A Kingdom of Scars and Water

The ship cut through the gray morning like a blade, the bow pushing aside low fog that clung to the water. Katara stood at the rail in her blue parka despite the heat that pressed at her skin, the brine-sticky wind tugging loose strands from her braid. The Fire Nation capital rose ahead, black cliffs and red roofs, banners lifting lazily in the breeze from the harbor towers. Even at a distance, she could see scaffolding like ribs against broken domes. Soot stained the stone in places no rain had reached. Smoke curled from chimneys and forges, but it was different than the smoke she remembered from raids and burning villages—thinner, steadier. Human, not warlike.

She had imagined never returning. She had also imagined that if she did, the air would choke her. It didn’t. The air was humid, heavy with spice and ash, but she could breathe. She wrapped her fingers around the wooden rail and let that truth settle. She was not a child sneaking into enemy waters. She was an envoy, sent with ceremony and trust, bearing letters with her father’s seal and a plan that felt as big as the ocean they’d crossed.

The harbor unfurled, busy and loud. Fisher boats bobbed between sleek warships whose flags had been freshly re-dyed and re-stitched. The hull of one ship bore the faint shadow of a painted dragon beneath the new emblem of the Fire Lord. Dockworkers moved like a single organism, passing crates marked with medicine symbols alongside casks of oil. A crane creaked. Somewhere a whistle blew twice, answered by another. Traders shouted prices, bargaining under shade canopies where cloth dyed every shade of red and gold hung like captured sunsets. As their ship eased into its berth, Katara saw a section of the dock where the planks were sun-bleached and newer, lines sharper, as if rebuilt within the last year. She saw the gap where a pier once extended farther into the bay. She saw an old man sitting on a crate, rolling a pipe between his fingers and watching everything with tired eyes.

She tried not to think of the last time she’d seen this city, lit by explosions and Aang’s glowing eyes. She tried not to think about chasing a boy across the world, fury hot in her throat. The past was here, she couldn’t deny it, woven into every beam and rooftop. But so was something else. She noted it the way she always had, with the precise attention of a healer: stitches pulled tight yet clean. A scar that had taken well.

“Ambassador,” Bato murmured at her shoulder. “We’ve got a reception party waiting.”

She glanced down to the dock. A small contingent of guards in red armor stood at attention, helms polished. Their posture was rigid, but they were not the officers who had burned the world at her doorstep. She could see the difference. Younger faces. A captain with a softer set to his jaw. Beside them, court functionaries waited, scrolls tucked into sleeves, expressions carefully neutral. A woman in white and red stood a little apart with a satchel slung across her chest. A healer, by the cut of her clothes. Katara’s heartbeat kicked up.

She exhaled. This was why she was here. A joint healing center. An idea that had felt audacious when she and her father first drafted it, that had seemed fragile when the Southern Water Tribe council put it to a vote. A place where Water Tribe practices and Fire Nation medicine could exist side by side. A place where the hurt of the last century could be tended, not just ignored. She had argued for it until her throat was raw. She had agreed to lead it, to leave home again, to cross this sea with a deck trunk of dried arctic herbs and medical texts wrapped in seal-leather.

The gangplank thudded into place. Heat rolled up to meet her as she descended. The smell of tar and salt, of hot iron, was strong enough that she could taste it. The guards bowed. She bowed back, careful and respectful, feeling eyes on the curve of her necklace, on the blue of her clothes. She unclenched her jaw when she realized she was bracing for contempt that didn’t come.

“Ambassador Katara of the Southern Water Tribe,” the captain announced in a clear voice that carried over the noise of the dock. “Welcome to the Fire Nation capital. I am Captain Ren. On behalf of the Fire Lord, we are honored to receive you.”

The “Fire Lord” caught, just for a breath. A shadow of memory: a boy hard-eyed in a cell below a crystal city, a boy trying to be his father and failing at every turn. She tamped down the flicker and met the captain’s eyes.

