Title: Proposal

Author: SCWLC

Disclaimer: If I owned A:tLAB, I wouldn't be living in my parents' basement right now.

Summary: Sokka makes a deal for his sister to marry the Fire Lord. I bet it's not at all what you think.

Author's Notes: Okay, I'm not a particularly dedicated fan to Avatar. I haven't even seen most of the episodes. But I'd been reading various Zutara 'ship fics and this idea came to me and wouldn't let go. This isn't the whole story, obviously, but it was a justification I hadn't seen before. I'd started thinking about Katara having a post-war breakdown where all the stress catches up to her and something pushes her over the edge. The seemingly misogynist nature of the Water Tribes seemed to be a good place to put those final stressors. On seeing all the various arranged marriage fics, I suddenly had this image of Sokka and Kana, having to go to desperate measures to get Katara somewhere safe.

This is actually part one of a series of stories, the rest of which can be found on my author's page. When I started, I had planned this as a one-shot and it grew out of control as a series of one-shots. Anyone who sees spinoffs, don't worry, I declared it open season on people finishing the story for me. However, if you look on my profile page, it actually is a finished series. Yes, I know it would be easier to track as a chaptered fic, but I'm as self-centred as the next person and I don't want to lose my reviews. Also, I still feel, philosophically, that this is better as a series of one-shots, because there's just too much connective tissue missing for this to feel right as a chaptered thing to me. But feel free to believe the reviews explanation. It's equally valid.

Zuko had just wearily sunk into bed, having been up late hashing out treaties and trade agreements and how to avoid being backed into a marriage by his advisors. Uncle Iroh had expressed some regret that Zuko and Mai were not still together, but that relationship was, unfortunately, over.

They'd tried. Following the victory over Ozai and his forces, Zuko and Mai had tried to restart the relationship they'd had before. But it had been too many years since they'd been together, too many years apart, and a lifetime's worth of experiences for each of them that just made it impossible. Mai hadn't been there in the years he'd searched for the Avatar, foolishly thinking it was the way into his father's heart. Zuko hadn't been there as Azula played her games with Ty Lee and Mai, and neither could truly get past how different they were from how they'd been before.

In the end, things had fallen to pieces in a series of fights, each one more acrimonious than the last. Mai was easily bored, but she was simply not the sort able to entertain herself by throwing herself into charitable projects and works and helping Zuko with the administration of the Fire Nation. The only time they had seemed to get along was when they were sparring together. Even the physical spark between them just went out. Zuko woke up one morning to find that Mai had left him a letter.

Zuko

I hate sappy goodbyes, they're dull and ridiculous. I'm leaving, and I'm leaving you this letter so you'll know not to come after me. Since I know you'll never break up with me because you'd feel it would break some promise you never made, I'm breaking up with you. We're good enough friends, but we're just too different and too alike in all the wrong ways to ever work out as husband and wife.

Ty Lee had the right idea when she ran away to the circus. Not that I'm going to the circus, but I'm just not cut out to be a part of court life any more than she is. I'm too good at tracking and with my knives not to do something interesting. After hearing about that girl, Jun, I've decided to become a bounty hunter myself. All that time tracking you and the Avatar should be put to better use.

So if you ever need a bounty hunter, let me know. I'll keep in contact, and I promise you special rates. How does that sound?

Your friend,

Mai

The simple fact that her leaving had left him barely more of a pang than when the Avatar and his friends had left for their own lives had told Zuko Mai was right. Unfortunately, now that he didn't have a romantic interest, many of his advisors had begun to get nervous. There were always concerns about the possibility of assassination for any monarch, and without heirs there was a great risk of civil war should something happen to Zuko. His uncle Iroh had already abdicated any chance of taking the throne, which meant sixth cousins twice removed from the royal line, would start appearing as various factions vied to get their own choices onto the throne.

All this meant that Zuko was being pressured practically hourly to find a wife and get legitimate heirs on her. Worse, there were factions within factions on the issue. Some wanted him to marry someone of the highest classes of Fire Nation nobility to ensure that the new Fire Lady would understand their culture and traditions and be capable within the court. Most of the Fire Ladies of the past had come from that caste.

Others felt he should pick someone from the nobility outside the court. A daughter or relative of the administrators of the various provinces, daughters of the highly-ranked navy officers or the rich merchants who seemed to have more money even than many member of the old money aristocracy.

