Legacy of Tyche ✬ Cabin 3 ✬ Slytherin ✬ ENTP ✬ white cat ✬ hopeless romantic ✬ overachiever ✬ underthinker
she/her
Jason Grace, Piper Mclean, Peter Johnson, Annabeth Chase, Aaron Warner, Sae Itoshi, Peter Parker, Sirius Black, and Hermione Granger are the precious members of my harem
Masterlists
PJO
HP
...
!Request Rules!
I don't like writing for too non-cannon ships
If I don't reply to your requests, don't worry! I am so busy I can't even call my family. I will reply asap
I am very busy
Also I am getting my education in English, I am kinda bilingual but English is not my first language.
I used to be a mad hp x fic reader but I haven't been active as a potterhead recently so I prefer writing pjo now
hello! could we maybe get like a firelord zuko and reader getting flashbacks about their first kiss as 20 somethings/teens? (up to you!) I feel like it could be super cute, just them reminiscing. i recently rewatched the show and oml i forgot how awkward zuko is 😭😭 in an endearing way 😭
a/n: thank you for this request anon! hope you enjoy <3
summary: a dinner with old friends has you reminiscing on your first kiss with Zuko
“You know, I’ve always wondered, who made the first move?”
You pause mid bite into your fire cracker bun as you tentatively cast your glance towards Zuko who sits across from you at the table. Sokka’s question has lulled the entire group into silence, and all of the attention is now focused on the two of you as you fight to keep from choking on your food.
“What do you mean?” You manage to get out after clearing your throat. You feign innocence by taking a sip of water, but Zuko’s reddened face and inability to maintain his composure quickly discredits your calm front.
“Well we’re here together reminiscing on the past, and you and Zuko have been dating for years without ever explaining how it happened,” he argues pointedly while gesturing to everyone seated at the table, and he does have a point. Every month you all make time to meet for dinner to catch up on memories both new and old, and it so happened to be Zuko’s turn to host the meal. Thus, it made sense your romantic history was the topic of tonight’s conversation.
“That’s right,” Katara agrees thoughtfully to your dismay, “you didn’t even tell us about your relationship until the day of Zuko’s coronation.”
“I had no idea you two even liked each other,” Aang notes with a sheepish laugh.
“I did,” Toph says with a playfully punch to Zuko’s arm. “I used to hear them sneak around the beach house at night.”
“Thank you for that observation, Toph,” you grumble with a sigh, setting your cup down as you will your gaze to meet Zuko’s. “Do you want to tell them?”
“Well, it’s really not the most romantic story…”
You step into the red hued hallways of the theater in search of a food stand and a chance to get some fresh air. You’re not sure how Sokka had talked your entire group into coming to see the Ember Island Players, but you’re certainly starting to regret your choices. The second hand embarrassment you feel at witnessing yourself be portrayed as some big joke is suffocating, and you figure if you’re going to be forced to sit through this torture you might as well have something to snack on.
You find a merchant selling mochi and reach into your pocket in search of gold pieces only for someone else to place their own down on the counter. Your mouth parts in quiet shock as you look up to see Zuko offering you a meager smile, wordlessly gesturing for you to keep your money as he thanks the merchant for his service.
“It’s my treat,” he insists while handing you the box.
“Wow, thanks, Zuko!” You exclaim with a pleased smile. You carefully remove the lid from the tray and pull one out before offering it to the Prince. “You can have the first one.”
“I couldn’t-” he begins to protest only for you to shove the mochi past his lips as soon as he opens his mouth. He’s clearly startled by the act, eyes widening in surprise and words immediately dying in his throat. If it had been anyone else he would have lost his cool immediately, but he couldn’t find it in him to be irritable with you when he caught sight of the gleeful grin on your face.
“It’s okay to let people be nice to you, too,” you remind him delicately, the softness of your tone awakening an uncomfortable ache in his chest. Your kindhearted nature and fun loving spirit made it easy for those around you to love you, and he was no exception to this rule. You unknowingly hold his heart in your hands, and he’s desperate for a chance to earn your affections by any means necessary.
“Right,” he finally manages to reply, sheepishly grasping onto the back of his neck. “That’s something I need to work on, I guess…”
“Come on, we’re gonna miss the show,” you tell him after a beat, taking hold of his hand as you guide him back towards your seats. He’s grateful you can’t see the red in his cheeks from the sudden physical contact, but he doesn’t dare try to pull away from your touch.
“Would that really be the worst thing in the world?” He mumbles to himself, though he doesn’t protest as you return to your group and take your seats on the bench.
The space is cramped but you manage to squeeze yourself in between Zuko and Aang with minimal difficulty. The room feels suffocatingly hot with the feel of your body pressing against his side, and he concentrates all his efforts on remaining as stiff as possible so as to not disturb you. Thankfully, you take no notice of his odd behavior, your gaze glued to the scene before you as watch the play and enjoy your dessert.
“You’re the most handsome man to ever take me as prisoner!” The actress portraying you sighs dreamily as Zuko’s stage counterpart unties her hands. “I wish you would keep me as yours!”
You scrunch your nose in distaste as you realize the scene is meant to be a portrayal of your time as Zuko’s prisoner. You had stumbled upon him accidentally while exploring Ba Sing Se on your own, and he had temporarily held you hostage demanding the whereabouts of Aang. You feigned innocence by insisting you had abandoned the group to travel by yourself, and with Iroh’s guidance the banished Prince had released you. You told no one of the incident until Katara and Zuko had been taken by the Dai Li, and the rest was history.
“Why would I keep you?! You don’t know where the Avatar is so what could you give me?”
“This,” the actress purrs sultrily as she pulls him down by the collar to plant a loud kiss upon his lips. Your eyes nearly budge out of your sockets at the sight as you start to choke on your mochi, and Zuko melts into his seat with embarrassment and the hopes of the ground somehow opening up to swallow him whole.
“You guys kissed?!” Sokka exclaims in dismay only for Suki to shush him.
“No!” You insist defensively after managing to swallow your dessert without asphyxiating. “That’s not what happened! Zuko realized he was wrong and let me go.”
“After you kissed him?” Toph rebuffs with a mischievous grin.
“We didn’t kiss!” You and Zuko both cry at the same time.
“She’s telling the truth!” He maintains emphatically. His entire face feels like it’s on fire, and he can’t bring himself to meet your eyes as he begins to crack under the pressure of your friends’ dubious stares. “I would never kiss y/n!”
The entire group falls silent at his statement, and with the attention focused on him no one is able to see your face fall in response to his words. Your heart feels as if it’s dropped to your stomach, and you’re left with a quiet sense of shame as you return your disheartened gaze towards the play. His words have struck a nerve within you, for no one but you knows of the feelings you harbor for the Prince.
You may not have kissed him when he’d finally released you, but you’d be remiss to say you hadn’t grown fond of him in the short amount of time you’d spent together. That fateful day had stirred something within you, and your time spent together after he’d joined your group only seemed to stoke the flames of your affection for him. You’ve never expected him to return your feelings, and you have no plans to tell him about your little crush, but to see him acting as if a kiss with you is the worst offense he could ever commit wounds your spirit in a way that’s suffocatingly painful.
Intermission couldn’t have come any faster, and before anyone can stop you you’re rushing out of your seat and towards the nearest balcony to catch your breath. Your entire body trembles as you attempt to keep your tears at bay, willing the cool air to soothe the uncomfortable warmth that spreads across your face. You feel completely humiliated, and you want nothing more than to disappear back to the beach house and pretend this whole night never happened.
“What are you doing out here?” Zuko’s voice calls from the doorway. You bristle at his presence and remain silent, prompting him to come up beside you and rest a fretful hand upon your arm. “Is everything alright? You practically ran out of the theater.”
You wordlessly shy away from his touch, something he picks up on immediately as he hesitantly retracts himself away from you. Your gaze remains glued to the night sky, but your body is rigid and shoulders visibly tense. While Zuko may not be the best at reading social cues, even he can tell that something is troubling you.
“I’m fine,” you finally answer, though the sharpness of your tone suggests otherwise.
“Was it the mochi? I didn’t mean to overstep by paying, I just wanted to try and do a good thing— honest!”
“That’s what you think this is about?!” You retort incredulously, finally whirling around to face him. He shrinks under your fiery gaze and swallows nervously as he tries to choose his next words carefully.
“Well, I did, but… now I don’t…”
You groan with frustration, throwing your hands in the air as you demand, “What’s so terrible about kissing me?!”
“What?” Zuko gapes, clearly taken aback by your question. His flustered features only agitate you further, and with all your rational thinking out the door you continue your tirade against the Prince.
“You said you’d never kiss me like it’s some horrible offense! Am I so embarrassing to be with?”
“What?! No, of course not! I didn’t mean it like that!” He insists desperately, the distrusting look on your face only further spurring his panic to rectify his previous statement. “I just meant it would be weird to kiss you!”
“Excuse me?!”
“Ugh, that came out wrong! What I meant to say-”
“I think you’ve said enough,” you interrupt him firmly, shoving past him as you make your way back into the theater.
Left alone from your angry departure, Zuko lets out a frustrated groan as his palm raises to collide with his forehead. Leave it to his big mouth to ruin what had started as a perfectly good evening with you. The last thing he wanted was for you to think he held any reservations about being with you; he was only trying to preserve your image by insisting the kiss had never happened. Instead, the girl he’d grown to care so deeply for not only thought he found her repulsive but also now wanted nothing to do with him as a result.
When your group returns to the theater for the second act you make a point to switch seats with Aang in order to maintain your distance from Zuko. This doesn’t go unnoticed, and it only spurs the ugly guilt he feels in the pit of his stomach. He can hardly focus on the play in front of him when all he wants is to make things right with you again. Tonight was meant to be his chance to win your heart, but instead he’d effectively crushed it.
“Hey, do you think you could get me some of that mochi?” Sokka whispers as he leans over your shoulder to capture your attention.
“Anything to get me out of here,” you grumble irately. You take the money he hands you before once more leaving your seat to escape into the hallway, and though you do your best to make a swift exit Zuko is still able to match your pace as he follows after you.
“Go away, Zuko.”
“No, not until you let me explain myself!” He demands, quickly maneuvering in front of you to block your path. You come to an abrupt stop to keep from bumping into him and let out a frustrated sigh as you defensively cross your arms over your chest.
“Explain what? That I repulse you?”
“No, that’s not-”
“That you’re ashamed to be seen with me?”
“Spirits, no!”
“No? Then let me guess, next you’re going to say-”
The sarcastic remark you’d prepared to make immediately dies in your throat when he suddenly grabs hold of your shoulders and hastily pulls you forward as he slams his lips upon your own. You let out a muffled gasp, your heart nearly leaping out of your chest as your mind scrambles to process the fact that you’re actually sharing a kiss with Zuko. It’s an awkward uncoordinated kiss that would appear less than romantic to any onlooker, but to you it’s everything you’ve imagined it would be. His lips are intoxicatingly warm, and you find yourself faintly chasing after them when he finally pulls away.
You find yourself at a loss for words as your mouth hangs open in stunned silence. While initially emboldened by the kiss, Zuko now stands flustered with reddened cheeks and a crooked smile. Neither of you seems to know what to say, but he decides to take it upon himself to break the tension.
“I’m clearly not good with words,” he admits with a sheepish chuckle, “so I thought it would be better to show you how I feel.”
“You kissed me,” you state matter of factly, finally regaining your voice as the shock begins to dwindle. “Why?”
“I know my words came across poorly, but I didn’t say those things because I don’t want to kiss you. I mean, clearly I do! I just didn’t want to embarrass you in front of your friends, but I managed to do that anyway. I’m sorry.”
Your features soften as you comfortingly take his hands in your own and offer him a smile of reassurance. “I’ll admit, I was a little embarrassed, but it was only because of how the play depicted our first meeting. I saw humanity in you that day, Zuko, and I’ll never forget it. You’re a good person, and I’d never be embarrassed to be with someone like you.”
“Does that mean you like me too?” He asks with a hopeful gleam in his eyes, earning a giggle from you in return as you throw your arms around him in a tight hug.
“It does.”
“Wait a minute, is that why I never got my mochi that night?” Sokka interrupts dismayed only to receive an irritated look from you in response.
“That’s what you’re focusing on right now?” You point out in exasperation. “You asked to hear the story!”
“And I also asked you for mochi,” he reminds you pointedly only for Zuko to groan disapprovingly as his features contort into a grimace.
“I gotta say, it’s a miracle someone as awkward as you managed to get y/n to be your girlfriend,” Toph compliments with a nod of approval, her comment only serving to embarrass him further.
“I wasn’t that bad… was I?”
“‘Hello, Zuko here’ was pretty bad,” Katara reminds him teasingly only for him to deflate with shame, but you come to his rescue as you move to sit beside him and press a kiss to his cheek.
“I think it’s endearing,” you assure him sweetly, prompting a sheepish smile to form on his lips. “Maybe the story isn’t the most romantic, but what’s important is we’re together now.”
“You’re right,” he agrees with a blissful sigh, taking your hand in his own to press a kiss upon your knuckles. “I wouldn’t change a single thing about it.”
“I would,” Toph says unabashedly, the room filling with laughter at her unfiltered nature. Though it’s at your expense, you don’t mind the teasing. It feels just like old times, and you can’t think of anything better than to be here surrounded by friends as you reminisce on your past.
Pairing: Zuko x Fem! Reader (specifically thinking about the Zuko in the photo above)
Word Count: 22k (22,187)
Warnings: Major Angst, Past Toxic Breakup Dynamics, Mentions of Parental Abuse & Financial Control (Ozai), Depictions of Panic Attacks/Anxiety, Intense Emotional Vulnerability, Crying During Intimacy, and Explicit Sexual Content towards the end (NSFW/Smut) MDNI 18+
A/N: Writing this was essentially just me holding Zuko by his shoulders and shaking him until the truth fell out of his mouth. A year of mutual pining and digital exile because this boy literally does not know how to perceive love without assuming it’s a threat. Suki represents my exact inner monologue throughout the entirety of writing her parts. Enjoy the emotional wreckage.
A low, concussive bass thrums through the floorboards of Jet’s off-campus house, rattling the soles of Zuko’s shoes and settling into the heavy ache in his chest. The entire living room is submerged in a suffocating, low-fidelity blue light that turns the crowded space into a blur of bruised shadows, thick with the sharp tang of stale beer and drifting vape smoke. It’s a sensory overload designed for forgetting.
It’s exactly the kind of party Zuko usually avoids, but Sokka had dragged him out under the guise of "celebrating the end of finals," which really just meant Sokka wanted an excuse to drink out of a red solo cup that wasn't in their own messy apartment.
Zuko leans against the doorframe of the kitchen, his fingers hooked into the front pockets of his jeans. He feels entirely out of place, a dark smudge against the neon-soaked canvas of the room. Beside him, Sokka is loudly debating some trivial sports statistic with Katara, who is crushing a lime into her drink with a look of intense concentration. Aang and Toph are somewhere in the thick of the crowd, Toph likely causing a hazard on the makeshift dance floor while Aang tries to ensure no one actually gets hurt.
It’s the Gaang. It’s always been the Gaang. Except it hasn’t been, not really, for exactly three hundred and sixty-five days.
Zuko takes a slow sip of his lukewarm beer, the bitterness coating his tongue, doing absolutely nothing to wash away the phantom taste of regret. He shouldn't be thinking about the timeline. He shouldn't have the exact date burned into his skull like a brand, but every time May rolls around, the air gets too heavy to breathe.
"Hey, man, you're doing that thing again," Sokka’s voice cuts through the thumping bass, a heavy hand dropping onto Zuko’s shoulder. "The brooding thing. Drink your beer. Look alive. Jet actually bought the name-brand chips for once."
"I'm fine," Zuko mutters, twisting his shoulder slightly to shake off Sokka's hand. He isn't fine. He hasn't been fine in a year, but admitting that aloud feels like breaking a scab that took twelve months to form.
"You're a terrible liar," Katara says, not unkindly, though her blue eyes scan his face with that sharp perception she always uses when she thinks he's spiraling. "If you want to leave, Zuko, we can go. Honestly, Jet’s parties always end with someone putting a hole in the wall anyway."
"No, it's fine. Stay," Zuko says, his eyes drifting away from his friends, scanning the shifting sea of bodies under the blue strobes.
And then, his heart stops.
It isn't a metaphorical sensation. It is a violent, physical halt, a sudden, freezing vacuum in his chest that makes his breath catch in his throat. The noise of the party—the laughter, the screeching bass, Sokka’s voice—instantly drops into a dull, underwater hum.
Across the room, standing completely static against the faded wallpaper of the living room wall, is you.
Zuko’s grip on his beer can tightens until the aluminum groans and dents beneath his knuckles. He freezes, staring through the haze of blue light and drifting vapor clouds, convinced for a terrifying second that he is finally hallucinating from the sheer weight of his own guilt.
But it’s you.
It’s undeniably you.
You’re nursing a red solo cup, your fingers wrapped loosely around the plastic, holding it near your chest like a shield. Two girls from your major—girls Zuko vaguely remembers meeting at a campus coffee shop a lifetime ago—are standing on either side of you, laughing dramatically, their mouths moving in animated sentences. But you aren't laughing. You’re just nodding along, polite, as your eyes stare blankly out at the throngs of dancing college students.
You look entirely different. And yet, you look exactly the same.
The first thing that hits Zuko like a physical blow is your hair. The soft, familiar dark strands he used to spend hours twisting around his fingers late at night, burying his face into when the nightmares got too loud, are gone. In their place is a sharp, striking platinum blonde that catches the blue neon light and turns almost silver. It changes your entire aura, sharpening the soft edges he knew by heart, making you look distant, and utterly untouchable.
As you tilt your head back to take a slow, measured sip of your drink, the strobes flash, catching the glint of silver on your face. Zuko’s breath hitches. A small, delicate silver hoop is pierced through your right eyebrow. It’s tiny, but on you, it looks incredibly rebellious, a deliberate mark of a life lived entirely outside of the boundaries he had once drawn around the two of you.
"Zuko? Earth to Zuko—" Sokka starts, trailing off as he follows the unwavering, dead-eyed trajectory of Zuko’s stare.
Sokka goes completely quiet. Beside him, Katara gasps softly, her hand flying to her mouth.
"Oh my god," Katara whispers, her voice sounding small, cracked beneath the weight of the bass. "Is that...?"
"Yeah," Sokka says, his usual boisterous energy instantly evaporating, replaced by a tense, uncomfortable sobriety. "Yeah, that's her."
The silence that settles over the three of them is heavy, a thick, suffocating blanket of history that none of them know how to lift. For three years, you hadn't just been Zuko’s girlfriend; you had been the glue. You were the one who remembered everyone's birthdays, the one who bought the specific snacks Toph liked, the one who sat on the porch with Katara talking about life until the sun came up, the one who validated Sokka's ridiculous theories. You had been woven into the very fabric of their lives, a golden thread that held their chaotic, mismatched group together.
And then, a year ago, the thread had been violently burned.
Zuko remembers the breakup not as a single conversation, but as a series of shattering impacts. It had been loud. It had been ugly. It had been a slow-motion car crash fueled by his own deep-seated insecurities, his toxic habit of pushing people away before they could leave him, and the suffocating pressure of his family's expectations. He had screamed words he didn't mean, words meant to cut deep enough to ensure you wouldn't come back, because a sick part of his brain believed he didn't deserve a love as pure as yours anyway. He had broken your heart on the floor of his bedroom, watching you cry until your chest heaved, watching the light completely die in your eyes.
The next day, you were gone. Not just from his apartment, but from the group. You hadn't made them choose—you had just quietly, completely extracted yourself. You stopped showing up to the diner. You changed your route to class. You first ghosted and then left the group chats.
Zuko remembers the agonizing weeks that followed. He remembers checking your Instagram every single hour, desperate for any sign of how you were surviving the wreckage. One night, three weeks after the split, he had opened the app to find your profile completely hollowed out. Every single photo—the anniversaries, the candid shots of you laughing in the passenger seat of his car, the group photos at the beach, the silly selfies—had been deleted. Cleaned out. A digital scorched-earth policy. All that remained was your profile picture, a small, distant shot of you looking out at the ocean, and your name. No bio. No highlights. Just a ghost town.
Now, seeing you standing there in the flesh, the reality of that year-long absence crashes over him.
You aren't wearing the oversized, comfortable hoodies you used to steal from his closet. Tonight, you are wearing a cropped, tight black top that clings to your skin, exposing a sliver of your midriff, paired with dark, form-fitting jeans that accentuate every curve of your hips and thighs. You look stunning. You look grown. You look like a woman who has entirely reconstructed herself from the ashes of a fire he lit.
"She looks... different," Katara says softly, her eyes welling with a sudden, sharp nostalgia.
Sokka rubs the back of his neck, shifting his weight uneasily. "She looks good, Katara. She looks really good." He glances sideways at Zuko, his expression a mix of pity and warning. "Zuko. Don't."
Zuko doesn't hear him. He can't. His eyes are locked on the way your fingers trace the rim of your red solo cup. He knows that habit. You only did that when you were anxious, when you felt overwhelmed by a crowd but were forcing yourself to stay out anyway. You were playing a part tonight, pretending to be the cool, detached girl in the blue light, but he knew the girl underneath. Or, at least, he thinks he used to.
Suddenly, your eyes shift.
It’s as if some invisible current passes through the crowded, sweaty room, a sudden drop in atmospheric pressure that alerts you to his gaze. Through the shifting bodies, through the haze of smoke and the flashing blue strobes, your eyes lock onto his.
Zuko’s chest tightens so hard it hurts.
Your expression doesn't change. You don't look angry. You don't smile. Your eyes, dark and unreadable simply hold his. The silver hoop in your eyebrow catches the neon light once more, a tiny spark between them. For five agonizing seconds, the world completely stops. The music dies. The party vanishes. It is just him, bleeding internally in the kitchen doorway, and you, standing like a beautiful, distant statue against the wall.
Then, you look away.
You turn your head back to your friends, nodding at something she said. It is the most brutal thing Zuko has ever experienced. It isn't hatred; it is complete, total indifference. It is the realization that you have learned how to look directly at the man who broke you and feel absolutely nothing at all.
"Zuko," Sokka’s voice is firmer now, his hand gripping Zuko’s elbow, pulling him back a fraction of an inch. "Seriously, man. Let it go. It's been a year. You guys had a mutual disaster. Don't go over there and make it weird for her."
"It wasn't mutual," Zuko says, his voice a low, gravelly rasp that sounds raw even to his own ears. "I ruined it. You know I ruined it."
Katara sighs, a deeply sad, tired sound. "We know, Zuko. We all know. But she made her choice to leave the group. She didn't want to see us. If you go over there now, after all this time..."
Across the room, Jet appears out of the crowd. He’s holding a fresh drink, his usual arrogant smirk firmly in place, his backward cap casting a shadow over his eyes. He walks straight up to your group, throwing an arm casually over the shoulder of one of your friends, before turning his attention entirely to you. He says something close to your ear, leaning down to be heard over the bass.
Zuko watches, his jaw clenching so hard a muscle tethers in his cheek, as you look up at Jet. You give him a small, genuine smile—not the fake one you gave your friends, but a real, soft amusement. You raise your solo cup to him in a silent toast, and Jet laughs, tapping his cup against yours.
A dark, hot wave of jealousy and pure, unadulterated panic surges through Zuko's veins. It’s a toxic, ugly feeling, because he has absolutely no right to it. He gave up the right to be jealous the moment he slammed his apartment door and let you walk down the stairs alone in the rain, carrying your life in two cardboard boxes. But seeing another guy—especially Jet, who always circled like a vulture around anything beautiful—in your orbit makes him want to tear the house down.
"I need to talk to her," Zuko says, stepping forward, his boots clicking against the linoleum kitchen floor.
"Zuko, stop!" Katara reaches out, snagging the sleeve of his dark jacket, her face tight with worry. "Look at her. Look at how much work she’s done to move on. Don't pull her back into your mess just because you're lonely tonight."
Her words cut deep, sharp and accurate as a knife. Your mess. That’s all he ever was to you at the end, wasn't he? A vortex of unresolved trauma, anger, and constant pushing away. You spent three years trying to heal a boy who refused to believe he was broken, and in the end, the shards of his identity had just cut you to pieces.
He looks back across the blue-lit room. Jet is still talking to you, his hand gesturing wildly as he tells some stupid story, but your eyes have drifted again. You aren't looking at Jet. You’re looking down at your drink, your thumb tracing the plastic rim over and over again, your shoulders slightly hunched.
You look so lonely in that crowd of people. You look like you're throwing a party in your own head, but no one turned up except the ghosts.
Zuko remembers a lyric from a song you used to play on repeat in his car during the quiet, late-night drives when neither of them could sleep. A song about throwing a party just for someone who wouldn't show up. He had thought it was a pretty, melancholic pop song back then. Now, looking at you, he realizes you had been living in that song long before the final breakup. You had been standing in the blue light of his dark moods, waiting for him to finally show up for you, until you simply ran out of breath.
"I'm not trying to pull her back," Zuko says softly, his voice cracking, his eyes never leaving the silver glint of your eyebrow piercing. "I just... I just need to tell her I'm sorry. I never got to say it. Not properly."
Sokka looks at Katara, an uncharacteristic gravity in his eyes, before looking back at Zuko. "And if she doesn't want to hear it? If she tells you to go to hell, or worse, if she looks right through you again?"
Zuko swallows the massive, painful lump in his throat, his knuckles white against his sides. "Then at least she'll know I'm the one standing in the dark this time."
He pulls his arm gently out of Katara’s grip. She doesn't reach for him again, but her eyes follow him with a heavy, prayerful sadness as he steps out of the kitchen and into the suffocating blue heat of the living room.
The bass thuds against his chest with every step he takes, a physical barrier he has to push through. The crowd is a blur of sweaty skin, laughter, and spilling drinks, but Zuko keeps his eyes locked entirely on the platinum blonde hair across the room. With every foot he closes between them, the ghost of their three years together grows heavier, pressing down on his shoulders until it’s almost impossible to move forward.
He remembers the way you used to smell like vanilla and fresh rain. He wonders if you still do, or if you’ve changed that, too, along with your hair and your clothes and your digital footprint.
Ten feet away. Jet is still there, laughing at his own joke. Your friends are taking a selfie, their phones creating a brief, harsh white flash in the blue darkness. You aren't in the photo. You’ve stepped slightly back, your back pressed firmly against the wall, a solitary figure in a crowded room.
Five feet away. Zuko’s heart is hammering so loudly against his ribs he thinks everyone in the room must be able to hear it over the speakers. His mouth is completely dry. He opens his lips to speak your name, to voice the word that has been a silent prayer in his mind for three hundred and sixty-five days.
You choose that exact moment to look up.
Your eyes meet his again, much closer now, completely devoid of the distance of the room. Up close, Zuko can see the faint, dark circles under your eyes, masked carefully by makeup, and the slight, nervous tremor in your hand as you hold your cup. You see him coming. You know exactly what he’s doing.
