand over, feels a scrap of silk. “Now, that is not Water Tribe underwear.”

Now it’s her turn to look smug. “The sarashis ruin the lines of the dress. What Fire Nation panties lack in coverage, they make up for in… well, lack of coverage, actually.”

Zuko tugs them down and leans in, pressing a kiss to her hip, then moving over, one inch of skin at a time, feeling her muscles tense and her thighs slip open, giving him, in his current position of still sitting in this chair, quite at his damn leisure, really, an excellent view of everything between her legs. The sun is streaming through the windows, and he’s sitting in a sunbeam and considering exactly what to do, and it seems like there are nothing but really good options at the moment.  

He traces one finger down, very slowly. “I used to watch you waterbending in your fucking underwear. All those yards of white linen, getting wet. And you didn’t even care.” He parts her with his fingers, slides one through. She’s already wet.

He likes the soft sound she makes, and decides that he’s going to make sure she makes it again. “I did notice you noticing, Zuko.” She’s looking at him under her lashes, and she’s clearly choosing her words for maximum impact right now. “Sometimes I didn’t bend all the water off me right away, either. Just to keep seeing that look on your face, and the way you had to be so careful not to stand up right away.”

He makes a sharp tsk. Clearly this is going to require a proportional response. “That wasn’t nice at all. Poor little teenage me. Do you have any idea how many cold dips in the river I was having to take?” And he leans in and licks her, long and thorough, enjoying the almost strangled sound she makes. He does it again, brushing all the spots she likes the most, but not enough to do anything more than work her up. He wants her begging and desperate, and already he can feel her hands grabbing at his shoulders, tangling at his freshly arranged hair.

“You’re going to get all rumpled if you go ahead with this,” she hisses, like she’s trying to warn him. As if he doesn’t know exactly what he’s doing right now.

He smirks, and it doesn’t even matter that she can’t see it, part of him knows that she can feel it, right up against her. “Well, then I guess you’ll need to tidy me up again.” And then he shifts his hands on her thighs and puts his total focus on taking her completely apart.

**

It takes Zuko a few days, but he does eventually notice that all of Katara’s belongings are now in his room, and he points out to her that technically they have an entire suite, including her own personal room.

She tells him, flatly, that his room is five times as large as the hut she grew up sharing with her parents, grandmother, and brother, and that the idea that the two of them should occupy separate rooms is the dumbest thing she’s heard since Aang told her about Air Nomad sexual practices.

A successful marriage is about both compromise and patricide, so Zuko lets the topic drop and learns, for the first time in his life, how to share closet space.

**

In their first banquet as a married couple, Zuko suddenly realizes the full extent to which Ozai has miscalculated, badly, with this marriage.

The social whirl of the court, with its smiles like knives and loaded conversations, have always been something that Zuko works to survive and endure, preferably with a carefully administered level of alcohol to blunt the edges but not inhibit his ability to think.

But this time, Katara is at his side.

She has no allies in this court. She is from a vastly alien culture and people, one that the Fire Nation spent quite a lot of effort trying to crush. She should be worse off than him, practically helpless, shunned and reviled.

But Zuko had forgotten that Katara always had charm to spare. When it came time to buy supplies, Katara was the one who bartered, walking away with twice the rice for half the money that Sokka or Zuko would’ve spent. She was the one who, if they wanted some information, would go out to some village square and spend a day just chatting seemingly aimlessly with two dozen people, but would walk away knowing everything they needed and more.

And, in the years since they traveled together, Katara has been honing that skill like a stiletto blade for her tribe, in the Northern Water Tribe over trade routes, but also in a dozen Earth Kingdom courts as she discussed treaties and negotiated the best opportunities for her tribe, and her skills as a diplomat have been one of the reasons that the Southern Water Tribe was able to operate so far above its weight class internationally.

So when she joins him in the mingling, Zuko sees her weaponize all that charm and soft power skillset, and use it for him.

She makes no promises. She does nothing to expose either of them. But she talks and talks while he stands quietly beside her, sipping his drink and lending her his authority and station, and she draws people out skillfully, getting a sense of them, figuring out who stands where. Laying the politics of the court out for both of them to look through like the lines on a ledger.