There were those who were pushing a marriage from outside the Fire Nation. They felt it would be an excellent political move to create a permanent alliance between the Fire Lord and the Earth Kingdom. After all, if he were married to some noble's daughter from Omashu or Ba Sing Se, the people there would be reassured he was not planning to attack her native land.

Each of these groups had factions. Each faction had a specific candidate in mind. On top of which, there were the constant arguments on the choice between benders and non-benders. Some wanted him to marry a firebender because they felt she would better represent the core of their national elemental nature. There were those who thought he should find an earthbender to help with international relations and to show the newfound tolerance of the Fire Nation. Others thought she should be a non-bender. Some because he should have a non-bending counterbalance to his bending, and some because they didn't want too much sheer physical power concentrated on the throne. There were those who just thought that he, as Fire Lord, should be able to dominate his wife, and thus she ought to be weaker than him.

After all that, some of the women were too old for him. Not that any were past childbearing age, but Zuko was still just twenty. He had no desire to be married to a woman old enough to be his mother. Others were too young, including a few who were just children. He'd been down the road himself, of being forced to be an adult before he was old enough to understand what that meant, and he'd seen what it did to him and all those other children who grew up in the midst of the hundred years' war. He wasn't going to put any other children through that if he could help it.

All this still left dozens of options. Some he'd met, and all of those were completely incompatible in one way or another. Whether it was because on meeting them he knew the girl in question could never cope with the role of Fire Lady, or if it was because he knew he could never put up with the girl in question, marrying them was simply not an option.

Unfortunately, intangibles like personality conflicts and sense of responsibility weren't something he could tactfully explain to their families and other supporters. So while he would never agree to marry those girls, he couldn't actually dismiss them from the race that was unofficially going on.

Neither could he do so for any of the "candidates" that were clearly being supported because those who supported them thought it would help their own social status. On principle alone, Zuko would refuse those. It was one thing for those who wanted him to have a stabilising personal influence and heirs to try to get him married off. It was quite another for those who just wanted him to pay them a large bride price or promote them to a higher rank.

All in all, the mess was giving him a headache. His uncle had had no helpful suggestions and Zuko had headed off to bed that night, determined only to put all the confusion from his mind and just get some rest.

So he was quite irate when he saw one of the panels of the secret passages that threaded through the whole palace complex open. Only a firebender could get into that one, and Zuko spared a moment of exasperation for the assassin that was ruining his escape from everything before launching himself across the room at the intruder, and quickly throwing the man down and pinning him to the floor. Something went spinning across the ceramic tiles with a clatter.

When the intruder didn't fight back, just hissing, "Zuko, it's me!" the Fire Lord blinked, then abruptly stood, backing away, and lighting all the candle sconces with a gesture.

"Sokka?" said Zuko in bafflement. "What are you doing here? How did you get into that passage?"

The other man stood. Three years had broadened the shoulders of the man Zuko still remembered as a slightly gangling teenager, and he now stood with a surety and confidence that showed the other young man as having finally come into his own. Sokka smiled a little, bending over and pulling out a strange device with a bladder hanging off the bottom, held it away from himself, and flicked some sort of switch. Suddenly, a concentrated jet of flame, just like the one needed to open those passages, came out of the device. "It's just something I threw together on the way here," Sokka said. "I needed to talk to you alone, and I didn't want anyone to know I was here." His lips tightened. "At least, not officially."

"Who does know you're here?" Zuko asked. "Why are you here?"

"Suki, Gran-gran, and, if you can believe it, Ty Lee," Sokka told him. "As to why I'm here . . ." He paused, clearly searching for the right words. Finally he shook his head and said, "There's no easy way to put it, and it's a long story, but the short version," Sokka took a deep breath, then continued, "The short version is that I want to ask you to marry my sister."

That . . .

That was . . .

"What?"

"I need you to ask Katara to marry you," Sokka told him.

Even as he knew this wasn't the right thing to say, that Sokka was completely serious and that something very important was going on, the first words out of Zuko's mouth were, "Is this a joke?"

The laugh that escaped the Water Tribesman's mouth was short and very bitter. "I wish it were. I wish this was just all me playing a really complicated prank." His eyes were suddenly wet as he looked at the man he'd started off as enemies with and eventually become close friends with. "I just . . . I can't think of anything else. I can't . . . she needs help and I can't help her and this is the only thing we've thought of that might bring her back." He seemed to be pleading with Zuko to understand.

