Disclaimer: It's all Bryke's, except what's not.

A/N: For Dyce.

Kick.

Kick.

Kick. Kick.

Katara is almost used to it now, the feeling of the baby inside her moving with such vigor that it sometimes wakes her from sleep. Here, in the quiet time before sleep, she closes her eyes and rests a hand on her belly, feeling the kicks—although it might be punches this time; she's not sure.

Beside her, Zuko is in the midst of the firebending form that will extinguish the last of the torches in their bedroom, and it's only with half a thought that she asks, "How many children do you want to have, Zuko?"

Her husband's hand stills, and a few torches still flicker. He lowers his arm and shifts slightly in bed to look at her, his expression guarded in the dim light.

She doesn't see that expression much anymore, these days. What little remained between them when they married disappeared in nights of equal parts passion and tenderness, of lying in each other's arms and talking until the sun crested the horizon, of kisses and touches that required no words at all.

Katara is proud to see Zuko become increasingly adept at concealing his emotions in public and in the council room, but she also prides herself on the fact that she almost always knows the secrets he's keeping.

This intimate knowledge of her husband's tempers usually works to her advantage. She knows when having her as a sparring partner would make him feel better; she knows when he would sort out his feelings best by being left to firebend in solitude. She knows how far she can push her causes before he loses his temper; she knows when smiling and pulling him into bed will make him forget his counterarguments (at least for a few hours).

Tonight, though, he is nearly as fathomless to her as he was years ago, when he was an enemy, when he betrayed her. Back then, the way Aang and Zuko wielded fire was as foreign to her as the Fire Nation itself. In the time since, Katara has learned to wield fire in her own way, in eyes that meet across crowded rooms, in heated arguments and bending battles, in a quirk of her lips or a toss of her hair, in quiet conversations whispered in the dark. In the delicate, intricate relations of their hearts and minds that twist and slip and shiver between them, she controls, as much as anyone can, this foreign element that consumes her husband. Zuko has learned to master water in a similarly indirect fashion, and their existence lies in this balance.

He looks at her. He blinks. And she probably should have thought more before she let the question slide from her lips, but now that it hangs between them, she knows his answer will be, at the least, one, because already her belly and breasts are swollen with this pregnancy, with a baby so far seven months in the making, that makes its presence known with kicks and punches and rolls that leave her wondering if the baby is bending some element already, inside her womb.

This baby was a surprise as much as it was a hoped-for event. Zuko and Katara were aware—even before the Fire Sages, Uncle Iroh, and various council members started dropping not-so-subtle hints—that heirs are an extremely important political move to reassure the Fire Nation of the future stability of its throne. Given that these hints started coming before they were even married, they learned to turn nearly deaf ears to them and decided privately to take things slowly while still being prudent considering their position—they would wait a year, at most, to start trying for a family.

But the first few months of their marriage were chaotic, to say the least. Besides the necessary task of learning to navigate the personal habits of another equally strong-willed person and the much more pleasant task of learning the ways of a husband and wife in bed, they had a seemingly endless stream of dignitaries wishing them well to entertain, an uprising in the colonies to quell, and war-altered resources to manage in order to meet the world's demands for a hundred years' worth of reparations. In long days and short nights, when stealing a few hours of sleep was sometimes foregone in favor of stealing lingering kisses, they were not always as…careful…as they might have been, although Katara would never admit that fact to anyone. Healers are not supposed to be careless about such things.

One morning, Zuko wakes up to an empty bed and he comes looking for her, like Katara knows he will, because he is always the one waking her up in the morning while she squeezes her eyes shut and huddles under the covers in an attempt to delay the morning's arrival. He finds her in her dressing room, working healing water over her abdomen with a look of intense concentration on her face.

Katara, what's wrong? Are you hurt? Lying here beside him now, Katara remembers the look of worry on his face then, worry that only intensified and twisted to mix with wonder when she told him they were going to be parents.

Iroh was thrilled, of course, and Zuko's advisors were relieved—and if the baby hadn't been conceived in direct response to their promptings, they were none the wiser.

The world doesn't stop because of a pregnancy, and Zuko and Katara are as busy as before while the months pass quickly. Now, Katara finds it harder to move than usual—her belly is becoming cumbersome and she has to use her arms to push herself when she wants to so much as roll over in bed. She is starting to tire of pregnancy; she wants to meet their child.

"Two."

Zuko's voice comes, firm but quiet, and distracts Katara from her thoughts.