Suddenly, Zuko is operating in a team — one that reminds him viscerally of the days when he and Katara dressed in black and slipped through the Southern Fleet like a set of dual broadswords, two halves of a whole, in perfect concert with each other. That’s always been how they fought — together or against each other — and on this night, and all the days and nights following it — he realizes that this whole life is another kind of battlefield, and now she is covering his back.

Zuko’s father isn’t a fool. He watches with narrowed eyes as his daughter-in-law begins moving through the court like a hunting shark. But he needs the treaty that Katara’s marriage brought them, and Sokka was careful with how he phrased certain clauses. And she and Zuko are always careful never to move against Ozai, either openly or covertly — just to, slowly and deliberately, understand and arrange a board to their liking.

Zuko is reminded of all the Pai Sho that he suffered through on the ship with Iroh for three years, and for the first time he begins to understand the moves.

Katara has allies abroad. The foreign ambassadors always hover around her, are quick to include Zuko in meetings, give him honors. It’s useful to Ozai, so his father has to grit his teeth and watch as Katara begins, slowly and painstakingly, to create a power base for Zuko.

She also never hesitates to imply, hint, or outright state that she has an inside path with the Avatar. Aang barely deviates from traveling from one air temple to another, more focused on acquiring air acolytes and trying to father new air benders than on anything happening in the foreign courts, but everyone still remembers what Aang is capable of — the devastation on the day the fleet at the North Pole was destroyed, or the acres of destruction still visible where he and Ozai fought — and, for a man devoted to peace, or at least the illusion of that peace, at all costs and any price, Katara is quite skilled at using him as a threat.

Married to Zuko or not, apparently everyone assumes that Katara still has Aang firmly in her pocket. Not that Zuko cares. He doesn’t care how many loyalties Katara cultivates and collects — she’s using it all for both of them.

And whoever might be in her pocket, Zuko is the one between her legs every night.

**

Ozai clearly would prefer to see the two of them slowed down by a pregnancy or two, and it’s obvious how much he wants the lever of a baby’s safety to pull if necessary. By the time half a year has passed, Ozai is hinting to Zuko that he would like to be made a grandfather, soon, and Zuko simply replies that he is most certainly doing his part in the process with a great deal of focus and attention, which is true. He’s sure that any number of the servants who change the bedding in the crown prince’s suite can report that Katara is never out of his bed for a single night, and that a great deal of marital activity is occurring. And there are no hints of contraceptive teas, or sheaths, and no attention even remotely paid to the calendar, so Ozai must simply sit and stew as his daughter-in-law smiles at him sweetly and her belly remains stubbornly flat.

**

It takes three marriages before even Ozai accepts that Azula will not be a useful marital pawn, and even a pregnancy is out of the question, since no groom has survived even long enough to complete a consummation, and Zuko’s sister is returned, in a notably agitated state, to the care of the Fire Sages. The Fire Sages look remarkably unenthused to have their charge again.

This works in Zuko’s favor, as three extremely high-profile marital murders firmly cement his position as Ozai’s only possible heir. The deaths themselves are also a very clear indication that his father, even in this risen part of his political career, is far from infallible.

Azula seems to enjoy the pomp and fuss of the weddings themselves, and always made sure to wait until after the rice wine is shared and the banquet completed before setting about the task of savagely deconstructing her husbands. During the final attempt, Zuko has just finished giving distinctly less-than-effusive congratulations to his new brother-in-law when Azula catches his eye and gives him a wink.

Poor Chan. He’d looked distinctly gray and shaky when half a dozen guards had escorted him to the wedding suite.

Not that half a dozen guards had proven even remotely up to the task of controlling Azula, even when there are chi-blockers among them. Azula was always so devious and deadly, with or without her bending, and full sanity was apparently not connected to those traits. They aren’t even able to fully determine which corpse was the flower of the nobility and which were just common guards.

No need to prepare the funeral pyres, though. Azula has already taken care of that.

Katara is quick to offer their deepest condolences to Chan’s parents, whisper how deeply, deeply sad she and the Crown Prince are that such a tragedy had occurred.

Such a very avoidable tragedy.

