PART THREE. filling up

She managed to let go of the niggling unease in her mind for a while, all too happy to focus on the welcome distraction of Zuko's warm hand closed firmly around hers as he led her out of the bar, onto the gently lit street, and through the darkened tearoom of the Jasmine Dragon.

In all the time she had known him, she had never seen him look as happy as he did then, flinging off the hooded black cloak, bustling around in the back room brewing tea. She leaned against one of the painted wooden counters, eyes fixed on the heart-stopping smile on his face, the way he occasionally turned back to meet her gaze, as though checking to make sure this wasn't all a figment of his imagination.

Not that she blamed him. The whole thing felt surreal. All this time, the memories in her head had been torturing her. Now she was here in his teashop, accepting the cup of fragrant, freshly brewed tea he pressed into her hands. It was so much more than anything in her wildest imagination that she promptly sucked scalding tea down the wrong pipe.

Zuko watched her cough with worried eyes. "Is it that bad?" he asked her anxiously once she finished coughing half a lung out, his eyes flitting between her and the teapot in his hands. "I thought I made it right."

She shook her head violently. "It's perfect." His brewing skills had improved immensely since the war, but that wasn't what she meant. "You know, Aang never made me tea," she said slowly, breathing in clouds of fragrant smoke, sipping the delicate gold liquid carefully. "He didn't even know where the leaves were kept."

Zuko replaced the teapot onto a green and gold wicker coaster atop the counter. "I'll make you tea anytime you like," he replied simply. "If you want."

He stepped closer and she leaned into him, her skin feeling like the only thing stopping her from flying apart into a million ecstatic pieces. His hand gently ran through the long strands of wavy hair framing her face.

Unbidden, a sigh escaped her at the tenderness of the gesture, and the realization of how much she had longed for this.

Whatever this is.

"Zuko?" she asked, her voice very small as a small stab of fear reared its head.

"Mm?" His lips moved against the top of her head, fingers still trailing through her hair.

"You never answered my question," she pointed out, more than a little apprehensively. She lowered her teacup, facing him with inquiring eyes. "What do you want from me? Really?"

He took a while to answer, but he held her gaze evenly as he thought it through, chewing intently at his lip. "I guess," he admitted at last, his voice perfectly steady, "I've always wanted to know you a little better, Katara."

Surprise – slow, spreading, delighted surprise – gripped her at that. "Always?" she echoed, unable to hide the doubt that threaded its way into her voice.

But when he nodded in confirmation, something struck her as not quite right, adding to the chorus of conflicting thoughts in her head. "Then –" she pressed, struggling to vocalize her most obvious question, "then why –"

"Why didn't I say anything? Why Mai?" he finished for her softly, as though he could read her mind.

Wordlessly, she nodded in agreement.

His hand stilled, trapped somewhere in the fall of her hair against her shoulder. "Because the war was over and I was about to become the youngest Fire Lord in over a century and I was scared." He let out a bitter sigh. "I never made the best decisions when I was scared."

You don't have to tell me twice. She blinked and for a moment everything appeared green, as though cast in the glow of the crystal catacombs beneath the city. "Are you scared now?" she whispered, heart pounding somewhere in the region of her throat.

"No," he answered.

The steadfast denial astonished her. "Why not?" After all, she was terrified. How could he not be?

"Because things are different now," he explained simply. "There's no taking back my choice back then, but now I know that it was the wrong one."

"How can you know that?" she demanded, voice shaky in the wake of how fast her heart raced. "How can you just know?"

Because even if every part of her wanted to be there with him, the voice in her head still warned her that maybe it wasn't a good idea. She had made bad choices before too, how could she ever trust her own instincts again? Those had driven her into Aang's arms, and that had felt right at the time, so how could she know that she wasn't about to make another big mistake?

"Are you scared?" he asked, turning her question back to her.

"Yes," she confessed, her eyes dropping from his face to the stout porcelain teapot sitting on the counter, a faint curl of steam still coiling away from its spout.

