swing and a miss.
characters: aang, katara, mai, sokka, zuko.
notes: for bean, all nsfw. asymetric.

…

vi. the garden of sorrows

…

The ill-humored irony of the situation lies in the fact that Zuko doesn't remember what he was doing when he heard that she was hurt. (And his world should have screeched to a halt, shattered into platelets of earth into the molten vortex beneath; yet there is no tether to anything but before and after to keep him from falling apart.)

Katara smiles, and there is only that memory to keep.

"Did you need something?"

His voice is soft suddenly and her eyes look different today and their daughter lingers behind her legs. He hasn't always been this aware of things but he notices it all now. Meticulous studying, notice her eyes, notice her smile, try to trace the pattern of her love.

"Aiko wanted to see if you had enough time to come into the gardens with us since it's getting dark out."

Zuko stands with a shadow of a smile obscured by something he can't quite grasp, but he focuses. Eyes on her smile, white-bright and genuine, completely genuine. He moves towards her slowly with gentle eyes and tucks his head down to brush a kiss across her mouth. It is a smile for a smile and Katara leans in, spreads her lips against his for a moment. Aiko tears her nails into Zuko's thigh impatiently, and it stings for a second before he withdraws.

It is one fell swoop when he picks her up and a litany of joyous, child-like noises from her mouth. Katara smiles, coils her fingers along his waist as they start to walk.

The garden has always been Katara's favorite place so it doesn't surprise him when she leads them there, measured steps and a radiant smile at the sight of the cloudless sky pouring sunshine over the grounds. Zuko remembers the days he poured his misery into this garden and how Katara had stepped in, how she had taught him how to sow seeds of a different kind so that there would be nothing but beauty and happiness to reap.

She falls down into the grass to twist her fingers around the flowers, laughing like a whisper to the flora. It almost feels genuine, real memories being repeated, but he knows this is new to her. Aiko slips down the side of his body, wriggling until she toddles herself free from his grasp, and then she is flinging herself into the grass beside Katara.

Katara looks down at her daughter with a look that nearly breaks Zuko in pieces because of the raw surprise and adoration of first moments done over again. He loves them both to the brink of pain (and he hates the deterioration of his psyche at the hands of her loss).

But he joins them, gently dropping down into a kneel beside the two of them. Aiko snatches at the grass and Katara plucks a violet-dark flower from the line of gorgeous stems to twirl and tuck behind Aiko's ear.

He loves them so much.

"Do you remember," and he braces for painful questions that hurt to answer because this is a fresh wound over his skin being torn away for months and months at a time, "when we came here the very first time?"

Maybe his heart stops, maybe he's so dead inside that this brings him to life. "What?"

Katara looks at their daughter as if nothing is out of the ordinary, tucks the familiar curly tangle of her hair behind her ears. She is so Katara, in all the ways that he loves, and enough of Zuko for him to bear. "That was summer, and now it's spring, and we're still here, rolling around the grass."

The obvious question sits on his lips. "You remember that?"

When she looks at him, her eyes are hard and insistent. "I remember making that promise to you in the dark. I remember holding your hand and thinking how warm it was and how I wanted to make as many excuses as I could to hold onto you. I remember you promising me something, too."

His memory is fraught with sadness and self-pity, but he remembers the glow of the moon and the twinkle of lights around them. And she remembers, too, and that is all he can ask.

"I'm sorry," Zuko shifts closer to her, anger at himself crystallizing, sharp and jagged in his chest, "I'm so sorry." He's scared for a moment but then he reaches his hand to cup her other cheek, pull her face close so he can kiss her temple. And it feels like melancholy love, but still real, still Katara.

If Aiko senses any distress, she doesn't give into it, because she rolls along the grass happily, tiny hands reaching for her toes suspended in the air, blades of grass strewn through her curls.

Katara touches his hand on the side of her face, stroking it gently. "I love you," and it's so raw that there is no choice but to believe her, "and I promised, and you promised, too. So don't…"

Her voice cracks and Zuko pulls her closer, kisses her cheek and rests his forehead against the side of her face, "you can't do that, even though I forgot, no matter what, I will never turn you away."

"I know," he mumbles against the curls of her hair, "I know."

Aiko crawls over to inspect the two of them, squealing loudly when Katara plucks her out of the grass and folds her into her embrace. Her noisiness only lasts for a few seconds before she settles, quiet.