"Only two?" she asks, equally quietly. Her voice is calm and soothing, because a few too many bitter arguments have taught her that crossing him when he's like this only makes him withdraw more. She wonders, suddenly, why they never talked about this before. The assumption was always that they would have children—a throne needs heirs, after all—but they never discussed how many. In the many things they talked about, it somehow never came up.

Zuko's eyes narrow, and they glint a defiant gold. "Did you want more?"

Katara pushes herself up and sits so that her gaze is level with his. "I…don't know." She bites back the temper that wants to well in her voice. "Maybe." She doesn't know this baby inside of her, not yet, but she can feel its kicks and its heartbeat and this living presence that has accompanied her for over half a year now calls to her, kindles the instinct her friends always teased her about when they complained about her mothering ways. It's different now, though, deeper and more vital than anything she ever felt when she was making sure Toph or Aang or even Sokka had clean clothes and food to eat in their travels together.

The fact that Zuko presumes to dictate the matter in such decided tones when they haven't even discussed it yet—when it's her body, not his, that will shelter and nourish their children—angers her, and she curls her fingers into the bedcovers to keep herself from shouting at him. She did not lose her mother all those years ago only to be denied motherhood in as full an extent as she wants it—which, for all she knows, may be more than two children.

"Don't look at me like that." Zuko is chiding, defensive, but not altogether combative. He starts to reach for one of her hands, to wrest it from its tense stronghold, but his own hand stops midway toward her, hesitates, and lowers to rest on the bed, inches from hers. "We need to have at least two—an heir and a second in case anything happens to the first."

"That's terrible!" Katara blurts out, her eyes wide now where before they squinted in anger.

"The world is terrible," Zuko counters matter-of-factly. "There is peace now, but the world is not a safe place…and even the best healers can't counter every wound or disease, especially not when the children are older and you may not be by their side all the time."

"If the world is so unsafe," Katara says, and she knows she's being stubborn and antagonizing him when she probably shouldn't, "then why only two? Wouldn't there be safety in larger numbers, to ensure the succession against nearly all danger?"

"Don't you see that they're the greatest danger?"

Katara startles when Zuko abruptly pushes himself out of bed to pace the floor and she reaches out after him, pulling the mussed covers back into place and over herself, anchoring them beneath her arms.

"What do you mean?"

Zuko pauses his pacing and stares at her. She feels small under his gaze. "Have you forgotten so quickly?" he asks, his body tense and his hands clenched at his sides. If this were a few years ago, he would already be bending fire at her. "Or do I need to remind you how one of my great-grandfathers killed the other—his best friend, the Avatar—because he stood in the way of his war? Or how my father undermined my uncle and killed his own father—and almost killed me, twice—in order to usurp and keep the throne? Or how Azula had no qualms about killing me—or you, an innocent bystander—to keep me from my place as Fire Lord?" His face is twisted in anger, nearly the angry snarl of the pompous prince she first met, but Katara barely notices for staring at the scar on his sternum, the old, jagged wound he took for her.

Her heart is pounding in her chest and the air in their bedroom seems heavier than it did ten minutes ago. "You're afraid," she says softly.

"Yes!" The word punctures the heavy air with the weight of the history and the future Zuko has come so far in accepting and molding into something workable, something healthy—but the vast, uncontrollable question of their children's characters is something they'll have to face together. "Of course I'm afraid! I carry the blood of murderers and tyrants in my veins, and I don't want—I don't want…"

His anger crumples with the deep breath he heaves out as he comes back to bed. He sits beside Katara and reaches out for her, gently, tentatively, pushing the covers aside, and his look of despair as he places his hands on her belly makes her sorry she ever claimed this baby as more hers than his, even if she is the one carrying it in her womb.

"I don't want this child—or any of our children—to…to be like that. It's a sickness, an uncontrollable lust for power, and it's not something we can…can train out of them or reverse. It's part of who they are and I don't know how to stop it if one of them has it."

Katara reaches up and places her hands on top of Zuko's. He doesn't look at her, only keeps his focus on their hands as she speaks. "I don't know how, either, Zuko. I don't know what it's like, to live with someone like that, to love someone who can't be redeemed. But I love you and I trust you and I will pray to all the spirits that our children inherit your traits and not your sister's or your father's." She strokes the backs of his hands, lightly. "We will love them and we will do our best to raise them well." She sighs. "And we'll try not to worry about what we can't control. We'll deal with things as they come."

They are silent for a long moment after that, and the stillness is interrupted by the baby kicking again under their hands. Katara smiles and Zuko watches incredulously, because he's felt it before, but is much less familiar with it than she is.