One thing Zuko could understand was desperation, and now that he was getting a good look at Sokka, he could see the other man was desperate. Zuko led the way to the far side of the room where two chairs sat facing the fireplace. He sat down, Sokka following blindly, practically falling into the other chair. "Start from the beginning, Sokka," Zuko said. "Explain why you think Katara and I should get married."

Sokka leaned forward, his elbows on his knees, staring at the floor between his legs. "Some of this I only know secondhand from Gran-gran," he started. "But it began right after Katara went home after the war ended.

"You know how Katara's always had that overwhelming sense of duty?" Sokka asked. "I mean, as long as she was sure something was the right thing to do, she'd make herself do it, no matter what."

"I remember. Once she forgave me for what I did at Ba Sing Se, she was almost too fair with me," Zuko said.

"Exactly," Sokka told him. "It's always been an easy way to get her to do anything. Make her feel like she's got a duty to do something and she'll give in. She has priorities of duty and one might conflict with another, but generally, she'll do almost anything she's 'supposed to'." Shaking his head, Sokka continued. "So when we got to the South Pole, Dad told her she had a duty to help with the rebuilding. She told Aang, and he left to do his peacemaking and airbender hunting without her."

Zuko nodded. "I remember. He came by here after." The Fire Lord paused, "He seemed a little confused, actually."

"Yeah, 'cause he and Katara had started trying out seeing each other," Sokka said. "But since she didn't know when she'd be able to leave, she broke it off and sent him on. I'm not sure Aang ever got that she was being all self-sacrificing." He sat back, shrugging, his hands opening in a gesture of resignation. "Anyhow, Katara stayed there and helped. Every time she talked about how she should go and help Aang, Dad would say something about how she didn't have to go anywhere, and shouldn't Katara go spend time with the women doing . . ." Sokka gestured vaguely, his hands circling in the air, "Woman things."

"'Woman things'?" Zuko echoed, a little incredulous. "Katara?"

Sokka rolled his eyes. "I don't know if you recall who did the cooking and mending and campsite organising when we were in the final days before the comet," he said, "But it was pretty much just the two of you."

Zuko frowned, "I do recall it seemed like Katara was doing a lot of work but-"

Sokka winced. "I'm a little ashamed to admit it, but that's the division of labour between women and men in the South Pole. Aang and I got used to the fact that Katara just did those things and never bothered to ask us to do them more than once because we felt like it was her job as the girl." A wry smile crossed Sokka's face. "I was always trying to monopolise Suki, and Toph was pretty much useless for that."

At that, Zuko nodded a little. "She never quite left behind her background as one of The Bei Fongs, did she?"

"Nope," Sokka told him. "Anyhow, Katara kept getting relegated more and more to the women's tents, and every time she tried to get back out, Dad would hit her with something that made her feel guilty for even trying." A sad smile crossed his face, "He used our mother a lot for it."

In spite of himself, Zuko felt that the slight hiss of breath he expelled after that revelation was a little hotter than his normal body temperature should account for. He sternly controlled himself. Sokka didn't seem to notice, just kept on.

"Dad seems to think that Katara wants to be a normal Water Tribe woman," Sokka told his friend. "No matter how Katara tried to explain it to him, he just . . . wants so badly to see her as the little girl he left, or maybe the woman he'd wanted her to grow up into, he doesn't see what's really there."

Then Sokka's hands clenched into fists for a moment before relaxing. "I didn't know this, because I was going back between Kyoshi and the South Pole a lot. Katara . . . I think she didn't want to bother me with her problems," Sokka said.

"This isn't a good thing," Zuko told him, "And you probably do need to find a way to get her to leave there, but it doesn't answer why you want her to marry me."

"I'm getting there!" Sokka snapped. "You have to understand everything that happened. You have to understand why she's not trying any more. You have to know why she just let . . . let them all . . ." His voice cracked as he ran out of steam, clearly seeing something awful in his mind's eye.

Gut clenching in sudden fear, Zuko leaned forward. "You mean she got worn down and something happened that pushed her too far?"

"That bastard raped her."

It was as though the room suddenly did a complete lazy turn around him. The walls seemed remote and the only thing grounding Zuko was the sight of Sokka, white-lipped, hands in fists on his thighs.

"What?" The word emerged as a whisper. "Who?" Zuko asked, only a little louder. He wasn't angry. Not yet. Right now he was too shocked, too horrified, vague images of the girl he'd known, the one who was fearless and kind and fire and ice all at the same time, trapped underneath some faceless shadowy figure.