Zuko is overwhelmed neither by sadness or relief, but in the realness of their relationship (and, he supposes, that is better than nothing at all).

This is their garden, and he can't afford to plant sadness here anymore.

…

v. a storm in her palms

…

"We're friends?"

Katara's eyes squint in criticism, but Mai doesn't move from where she is stretched elegantly across the couch, staring back with an expression twisted with exasperation.

"For some reason beyond the scope of my understanding," she picks at her nails, "we are friends."

Katara seems to roll this thought around in her head as she stands from her vanity, turning to look over her shoulder at the other girl. Her hair is braided in wisps of curls that seem to escape from the plaited rope and the end is tied off with a bright red ribbon, out of place against her blue clothes.

Mai looks less than impressed. "Believe me, it wasn't and continues not to be a stroll in the sunlight for me. But," and she pauses, flinging her bangs aside her pretty, porcelain face, "you remember as far as the days after your accident. You remember who was there first, don't you."

And it's not a question, because Katara is certain the answer is written all in the lines of her face. It doesn't make sense, but she remembers those soft eyes peering into her face, a grim slash across her lips for days when Katara lay in that bed barely eating, barely living. It doesn't make sense, but it's true.

They were, are, friends.

Katara glances down at her with imploring deep-sea eyes, unsure of what to say next. But Mai fills that space with a drone that almost passes for boredom (what lies underneath it, Katara tries to divine as she listens).

"Almost every time the girls—" somehow, Katara knows that this is Suki and Ty Lee, "—get together, you make me tell that story about how Azula convinced the three of us—" Zuko, Ty Lee, Mai, "—that we'd grow into apple trees if we ate apple seeds."

It is hazy in her mind, but something about imagining a child-like version of the man she knew running about screeching about trees bursting from his stomach sits in her memories. And Ty Lee standing on her head, shaking the seeds out. And Mai, threatening to slice it out of her once it started to sprout.

Katara remembers like she was there, half-asleep.

…

"When you started dating Zuko, I told you his favorite treat, and you thought I lied out of jealousy, so you threw out an entire tray of chocolate custard since you knew so much."

…

"I asked you to bring me your favorite garment so I could sew sleeves for knives into them and you brought me Zuko's outer robe. When I finished, you put all of the knives I gave you into the shirt but the next morning, Zuko put the shirt on and cut his entire arm into ribbons."

…

"He didn't really think that was funny, though. It was a riot, he's just bitter."

…

Mai's face only twitches marginally, but Katara knows better than to think it means nothing.

"I told you a lot of things," she says in an even tone, but something echoes in her head with sadness, with forgotten stories and memories and laughter. Katara wants to wrap her arms around the other girl and tuck her face in the crook of her neck, but she suspects that their friendship has not devolved into hugs, "you know a lot of things, things about me. So…we're friends."

That would mean something, it would mean a lot, if she could remember why.

Katara unfurls the ribbon-tied ends of her braids, smoothing the red strands between her fingers as she moves back to her vanity. She hesitates, stares at them for a few moments longer, and then tucks them back into the corner.

She doesn't know much, but those don't feel right, and when she turns to Mai, there is a tiny smile on her lips.

…

ii. but she doesn't know

…

The day doesn't start out any differently.

"Don't," she says, curls her arms around his bicep, "don't move, don't get up."

A loud whine sounds on his other side and his daughter's nails scratch along his opposite arm, fumble in the crook of his elbow. Her nose nudges against his skin and Katara scoots herself closer to his body, slivers of blue eyes peeking through tired eyelids.

"Just stay in bed with me," she mumbles, pressing a kiss to his skin, flicking her hair away from her face, "don't go."

Every morning, he wishes he didn't have to. But Zuko tilts his head and kisses the tip of her nose, smashes a kiss firmly against her lips, and peels himself from between the two of them, the same as every other morning. "I'll be back, I promise."

Katara wraps her arms around Aiko and pulls her close, and smiles until she falls asleep again. And Zuko watches her patiently as he gets dressed, before he leaves, ready for the day.

…

Everything goes to hell in a matter of hours.

The very important audience Zuko is meant to attend today is a troupe of five men carrying assorted weapons, and it isn't until a dart nicks the side of his face that he is even remotely aware of just how serious this is.