"Who knows," he says, as the baby kicks again, "maybe we'll be lucky. Maybe they'll all end up with mostly Water Tribe traits, like their mother." He kisses her stomach near where the baby was kicking, then sighs. "As long as one of them can firebend and we have a legitimate heir, I'd really like it if they turn out like you."

He looks up at her then and Katara wants to laugh and cry all at once. "You're saying you'd like to raise Water Tribe peasants?" The tremor in her voice ruins her attempt at levity.

"I've figured out that Water Tribe peasants aren't so bad." He moves his hands, slowly, from her stomach around to her back and shifts himself closer to her. Katara shivers and grins because it pleases her immensely that she can still inspire that look in his eyes when she feels as large as a hippo-cow. Before he kisses her, she manages to murmur back, "Well, neither are spoiled Fire Princes."

"Spoiled Fire Lords," he corrects her between kisses.

"Spoiled Fire Lords," she amends. Neither of them says anything for a long while after that.

The next morning, Katara snuggles against Zuko and mumbles, "I hate mornings," when he tries to wake her up, so he runs soft fingers up and down her arm until she gives up and squints her eyes open.

"I'm going back to sleep after you leave," she announces, and he kisses her before he slides out of their bed and begins preparing for the day. She settles back against the pillows and watches him. She enjoys this quiet time of dwindling twilight, the everyday intimacy of shared habits.

Before Zuko leaves, he comes back over and kisses her. "I love you." She smiles.

Then he leans down and kisses her belly. "And I love you, too," he mumbles against her skin, and suddenly the backs of her eyes sting.

Two months and thirteen hours of labor later, Katara gives birth to a son. The first heir to the Fire Nation throne has his father's dark hair and (it is revealed years later, much to everyone's relief) firebending skills, but beyond that, he resembles his uncle Sokka more than anyone else.

The second heir to the Fire Nation throne, coming rather quickly on the heels of the first, is a daughter, also a firebender, who is more ambitious and talented than her older brother but has her mother's generous heart rather than her aunt Azula's scheming mind.

The third heir to the Fire Nation throne comes following a somewhat larger gap than that between her older brother and sister, but after the first two had won over their parents' hearts so completely, Zuko and Katara decided to add another child to their brood. She is, much to her mother's delight, a waterbender.

The night following that discovery, long after the children are in bed, Katara pulls Zuko into their own bed and cuddles against him. He runs his fingers absentmindedly through her hair and she watches the even rise and fall of his chest in the dim light."

"Well, you won with two firebenders." He glances down at her in surprise and she smiles wryly. "But at least one of them is a waterbender."

Zuko chuckles. "It's not a competition, Katara."

"No, I guess not," she says, reaching out to intertwine the fingers of one hand with his. She ponders their joined hands for a moment, then snuggles a little closer. She likes this. She likes them, together.

Zuko kisses her head. "Are you all right?"

"I just—I like our kids. And I think they seem…normal," she suggests hesitantly. She has never been around Zuko's family enough to recognize the signs, to know if his deepest fears have been realized.

When he says, "I think so, too," she lets out a breath she didn't realize she'd been holding.

"They're good kids," he says soberly. "We've been lucky."

Katara sits up to look at him then, meets his gaze evenly for a while, sees the love and tenderness and responsibility that have grown in both of them with age, and whispers, "Smile."

He obliges her, and in the crooked grin he offers her, she sees the boy she fell in love with and the man she still loves, and she is suddenly overwhelming grateful for her life, just the way it is.

She kisses him, and he kisses her, and it is a long time before either of them sleeps.

Nine months later, even more of a surprise than his oldest brother was, the fourth heir to the Fire Nation throne is born. He is the most easygoing of all of the princes and princesses, and his older siblings dote on him endlessly. For a long time, his family thinks he might not bend any element, but then he surprises everyone (including himself) when fire dances from his fingertips on his seventh birthday.

Zuko scoops his youngest son up in his arms, twirls him around despite the boy's protests that he's too big for this, and then mouths "I won" to Katara after his son's feet are planted on the ground again.

Katara laughs and shakes her head, taking her own turn to hug their youngest.

Later that day, when the children are tossing a ball around the royal gardens in some new game they've invented, Katara comes to stand beside Zuko and wraps her arms around him, laying her head on his shoulder as they watch their children play.

"You're wrong," she murmurs. "We both won."

She's not talking about bending anymore, but he understands her perfectly. And he agrees.