You don't run. You don't hide. You just set your red solo cup down on a nearby windowsill with a slow, deliberate finality. You look at Jet, pat him once on the arm to interrupt him, and whisper something in his ear. Jet glances over at Zuko, his smirk instantly dropping into a hard, protective scowl, but you place a hand on Jet's chest, shaking your head gently.
Jet hesitates, then spits on the floor, turning his back to Zuko, taking your friends with him as they move deeper into the kitchen.
And suddenly, the space between Zuko and you grows once again as he retreats back to his friends.
The memory of that blue-lit living room doesn’t fade; it stains. For seven days, Zuko carries the image of you standing against Jet’s wall like a phantom limb, an ache that flares up every time he closes his eyes. He had stood five feet away from a girl who looked like a stranger, watching the silver hoop in your eyebrow catch the neon light, watching the way your platinum hair turned silver under the strobes. He hadn't spoken. Sokka had pulled him back, or maybe his own cowardice had finally frozen his boots to the floor. Either way, you had walked out of that house with Jet's friends, and Zuko had gone home to an apartment that smelled like old take-out and silence.
A week later, the humidity of the late semester gives way to the biting, damp chill of a campus winter. The university is emptying out, turning into a ghost town of concrete and bare trees as finals wrap up and winter break descends. Most students have already dragged their rolling suitcases to the airport or packed them into the trunks of their parents' cars.
Zuko walks down the perimeter of the campus, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his heavy black coat. The air is so cold his breath blooms in white clouds before him, vanishing into the gray dusk. He’s exhausted. The skin under his eyes is bruised from sleeplessness, his mind a chaotic loop of history and the sharp, sudden reality of seeing you alive and breathing in the world without him.
He turns the corner near the commuter lot, intending to just head straight back to his apartment, shut the door, and let the darkness take him until next semester.
Then, he sees the light.
A single, flickering halogen streetlamp illuminates the concrete pad of the campus bus stop. The light is harsh, buzzing slightly in the winter quiet, casting a cone of pale yellow through the encroaching evening.
And standing directly beneath the sign, perfectly centered in the glow, is you.
Zuko stops dead in his tracks, his boots crunching softly against the thin skim of frost on the pavement.
You’re waiting for the campus shuttle, likely heading back to the dorms to grab the last of your things before the university shuts down completely for the holidays. You look so small underneath the massive, rusted metal sign. You’re snuggled deep into a heavy, oversized coat that swallows your frame, a stark contrast to the tight, revealing black top you’d worn to Jet’s party. Big, padded over-ear headphones are clamped over your ears, the faint, tinny vibration of a baseline leaking out into the cold air. Your hands are stuffed securely into your pockets, your shoulders slightly hunched against the wind.
But it’s the scarf that makes the air leave Zuko’s lungs.
Wrapped twice around your neck, pulled up so high it almost touches your chin, is a thick, forest-green knit scarf. It’s slightly frayed at the edges, a little worn from years of use.
He knows that scarf.
He bought it for you two years into your relationship, during a weekend trip to a tiny mountain town when the weather had turned unexpectedly brutal. You had been shivering, your teeth chattering as you tried to pretend you were fine, and he had marched into the first local shop he found, spending the last fifty dollars in his checking account on the heaviest wool they had. He remembers the look on your face when he wrapped it around you himself, tucking the loose ends under your chin, his fingers lingering on your cold cheeks until you smiled up at him with that fierce, unshakeable devotion that used to terrify him because he didn't know how to hold something so precious.
You were still wearing it.
After the shouting matches, after the slammed doors, after deleting every single trace of him from your digital life, after bleaching your hair and piercing your skin to rid yourself of his ghost—you were still wearing his scarf.
The sight of it does something violent to his chest. It’s a contradiction that tears him apart. You had looked right through him in the blue light a week ago, a vision of complete and total indifference. But here, in the quiet winter gray, you were carrying a piece of him close to your throat, letting it keep you warm.
Don't do it, Sokka’s voice echoes in his head. Don't pull her back into your mess.
Look at how much work she’s done to move on, Katara had said.
Zuko takes a step backward, his heel skidding on the ice. He tells himself to turn around. He tells himself that if he walks away right now, he can leave you with your music and your quiet, letting you go home in peace. He forces his muscles to tense, attempting to steer his body back toward the path to his apartment. He grips the fabric inside his pockets until his nails dig into his palms.
Leave her alone.
But his feet don't obey. Like a man caught in a undertow, he finds himself stepping forward into the light. The distance between them shrinks—twenty feet, ten feet, five feet—until he is standing inside the yellow cone of the streetlamp, the heat of his breath mingling with yours in the freezing air.
You don't move. Your eyes are closed, your head tilted slightly back against the cold metal post of the bus stop sign, lost entirely in whatever song is spinning through your headphones. The platinum blonde of your hair looks ethereal under the halogen light, glowing like spun silver against the dark collar of your coat. The silver eyebrow piercing glints sharply, a tiny, defiant star on your face.
Zuko stands there for a full thirty seconds, utterly paralyzed. He is close enough to see the small crystals of frost caught on the wool of the green scarf. Close enough to smell the faint, ghostly trace of vanilla that still lingers around you, cutting through the crisp winter air.
His hand trembles as he lifts it out of his pocket. His fingers are numb from the cold, but as he reaches out, they feel heavy as lead. He hesitates, his palm hovering just an inch above the thick material of your shoulder. Every instinct in his body screams that this is a mistake, that he is trespassing on ground he traded away a year ago.
He closes the distance. He places his hand on your shoulder.
The moment his fingers press into the heavy fabric, you flit your eyes open.
A sharp, violent gasp hitches in your throat, and you flinch away from the touch, your body tensing instantly as your hands yank out of your pockets. Your head snaps around, defensive, ready to confront a stranger who crossed a line at a deserted bus stop.
But the anger in your eyes instantly freezes over.
The color drains from your face so fast it leaves your skin looking almost translucent under the yellow light. Your lips part slightly, the green scarf slipping down an inch, exposing the pale skin of your throat. For a second, just a fraction of a second, the cool, detached mask you wore at Jet’s party isn't there. Instead, your eyes widen with a raw, bleeding shock that mirrors the agony in his own.
Slowly, deliberately, you reach up and slide the headphones down around your neck. The tinny sound of a melancholic synth track leaks into the space between you, a rhythmic, hollow heartbeat.
"Zuko," you say.
It’s the same name, but out here in the cold, without the bass to hide behind, it sounds entirely different. It sounds heavy. It sounds like a word that has been buried in a shallow grave for twelve months, suddenly dug up by the roots.
"I'm sorry," Zuko says immediately, his voice cracking on the syllables. He doesn't even know what he’s apologizing for first—touching her, stopping her, or the entire year of wreckage behind them. "I saw you from the path. I didn't mean to scare you."
You don't break eye contact. Your gaze drops down to his hand, which is still hovering near your shoulder, before rising back to his face. You wrap your arms tightly around yourself, burying your hands back into the sleeves of your coat, pulling the green scarf back up to your chin as if trying to shield yourself from the sheer presence of him.
"What are you doing here, Zuko?" you ask. Your voice is quiet, steadying itself with a visible effort that makes your shoulders tremble slightly.
"I was just walking home," he says, stepping back a single inch to give you space, though every cell in his body wants to do the exact opposite. He wants to reach out and pull the scarf down, to see if the skin beneath it still remembers the heat of his mouth. "I recognize that scarf."
The words leave his mouth before he can filter them, raw and clumsy.
Your eyes flicker down to the green wool tucked against your chin. A small, bitter line forms at the corner of your mouth, and for the first time, the indifference from the party begins to settle back over your features, a protective armor against the cold.
"It's cold," you say, your tone dropping into a flat, matter-of-fact register that makes his chest ache. "It’s a good scarf. I didn't see a reason to throw away twenty percent of my winter wardrobe just because of how it got into my closet."
The words are a calculated strike, a reminder that to you, he has been reduced to a transaction, a historical footnote that can be compartmentalized and utilized for warmth without any emotional tax. But Zuko can see the way your fingers are tightening against your elbows through the fabric of your coat. He knows you. He knows that when you are lying, your left eyebrow twitches just a fraction of a millimeter.
It doesn't twitch tonight, but your breathing is too fast, the white clouds of your breath coming in short, jagged bursts.
"You look different," Zuko says softly, his eyes tracing over you appearance. "The hair. The... everything."
"A year is a long time," you reply, your voice lifting slightly, carrying the faint edge of someone who has spent twelve months explaining their reinvention to people who didn't care. "People change their hair, Zuko. They get piercings. They move on. They don't stay frozen in the exact shape they were when someone broke them."
"I know," he says, the guilt settling into his stomach like a stone. "I saw you at Jet's. A week ago. I was... I wanted to come over. Sokka stopped me."
"Sokka always had better judgment than you," you say, and though the words are sharp, there is a faint, exhausted sadness in them that cuts deeper than any insult. You look away from him, your eyes scanning the empty campus road, watching for the headlights of the shuttle that will save you from this conversation. "You shouldn't have come over tonight either."
"I couldn't help it," Zuko says, stepping back into the cone of light, his voice growing desperate as the reality of the approaching bus threatens to cut his time short. "I've spent a year looking at an empty Instagram profile, trying to figure out if you were even still in the same city. You deleted everything."
"Because there was nothing left to look at," you say, your head snapping back to him, your eyes flashing with a sudden, hot spark of the anger he remembers from the very end. "What did you want me to do, Zuko? Leave the pictures up? Leave the reminders of every time you screamed at me to leave because you couldn't handle someone loving you? Leave the evidence of the three years I wasted trying to pull you out of your own head while you threw everything away?"
The words hit him like a physical blow. He actually recoils a step, his breath hitching. The silence that follows is deafening, filled only by the low, tinny hum of the music still leaking from the headphones around your neck.
"I didn't mean those things," Zuko whispers, his face contorting with an old, familiar agony. "The things I said that night... I was angry. I was scared. My family—"
"Don't blame your family," you interrupt, your voice dropping into a dangerous, quiet hiss that shakes with a year’s worth of suppressed tears. "Do not use your father or your sister as an excuse for how you treated me at the end. I took every single blow your moods dealt. I stayed through the silence, I stayed through the drinking, I stayed when you wouldn't look at me for days. I didn't leave because it got hard. I left because you looked me in the eye and told me I was a burden."
A tear finally escapes your eye, hot and bright, tracking rapidly down your cheek before freezing in the biting air. You don't wipe it away. You just stare at him, your chest heaving under the heavy coat.
"You told me I was dragging you down," you whisper, the words sounding small and broken in the winter night. "You told me you didn't love me anymore. You said it so clearly. And I believed you."
Zuko feels the tears welling in his own eyes, hot and blurring his vision until the yellow light of the streetlamp smears into a jagged halo around your head. He reaches out automatically, his hand moving toward your face to wipe the tear away, to touch the skin he used to know better than his own.
"I lied," he chokes out, his fingers stopping just inches from your cheek as you flinch back again, your teeth clenching. "I lied because I was drowning, and I thought if I didn't push you away, I'd take you down with me. I loved you. I've never stopped loving you. Not for a single second of this miserable year."
The admission hangs in the frozen air between them, a heavy, bleeding thing that neither of them knows how to fix.
You look at his hovering hand, your eyes dark and unreadable. Slowly, you shake your head, a single, definitive gesture that feels like the final turn of a key in a lock.
"It doesn't matter anymore, Zuko," you say softly. The anger is gone now, replaced by that terrifying, hollow exhaustion that he had seen a week ago at the party. "It doesn't change anything. You think you can just show up at a bus stop, tell me you lied, and expect me to undo a year of rebuilding myself? You think this scarf means I'm waiting for you?"
She reaches up, her fingers wrapping around the forest-green wool, pulling it slightly away from her chin.
"I wear this because it's cold," you say, your voice cracking, but your eyes remaining steady. "And because I wanted to prove to myself that I could carry the things you gave me without breaking anymore."
In the distance, the sharp, bright glare of two high-beam headlights cuts through the commuter lot. The low, rumbling engine of the campus shuttle grows louder, its brakes squealing as it rounds the final turn toward the bus stop.
Zuko looks at the approaching lights, panic rising in his throat like bile. This is it. The bus is going to stop, the doors are going to hiss open, and you are going to step inside, disappearing back into the winter break, back into your new life, leaving him alone under the halogen bulb.
"Please," he rasps, stepping closer, his boots touching yours now, the heat of his body close enough to challenge the winter air between them. "Just let me buy you a coffee. Ten minutes. Just let me talk to you without the shouting. Let me apologize properly."
The shuttle pulls up to the curb with a heavy, concussive sigh of its air brakes, the bright white interior light spilling through the glass windows, washing over the two of you, obliterating the soft yellow glow of the streetlamp. The doors hiss open. The driver doesn't look at you two bickering, they just stare straight ahead into the dark road.
You look at the open doors of the bus, then look back at Zuko.
For a long, agonizing second, the girl he loved for three years looks out through your eyes—the girl who used to laugh into his neck, the girl who used to hold his hand until the nightmares stopped, the girl who threw a party in her own head just hoping he would show up.
"Goodbye, Zuko," you say softly.
You don't wait for him to answer. You turn around, your heavy coat swirling around your legs, and step up onto the stairs of the bus. You don't look back as you pull your headphones back up over your ears, clamping the music back down over your head, shutting out the sound of his voice before he can even try to call your name.
The doors hiss shut with a definitive thud.
Zuko stands perfectly still under the flickering halogen light as the shuttle pulls away from the curb, its red taillights bleeding into the dark winter night until they vanish completely around the bend. The green scarf is gone. The platinum hair is gone. You're gone.
The rhythmic, rubbery smack of the neon pink sticky ball hitting the popcorn ceiling was the only sound competing with the frantic clacking of Suki’s mechanical keyboard.
Smack. Drop. Catch.
You lay flat on your back across Suki’s mattress, your head hanging completely off the mattress edge so the room was entirely inverted. From this angle, Suki’s small off-campus bedroom looked like an upside-down sanctuary. Her fairy lights hung upward like luminous vines; her posters of local indie bands were flipped on their heads; and Suki herself was an inverted silhouette, her auburn hair falling toward the ceiling as she aggressively hunched over a final term paper for her sports medicine major.
Smack. Drop. Catch.
"If you leave a grease stain on my ceiling, I'm making you paint over it by yourself," Suki muttered, not looking away from her monitor. Her fingers flew across the keys, executing a vicious sequence of citations.
"It’s silicone. It doesn't leave grease," you droned, your voice sounding slightly nasal from the rush of blood to your inverted head. You tossed the ball again. It stuck for a fraction of a second longer this time, dangling precariously above your face before gravity reclaimed it. You caught it blindly in your palm. "Besides, it’s a distraction. I’m practicing hand-eye coordination. A basic survival skill."
"What you're practicing is sulking on my bed," Suki corrected, finally hitting a final, aggressive keystroke and letting out a long, theatrical sigh. She spun her black mesh swivel chair around to face you, crossing her legs. She was wearing an oversized University sweatshirt—one she had undoubtedly stolen from Sokka—and a pair of thick-rimmed blue-light glasses that sat crookedly on her nose.
Suki had been your anchor since your sophomore year of high school, long before the chaos of college dorms, changing majors, and catastrophic breakups had entered the equation. She was also, by extension of her four-year relationship with Sokka, the only remaining bridge between your current life and the ghost town of your past. When you had severed ties with the Gaang a year ago, Suki was the only one you hadn't cut loose. You couldn't. To lose Suki would have been to lose your own reflection.
She looked at you now, really looked at you, her sharp green eyes taking in the view of your upside-down face. Your platinum blonde roots were starting to show just a fraction of a millimeter of your natural dark hair.
"You look like a bat," Suki observed, leaning forward and resting her elbows on her knees. "And you’ve been throwing that stupid ball for forty-five minutes. Sit up before your brain starts leaking out of your ears."
With a dramatic sigh, you let your momentum carry you, swinging your legs down and shifting until you were sitting cross-legged in the center of her unmade duvet. The sudden rush of blood leaving your head made the room tilt for a brief, dizzying second. You squeezed the sticky ball in your fist, feeling the tacky material deform between your fingers.
"Finals are done," Suki said, removing her glasses and tossing them onto her desk. "Which means I am officially off the clock, and you are officially out of excuses. Talk to me."
"About what?" you asked, aiming for a tone of breezy indifference and failing spectacularly. "I'm fine. Just ready to start moving in here for the break."
"Right. You're so fine that you ran into Zuko at a deserted bus stop at seven o'clock on a Tuesday night, had a cinematic crisis in the freezing cold, and then texted me a single string of incoherent emojis at two in the morning," Suki said, her voice dropping into that grounded, no-nonsense register that usually meant she was about to lay out your life right front of you. "Sokka told me Zuko came back to their apartment that night looking like he’d been hit by a semi-truck. He hasn't left his room in three days."
The mention of his name felt like a cold finger tracing the length of your spine. You looked down at your lap, your thumb brushing against the silver ring on your thumb. "He shouldn't have come up to me. I was just trying to go back to my dorm."
"But he did," Suki countered softly. "And you didn't run away. Not immediately."
"I took the bus, Suki. I left."
"After you let him see you wearing the scarf."
You flinched, the accusation landing cleanly. You pulled the collar of your sweater up instinctively, even though the forest-green wool scarf was currently tucked safely away inside your duffel bag across the room. "It’s a piece of clothing. It was like zero degrees outside."
"You have four other scarves, babe. I helped you pack them when you moved places," Suki said, her expression softening from clinical to deeply empathetic. She slid off her swivel chair and moved to sit on the edge of the bed beside you, her shoulder brushing against yours. "Look, I’m not lecturing you. God knows I watched the two of you burn that bridge down from space. I know how bad it was. I was the one holding the box of tissues while you cried in my bathroom for a month."
"Then why does it feel like you're taking his side?" your voice cracked, the raw, jagged edge of an old wound tearing open in the quiet of her bedroom. The anger came up fast, a defensive shield against the sheer vulnerability of the memory. "You know what he said to me, Suki. You know how he made me feel. Like I was some kind of... some kind of anchor dragging him into the bottom of the ocean just because I wanted him to talk to me. I spent three years trying to decode his silences, trying to make up for the fact that his dad is a monster and his sister is a psychopath. And the second things got hard for him, he threw me away like I was the problem."
"I know," Suki whispered, reaching out to place her hand over yours, stilling your frantic squeezing of the silicone ball. "I’m not taking his side. Zuko was an idiot. He was toxic, he was defensive, and he handled his survival by hurting the only person who actually had his back. I wanted to punch him in his stupid face for months after you guys split. Sokka had to physically hold me back from keying his car."
A small, wet laugh escaped your lips at that, a single tear slipping past your eyelashes. You wiped it away quickly with the back of your hand, cursing mentally. "Then what are we talking about?"
Suki let out a breath, her fingers gently squeezing yours. "We're talking about the fact that it's been a year. A whole year of you bleaching your hair, getting pierced, deleting your social media, and trying to pretend that three years of your life just... vanished. But you're still carrying it. You're carrying it in the way you look at the floor when someone mentions the others. You're carrying it in that green scarf. And you're definitely carrying it in the way I know probably you looked at him under that streetlamp."
You kept your eyes fixed on the floorboards, your jaw tight. "He told me he lied."
Suki paused, "What?"
"At the bus stop," you whispered, the admission tasting like copper in your mouth. "He said he lied. He said he told me he didn't love me anymore because he was drowning, and he thought he’d take me down with him if he stayed. He said he’s loved me every single second of this year."
The silence that followed was heavy, filled only by the distant hum of the apartment building's heating system. Suki didn't interrupt. She just sat there, processing the words, her mind working behind her eyes.
"And what did you say?" she asked finally, her voice incredibly gentle.
"I told him it didn't matter," you said, your voice shaking. "I told him it didn't change anything. Because it shouldn't, right? You don't get to destroy someone for their own good. You don't get to decide what I can handle. That’s not love. That's just... isolation."
"You're right," Suki said, and the absolute certainty in her tone made you look up, surprised. She wasn't giving you a platitude. She was validating the anger you had cultivated like a garden for twelve months. "It is selfish. Zuko has a massive, deep-seated savior complex mixed with a martyr fixation. He thinks the only way to keep things safe is to burn them down before anyone else can touch them. It’s what he did with his family, it’s what he did with his old friends, and it’s what he did with you."
She got off her chair, sitting beside you, forcing you to meet her gaze directly.
"But here is the piece you’re missing," Suki continued, her hand moving to rest on your shoulder, right where Zuko’s hand had been a week prior. "He didn't run away this time. For three years, every time Zuko got overwhelmed, he withdrew. He went silent. He pushed people out. But a week ago, he saw you across a crowded room looking completely different, totally untouchable, and his first instinct wasn't to hide. He wanted to go to you. Sokka had to stop him. And then, a week later, he saw you alone at a bus stop. He touched your shoulder. He told you the truth, even knowing how much you probably hated him for it."
You shook your head, a defensive instinct. "So what? I'm supposed to just forget everything? Go back to his apartment and pretend he didn't break me into pieces?"
"No," Suki said firmly. "Absolutely not. If you went back to him right now, I’d lock you in this room. You worked too hard to find your feet this year to let him knock you over again. But..." She hesitated, searching your face. "You haven't moved on, babe. You’ve just built a very high wall. And you're standing behind it, freezing to death, holding that damned green scarf."
A sob caught in your throat, hot and agonizing. You squeezed your eyes shut, letting the tears fall freely now, the weight of the past year crashing down on your chest all at once. Suki pulled you into her arms, wrapping her limbs around you tightly, letting you bury your face into the stolen sweatshirt.
"It hurts so much, Suki," you choked out, your hands clutching the fabric of her back. "Seeing him... he looked so tired. He had the same dark circles he gets when he doesn't sleep for days. And I wanted to hate him. I wanted to look at him and feel nothing, like I did at the party. But the second he touched me, it was like the last year didn't even happen. I was just... I was just back on that floor, watching him walk out."
"I know," Suki murmured, rubbing your back in slow, soothing circles. "I know, sweetie. Because you loved him with everything you had. You don't just turn that off because he screwed up."
She let you cry for a long time, until your breath slowed and the heavy, ragged sobs turned into quiet, occasional hitches. The room grew darker as the sun set completely outside the window, casting long, gray shadows across the bed.
Finally, Suki pulled back just enough to look at you, her hands resting on your upper arms.
"Here is my advice," Suki said, her green eyes steady in the dim light. "The best advice I can give you after watching this disaster play out for twelve months. Give him a chance to explain himself."
You blinked through your tear-blurred vision, your mouth dropping open slightly. "What?"
"I don’t mean get back together with him," Suki clarified quickly, her tone sharp and authoritative. "I don’t even mean you have to forgive him. But you need to let him sit down, face-to-face, without a bus arriving in five minutes, and tell you exactly what happened in his head a year ago. You need to let him speak his piece, not for his sake, but for yours."
"How does that help me?" you muttered, wiping your nose with a tissue Suki handed you from her nightstand.
"Because right now, you're ghost hunting," Suki said. "You're fighting a version of Zuko from twelve months ago—the version that yelled at you and left. You haven't allowed yourself to see the guy who has been living in the aftermath. If you let him explain, one of two things will happen. Either you’ll look at him and realize he hasn't changed at all, and you’ll finally get the closure you need to drop that scarf in a donation bin... or you’ll see that he’s actually trying to fix his own broken parts, and you can decide, on your own terms, if you want him in your life again. As a friend. As an ex. As whatever."
She leaned back, crossing her arms, a small, knowing smirk starting to form on her lips as she watched the realization dawn on your face.
"You're in control now," Suki added softly. "A year ago, he made the choice for both of you. He ended it. He drew the line. But right now? He's waiting on you. The ball is in your court. You get to decide if you want to hear him out or leave him in the dark. But staying in this middle zone—where you're running away from him at parties and crying over his clothes—is killing you."
You sat in silence, the neon pink sticky ball rolling out of your limp hand and settling onto the duvet between you. You hated it when she did this. You hated how cleanly she could strip away the layers of your anger and expose the bleeding, frightened core of your pride underneath.
She was right. She was completely, entirely right, and it was infuriating.
"I hate you," you mumbled into your tissue, though there was no venom in it.
"I know," Suki smiled, leaning over to press a quick kiss to the side of your head. "That’s why I’m the best friend you’ve ever had. Now, wash your face. Sokka’s coming over with Thai food in twenty minutes, and if he sees you've been crying, he's going to think we fought, and then he’ll try to give us a lecture on conflict resolution using spring rolls as a visual aid."
You let out a genuine, wet laugh, shifting off the bed to head toward her small bathroom. As you turned on the faucet, letting the cool water pool in your palms before pressing it against your swollen eyes, you looked at yourself in the mirror. The platinum blonde hair, the silver piercing—they were still there. They were part of you now. But as you stared at your own reflection, the wall behind your eyes felt just a little bit less heavy.
The ball wasn't stuck to the ceiling anymore. It had fallen, and for the first time in a year, you were actually looking down at your hands, realizing you were the one holding it.
The white screen of the notes app cast a stark, digital glare over your face, illuminating your dark bedroom with a ghostly hum. You had been staring at the same ten-digit number for exactly ten minutes, the cursor blinking rhythmically at the end of the line like a tiny, mocking pulse.
Three hundred and sixty-five days. That was how long this number had sat exiled in the graveyard of your phone's utility folder. You had deleted his contact the morning after the breakup, your hands shaking so violently you’d nearly dropped your phone. It had felt like a necessary exorcism at the time—a frantic attempt to scrub his name, his custom ringtone, and his existence from your life. But a small, terrified part of your subconscious hadn't been strong enough to let the line go completely dead. You had copied the digits, pasted them into a blank note titled simply with a period, and buried it beneath grocery lists, and class schedules.
In case.
It was a pathetic safety net, an admission that even when you were screaming at the walls of your empty room, you weren't ready to let the universe completely erase him.
Now, your thumb hovered over the screen. You highlighted the number, copied it, and dropped it back into the empty 'To:' field of a fresh text message thread. The bubble was blank. The gray text read Text Message, an empty chasm waiting for you to bridge it.
Your heart thudded an irregular, heavy rhythm against your ribs. Suki’s words from the night before echoed in the quiet space of your skull, scraping against your pride. You haven't moved on, babe. You’ve just built a very high wall. And you're standing behind it, freezing to death.
You closed your eyes, took a deep, shuddering breath of the stale dorm room air, and let your fingers move before your brain could sabotage the impulse.
Let's talk. The Daily Grind near Suki's place. 2:00 PM?
You hit send.
The blue bubble shot upward with a soft swoosh. You instantly flipped the phone face-down on your comforter, pressing your palms against your eyes as if the sheer physical distance could shield you from the reality of what you had just done. Your skin felt hot, the adrenaline spiking through your veins so quickly it left a metallic taste on your tongue. You expected to wait. You expected him to take hours, to let the message fester in his notifications while he brooded or debated with Sokka about whether it was a trap.
Buzz.
The phone vibrated against the mattress before you had even drawn your next breath.
Your hand flew out instantly, flipping the device over.