"His name is Ujarak," Sokka said. "He was one of the warriors who came from the Northern tribe to the Southern." He slowly shook his head. "I've never been as good at treating women as equal to men as I ought to be, but that . . ." Sokka stopped himself abruptly. "He couldn't accept that Katara was never going to 'go to the healing tents where she belonged'." Zuko could almost see the sarcasm floating in the air.

"There was an eclipse of the moon," Sokka said. Zuko, who had glanced away from Sokka for a moment, just to get a little relief from the intensity of his friend's almost vacant look. "They happen more often, so I think they don't affect a waterbender as much as the eclipse of the sun did the Fire Nation."

Zuko still winced. He remembered that horrible feeling. That slight emptiness that had made him almost feel like a small portion of his own spirit was dying. It wasn't precisely debilitating. Not completely. But it was a pervasive sense of wrongness. If Katara had gone through anything close to that, she would have been very vulnerable. "He got to her during the eclipse."

"Yes." Sokka's jaw clenched and unclenched in concert with his fists. "It was enough for him to restrain her. To . . . to . . ." He closed his eyes, clearly reaching for some self-possession. Zuko waited, his own hands now tightly holding the arms of his chair. Finally Sokka continued. "I got a letter from Gran-gran, telling me what had happened. When I got back," he swallowed sharply, "When I got back everyone, including Dad, were saying that Katara was lying. That she must have chosen to . . . to be with Ujarak. That since she was a waterbender, he couldn't possibly have forced her."

He was breathing fast, practically panting, and Zuko could feel a sharp burst of heat with every breath out of his nose. Every breath in, he thought he might be smelling smoke. His hands were white-knuckled as they clung to the chair. Only the knowledge that there was more kept him from erupting.

"Somehow, in the time it took Gran to send me a letter, and for me to get back, Dad insisted Katara had to marry Ujarak. To make up for the slight to his honour." Suddenly Sokka's eyes focussed, widened, and he said, "Uh . . . Zuko? You uh . . . might want to let go of the chair."

The non sequitur got Zuko's attention, and he glanced down to see that smoke was issuing from between his fingers, and when he let go of the chair, there were charred marks in the shape of his hands where he'd been hanging on.

The moment broke the tension a little, as Zuko launched himself out of the chair and started pacing. He took a few deep breaths and said. "What then? She's not married now or you wouldn't have asked me. I still don't know why you aren't just kidnapping her and taking her to Kyoshi."

"Suki and I aren't kidnapping her, because she's had too many things happen against her will, and because she'll go right back as long as she feels her duty is in the South Pole." Sokka said. "And right now, no one needs her away from the South Pole. If she marries you, she becomes the Fire Lady. She has to be here. She'll have duties she has to do here. They'll keep her away from . . . everything.

"If she gets taken away, she'll just feel like she has to go back because Dad said they needed her there. But Aang doesn't need Katara with him, he's got Toph to back him up as another bender. There isn't anyone else anywhere else that needs her." Sokka sighed. "Katara needs to feel needed, or else she feels like she's failing someone."

Zuko stopped pacing and turned to Sokka. "So why isn't she married any more?"

"Ujarak repudiated her. He raped her, got her pregnant with his child, married her, and when she had a miscarriage – which I could not honestly swear wasn't caused by him – he declared that she was an unfit wife and ended the marriage." Sokka shook his head. "He did it publicly. He made sure to humiliate her as much as possible in front of everyone. She'd just lost a child, his child, and all he could do was make sure to tell everyone that she wasn't even worth his time or respect.

"It broke her," Sokka said. His voice dropped to almost a whisper. "I've seen her go through so much, and it was like the fight was just . . . gone. I tried so hard to help her. Tried to get her not to blame herself, but everyone was against her but me and Gran." He started to breathe faster, talking faster. "She just refused to do anything. She just . . . stopped. She retreated to an igloo at the edge of the community, she just goes to the healing tents, and back to the igloo. She lets them all treat her like a . . ." his voice broke for a moment in a sob.

"Dad really believes that she gave in to youthful lust or something and was just ashamed after. He just won't even try to understand, and after how long he was gone, Katara listens to everything he says, and doesn't try to fight back."

It was like a nightmare, Zuko admitted to himself. He'd seen the sort of inner strength Katara had, but he also knew how much it hurt when your own family were the ones testing your resolve. He knew how it felt when the people who were supposed to love and support you the most treated you like dirt. You believed them in a way you wouldn't believe anyone else, because they were supposed to know you better. And there was something about your own father being like that . . . he knew that pain all too well.

