You had been Zuko’s advisor since the very beginning of his reign as Fire Lord.
For the first few years, you were his anchor, keeping him from losing his mind entirely under the crushing weight of the responsibility that had fallen upon him.
Your advice was quiet, never drowning out his own thoughts and feelings. You never told him that doing things a certain way would be "better." Zuko used to be irritable and short-tempered, and now, looking back, he wondered how you had ever put up with him at all.
As the years went by, his requests for you to stay behind after council meetings stopped being strictly about business.
Zuko, now stately and wiser, didn't really need an advisor anymore, yet here you were. His questions could be personal, but never to the point where you'd slap his face and call him a jerk. Zuko sensed that boundary perfectly. You would have to be a fool not to realize that the Fire Lord was flirting with you. But etiquette forbade you from responding just as openly, so you did nothing but smile.
You personally oversaw the shipping logs and merchants' reports, even though it wasn't your job. Zuko knew you did it because of the massive budget deficit that had formed during the second year of his reign, but everything was fine now. Better than fine, actually. The nation was thriving.
However, that didn’t stop you from burying yourself in work in your study until late at night, and Zuko absolutely hated it.
On one such evening, he walked into your room without knocking. You turned your head toward him and blinked slowly.
"Come now, Lady Advisor, it's bedtime."
You could have told him how inappropriate he was being, but all that escaped your mouth was a soft mumble. Zuko chuckled and scooped you up in his arms as if you weighed nothing at all.
After that, any desire to protest completely vanished.
There were no inappropriate touches; he simply carried you to your chambers, tucked you into bed, and snuffed out the candle on the wall.
You hated to admit it, but you hadn't wanted him to leave.
It became a ritual of sorts: Zuko would come in, pick you up, carry you to bed, and leave. Nothing more. But one evening, just as he had bundled you up in the blankets, you propped yourself up slightly on your elbows and stared at him.
"Why all of this, my Lord?"
*Who else would do it, if not me?*
Instead of answering, Zuko took a couple of steps toward you and sat on the edge of the bed.
Perhaps the way his lips quickly found yours was only natural.
After that night, Zuko carried you exclusively to *his* quarters and from then on, you worked at his desk whenever he wasn't using it.
You had always thought that Zuko would burn, but in reality, it was a little different. Zuko warmed you. He would find your freezing hands at night and warm them.
His hair, soft and much longer than yours, gave you no peace. When he returned, you would hover awkwardly near him, hairbrush in hand. Zuko would take a deep breath and sit on the edge of the bed, letting you do whatever you pleased.
You would gently remove his hairpins, brush through the strands, and let the locks slide through your fingers, sometimes weaving golden ribbons into his hair. Zuko leaned into your touch, and you were absolutely certain he was purring.
in which you don't fully understand the effect you have on your beau
talk about body image, zuko losing his fucking mind over your stretch marks (bc they're so hot hello, its so yum, i second him), him losing his mind over you, implied sex, some explicit sentences about it but I don't go into detail. lmk if there's anything i'm missing
You never felt fully confident in your body. It's not hate either, if anything, you feel better about yourself now than you did when you were a teen. But sometimes, the scars of your hardships aren't something you feel confident about.
The thin scars all over your arms and lower legs from getting sliced by swords and knives when blocking during fights in your youth, the stretch marks littered over your thighs and butt, from where your body stored the fat when you were fed on the road, putting on weight fast, then losing it even faster as you and the avatar's group picked it's way through the war torn world.
But there wasn't much you could do about it, the discoloration from where you were burned slightly, to the callouses on your hands that you can still feel, even if you can't see them anymore. Accepting it was the only way to move forward. You liked yourself enough, and sometimes you would stare at your reflection, seemingly lost in the way your waist curves into your hips, the particular swell of your shoulders, the plush of your thighs.
Sure, you didn't like all of you, but you liked yourself enough, and for the longest time, you thought that would be the case for everyone.
•°¯`•• -.-.- ••´¯°•
If only you had found out what the unloved parts of you do to Zuko.
This boy, helplessly in love with you, turned Fire Lord, still hopelessly in love with you, feels things he cannot describe when he sees you.