It takes mere moments for him to flare off of his throne and whirling fire about him, artfully dodging the crowd of them that charge at him. Something clatters and crashes outside of the doors, and Zuko curses loudly before the panic sets in.

"Just what the hell do you think you're doing?" Zuko punches out a white-knuckled fist and fire clasps around one man's ribs; his misshapen sword drops against the marble with a dissonant clang, but none of the others seem deterred. Instead, they continue to circle him like a wild pack of animals, teeth bared, bloodthirsty.

One of them, a scrawny man with unkempt facial hair, slips close to Zuko and threatens to strike a pressure point in the back of his arm, but the door breaks open and a flood of fighting pours inside of the throne room.

Zuko's Royal Guard, the infamous Kyoshi Warriors, are a sight to behold in the room cast in shadows and flames. Fans only flare the embers into the air and Zuko snatches them down, twirls them in his hands to handle the light work of an angry group of dissidents.

The tallest one, the leader, steps close enough to Zuko to make him uncomfortable. His sword, clenched expertly in wide hands, gleams with expense and purity, and this is no average citizen. He laughs, and it chills his bones. And then he swings down hard, slicing down the right side of Zuko's body.

He slips away, but barely, because the sleeves of his regalia shred and his flesh skims over with blood. He stares at Zuko, dirty yellow eyes masochistically gleeful.

And that's when he hears her scream.

…

Zuko will kill them all.

He burns a path through warriors and rioters alike, burns until he reaches the doorway and slides into the hallway. The entire Royal Palace is a cacophony of violence and screeching and painful sounds, because there are more than just five offenders.

But Katara sweeps up the hallway, thrashing a cruel wave over anyone who stands in her way shaping it around the Palace Guards, unharmed. He's not sure what it is that distresses her, but she doesn't look anything like distress. She is power and wrath and she watches the crunch of bones breaking against currents, tosses two men flat against the wall until water shoots through their skin.

Her eyes land on his and there is a mixture of too many things for him to decipher: heart-pounding fear, terror, confusion, relief, pain, hurt.

He stares for a second too long.

Something cracks like thunder in the air.

…

Zuko hasn't seen a bat, he was never fond of those games as a child.

…

Her eyes widen and splinters break against her head, and she collapses in a broken slump on the floor.

Zuko doesn't really remember what gripped his veins so tight, so hot with rage, but it burns everything around him. He swings wildly, fire trailing, consuming, rendering ashes of anything that keeps him from reaching Katara.

He wants to scrub away the memory of it happening before his eyes, but there is no way to dispose of that vicious face, that churn of arms and wild swing. There is no way to cleanse his eyes of shattering, splintering pieces and Katara. Oh, Katara.

Zuko grabs the one with splinters in his palms and burns him with his hands wrenched around his neck. Burns him, whole, screaming, into ashen skeletal pieces.

Katara is still, painfully still. It takes him two tries to lift her into his lap, smearing his hands across her face and peeling back her eyelids to discern alertness. Zuko cups her head in his hand and tilts his ear down to her mouth; breath whirls from her lips but he doesn't feel anything but latent fear.

He should fight, but something locks his bones still, douses the fire inside him until there is nothing but chill underneath his skin. He will try to get her to safety, and he can focus on nothing else but that.

…

Zuko blinks awake staring at his ceiling, cold fingers wrapped around his forehead.

His spike in temperature must be innate because there is a click of teeth. "Brat," she mumbles and slides her fingers down the side of his unscarred cheek slowly. She leans forward and Zuko blinks again, into dark eyes. Not blue.

"Mai, wh—"

"I took care of her," she says before he can ask completely, "she's not awake, yet, but she's safe. Katara, I mean."

Zuko lifts his hands and drags them through his hair. The dark tangles are thick with sweat, with ash, and after wincing through the maze his fingers yank through, he sits up and lets it hang around his face.

Fingers bend against the edge of the bed and something like serenity slips into his chest when his daughter's eyes peek over the edge of the bed. Zuko stretches along the bed crawling until he can tug her up and over and into his arms, curling her close. Aiko doesn't squirm, doesn't cry; she rests her head against Zuko's chest and sighs heavily.

"Everyone is being cleared out or restrained and everyone is giving her the utmost attention."

Zuko flings his hand absently, his eyes trapping all of the thoughts rolling around in his head. He tips his chin down onto Aiko's head and focuses on the feeling of her hair under his skin. Breathe in, breathe out. Now, "what the hell, Mai." His voice is weaker than he imagines it should be.

