48. "I didn't expect you to understand."
Okay, so I sat on this for ages, I know. I'm sorry. But now there's a multichapter fic in the works, so.... you're welcome? You have to be a registered AO3 user to acess it over there, but. :D
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"You don't have to, you know?"
The voice was low and quiet, and Katara startled from her place at the edge of the turtleduck fountain where she peered up at the full moon, listening to the chatter of the fountain and asking the moon spirit for answers.
"Don't have to what?" She asked in reply, turning her head to watch Fire Lord Zuko loom out of the darkness and into the bright moonlight.
He wore only a pair of sleep pants because summer in the Fire Nation was blistering, and even the nights were warm. The glow of the moon was bright enough that the blemish of red in the middle of his chest stood out starkly against his pale skin, evidence of his willingness to put her life above his own and to sacrifice himself for her, evidence of his bravery and martydom.
"Whatever it is you think you have to do," Zuko shrugged as he drew closer, close enough to sink down on the edge of the fountain beside where Katara reclined, trailing one hand in the cool water.
"Well, you never know with you," he chuckled. "Your head is always full of ideas and different responsibilities you think you need to carry alone."
"No, it is," he conceded with a nod. "But sometimes it helps if someone reminds you that you don't have to. You don't have to do the thing you think you have to do. Or say the thing you think you're supposed to say to smooth rankled feelings. You don't have to."
"So I don't have to call you Fire Lord Zuko?"
"Definitely not," he chuckled.
"And I don't have to be polite to the other ambassadors in your court?"
"Why should you be when they're rarely polite in return?"
Katara huffed an empty laugh and twisted on the fountain-edge to shuffle along the lip until she could rest her head on Zuko's lap.
He didn't protest the action, and instead carefully weaved his hands into her long, loose tresses, free of the intricate braids and styles she wove into them during the day when she needed to present a dignified front to represent the Southern Water Tribe amid the myriad councils working toward a lasting, meaningful peace after one hundred years of war.
"What is it that's got you so in your head today?" Zuko murmured, his strong fingers massaging her scalp and drawing a contented sigh from Katara's lips as her eyes slipped closed.
"There have been.... rumblings of late," she confessed. "About... the repopulation of our many and varied strains of bender in this new post-war world."
He'd heard them too. Many from among the senior order of the White Lotus, his uncle included, had pointed out that Aang was the last of the Air Nomads, and Katara the last waterbender of the Southern Tribe. They had also pointed out that Zuko was the Fire Lord and presently without an heir to his throne.
"We're so young, Zuko," Katara whispered. "I know we had to grow up too soon, and that the war decimated so many families, so many cultures, but... We're so young."
"We are," he agreed easily. "Too young for concerns like childbearing."
She opened her eyes, peering up at him.
"You've heard the whispers, too?" she murmured.
"I'm the Fire Lord and currently without an heir to my throne," he reminded her. "They're not just whispers for me. I hear the reminders weekly, if not daily, from the Fire Sages, my Council, and my Uncle that it's my duty to preserve and prosper the royal bloodline, and that dying without an heir to succeed me would be tantamount to disastrous. We're at peace, presently, but assassination attempts on my life are rampant. And without an heir, my throne is at stake and at risk of falling to Azula, should I die."
"She's mentally unsound. They wouldn't allow her to ascend to the throne."
"She is. But succession is important to these people. Uncle is considering taking a wife and trying for another heir of his own, despite his ongoing mourning for my cousin, Lu Ten. That way at least my cousin might rule should I die before siring an heir of my own."
"And they want you to do the same?" Katara asked. "To take a wife and sire an heir?"
Zuko nodded, his gaze lowering from the moon to meet her eyes.
"They regularly arrange meetings for me with the daughters of noblemen in the hopes one will take my fancy enough to do so," he confirmed.
"But we're so young..." Katara despaired. "You're.... what? Barely twenty?"
"Marrying age in the Fire Nation is eighteen," Zuko shrugged. "If I don't choose a wife for myself soon, I expect the council will attempt to make arrangements on my behalf. I thought marrying age in the Water Tribe was even younger than that?"
"It is," she grumbled. "Marriages are arranged from the age of sixteen, in my culture."
"And you have just celebrated your eighteenth birthday," Zuko nodded.