"Of what?" His voice didn't hold any reproach or judgment, only gentle concern. His fingers stroked the back of her head reassuringly, coaxing her fears out of her.

"Of..." The uneasy thoughts spiraled in her mind, all a variation of I don't want you to hurt me. "I'm scared of you disappearing from my life without another word again. Of being left behind. You're not going to be here forever, right? One day you'll have to go back home and…that scares me. And maybe," she sighed shakily, chewing on her lip, "maybe I'm scared that this is all happening too quick, because the last time we rushed into something, it wasn't the best decision either of us made."

To his credit, he didn't tell her that she was being hysterical or unreasonable or overly sensitive. Instead, he hugged her close. "I'm so sorry," he murmured into her ear, and she trembled because she had never even dared to want to hear him say it. "I didn't think about you, or how you might have felt." His eyes found hers, a solemn promise glimmering in their depths. "I won't leave you this time. Not unless you want me to."

A new sense of calmness flooded over her then. Because if there was one thing Katara didn't doubt, it was that Zuko would move mountains to prove himself worthy of her trust.

"I think I'd like to know you a little better too," she decided. His eyes lit up so bright they could have outshone the sun, and her disquiet faded at the sight of it. "But…maybe…it'd be nice to kind of take things slow?"

The beatific, glowing smile returned to his face. "I could do slow," he affirmed. She could feel his heart beating slowly in time to hers. "Slow sounds great."

She grinned, raising her teacup to her lips as he kissed to her temple. "And I'm not leaving here anytime soon," he assured her. "So you don't have to worry about… what comes next for a while, I guess."

"About that," Katara said nervously, a new wave of ideas hitting her seemingly all at once. "I didn't plan on staying very long in Ba Sing Se. What would I even do here? And I can't stay with Sokka and Suki forever, I'd have to find a place of my own eventually…"

"Sokka and Suki are in the city too?" Zuko asked, stunned. "Since when?"

"About a month, I think," Katara answered, pursing her lips in thought. "They just moved in to an apartment on the middle ring. It's cute, but on the cramped side for three people."

"Good for them," he commented softly. "What are they doing here? I thought Sokka was supposed to be helping with things back in the South Pole. And I didn't think anything would tear Suki away from Kyoshi again."

"Well, Suki's working for King Kwei at the palace," Katara explained, setting down her empty cup on the counter.

"As his bodyguard?" Zuko guessed. He reached for the teapot, still steaming, and refilled her cup without another word.

"As one of his councillors, actually," Katara corrected. "She's representing Kyoshi Island on some internal committee." She picked up the newly refilled cup and nodded at him thankfully.

He replaced the pot on its coaster, leaning against the counter. "I hope she's as good at it as she was a bodyguard."

"She loves it. And Sokka's doing a stint at our embassy here." Her words earned a dubious eyebrow twitch from Zuko. "I know, I thought the same thing when Dad wrote to tell me about it. Sokka isn't exactly diplomatic. But he made loads of connections in the Earth Kingdom during the war, especially when planning the invasion, and he's been surprisingly useful to our ambassador." She slumped mournfully. "Both of them are so busy, and meanwhile I don't even know how to make myself useful anymore."

"Well, what do you want to do?" Zuko asked her plainly.

"I don't know." She worried at her lip. "I kind of wanted to go to the Northern Water Tribe and see Yugoda, learn how to heal properly…"

She expected him to flinch from the idea and talk her out of it. After all, she already knew how to heal well enough, and the North Pole was bleak and distant...

"If that's what you want to do," he responded instead, patting her encouragingly on the shoulder, "then you should do it."

"Really?" she blurted out, shocked. "But it's so far. You'd never see me."

He shrugged, unfazed. "So? Knowing you, it wouldn't take any time at all to master it. You'd be back before I even noticed you were gone, I'll bet."

She opened and closed her mouth ineffectually, trying and utterly failing to find words as she gaped at him. "You mean that."