"You burned him to bits," she tugs the sleeve of her robes to her mouth, stares at him with razor-sharp eyes, "I would have diced him within an inch of his life to know why."

She leaves before he can ask anything else about Katara.

…

He is wise not to allow Aiko in to see her, because Katara looks deathly.

Her face is cracked with pain and when she isn't cinching from the bruises splattering across the side of her face and into the back of her hair, she is twitching in what Zuko thinks is her attempt at waking herself up. Her hair is matted in spots with blood, lackluster curls only wiry spindles against her pillows. The sheets are tucked around her, but that is enough, because he hates seeing her this way.

It takes all of his strength not to cry when he touches the unblemished side of her face, the left side, and she flinches subconsciously.

He doesn't regret incinerating, doesn't regret that fermenting smell of burnt skin that blasted through his senses once he gripped tight and burned higher, burned fiercer.

Katara doesn't move, but her face relaxes when his fingers slide into her hair, and he doesn't dare to move from her side.

…

Mai tells him the next day that her eyes are open and that technically, she is awake, but she may as well be asleep.

Zuko says tell her I'm sorry and returns to his paperwork.

…

Writing to her brother is the most painful letter to send. This is a problem that warrants Sokka's presence from Republic City, so Zuko knows he can't put it off, knows he shouldn't hide something like this. But knots bump along his throat that he can't swallow, nervousness and tension and indecision rolled into one.

And his hands shake as he writes, but he sends the letter off anyway.

…

The day Sokka arrives is the day Katara fully regains her consciousness.

Zuko remembers this because it is when he passes by Katara's room on the way to meet Sokka by the harbor that he hears it. Rather, he hears her, spluttering and screaming and knocking things over.

Before he can ask or turn to enter her room, the door wrenches open and Mai steps out, looking all the more incensed for the unnecessary noise.

From his space in the doorway, Zuko can see her sitting upright in her bed. She twists her head swiftly, stares at him and her shoulders sink comfortingly.

"Zuko!"

Thank Spirits. Sokka can wait, he tells himself as he walks across the ornate carpet, leans over the bed and wraps his arms tightly around Katara. She is stiff in his grasp, but relief overwhelms his senses, distracts him from the tension blooming in the room.

Zuko leans back and smiles, but Katara stares at him in confusion.

"I'm so glad you're okay," he says and she manages a quivering, uneasy smile in return.

It isn't until he cups her face in his hands and she moves away that he knows anything is wrong.

…

"What happened?" Her eyes are sky blue and wide open.

"You…don't remember?"

She shakes her head, but her eyes are trained on his, hopefully curious.

…

She doesn't remember anything.

…

Sokka gives Zuko a half-hearted onceover because he can't take his eyes off of Katara; neither of them can stop staring at her, stop worrying in the back of their minds.

But Sokka is the one who can pull her into a hug and feel her arms curl around his waist, feel her face bury into the side of his neck and sigh relief all over him.

"What's going on?" Her voice is quiet against his shirt and Sokka's mouth tugs into a frown.

…

Zuko can't listen, he can't take it, so he stands in the hallway. He paces two steps forward, swivels on his heels, and paces two steps backwards, turns again. His heart slams against his ribcage painfully with each step, and when the door opens, his eyes flicker up.

Sokka sighs, heavy.

"She's asking for Aang, you know," he mumbles.

Zuko feels the color drain from his features. "Two whole years, Sokka."

…

Two years, gone. She doesn't remember anything. She doesn't remember him, most of all.

…

iii. with every worthless word we get so far away

…

There is always worry needling the cracks of his bones, the staccato thump of his beating heart to the rhythm of wrath contained in panic. There is always part of him ready to burn golden-eyed and feral at the first sign of danger.

Katara screams for the fifth time that night and it hurts Zuko somewhere deep that he cannot move from his bed. The nightmares rage on, even in the presence of her brother, even though it has now been a full week that the Avatar has come to visit his ex-girlfriend in the Palace.

And if Aang apologizes to him one more time, he will strangle the little monk himself.

It's hard enough to see her go through these torturous nights, hard enough to know he has to listen to her scream until Aang wakes and comforts her with timidly awkward hugs and faultless smiles.