"Suki and Sokka are trying for a child," she confided softly. "Sokka told me today. They've been trying for months."
"I think they've been giving it their best effort since the summer before Aang defeated Ozai," Zuko replied dryly. "I am scarred for life by what I walked in on."
Katara giggled when Zuko gave a full-body shudder at the memory.
"Aang is sixteen," she whispered. "Almost seventeen. He's... mentioned multiple times how much he wants to ensure more Airbenders are born into the world and how much he hopes he can contribute to repopulating the world with Air Nomads."
Zuko's fingers kneaded her scalp powerfully, and he remained quiet for a long time, letting the words hang in the air between them, sensing there was more Katara wanted to say, but didn't dare voice, even when they were alone in the dark, and everyone else was fast asleep.
"Do you want to help him make that happen?" He asked, voice low and careful, because one thing they didn't typically discuss, despite how close they had grown in the years since the war ended, was the other's relationship status.
Katara knew better than to ask what had become of Mai, where she had gone, or how she'd never returned. Zuko knew better than to inquire after what existed between Aang and Katara, too. Usually, their friendship focused on other matters, and they didn't dare tred the forbidden territory of love or relationships.
"And before you answer," he injected when she opened her mouth to respond. "I'll say again.... You don't have to, you know? It's okay if you don’t."
"Is it?" Katara whispered to him, searching his face. "He.... I... you know how he feels about me. He's made no secret of it."
Zuko's hand carded through her loose, long hair and down the length of her neck, over her bare shoulder, and down her arm to where her hand played in the water of the fountain. He wove their fingers together tentatively.
"You don't return his feelings," Zuko finished for her.
Katara sighed out a heavy breath.
"I thought I did," she confessed. "But then he started talking about... having children. And just the way he speaks of it sounds so much like..."
Katara trailed off, afraid to finish, even with only Zuko there to hear.
"Like if he has children, and they're not all airbenders, he'll be disappointed," Zuko nodded. "Yes, I've noticed the same thing. He seems to think any child he sires will automatically be an airbender, and statistically speaking..."
"There's a very real chance they won't be," Katara said. "A very real chance they will be waterbenders, if he were to have them with me, or for them to not be a bender at all. Yes, with two parents who are benders, it's more likely than, say, Sokka and Suki having a child who can bend. But there's no guarantee. And I just.... we're so young, Zuko. Too young to be worrying about repopulating an entire race of benders."
Zuko squeezed her hand gently.
"So, don't worry about it," he shrugged.
"As if it's that simple?" she scoffed, staring up into his eyes from where her head still rested in his lap. "You know it isn't. You said so yourself that your Uncle and your advisors are all pushing for you to produce an heir."
"They are," he agreed. "But that doesn't mean I have to do it."
"I don't have to do it," he repeated. "And neither do you. We're the masters of our own destinies, Katara. If you don't want to consider having children yet, you don't have to. If you never want to have them, you don't have to. We have all sacrificed more than enough in this life to reach this point of tenuous peace. I won't let my advisors or my uncle or my nation bully me into a relationship with a woman I don't love, or into siring an heir with anyone until I'm ready, if I'm ever ready."
Katara sat up, twisting around to place her feet back on the still-warm stones at the foot of the fountain, the heat of the summer sun still baked into the rock and clinging to it.
"No buts," Zuko interrupted her. "I won't do anything until I'm ready. Not as Fire Lord. Not as a Fire Bender, or a Prince, or a man. You shouldn't either. If you don't want to do something, Katara, then don't do it."
"Aang is almost grown," Zukoe said quietly. "And he has big ideas, and a lot of wisdom about a lot of things, but not about this. Not about his people and not about the pressure that being in a relationship with the Avatar places on his partner - or even on his friends. If you aren't ready for something as life-altering as having a child, then you tell him that. And if he can't respect that decision and choose to wait until you are ready, then.... You consider ending things."
"We... technically we're on a break at the moment," Katara confessed. "We had a big fight about it before he left for the Earth Kingdom because he wanted me to go with him and I had responsibilities here that wouldn't wait while he detoured via several of the Air Temples."
"I thought he looked cranky when he left," Zuko hummed. "What does being on a break mean for the two of you?"