Zuko
I'll be there. Thank you.
The response was instantaneous. It was so fast it was almost terrifying, an validation of Suki's theory that he had been sitting in his own dark room, staring at his own empty screen, waiting for the sky to fall.
The digital clock on your lock screen read 1:00 PM. You had exactly sixty minutes.
The bathroom mirror was a cruel witness to the civil war raging inside your own head.
You stood in front of the glass, a curling iron smoking slightly on the counter, staring at the version of yourself that stared back. You had spent the last forty-five minutes executing a meticulous, calculated transformation that made absolutely no sense given the thesis statement of this meeting.
This was supposed to be an eviction notice. This was supposed to be the final chapter, the heavy iron key turning in the lock of a three-year history so you could finally take off the forest-green scarf and finally breathe.
So why were you wearing baby pink?
You looked down at your outfit, a sudden, sharp spike of self-loathing twisting in your gut. You had chosen a soft, oversized pastel pink cardigan that fell off one shoulder, paired with a short, pleated skirt and thigh-high knit socks that met the hemline with a sliver of exposed skin. It was sweet. It was intentional. It was an outfit that screamed for attention in the softest, most vulnerable way possible.
"What are you doing [Y/N]?" you whispered to your reflection, your fingers tightening around the edge of the porcelain sink.
You had spent a year cultivating your armor. You had wanted to look like someone who could survive a wreck. But today, you had styled your hair into soft, tumbling waves that framed your face in romantic curves. You had spent ten minutes with an eyelash curler and a tube of expensive waterproof mascara, ensuring your lashes were perfectly fanned out, making your eyes look wide, and devastatingly familiar.
You were dressing for him.
The realization hit you like a bucket of ice water. You were standing on the precipice of a final closure, yet a pathetic, lingering part of your heart was still trying to curate the way his mind would hold your image after you left. You wanted him to see the new, untouchable girl, but you also desperately wanted him to remember the soft, sweet girl he used to hold on the couch on Sunday mornings. You wanted him to look at you and bleed from the sheer gravity of what he had thrown away.
"You're pathetic," you muttered, reaching for a nude lip gloss and applying it with an aggressive, defensive swipe.
You checked the silver hoop in your eyebrow, ensuring it was straight, a tiny glint of defiance against the soft pink of your sweater. You didn't change. You didn't put the heavy black boots back on or hide behind a leather jacket. You grabbed your keys, stuffed your phone into your pocket, and walked out into the gray winter afternoon, your heart hammering a relentless, terrifying rhythm against your breastbone.
The Daily Grind was a small, independent coffee shop tucked between a vintage clothing boutique and an old laundromat. It was the kind of place that smelled permanently of roasted espresso beans, cinnamon, and damp wool. Inside, the heating was turned up too high, fogging the large glass windows and turning the world outside into a smeared, gray watercolor.
When you pushed the heavy wooden door open, the brass bell jingled overhead, a sharp, cheerful sound that felt entirely inappropriate for the execution you were about to attend.
You stepped inside, pulling off your gloves, your eyes instantly scanning the dim, wood-paneled room.
He was already there.
It was 1:50 PM. You were 10 minutes early, a strategy to ensure you could choose the table, establish your territory, and be the one waiting. But Zuko was already sitting in a corner booth near the back, half-hidden by a large, leafy fiddle-leaf fig tree.
A heavy, aching sorrow settled into your chest at the sight of him.
He looked like he had been carved out of charcoal. He was wearing his heavy, dark canvas jacket, the collar turned up against a draft that didn't exist inside the heated cafe. A paper coffee cup sat untouched in front of him, the plastic lid off, a faint wisp of steam rising into the air before dying out. He wasn't on his phone. He wasn't reading. He was just staring fixedly at the grain of the dark oak table, his large, scarred hands flat against the wood.
Up close, as you walked down the narrow aisle between the tables, the details of his exhaustion became brutal. Suki hadn't been exaggerating. The skin beneath his amber eyes was dark, a bruised, violet shade that spoke of days spent staring at the ceiling in the dark. His dark hair was messy, longer than it used to be, falling over his forehead in jagged strands that almost touched the old, puckered scar on the left side of his face.
He looked small. For a guy who used to carry himself with a defensive, rigid intensity that filled every room he entered, he looked entirely hollowed out.
As your presence drew closer, Zuko’s head snapped up.
The breath caught in his throat, a distinct, audible hitch that you could hear even over the low acoustic indie music playing from the cafe's speakers. His eyes widened, his gaze sweeping over you in a frantic, unblinking rush. He took in the soft waves of your hair, the glint of the eyebrow piercing, and then, his eyes lingered on the baby pink cardigan slipping slightly off your shoulder.
A look of profound, agonizing recognition passed over his features, followed immediately by a flash of deep, internal pain.
"You're early," you said, your voice sounding detached, a protective mechanism you had practiced during the walk over.
Zuko scrambled to his feet, nearly knocking his untouched coffee over in the process. His hand shot out to steady the cup, his movements clumsy, frantic. "I—yeah. I wanted to make sure I got a table. The one in the corner. I know you don't like sitting with your back to the door."
The fact that he remembered that—a tiny, trivial preference from a lifetime ago—made the wall behind your eyes tremble. You didn't acknowledge it. You just slid into the vinyl booth opposite him, setting your keys on the table with a soft clink.
Zuko sat back down slowly, his eyes never leaving your face. He looked like a man who had been granted a temporary reprieve from a life sentence, terrified that if he blinked, you would vanish back into the gray mist outside.
"Thank you for coming," he said, his voice low, gravelly, and thick with an emotion he was trying desperately to suppress. "I didn't think... after the bus stop, I didn't think you'd ever want to see me again."
"Suki gave me a lecture," you said plainly, resting your forearms on the table, the pink wool of your sleeve bunched around your wrists. "She thinks I'm ghost hunting. She thinks I need to hear what you have to say so I can finally move on."
Zuko flinched at the words move on, his head dropping slightly. He looked down at his hands, his fingers tracing the rim of his paper cup over and over again, the exact same anxious habit you had noticed at Jet's party.
"She's right," Zuko whispered. "You shouldn't have to carry any of it. It was my mess. It's always been my mess."
"Then talk, Zuko," you said, your voice softening just a fraction, the anger from the previous week beginning to melt under the sheer, heavy sadness radiating across the table. "You told me you lied. Why? Why would you look me in the eye after three years and tell me I was a burden? Do you have any idea what that does to a person?"
A single, jagged breath left his lips, and when he looked up, his amber eyes were bright with unshed tears, reflecting the warm amber lights of the coffee shop.
"My father called me two days before I broke up with you," Zuko said, his voice shaking so violently he had to lock his jaw to force the words out. "He... he found out about the academic probation. He found out about the money I was trying to save to get our own place next semester. He told me if I didn't pull my grades up, if I didn't come back home for the summer to work at the firm, he was going to cut off my tuition. All of it. He was going to pull the apartment lease."
You sat frozen, your fingers curling into the pink fabric of your sweater. You knew Ozai was a CEO tyrant—you had spent years helping Zuko navigate the text messages that left him shaking in bed—but this was different. This was total economic and emotional leverage.
"I went into a panic," Zuko continued, a hot tear finally breaking free and tracking down the scarred side of his face. "I felt like the walls were closing in. Azula kept texting me, telling me how much of a disappointment I was, how I was going to ruin everything and to just come home during the summer. And I looked at you. You were sitting on my bed, studying for your finals, laughing at some stupid video on your phone, looking so... so completely pure and safe. And a sick part of my brain just clicked."
He reached out, his hand moving an inch across the table before freezing, remembering his boundaries, and pulling his fingers back into a tight fist.
"I thought about what my father does to things I love," Zuko choked out, his chest heaving under his dark jacket. "He destroys them. He uses them to hurt me. And I convinced myself that if I stayed with you, if I kept dragging you into my family's psycho-drama, my father would find a way to break you too. I thought... I thought I was being a martyr. I thought if I cut you loose, loud enough and mean enough that you’d hate me, you’d run away and stay away from me for good."
He wiped the tear from his cheek with the back of his hand, a frustrated, angry motion.
"But it wasn't about saving you," he whispered, looking directly into your eyes, his gaze raw and entirely devoid of pride. "It was cowardice. I was terrified of failing you. I was terrified of you seeing me lose everything and realizing I wasn't enough. So I broke your heart before my family could break us both. It was the most selfish, disgusting thing I’ve ever done. And the second I walked out that door... I knew I had destroyed the only good thing I had ever built."
The silence that settled over the table was heavy, suffocating, and deeply, profoundly sad.
You sat there, staring at the boy who had spent twelve months living in a prison of his own design. The anger you had nurtured like a shield for a year didn't feel like armor anymore. It felt like ash in your mouth. Suki had been right. You had been fighting a ghost—a cruel, unfeeling shadow from a year ago. But the boy sitting in front of you wasn't a monster. He was just a broken kid who had grown up in a house without love, trying to navigate a world he thought was permanently rigged against him.
You looked at his hand—the one flat on the table, the knuckles still white, a slight tremor running through his fingers.
The weight of the year—the loneliness of the parties, the bleaching of your hair, the digital ghost town, the tears shed on Suki's bathroom floor—it all seemed to converge into this tiny, wood-paneled corner. It was so sad. The entire situation was just a tragedy born of silence and fear.
Without thinking, driven entirely by an ancient, instinctual muscle memory that your pride couldn't stop, you reached across the wood of the table.
Your fingers, small and soft against the oak, slid forward until your palm rested over his trembling knuckles.
Zuko froze. He looked down at your hand, his breath stopping completely, as if he were looking at a miracle he didn't have the right to touch.
Slowly, gently, you turned your hand over, sliding your palm beneath his, threading your fingers through his large ones. His skin was freezing, cold from the winter air he had walked through, but as your fingers locked together, the heat of your body began to transfer into his.
"Zuko," you whispered, your own tears finally blurring your vision, turning the coffee shop into a smear of warm, golden light.
With a ragged, broken sob, Zuko collapsed forward, his forehead coming to rest on his free arm against the table. His grip on your hand tightened until it was almost painful, his fingers clinging to yours like a drowning man catching a rope in the dark. His shoulders shook violently under the dark canvas jacket, the quiet, suppressed sounds of a year’s worth of isolation finally breaking out into the open space between you.
You didn't pull away. You sat in the baby pink sweater you had chosen for him, your eyelashes wet and clumped together, holding his hand tightly across the table while the acoustic music hummed and the winter gray pressed against the fogged windows.
It wasn't a fix. It wasn't an erasure of the last twelve months. But as you squeezed his cold fingers, letting him cry into the dark wood of the booth, you knew the wall had finally come down, and neither of you had to freeze in the dark anymore.
The warmth of the coffee shop stayed with you even after the brass bell jingled behind you, cutting you both loose back into the sharp, gray winter afternoon.
Outside, the air was still bitingly cold, but the heavy, suffocating tension that had defined the last twelve months had finally lifted, leaving a strange, fragile quiet in its place. Zuko walked on the outside of the sidewalk, his hands buried deep in the pockets of his dark canvas jacket, his shoulder occasionally brushing against the soft wool of your cardigan. It was a rhythm your bodies hadn't forgotten—the instinctive way you slotted together when navigating a crowded street, matching each other's stride without a single word.
"Are you... do you have to get back to the dorms right away?" Zuko asked, his voice still carrying that low, gravelly scrape from the tears he’d shed in the corner booth. He wasn't looking at you; he was looking straight ahead, his jaw slightly tight as if he were bracing himself for you to tell him that the coffee was all he was going to get.
You looked down at your boots, watching your breath form a soft, white cloud in front of your face. "Suki doesn't expect me back until later. Sokka's bringing food, but... I have time." You paused, a small, tentative feeling fluttering in your chest. "We could walk. Go down by the lower campus."
Zuko’s head snapped toward you, his amber eyes wide with a quiet, disbelieving gratitude. "Yeah. Let's do that."
For the next three hours, the last year seemed to blur, dissolving into the familiar geography of a history you had both spent twelve months trying to pretend didn't exist. You didn't talk about the breakup. You didn't talk about the screaming matches, or his father, or your empty Instagram profile. Instead, you let the old spaces do the talking for you.
You walked down to the small, gravel-paved courtyard behind the humanities building—the exact spot where you used to hide between classes during your sophomore year. The stone benches were dusted with a thin layer of frost, but Zuko immediately pulled a spare flannel shirt out of his backpack, folding it neatly and placing it over the cold stone so you could sit down without getting your pleated skirt wet.
"You still carry extra layers everywhere," you noted, a soft, genuine smile tugging at the corners of your lips as you sat, pulling your knees up toward your chest.
Zuko rubbed the back of his neck, a faint, dark flush creeping up his neck, contrasting sharply with the pale skin near his scar. "Old habits. Sokka always forgets a jacket, and... well, I used to always make sure I had something for you in case the weather turned."
The admission was quiet, completely stripped of the defensive armor he usually wore. You looked at him—really looked at him in the clear, honest light of the winter afternoon. The platinum waves of your hair caught the pale sunlight, and as you tilted your head. Zuko’s eyes traced over your features, his expression soft, almost reverent.
"It suits you," he said softly, gesturing vaguely toward your face. "The piercing. When I saw you at Jet's, I thought... I thought you looked incredible."
"I needed to change," you admitted, shrugging, your fingers tracing the knitted pattern of your cardigan. "I felt like if I kept looking at the girl in the mirror who had dark hair and wore your old hoodies, I was never going to stop crying. I needed to build someone who could survive without you."
Zuko’s chest heaved with a slow, painful breath. "I'm sorry I made you feel like you had to rebuild yourself from scratch."
"Don't," you whispered, reaching out to touch his sleeve, the canvas rough under your fingertips. "We're not doing that right now. Let's just... let's just be here."
From the courtyard, you walked to the tiny, subterranean convenience store off the main quad—the one that sold the specific brand of sour gummy candy Toph always stole from your purse. The elderly man behind the counter recognized the two of you immediately, his eyes crinkling as he rang up a single coffee and a bottle of tea.
"Ah, the long-distance travelers return," the old man chuckled, entirely unaware of the twelve months of wreckage that had transpired between his last sighting of you. "I haven't seen you two together in months. I thought you forgot about my shop."
"Just busy with finals, Mr. Chen," you said quickly, your heart doing a strange, aching flip in your chest.
Zuko didn't say anything, but as he handed over a crisp five-dollar bill, his hand was steady, his eyes catching yours in a silent, shared understanding. It was a bittersweet sting—realizing that the world had kept a space reserved for the two of you, completely unchanged, while you had been busy tearing each other apart.
By the time you reached the edge of the campus, the gray dusk had deepened into a dark, bruised violet, the streetlamps flickering to life one by one along the avenue. The wind was picking up, rattling the bare branches of the oak trees overhead.
"The shuttle should be here in five minutes," Zuko said, standing beside you at the exact same bus stop where you had confronted him a week ago. This time, however, there were no headphones shielding you, no green scarf pulled up to your chin to act as a barrier.
When the large, white campus bus rumbled up to the curb, its air brakes letting out a familiar, heavy hiss, Zuko didn't step back. He let you climb the stairs first, and then he followed you, his heavy boots clicking against the rubber matting of the aisle.
The bus was nearly empty, a ghost ship sailing through the final evening of the semester. You picked a row near the back, sliding into the vinyl seat beside the window. Zuko sat down next to you, his large frame instantly making the cramped space feel warm and secure. He didn't crowd you; he kept his hands folded in his lap, giving you the space you had fought so hard for over the last year.
As the bus pulled away from the curb, shifting gears with a low groan a heavy, incredibly comfortable silence settled over the two of you. The interior lights of the shuttle were dim, casting a soft, yellow glow over the rows of empty seats. Outside, the storefronts and university buildings smeared into long lines of neon and shadow against the dark glass.
The steady, rhythmic motion of the bus, combined with the emotional exhaustion of the afternoon, made your eyelids feel impossibly heavy. Your head began to loll slightly with the swaying of the vehicle.
You didn't think about it. You didn't debate the pride of it, or the boundaries Suki had outlined on her bed. You just let your body weight shift, leaning sideways until your cheek pressed softly against the thick, dark canvas of Zuko’s shoulder.
Zuko stiffened instantly. For a terrifying half-second, you thought you had made a massive mistake, but then, you felt the air leave his lungs in a long, shaky sigh. The rigid tension in his frame completely melted away. He shifted his weight slightly, leaning into you, his head dropping down to rest against the top of your head, his shoulder forming a perfect, solid cradle for your head.
Your eyes drifted shut. The scent of him—old smoke, cedar, and the sharp, clean winter air—enveloped you completely, a familiar blanket that instantly quieted the restless ache that had lived in your chest for a year. In the quiet, dark space of the moving bus, you let yourself believe, just for twenty minutes, that the wreck had never happened.
The bus ride ended too quickly. When the driver announced your stop over the intercom, the sudden halt of the vehicle made you blink your eyes open, the bright street-lamps outside the window scattering the shadows.
You pulled your head back slowly, feeling a sudden, sharp coldness where his shoulder had been. Zuko looked down at you, his eyes incredibly soft, a quiet sadness lingering in the amber depths as he realized the sanctuary of the bus ride was over.
He walked you out into the night, down the short, concrete path that led to your off-campus apartment building. The building was quiet, most of the residents having already left for the winter break, some of the windows dark and empty.
He rode the elevator with you, walking you to your door and stopped in front, the yellow lights above casting long, stark shadows across the floor. You turned to face him, your keys heavy in your hand, the baby pink cardigan offering little protection against the biting winds.
"Well," you said softly, your voice carrying a strange, floating quality. "This is me."
Zuko stood a foot away, his hands still shoved in his pockets, looking at you as if he were trying to memorize every line of your face. "Yeah. This is you." He took a slow breath, his chest expanding under his jacket. "Thank you for today. Seriously. You didn't have to give me ten minutes, let alone the whole afternoon. It was... it was the best day I’ve had in a year."
"Me too, Zuko," you said honestly, the truth slipping out before you could filter it.
He hesitated, then pulled his hands out of his pockets. He stepped forward, his movements cautious, giving you ample time to pull away if you wanted to. When you didn't move, he reached out, wrapping his large arms around your shoulders, pulling you into a tight, heavy hug.
It was the same hug he used to give you when he came home from a long shift at his campus job—solid, grounding, and desperate enough to make you almost suffocate from the lack of air. You buried your face into his chest, your hands coming up to grip the fabric of his jacket, absorbing the heat of him.
"Have a good break," Zuko whispered into your hair, his voice thick. "Take care of yourself."
He began to pull back, his hands sliding down your arms, his fingers lingering on your wrists for a fraction of a second before he started to turn away, his boots pivoting to head back toward elevator.
The space between you instantly turned freezing cold.
You looked at his back, at the sharp lines of his shoulders beneath the dark jacket, moving away from you once again into the winter night. A sudden, violent panic surged through your veins—the exact same panic you had felt a year ago, watching him walk out on you, but this time, the door wasn't locked from the inside.
The ball is in your court, Suki’s voice echoed sharply. You get to decide.
Before your brain could formulate a single doubt, your hand shot out.
Your fingers wrapped firmly around Zuko’s left wrist, your grip tight enough to stop him in his tracks. Zuko froze, his head snapping back over his shoulder, his amber eyes wide with a sudden, breathless confusion as he looked down at your hand on his sleeve.
You didn't say a word. You turned around, slid your key into the lock of your door. Your hands were shaking so badly as you opened the heavy wooden door. The apartment inside was dark, smelling faintly of vanilla and linen, the blinds drawn against the city lights outside.
The door was slightly ajar, a sliver of yellow light from the hallway cutting a sharp line across the dark linoleum of your entryway.
You turned around to face him, standing in the threshold, the heat of the apartment rushing out to meet the cold air on your skin. Zuko stood right outside the line of the door, his breath coming in short, uneven bursts, his eyes searching yours with a raw, terrifying vulnerability.
"Zuko," you whispered.
You reached up, your fingers wrapping around the lapels of his dark canvas jacket, and pulled him forward into the dark room.
Before he could even draw a breath to ask, you leaned up on your tiptoes, tilted your head back, and brought your lips directly against his.
The impact of the kiss was a physical shock to both of your systems. It wasn't the slow, cautious reconciliation you had imagined during your walk; it was a desperate, starving collision of two people who had been living in a drought for three hundred and sixty-five days.
Zuko let out a low, ragged sound—a mix of a sob and a gasp—and his hands instantly flew out of his pockets. His large palms slammed against the sides of your face, his fingers burying themselves into the soft, tumbling waves of your hair, holding you against him as if he were terrified you would dissolve into smoke if he didn't anchor you to the earth.
The kiss tasted like the tears you had both shed at the coffee shop—salty, raw, and heavy with the profound sadness of a year wasted in silence. His mouth was hot, moving against yours with a frantic, trembling intensity that made your knees buckle beneath your pleated skirt. You gripped the rough canvas of his jacket, pulling him deeper into the dark entryway, your bodies slamming against the wall beside the coat rack with a soft, heavy thud.
The door to the hallway swung shut behind him, clicking into place, plunging the room into complete, velvety darkness, save for the blue neon glow of the city lights leaking through the gaps in the blinds.
Zuko’s lips trailed down from your mouth, his breath hot and frantic against your cheek, before burying his face into the crook of your neck, right beneath your ear. His chest heaved against yours, his entire body shaking so violently you had to wrap your arms around his waist just to keep him steady.
"I'm sorry," he sobbed into your skin, his hands gripping your waist through the baby pink sweater, his fingers digging into your hips. "I'm so sorry. I didn't think... I didn't think I'd ever get to hold you again. I've been so cold."
The sheer sadness of his voice broke something final inside you. You squeezed your eyes shut, letting your own tears fall into his dark hair, your fingers tracing the sharp, familiar lines of his shoulder blades through his jacket.
"I know," you whispered, your voice cracking as you pulled him deeper into the apartment, leading him toward the quiet dark of your bedroom. "I know, Zuko. Just stay."
And there, in the quiet, neon-streaked blue shadows of your room, the wall didn't just come down—it vanished entirely, leaving only the heat of two broken people finally learning how to piece themselves back together in the dark.
The first sensation that filtered through the heavy fog of Zuko’s consciousness was the heat.
For twelve months, he had slept in a bed that felt permanently frozen. No matter how many heavy blankets he dragged from Sokka’s couch, no matter how high he cranked the radiator in his cramped, off-campus apartment, he had spent three hundred and sixty-five nights shivering beneath the sheets, his own skin feeling cold and hollow. It was a phantom winter, a perpetual chill that had settled deep into his marrow the moment he let you walk out of his life.
But right now, his skin was burning. A deep, radiating warmth enveloped him, thick and heavy, pressing down on his chest like a weighted blanket.
Zuko blinked his eyes open, his long eyelashes brushing against a pillowcase that didn't smell like his cheap, unscented laundry detergent. Instead, the air was thick with the gentle, unmistakable scent of vanilla, linen, and the faint, crisp tang of the winter air that had clung to his clothes the night before.
He didn't recognize the ceiling.
He lay perfectly still, his heart instantly doing a sharp, panicked flip against his ribs. The ceiling above him wasn't the water-stained, cracked plaster of his own bedroom. It was smooth, painted a soft, muted cream color that caught the pale, silver light of a winter morning leaking through a set of closed blinds.
Slowly, deliberately, Zuko turned his head on the pillow, his amber eyes scanning the unfamiliar room. There was a small white desk in the corner, a stack of textbooks neatly arranged beside a laptop, a plush rug on the floor, and a duffel bag sitting open near the closet.
And then, his gaze landed on you.
The breath left his lungs in a sharp, silent gasp, his entire body locking up as the reality of the previous night rushed back into his brain like a tidal wave.
You were asleep beside him, lying on your side, your back turned completely toward him. The heavy duvet had slipped down to your waist, exposing the smooth, bare expanse of your back to the warm morning air. In the dim, silver light, your skin looked almost translucent, a flawless canvas framed by the tumbling, messy waves of your platinum blonde hair.
Zuko stared, his eyes wide and unblinking, a terrifying wave of vertigo washing over him.
He was convinced, with a sudden, agonizing certainty, that he was still asleep. This was a nightmare disguised as a sanctuary. He had lived through a dozen variations of this exact dream over the past year—dreams where he would wake up, reach out, and find you breathing beside him, only for his fingers to pass through empty air as the morning light dissolved the illusion, leaving him utterly alone into the silence of the shared apartment.
He felt a desperate, almost violent urge to pinch himself, to dig his nails into his own palm until he bled, just to force his brain to wake up before the crushing weight of the reality could destroy him again.
But then, he felt the weight on his arm.
His left arm was completely outstretched across the mattress, acting as a cradle. Your head was resting perfectly in the crook of his elbow, your platinum hair spilling across his bicep like spun silver. And beneath the heavy covers, your small hand was wrapped tightly around his, your fingers threaded securely through his large, scarred ones, holding on even in the deep vulnerability of sleep.
He could feel the slow, rhythmic pulse of your blood against his palm. He could hear the faint, soft whistle of your breath escaping your lips, your chest expanding and contracting against the mattress.
It wasn't a dream. You were actually there.
A heavy, incredibly aching sorrow mingled with a profound, terrifying joy in his chest. Zuko swallowed the massive lump in his throat, his eyes welling with a sudden, hot burst of tears that blurred the image of your bare back into a soft, glowing smear of silver. He didn't deserve this. He knew, with every shred of his being, that he didn't deserve to be lying in your bed, holding your hand, absorbing the heat of the body he had willfully cast out into the cold a year ago.
Yet, you hadn't pushed him away. Last night, in the dark entryway of your apartment, you had pulled him into a kiss that had entirely obliterated the twelve months of wreckage behind them. You had led him into this room, your hands frantic as you stripped the heavy canvas jacket from his shoulders, your lips never leaving his as you both collapsed onto the mattress, desperate to burn away the isolation in a fire of tangled sheets and whispered, tearful apologies.
Slowly, carefully, as if trying not to disturb a fragile glass statue, Zuko shifted his weight.
He slid his body closer across the mattress, the sheets rustling softly in the quiet room. He closed the tiny, gap between them, pressing his chest directly against the bare skin of your back. The contact was an instant, electric shock of warmth. He curled his larger frame around yours, tucking his knees behind your legs, slotting his body into yours like a missing puzzle piece his muscles had remembered perfectly.
He buried his face into the soft curve of your neck, right beneath your ear, where the scent of vanilla was the strongest. He let his nose brush against the short, soft hairs at the base of your skull, his eyes closing as the absolute reality of your presence anchored him to the earth.
As the heat of his breath hit your skin, you stirred.
You let out a low, soft, incredibly contented hum—a small, sleepy sound that vibrated through your throat and straight into his chest. You didn't pull away. Your fingers tightened their grip around his hand beneath the duvet, pulling his arm just a fraction of an inch closer against your stomach, anchoring him to your side.
Zuko squeezed his eyes shut, a single, hot tear slipping past his lashes and vanishing into the waves of your hair. He held your hand tighter, pressing his forehead against the space between your shoulder blades, finally letting himself believe that the winter was over, and he was finally allowed to come inside as he fell back asleep.