Katara is frightened of him, but between Sokka and Aang, she manages to be tolerant of still being in his Palace. Being married to him, however, seems to be too taxing of an idea. And after a week, Zuko is just grateful that she is all right.

But after two weeks, there is an ache that doesn't go away, an ache that gets worse when he sees her sidle into the dining hall with her hand gripping Aang's arms, the bright red ribbons he'd given her tied into the knot of her hair. Red and vibrant and so Fire Nation, but simultaneously in defiance of their relationship that he doesn't really know what to do.

So he tolerates it, for now. Aang will be gone in a week, but he will have no idea what to do with Katara.

…

"You should talk," he tells her with a nudge. Katara's fingers are still interlaced with Aang's, and he drags her into the room more than leads her, so it shows in her features. "I'll stay here, but you two need to talk."

Zuko stares from behind his desk and Katara edges away from him, closer to Aang.

"I just don't understand," she says in a low voice, "I don't understand why it's like this."

That doesn't bother him nearly as much as he suspects it should. Instead, Zuko tilts his head back to look at her, eyes narrowed slightly. "Katara, we're still friends, you know. It's not…unimaginably terrible to picture."

The idea of it doesn't roll around in her head for too long, though.

"I guess. I still don't understand it, though."

Aang guides her slowly to the chair in front of his desk before she realizes what is happening, tugs his fingers free from her tight vice-grip.

…

"We have a daughter?" Katara's eyes are wide, and Zuko can't help but think about how much the two of them look alike when she does that.

"Aiko," he confirms with a nod, flips a black-line portrait of her infantile face over so she can see the likeness, "she's not quite two."

Katara is quiet, with her hands tucked into one another and her eyes fixed on the backs of her knuckles. Zuko wonders how Aiko is doing at that very moment, wonders if she knows something is wrong with her mother. Maybe, somewhere deep, she can sense it.

"Whenever you're ready, you can see her, sometime soon."

He doesn't want to restrict her, but it will be their daughter that suffers from this, and somehow he knows there has always been maternal structure in Katara's personality and that she will not turn their daughter away.

…

"Ma," she punctuates, smiles drunken with happiness, and nudges her round head beneath Katara's chin. The terror on her face is brand new, mixed with wonder and adoration, and it reminds him of what it had been like when Aiko had been a newborn. Soft and tender and vulnerable, that fear had been so vivid for him, and Katara was experiencing it again.

"Aiko," she says slowly, fitting the syllables between her lips, and smiling.

Zuko smiles, too.

…

A blue blanket with frayed edges and wave patterns stitched into the hem is what she drags behind her when she walks into his office.

"This—"

"It's yours," Zuko says after looking up for a moment, but he returns to his paperwork. Katara hasn't taken to barging in on him, not since she mustered up the courage to drag Sokka down to visit Aiko with her. "It was blessed from our wedding and you don't ever sleep without it at least folded up on the bed."

She seems to weigh this as she turns the blanket over in her hands, staring at the patterns. Katara folds it up neatly and drapes it over her arm, nodding to herself.

Zuko doesn't think much of it at first, when she touches the fabric to her cheek and closes her eyes, but later that night, he thinks she may remember something about it.

…

"Aang left today."

Zuko tries not to appear startled that Katara shows up in his doorway, especially that she has Aiko hitched on her hip. He'd thought that Sokka would have helped her through the remainder of this alone time with him, but it is the cherubim girl clinging to her neck that is her solace.

The sight of them together gives him a tremble in his chest like it had the very first time. He wonders if she had been the one to ensure Aiko's safety when everything broke into pieces on that day.

Aiko babbles senselessly from her perch against Katara's hip, and Zuko peeks up at the two of them with narrowed eyes. "Are you okay?"

Katara nods slowly, her hair bouncing against her back. She's stopped wearing the ribbons in her hair, although Zuko didn't have the heart to tell her why he was happy about it. Maybe it was Aang, maybe he told. Maybe Aang told her a lot of things.

"Is it okay if Aiko sleeps with me for a little while?"

Zuko's eyes crinkle and he smiles. "Of course." There is a litany of stories on his lips, about how they used to sleep together on nights where he was busy, on how they took midday naps sprawled across the bed, on how they dragged him into bed and forced him to sleep at least a dozen times throughout the week.

"I," she starts, her lips murmuring atop Aiko's glossy head of hair, "I really do love her, already." It's so easy.