"Of course I mean it," he answered brusquely. "Katara, I saw you take down my sister at the height of Sozin's Comet. I would never, ever bet against you."

Her eyes suddenly grew very watery and a lump tightened in the back of her throat. I think I could love you. She pressed a hand to her chest, reminding herself to breathe. "But what would I do after that?"

"You'll figure it out," he assured her lightly. "You could open a school and teach, you could join your brother working for the ambassador –"

She wrinkled her nose. "I don't want to step on Sokka's toes."

"Then come back with me to the Fire Nation and be our ambassador," he retorted without missing a beat. "The one we have right now is lousy anyway."

A coughing fit possessed her entirely at his suggestion. "Me? An ambassador? Get out of here, Zuko, you're dreaming."

"I think you'd be great," he maintained stubbornly, crossing his arms across his chest. "But if you don't want to, that's fine."

"It's not that I don't want to," she pointed out tentatively, "it's just – I mean – what do I know? I mean, I'm only nineteen for crying out loud!"

"I was younger than that when I became Fire Lord," Zuko reminds her. "The world didn't end."

"I…" It wasn't a bad idea, if she was perfectly honest with herself. Terrifying but alluring. "It just sounds a little intense. I mean, I came here looking for a bit of a break. The last thing I want right now is to dive headfirst into Fire Nation politics." She smiled at him apologetically. "No offense."

"Believe me, I'm more sick of Fire Nation politics than you are," he answered roughly, and she smirked at the imperceptible roll of his eyes. "I wasn't saying to go right away. None of this is urgent. Like I said," he added with a glint in his eye that intrigued her instantly, "I don't think I'm leaving Ba Sing Se anytime soon."

"You seem awfully confident about that," Katara said dubiously.

"Well, I had an idea the other day," Zuko said, with an ill-concealed excitement that heartened her. "Uncle Iroh liked it too. See, I haven't been to school since I was banished and the university in Ba Sing Se is the best in the world." A grin split his face. "So I was thinking of studying here for a while."

For the second time that night, Katara accidentally inhaled a lungful of tea.

"I mean," he continued slowly, evidently disappointed by her reaction, "it isn't without precedent. And besides, the Fire Nation would obviously benefit from a more learned head of state, and it would also be a huge compliment to the Earth Kingdom if I chose to study here instead of in my own country…"

"I think it's brilliant," she forced out through her hacking coughing fit. "It's just – Zuko – I can't imagine you as a student."

"Yeah," he agreed, rubbing at the back of his head quizzically. "It'll be a change. But an improvement, I think."

"You're going to be so busy," she remarked, setting down her teacup and placing her hands on his shoulders. Her fingers traced the ornate gold embroidery on the collar of his green tunic. "Doing all that on top of running the teashop."

He smiled crookedly at her and it flipped her stomach over. "Yeah, I might need to hire some more people to help me out," he returned, his voice amused. "Do you need a job?"

A sudden sharp peal of laughter burst out of her throat as she imagined it. "It's a tempting offer," she said, only half-joking, "but the last thing I need is people thinking that I'm trying to sleep my way to the top."

His good eyebrow rose quizzically. "But…you just said you wanted to take things slow?"

"I do!" she corrected, face flaming. "It was a joke."

"Right." His arms snaked around her waist and pulled her in. "Clearly Sokka got the family sense of humour."

She fought the urge to stick her tongue out at him, but settled instead for resting her cheek against his shoulder, hands pressed flat against his chest, right over the star-shaped scar and his faithfully beating heart. "Well, you probably remember how awful his jokes were, so I guess there wasn't that much to go around."

"I'll bet," he murmurs as he rested his chin on top of her head, but his voice was warm nonetheless.

She met his eyes somewhat impishly. "I thought you said you'd never bet against me."

He let out a small chuckle and she understood then that with Zuko, she didn't have to worry. "For that," he said very solemnly, words muffled into her hair, "I might have to make an exception."

Maybe, just maybe, she wouldn't ever have to worry again.