An hour later, you blinked your eyes open, the silver-gray winter light filtering through the blinds and painting the bedroom in quiet, muted tones. For a long, disorienting second, your brain tried to latch onto the usual morning routine—waking up alone, checking your phone to see a blank screen, adjusting to the hollow ache that had lived beneath your ribs for three hundred and sixty-five days.
But the air was warm. The scent of vanilla and linen was entirely compromised by something heavier, darker, and devastatingly familiar.
You felt the solid, radiating heat before you even shifted. Zuko’s chest was pressed flush against your bare back, his large frame curled around yours so perfectly it felt as if your muscles hadn't spent a single day apart. His breath was a steady, warm puff against the nape of your neck, a rhythmic reminder of the reality you had voluntarily pulled into your bed the night before. Beneath the covers, your fingers were completely locked in his, your hand wrapped around his knuckles with a desperate, sleeping grip.
Slowly, carefully, you untangled your hand from his, the sudden absence of his skin leaving your palm feeling instantly frozen. You shifted your weight, rolling over on the mattress to face him, the duvet rustling softly in the quiet room.
Zuko didn't wake up, but as you moved, his brow furrowed slightly, a faint, anxious line appearing between his eyes as if his subconscious were already panicking that you were slipping away. His left arm remained outstretched where your head had just been, his bicep bare and marked by the faint shadows of the room. Without the heavy canvas jacket, without the defensive, rigid posture he used to navigate the campus, he looked incredibly vulnerable. The puckered, uneven skin of the old scar on the left side of his face was pressed into the pillow, his dark hair falling in messy, jagged strands across his forehead.
You lay there, resting your cheek on your hand, your eyes tracing every familiar line of his face.
You didn't regret it.
The thought formed in your mind with absolute, unshakeable certainty. You knew what Suki would say when she found out; you knew the entire communication major cohort would think you were insane for letting the guy who broke you back into your bed after a single afternoon. But looking at him now, in the honest, unfiltered light of the morning, you knew last night hadn't been a mistake. It hadn't been a weak lapse in judgment or a cheap attempt to seek comfort. It had been an exorcism. You had needed to burn down the wall you spent a year building, and you had needed him to be the one to help you do it. Sleeping with him wasn't a regression; it was the first time in twelve months you had felt entirely alive, entirely embodied, rather than just surviving behind a mask of platinum hair and silver piercings.
But as the initial warmth of the morning began to settle, a cold, heavy knot of anxiety started to tighten in your stomach.
You looked at the sharp line of Zuko’s jaw, your eyes dropping to the way his lips were slightly parted. A familiar, terrifying question began to circle in your head, peckish and cruel: Does he regret it?
Your heart did a slow, painful twist. Zuko was a creature of intense, agonizing guilt. You knew him better than anyone else in the world, and you knew how his brain functioned in the aftermath of a crisis. He had spent the previous afternoon crying into the wood of a coffee shop booth, pouring his heart out about his father, his cowardice, and the protective, twisted lies he had told to keep you safe from his family's wreckage. He had been raw, bleeding, and entirely defenseless.
What if he woke up today and realized he had crossed a line he shouldn't have? What if the gravity of sleeping with his ex-girlfriend—the girl he had spent a year trying to save by destroying her—felt like a mistake? Zuko’s savior complex was a living, breathing thing, and you knew how quickly his comfort could curdle into self-loathing if he believed he had hurt you again by dragging you back into his orbit.
You bit your inner lip, a sudden, sharp panic making your chest tighten. You couldn't handle him waking up and looking at you with apology in his eyes. You couldn't handle him pulling the blankets up, scrambling out of your bed, and retreating back into that defensive, silent shell because he thought he had compromised your healing. If he looked at you with regret today, it would break you in a way the initial breakup hadn't even managed.
As if sensing the sudden spike of adrenaline in your system, Zuko’s eyelids fluttered.
Zuko froze. The sleep instantly vanished from his eyes, replaced by a sudden, breathless intensity that made your heart stop. He didn't move a single muscle, his gaze locked onto your face.
"Hi," you whispered, your voice small, cracking slightly in the morning quiet.
Zuko swallowed hard, his Adam's apple bobbing. He reached out, his large, calloused hand trembling slightly as he lifted it from the mattress, his fingers hovering just a millimeter away from your cheek before he hesitated, his knuckles tensing.
"Hi," he rasped, his voice incredibly deep, rough from disuse. He looked at his own hand, then looked back into your eyes, his expression twisting into a look of such intense, concentrated worry it made your stomach drop. "Are you... are you okay?"
The question was loaded with a year’s worth of fear. He was checking the damage. He was looking at you as if he expected you to start crying, to tell him to leave, to realize that the previous night had been a catastrophic mistake.
"I'm okay, Zuko," you said softly, shifting slightly closer to him, trying to close the emotional distance that was already threatening to open between you. "I'm really okay."
Zuko didn't look convinced. He let his hand drop back down to the mattress, his eyes falling to the space between you, his jaw clenching. "You don't... you don't have to say that just to make me feel better. I know last night... I know we didn't plan on this. I know you’ve been trying to move on, and I don't want to be the reason you feel like you took a step backward."
There it was. The guilt. The immediate, suffocating assumption that he was a disease and you were the patient he was infecting.
"Zuko, look at me," you said, your voice firmer now, reaching out to place your hand flat against his bare chest. The heat of his skin was instantaneous, his heart thumping a frantic, rapid rhythm beneath your palm. "Do you regret it?"
The question hung in the quiet room, sharp and heavy as an axe.
Zuko’s head snapped up, his amber eyes wide, flashing with a sudden, fierce desperation that took your breath away. "What? No. No, absolutely not. I could never regret last night." He reached out blindly, his fingers wrapping around your wrist where your hand rested on his chest, his grip tight, almost bruising in its intensity. "I've spent a year wishing I could wake up like this. I've spent three hundred and sixty-five days dreaming about holding your hand in the dark. I could never regret a single second of being near you."
He stopped, his eyes searching yours with a raw, pleading vulnerability that made your own eyes well with tears.
"But I’m terrified that you do," Zuko whispered, his voice cracking completely, a sudden, heavy sorrow breaking through his defensive shell. "I'm terrified that you're going to look at me today and realize that I'm still the same broken guy who ruined everything. I don't want to hurt you again. I’d rather walk out of this room right now and never touch you again than be the person who breaks you twice."
A hot tear slipped past your lashes, tracking rapidly down your cheek and pooling on the pillowcase. You let out a small, wet laugh, a mix of pure relief and the deep, aching tragedy of how much you both still carried. You shifted your body forward, sliding your arm over his waist, burying your face into the warm, solid crook of his neck.
"I don't regret it, you idiot," you choked out against his skin, your fingers gripping the muscle of his back, pulling him down against you until there was absolutely no space left between your bodies. "I don't regret a single thing. I just... I was so scared you were going to wake up and tell me it was a mistake."
Zuko let out a long, shuddering sigh, a sound that seemed to come from his soul. His arms came around you instantly, wrapping around your naked back, his hands large and warm against your skin as he pulled you into a tight, desperate embrace. He buried his face into hair, his chest heaving as he let out a trembling breath.
"It wasn't a mistake," Zuko murmured, his grip tightening until your ribs ached, his voice sounding surer, stronger than it had in a year. "It's the only thing that’s made sense in a whole year. I'm not going anywhere. Not this time."
Zuko’s hands remained splayed across your back, his fingers tracing the dip of your spine with a slow, almost disbelieving tenderness. The frantic, desperate edge of his morning panic had settled into something thick and heavy, a profound quiet that seemed to pool in the space between your chests. He didn't move his head from your hair for a long time, just inhaling the scent of vanilla and the clean, warm musk of you, his chest rising and falling against yours in long, steady increments.
For a moment of silence, he finally spoke. "In my apartment... the light is always gray. Even in the summer, it feels like the sun doesn't quite reach the floorboards. I used to wake up at three in the morning and just try to remember what color your skin looked like when the sun came through the window."
You tightened your arms around his neck, pulling him a fraction of an inch closer, your fingers tangling in the messy, dark length of his hair. "It’s just cheap blinds, Zuko."
"It’s not the blinds," he whispered, finally tilting his head back to look at you.
The proximity was intense, almost suffocating. His amber eyes were clear now, the glassy film of sleep entirely gone, replaced by a dark, concentrated focus that made your skin prickle with sudden, localized heat. The scar on the left side of his face was flush against the white pillowcase, the red, puckered tissue soft under the morning light. Up close, you could see the tiny silver flecks in his irises—the ones you used to count when the two of you were trapped in his bed during summer thunderstorms.
He looked down at your mouth, his jaw clenching slightly, a muscle tensing in his cheek. His hands slid down your back, his large, calloused palms smoothing over the curve of your waist, his thumbs pressing into the small indentations above your hips. He didn't pull away, but his movements slowed, becoming heavy with a sudden, deliberate hesitation.
"Can we..." Zuko started, his voice cracking slightly before he cleared his throat, his eyes rising to meet yours with a raw, almost painful vulnerability. He swallowed hard, his fingers tightening against your skin. "Last night... it was so fast. I felt like I was losing my mind, like if I didn't touch you right then, the floor was going to open up. I want... I want to remember it this time. Without the panic. If you're okay with it."
The question was entirely him—clumpy, honest, and stripped of any game-playing. He was asking for permission to stay inside the boundary you had opened for him, his eyes pleading for a reassurance that he wasn't overstepping the fragile peace you had negotiated.
In response, you didn't say a word. You gave him a small, slow smile, the anxiety that had lingered in your stomach completely dissolving under the fierce, unwavering heat of his gaze.
You shifted your weight, the heavy down comforter rustling loudly as you pulled your legs out from beneath the sheets. In one fluid, deliberate movement, you slid your knees along the mattress, lifting yourself up and straddling his waist.
Zuko let out a sharp breath through his teeth, his abdominal muscles contracting instantly beneath your thighs as you settled over him. You were already bare from the night before, save for your black lacey thong, your skin completely exposed to the warm morning air, while Zuko was back in his dark boxer briefs, the thin cotton doing very little to hide the rigid, heavy length of his arousal.
You sat back on his lap, your knees pinning his hips to the mattress. From this height, you looked down at him, your platinum hair falling forward in soft, silver-blonde waves that shadowed your eyes.
Zuko’s hands found purchase immediately. His palms didn't slide or hesitate; they locked onto the plush, soft skin of your hips, his fingers digging in slightly, his thumbs tracing the line where your thigh met your torso. His skin was incredibly hot against yours, the heat of his palms transferring through the thin lace of your underwear like a brand. He stared up at you, his chest heaving under your hands as you rested your palms flat against his sternum, feeling the rapid, concussive thud of his heart.
"You look so beautiful," Zuko choked out, his eyes darkening until the gold in his irises seemed to catch fire. His thumbs pressured the fullness of your waist, his knuckles turning white against your skin. "You look like a dream I'm not supposed to have."
"I'm not a dream, Zuko," you whispered, leaning down slowly, letting your hair fall across his cheeks like a silk curtain. "You can touch me."
He didn't need the invitation twice. His hands slid up from your hips, his fingers tracing the outer curve of your ribs, his palms rough and warm as they slid beneath your back, lifting you slightly. He didn't even bother pulling his boxers down; instead, his trembling fingers reached for the button fly, parting the dark cotton. With a low, ragged breath, he took out his cock at the hole of his boxers, the thick, fully erect length springing free, slick with a bead of pre.
The sight of him, thick and heavy between your thighs, made a sharp, electric ache flare in your lower belly. You leaned forward, pressing your chest against his, the contact of your bare skin against his warm, pectoral muscles sending a violent jolt of adrenaline down your spine. You pressed your lips against his, capturing his mouth before he could say another word, before his brain could cycle back into the guilt that always threatened to tear him apart.
The kiss was entirely different from the desperate collision in the hallway last night. This was slow, heavy, and drenched in a deep, agonizing luxury. His mouth opened beneath yours, his tongue tangling with yours in a rhythmic friction that made it dizzy for the both of you. Zuko let out a low, vibrating groan into your throat, his arms wrapping completely around your torso, his large hands flat against your shoulder blades, pulling you down until the entire weight of your body was supported by his chest.
His hand moved down to the space between your thighs, his fingers calloused and warm as they slid along the sensitive inner skin of your legs, making your thighs tremble against his ribs. When his hand found the damp, covered aching heat between your thighs, your eyes squeezed shut, a low, gasping breath escaping your teeth as his thumb found the small, sensitive bud of your clitoris, slicking your own moisture over your thong in long, heavy strokes.
"Look at me," Zuko rasped, his voice breaking on the syllables. His free hand reached up to grip your chin, his fingers firm but gentle, forcing your head up until your eyes met his through the blur of your tears. "Please. Look at me."
Your vision was swimming as you stared down into the golden intensity of his gaze. He was breathing through his mouth, his cheeks flushed, the scar over his eye looking dark and stark against his pale skin. He was watching your face with an intensity that felt almost holy, his thumb continuing to stroke you until you were dripping, completely slick and ready for him.
He slid his hand away with a wet, heavy friction that left you shivering, gasping for the space to be filled. Zuko gripped your hips again, his large hands guiding your body upward. You lifted yourself, pulling your panties aside, feeling the tip of his hot length brushing against your wet opening. The heat radiating from him was incredible.
Slowly, you lowered your weight.
The sensation of him entering you was a slow-motion rupture, a thick, stretching fullness that made your breath catch in a choked gasp. Your head fell back, your throat exposed to the silver light as you took him in, inch by inch, your body tight and resisting for a fraction of a second before your muscles remembered the exact dimensions of him, melting around his thickness until your pelvis clapped against his with a soft, heavy thud.
Zuko let out a long, ragged groan into the quiet room, his head throwing back into the pillow, his back arching off the mattress as he buried himself completely inside you through the parted cotton of his shorts. His hands on your hips tightened until his nails left small, white crescent marks in your skin, his eyes squeezing shut as his jaw locked in pure, physical agony.
"Oh my god," he whispered, his chest heaving beneath your palms, his voice a broken, trembling thread. "You're so tight... you're so warm. I forgot... I forgot how perfect it is."
The ache in your lower belly had transformed into a driving, relentless friction that demanded movement. You lifted your hips, sliding up his length until you almost cleared the tip, before pressing down again, the wet, sliding heat of the motion making Zuko let out another low, guttural groan.
You established the rhythm, your hips rolling in long, slow circles that utilized the plush fullness of your thighs against his hips. Every time you dropped your weight, the friction of your bodies created a soft, wet sound that filled the quiet spaces between the sleet against the window. Zuko’s gaze was fixed on the way your breasts moved with the motion, watching how the platinum of your hair whipped against your shoulders as you moved over him.
He couldn't stay passive. His hands moved from your hips to your waist, his arms locking as he began to meet your descents, his hips thrusting upward with a sudden, powerful intensity that drove him deeper against your cervix, hitting the sensitive back wall of your vagina with a force that made your vision go white at the edges.
"Faster," you gasped, your hands flying from his chest to grip the wooden headboard behind him for balance, your fingers slick with sweat. "Zuko, please—"
His thrusts became shorter, harder, a relentless, concussive rhythm.
The friction built rapidly, a tight, coil-spring tension gathering at the base of your spine. Every stroke of his length felt like a match striking against dry wood, the heat spreading through your thighs, your stomach, your throat, until your entire body was shaking with the approach of the cliff.
Zuko was close, too. His breathing had devolved into short, ragged hitches, his teeth bared, his neck muscles tensed as he drove himself into you over and over again, his movements frantic, desperate, as if he were trying to dissolve the last twelve months through the sheer, physical force of his collision with you.
"Look at me," he gasped out again, his eyes wide, wild, and swimming. "Look at me... while I finish. Don't look away."
You forced your eyes open, your breath coming in small, pathetic squeaks as the tension inside you snapped.
Your orgasm hit you like a physical blow, your walls contracting around his length in a series of violent, involuntary spasms that left you entirely breathless. Your head fell forward, a cry tearing out of your throat as the pleasure rippled through your hips, your body shivering against his chest.
The tight, crushing grip of your climax was the final straw for him. Zuko let out a low moan, his hips lifting off the mattress in one final, deepest thrust. He froze there, buried to the absolute root, his body shaking violently as he came inside you, the thick, hot pulses of his release filling you up, a heavy, radiating warmth that seemed to anchor your souls back to the center of the bed.
He stayed inside you for a long time, his chest heaving, his heart hammering against your ribs like a trapped bird. Slowly, the tension left his muscles, and his arms came around your waist, pulling your limp, sweaty body down against his chest as he rolled the two of you over onto your sides, never breaking the connection between your hips.
The duvet was dragged over your shoulders by his large, trembling hand, shutting out the cool morning air once again. You buried your face into his neck, your skin wet with sweat and tears, your legs tangled with his beneath the heavy covers.
The metal-on-metal scraping of a wire whisk against a ceramic mixing bowl was the loudest sound in your apartment, entirely drowning out the soft, muted patter of the snow outside.
You stood at the kitchen counter, wrapped in a plush, oversized cream-colored shirt that swallowed your frame. Your hair was pulled up into a messy, structural topknot held together by a silver hairstick, a few loose, tendrils falling around your face and sticking to the faint sheen of sweat on your neck.
You added a splash of buttermilk to the batter, a small, involuntary smile tugging at the corner of your lips as you worked. For the first time in a while, the heavy, suffocating static in your head had vanished. The apartment didn't feel like a digital graveyard anymore. It felt grounded. It felt real.
From the hallway, the heavy, distinct sound of a floorboard creaking perked up in your ears.
Zuko emerged from the bedroom, his tall frame cutting a striking silhouette against the narrow corridor. He was shirtless, his chest and broad shoulders bare, exposing the hard, clean lines of his muscle. He was wearing only his dark canvas pants from the day before—wrinkled, slightly rumpled from being cast onto the floor, and riding low on his hips. His long, dark hair was an absolute disaster, completely uncombed and sticking up in jagged, chaotic directions from the pillows, falling over his eyes and shadowing the puckered, red tissue of the scar on the left side of his face.
He looked incredibly soft, entirely stripped of the rigid, defensive armor he usually wore to face the world.
"Smells good," Zuko rasped. He walked into the kitchen with slow, heavy steps, his bare feet silent against the linoleum.
"Buttermilk," you said softly, setting the whisk down.
Before you could even draw your next breath, Zuko closed the remaining distance between you. He slid his large, warm arms around your waist from behind, pulling your back flush against his bare chest. Through your shirt, you could feel his skin emit a sleepy warmth that enveloped your back. He buried his face into the side of your neck, his nose brushing against your skin as he let out a long, shuddering sigh of absolute contentment.
"Stay right there," you murmured, leaning your head back against his shoulder, your fingers coming up to rest over his large, calloused hands where they were locked across your stomach. "The griddle is hot. If you crowd me, I’m going to burn the first batch."
"I don't care about the pancakes," Zuko mumbled into your skin, his grip tightening just a fraction of an inch, his thumbs tracing the plush curve of your hip through the thick fabric of the robe. "I just want to stay like this. I feel like if I let go, the room is going to change again."
"I'm not going anywhere, Zuko," you whispered, turning your head just enough to press a soft, lingering kiss to his jawline, tasting the faint, familiar salt of his skin.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
The sudden, aggressive pounding on the front door shattered the quiet of the apartment like a brick through a glass window.
Zuko stiffened instantly, his chest locking up against your back, his eyes flying open. His hands dropped from your waist, his jaw clenching as his head snapped toward the short entryway.
"Who is that?" Zuko muttered, his voice instantly dropping into a low, territorial hiss. "It’s barely nine in the morning."
You blinked, your brain scrambling to catch up with the sudden intrusion before a memory from the previous night hit you like a bucket of ice water. Sokka’s coming over with Thai food... No, that was last night. Suki and Sokka are coming over to help you pack the rest of your duffel bags before the building shuts down.
Your eyes widened in pure, unadulterated panic. "Oh my god. It’s Suki. And Sokka."
Zuko blinked, his expression completely blank for a fraction of a second. "Sokka? Why would Sokka be—"
"They're helping me move the last of my things to Suki’s place for the holidays," you scrambled, your hands flying out to push against his bare chest, trying to steer his massive frame back toward the bedroom. "Zuko, you need to hide. Go to the bedroom. Put a shirt on. Go out the window—"
"I am not jumping out of a second-story window in my pants," Zuko countered, his stubborn, rigid pride flaring up instantly as he resisted your pushing, his boots—no, his bare feet—planted firmly on the floor. "Why do I have to hide? We’re adults. We talked."
"Because Sokka has the emotional processing power of a teaspoon and Suki thinks I spent the last twelve months building an impenetrable wall against you!" you hissed, your face turning bright red. "If they see you like this, they’re going to think—"
Knock. Knock. Knock.
"Hey! Open up!" Sokka’s booming, cheerful voice cut straight through the wooden door, entirely too loud for the quiet morning. "We brought the big rolling cart from the dorm lobby! And Suki has bagels! The good ones from downtown, not the cardboard ones from the dining hall!"
"Just open the door, Zuko," you groaned, throwing your hands up in complete defeat as you realized the battle was already lost. "But for the love of god, pull your pants up."
Zuko rolled his eyes, a faint, dark flush creeping up his neck as he walked out of the kitchen and into the tiny entryway. He didn't look back at you. He reached out, unlocked the deadbolt with a sharp, metallic click, and pulled the heavy wooden door open.
The silence that followed was absolute, heavy, and loud enough to be cut by a knife.
Sokka was standing mid-knock, his hand holding the handle of a blue plastic rolling cart filled with empty cardboard boxes. He was wearing a ridiculous, bright yellow University beanie pulled low over his ears and a heavy winter coat. Beside him, Suki was holding a brown paper bag that smelled intensely of toasted garlic and cream cheese, her green eyes going wide.
The second the door swung back, revealing Zuko—shirtless, hair completely wild, wearing only his rumpled pants from the day before, and looking thoroughly, unmistakably like a man who had just crawled out of your sheets—Sokka’s mouth remained perfectly open, the words dying a violent death in his throat.
Suki's eyes darted from Zuko’s bare chest, down to the low-riding waistband of his canvas pants, up to his messy hair, and then shot straight past his shoulder into the kitchen where you were standing, frozen like a deer in high beams, holding a wire whisk.
Safe to say, they were thoroughly, entirely, and completely SHOCKED.
"I—" Sokka started, his voice squeaking a full octave higher than normal. He dropped the handle of the rolling cart, the metal bar clattering against the linoleum hallway with a deafening bang. He pointed a trembling, gloved finger at Zuko’s chest. "You. What? Zuko? Why are your... why are your nipples out?"
Zuko crossed his arms over his chest, his jaw clenching as he tried to maintain an aura of dignity while being completely bare from the waist up in front of his roommate and his roommate's girlfriend. "Good morning, Sokka. Suki."
Suki didn't say a word for a full five seconds. She just stared at him, then slowly turned her head to look at you in the kitchen.
"You," Suki said accusingly, her voice dangerously quiet, carrying the exact same tone she used when she caught Sokka trying to eat raw cookie dough from her fridge. "What happened to, talking it out?"
You let out a small, pathetic squeak from the kitchen counter. "Suki, it's not what it looks like."
"It looks like he slept here," Sokka accused, his eyes practically popping out of his skull as he stepped into the apartment, completely bypassing Zuko and slamming the front door shut behind them. He grabbed his own head with both hands, his yellow beanie shifting crookedly. "Zuko! You told me you were going for a walk on Tuesday night! That was three days ago! I thought you were dead in a ditch or doing something else weird! I didn't think you were... you were here!"
"Sokka, shut up," Zuko grunted, his face turning an incredibly dark, bruised shade of crimson as he rubbed the back of his neck, his defensive pride finally crumbling under the sheer absurdity of the interrogation. "We talked. We met at the cafe, and we talked."
"And the talking involved losing your shirt?" Sokka yelled, his arms flailing wildly. "Because when I talk to people, Zuko, my shirt stays firmly on my body! Suki, tell him! Tell him about the rules of communication!"
Suki didn't look at Sokka. She walked past Zuko, her boots clicking sharply against the floor, and stopped at the threshold of the kitchen. She looked at the preheating griddle, looked at the bowl of buttermilk batter, and then looked at the faint, unmistakable red mark on the side of your neck that your shirt hadn't completely covered.
A slow, knowing, and incredibly smug smirk began to spread across Suki’s face, her green eyes twinkling with the absolute satisfaction of a best friend who had been proven entirely right, even if the execution was chaotic.
"Well," Suki said, leaning her shoulder against the refrigerator, crossing her arms. "I did tell you to give him a chance to explain himself. I just didn't realize Zuko’s explanation was so... persuasive."
"Suki, please," you groaned, burying your face in your hands, the warmth in your cheeks hot enough to cook the pancakes without the griddle.
Zuko looked between Sokka’s frantic flailing and Suki’s smug expression, letting out a long, defeated sigh. He looked over at you, his amber eyes catching yours through the chaos, a tiny, subtle glint of a smile finally breaking through his stoic expression.
The wall was definitely down. And apparently, the entire apartment building was about to hear about it.
A little bit after pancakes, the heavy plastic rolling cart sat in the center of the living room like an awkward monument to the sudden shift in the apartment’s atmosphere. Sokka was currently wrestling with a roll of packing tape, the loud, aggressive shhhk-shhhk-shhhk of the adhesive tearing echoing off the walls as he tried to construct a cardboard box with maximum structural integrity.
"I’m just saying," Sokka muttered, his voice slightly muffled because he was holding a pair of scissors between his teeth, "there is a proper way to do this. If you don't tape the bottom joints with a cross-weave pattern, the whole thing loses its integrity. And when your shoes fall through the bottom in the parking lot, don't come crying to the guy who literally has an engineering minor."
You let out a soft laugh, shifting on your knees beside a stack of sweaters. "Sokka, they’re just shoes, not bricks. If the box breaks, they’ll just fall softly onto the concrete."
"It's the principle of the thing!" Sokka spat the scissors out into his hand, pointing them at you dramatically. "We are packing for winter break. This is a strategic operation."
You smiled, but your eyes kept flickering toward the closed door of your small bathroom. Zuko had finally been banished there to put on a shirt—specifically a clean grey University hoodie he’d unearthed from the bottom of your laundry hamper—and to do something about the wild, static-induced bird's nest that was his morning hair. Suki had vanished toward the back of the apartment, ostensibly to "check for loose scarves" in your bedroom, but her sharp green eyes had given you a look before she left that said everything.
When the bathroom door finally clicked open, Zuko stepped out. He looked significantly more put together, though the dark circles under his amber eyes were still prominent. He caught your eye across the living room, a brief, silent question passing between you, before Suki stepped out of the hallway, intercepting him neatly near the entrance to the living room.
"Zuko," Suki said, her voice dropping into a calm, authoritative register that instantly made Sokka freeze mid-tape-rip. "Walk with me to the lobby. We need to grab the extra luggage dolly from the front desk."