"I.... don't really know," Katara confessed. "We've.... he's always been so... I don't know, Zuko. I don't know. All we've ever really known is each other, and I kind of... yelled at him... and... I just don't know. I think it means we both have room to explore who we are when we're not a couple, and to figure out what we both want, and to let some distance separate us and see how things look. He won't be back for at least six months, he said."
"Did you discuss the idea of being on a break meaning you could explore being with other people?" Zuko asked.
"I only ask because when Mai and I took a break, that was what she meant and not what I meant, and she explored the option of being with someone else. Several people, in fact, and I didn't because I didn't think that was the kind of break we were taking. And it turns out that she found something with one of those other someone's that she hadn't with me. It's where she went. Her partners and their families are based in the Earth Kingdom."
"Oh, Zuko," Katara whispered, reaching for his hand to squeeze.
"Last I heard, their expecting a baby, funnily enough," he said quietly.
"Partners... plural?" she clarified when the word sank in.
"Mmm," Zuko hummed. "According to a letter from Ty Lee, Mai is in a polyamorous relationship with two other women and two men."
"Oh," Katara frowned. "I... wouldn't have expected that from her."
"She did always bore easily," Zuko sighed. "It doesn't matter. I hear she's happy and that's what matters."
"I see.... so there's no plans in her future to be Fire Lady?" Katara confirmed.
"Wow. Okay. That's... I don't know what to say to that."
"There's nothing to say," Zuko shrugged. "The point is, we took a break and didn't make it clear what that meant to each of us, and as a result, we've broken up, and I walked away from it feeling cheated. You should define what your break from Aang means. Especially considering he's an almost-seventeen-year-old boy on the other side of the world, and with all the fawning and attention of being the Avatar to impact the bonds he forms with people. Speaking as a former seventeen-year-old male with a healthy libido and a reputation as a prominent public figure.... he's probably keen to get laid whenever and however he can. And he'll be given plenty of opportunities."
Katara sighed another heavy breath and untangled their fingers to card her hands through her hair.
"Yeah, well... maybe that's for the best," she muttered. "Maybe he can sleep around with a bunch of the sycophantic women who all throw themselves at him, and they can be the ones who help repopulate the world with airbenders."
"That wouldn't bother you?" he checked. "If he had kids with someone else, possibly multiple kids with different women. And then came back to you?"
"I.... well, I mean, he's an airbender, isn't he?" she sighed. "Culturally, the Air Nomads weren't monogamous, and they rarely married. I think his interest in being with me was born mostly of proximity and societal pressure to conform to the way of life that we in the Water Tribes, Fire Nation, and Earth Kingdom more frequently practice with marriage and nuclear familial structures... Air Nomads weren't like that."
"They weren't," Zuko agreed. "So I'll say it again... you don't have to."
"Don't have to what?" she repeated. "Get married and have kids?"
"Yes. Or be with Aang. Or be in a relationship. Or do anything you don't want to do. And that includes being with a man whose primary focus and responsibility will always be the state of the world, physical and spiritual, over any one relationship. You don't have to be with him. You don't have to be okay with him wanting kids, or being non-monogamous, or anything else, either."
Katara emitted a bitter little laugh.
"No," Zuko insisted, reaching for her hands again and giving them a firm squeeze, firm enough to make her look at him again. "Katara. You don't."
Her lower lip trembled as her eyes steadily filled, the sheen of unshed tears glittering in the glow of moonlight as it beat down from above.
"I... I didn't expect you to... understand," she croaked as a tear spilled over and trickled down her cheek. "I thought... I don't know what I thought, but.... I mentioned to Sokka that things were rocky with Aang and me, and he.... he just made it sound so much like it didn't matter and like it was my duty to be with him and my duty to go after him and patch things up and...."
"You don't have to do anything you don't want to do, Katara," Zuko reminded her, getting to his feet and pulling her up too before tugging her into his arms when a quiet sob escaped her. "You're a free woman of the Water Tribe and it's your right to do whatever you want, with whomever you choose, whenever you choose to do so."
He tucked her head beneath his chin when her arms snaked around his waist, his hands rubbing comforting circles into her back as she cried quietly. They stayed there like that for a long time, cuddled close while she cried into his chest under the glow of the full moon, and Katara breathed in the scent of his skin past the sting of her tears, taking comfort in the familiarity of her closest friend.
Maybe Zuko was right. Maybe she could choose her own destiny.
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