Sokka sighed. "Gran, Suki and I just started trying to figure out what to do. We've been trying and trying. Trying to find something that would create a reason for Katara to leave that would keep Dad from telling her not to. Something she would feel was an important enough obligation to leave the South Pole." He looked seriously at Zuko and said, "And then we heard from Ty Lee about how you were being pressured to marry."

"This is a lot you're asking of me, Sokka," Zuko said, slowly. "You know I'd do almost anything for any of you, but you're asking me to marry your sister." He shook his head slowly, then said, "And how would I even convince the council and my advisors that I should do this?"

"Ty Lee said that there's a faction that want you to marry outside the Fire Nation," Sokka said, "For starters, you can look for their support. You said that a lot of them were concerned about inbreeding being the reason for Azula being-"

"Insane?" Zuko cut in, dryly. It twinged a little to hear that about his sister, but he'd forced himself to accept over the last few years that she was never going to be a sister to him the way Katara was to Sokka.

"Yeah," Sokka rubbed the back of his head, a little embarrassed. "You can't get any further from inbreeding if you take a bride from the Water Tribe. Second, you'll be just as reassuring to the world at large about not wanting to send the Fire Nation on another stupid war if you marry into the Water Tribes as into the Earth Kingdom."

"Fair enough," Zuko acknowledged. "And we've done far more damage to the Southern Tribe than anywhere else, it's true. But Katara's not a noble, and your family isn't even particularly wealthy."

"No," Sokka agreed. "But our father is the chief and in charge of the South Pole at this time, and Katara is both the only woman master bender in the Tribes, and the only one to come from the South Pole for the last thirty-five years. She was key in ending the war, travelled with the Avatar, and saved your royal butt from Azula, in the end."

"That is a convincing argument," Zuko said.

Sokka added, "You know she's good at organising, and if there's anyone more driven by doing what's right than her, I don't know who it is. Not to mention, you can add the personal appeal that you want to marry someone you know and trust and can be sure isn't after you for the power and riches."

"But you really think that marrying me is the only way to help her?" Zuko asked. It was the crux of the issue. In a lot of ways, fixing Katara was essentially a temporary thing. To be a little cold about it, it had to be done, but when it was done, that was it. Marriage was for the rest of their lives. He'd already broken up with a girlfriend because they'd found out they could never tolerate each other long term in a romantic relationship.

"I think," Sokka said, a little hesitantly, "That the two of you are better suited for each other than either of you were going to admit as long as Mai and Aang were in the picture."

"Meaning?" Zuko asked.

"Meaning Suki and Ty Lee consider the opportunity to play matchmaker with two people who have 'perfectly complementary auras' as a happy bonus to keeping my sister from throwing herself off an iceberg."

"You really think she's likely to do it?" Zuko asked. Sokka made some very good arguments, and Katara was too good a friend and too good a person to let her go like that.

"I think she spends too much time just standing in front of her igloo, staring vacantly into space," Sokka told him. "I think she spends too much time just letting injured warriors call her a spoiled woman. I think she spends too much time listening to Dad tell her what she did and not enough time accepting that something was done to her. And . . ." Sokka took in a shaking breath, "She asked me whether I thought our mother would be too angry with her if she was careless the way Teriak was when he got lost in a blizzard when we were kids and never came back. She was half-asleep at the time, drugged for the pain from the miscarriage," Sokka said, "But I wonder."

With that, Zuko knew he couldn't say no. It was possible for the Fire Lord to put aside a wife and take a new one if need be, and this would solve some problems, even if he was taking on Katara's. But she'd helped him under Ba Sing Se, more than she probably knew. Lancing the boils that were the memories he'd been holding onto. She'd offered him trust, and even though he'd turned on her, it had meant a lot to him that someone he'd hurt so much could offer him that chance. She'd had no reason to, but she'd done it.

That it was possible for someone to do that, had never occurred to him before that day, and it had been the reason he'd eventually been able to bring himself to join the Avatar and his friends. It was Katara, out of all of them, who'd been the essence of their faith in Aang and themselves. Now, someone had to have faith in her, and he owed it to her to give her that chance to find herself again.

"How are we going to make sure she accepts?" Zuko asked.

Tension seemed to leave Sokka in a wave. "You're going to offer Dad a bride price he can't, in good conscience, turn down."

"And what is that?" Zuko said.