Ozai’s desire to use Azula to solidify his own power base has the rather delightful result of putting three of the strongest noble dynasties firmly in Katara’s pockets, and, therefore, in Zuko’s. Grieving parents do so need a target for their rage, after all.

**

Every morning Katara and Zuko share breakfast, then head to their own tasks. Zuko goes about his responsibilities and obligations as Crown Prince, burrowing his way further into the bureaucracy every day, learning exactly where the levers of power and control are within his father’s regime. When Zuko overthrew his father at seventeen, he’d just spent three rather critical and formative years in total exile, and his few months back in Caldera City had been spent fully insulated away from real power. With Uncle Iroh permanently settled in Ba Sing Se, Zuko had occupied his years as Fire Lord trying to figure out how the damn country was run, with varying levels of success day to day.

Now he is getting the kind of real instruction and training he’d needed then by watching Ozai closely – his father is, megalomania, narcissism, and excessively bloodthirsty tendencies aside, a master at operating a country, and Zuko is careful to learn, and learn well.

Zuko and his father have lunch together on most days. It’s a very working lunch, true, often with aides sent running to look up particular figures or information to augment whatever topic the two are discussing, but it is a regular event.

On some occasions, as Zuko talks with his father and eats, he reflects that this is all he’d ever truly wanted when he was thirteen and desperate for any of Ozai’s attention and affection.

Now, of course, as he talks and maintains his perfect mask of obedient attention, he considers just how very much he would like to drive his chopsticks through his father’s throat, and Zuko gives his father a thin smile and promises himself that, one day, he’ll do just that.

Then back to the minutiae of ledgers, reports, trade agreements, and endless, endless budgets. As fast as Zuko can work, it feels like double that amount is always placed on his desk by the end of the day, a paper pile driven by the heartbeats of every citizen in the country.

Dinners are almost invariably with company. Katara is of the opinion that they might as well wring another few hours of politicking out of the day, and Zuko sits at his table, eating quietly, and listening as his wife draws nobles, ministers, and generals closer into her finely woven net. Katara regards politics much like the Water Tribe regards food stores – it’s always best to add a few more fish in the larder for winter.

And when the plates are finally cleared, and their guests leave, Zuko and Katara can head down to the private training courtyard, to work another day’s worth of frustration and smothered aggression out in the kind of sparring matches that leave gouges and scorch marks in the stones, and more often than not end with Zuko’s pants down and Katara’s skirts up.

They’re generally both feeling substantially mellower when they head back to their room to discuss the events of the day and compare what they’ve learned.

**

It’s not every night that Zuko dreams. Sometimes he’ll go a full week or two between dreaming, and part of him will start to hope that, maybe, it won’t happen again.

It always does. Always the same dream. The moisture. The walls. The pain. The knowledge that no one will be coming for him, that he served his purpose, did his part, and is now utterly disposable. And then, looking over and seeing his father – sitting, smiling, and, this time, never ever letting him out.

“Zuko, wake up.”

His hands are iced together when his eyes open – Katara learned the hard way that sometimes he comes out of the dream and part of his brain has already chosen the fight response. The first time it happened, when she was dunking herself into their tub and healing the burns, he’d been pacing, yelling that she was going down the fucking hall, that she was going to sleep in her own damn room like a proper royal bride and—

And she’d iced him to the floor and told him to stop freaking out and start troubleshooting, because she wasn’t about to put up with total bullshit like separate rooms.

Tonight it doesn’t take long before the fog of terror and throat-clogging, vicious rage clears from his brain, and he knows who is next to him in the darkness. He whispers her name and she melts the cuffs, wraps herself around him.

“It’s going to be okay, Zuko,” she whispers. “You’re not going back there. We have a plan. It’s going to be okay.”

In the daylight he can believe all those things, but not in those dark hours after the dream, when he can still feel the damp and the cold inside him, and his whole body is still shaking, and he’ll hate himself for it later, but all he can do is pull her even closer to him and hiss, “Just don’t leave me, Katara. Don’t leave me alone. Promise you’ll stay.”

She promises in words, she promises with the warmth of her body, she promises with every day at his side.