Zuko blinked, his shoulders tensing under the grey hoodie. He looked at you, then at Suki’s unblinking green gaze. He knew exactly what this was. It wasn't about a luggage dolly.
"Yeah," Zuko said, his voice gravelly. "Okay."
The heavy wooden door of the apartment clicked shut behind them, leaving the living room in a sudden, thick quiet, save for the hum of the old refrigerator.
The metal walls of the elevator was freezing, the damp chill of the winter morning rising up from the lower levels.
They reached lobby, exiting the elevator and walking towards the extra dolly but Suki stopped, turning around to face Zuko. She crossed her arms, her expression completely unreadable beneath her auburn bangs.
Zuko stopped two steps away from her, his hands buried in his pockets, his chin tucked slightly into the collar of his hoodie. He looked like he was preparing for a physical blow.
"I don't know the full context of what you two discussed at the coffee shop," Suki began, her voice quiet but carrying an unshakeable weight that reverberated softly against the lobby walls. "I don't know the details of why you did what you did a year ago, and honestly, Zuko, I don't care. That's between you and her. But I was the one who spent the last twelve months watching her try to put herself back together. I was the one who sat on my kitchen floor with her when she couldn't breathe because she saw an old photo of you on her phone she thought she deleted."
Zuko flinched, his head dropping. His jaw clenched so hard the muscles along his scar twitched. "I know."
"No, you don't," Suki countered cleanly, her green eyes narrowing. "She gave you a chance to explain yourself because she has a good heart—too good, if you ask me. But I swear to you, Zuko, if you hurt her again—if you pull that defensive, self-sacrificing martyr act because things get heavy with your family and you decide she’s a burden—I won't just be disappointed. I will do everything in my power to keep her so far away from you that you won't even remember the sound of her voice. Do you understand me?"
The threat wasn't delivered with anger; it was delivered with the absolute, chilling certainty of a best friend who had high-school-level roots of loyalty.
Zuko looked up, his amber eyes locking onto hers. The defensive, stubborn pride that usually flared up when he was challenged was entirely absent. Instead, his face was dead serious, his posture straightening.
"I swear on my honor," Zuko said, his voice thick. "I don't intend on ever hurting her again. I was a coward a year ago. I thought I was protecting her from my father, but I was just protecting myself from failing. I've spent a year realizing that the dark doesn't go away just because you push the light out of the room. I’m not letting her go again."
Suki searched his face for a long, agonizing five seconds, looking for any trace of the old, volatile boy who used to slam doors and disappear for days. All she found was a tired, fiercely determined man who looked like he had finally grown into his own skin.
Slowly, the tension left Suki’s shoulders. The terrifying, protective older-sister aura faded, replaced by a soft, weary sigh.
"Good," Suki said, a small, faint smirk returning to her lips. "Because Sokka really likes having her around, and if you screw this up, he’ll try to fight you, and we both know you’d destroy him, which would just make my weekends very annoying."
Zuko let out a short, surprised breath—a ghost of a laugh—and rubbed the back of his neck. "Yeah. Okay."
Back up in the apartment, the atmosphere had shifted into something lighter. Sokka had finally managed to tape three boxes, and he was currently sitting on one of them, using an empty cardboard tube like a telescope to watch you fold a blanket.
"So," Sokka said, his voice echoing slightly inside the tube. "Are we, like... official again? Is the Zuko-and-[Y/N] dynamic restored? Am I allowed to invite you back to group chats again?"
You rolled your eyes, tossing a balled-up pair of socks at his face. He caught it with his telescope tube, grinning. "Sokka, we’re just... talking. We’re figuring it out."
"Right, right. 'Talking.' With the shirts off and making pancakes session," Sokka nodded sagely. Then, his expression softened, the goofy, flippant mask slipping away to reveal the genuine, fiercely loyal friend underneath. He set the cardboard tube down on the box beside him. "Honestly? I missed you. Like, really missed you."
You stopped mid-fold, looking up at him.
"The last year was weird," Sokka admitted, looking down at his sock covered feet. "When you left, it felt like this huge chunk of our high school life just got deleted. Zuko was a miserable zombie, which, you know, is his default setting, but it was worse. And the rest of us... we felt like we had to choose sides, even though nobody wanted to. Katara was mad at him, Aang was stressed, Toph kept complaining that the vibe was ruined because nobody was there was no one to steal the good snacks in between classes."
He looked back up, his blue eyes bright with an honest, puppy-dog earnestness.
"If you guys are actually doing this—if you're letting him back in—it means you have to come back to the group," Sokka said, a massive, genuine grin spreading across his face. "You have to come hang out with me, Aang, Katara, and Toph. We’re doing a big reunion thing at Suki’s place next week before everyone flies out for the holidays. You’re coming. No excuses."
A heavy, incredibly warm wave of relief washed over your chest, the final lingering shards of your isolation turning to dust. "Yeah, Sokka. I’d love to come."
The front door clicked open, and Suki walked back in, followed by Zuko, who was carrying a completely unnecessary second luggage dolly with an expression of intense focus. Suki caught your eye and gave you a single, subtle nod.
A week later, the silver-gray sleet had turned into a thick, heavy blanket of snow that quieted the entire city.
You had spent the last seven days settled into Suki’s apartment, which was significantly larger than your own place and smelled permanently of cinnamon tea and the lavender wax melts she kept in the living room. It had been a week of quiet transition—texting Zuko at night without the notes app, cheesy texts, clumsy photos of his morning tea.
Tonight was the night. The reunion.
You stood in front of Suki’s bathroom mirror, adjusting the collar of a soft, dark green sweater you’d chosen—a subtle nod to the color that used to define you without letting it control you. Your platinum hair was pinned back with two simple silver clips, and the hoop in your eyebrow glinted under the warm vanity lights.
"They're downstairs," Suki called out from outside the closed door, her voice accompanied by the muffled sound of Sokka shouting something about calling dibs on the bean bag chair.
Your heart did a quick, nervous flutter against your ribs. You hadn't seen the entire Gaang in one room since the night of the wreck a year ago. You had seen Suki, obviously, and Sokka occasionally through her, but Katara, Aang, and Toph had been distant figures, names you avoided on socials and at school.
"Ready?" Suki asked, when you left the bathroom. She was wearing a comfortable flannel shirt, her auburn hair tied back in a low ponytail. She reached out, giving your shoulder a reassuring squeeze. "They’re practically vibrating through the floorboards."
"Ready," you said, taking a deep breath and following her down into the living room.
The front door was already wide open. Sokka was in the middle of welcoming Aang and Katara, who were completely bundled up in heavy winter coats, their faces flushed red from the walk up the stairs.
"The queen has arrived!" Sokka announced dramatically, stepping aside and pointing a hand toward you as you descended down the stairs.
"Oh my god, [Y/N]!" Katara’s voice broke the air first. She didn't even take off her gloves before she lunged forward, bypassing Sokka entirely and throwing her arms around your neck. She smelled like the cold winter wind and expensive body lotion, her dark curls brushing against your cheek as she squeezed you tightly. "I missed you so much!"
"I missed you too, Katara," you whispered, the warmth of her embrace instantly melting the last bit of ice in your stomach.
Aang was right behind her, his bright gray eyes crinkling as he gave you a huge, enthusiastic hug that nearly lifted your feet off the floor. He had a massive knitted scarf wrapped three times around his neck, looking exactly like the golden retriever of a human being he had always been. "It’s so good to have you back. Seriously. The group chat hasn't been the same without your specific emoji usage."
"Yeah, yeah, enough with the emotional sap," a sharp, raspy voice cut through the room from the couch.
Toph was sitting cross-legged on Suki’s oversized beanbag chair, casually tossing a small rubber ball up and caught it—exactly the way you used to do. She didn't look up, but a massive, rare smirk was plastered across her face. "Took you long enough to come out of hiding, Sparky's girl. The vibe in this circle was getting dangerously boring without someone to balance out Katara’s mothering."
"Missed you too, Toph," you laughed, walking over and nudging her shoulder with your hand. She reached up, giving your hand a quick, affectionate slap before returning to her ball-tossing.
The apartment door opened one final time, and the room went completely quiet for a brief second.
Zuko stepped inside. He had walked over from his own apartment, his nose and cheeks flushed a dark red from the biting cold outside. He took off his heavy black coat, revealing a simple black sweater that fit his broad shoulders perfectly.
He stood in the entryway, his amber eyes instantly scanning the crowded room until they locked onto you.
A year ago, a moment like this would have ended in a defensive comment from him or a sharp, hurt look from you before he retreated to the kitchen to wash dishes alone. But tonight, Zuko didn't hide. He walked straight through the living room, navigating past the shoes near the door until he was standing right in front of you.
He reached out, his large, warm hand finding yours in the space between you, his fingers threading through yours with a quiet, unshakeable certainty.
"Hi," he said softly, his voice a low, gravelly rasp that was meant only for you.
"Hi," you smiled, your fingers tightening around his knuckles.
"Alright, everybody!" Sokka shouted, clapping his hands together and breaking the spell as he dragged a massive box of pizza onto the coffee shop table. "The Gaang is officially back together! Nobody talk about finals, nobody talk about GPA, and for the love of god, someone give Toph a soda before she starts throwing something!"
The apartment dissolved into a loud, chaotic symphony of laughter, shouting, and the familiar, beautiful noise of the people who had known you since the beginning. You sat on the couch beside Zuko, your shoulders touching, his hand a constant, radiating source of heat against your thigh. The winter was still cold outside the glass, but inside, the fire was finally burning exactly the way it was supposed to.
CW: Fem!reader, NSFW, Masturbation, Nipple play, Body worship, Temperature play, Size difference, Insinuations of impregnation, Creampie, Oral M and F receiving, MINORS DNI.
A: Aftercare (what they’re like after sex)
KING of aftercare. Seriously, this man will do anything for you. He’s been training as a prince his whole life, chased the avatar for a while, AND NOW HE'S THE FIRELORD. so his stamina is pretty high, and after sex he’s ready to do anything you ask of him.
B: Body part (their favorite body part of theirs and also their partner’s)
He doesn't have a lot to be proud of with his body(HE'S BASICALLY PERFECT THO), but he’s never really thought about a part of him he likes the most. If he had to choose, he’d probably say his hands, simply because of the pleasure they give you. When it comes to you though he's unable to choose because every single part of you means a lot to him.
C: Cum (anything to do with cum, basically)
Zuko prefers to cum inside you as it feels the most intimate. It also means there’s less to clean up. Though a part of him thinks about how you'll look like with your belly swollen and full of his babies.
D: Dirty secret (pretty self explanatory, a dirty secret of theirs)
I don’t know if this would class as a dirty secret, but he really wants to see you masturbate in front of him. He’s the kind of person to get off on the sight of you getting off.
E: Experience (how experienced are they? do they know what they’re doing?)
Before you, Zuko didn’t have much experience. In fact it is highly likely that he didn't indulge with his previous partners if he's not in a serious relationship.
F: Favorite position (this goes without saying)
Doggystyle.
He LOVES seeing you with your ass up (He also likes pulling your hair from behind)
Cowgirl/Riding.
It gives him easy access to your tits and you clit.
G: Goofy (are they more serious in the moment? are they humorous? etc.)
He’s pretty serious. He believes sex is an intimate thing, and he’s completely invested on making sure you have the best time possible.
H: Hair (how well groomed are they? does the carpet match the drapes? etc.)
He keeps himself pretty neat, usually shaved as it just makes everything easier and cleaner.
I: Intimacy (how are they during the moment? the romantic aspect)
I don’t know how many times I can say that Zuko is a killer when it comes to intimacy during sex. Have you thought about the idea of having rose petals covering the bed and candles around you? Well he pulled it off on your first time with him. Though he still does it occasionally.
J: Jack off (masturbation headcanon)
He doesn't have the highest sex drive, so he’s unlikely to really need to jack off, and when he does, you’re usually around him to help out.
K: Kink (one or more of their kinks)
Temperature play.
He loves it when you get excited over the thought of his hands either being warm or just hot(not enough to burn you though) He knows you get off easily when he does it.
Body worship.
No matter how many times you say that you don't feel confident when it comes to your body, or if you talk about your insecurities. Your body is Perfect to his eyes. That's why his hands are wandering everywhere on your body while he's fucking you.
L: Location (favorite places to do the do)
A traditional man likes a traditional location, so the bedroom is his favorite. Zuko wants you to enjoy yourself as much as possible.
M: Motivation (what turns them on, gets them going)
The thought of seeing you with your belly swollen with his baby.
N: No (something they wouldn’t do, turn offs)
The classic one.
Choking, he doesn't like the thought of accidentally hurting you.
O: Oral (preference in giving or receiving, skill, etc.)
Depends on your mood, whether you ask him if you can suck him off or you'll ask him if he can eat you out.
P: Pace (are they fast and rough? slow and sensual? etc.)
Slow and sensual, he likes taking his time with you. Though he can be fast and rough at times.
Q: Quickie (their opinions on quickies, how often, etc.)
He considers it as a normal practice now since he's the firelord, so naturally, his schedule would be full of meetings.
R: Risk (are they game to experiment? do they take risks? etc.)
AS I SAID. He doesn't like the thought of accidentally hurting you, so no, he's not open to experimenting or taking risks.
S: Stamina (how many rounds can they go for? how long do they last?)
I don’t know if he ever runs out of stamina. I mean, he's trained and was looking for the avatar for three years. So YES HE HAS A HIGH STAMINA.
T: Toys (do they own toys? do they use them? on a partner or themselves?)
He doesn't own any toys, he pleasures you either with his fingers, tongue, or his cock. Nothing more.
U: Unfair (how much they like to tease)
He’s unlikely to tease you to begin with, unless you ask him. If he’s teasing you, it’ll be when one of you brings up the idea of edging you, although it’s not really teasing. It’s a little frustrating being brought right to the edge and then denied that glorious release, but the build up makes it so worth it in the end
V: Volume (how loud they are, what sounds they make, etc.)
OH HE'S THE FIRELORD RIGHT? OFCOURSE HE DOESN'T CARE IS SERVANTS HEAR HIM MOANING OR GROWLING.
In fact he knew they wouldn't even dare talk about it.
W: Wild card (a random headcanon for the character)
Zuko has had many thoughts about letting you tie him up and have your way with him, but he’s just scared to voice those ideas to you. He’s just curious to see what you’d do.
X: X-ray (let’s see what’s going on under those clothes)
7.1 inches long and 2.4 inches thick.
His tip has a faded pink color, little to no veins but some stick out.
Y: Yearning (how high is their sex drive?)
He’s used to keeping his urges suppressed, as they tend to just get in the way of things. But overall he has a pretty decent sex drive. Not high, but not low either.
Z: Zzz (how quickly they fall asleep afterwards)
As I mentioned, Zuko has incredible stamina, so he’s not gonna fall asleep quickly. He’ll clean you up, perhaps even run you a hot bath being the aftercare god he is, and after that, he’s happy to just cuddle with you until the both of you fall asleep.
I said I was done with my Jason Grace bullshit but god is it unfair that he didn't get to the main character of his series. THE SHIP IS LITERALLY CALLED THE ARGO II. NAMED AFTER THE SHIP THAT THE ORIGINAL JASON CAPTAINED. AND YET YOU'VE GIVING ME A SIDE CHARACTER WITH AN AFFINITY FOR BRICKS
i tried explaining to this girl at a party once how i could be gay and asexual at the same time and it basically boils down to never being into anyone but like once a year i’ll find a man attractive. and she was like “so what am i if i only like girls, and i’ve never found any of my boyfriends attractive and and i just wanna do cocaine all the time?” i was like “you’re a lesbian with a coke addiction?” and she was like “woooooah”. she broke up with her boyfriend that night and had a threesome with two girls in the bathtub. rebecca if you’re out there, i hope you’re going places. well, not far, since you’re electronically tagged. but spiritually.
sumarry: After ascending the throne and becoming the new Fire Lord, Zuko finds himself surrounded by decisions that go far beyond politics. Guided by the Sages of Fire, everything points to a choice his heart had made long ago: to bring back to his side the childhood friend he could never forget, not even during the bitter years of exile.
But what seems simple in court councils proves to be far more complex in practice. After all, how do you convince someone who has spent her life fleeing the Fire Nation, and who carries with her an indomitable spirit inclined to cause scandals, to accept the suffocating grandeur of the palace?
warning : mdni 18+ | smut | fluffy
The grandeur of the Fire Nation Palace, once a place of suffocating tradition and the terrifying shadow of Ozai, had begun to change. Under Zuko’s rule, the oppressive weight was dissipating, replaced by a restless energy of reconstruction. And yet, as he stood on the balcony overlooking the capital, the crown upon his head felt heavier than any armor he had ever worn in battle. Being the Fire Lord was a constant struggle of diplomacy, politics, and the relentless demand to be the leader his people deserved.
He heard her footsteps before he saw her. He did not need to turn; he knew the cadence of her stride, the specific, graceful way she moved, something that always seemed to bring a sense of calm to the chaos in his mind.
When she finally stepped into the light of the setting sun, Zuko felt that sharp, familiar pull in his chest. Seeing her there, amidst the crimson and gold architecture of his home, felt almost surreal. Y/N was a piece of the world he had fought so hard to find, a constant in a life that had been nothing but turbulence.
“It’s different, isn’t it?” Zuko asked softly, his voice stripped of the authority he used in council meetings. He turned to her, his golden eyes searching hers, looking for traces of the displacement he knew she felt. He no longer looked like the scarred, angry prince of his youth; he looked like a man who had matured, though the lines of exhaustion around his eyes revealed the burden he carried.
He extended his hand, finding hers, not with the frantic desperation of stolen moments in the field, but with a steady, reassuring firmness. “The palace… it doesn’t feel like a fortress anymore. It feels like a home. But sometimes, when the halls are too quiet, it still feels like a cage.”
“It is very strange… I ran away from here when I was thirteen, so coming back…” Y/N agreed, observing the pompous architecture of the palace as she stepped closer to Zuko. “It’s so… oppressive.”
Zuko flinched, a flicker of pain crossing his golden eyes at her words. He knew exactly what she meant. He had lived under that oppression for years, feeling suffocated by expectation and crushed beneath his father’s shadow. To him, the palace had always been a battlefield of social hierarchies and rigid rules, a place where one’s worth was measured by obedience rather than character.
“It is,” he admitted, lowering his voice into a sincere murmur. He did not try to defend the architecture or its history. He would not lie to her. Not anymore. “It was designed to make you feel small. To make you feel like you’re just a cog in a machine that’s been running for a hundred years.”
He stepped closer, closing the distance until the warmth of his body shielded her from the vastness and imposing nature of the courtyard. He reached out, brushing her cheek with a tenderness that felt almost out of place in such a formal setting. His thumb traced the line of her jaw, a silent attempt to anchor himself in the present rather than the ghosts of the past.
“But that’s why we’re changing it,” he said, his gaze intensifying, burning with a quiet, revolutionary fire. “The old customs… they’re dying, Y/N. We’re tearing down the walls, metaphorically speaking. We’re making room for something different. Something that doesn’t demand you hide who you are just to fit in.”
He leaned in, pressing his forehead against hers, letting the silence of the night wrap around them. “I don’t want you to feel like a guest in a museum, or a prisoner in a palace. I want this to be yours too. If it feels too heavy, we’ll lighten it. If it’s too cold, we’ll light a fire.”
His eyes searched hers, looking for the vulnerability he knew she hid. “Just promise me one thing,” he whispered, his voice thick with a sudden, fierce possessiveness. “Don’t let the stone swallow you. Stay here, with me. In the middle of all this chaos, we’ll be the part of this place that actually feels alive.”
“I will not allow that to happen to me, my lord. I will be here until the end,” Y/N said in a low yet firm tone, as if each word carried a silent promise she had no intention of breaking. As she spoke, she leaned slightly, resting her cheek against Zuko’s shoulder, allowing herself a moment of closeness amidst the formality that now surrounded them. The fabric of his robe was heavy and richly crafted, the intricate brocade brushing against her skin with a firm, refined texture, so different from the simple clothes he used to wear during the war.
She remained there for a moment, feeling the symbolic weight of everything; not just the garments, but the role he now occupied.
And she could not help but notice.
Zuko was… different.
Not only in position, but in presence. There was something naturally imposing about the way he carried himself, as if the title of Fire Lord had found in him a place that had always belonged to him, even before he believed it. His clothing reinforced that image; the rich layers, the meticulously embroidered details, everything contributed to transforming the man she knew so well into someone who now also had to be seen by an entire nation.
And he was beautiful.
In a way that was not merely aesthetic, but complete, as if that image were the sum of everything he had endured to reach this point.
Y/N let out a small sigh before stepping back just enough to observe him better, though she remained close.
“It’s just…” she began, hesitating briefly as if carefully choosing her words. Her fingers lifted almost automatically, finding the outer fabric of his robes and gliding over it with a distracted curiosity, exploring the rich texture and intricate embroidery. “I didn’t imagine it would be easier to win a war than to be the center of attention for an entire nation just for being your fiancée.”
There was a hint of humor in her voice, but also undeniable sincerity.
Her fingers paused when they found the outline of the dragon embroidered into the fabric, and she began tracing it with her fingertips, following its lines with almost playful care, as if the gesture helped her organize her thoughts.
“And organizing the Fire Lord’s wedding…” she continued, letting out another sigh, this time more evident, as if finally giving voice to her accumulated exhaustion. “It’s a real challenge.”
She tilted her head slightly, still focused on the embroidery as she spoke, as if it helped her maintain balance between nervousness and the lightness she tried to sustain.
“There are so many details filled with meaning… so many rituals that must be followed precisely…” she added, her tone now more reflective, almost admiring the complexity of it all, though also somewhat overwhelmed by it.
Zuko let out a dry, breathless laugh, the sound vibrating in his chest where her cheek had rested. He looked down at her, watching her fingers trace the golden thread of the dragon on his robes. There was a deep irony in that; they had survived Agni Kais, monsters, and the end of the world itself, and yet here they were, seemingly defeated by silk and ceremony.
“Don’t even get me started,” he replied, his voice laced with amusement and a touch of embarrassment. He did not pull away from her touch; instead, he leaned into it, allowing her to explore the heavy fabric of his mantle. “I thought leading a war council would be the hardest part of this job. But apparently, deciding the exact shade of crimson for ceremonial banners is where the real battles are fought.”
He reached out, covering her hand with his, his larger, warmer palm pressing her fingers more firmly against the embroidery. He could feel the faint tremor of her exhaustion, the weight of expectations placed upon her shoulders now that she was not only a warrior, but the future Fire Lady.
“You’re doing better than anyone expected,” he said, his gaze intense, the humor fading to reveal the genuine devotion beneath. “The sages, the ministers… they’re all watching you, waiting to see if you’ll falter. But they don’t know you. They don’t know that you are the strongest person in this entire palace.”
He stepped closer, his shadow enveloping her in the fading light, his presence once again becoming that protective, imposing force she had noticed. He was no longer just the boy she had fallen in love with at thirteen; he was a man who had carved a kingdom out of chaos and was determined to be the foundation she could lean on.
“If the rituals become too much, if the details start to suffocate you…” He leaned in, his lips brushing her ear in a rough, intimate whisper that made her shiver. “…just look at me. Remember that we’re not doing this for the ancestors or the nation. We’re doing this for us. And if we have to skip a few traditions just to keep our sanity, then let them whisper. Let them talk.”
He pulled back just enough to meet her gaze, a crooked, rebellious smile playing on his lips. “Besides, if wedding planning gets too stressful, we can always run away to the Earth Kingdom or the Water Tribe. Just the two of us. What do you think?”
A soft, melodic laugh escaped Y/N’s lips, the sound sharply contrasting with the heavy, ceremonial silence of the palace. Escape? The mere thought sent a comforting warmth through her chest, making her cheeks flush delicately.
“You and your escapes,” she teased, her eyes shining with affection as she looked at him. “You should stop that terrible habit, my lord. Besides, the world needs to meet your consort, don’t you think?”
She let her hand slide to his chest, feeling the steady, powerful pulse of his heart beneath the silk. It was a comforting rhythm, reminding her that despite crowns and titles, he was still the same boy who had challenged her since childhood.
He looked at her, his expression softening into something deeply tender. The playfulness faded, replaced by a profound, intense devotion.
“Alright. Alright. No more escapes,” he whispered, his thumb tracing the curve of her hip through the thin fabric of her dress. “But know this, even if the world needs to know you, I’m the only one who will ever need you. Whether you’re wearing a crown or traveling in disguise, you’re the only person who makes this throne feel like a home.”
He leaned in, his nose brushing hers, his warm breath against her skin. “So let’s give them the spectacle they want. Let’s give them the perfect, majestic, flawless wedding they expect. But the moment the last candle is extinguished…” He paused, a dark, hungry smile returning to his face as his voice dropped into a sensual growl. “…that’s when the real celebration begins. Just for us.”
“Already thinking about our wedding night, my lord?” Y/N whispered, her voice low and velvety, almost a murmur blending into the air, brushing lightly against his ear with calculated closeness. There was a teasing tone there, soft but intentional, and also an evident caution; she did not want the guards or anyone else passing through the palace corridors to overhear even a fragment of that conversation.
The formality of the environment contrasted with the intimacy of the moment.
Externally, everything demanded composure: the wide corridors, the heavy fabrics, the watchful eyes of those who served the new Fire Lord. But within that small space between them, Y/N let something else slip through.
“I thought you wouldn’t be so eager…” she continued, keeping her tone low, almost confidential, as she stepped back just enough to glance at him, a faint glimmer of amusement in her eyes. “…considering this isn’t exactly new for us.”
There was a lightness to her words, almost a subtle smile, as if she were trying to balance the tension of their responsibilities with the memory of something simpler, moments that belonged to them before titles, before crowns, before all the expectations that now surrounded them.
Her fingers lightly brushed the fabric of his robes, a subtle, almost distracted gesture that maintained that silent connection between them, even amidst the imposed formality.
Zuko felt a sudden, intense heat rise to his chest, and it had nothing to do with his firebending. Her whisper, that velvety, provocative murmur against his ear, hit him harder than any physical blow. He felt the familiar, intense pulse of desire stir his blood, a reaction so instinctive it was almost embarrassing. He was the Fire Lord, a man of gravity and authority, and yet she managed to reduce him to a state of suffocating anticipation with a single well-placed sentence.
He let out a low, tense growl, a sound that was half laugh, half surrender. He tightened his grip on her waist, his knuckles brushing against the fine silk of her dress, as if trying to anchor himself against the provocative current of her words.
“Eager?” he repeated, his voice dropping into a rough, dangerous tone, far from the composed demeanor of a ruler. He leaned forward, his lips hovering mere millimeters from hers, golden eyes burning with a dark, unapologetic hunger. “It’s not eagerness, Y/N. It’s… anticipation. There’s a difference.”
He let his gaze sweep over her face, his expression oscillating between playful and predatory. The humor was still there, but it was eclipsed by a raw, primal honesty.