You're his wife, yes, but still, he loses it over you, and your body. Your soul is arguably the prettiest thing he's ever seen. In those soft, slow, rare moments, when the morning sunlight warms the both of you in his sleeping chambers, he presses a palm against your sternum and breathes, feeling the heat and fire inside you move.
It's something he found out by chance, after his meeting with the dragons. He noticed your inner flame, when you had hugged him so tight after his father was put away. It was in you, around you, around him, and for a moment, it was all he could feel, and he's never felt better. He could never describe it, would fail at every try, but somehow, his affinity to fire and his feelings for you had allowed him to see.
He had tried to describe it to you once, when you had asked, but he couldn't. He was never good with his words, but this was so much more than anything he'd ever experienced, he had just stared at you helplessly, mouth open and gaping. But he did say one thing.
"Whenever I feel it-see it, it's like I'm home."
The resulting blush in your face had him barking out a laugh, but you'd hugged him anyways, kissed the skin under his burned eye, and thanked him.
Thanked? Him?
It was absurd, and he told you as much, but you had giggled, smoothing his robes out as a guard approached him to let him know the council meeting was starting.
That's not the main point, however.
The main point is, when you lay with him in bed, hands ghosting over his skin, pressing your lips into every marred inch of his skin, he feels like igniting.
Every time you both bathe together, and you let him scrub you down as you talk about your day, he won't lie and say he hears everything. Sometimes, he's so preoccupied with how your stretch marks look and feel under his fingers, that you openly have to stare him down so he stops caressing your thighs and ass, and actually cleans you.
Not that it stops him from lifting you onto the counter tops, pulling your legs over his shoulders like they're his robes, and palming at the damp skin as he devours you whole.
Every single time, without fail, the thought or sight of your marks makes his ears burn and his face red. Sparring? if you pull off your arm guards, the little white scars on your skin make him pause. The way you smirk at him, the way he knows that you earned them, has him breathing slow and thinking about sharing living quarters with his uncle just to snap back to focus for a little bit.
The unsaid implications of the marks on your body, the hardships and journeys you've went through, documented on your skin only for his eyes to read, make it very hard for him to keep his hands to himself.
You complain about it, at times, fond and teasing, but there is no way you'd understand how hard it is for Zuko, who has to work through every meditation trick in the book to keep calm as you dress yourself after climbing out of bed. Not that it works half of the time. Just the act of you slightly bending at the hips to check your reflection, your undergarments hiding nothing, stretch marks stretching even more, has him prowling towards you, hands hard at your hips as he latches onto your neck.
It's insanity. It drives him insane. Makes him feel like a raging hormonal teen all over again, back when just the thought of you in the next tent over had him shifting. But now with knowing how you sound and taste, it's gotten even worse, but he can't say he's mad about. Especially when you let him do whatever he wants, laughing, eyes crinkling as you beckon him towards you.
He notices how you stare at yourself in the mirror before climbing into the bathing pool every time.
Zuko knows how you feel about them of course. But if you don't want to love these parts of yourself, he has no qualms loving them on your-and his-behalf.
Especially if it gets you saying his name like that when he pulls you into the scented waters, hands already ghosting over his favourite parts of you.
Hello I am curious pourquoi is zutara unacceptable
Not only do they straight up not like or trust eachother til the very last moment and have zero romantic tension or chemistry, it completely negates the entire narrative, defeats the purpose of both zuko and kataras arcs, and is wildly out of character for both of them.
Katara and zuko would make a terrible couple. I liken it to the hunger games when katniss says that she doesnt need gales fire because she has plenty of her own and that she needs someone peaceful, a 'dandelion in the spring' (paraphrasing but thats the general idea) katara doesnt need someone 'mature' and firey and angry, she's got enough of that, she needed aangs peace and his immaturity to show her that she's also just a child, that she's allowed to be silly and she doesnt have to be the responsible one all the time.
And by zuko having something to gain by switching sides (romantic love in this case) his redemption arc isnt as impactful, he had EVERYTHING to loose and nothing to gain when he joined the gaang which is why it was so effective.
ALSO I think people only really ship it by ignoring all of kataras personality traits and turning her into a self insert, and because they don't like aang and think he's not 'mature and attractive' enough to ship with katara, despite his 'immaturity' being exactly what katara needs.
ANYWAY I havent done a rewatch in a while so apologies if I forgot something or got something wrong.