“Thank you, Captain. I bring greetings from Chief Hakoda,” she said, reaching into her satchel and producing the rolled letter she had oil-sealed twice to guard against the sea air. She passed it to a scribe, who accepted it with a quick bow. “And I bring a proposal. We are ready to begin as soon as your people are.”

Ren gestured, and they moved off the gangplank into the crush of the harbor. People stared—of course they did—but the looks were curious more than hostile. A girl with a basket of squid tucked close to her smiled shyly when Katara met her gaze. A man with a scar that ran from collarbone to jaw paused, then dipped his head, as if acknowledging the blue of her clothes, the braid down her back, the way she carried herself. She wanted to stop and ask him how he’d gotten it. She wanted to ask everyone here what hurt and what helped.

The city rose from the docks in steep streets. As they passed through a gate flanked by stone dragons whose noses had chipped, Katara saw broad avenues where ash had been scrubbed from the paving stones but still clung to the cracks. She saw children racing a hoop with sticks, laughter bouncing off brick. An alley opened to her left, and in it a mural bloomed on a wall—reds and oranges and blues. Flames shaped into a pair of hands cradling water that cradled a heart. Her throat tightened. Someone had painted that here. Someone had decided to keep it untouched.

Ren kept up a steady commentary as they walked toward the carriage waiting beyond the gate. “You’ll be lodged in the south wing of the palace. From there we’ll tour the infirmary district, as agreed. The Fire Lord has set aside the old west annex to be converted, if you approve.”

“The old annex,” she repeated, sliding into the carriage and adjusting her satchel at her hip. The bench was upholstered in dark red silk. She resisted the urge to fidget. “What was it before?”

“A barracks,” Ren said, and a muscle in his cheek jumped. “It has been empty since the end of the war.”

Her fingers found the edge of her waterskin and pulled comfort from the cool weight. A barracks turned to a place of healing. There was symmetry in that. She thought of Master Pakku, gruff and relentless, bending a torn tendon back into place with gentleness that had surprised her. She thought of Iroh pouring tea, telling Zuko that there was honor in choosing love over power. The carriage jolted forward. Through the window she watched as they passed a scaffold where women in plain dresses chipped away at a cracked relief of a phoenix. Someone had draped a cloth over it to shade them from the sun. At another corner, vendors sold triangular rice cakes and steamed buns. She realized, slowly, that her shoulders had lowered from around her ears.

Duty lay heavy but clear before her. She would walk into rooms where her presence would be an affront, and she would smile anyway. She would stand over burn scars and teach new ways to knit skin and nerve. She would sift through herbs with Fire Nation healers and talk through differences in practice until mutual respect found root. She would hold to her line when politics tried to pull her sideways. And somewhere in these halls, he would be there. The thought slid in uninvited, quiet and stubborn. Fire Lord Zuko. The boy she’d forgiven once for a sin that had almost drowned them both. The man who now held a nation like coals in bare hands.

She pressed her palms to her knees. The city unfurled before them, palaces and courtyards and a hundred small lives entwined. The carriage turned, climbing toward the palace set high on the cliff, its roofs layered like waves of fire frozen in wood and tile. Between buildings, she caught glimpses of the sea they’d just crossed, iron-blue and relentless, dotted with sails. She wasn’t sure yet if she belonged here. She wasn’t sure if the hope she carried would survive the rooms she was walking into. But when she drew water into her palm to wet the edge of her lips, it moved clean and obedient, cool against her tongue. Her bending hummed under her skin, steady and present.

It was enough for now. She would take the next breath, then the next. And when she stepped out of this carriage, she would carry the South with her into the heart of the Fire Nation.

The council chamber was hotter than any forge, despite the lattice screens open to the courtyard and the thin morning breeze trying to creep in. Zuko sat on the raised dais beneath the dragon carvings and felt every eye in the room measure him, weigh him, and find him too light or too heavy depending on what they wanted that day. The crown knot at his topknot tugged at his scalp. The firebowl at the room’s center burned polite and low, perfumed with cedar. It made his throat itch.