"And don't act like it's 'nothing new' to me," he retorted, his voice deep and vibrant. "Every time you look at me like that, or touch me like that... it's like the first time all over again. The titles, the robes, the ceremonies... all that is just noise. It only serves to prolong the wait."
He cast a quick, furtive glance down the dark corridor behind them, making sure the silence of the palace remained intact, before turning his full attention back to her.
"You think you're being subtle," he teased, tracing a slow, possessive circle with his thumb against her hip, "but you're driving me completely crazy. If you keep up these games in the middle of the palace, you'll find out that the Fire Lord is a very impatient man when it comes to getting what he wants. Now, let's find those advisors before I decide to skip the entire banquet just to be alone with you."
"First, give your bride a kiss, my lord."
Zuko let out a sigh, half-groan, a sound of pure and delicious defeat. He loved it when she was like this, bold, provocative, and completely aware of the power she wielded over him. The formal and elegant woman the court saw was a masterpiece, but this Y/N, the one who demanded what was due to her with a mischievous glint in her eyes, was the one who truly possessed his soul.
"You're impossible," he muttered, though his eyes gleamed with anger. "Demanding things from the Fire Lord in the middle of his own palace... you're lucky no one's listening."
He didn't wait for a second invitation. He reached out, sliding his hand from her waist to the nape of her neck, his fingers tangling in her hair to pull her firmly to him. He didn't give her a polite, courteous kiss on the cheek, nor a chaste touch on her lips. Instead, he took her mouth with a fierce, hungry intensity that revealed all the years of desire and the growing tension of their situation.
The kiss was deep and possessive, a silent declaration that, despite the crowns, the ceremonies, and the gaze of a nation, she was his, and he was hers. He savored her sweetness, the warmth of her breath, and the undeniable spark that always ignited between them. For a few stolen seconds, the heavy silk of his robes and the weight of his responsibilities vanished, replaced by her singular and overwhelming reality.
When he finally pulled away, he didn't go far, leaving his lips a breath away from hers. His eyes were dark, half-closed, and filled with a raw, defenseless adoration.
"There," he said in a hoarse, deep voice. "My bride has been properly attended to. Are you satisfied, or do you intend to distract me all night?" He gave her a crooked, burning smile, running his thumb along her swollen lower lip. "Because, if you continue like this, the banquet will be the least of our worries."
Y/N looked around, her fingers gripping Zuko's cloak and pinning him.
"Do you think we can have a quickie before they come after us?" she asked, looking at the heavy door that led to the entrance; behind which several Fire Nation advisors awaited them.
Zuko's eyes widened, a surprised, breathless laugh dying in his throat as he felt the sudden, firm pressure of her hands pinning him against the cold stone of the column. The sheer, brazen audacity of her suggestion sent a surge of pure adrenaline straight to his core. He looked from her flushed, beautiful face to the heavy, silent doors of the hall, hearing the muffled, rhythmic footsteps of the councilors walking on the other side.
"A... quickie?" he hissed, his voice a frantic, low whisper, oscillating between disbelief and an intense, burning desire. "Y/N, you're crazy. We're in the middle of the palace! If a guard comes by, or if one of those ancient sages decides to check us out, we're dead. Not just dead from 'social shame,' but from 'scandalous political disaster'!"
Despite his words of caution, his body betrayed him instantly. His heart pounded against his ribs like a trapped bird, and the heat emanating from it made him spin. He could feel the intensity of his own need pressing against the thin silk of his robes, a physical pain that demanded he say yes.
He glanced nervously at the door once more, then at her, his dark golden eyes half-closed with a primal, hungry intensity. The risk was terrifying, but the thought of her right there, at that moment, in the shadows of his own throne room, was almost unbearable.
"Gods, you're going to kill me," he groaned, his hands sliding from her waist to her thighs, his fingers digging into her generous curves with a desperate, possessive grip. He pulled her close, letting her feel exactly how much her suggestion had affected him.
"All right," he murmured, his voice dropping to a hoarse, authoritative tone as he tilted his head to bury his face in the crook of her neck, inhaling her scent. "But we have to be quick. If we don't get through those doors in five minutes, the Fire Lord will have a very interesting explanation to give the council."
A soft, breathless laugh escaped his lips, his cheeks flushing a deep crimson at her desperate, grave order. She loved how easily his composure crumbled when she pressured him, especially when the situation was so critical.
Five minutes is enough, she thought, her heart pounding against her ribs. Reaching his waist, her fingers explored the intricate, heavy clasps of the clothes, her touch trembling slightly with a mixture of adrenaline and pure desire. She leaned closer, her full lips brushing against the shell of his ear as she whispered, "Then stop talking and show me just how impatient the Fire Lord can be."
With a sudden and decisive movement, Y/N lifted the skirts she was wearing, pressing her thick thighs firmly against his.
He lifted her slightly, pressing her back against the cold stone of the column to give her stability as he snuggled into her space, his body a wall of warmth shielding her from the corridor's view. "But if we get caught, I promise I'll be the one who has to explain to the Supreme Sage why the Fire Lord is... busy. Now, shut up and give me a kiss before someone knocks on the door."
Zuko didn't need to be told twice. The instant her thighs pressed against him and he felt the warmth of her skin, any vestige of royal decorum vanished, replaced by an intense and singular concentration. He let out a low, visceral sound of satisfaction, his hands sliding beneath the heavy fabric of her skirt to find the soft, warm skin of her thighs, pulling her even closer against the rigid line of his body.
"To hell with the Supreme Sage," he muttered against her lips, his voice hoarse and breathless.
He pressed his lips against hers, the kiss desperate and raw, a stark contrast to the serene and ceremonial man he was supposed to be. He was a possessed man, his tongue intertwined with hers in a feverish rhythm while his hands worked with frenetic and precise speed. He didn't care about the silk, the embroidery, or the danger; he only cared about the sensation she caused him, her taste, and the way she was driving him to the brink of madness.
His hands moved with a singular purpose, breaking down the barriers between them with a desperate urgency. When he finally found her, the sensation of her wetness against his skin made him dizzy. He groaned into his mouth, a deep, animalistic sound he tried to stifle so as not to alert the guards.
"Y/N..." he whispered her name like a prayer and a curse at the same time, his golden eyes wide and dark as he stared at her. He positioned himself, his movements precise and voracious, driven by the pure adrenaline of the risk.
As he penetrated her, a sharp, muffled sigh escaped her lips, and he immediately leaned forward, his lips capturing her mouth to stifle the sound, his body moving in a rhythmic and powerful cadence. Each thrust was a silent battle against time, a frenetic and beautiful dance of friction and heat in the shadows of the palace. He was pure, raw, unrestrained strength and intensity, his eyes fixed on hers, watching how her expression oscillated between pleasure and the terror of being discovered.
A sharp, muffled cry escapes her throat, swallowed by the heat of his mouth as he penetrates her with primal ferocity. Y/N's fingers dig into the rigid muscles of his shoulders beneath the layers of clothing, her nails lightly gripping the thin silk of his garments as she tries to brace herself against the intensity of the sensation.
Her vision blurs, the pale, her eyes obscured by a haze of pure pleasure and the terrifying thrill of risk. He is much faster, much more intense when he tries to be silent, she thinks, her breath catching as a wave of heat washes over her body.
She arches her back against the cold stone, her thick thighs pressing against his waist in a desperate attempt to pull him even closer.
"Zuko..." she moaned during the kiss, her voice a broken, melodious thread. "The door... of someone... ah!" She gasped, her eyes widening as she heard the dull thud of a footstep on the other side of the thick wood, just seconds from her hiding place.
Zuko's entire body stiffened at the sound of that footstep. The thud echoed off the stone like a drum roll, announcing doom. His heart pounded so hard against his ribs that he was sure the person on the other side could hear it. The sudden adrenaline rush was a double-edged sword; it made his blood boil with a frantic and desperate need to finish, even if it forced him to freeze mid-movement.
He didn't pull away. Instead, he buried his face in the crook of her neck, his teeth grazing her skin in a silent, biting groan to avoid screaming her name. He squeezed her thighs with brutal intensity, his muscles trembling from the effort of remaining still while her body begged for movement, for him to penetrate her one last time, relentlessly.
"Shh..." he whispered against her skin, the word almost inaudible. His golden eyes were wide, fixed on the sliver of light under the heavy door. He was a predator caught in a trap, frozen in a state of exquisite, agonizing tension.
The silence in the corridor was heavy, suffocating. He could feel Y/N's pulse racing against his chest, her warmth in stark contrast to the cold stone behind him. Each second felt like an eternity. He was torn between the desire to lose himself in her and the desperate need to maintain the serene mask of the Fire Lord.
Finally, the footsteps faded, disappearing into the distance of the corridor. Only then did Zuko allow himself to exhale, a long, trembling breath that seemed to have been held for an eternity. The tension in his body didn't dissipate; it transformed. The fear of being caught turned into a raw, unrestrained hunger.
"They're gone," he whispered, his voice hoarse and menacing. He stepped back just enough to look her in the eyes, his expression fierce and unrepentant. "But we're not finished yet. Not by a long shot."
With a sudden, powerful impulse, he abandoned any pretense of caution. He began to move again, his pace no longer quickened by the fear of being discovered, but driven by the need to claim her completely before the world could call him back. He was relentless, his movements heavy and deep, his eyes fixed on hers as he guided them toward the edge of the precipice.
Y/N's head fell back against the column with a soft thud, her breath failing in a series of rhythmic, broken gasps as he resumed his pace. The sheer, unrestrained force of his movements left her breathless, her senses dazed by the friction of his skin against hers and the delicious, terrifying wave of near-discovery.
Her fingers dug so hard into his covered shoulders that her knuckles turned white. As the tension in her lower abdomen coiled into a tight, frantic knot, she tightened her legs even more around his waist, pulling him into the center of her heat.
"Zuko... please," she moaned, her voice a desperate, melodious plea that was lost against his neck as she felt the first tremors of climax begin to manifest. She looked at him through the mist of her pale eyes, her face flushed a deep, burning red. "If you... if you don't finish now... we'll never get to the banquet."
Zuko's jaw clenched, a low growl vibrating in his throat as he heard her plea. The mention of the banquet was almost laughable, given his state of composure, but he understood the urgency. The pressure of the moment, the risk, the heat, the pure, overwhelming sensation of her pressing against him was pushing him to a breaking point he could no longer control.
"Then don't make me wait," he whispered, his voice hoarse and heavy with desire. "Cum for me. Now."
He abandoned all remaining restraint, his movements becoming heavy, deep, and punishingly swift. He was no longer the serene Fire Lord; he was a man driven by instinct, his golden eyes burning with a primal fire as he watched the transformation in her face under the weight of pleasure. He could feel her trembling begin, her body pulsing around him, and that was the final catalyst he needed.
He penetrated her one last time, a deep, lacerating thrust that seemed to pin her to the very stone of the palace. As Y/N's climax washed over her in waves, Zuko let out a muffled groan, his head falling forward to bury his face in her shoulder as he rode her to her peak. His entire body stiffened, every muscle tense and trembling as he spilled inside her, the sensation so intense it felt like he was burning from the inside out.
For a long moment, the only sound in the alcove was the irregular, synchronized rhythm of their breaths and the frantic beating of their hearts. Zuko remained immersed in her, his forehead pressed against hers, his eyes tightly closed as he tried to regain his senses.
Slowly, he stepped back, though he didn't let go completely. He reached out, trembling slightly, as he brushed away a strand of hair that fell across his damp forehead. His expression was a mixture of sheer weariness and ardent, triumphant adoration.
"The feast..." he gasped, a crooked, breathless smile curving his lips as he gazed at her flushed, beautiful face. "I think we're a few minutes late. But, heavens, Y/N... it was worth it."
Y/N let out a long, trembling sigh, her head falling back against the stone as the spasms of her climax slowly subsided. Her skin was damp with sweat, and her cheeks remained a deep, undeniable red, a stark contrast to the pale, expressionless white of her eyes, which now seemed slightly dazed. A small, giddy smile appeared on her rosy lips as she felt his warm, intense weight still pressed against her.
"You're a threat to my sanity, Zuko," she whispered, her voice still hoarse and velvety from the effort, as she awkwardly reached out to straighten the uneven collar of his clothes. She tried to regain some of her usual composure, but her hands trembled as she smoothed the luxurious fabric over his chest.
"If we arrive at the banquet looking like we've just survived a skirmish instead of a formal dinner, the sages will have more to gossip about than just the political intrigues of the new Fire Lord." She leaned in, placing a soft, lingering kiss on the corner of his scarred eye, her touch becoming tender and comforting.
Zuko let out a low, breathless laugh, the sound vibrating warmly against her chest. He held her trembling hands in his, placing a firm, lingering kiss on her palms before helping her smooth the wrinkles in her robes. He felt a little disheveled, a little messy, but the lingering warmth between them made him feel more alive than any coronation ceremony ever could.
"Let them speak freely," he murmured, his voice finally regaining some of its usual husky strength, though the burning intensity in his eyes had not yet completely disappeared. "Let them wonder why the Fire Lord seems so pleased and why his bride has such a mischievous glint in her eyes. If they want to talk about us, let them talk about how much we belong to each other."
He stepped back just enough for her to adjust her heavy skirts, his gaze sweeping over her with a possessive and appreciative hunger. He wanted to pull her back into the shadows and start all over again, but the distant sound of a gong signaled that the time for rebellion was coming to an end.
With a practical, almost frantic grace, he helped her adjust her clothes, his fingers lingering on her waist one last time. He reached out to tuck a loose strand of her hair behind her ear, his expression softening into that sincere and tender devotion he reserved only for her.
"Let's go," he said, offering her his arm with a feignedly regal gesture that barely concealed the crooked smile on his face. "Let's face the sages. But remember, Y/N..." He leaned forward, his voice lowering to a sensual and intimate whisper as they walked toward the doors. "...this is just the beginning. The real celebration begins when the doors are locked again."
The Jasmine Dragon was uncharacteristically loud for a Tuesday night. Iroh had long since retired to his personal quarters upstairs, leaving the tea shop—which doubled as the Gaang’s unofficial headquarters in Ba Sing Se—to the rowdy remains of the world’s saviors.
Now in their mid-twenties, the group didn’t get together as often as they used to. Between Zuko’s grueling schedule as Fire Lord, Aang’s nomadic duties, and Sokka’s tireless work with the United Republic Council, "leisure time" was a myth they only occasionally managed to make a reality.
Tonight, however, the Cactus Juice was flowing (courtesy of Sokka’s questionable "private stash") and the premium Fire Nation sake was disappearing fast.
At the center of the rowdiness of the Gaang sat Zuko. He looked every bit the Fire Lord—broad-shouldered, regal, and wearing his hair in a topknot secured by the Flame Headpiece—but his posture was relaxed. His arm was draped over the back of the chair occupied by his wife, (Y/N).
(Y/N) was, by all accounts, the "grounding wire" of the group. She was a woman of few words, known for her sharp wit and a impassivity that rivaled Zuko’s own. While Toph and Katara were currently engaged in a loud argument about the best way to steer a sand-sailer, and Aang was trying (and failing) to teach Momo how to juggle berries, (Y/N) usually sat back with a small, knowing smile, sipping her tea.
Usually.
But tonight, the tea had been replaced. Sokka had been "testing" a new batch of fermented plum wine, and (Y/N), being the polite guest she was, had finished three glasses before anyone realized she hadn't eaten dinner.
Zuko felt a soft weight lean against his shoulder. He glanced down, expecting (Y/N) to be tired. Instead, he found her staring at him with wide, glassy eyes, her cheeks flushed a deep, dusty rose.
"Zuko," she whispered, her voice uncharacteristically high-pitched.
"Yes, love?" he asked, his voice softening. He adjusted his arm to pull her closer.
She blinked slowly, her eyelashes fluttering. Then, with a sudden jerk, she pulled away, staring at his hand on her shoulder as if it were a strange spirit. "Oh! Excuse me, sir."
The table went silent. Sokka paused with a chicken skewer halfway to his mouth. Toph turned her head, her milky eyes scanning the room as if she could "see" the shift in the air.
"Sir?" Zuko repeated, a confused smile tugging at the corner of his lips. "Is this a joke? Did Sokka put you up to this?"
(Y/N) smoothed out her robes, her movements exaggerated and clumsy. She looked him up and down, her gaze lingering on the gold headpiece and then the golden eyes that usually looked at her with such adoration. She let out a soft, dreamy sigh that made her sway on her stool.
"You’re... you're very handsome," she murmured, leaning back in toward him, but then catching herself and snapping upright. "But I shouldn't be saying that. A man of your... fire-ness... probably has a lot of ladies waiting for him."
Sokka let out a muffled snort. Katara’s eyes widened. "Oh, no. Zuko, how much did she have?"
"Just the plum wine," Zuko said, his brow furrowing in genuine concern. He reached out to touch (Y/N)’s forehead. "Honey, are you feeling okay? You’re acting a little... displaced."
(Y/N) batted his hand away with a pout that could have melted a glacier. "Don't 'honey' me! You don't even know me! We just met... in this very loud building with the blind girl and the bald monk."
"I’m sitting right here, (Y/N)!" Toph cackled, leaning back. "This is gold. Sparky, she’s gone."
Zuko looked back at his wife. She was currently staring at his wedding band—a simple, elegant gold band that matched the one on her own finger. She looked at her own hand, then his, and her lower lip began to tremble.
"Are you..." (Y/N) started, her voice breaking. She looked like she was on the verge of a tragedy. "Are you... married?"
Zuko took a deep breath, trying to suppress the urge to laugh. He knew how sensitive she was, even when she wasn't tipsy. If he laughed now, she’d never let him live it down. "Yes, (Y/N). I am very happily married."
The reaction was instantaneous.
(Y/N) let out a tiny, heartbroken whimper. She slumped forward, burying her face in her hands on the table. "I knew it! All the good ones are taken by some... some Fire Nation duchess with perfect hair and a mean streak!"
"Actually, she’s quite kind," Zuko said, leaning in close to her ear, his voice dropping to a teasing rumble. "She’s a bit of a lightweight, though. And she’s currently crying into a plate of dumplings."
(Y/N) lifted her head, her eyes rimmed with tears. "Is she pretty?"
"The most beautiful woman in all the nations," Zuko said earnestly.
(Y/N) wailed—a soft, pathetic sound. "It should have been me! I saw you first! Well, I mean, I saw you just now, but I felt a connection, you know? Like... like Agni himself told me, 'Hey, look at that guy with the grumpy face, he’s the one!'"
Aang let out a chuckle, "Zuko, I think you should tell her."
Zuko sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose. He turned back to his distraught wife. "(Y/N), look at me. Look at my face."
She peered at him through her fingers. "I am. It’s a very nice face. Even the part that looks like it had a run-in with a dragon. It adds... character."
Zuko chuckled. "Thank you. Now, look at your left hand."
She lifted her hand, staring at the ring. "I know! I’m married too! That’s the worst part! I’m a married woman pining after a married Fire Lord! We’re both terrible people! We’re... we’re star-crossed! Like that play in Ember Island!"
"Please don't compare us to that play," Zuko groaned. "(Y/N), I am the person you are married to."
(Y/N) paused. She squinted at him, her brain clearly trying to connect the dots through a fog of plum wine. She reached out, her small hand cupping his scarred cheek. Her thumb traced the edge of the burned skin with a familiarity that survived even her intoxication.
"You have a very soft voice for a King," she whispered.
"I’m a Lord, actually," he corrected gently.
"Whatever," she huffed, her pout returning. "If you’re my husband... prove it."
The Gaang leaned in. This was better than any theater performance.
Zuko felt the heat rise to his cheeks. He wasn't one for public displays of affection, usually preferring to keep their romance behind the closed doors of the Caldera palace. But (Y/N) was looking at him with such genuine, drunken suspicion that he had no choice.
He leaned in, closing the gap between them. He kissed her deeply—not a quick peck, but a lingering, sweet kiss that tasted of plums and home. He pulled away just enough to whisper against her lips, "You have a birthmark on your inner ankle shaped like a turtle-duck. And you hate it when I leave my boots in the middle of the room because you trip on them in the dark."
(Y/N) froze. Her eyes cleared for a split second, a spark of recognition lighting up. Then, just as quickly, the fog rolled back in.
She let out a gasp and pushed him back, her face turning a shade of red that rivaled the Fire Nation flag. "You... you scoundrel! You're a mind reader! You've been spying on me and my husband!"
Sokka finally lost it, falling off his chair in a fit of hysterics. Katara was clutching her stomach, laughing so hard no sound was coming out.
"I give up," Zuko muttered, though he couldn't stop smiling. He stood up and scooped (Y/N) into his arms, bridal style.
"Put me down! Unhand me, you handsome tyrant!" she yelled, though she immediately snuggled her head into the crook of his neck. "I’m a married woman! My husband is going to... he’s going to firebend at you! He’s very powerful! And very grumpy! He’s like a big, warm heater with legs!"
"I'll be sure to watch out for him," Zuko said to the group, nodding toward the door. "I think it’s time to take the 'other woman' home."
"Good luck, Sparky!" Toph shouted. "Try not to let her 'husband' catch you!"
As Zuko carried her through the cool night air of Ba Sing Se toward their carriage, (Y/N) continued to grumble.
"You know," she whispered, her voice trailing off as sleep finally began to win the battle against the alcohol. "You smell just like him. Like cinnamon and... and smoke."
"Do I?" Zuko asked softly, stepping into the carriage and settling her onto his lap.
"Mmhmm," she hummed, closing her eyes. She reached up, fumbling for his hand and interlocking their fingers, their matching rings clicking together. "I guess... if I can't have him... you’ll do. But don't tell him. He gets jealous."
Zuko leaned his head back against the carriage wall, watching the moonlit streets pass by. He looked down at the woman in his arms—the fierce, brilliant, reserved woman who usually ran a ministry and advised him on international policy—now fast asleep and convinced she was committing a scandalous act of infidelity with her own husband.
"Your secret is safe with me, (Y/N)," he whispered, kissing the top of her head. "I think he’ll forgive you."
Chat please don’t tell me the hype over zuko is dead already??? Posts were getting up to 20k+ like and I’d be refreshing the tags and getting like ten new fics every second…now it feels so quiet….wake up!!!
‘Don’t sleep on mah man I need content to fuel my own delulu fic!!
summary: to escape the duty of producing an heir, firelord zuko accepts a request for help from the avatar and in the process crosses paths with the one person he never truly let go. you.
(mixed in with the plot of legend of aang, don't read if you wish to avoid spoilers!)
firelord zuko was in a terrible fucking mood after another council meeting full of advisors all but insinuating he did not bed his concubines enough.
"you are nearly twenty-eight, my lord."
"you need an heir. it’s for the good of the realm, my lord."
"you have plenty of noble women at your disposal my lord."
it wasn’t that zuko didn't want children. he understood the importance of ensuring his line continues, of fulfilling his duties as firelord.
only zuko did not want to lay with someone he did not know intimately, and that fucking honour of his refused to let him degrade anyone to just a warm body to carry his heir.
he had hoped to marry by now but between his royal duties, rebuilding the nation and missions with the gaang, he hardly had the time to sleep let alone entertain the thought of a wife and children.
a part of him wondered if he should fix things with-
no he couldn’t do that. things had ended so badly that he wasn’t sure he could ever make up for it.
after a messenger arrived with a request for help from aang, zuko left the palace grounds. he readied an airship and took to the skies.
ঌ
you had been in the middle of washing the day off your body when a knock with a specific pattern came from your front door. you frown to yourself before quickly drying off, slipping into a silk dress and robe and rushing to the door.
when you open it a pinch of fear shows before you let your fire take over, face set in a scowl.
"what are you doing here? i thought i told you i never wanted to see you again."
stood before you in all his regal attire, was firelord zuko himself. your ex.
his eyes fell to where your robe slipped off your shoulder. you could have sworn they darkened for moment before he covered any emotion with indifference.
he clears his throat before handing you a scroll. you read it and wonder what a message from the avatar has to do with you, before you reach the bottom.
𝔟𝔯𝔦𝔫𝔤 (𝔫𝔞𝔪𝔢) 𝔴𝔦𝔱𝔥 𝔶𝔬𝔲. 𝔴𝔢 𝔠𝔬𝔲𝔩𝔡 𝔲𝔰𝔢 𝔥𝔢𝔯 𝔥𝔢𝔩𝔭.
your frown deepens. it had been years since you seen your old friends, what could aang possibly be summoning you for?
"what the fuck is going on?"
ঌ
you had dressed yourself in fire nation attire, decorated in red, gold and black from head to toe, your hair pulled back in a braid.
you were glad to find that toph, katara and sokka had already been on the airship. though a part of you rolled your eyes at the fact that you had been the last one to be picked up, despite the fact that you lived in the same nation as zuko.
which only told you he had every intention of ignoring the end of aang's message until one of the others—likely katara—called him out.
fuck. him.
you decided you would be petty back and for the past three hours you'd been in the air, you refused to even look at him. not when he was dressed like that. not when his hair had grown in the years you hadn't seen him. not when he was ripped to the fucking gods.
you sat with toph and katara, letting the fire in your palm build before smothering it to an ember with a flick of your wrist. zuko steered the ship while sokka attempted to get the firelord to laugh. it hadn't taken much. in the time you had been absent, zuko had lightened tremendously.
no, that cold indifference had been reserved for you and you alone. because who else was more deserving of it than the woman who turned down the firelord himself?
it was four years ago. zuko was only twenty-three and still weeding out ozai supporters while rebuilding a nation that spent one hundred years ruled on rage and violence. you tried to make it work, really you did, but when you realized you would always come second to the nation, it had only seemed logical to break it off.
the timing had been terrible. zuko had asked to marry you, but you knew you could never handle the expectations that came with being firelady, though the title would bring your family great honour.
as one would expect, zuko was heartbroken, and in a moment of unchecked anger, he told you he had never loved you anyways.
so you left him and your childhood home behind, settling into the countryside.
now here you both were again. pretending as if you were not still ridiculously attracted to each other, as if that fire that burned between you two had ever truly been smothered by the hurtful lies he spewed at you.
“you’re staring.” katara stated the obvious with a teasing smirk. she had been the first to know of your crush on zuko when you were only teenagers and you hadn’t even told her.
"i am not." you quickly snapped your eyes away from the firelord's back.
"how long do you think she's going to continue avoiding the truth?" toph snickers, kicking her feet onto the table you guys were sat at.
you roll your eyes before remembering she couldn't see, therefore making the action pointless.
"avoid what?" you crossed your arms.
"the fact that you're still head over heels for zuko, because I can tell you now, he's still not over you." katara answers for toph.
you give a dry laugh, remembering the night you called things off. "i think he'd disagree with that statement. he made it very clear how he felt and i'm not the kind of person who needs to be told anything twice."
"zuko had a lot more anger back then and to be fair, he did try to explain things but you ignored him and us."
you remembered. how could you not? you still had the letters he sent you during that first year, though you had no idea how he even knew where you went. but it hadn't been enough. your heart was already broken and a sour feeling had been left in the wake of his wrath.
