When There's a Firebender Hot for your Sister

Yes, it's happening (late, but y'know better late than never). I am getting all up in Zutara Week 2018 with my favourite fic writing pal — misszeldasayre! We're both busy bees so we're co-writing/tag teaming the prompts for this week. I'll post a full list with links on my profile at the end of the week/when we actually write, beta, and post them all. Happy reading, y'all!

After the comet passes, the princess falls, and Fire Lord Ozai's bending disappears like moisture in the Si Wong Desert, the Avatar leaves the Fire Nation.

Alone.

Sokka asks Katara first. Katara always knows where everyone is and, more often than not, why they are where they are. But when he inquires after Aang's sudden departure, his sister's cheeks flame and she lectures him for longer than he cares to remember about why it's not up to her to know where anyone is, especially Aang.

Sokka is confused by this — Sokka is often confused by Katara, even more than he's confused by Suki — but really, it's unsurprising. Down the hall lies a boy whose veins run with lightning meant to strike the air from the girl's lungs. Down the hall, Katara visits him everyday and the two of them pick at this tangle of things unspoken the way a novice tailor might pull at fine lace.

Sokka doesn't know this.

Toph does. Or she suspects. She knows something went down when everything Zuko says when Katara's within earshot sounds like a lie.

'What's with you these days?' she demands when she accompanies Katara to his room for a visit.

Zuko splutters something in a language unfamiliar to his guests.

'Is it your chest?' The waterbender is coloured with concern and traces the scar she's coaxed from the burn.

Toph knows it's not his chest. 'Oh, Sparky,' she sings as the boy's pulse resonates throughout the room. 'Sokka's going to kill you!'

'Why am I killing Zuko?' the warrior inquires eagerly from the doorway.

The Fire Lord To Be is a deeper shade of maroon than the blind girl can appreciate when he orders them all to leave him alone.

Toph doesn't need to tell Sokka. For such a clueless rube he's not as stupid as he looks. Huh, that's almost sweet. So this she does tell him.

'Gee.' His sarcasm is thicker than the humidity of Fire Nation summers. 'Thanks, Toph. You sure know how to make a guy feel special.'

'No problem, Snoozles.'

He doesn't waste time on the earthbender. Not when there's a firebender hot for his sister.

He finds the culprit with his hand on his (Sokka's) sister's arm — Katara's arms are not for boys to touch! They're barely for other girls to touch, in fact he's about to implement a sleeves-only policy in his sister's wardrobe — while in bed. Well, Zuko's in bed. It doesn't matter that he has been for a week, that he can't spend more than a few minutes out of bed without turning grey. He has no right to be touching arms while seated so suggestively.

Sokka says so as he bursts through the door.

'What are you blabbering about?' Katara demands after he's said "Anti-Arm Touching Policy" and "boomerang in your firebending face" about twenty times.

Zuko is looking at him like the Water Tribe boy has just shot him full of lightning again. 'What are you doing here, anyway?' Sokka demands of his sister, glad to see both the jerk bender's hands now clenched by his side.

'Healing session with Zuko, what are you doing here?'

He glowers at the boy on the bed. 'Oh, I've just come for a chat with my good friend. You know… visiting. Ensuring he's comfortable.'

The firebender returns his glower. 'Great timing—' It isn't '—to have you visit during my healing session.'

'Coincidence at its finest,' Sokka agrees, picking his teeth threateningly with the edge of his boomerang.

It's trickier when the Fire Lord To Be is mobile again. Tricker, but not impossible for a Southern Genius. Sokka can track a seal bear for miles through the snow, (probably) in a blizzard. Stalking his sister through a palace of crimson is a piece of cake.

Sort of.

It's harder when the stupid moonlight (sorry, Yue, he doesn't blame you really) and dumb firefly moths are being all soft and glowy and romantic in the dusky Fire Nation nights.

Katara likes to walk around the gardens after dinner. Mostly because Sokka so rarely does, but also because there are ponds everywhere and just being around her element helps her feel cool in the aftermath of Sozin's comet. Sometimes Toph and Suki join her, sometimes one of the palace healers begs her time to advise them on an unresponsive patient at the nearby hospital.

More and more often, the Fire Lord To Be is on the winding garden paths.

She finds him under a maple not yet amber with autumn, beside a cypress so gnarled and bent that it appear like and old man hunched over his own trunk to keep upright. He's seated beside a pond, a crown of flames abandoned on the ground beside him.

It's this time he talks to her of destiny, his father's legacy, and the emptiness he feels at having to fill it. He doesn't seem empty, though, not to Katara. Not with eyes that burn with his nation's future, and a hand so brimming with heat it sets her heart to racing when it brushes against hers.

'I can't imagine being responsible for all this.' Though the garden is empty of anyone but them, he knows what she means. 'I can understand how scary that could be… I hope you know you'll always have us to help you. Aang and Toph and Sokka and your uncle.'

His gaze slides away, drips back to the moon reflecting in the pond. 'It took me a long time to learn that being on your own isn't always the best path.' He is only half paying attention to what he's saying. The other half of him can't help but notice that she left herself off of his list of friends. 'When we went after the man who killed your mother, and then again when you agreed to face Azula with me, it made me understand the strength in trusting your friends.'

It's then that Katara — who once rallied a group of captured earthbenders to seize their freedom, who convinced Master Pakku into accepting her as a student, who gave the Avatar the wisdom and strength he needed when he doubted himself — is struck speechless by the softness growing beneath her rib cage.

It's also then that her brother loudly clears his throat and joins them from the archway he'd been lurking behind. It's an ungainly entrance. The throat clearing isn't done in sarcasm; he's been choking on the firefly moths all evening.