And he can't help but stare at her, smile softly. "Me too."

…

Really, he doesn't mean to intrude.

But Aiko cries in his arms, a fidgeting, inconsolable mess of tears and rumpled fabric. Katara plucks her from his grasp after she realizes the sounds of her cries, rocks Aiko back and forth in her arms, cradling her close.

"She wouldn't stop," he offers sheepishly, "she got up to look around for your room and got lost."

Katara doesn't acknowledge him; her lips are pressed on the top of Aiko's head and she is humming, singing a combination of different sounds that seem to soothe Aiko. Zuko doesn't ask. He just watches her quiet down and slump into her arms, exhausted.

Zuko notices the neatness of her room, and yet that everything has been picked through meticulously. Books have been pried apart and stuffed back into place, papers spread in a neat array along the desk in the corner. There is no need to pry, but at the least it's very indicative of her curiosity.

Aiko coos quietly, and Zuko touches his palm to the small of her back.

"Goodnight."

…

iv. i know you don't love me but they tried to take you away from me

…

It takes two months before Katara drags her blue blanket through the door of their bedroom, eyes wide and nervous. And Zuko doesn't expect to see it, doesn't expect to see her standing in the doorway like a frightened child with her nails trapped between her teeth.

"I thought it would be better if I…"

Zuko sits up from beneath the covers tugged over him, staring at her curiously. Patience is difficult for him, stretching thin at the sight of her curled into herself or leaning on Aang or staring fearfully at their daughter. (And somewhere in between, it stops being patience and becomes masochism, becomes suffering, becomes resilience to pain.)

She clears her through and Katara meets his eyes timidly. "I thought it would be better if I slept here," she tucks her hair behind her ears, "with…with you."

Victory is not the word for this, but whatever fits is an expression that sounds like settling, that sounds like endurance. Zuko shifts to the side of the bed, his eyes lingering over the mattress as if he can still see the shape of her in it and the soft smile on her face, and then he looks at her.

"Only if you want," he flips the sheets away from her corner of the bed as she walks over, but she only tucks them back in place. Katara climbs onto the bed like a child with fresh legs, wobbling, and twirls her cotton-blue sheet around her like a cloak of protection.

Zuko smiles, but it is entirely weak as he falls back against his pillows, eyes fixed on the ceiling. He doesn't know whether to turn away from her or to face her and he isn't quite sure he wants the rejection if she decides to dole it out.

"I'm sorry." Quietly, almost inaudible. Zuko blinks and Katara nestles into her cocoon of blankets, turns her face to stare at the unscarred profile of his own.

He might regret it, but he turns to face her, too.

"Don't be sorry," he touches his hand to the soft edge of her hair and pushes it back before retracting, "it wasn't your fault. None of this is your fault." And that is why he keeps his suffering silent (but it does nothing for the way it bleeds from his eyes, palpable hurt).

Katara smiles and he feels guilty for wanting to kiss her. His thoughts are crowded enough with dream-wishes like this to the point where he can barely finds himself not imagining their interaction tapering off into tight embraces and shy kisses.

Her hands tuck under her cheek and just as he lifts his hand to douse the flames flickering around their room, she yawns, pillowing herself deeper into her blankets. Zuko rolls himself onto his back again, sighing.

"…can I ask you something, Zuko?"

It's a dangerous question to answer without knowing anything beyond it, but he finds that he lacks the ability to turn her away in a manner that only reminds him of the subtle hunger he has for her presence.

"Sure."

She doesn't miss a beat. "Are we intimate often?" Her words are so carefully measured but Zuko still flushes in the dark, grateful that the moon is only a fingernail in the sky and that their room is cast in shadows.

"Um, that's not really—"

"I asked," she interrupts, her voice insistent, "it's okay if you tell me. I'm still me."

He weighs that statement in his mind for a little while. It's a small but comforting thought, if true. Zuko decides he may as well run that risk. "We're close. You, uh, like to put your feet on my legs even though they're freezing and I complain about it every single time, but I let you do it anyway. But as far as sleeping together…"

Something knots in his throat and drags across his tongue, dry.

"Katara—"

"I just want to know," her voice is frustrated now and it makes Zuko uncomfortable because of their precarious sleeping arrangements, "I just wanted to know…what it was like. I mean, because we're married, and because Aiko, and sometimes I just—I get feelings."