"i've moved on katara and so has he. now will someone please explain to me what's going on?"
katara sighed but decided to let it go, for now. "a group of rebels who call themselves the denied have been attacking benders and raiding ancient sights. aang believes they're looking for some kind of staff."
you sit back considering this. you had never heard of the group but knew that if they were desperate enough to attack benders, this staff must be something they should be the last people having.
to attack the avatar himself?
you looked toward zuko again and found he had already been looking at you. he didn't look angry, but as if he had been remembering the time you spent together. as if he was working up the courage to finally say something to you.
he didn't break eye contact when you stared back and it sent shivers through your body before you looked away, heat spreading through your cheeks.
ঌ
a sinister feeling overcame you as you watched aang interact with his new airbender friend. he called himself taga and while you were happy he was no longer the last airbender, you trusted the mysterious man as far as you could throw him.
something was pulling at your spirit, telling you he could not be trusted. you were just glad katara seemed to think the same.
after the denied had attacked the ship, you all managed to make it through the eye of the storm relatively safe.
you had no idea where the fuck you were going now but while you didn't trust taga, you did trust aang. so while the others sat with the airbenders on the deck, you opted to stay inside after receiving the relevant information.
"can we talk?" an all too familiar voice interrupted, just as you closed your eyes.
you sighed, peaking at zuko with one eye before closing it again. "yes."
you heard the sound of the chair next you being pulled back before he sat on it. an awkward silence followed before you opened your eyes and fully sat up.
"yes zuko?" you stared at him. he had the nerve to look embarrassed. good!
he rubbed at the back of his neck, looking away from your judging eyes. you had never seen him look so bashful and it tugged at your heart.
oh no. absolutely the fuck not. you were still angry and would not be won over by his golden eyes and insanely gorgeous face. those arms-
you clear your throat and squeeze your legs against the ache growing between them.
"i just- i wanted to apologize for what i said that night. it wasn't true, none of it was. i was just.. angry. there hasn't been a day where i haven't thought about you. i'm sorry."
you hadn't expected the straight forwardness. zuko wasn't always good with expressing his feelings and you had been too good at expressing yours.
at your silence, zuko bit his bottom lip and ran his hand through his tousled hair. he didn't make hating him easy.
"i'm still angry." you said, ignoring the heat forming in your lower stomach.
"i know." his body slightly leaned forward, as if you were a force pulling him closer.
"you hurt me."
"i know. i'm deeply sorry."
"i'm sorry too."
his hand reached forward, hovering as if to give you a chance to pull away. when you didn't, he grabbed your hand and squeezed.
"i know love and if you agree, i would like us to be friends again."
love. the pet name had butterflies shooting right to your pussy. zuko had always been a gentle lover in bed and whenever he was balls deep inside you it was his favorite thing to whisper in your ear.
you have to fight the moan he nearly coaxed from you, your lips quirked up in a small smile.
ঌ
to say you were pissed would be the understatement of the century. you burned with a fury that would rival sozin's comet. you knew taga couldn't be trusted but when you found him attacking your friends, you were surprised at his brutality.
he had destroyed the airship, sokka was down, and the others were fading fast. you had wondered off in search of food and had only been gone ten minutes before the yells started.
you immediately joined the fight, jumping onto the rock toph had just lifted and shot a massive ring of fire toward the airbender. he countered it with a ball of wind that sent you flying back.
zuko saw this and used his flames to send him into the air, catching you in his arms and taking the brunt of the impact when you both hit the ground.
hair fell from it's braid as you looked down at him and fear settled deep into your bones. he was knocked out cold and after ensuring he was still breathing, you stood to your feet again. your leg hurt terribly, but this fucker would pay for even thinking he could attack your friends and live to tell the tale.
while he was distracted fighting toph, you closed your eyes and took in a deep breath. you searched for that feeling, the slight buzz in the air and when you found it, you lifted your two fingers in the air and pulled. loud cracks of thunder filled the island and when the lightning appeared, you took control of it and aimed it right at taga.
ঌ
sometimes you really hated aang’s no kill policy. of course he would arrive at the exact moment your lightning almost took taga down. of course, he blocked it by earth bending a huge rock in front his traitor airbro (as sokka calls it), and of course you received a disappointing lecture after he neutralized taga.
you of course, were left feeling guilty. your father had been one of the more brutal advisors of lord ozai, and his teachings sometimes stuck a little too well.
now you sat idly back while katara used her powers to heal zuko, sokka and toph. you had a few painful scratches but had denied any treatment until the others were taken care of.
it had taken an hour for them to come back around, but one by one they started to wake up. zuko was the last to awake and the others left to give you privacy, after ensuring he was ok.
“hi.” you whispered, moving to help him sit up fully. his hair fell down his back and his shirt was completely gone now, shredded in the fight against taga.
“hi. are you okay?” he winced as he lifted his hand to your face, grabbed your chin and looked you over before letting go.
ever the protective zuko. your heart fluttered, your eyes burning at the gentleness. you had forgotten what it was like to have someone care for you as much as zuko did.
the man threw himself in harms way to save you, took the brunt of the fall which knocked him out and now he’s asking if you’re ok as if he hadn’t saved your life.
fuck. fuck my hopelessly romantic heart. you thought.
“you saved my life zuko. if you hadn’t been there-”
his eyes softened as he looked at you with unfiltered adoration. as if you were the most precious thing in the world. as if he could will you to understand just how important you were to him with looks alone. “i have a lot more to make up for, if you let me.”
“i would like that.”
ঌ
two weeks had passed since the mission and while everyone had returned to their respective homes, you were in the royal palace of the fire nation. far from your humble cabin in the country side.
true to your word, you had taken zuko up on his offer to make up for the past. true to his, he had sent for you five days ago and in that short time you had spent an embarrassing amount of time together.
servants had began to whisper about firelord zuko’s lady friend and you were pretty sure you overheard his grand chamberlain complaining to him about it when you passed the throne room.
you caught the words: her father, concubines, heir, marriage, legacy and others you didn’t care to decipher because the sound of your racing heart filled your ears.
an heir. zuko was trying for a baby and you were getting in the way. distracting him from his royal duties. he defended you of course, chastising the chamberlain for speaking out of turn and threatening to fire him if he ever mentioned you in a foul manner again.
you bit your lip as you continued toward the gardens, silk dress flowing behind you.
you weren’t the same person you were four years ago. you were sure of who you were, more confident in your ability to be a good partner..
a good firelady.
you were nearly twenty-eight yourself and your mother never let a visit go by without making sure you knew how disappointed she was that you had not given her grandchildren yet. that you had not been wed yet.
after hearing him defend you, you become overwhelmed with the sudden urge to do your duty as a citizen of the fire nation and give them the heir they so desperately wanted.
spirits. it was because you were ovulating, of course it was. zuko had been nothing but respectful the last five days you’d been there, often joining you for tea and late night talks in his personal garden.
on the fourth day when you had asked him why his personal one and not the more grand, public gardens, he stared at you for a few seconds, bangs falling out of his bun before saying:
“some things are too precious to be shared.”
you nearly jumped on his lap then and it took every ounce of restraint you had built up over the years to not utterly embarrass yourself.
today he promised to give you a tour of the new wing of the palace, an area with added security that would be restricted to the new royal family whenever zuko settled down.
a part of you hoped he was hinting at something by showing you. that a part of him wanted this just as badly as you did.
when you finally made it to the gardens, iroh had been there waiting. uncle iroh.
spirits, you had been too excited to see him still alive and rushed to hug him. he had laughed when you all but crashed your body into his, allowing himself to hug you back. though the hug was not as tight as you remembered them being when you were a kid.
as the child of a royal advisor you had been at the palace for half of your life. you grew close to iroh, him being more of a father figure than your own. he took you under his wing, helping you control your ability to lightning bend at the age of only ten. you had been sad when he decided to join zuko in his banishment.
he looked older of course but other than that he was still the same soft hearted man you once knew.
he talked of zuko mostly, telling you his fear of his nephew being alone once he passed. how he did not want him to feel smothered so he never brought it up to him, but how he needed someone who understood him by his side.
someone who could see him as more than just firelord. to give him the family and happiness he had always deserved.
he was not subtle at all in implying that, that person was you. in fact, it was literally what he said.
“it should be you (name). zuko can be hot headed but i never seen him love anyone as much he loves you.”
the visit left you flustered and hot with the thought of creating a family with zuko.
loves. iroh said loves as in the present, not loved.
after your visit, you found zuko in your guest room waiting for you. your face was still flushed from the earlier encounter and your never ending, ovulation enhanced thoughts.
there he sat on the edge of your bed in simple red robes, hair falling loose down his back.
he looked ethereal. his scar glowed under the golden light that poured in the room, his skin appeared smooth enough to bite.
he was a pyre luring you in and fuck, you didn’t mind being burnt.
you smiled politely when he stood at the sound of the door closing. ever the gentleman. if he were caught in here, the chamberlain would have a stroke.
“hi.” you nearly cooed and bit your lip in embarrassment.
if zuko noticed he didn’t say anything. instead he walked up to you, taking your hand in his and giving it a soft peck before letting go.
“love. how was your evening?”
spirits help me. you thought, though nothing but zuko between your legs would settle the fire in your chest.
him pounding you, taking what’s rightfully his and leaving you round with his child-
“it was great, thank you!” you said too fast in a desperate attempt to stop your vulgar mind from embarrassing you further. “and how was yours? it must be tough running a entire nation.”
zuko chuckled, low and deep and you shivered as the sound vibrated through you. “stressful but nothing for you to concern yourself with. uncle told me he ran into you in the gardens.”
“yes. he’s still the same as when we were children.”
zuko’s smile was true and heart warming when he grabbed your hand again, his thumb rubbing against your knuckles in slow strokes.
you bite back a moan.
“if you’re up to it, i would like to show you the new royal quarters.”
ঌ
“it consists of twelve bedrooms. one of course, is for myself while any of the others will be for the personal offices of myself and my wife, and rooms for any children we might have.” zuko’s cheeks tinted a light pink at his words.
you were glad to know you weren’t the only one affected by them.
you felt annoyed at the thought of him having a wife that wasn’t you. children that did not share half your genetics.
you stood in the room that would belong to him and your heart skipped a beat when you noticed a small cot set up near his bed. one obviously meant for a baby.
you turned to zuko, one eyebrow raised.
“expecting already, my lord?”
he flushed and ran his hand through his hair. “this was not here yesterday, someone must have just placed it.”
“that doesn’t answer my question-”
“no!” he cut you off. “fuck. I haven’t been active since you.”
all sense of decency went out the window as you took a sultry step toward him and allowed yourself to say what you had been feeling for days.
“maybe it’s time we change that.”
zuko paused, letting your words sink in before he wrapped his huge hands around your waist and pulled you until your chest was flat against his. you steadied yourself, hands on his chest. you knew his motives hadn’t been completely innocent bringing you here and were glad you opted against wearing panties.
“mm, do not say things you don’t mean, love.” his groaned as fingers dug into your hips, golden eyes staring so intensely at you that goosebumps crept up your arms. not the alarmed kind, but the ones that told you:
i’m so fucked. so utterly, thoroughly fucked.
your hand moved up his chest and slid behind his neck before you pulled him closer, his forehead pressed against yours.
you had to stand on your toes to reach any further, your lips brushing his. electricity buzzed through your body and you knew he felt it too, because his eyes darkened as he moved his hands to cup your ass.
“i want you to fuck me zuko. let me do my duty as your loyal citizen and give you an heir.”
that was all it took. zuko fucking broke like a dam and crashed his lips against yours. the kiss was far from innocent, a combination of tongues clashing, exchanging spit and lip bites.
particularly zuko. he tasted you as if his life depended on it.
you weren’t innocent either and when your hand reached to grab his cock, he moved it and lifted you, your legs naturally wrapping around his waist.
as you two made up for years of lost kisses, you noticed zuko began to walk and soon enough you felt soft, silk sheets beneath you.
“you have no fucking idea how long i waited for this.” he groaned, grinding his hips into yours as he began to place desperate kisses against your neck. he was incredibly strained against his pants and you were sure there would be a stain left behind from your leaking pussy.
you threw your head back and moaned loudly, knowing the wing was private but not giving a single fuck if anyone heard either.
he gently tugged your head back to his, and you stared into his lust filled eyes and whispered, “prove it.”
he captured your lips in a sloppy kiss, his calloused hand moving down your body when his fingers found your pussy.
“my, my.” his eyes widened slightly as a smirk spread across his face. “look at you, already ready for me.”
“you weren’t the only one lacking in sexual partners over the years.” you purred, lifting your head to lick his bottom lip.
a low rumble escaped his mouth. something deep and feral from his soul. “a grave mistake on my end that I’ll spend a lifetime making up for.”
then as slowly and seductively as possible, he trailed kisses down your body before he settled between your legs. he wasted no time throwing your legs over his shoulders, strong hands grabbing your hips and pulling your body to the edge of the bed until your pussy was to his face.
he wasted no time, his mouth licking and sucking at your heat as if his life depended on it and you were gone. you threw your head back as fire erupted in your body.
“oh- fuck zuko, just like that!” you cried out as he added two fingers. you had forgotten just how good he was with his mouth.
“mmm.” his voice vibrated against you and your eyes rolled back as you placed a hand in his hair and gently tugged. he responded by lapping at your pussy even faster, his fingers fucking you at a brutal pace.
one look at him sent you over the edge. golden-yellow eyes stared up at you, his hair fell forward and his face was flush with arousal.
that was all it took before your body convulsed in pure, white hot pleasure. “fuuuck, oh- just like that. zuko, i’m cuming!”
he responded by pulling you even closer, drinking anything you were willing to give him, his nose pressed flat against your clit.
once your legs fell from his shoulders, he placed a final kiss your aching sex before crawling up your body. his face was glistening with your liquid, black locks falling to crown his face as he peered down at you.
“what a good fucking girl. look at you love, completely ruined and i haven’t even fucked you yet.”
you pulled him down in a loving kiss, wrapping your legs around his hips as you moved your body, grinding against his hard and leaking cock.
his eyes darkened at he lifted your legs higher, putting you in a mating press. he sat up on his knees and pulled his pants down until his cock sprang free. he grabbed and guided himself toward your entrance.
“gonna fill you with my seed. i can’t wait to see that belly swollen with my child, those beautiful breasts leaking with milk to feed our baby. do you want that love?”
holy fuck, your head was spinning. his words sent something primal through you and when he pushed forward, your back arched off the bed.
he stretched you open in slow strokes, a sting appearing before absolute ecstasy took over. but he stopped moving before you could really enjoy it.
“answer me.” he grabbed your chin, turning your head to look at him.
“yes!" you cried, moving your hips. "gods, yes zuko- give me your baby. wanna make you a father, give you an heir.” you moaned out, your hands grabbing at his lower back.
"i'm gonna fill you, and after you give birth to this one, i'm gonna fucking do it again." zuko grabbed your legs and began to fuck you slow. your body ached for more, for him to pound you, to claim you and mark you as his.
he chuckled as if he could hear your thoughts. “plenty of time for that. let me show how much i love you. how much you consume my every waking hour.”
and he did.
zuko made love to you for what felt like hours, his hands and mouth worshipping your body the entire time. he whispered sweet nothings into your ear, taking his time and making sure you understood just how much you meant to him.
when your stomach tightened again, that euphoric feeling spread from your clit to the rest of your body. you were were seeing stars as your orgasm spread over you.
"zuko yes! oh god- don't stop!"
he carried you through your high, his hips picking up pace as he searched for his own. he sat back on his knees, lifted your hips and pounded into you in at a wicked pace. his hair fell onto his face, sweat dripping down his forehead. his veins bulged in his neck as he threw his head back.
"fuck, love. i'm gonna breed you." he panted, steam rolling off his body as his skin grew hot.
holy shit.
"d-do it zuko, give me your baby." you clench around him and he opens his eyes to watch you as he groans, placing one hand onto your stomach, buckets of hot cum spilling into you.
he shouts as his cock twitches, leaning forward and burying himself deep inside you to prevent any from leaking out. you cry out as another orgasm washes over you.
"that's it, love. you take my cock so well." he groans, hips stuttering as he drains himself, making sure you carry every. last. drop.
he falls onto the bed beside you as you both catch your breath, pulling you into his side and kissing the top of your head.
zuko knew he would never let you out of his grip again. he would keep fucking you until you were swollen with his child and he would make you a proper woman by wedding you. the nation would get it's heir and he would get his love.
by any means.
𓈒⠀𓂃⠀⠀˖⠀ঌ⠀˖⠀⠀𓂃⠀𓈒
note: guys i haven't made a fanfic in like nine years but daddy zuko looks so fucking yummy in the new movie, i had to write about my man 😋 let me know if you want to be tagged for the next part or if i should even make another one!
currently obsessed with sleep token and thought of zuko when i heard take me back to eden, like this is his sooong.
“Zuko?” Your voice is faint from the other side of the heavy wooden doors separating the main bed chamber from the bathing room where Zuko now stands, dressing in his night clothes freshly washed from the day's grime.
He calls back, a soft sound of your name to let you know he has heard, that he isn’t ignoring you or something untoward and tries to hurry, ringing the water from his hair in a way that would have once had his mother scolding him, but he rushes nonetheless, eager to answer your call. Your relationship is still new, the betrothal and subsequent marriage just barely reaching the three-month mark, and it had only been within the last few weeks that you had stopped referring to him as Firelord and opted for a softer, warmer call of his name instead. Zuko does not blame you, though. In all the years he had known of you as the youngest daughter of a nobleman, you had never wanted to be married, never desired a life within the palace walls so much so that you had trained alongside his sister for a brief period as children, had studied history and culture instead of embroidery and floral arrangements, anything that would further seperate you from a version of yourself that could be a wife one day and yet, here you had ended up and you had blamed it entirely on your Firelord.
It had been in passing, an offhand comment made about you to an advisor at the mention of you in a meeting that had nothing to do with the predicament of trying to find Zuko a wife; in fact, the conference was about sending diplomatic officials into the far-reaching water tribes to broker peace and future trade deals. Your name had been suggested as an option, nothing out of the ordinary, your past performance as a diplomat caused no cause for alarm amongst the advisors, but it was Zuko's soft question of you that had the men talking.
"She facilitated the previous negotiations of the eastern earth tribe last year," an advisor pointed a crooked finger at the map, the small village at the edge of the map. "You know her father."
Zuko stared at the map, trying to rack his brain as to who you were. The name was familiar, almost too, but he had yet to place it.
The official gave your family name, and the synapses in the firelord's brain connect.
"The pretty one?" There was no warmth or familiarity in Zuko's tone, only cold, hard facts as he asked.
"I- I believe so," the advisor stammered and clarified. "The youngest."
"Yes, the pretty one." Zuko nodded, rubbing at his jaw as he studied the map, the thought of you flitting from his mind just as quickly as it had appeared, and continued with the meeting, his attention diverted to a farm dispute on the border of his kingdom and while he paid you no mind beyond a wuick thought upon your triumphant return three weeks later, the officials and advisors at his side had not stopped thinking about you and how the firelord had called you pretty.
Zuko regretted telling you that fact. It had meant to be a way to break the tension as you both sat on the edge of his too-big bed on your wedding night, still cloaked in the traditional gowns and jewellery. He thought you might laugh, talk about how funny the situation was, maybe even spare him a glance, and you did, but it was one of fury. Instead of laughing with him, you had raged, turned red in your cheeks as you stripped yourself of your wedding gown, crown thrown at his feet in a huff as you blamed him for your situation, calling him reckless and stupid, that if he had kept his mouth shut, you would not have been tied to a man, tied to the obligation of a firelady. You could live the life you had wanted and worked so hard for. You did not see or speak to him for a week after the revelation, too angry to form coherent sentences that didn't involve some variation of a curse and yet your husband did not push, did not try to initiate contact beyond a simple hello in the morning or goodbye at night, and while that should have irritated you more, fueled your rage into a wildfire, it did the opposite. Your apology came in the form a letter on his pillow nine days after the wedding. A truce, a white flag admists the red of rage.
That had been seven weeks ago. Seven weeks of shared meals and walks through the palace, late night talks, and perhaps too many bottles of fire wine. Seven weeks of your relationship had blossoming from nothing into something one would consider romantic.
Zuko finds you in bed as he finally exits the bathroom, your body sprawled out over silk sheets as your hands rub circles over your lower belly.
"Is everything okay?" he asks tentatively, stopping at the edge of the mattress, two fingers tracing the soft material of the bedding. "Do you need me to call someone? Did you eat something bad?"
You open an eye to peer up at him, your mouth pulling into a soft pout. "No."
"No, everything is not okay, or no, you don’t need me to call someone?"
"Both," you groan, shifting to your side, hands clutching at your abdomen.
The silk of your night gown shifts over your body, pulling tight at your hips and thighs, the plushness hidden beneath the thin material on display in such a way that Zuko had to quickly divert his gaze to avoid blushing ten thousand shades of red. You really are pretty.
"Can I ask something of you?" Your voice muffled by the pillow you have buried your face in.
"Anything." Zuko drops to his knees at the edge of the bed, all pretence of the great firelord gone as he reaches a hand out to you, the back of his fingers brushing over your cheek. He feels your skin heat at his touch.
There is a moment of quiet as you gather your courage to ask.
"Can you-" you smile as Zuko pushes hair behind your ear. "The compresses the healers gave me aren't working, and neither are the teas," you rush to explain, rolling onto your back once again. "Can you just hold your hand over my stomach and heat me up, please?"
Zuko blinks, trying to make sense of the request. You are clearly in pain if you required the healers, but not enough to warrant another visit, but you hadn't eaten anything that had made you sick, so what could be causing- oh.
"I'm sorry I've embarrassed you, I'll just visit the-" you begin, rising from the bed, cheeks flushed bright as you notice the hesitation in Zuko.
His hand on your stomach stops you from moving any further.
"It's not embarrassing. I'm your husband," Zuko begins to heat his skin, pressing down on your clothed skin. "This is the least I can do with all the pain you go through."
Heats spread through his palm and fingers. Your body relaxes under his touch, the warmth already easing the pain. A hand reaches out for his other, and you're hauling him up onto the bed, snuggling into his side as you search for more.
Zuko's heart begins to stutter at the closeness. You had never been this close, especially not with the thinness of your night clothes.
"If this is too much, tell me, and we can stop," you whisper against his chest, your lips brushing the exposed skin of his collarbone.
"Not too much." He takes in a staggered breath but shakes his head, free hand coming up to cradle the back of your head, fingers weaving through hair.
"But if it becomes-" you try.
Zuko uses the leverage and tugs your head back, gaze focused on him as he stares down at you.
"It won't."
Your bottom lip quivers and you’re quick to tamp it down with your teeth. He has come to learn that unlike most people when they get sad and their bottom lip wobbles, yours does that when you’re happy too. Just before you’re about to smile and not the kind that you make when you see your friends or are politely addressing someone else but the kind that rarely comes out when you’re emotional, when you’re feeling so happy you feel it leaking into sadness. The first time it had happened Zuko panicked, thinking he had upset you but as you grabbed his face in your too small hands and stroked his cheeks, you explained your strange quirk and how it wasn’t something bad but entirely the opposite.
“You’re doing it again.” He points out, digging his fingers into your scalp.
You hum, eye slipping closed at his ministrations. “Doing what?”
“The pouty frown”
“Yeah, well I have my firelord acting as own personal heating bag.” you tease, leaning further into his hand.
Zuko pouts this time. “Firelord?”
Eyes flicker open as you smile up at him, fingers gripping the front of his shirt.
“i have my husband acting as my own personal heating bag. Better?”
“Perfect.”
a/n: first ever zuko fic, wow crazy times around here. idk how to end this i think i wanna write a bigger fic with the dynamics between the two
when FIRELORD ZUKO takes a liking to AVATAR AANG'S mysterious new BRIDE.
TORN BETWEEN TWO ROADS ! — aang x reader x zuko
PLOT. republic city is finally at peace, and for once, katara allows herself to hope—maybe now, after everything, she and aang can finally become something real. but when aang returns after eight months, he isn’t alone. he comes back with you at his side, introducing you as his wife. suspicious yet helpless, his friends do their best to welcome you, even as nothing about this sudden marriage makes sense. but while everyone else keeps their distance, one person doesn’t. and perhaps Zuko gets a little too comfortable with the avatar’s new wife.
CHARACTERS. AANG and ZUKO.
CHAPTER WARNINGS. 18+, mdni, angst, takes place 10 years after atla, age gaps. reader is 21, established relationship, mean sokka (no hate for him please, i am just a bitch hahah), little arguing (lowkey fight), fem reader, atla spoilers, no spoilers for legend of aang, not proofread.
(please check the story masterlist for the story warnings.)
WC. 5.8k
masterlist : story masterlist
chapter one
a/n: i did not expect the response i got for the first chapter. i am genuinely glad that you all enjoyed it, for which i would also suggest you to please read the a/n at the end!
p.s: do not ask me the layout of katara's house. just know that it's big and like the one we see in the movie, except i have made up everything inside for convenience.
Morning came quickly, and with it, Fire Lord Zuko.
Sokka, Katara, and Toph had come to greet him at the harbor, and while they did think to call Aang, knowing him to be an early riser, they just guessed he would be occupied with his wife.
Zuko walked alongside them, his presence drawing the occasional glance, though far less than it might have elsewhere. Here, in the Republic City, titles blended more easily into the crowd, and even a Fire Lord could pass through without bringing everything to a halt.
His attention remained forward, though it shifted slightly at the way the others had been speaking since he arrived; their awkwardness was blatant.
And when he had asked where Aang was, it was Sokka who finally said it outright, unable to hold it in any longer.
"He's married."
Zuko slowed half a step, eyes widening at the revelation. He was expecting an 'Oh, he slept in!' or 'He's busy with Avatar stuff, y'know?', but this was the most unlikely answer to the question he had asked.
"What?" he repeated, the surprise clear.
"Yup. He came back yesterday with a suspicious-looking lady, and then he introduced her as his wife!"
Sokka spoke animatedly, which really didn't help his case while explaining something that was already hard to believe.
"Oh. Good for him."
Zuko's reaction landed poorly. Sokka turned toward him immediately, incredulity written plainly across his face.
"Good? How is that your takeaway from this?"
Zuko frowned slightly, not in a defensive manner, but genuinely confused by the response.
"He's married," he said, as though that alone should explain it. "What's not to be happy about?"
Sokka stared at him for a second longer before his face shifted. Without saying anything, he tilted his head just enough, his gaze flicking briefly toward Katara.
Zuko understood, sparing a small glance at the Waterbender. He did not comment on it so as to not acknowledge the implication aloud.
So he spoke again, not entirely changing the topic but not dwelling on the previous conversation.
"What is she like?" he asked.
Toph gave a small shrug, her posture loose, though her answer came like she had it ready. "Couldn't tell you much. She barely spoke."
"She was all gloomy." Sokka added.
"That's not true Sokka, she was just tired." Katara said, and the fact that she spoke at all drew their attention immediately.
"She's..." Katara paused for a second, then continued, "she's beautiful."