'Nice night for a little moonlight walk,' he quips, sidling up to squeeze himself between them. 'Personally, I've always been more of a solo moon appreciator. You know, just me and the moon. Alone.'

Katara's irritation itches like ant bites. 'What are you doing out here? I thought you said you were going to take Suki to the night markets.'

Zuko receives his friend's suspicious glower with a shrug. 'Zuko here promised to come with us, didn't you buddy?'

The Fire Lord To Be frowns. 'I did?'

'Oh you definitely did.'

'I don't remember saying—'

'You were probably too busy Fire Lording to remember. Trust me. That's why I remembered for the both of us.'

Katara sighs and stands from the bank of the pond. 'I'm going to bed,' she announces, handing the discarded golden flame to the scarred boy blinking up at her. 'Here, you don't want to lose this.'

When Zuko asks Sokka's father to appoint an ambassador to stay in the Fire Nation, and Hakoda nominates Katara, Sokka wants to go back to Aunt Wu's village to show the fortuneteller just how little of his own misfortune he actually causes. His own father — blind to the sleeveless ways of his sister and moon charming of the new Fire Lord — has become the cause of his misfortune.

He tells Suki this, more than once. But she gives him that look (which he doesn't deserve), tells him he's an idiot (which he definitely doesn't deserve), and kisses him until he can't quite remember what it was Aunt Wu said (the kiss he deserves).

Katara accepts the ambassador's position and a part of Sokka that is still a child mourns for his impending separation from the girl who had raised him after the war stole their mother. It isn't until much later that he realises a part of her also mourns. For a home she now won't return to.

It isn't Sokka, but Zuko who discovers her sadness. Zuko hears her sob crawl up the corridor and through his open office door as she passes.

Katara's eyes are so red she doesn't even see him. 'Katara?'

Her grandmother isn't getting any younger — she calls her grandmother Gran Gran, this is something Zuko learns about her as her tears stain her cheeks and his peace of mind — and her people need waterbenders to rebuild after a century of cultural erosion. She tells him this — she doesn't love the cold, but she loves the heat of her furs around the family stove — at the same time she tells him how happy she is to represent her people.

To do her duty.

To uphold her people's honour.

'You'll be able to visit the South.' She knows this. Wait, does she know this? 'Whenever you want, you can arrange trips home. As ambassador, you'll be assigned a ship for your work. And we can negotiate with the North to send benders to the South Pole, I'll make it part of the peace agreements.'

'Zuko, the North will expect you to give to them during the peace accords, not make demands on them.'

Oh. Right. Fire Lord. 'Well, as ambassador you can ask, and I'll back you up.'

She's not crying anymore—

Her hand is on his.

Her hand is on his.

'We can't start a fight with the Northern Water Tribe because I feel guilty about not going home,' she tells him with honey and sunshine warming her voice. How is it this girl of water and moonlight can be so full of midday sun?

'We won't fight them.' Much. 'We'll just… negotiate.'

'The Northern Tribe won't like negotiating with a woman,' she sighs, and the fire behind her eyes flickers in a doubtful wind. 'I should really ask dad to appoint Sokka or Bato as ambassador. I don't know if I can even—'

'No.'

Her confusion blooms like a bruise. 'What?'

He clears his throat and flexes the fingers underneath hers. 'If the world is going to move forward, we have to do it together. You should never make yourself small because of something as outdated as the Northern Water Tribe's views on women in positions of power. You just told me about how proud you would be to represent your people. Are you really going to let a bunch of old guys and their stupid rules take that away from you?'

Her stubbornness returns in her lips first. Zuko can't look away from the tight line she presses them into. 'You're… you're right. I'm stronger than them, I'm better than that. Here, I can negotiate real change for my people. At home I might be able to help build better homes for the tribe, but as ambassador...' Her eyes are far away, they're watching industry grow and merchant ships arrive at the South with the deals she now has the power to broker. Without warning, she kisses him on his scarred cheek, the one that can barely feel the whisper of those stubborn lips. 'Thanks, Zuko.'

The Fire Lord's cheeks burn with flames set by a waterbender. 'Uh. Yep.'

She's smiling again — she's definitely not crying anymore — and Zuko sees the stubbornness drift into the playfulness in her eyes.

But Sokka has come rushing around the corner, chopsticks perched in one hand and a half eaten komodo chicken leg in the other. 'What,' he states, and it sounds like a question but really it's more of an interruption.

They look at him blankly. 'What, what?' Katara finally asks.

Zuko makes a sound of disgust when the Water Tribe boy gestures with the komodo chicken leg and a hunk flies off the end and onto his face. 'What's going on here is what.'

Suki appears at his elbow and the embarrassment on her face is pink cheeks and a quick jab to her boyfriend's side. 'Sokka!'

He lets the Kyoshi warrior drag him away, pointing at his eyes with the chopsticks, then thrusting them at the firebender. I'm watching you, fire boy...

Try as he might, Sokka cannot be everywhere at once.

Zuko and Katara find themselves alone — mostly — in the pavilion outside the Fire Lord's personal chambers sometime before sunset a few days later. She would be lying if she said she wasn't searching out opportunities to command his undivided attention, the thrill of that secret smile was too heady for her to play coy.

When they kiss for the first time it is not a thing of legend, of epic romances. She does not sigh delicately or moan in passion. She squeaks in surprise. Partially because she never expected the boy marked by flames to be so forward. And partially because Zuko was so nervous he set the hem of his robes (briefly) on fire.

This Sokka never let the firebender forget.