Zuko rolls onto his side again, squinting through the almost-midnight darkness until he can see the bright width of her eyes staring back at him. Her breathing is shallow, but he doesn't say anything about it.

"Sometimes I just feel like I have to be near you," she says quietly, ashamed, or something mirroring secretive.

There are thousands of things he wants to say in response. Those feelings are a compass to him, leaving him wandering towards her absently. But Zuko knows better than that, because he can't let himself so close, not until she is comfortable. This is a step closer, and that is all.

There is a goodnight on his lips, but he keeps it to himself.

…

Zuko wakes up with an unexpectedly heavy weight on his chest, and he turns his head to the side, inhales deeply to try and disperse it, but it only presses down against his chest in earnest.

He slits open one golden eye and peeks down and immediately tries to control the surprised gasp trying to work its way out of his mouth.

Katara's face is tucked against his side and she looks so comfortable with her hair draped over his bare skin and her fingers spread over the ridges of his ribcage. But Zuko hadn't even felt her move in his sleep, because she had been the one to move herself, to move the two of them like this, to pillow herself atop his chest. And even though she was still so close to him, breathing steadily, her blanket was curled over her hips and tangled around her legs, a protective charm.

His throat is thick with the idea of saying something, of rousing her, but this is entirely too private of a thing for him to intervene with. So Zuko burrows back into his pillows, revels in the warmth of her body outlined against his.

Zuko is barely lucid when she actually wakes up, jaw stretching and yawn rolling across his skin. A feather-light touch rakes across the side of his ribs and crawls languidly across the space of his collarbone, fingers sluicing through dark hair.

And just as quickly as he felt it, it is gone, and she is gone, and he is cold beside her in bed.

…

He stops counting the nights because it is an endless number only meant to distress him (but he can't really stop, so he knows that this night is somewhere between fifteen and twenty-five, somewhere braced in habit but brimming with shyness).

Katara rolls onto her side and strips the pale blue blanket from her shoulders, moving until she is close enough to make out the lines of his face in the almost-dark room.

"Zuko?"

Her eyes are not like his, not sunlit yellow but deep, soothing blue, like the ocean in the pervasive darkness surrounding them. He meets her gaze and tries for all the world not to look how he feels deep down.

"I'm listening."

But he doesn't hear anything other than the hammering of his heart in his ears. Something tickles against his chest and he feels a hand against his arm, and suddenly Katara is leaning over him and staring at him with those deep sea eyes of hers. Her fingers brush against the rigid scrape of his scar, purposeful and slow. Her lips part enough for a single breath, and then she touches them smooth and slow against his mouth.

It feels like a splash of water to his dry, thirsty soul; refreshing, breathless kisses. Katara's forehead rolls and taps gently against his and her hair tickles in its curtain along the side of his face as she lets her weight sink into his body.

Panic. Panic shoves her away, wide eyes shaking and staring through the dark, bare legs straddled around his waist. "Zuko—"

"What are you doing, Katara?" His words are rushed syllables, frantic shock sitting on the flat of his tongue, and it seems like regret sliding over his skin (but it's Katara, retracting, retracing, moving away.

"I—nothing. I'm sorry."

Something about the way she sits with her gown ridden up around her waist, legs stretched but spine curved away from him, something about that will burn its silhouette into his mind for too long of a time.

She sits on the edge of the bed for what feels like an eternity. Zuko wants her to crawl into bed beside him and sleep and pretend it hadn't happened at all. But she can't do that, not with that fear trapped in doe-wide eyes. So he twists onto his side, letting his eyes glance down the walls in the hopes that the discretion will give her strength.

Her blanket slides from underneath his arm and Zuko doesn't flinch when the door closes loudly behind her.

…

She stays away for days and days and days. This time, though, he counts: one, two, three, and on four he thinks she will return, but there is five, six, seven, onward, higher.

…

It takes Katara three weeks to slide into his, their bedroom. She doesn't have her blanket draped around her shoulders but her hair slides down in spirals, sheets of curls instead. Zuko blinks, and then sits up from underneath his thin sheets.

"I just wanted to tell you something," her voice is loud, assertive. "You can't be scared of me forever. I'm not some ghost, some brand new person that you've been stuck together with. You married me, you fell in love with me, so stop treating me like this!" Her inflections warble with sadness, with strife, and for once, Zuko wonders if this has taken a terrible toll on Katara, too.