Everyone visibly faltered in their steps, making Katara let out an exasperated sigh.
"Can you guys please stop? I'm fine, alright?" she said, a quiet firmness entering her voice as she looked at them.
"Can you stop looking at me like that? It's like you're walking around eggshells whenever you talk about Aang."
No one responded. Frankly, they didn't know what to say.
"There's nothing wrong," she continued, voice softer now. "He's happy. And nothing makes me happier than that."
Zuko drew a quiet breath, feeling the air grow awkward by the second, so he spoke—
"Where is his wife from—"
He couldn't finish.
Sokka's attention snapped elsewhere mid-step, his hand lifting abruptly as he pointed across the street, his voice cutting through Zuko's question.
"Look! There's Aang...woah."
All of them (except Toph) followed his line of sight, and there, moving through the street were you and Aang.
You walked beside him, your arm encircled around one of his. Aang greeted those around him with the same open warmth he always had, children waving as he passed, some giving a gentle bow.
But it was not Aang that had held their attention.
It was you.
The difference from the day before was unmistakable.
Where you had once appeared in plain robes, you now stood adorned in the finest of fabrics, silks that caught the light in all their glory, draped carefully over your form.
Delicate jewelry framed you, resting at your neck, your ears, your wrists, your hands, even woven into your hair, each placed with grace as though they were a part of you.
It was a stark contrast. Not only to what you had worn the day before, but to him.
Aang, in his simple robes, untouched by ornaments except for his prayer beads and the Air Nomads symbol he wore proudly, stood beside you without any attempt to match you in your regal ensemble.
It felt...unexpected.
The distance between all of you closed naturally, meeting the group halfway.
You had inclined your head slightly, offering a small bow in greeting, as Aang excitedly greeted his friends.
He left your side momentarily, moving to give Zuko a hug after not having seen him for over a year now.
Once Aang returned to your side, you finally spoke, and it felt as though they were hearing your voice for the first time.
"It is an honor to be in the presence of the Fire Lord," you said, your tone refined. "I have heard of your tales and your journey from my husband. It is a pleasure to finally meet you."
Your gaze rested on Zuko trying not to linger on the scar across his face. Simultaneously, Zuko took in every inch of you with a quick skim.
There was a confidence in the way you held yourself, in the way you walked, even in the way you spoke. The structure of your speech, the practiced tone, the accustomed comfort of status.
It was unmistakable, and Zuko took note of it easily.
You carried the weight of upbringing, much like himself. You carried royalty.
He inclined his head slightly in return, his response just as respectful.
"The honor is mine," he said.
Your attention shifted then, moving to the others.
"It is good to see you all again," you continued, offering a small smile that did not overreach.
"I apologize if my company yesterday was lacking. I had been traveling for days without pause, and though I would have preferred to settle into our home sooner, I understood that Aang wished to make up for lost time."
At that, you glanced back at Aang, and he met your look with a sheepish grin, one hand lifting to the back of his head in a gesture far too familiar to everyone there.
"Sorry," he said lightly. "I was just really excited."
His hand dropped soon after, settling over yours where it rested against his arm. You only shook your head faintly, your smile remaining.
"There is no need to apologize." Then your gaze shifted again.
"You are Katara, correct?" you spoke, turning to the Water Tribe girl.
The moment you spoke her name, you felt Aang flinch against you, your eyes snapping to your connected hands before returning to Katara.
"...Yes?" Katara answered with a question hidden beneath it.
"The food you prepared yesterday was lovely," you said. "I am grateful for the effort you put into hosting us on such short notice."
Katara blinked once, caught off guard by the sincerity of it.
"Oh...that..." she said, her words settling unevenly before she steadied them. "It was my pleasure."
You nodded slightly in acknowledgment before continuing.
"I understand from Aang that we are to gather at your home again this evening."
"Yes," Katara replied, more certain with her voice now. "I'll have everything ready by eight."
"I see," you said. "Aang and I shall arrive earlier to assist you."
Katara's response came quickly, almost like a reflex. "Oh, there's no need for that—"
"I insist," you said gently, and although you had just met, the finality in your words left little room for refusal.
"We will be there at six. Won't we, Aang?"
There was the smallest pause before Aang glanced at you, then back at the others, his smile returning easily.
"Yeah, Katara, we want to help."
"We'll be there too," Sokka added quickly, his words coming out faster than intended. He wanted to give you the benefit of the doubt, but something about your presence at Katara's home unsettled him.
"I will join as well," Zuko said, his voice steady, his gaze returning to you with quiet interest.
Toph let out a small huff. "I'd offer, but—"
"You're coming anyway," Sokka cut in immediately.
A quiet laugh passed between them, light enough to ease the moment.
Aang shifted, his attention returning to you as he remembered his agenda for the day.
"I promised to show her around," he stated, the grin stretching across his face in excitement.
"I'll see you guys at noon!" he said, before guiding you forward once more, his hand engulfing yours as he pulled you along with him.
By the time the sun had reached its peak, the earlier bustle smoothed beneath the midday heat. As promised, Aang had left to meet his friends. He had left you at home not long before, trusting you to settle in at your own pace.
He found Appa waiting, ever patient, as he climbed onto his back, Momo already darting up to join him, settling on his shoulder. The flight was short, and it did not take long before the city gave way to an open stretch of land just beyond the outskirts of the city, leading uphill to a stumped cliff.
His friends were already there, waiting for him. Aang was excited to spend some time with them. He had sensed your presence make them feel awkward around him, so he thought this might come as a good opportunity to ease their friends into his new marital life.
Sokka stood close to the edge, his posture restless even as he was still, while Katara remained close by, her attention shifting at the sound of Appa's descent. Toph sat relaxed, floating a few rocks in the palm of her hand, and beside them stood Zuko, his presence quieter than the group.
Appa landed and the wind settled around them as Aang stepped down, and Momo wasted no time in leaping off after him to greet the others.
His gaze moved across them, a small smile forming. It felt nice to have the group back together. And he hoped for you to gently be included in the future.
His friends on the other hand, had a different plan They trusted him. That much had never been in question. But even their trust was wavering as curiosity came knocking down those carefully built walls.
The scheme had been made before he arrived. It was simple. Get information out of Aang. Simple.
And perhaps if they had asked straightforwardly, Aang wouldn't have denied them.
But Sokka just had to ruin it all by starting off the conversation with—
"You know, Aang, you really shouldn't let your wife walk around dressed like that. Isn't she supposed to wear your monk robes now? What even was that?"
He let out a short laugh, the sound landing unevenly against the quiet of the hill.
Aang's expression shifted, his easy grin dropping so dramatically, they were sure the entire city felt the pressure in the air drop.
Beside Sokka, Toph let out a sharp exhale, her hand coming up to her face in immediate exasperation.
Katara did not hesitate, a quick motion of her hand sending a splash of water directly into Sokka's face with enough force to deliver a slap.
"Hey—!" Sokka sputtered, wiping at his face as he turned toward her, ready to argue, but Aang's voice came sooner than his.
"What are you trying to say, Sokka?"
Aang looked as though he would lash out, but he didn't. His voice wasn't loud, and it didn't need to be to feel the growing anger beneath it.
The tension followed, unsettling them all. For a brief moment no one spoke, because this had been uncalled for. None of them wanted their 'reunion' to start on a bad note, much less end on it.
So Zuko gives an attempt to salvage it in the easiest way he could think of. Throw Sokka under the bus.
"That was very rude, Sokka," he said. His gaze moved briefly toward Sokka before returning forward. "Why should Aang have a say in what his wife chooses to wear?"
There was a pause before he continued, his voice lowering to soften the weight of what he was going to say.
"Besides..." he added, the word carrying a hesitation he did not fully understand, "I think she looked rather...beautiful."
The last word came slower than the rest, and though his expression remained composed, something in him had bloomed.
Katara had been correct in describing you.
Zuko's dilemma went unnoticed by everyone else, slipping beneath the surface without acknowledgment.
"Yeah, whatever," Sokka says, brushing off Zuko's scolding with an edge in his voice.
"I'm just saying, Aang, if people see the your wife walking around dressed like that, they're going to start talking. You're the Avatar for Spirit's sake! No one's even heard of her before, and suddenly she shows up with you looking like that? People are going to assume things."
He didn't stop there.
"They might think she just married you to—"
"I beg of you to stop talking!" Toph cut in loudly, her tone sharp not only from annoyance but also concern
She could feel it, the subtle rise of rage encircling the area where Aang was sitting. Sokka threw his hands up slightly, frustration quick to follow.
"Hey, I don't mean it in a bad way! I want what's best for him."
The words did not land the way he had intended them to.
Somewhere in Aang's mind, he knew that Sokka would be a challenge. He knew Sokka would not be accepting to your presence, always having been the sensible one in the team. But the horrible implications he made about you were too much.
Yes, he had expected for Sokka to be unwelcoming, but he didn't think he would stoop so low to imply something so vile.
Aang moved before he realized, words spewing from his mouth as he still fought to hold back his anger.
"My wife," he said, the words coming out sharp, an unfamiliar tone that did not belong in their usual conversations, "left her home for me."
He rose to his feet as he spoke, the motion slow as his presence shifted with it.
"She chose to come with me to a city she doesn't know, to be around people she's never met, and the only things she has from her home are what she brought with her."
Sokka unconsciously took a step back, and even though Aang was further away the distance was evidently closing.
"If she wants to wear them, she will," Aang continued, "And if she wants more, then I will give them to her."
He took another step forward.
"That's her choice," he said. "Hers. Not mine. And definitely not yours, Sokka."
The space between them closed completely, and Sokka watched the boy he once towered over meet him eye to eye, where he could see that he had definitely struck a huge nerve.
Toph was on her feet, stepping close, her hand lifting slightly just in case.
"Whoa, easy, Twinkle Toes," she said, her tone lighter than the tension warranted. "Sokka's just being Sokka. Don't let it get to you."
"Yes, Aang, he's talking nonsense," Katara added quickly as she shot her brother a sharp look.
Zuko remained where he was, silent.
"It didn't sound like nonsense to me," Aang said, and in a single motion that came as quick as lightning, his hand caught the front of Sokka's collar, gripping it firmly to pull him slightly off balance.
"Do we have a problem, Sokka?"
The man in question gritted his teeth, his brain telling him to end the fight and apologize, but instead he chose to bite back just as fiercely.
"Yeah," Sokka shot back, the restraint he had been holding slipping away. "I do have a fucking problem."
Aang’s face twisted more, but he let the older man continue, understanding this wasn’t something as shallow as about what you wore.
"You disappear without a word for months, and then you come back married?" His voice rose and the frustration in it no longer contained.
"We're your friends, Aang! We're supposed to be your closest friends. Don't you think that's something you should've mentioned?"
Aang's jaw tightened, his grip still firm. He heard what Sokka was saying, and as much as he understood the weight behind it, Sokka's previous words, the way you had been spoken about, refused to settle.
Neither of them moved. But then Katara stepped in, her hand pushing against Aang's arm.
"Aang, let him go."
Toph was already there beside her, offering her silent support.
He let go.
Sokka stumbled back half a step, adjusting his shirt with a quick, irritated motion, watching as Aang spoke.
"It just... happened," Aang said, his voice quieter now, though the edge remained beneath it. "I don't always have the time to send out a letter for every little thing."
"Every little thing?" Sokka repeated, disbelief cutting through the words. "You got married. How is that something little?"
"Stop it, Sokka," Katara said, but he didn't stop.
"No," Sokka said, shaking his head, the frustration still too close to the surface to be dismissed.
"I will be honest, Aang. I do not like your wife."
The words landed harder than anything else he had said before.
"I know you're hiding something," he continued, his voice lower now. "And you can't even be honest about it with your own friends."
Something in Aang snapped.
"Maybe," he said, "you should realize for once that you don't need to know everything!"
Sokka held his gaze for only a second longer before he let out a frustrated breath, the anger in him growing.
"Forget it." he muttered, turning away abruptly.
He didn't look back.
"Fuck this. I'm done."
He started walking down the slope without waiting for a response, his steps quick as he stopped for no one.
Katara hesitated only briefly, glancing back at Aang momentarily, before following Sokka, her hand catching Toph's arm and pulling her along with her despite the protests that came from it.
"Hey! I can walk on my own—"
And within moments, they were gone, leaving Aang and the Fire Lord behind.
The wind moved across the hill, filling the silence as it brushed through the grass.
Appa approached first, lowering his head to nudge against Aang in an attempt to cheer him up. Momo followed him, settling near him with a soft chirp before climbing closer, pressing himself to his side.
Aang did not move them away. He let himself settle onto the grass instead, the tension still present in his posture. His gaze remained fixed somewhere else, thoughts going haywire, wondering how quickly it all went downhill.
Beside him, Zuko lowered himself to sit as well. He did not press, did not interrupt, allowing Aang to process the situation at his own pace.
Time passed in silence for a while, then, eventually, Zuko spoke.
"I do not mean to pry," he began, his tone slightly tentative. "but is your wife of royal birth?"
The question was not meant to be intrusive, but it felt as though it was, so Aang did not answer immediately.
For a moment, there was only the wind again, moving through the space between them.
Then—
"Noble," he said.
Zuko nodded his head slightly, accepting the answer for what it was, though his thoughts did not stop there.
"From where?" he asked after a moment.
Aang's gaze did not shift.
"A smaller nation close to the Earth Kingdom."
The explanation ended there and Zuko didn't ask anything more.
He understood restraint well enough to recognize it in others, and whatever was unsaid, he let it remain that way. Aang wouldn't go to such lengths if it wasn't important.
"I hope that you can find it in yourself to forgive Sokka." Zuko said after a moment.
Aang's expression did not change, though is posture softened at the though of his oldest friend.
"Only if he apologizes," he replied.
"Well...yes. Of course." Zuko assured.
Evening settled in fully by the time they gathered again, the sky dimming into a softer hue that filtered through the open windows of Katara's home.
Everyone had arrived at six, just as promised.
All except Sokka.
You stood beside Aang and Zuko in the kitchen, your hands occupied with small tasks Katara had asked each of you to do, easily settling into the mood for preparation. Aang moved beside you, while Zuko did his best to assist.
In the living section of the room, Toph had claimed the couch entirely, stretched out without any concern.
The conversations moved easy enough. You weren't much involved in the talking part, and you hadn't notice the underlying conflict between the group.
By the time you glanced up again, the light outside had shifted further, and the absence of a certain someone was all too blaring.
"Will Sokka be joining us at eight after all?" you asked, your tone unassuming, though the question itself stilled the room.
The discussions through the room came to a halt, taking you off guard by the sudden silence.
Aang answered before anyone else could.
"Do not worry about Sokka," he said too quickly, and though the edge in his voice was subtle, it was enough to make you take note that something was wrong.
You turned slightly toward him, your hand lifting instinctively to rest against his arm.
"Is everything alright?"
"Mhm." He gave an unsure hum.
"What he means is, Sokka is—"
Katara began, but she did not finish.
The door opened.
"I'm here."
Sokka stepped in without ceremony, the spare key tossed carelessly onto the counter with a small clatter that cut through the air.
"Sorry I'm late," he added, already moving across the room, dropping himself onto the couch beside Toph, who barely shifted at his presence.
"I'm glad you could you make it, Sokka." You greeted politely, but got no response.
"Would you like to help us out?" You prodded yet again, only to be met with a—
"In a minute. I just got here."
His words shut you up as you frowned at his behavior. He was very unlike the Sokka Aang had once described to you.
"If you're just going to be lazy, then come back at eight." Aang's voice came sharp this time.
He swiftly turned his back to the living area as he moved toward the stove, focusing instead on the task in front of him.
The room stilled again.
You glanced between them, and after a brief pause, you simply stepped after Aang, returning to your place beside him, your hands resuming their quiet work, peeling through the peas with careful attention.
Katara watched for only a second longer before she exhaled softly.
"I'll be back," she said, and her gaze lingered on Aang for a moment before she turned away, stepping out of the kitchen and into the living area.
Zuko noticed the way the space between you and Aang had closed again, your voices lowering for something private, so he followed Katara's lead, stepping away to give you both some distance without making it obvious.
In the living area, Sokka leaned back against the couch, his earlier frustration still present beneath the surface.
Katara did not sit. She stood in front of him, her arms folding as her voice dropped.
"You need to apologize to him."
"I will," Sokka said, almost immediately, his voice riddled with guilt. "Of course I will."
There was a pause.
Then he added, "But you can't tell me you don't agree with me."
"I don't."
Zuko's voice cut in before Katara could respond.
"I think she is rather lovely."
Sokka let out a short, incredulous breath, turning toward him with a look that bordered on disbelief.
"Okay, stop with the compliments," he snapped. "It's weird coming from you."
Toph pushed herself up slightly on her elbows, a grin pulling at her expression.
"Oh, this is interesting," she said, her tone carrying that familiar edge of amusement. "Has Zuko taken an interest in the missus?"
"Nonsense," Zuko replied immediately. "I am stating what is obvious. They suit each other."
His gaze shifted then, drawn back toward the kitchen as the others followed.
Through the open space, they could see the two of you clearly. Aang standing close you, speaking in hushed whispers and big smiles.
Perhaps he says something funny, because you reached for him, your hand lifting to land a playful slap on his shoulder, only for him to catch it before it landed.
His fingers closed around yours as he brought your hand upward planting a kiss to the inside of your wrist.
Katara looked away first, and her gaze shifted sharply, her focus fixing elsewhere as she tries not to dwell on what she just saw.
"Come on, Zuko," she said. "We still have dinner to finish."
She did not wait for a response, already turning back toward the kitchen. Zuko followed shortly after, stepping away and leaving Toph and Sokka alone.
It was nightfall by the time dinner ended. The table had been cleared, dishes left soaking, and a bottle of wine had been opened for those who wanted it, though tonight it was only Toph and Zuko who indulged.
Sokka had declined, his reason simple. He wanted to keep a clear head for what he had to do.
He had to apologize.
So he stood outside on the balcony with Aang, the doors shut behind them, their voices muffled by the glass, leaving the rest of the house quieter.
You did not remain in the living area.
The unfamiliarity of his friends still remained, so when Aang stepped away, you excused yourself with the pretense of needing water. The kitchen welcomed you back as you sat upon the open counter, a glass in your hand.
Zuko noticed.
He had been seated in the living area, his attention divided between the balcony and you. Your absence had settled firmly in his awareness.
Katara and Toph remained focused on the figures outside, so he rose without announcement. The soft sound of his steps did not reach you until he was already there, a glass of wine held loosely in his hand.
"Do you not drink?"
His voice broke through your thoughts as you looked up, pulled back into the present.
"Oh...I used to, my father would allow me a couple sips during dinner." you said, smiling fondly at the memory, but instantly a scowl tainted your face, as though you had remembered something foul.
"I abstain now that I have married Aang." You ended, smile returning.
"Did he ask you to do that?"
"No," you answered. "I chose to. Out of respect for my husband's culture."
You weren't sure of the Fire Lord's motives in approaching you, but you decided to make the best of the situation.
"May I ask what happened between him and Sokka?" you questioned, your eyes meeting his in confidence. Zuko was sure you were examining for even the slightest nuance.
Zuko did not answer immediately, knowing it wasn't his place.
"I think it would be better if it came from Aang," he replied at last.
Your expression did not change.
"What difference does it make, Fire Lord Zuko, if you were the one to tell me?"
"The difference lies in trust," he said. "You may not take my words lightly if they come from me, and I would prefer that there be no unnecessary conflict between us."
"And you suspect there will be," you said, not as a question.
Zuko exhaled faintly.
"I believe there would be," he admitted. "Because unlike Aang, I would not soften what was said."
A small sound left you then, something close to a laugh but not entirely one.
"I may not have known Aang for as long you have, but even I know that Aang is not one to gain a temper against his friends so easily. At least, not anymore."
"You would be surprised at his younger self." He humors.
You chuckle, but your fingers tightened slightly around the glass.
"Then maybe you can tell me this," you continued, your voice lowering.
"Was the reason of their fight, me?"
Zuko hesitated.
"...You could say that."
"Was I insulted in my husband's presence?"
His silence was answer enough.
"Pray tell," you said, the calm in your voice almost poisonous. "what exactly was said?"
"Many things," he replied. "Things I would hope you take with a grain of salt, since it came from Sokka."
"Funny."
You did not remain where you were.
The glass was set aside, forgotten, as you stepped down from the counter, closing the distance until you stood before him, your gaze lifting to meet his.
"Aang spoke to me about you. I didn't even know he was friends with you until yesterday."
"That's surprising, considering everyone knows of the Avatar's feat of ending the 100 year war, including my involvement."
"I didn't think to connect the dots."
"Hmm."
"He told me about how you met. A very endearing story. The lengths one goes to for their honor."
Zuko couldn't tell if that was meant to mock him, but that phase of his life still remained something he was ashamed of, so the frown on his face was inevitable.
"Do not be upset. I didn't mean it as an insult. I'm only mentioning it because it's something I can agree with."
You clarify, setting the cup of water down onto the counter before continuing.
"Which is why I figure you will understand that," you paused, your voice steady as you finished your sentence. "My honor is not something I treat lightly. It is very dear to me."
You stepped even closer, the space between you narrowing until it left little room for anything else.
Zuko did not speak.
There was something in the way you held yourself despite the quiet fracture beginning to show, that felt familiar. It did not come from recognition of you, but from something he had once carried himself, something he had fought to reclaim.
Honor.
It wasn't just a word, it was once his purpose and now his treasure.
"I understand." he said.
Your composure faltered then. Your jaw tightened, you did not look away, and Zuko noticed there was a sheen to your eyes now.
"Do you really?" you asked.
"I do," Zuko answered. "But I also do not want you to turn against Sokka because of it. He is still Aang's closest friend."
"Perhaps he will not be for long."
Your response had come without any hesitation, and it stumped him.
You drew in a quiet breath, the tension pulling inward once more as you turned away. You grabbed the glass of water you set down, draining it in one motion before you started rinsing it with more force than necessary.
Behind you, Zuko remained still.
Until now, he had believed Sokka's concerns were rooted in something else. Namely, in the history between Aang and Katara. But standing there, watching the way your single statement had carried a genuine threat behind it, he began to see it differently.
Maybe, Sokka was not disappointed by the unwritten story of Aang and Katara.
Perhaps he feared what your presence would do to the group, because he saw something in you the others failed to see.
Zuko returned to the living area and he noticed you leaving the kitchen in the same moment, your movement quick, and he assumed you had gone in search of some quiet corner of the house.
By the time he seated himself again, the balcony doors had opened.
Aang and Sokka stepped back inside together, the earlier tension between them no longer sharp, though it was not entirely gone. After all, Aang may forgive, but he was not one to forget easily.
Zuko's scanned their dejected faces, so to lighten the mood he jokes—
"Were you both crying?" he asked.
"No, we were not!" Aang and Sokka answered at once, their voices overlapping in perfect unison, and for a brief moment, something familiar surfaced between them.
Laughter followed, and it felt like they were all kids again.
Aang's attention shifted soon after, his gaze moving across the room before settling into a small frown.
"Where is she?" he asked.
Zuko leaned back slightly. "She stepped out. I believe she went to find the restroom."
Aang's expression tightened just a fraction. "I don't think she knows where it is."
"She's a big girl," Toph said from the couch. "She'll figure it out."
"I can go check," Katara offered, already stepping forward.
Aang stopped her before she could take another step. His hand caught her arm gently, halting her movement. Her breath hitched, the reaction subtle as her resistance dissolved beneath Aang's touch.
"I'll go," he said instead. He did not wait for a response before turning, already moving out of the room in search of you.
In his haste, he did not notice what had slipped loose. It was Katara who saw it first, her gaze dropping toward the floor just after he had disappeared from view.
"His emblem—" She pointed.
The small piece lay near where he had stood, the Air Nomad symbol detached. Zuko reached for it before anyone else could, his fingers closing around it with care.
"I'll bring it to him," he said, stepping away from the others, the emblem held loosely in his hand, as he moved through the unfamiliar layout of the house, turning once, then again.
And then he found you both.
He stopped before either of you noticed him.
You both stood close, your hands pressed against Aang's chest, your fingers curled slightly into the fabric. Aang's hands rested at back as his arms engulfed you.
Zuko stepped back instinctively, retreating into the shadow of the wall, turning his gaze away even he remained where he was, his presence hidden.
He did not watch.
He listened.
A soft sound broke through the quiet as you pulled away, your voice following after.
"Why won't you just tell me?" you asked, the words catching at the edges. "What did Sokka say?"
Aang did not answer, and the silence went on with the occasional break of your sniffles, enough to confirm what had not been said.
"Zuko said he insulted me. Did you just forgive him for it?" you pressed, your voice breaking slightly.
"...Not exactly—"
"It's a yes or no question," you cut in, sharper now, though the hurt beneath it did not lessen. "Tell me, what did he say, Aang?"
"Please stop crying," Aang whispered as you pulled you into a hug yet again. "I'll tell you everything once we're home."
You sobbed against his chest, your breath uneven, before you braced yourself for your next words.
"Did...did you tell Sokka about...what happened...—"
"I would never!" He exclaimed softly, pulling away slightly so he could meet your eyes. "I would never disrespect you like that, I promise you."
"But Sokka did, didn't he? And I consider you forgiving him is just as disrespectful."
"I forgave him because he was sincere with his apology. Sokka is not someone who acts on his feelings like that."
"How is that meant to justify anything."
"It means, whatever was said about you was his anger directed at me."
There was a pause after his statement, shifting your eyes from his as you closed them shut.
Your grip on him tightened, inhaling softly to you ease your emotions.
"It seems my presence has caused a lot of harm. And it's only been a day."
"It is not your fault. My friends felt deceived because I didn't tell them about you. I chose to stay silent."
You knew Aang meant well, but you were taking his words at face value.
"...I feel as though I have trapped you. I should have never agreed—"
"You are the best thing that has happened to me. I know it may not have seemed like it in the beginning, but I do not regret asking you to marry me. I never will."
His tone softened further as his hands lifted, cupping your face, his thumbs brushing away the tears that had already fallen.
"I am sorry that you've been having a hard time around my friends."
Even though he didn't need to, his apology was reassuring, and you shook your head with a smile.
"It's alright. It shows how much they care for you."
At your words he smiles, thumbs brushing your cheeks.
"Let me take you home. I'll explain everything."
You nod, head tilting back as he leaned closer for a kiss. The kiss was not brief. It was deep and vulnerable, the shine of tears still tracing your cheeks.
Then there was nothing more.
Zuko did not stay. He stepped away as quietly as he had arrived, your conversation left behind him.
When he returned to the others, Katara noticed his failed excursion immediately, eyes dropping to the emblem still in his hand.
"You couldn't find him?" she asked.
Zuko glanced down at the emblem, then back at her.
"No." he said calmly. "I'm sure he will return for it."
chapter three coming soon...
a/n: fair warning, this story will have darker themes in the future. my vision for this story is very straightforward and to the point, so yes, the characters may seem ooc at times. but i gotta do it for the plot. just promise me, no one will hate on the actual characters, okay?