“The food stipend is bleeding the granaries,” Lord Shoji said, his tone courteous and sour. “If your edict stands, peasants will rely on state handouts instead of planting. My provinces already report loafing.”

“Your provinces report failed irrigation ditches and salinized fields,” Zuko answered, keeping his voice even. “They can’t plant what they can’t water.”

A ripple across lacquered sleeves. A cough that was almost a laugh. Shoji’s eyes, hooded and old. Ukano didn’t bother hiding his disdain; he leaned back and laced his fingers over his belly, red lacquered nails gleaming.

“The Earth Kingdom has resources to spare now that the war is over,” another lord said mildly. “We could seize a portion of their surplus in exchange for lifting tariffs on our ports, my lord. Nothing brazen. A correction.”

Zuko’s fingers curled on the arm of his chair. I will not be my father. He unclenched, forced the words out clean. “We will not seize anything. We will trade. We will repair what we broke, and we will feed our people while we do it.”

“Trade is easier when our ships are respected,” Ukano murmured. “Respected ships are built with seasoned men. Men who trained in barracks you are converting into—what did the decree call them? Healing centers.”

Zuko could hear his uncle in the corner of his memory, the warm weight of a teapot in his hands. Breathe. Count to eight. He inhaled and tasted smoke and expensive ink. He thought, abruptly, of a cave, of rain on stone, of his sister’s cold smirk, of blue water glowing around his wrists. He ground that memory down to its smallest possible shape and set it aside.

“The war is over,” he said. “We won’t commit our people to endless training for a conflict that isn’t coming.”

Ukano tilted his head. “The world is not as soft as you are trying to make it.”

You don’t know me, Zuko thought, the flare of temper familiar and unwelcome. He kept his face smooth. “The world is tired. We can be the ones who let it rest.”

A scribe’s brush scratched. Beyond the screen, a turtle dove called. The council fanned themselves with painted bamboo and pretended nothing had shifted.

Lady Kanae, younger, bolder, cleared her throat. “My lord, if we postpone converting the west annex by a single season, we can complete the barracks repairs and appease the armorer’s guild. The healers can still—”

“No,” Zuko said, more sharply than he intended. Heads turned. He felt the weight of it press against the scar on his face like a palm. “The annex conversion proceeds on schedule. The Southern Water Tribe envoy arrives today, and I intend to show her that our commitment is real.”

Ukano’s smile was small. “Ah, the waterbender. The one who fought you at Ba Sing Se.”

Something in Zuko’s chest stuttered. He did not let it show. “Ambassador Katara will lead the center. The old way of doing things—” he let his gaze rest a heartbeat too long on the older lords “—got us a century of suffering. We are changing.”

“They will not accept you,” Lord Shoji said softly, and Zuko couldn’t tell if he meant the provinces or the council. “They accept fear. They accept power.”

“They will accept food in their bowls and doctors in their streets,” Zuko said. “They will accept seeing that their Fire Lord listens to them.”

“Listening is not leading,” Ukano said.

He wanted, suddenly, stupidly, to be back on Appa’s saddle with wind in his face and Sokka’s awful jokes snapping at his ears. He wanted the problem to be simple: there is a man trying to burn a village. Stop him. The room pressed in with its carved dragons and ribbed pillars and all the ghosts that clung to them. He adjusted the gold band at his wrist, felt the cool metal, felt how his hand shook, just barely.

“On the matter of the mines,” a smaller lord pushed in, sensing blood. “Your edict to cap hours at eight has closed three shafts and cut output by a third. Our iron contracts—”

“Are predatory,” Zuko said. “No child is going into a mine in my nation again. Send the contracts to my office. We will renegotiate.”