She remembers things, too.

And she's right, because guilt bleeds through his skin from just looking at her. She steps closer and closer to the bed, eyes darting back and forth slowly. "I can do this again, if you let me."

She could learn to love him again, he thinks is what she means, she could learn ease and smiles and cheek kisses and motherhood, and he wants that too.

Zuko doesn't remember when she'd gotten so close, but his head is tipped back staring up into her face and her eyes are thin but shine with some closely kept secret. One of them moves, one of them shifts into a kiss, and Katara comes tumbling down.

…

She sits in the curve of his lap, kissing tentatively, curiously over his jaw before he rolls her onto her back. All of the air slams out of her lungs and her hair tangles around her neck with the sudden movements.

Zuko's eyes are full moons, thick and yellow and bright. Katara wants to touch him and she doesn't know why, but it doesn't stop her from sliding her fingers down his chest.

He shudders with his knees lofted beside her hips, and she remembers, she learns.

…

Katara twists beneath him, crying out loud, and thinks this is how she forgot, this blinding, mind-numbing pleasure.

…

Katara's voice threatens to shatter into glass with moans, her throat raw and clawed hollow from the needy sounds trapped there. But Zuko's mouth is hot on her neck, his hands are torturously gentle between her thighs, and her back stretches with back-breaking force.

"Let me remind you," he mumbles, a weak whisper against the column of her throat, flexing his fingers slowly, "I know what you like."

…

How could she forget this?

Not all of it, because there is something inherently right about Zuko's hands on her waist and his kisses along her collar and the warmth that flows through her body when he shifts inside of her, something that makes sense.

…

It gets easier each night. Her blush fades from something shy to something pleasurable, she quakes not with nervousness, but with uncontainable desire.

The sun is bright in her eyes and Zuko is a warm body flush against her side. "Wake up," she prods her fingers into his cheek, walking them along the sharp ridge of his cheekbone.

She is only acknowledged by the rise and fall of his chest, warm pulses of breath in the air. He looks so young and carefree when he is asleep and she almost doesn't recognize him. His hair slips across his forehead, smooth dark swathes that tuck behind his ears and tangle behind his head.

Katara doesn't really want him to wake up; it's so much easier for her to talk to Zuko when he is unconscious and she is feeling brave beneath new morning sunlight. And it beams down over their bed, leaving everything glowing bright and bronze and metallic.

Her fingers smooth across his lips and she cranes herself close, as if she has a secret from him.

"I think I love you."

Maybe she does.

…

i. love is like breathing

…

Katara enjoys the Fire Nation in the summer because everything is so lush and beautiful and the air is thick with moisture in the middle of the day, summer's special touch of humidity. She enjoys being around the girls, even Mai, especially Mai.

She enjoys the way Zuko seems so nervous when the two of them tip their heads together and talk about whatever it is that they talk about.

But she manages to get him to relax when she drags his larger hand into hers, smiles and laces their fingers together. The summer is beautiful and the garden is her favorite place to dwell and Zuko is resplendent in all of the ways she is learning to love.

She is the one who falls down into the grass, splaying along the grass.

"Katara…" She can see him through sun-dappled lashes, standing over her and staring with confused golden eyes, but he sits down beside her and watches her roll in the grass. It flattens and prickles back up underneath her, and she turns to pluck flowers between her fingers.

The stress tightening across his features is almost visible, and she yanks on his hand until he sits down beside her in the garden. His face is beautiful, Katara will never not think he is beautiful; but his scar is twisted with all of his thoughts, and the sharp elegance of his face is drawn into harsh lines of worry.

"Zuko," he wobbles and tips into her side so that she can press her lips on his neck, "listen to me."

The Fire Lord hesitates for a moment and Katara knows, because she waits. He sighs, and draws away from her to stare into her eyes, sunshine-gold behind pretty lashes and bunches of scar-red tissue.

"I promise you won't be like this," be sad, be alone, be depressed, "because I will always be here for you, no matter what." Katara squeezes his hand and it encourages a smile to burst over his features, slow and warm. "But you have to promise me that you'll always ask for me when you need me, always."

Zuko's smile crests, and breaks as if it is carefree, an unforgettably bright expression. "I promise," he kisses her lips steady, slow, "always."