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

A/N: This is a snippet of an unformed S3 ZK elopement AU.

Waves beat against timeless sand and mirror the relentless fear that niggles in Zuko's heart, a feeling that grows stronger with each mile he and Katara travel closer to the Fire Nation capital. His life has changed so much since the last time he was there, and it's all a gamble as to whether or not his father will take him back—especially with a Water Tribe wife, even one who is close to the Avatar, in tow.

Most days, he's certain everyone will see through their lies and the whole effort will have been in vain.

Zuko glances down at Katara, who rests her head on his shoulder with easy comfort, and her eyes are half-closed in the near-darkness that surrounds them. He resumes his fixed stare at the knot-hole where meager moonlight seeps through the wall.

"It's okay to be scared, you know. There are rules," Katara interrupts the waves to say, her voice just above inaudible against the sounds outside the weathered walls of their borrowed (worked-for, earned with a day's labor under the burning sun) room in a fisherman's hut, "and you've broken them. Fire Nation royalty don't exactly marry Water Tribe peasants."

Even her whisper seethes with derision, but then she sighs and pushes her head up off of Zuko's shoulder and looks at him. "We've broken them."

That's only a half-truth, because the war broke all the rules of human interaction long before their resistance came to stop it.

Out of the corner of his eye, Zuko sees her tilt her head and he hears the resigned smile in her voice. "But we knew that when we did this."

This is a hasty wedding in a seedy part of town where bribed officials don't ask questions when a young man with a scar to match the banished prince's wants to marry a young woman whose heritage is so obvious that she couldn't even pass for a colonist. This is tenuous plans concocted with an uncle, an Avatar, and an appeased brother-in-law that have the new couple traveling toward the heart of the Fire Nation to earn a place for the resistance inside the palace. This is moments together where they are able to forget that the war exists at all.

But the war does exist, and they get closer to the capital city every day.

Zuko doesn't meet his wife's gaze, because if he looks at her, he'll talk and he'll confirm out loud all of the doubts she can probably read in his eyes, anyway.

The walls that separate them from the fisherman and his family are too thin for that.

Instead, he says, "Family is never simple, is it?" His tone is dejected and the truth is universal.

"No," Katara says after a pause, and then she shifts, presses herself closer to him on their shared pallet even though the summer night swelters here where the sea breeze barely reaches them, and lays her head back on his shoulder.

In the quiet, they listen to the waves together.

The islands of the Fire Nation, with their oceans and lakes and seasonal rains, are not as foreign to Katara as the deserts and open plains of the Earth Kingdom. Here, in the land of the sun, water surrounds her.

It's not at all like her home of snow and ice, but Zuko takes some comfort from the fact that he is not bringing his waterbending wife to a desert wasteland.

Other obstacles stand in their path, ones that are more difficult to deal with than climate changes, but sometimes the pretenses are what keep them both moving forward on their mission.

Katara makes a quiet murmuring noise, one that Zuko now knows means she's almost asleep. He closes his eyes for a moment and enjoys being in the stillness with her. She loves him, for reasons that he still can't fathom, but even if he had to live his Agni-forsaken life over again, he would still choose her. Every time.

And if they survive—"when we survive," he knows she would correct him—he wants nothing more than to forget about politics and settle down to raise a family with her.

He doubts he'll be able to ignore the politics, especially if his uncle's plans for him to become Fire Lord come to fruition, but he has high hopes for the family.

"Katara, how many kids do you want?"

He whispers the question into her hair, not sure she's still awake and not sure she'll hear him—and now isn't the time for such questions, anyway, when they have a war to win—but then her fingers tap on his chest and she mumbles, still half-awake, "Mmm, I dunno. Lots. You're cute and you're gonna be a good dad."

Zuko's hushed laugh slips into the humid air, because being around her eases the ache in his heart, even though he doesn't quite believe her sleepy compliments.

He kisses the top of her head and she sighs and snuggles closer. Fragile human declarations don't amount to much in the face of a century of bloodshed—and no matter how much he loves her, he has already come close to starting several fights with his countrymen who make derisive comments about his foreign wife—but then, the resistance movement doesn't amount to much, either, in the face of the Fire Nation armies.

And on some level, they all have to hope in something if they want to make it through each day.

So Zuko tries to still the dread that thunders in his heart and focuses on the solidly whole presence of his wife lying curled around him, listens to Katara's peaceful breathing and the sound of nearby waves.

Before the hours creep too close to dawn, he sleeps.