But the dream always comes back anyway, as much a scar as the one on his face or the ones across his body.

**

While Zuko and Katara work inside the court, Sokka is the one who is working to line things up outside the Fire Nation. There is no such thing as secure communication in the Fire Court, and Ozai is careful to make certain that things are never quite right for him to approve a visit from Katara’s brother – though, he promises, a visit from her brother and her father would be the perfect way to celebrate the birth of a baby – but Zuko learns quickly that this is exactly what Katara and Sokka had expected.

A few verbal messages are passed through various diplomats – the Northern Water Tribe seems to excel in producing particularly slippery ambassadors who excel at cloak and dagger work, and a few of the warriors of Kyoshi make trips in under the guise of escorting dignitaries from the Earth Kingdom – and the code phrases are simple.

How is the hunting in the western bay this year?

If an ambassador says, Too many penguin-otters, then the plan is moving along well, and everyone can proceed on the agreed-on timeline.

If the Kyoshi warrior frowns and says, The fishing was fine, but the tiger-walruses are hanging close to shore, then everything must be delayed by three full moons.

Zuko, who has seen Sokka’s planning up close before, expresses surprise that two coded phrases that basically amount to “keep going” and “slow down” is the only way that they can communicate, and Katara assures him that, in the five months between Zuko getting out of prison and the siblings arriving, Sokka never stopped planning, and they had to build a separate hut to accommodate all of his drafting papers, notes, and color-coded charts. While she was wrestling both the Southern and the Northern leadership into agreeing to terms so generous that Ozai would take the bait and assume he could snap the line, her brother was creating a plan so nightmarishly convoluted that at one point he had stopped sleeping, then burned the hut down in a blaze of perfectionist glory, and two days later had produced a plan that could be contained in a single page, leaned into their strengths, known allies, available assets, and focused on murder-based regime-change.

Four years after their wedding, Katara whispers a date into the ear of the ambassador from the Northern Water Tribe.

**

“Fire or steel,” Zuko murmurs to Katara that afternoon, as they share a soothing pot of tea and wait for the moon to rise.

She hums softly, contemplatively, and says, “Why don’t you leave your options open, and then do whatever feels right to you in the moment?”

It’s excellent advice, and, like most advice that Zuko gets from his wife, he is pleased to take it.

**

That night, they walk to his father’s rooms for the last time.

The guards block them.

“We’d like an audience, if my father is available,” Zuko says, then gives a small, knowing smile. “My wife and I have some news that the Fire Lord will want to hear.” And then Zuko reaches over and curls one hand unmistakably across Katara’s belly, where the gaze of the entire court has been ceaselessly locked since about three months after the wedding.  

The senior guard brightens — this is the kind of good news that gets the help a few coins as a good-will bonus, after all. He disappears inside, and comes out again quickly, followed by Ozai’s best chi-blocker. Ozai is understandably cautious about being around his daughter-in-law on nights that the moon is heavy, given that she’s the best waterbender of her generation.

He would’ve never let her live if he’d known about the bloodbending.

Katara smiles as the chi-blocker steps forward to start striking her, and twists a hand the way that Zuko last saw when he was seventeen. The chi-blocker freezes, and so do the guards. Katara’s hand is almost a claw as she puppets the chi-blocker through the motions — all the walking and sounds that Ozai and the guards inside the room with him would expect to hear, and then she nods to Zuko.

Zuko cuts the throats of the guards and the chi-blocker, and Katara puppets them softly to the floor, no noisy death throes permitted, blood pooling across the floor but never touching the hems of their garments. He knows who was stationed here tonight, and he sincerely doubts that any of them will be truly missed – if anything, a few families will be raising glasses in bitter toasts when word gets out.

They are able to walk right into his father’s inner rooms.

Zuko ought to thank his father for arranging such an excellent marriage for him.

He’ll make sure that he does it soon.

**

When the moment comes, and Katara bloodbends the guards inside the room into perfect stillness, Zuko is able to take his time with his father.

He chooses fire. It feels right to put his hand against his father’s face, almost lovingly, and return the favor that his father paid him when he was a thirteen-year-old child.

With interest.