"Fire Nation steel spearheads for our hunting spears," Sokka started, "That metal that won't rust. A better price for the woolly walrus ivory than we get from the southern Earth Kingdom merchants and a purchase in bulk. That slow-burning coal you mine from the western islands, regular free shipments for the winter to fire the new stoves I designed with The Mechanist for use on the ice."

"And perhaps a shipment of those stoves?" Zuko added.

"And the stoves," Sokka agreed. "We're in desperate need of the money for trade, and anything to reduce the number of deaths from cold will always be welcomed."

Zuko frowned a little, "I actually also have some former soldiers, from fishing villages, that got used to being posted in colder regions. I'm having some trouble resettling them."

Sokka's head came up, "You're offering extra men to help with hunting in the winter?" he asked. His eyes narrowed a little, "And since we've lost so many men to the war, there's a possibility of them settling down with Water Tribe wives."

"If that wouldn't be offensive," Zuko told him.

Sokka grinned at Zuko. "I think that would be a deal. You offer that to Dad, in exchange for Katara's hand in marriage, and he'll have to say yes. Especially once Gran and I get working on him." Suddenly the grin fell away, and Sokka said, "I need to thank you for this. You don't know how many ideas we went through. I didn't know what we were going to do if you said no."

Zuko smiled a little wryly. "By the way, why didn't you just get Aang to kidnap her on Appa and get her so deeply involved in some peacekeeping mission she wouldn't be able to extract herself from?"

"Mostly because we can't ever seem to track him down. He sends us letters, but every letter we send after him seems to find him months after it got where it was going." Sokka shrugged. "Quite frankly, we were worried something irrevocable was going to happen before we ever got ahold of him. Also a little because we weren't quite sure if that was the right thing to do for her."

"What do you mean?" Zuko sank back down into the chair he'd almost set alight before.

"Suki thinks that Katara doesn't just need to be given things to do," he told Zuko. "She thinks Katara needs to learn that it's okay for her to want things for herself. Not just something she wants and also it's important because Mom died for Katara's bending, or something she cares about that coincidentally is about saving the world."

Eyes widening a little, Zuko said, "You want me to spoil her like nobility. Servants waiting on her hand and foot, expensive clothes and luxuries."

"Exactly," Sokka said. "Suki thinks that Katara has spent so much time looking after everyone, especially when we were helping Aang, that she doesn't know how to look after herself. More than that, she thinks that if you spoil her by almost treating her as though she's helpless, it might do more to get her back than all the challenges and duties in the world."

Zuko slowly nodded. "I suppose that does it then. Tomorrow morning I'll write to your father with my offer." They both stood, having reached an agreement. "Do you need somewhere to stay?" he asked.

"No," Sokka said. "Actually, I have to get back to the docks soon. The boat's leaving at some horrible hour in predawn. I'd rather be sleeping on board when it leaves, and I certainly don't want anyone to know I was involved in this."

"Just one question," Zuko said.

Sokka looked at him. "What's that?"

"Just so I can . . . avoid trouble," Zuko told him, carefully. "Where's this Ujarak?"

A slightly vicious smile crossed Sokka's face for a fleeting instant. "Confined to an invalid igloo. There was a terrible accident one time when he and I were out fishing. I just don't know how we stumbled onto those mating woolly walruses. I should have warned him how territorial they get, I just . . . didn't realise not everyone knew." The smile was lingering around the edges of his lips. "It's a sad thing that he'll never feel anything below the waist ever again."

An approving, and equally bloodthirsty smile flickered over Zuko's lips in response. "Yes. A real tragedy." Then he shook his head a little, moving on. The Fire Lord walked to the entrance to the secret passage Sokka had come in by, and sent a flame through the decorative curlicued horn to open the door. "I'll do my best," he promised Sokka.

"Thank you," replied Sokka. "Just . . ." and then he grabbed the other man into a tight embrace, unable to find any other way of expressing his gratitude. A slightly weak smirk was on his face when he pulled away, and said, "Just so you know, once you're part of the family, that means I get to sic Gran-gran on you when you do something I don't like."

"Get going, Sokka," Zuko said, turning and shoving the other man through the door. "I need sleep if I'm not going to accidentally offend your father by writing something awful out of sheer tiredness. As the door closed he added quickly, "And how do you know I won't become her favourite grandson?"

Sokka's response was muffled by the door, though clearly acidic.

Then he was gone, Zuko was alone, and collapsed onto his bed, putting his head in his hands. "What am I getting myself into?" he asked.