They can’t secure an entire palace by themselves, of course. That’s the part where Sokka, Suki, Toph, Iroh, and a targeted force of White Lotus and Water Tribe troops come into play.

Sokka had been insistent that the Water Tribe customs were followed in the marriage ceremony, and apparently the Water Tribe was quite literal about all the kisses and declarations that Zuko belonged to their tribe.

So they weren’t raising arms against the Fire Nation, which would have been in violation of the treaty. Just raising arms against the enemies of Zuko, their tribesman and now presumptive Fire Lord, thanks to the very convenient death of Ozai, a carefully-timed ten minutes prior to when the troops entered the palace.

No one knows how to plan like Zuko’s brother-in-law.

Plan Thirty-Seven succeeds, flawlessly.

**

Four years of close attention have allowed Zuko and Katara to get a very good sense of the individuals who make up the Fire Nation bureaucratic system, as well as the overall system itself.  

Who does what. Who they need. Who they don’t. This time, Zuko has learned a number of valuable lessons about what it means to hold power, and made several careful lists of names.

As his extremely decisive and thorough purge of his father’s supporters and ministers occurs, he sends a soothing letter to the Avatar — this is simply an internal matter within the Fire Nation.

The Fire Lord and his wife have no need at all of his assistance… or interference.

**

Weeks later, when it becomes clear that the aftermaths of the coup have settled, and that this time his grip on his country is by the throat, Zuko lies in bed with Katara, feeling their heartbeats begin to quiet and slow.

She starts to make the little bend that she had made so many times before over the last years, but this time Zuko catches her wrist and stops her.

“No, leave it this time.”

Katara lifts an eyebrow. “I thought someone had very strong feelings about this.”

He presses his lips against the crown of her head and whispers. “That was about my father. Maybe I want a hostage for myself.”

She pulls back, enough to look at him seriously while she runs her fingers over his chin, up, very deliberately, to his scar. “How many hostages will make you believe that I’ll stay, that I’ve won the game and that I’m keeping you?” She presses her mouth against his, a brush of lips that is gentle and sweet, and her voice is soft and caressing.  “Choose a number, Zuko.” Another kiss. “We can keep having babies until the day you really believe me when I say I love you.”

He does believe in her, in the words she says that fill that hungry pit inside of him that will never stop craving her. But too many people have left him behind for a coiling part of him not to cling desperately to a bit of leverage, a bit of certainty. He believes that Katara would never leave him, believes even that she is honest when she says that she loves him, but he knows that she would never, ever leave her baby.

The scars from the prison, the ones that are visible and the ones that aren’t, will be with him until the day he dies. He knows that. His feelings for Katara are too tied up with his need for her, the need to know that she won’t leave him, that he won’t be alone again. When he tells Katara that he loves her, he knows that there’s a part of him that means it, but that also there’s a part of him that says it to keep her with him.  

He runs his hand over her hip, sliding slowly down the center of her, stroking between her legs, gathering up everything left behind and, almost methodically, thumbing it back up inside her, a slow smile pulling across his mouth when he hears the small moan she can’t quite bite back. He looks at her, seeing the way she’s biting her lip, the heaviness in her eyes. “Maybe let’s just start with one and find out.” His hand is already on her, there’s absolutely no hiding how much she likes the idea of that, and then his voice drops, gets raspy. “Bet we make a really cute hostage.”

She pulls him down hard, kisses him, then pulls back. “Waterbender, firebender, or no bending at all? Care to place a bet?”

Zuko’s smile widens. “Guess there’s only way to find out.”

**

It’s their fifth child and third daughter who is the firebender among their children, and while the political side of Zuko is very pleased that Izumi is clearly suited to be the heir, both in terms of temperament and bending, the paternal side of Zuko is primarily just relieved to have a little bit of reinforcement after having experienced the last few years of living in the royal wing with five waterbenders, all of whom inherited a double helping of temper from their parents.

And while the part of Zuko that grew up in a royal viper pit can deeply appreciate the level of sibling loyalty that his children possess, he gets a bit tired of opening the door, seeing three feet of water sloshing around, and somehow not a single child is able to recall exactly who it was that flooded the wing. Again.

But he is not alone.

And apparently, the number was five.