“Your office cannot renegotiate the laws of economics,” Ukano said, gentle as a knife. “Or the temper of men. You risk revolt.”

Zuko thought of a boy crouching in an alley, listening to the angry thrum of a city that wanted him dead. He thought of fire bucking in his hands, wild and untamable when he was. He thought of the way his uncle had stood between him and the wave of everything and told him to drink his tea while it was hot.

“Then we tamp down the temper of men by giving them something to live for,” he said. “Schools. Work that isn’t a death sentence. A government that doesn’t squeeze them until all that’s left is rage.” He leaned forward, let his voice go quiet; it made them all lean closer whether they meant to or not. “We broke them. We fix it. That is the only calculus I care about.”

Silence rang. Someone shifted a sandal. The fire in the bowl hissed.

“You are earnest,” Shoji said finally. “Earnestness does not build ships.”

“No,” Zuko said. “People do. People who stop dying in mines. People who can eat. People who trust that when I say I will use our strength to protect them, I mean it.” He swallowed. The ring of gold at his throat—another weight—felt like a shackle today. “We’re done for now. Prepare drafts reflecting the stipends and the labor reforms as written. We’ll reconvene tomorrow.”

Protocol said they should bow. Most did. Ukano didn’t bother. Zuko watched them file out with silks whispering, the air cooling by a degree with each exit, as if they were heat sources he’d finally put out.

When the door shut, the chamber went quiet except for the small, steady crackle of the firebowl. Zuko pressed his palms to his eyes and saw not darkness but the light that lived in scars when you stared too long. He let out a breath he hadn’t realized he’d been caging.

“Tea, my lord?” a servant asked from the doorway, tentative.

For a second, the word made something in him ache. He nodded. “Please.”

The cup arrived hot and fragrant. He cradled it and thought about how, not so long ago, everything had been motion. Chasing, running, decisions made because the next step was obvious: survive, protect, fight. Now every step was ink and resistance and men who had never bled telling him what the world required. He had chosen this. He would keep choosing it. But he felt, suddenly and sharply, the absence of the people who had once flanked him. Aang’s laugh. Toph’s sarcasm. Sokka’s blunt good sense. Katara’s steady eyes, the way she had seen through to the smallest, truest parts of him and decided they mattered.

He took a sip and burned his tongue. He didn’t flinch. The heat grounded him.

The servant bowed himself out. Zuko stood and moved to the screen, pushing it aside to let more air in. The courtyard outside was all raked gravel and a single pine that leaned toward the sun. A turtle dove hopped along the wall and cooed, unbothered. Down in the city, a ship horn sounded, long and low. Somewhere on the docks, a girl in blue would be stepping onto Fire Nation stone.

He rolled his shoulders. The crown would not get lighter. The room would not grow kinder. He set the empty cup down with care, turned back to the table piled with petitions and letters tied in red string, and reached for a brush.

The throne room’s doors were taller than any she’d seen, faced with bronze that caught the late morning light and threw it in shards across the red stone floor. The air held a dry heat that clung to the back of Katara’s throat. A herald’s staff struck once, twice, and the sound traveled like a ripple, escorting her steps toward the dais.

She had walked into palaces before. She had faced a princess with knives behind her smile and a hundred spears pointed at her friends. She had stood in caves where the ceiling wept and a boy she hated and almost trusted had looked at her like she was the only torch in the dark. She held those memories tight and small now and kept her chin level.

Zuko sat beneath a canopy carved with dragons. The crown knot pulled his hair tight, making the severe line of his jaw even sharper. Firelight softened the gold at his collar and threw shadows across the left side of his face, where scar tissue caught and held the glow. His back was very straight. His hands rested on the arms of the throne as if in restraint rather than ease.

“Ambassador Katara of the Southern Water Tribe,” the herald announced.

Her name bounced off pillars and painted panels and landed between them. Zuko’s mouth moved—something like a breath, or a word he didn’t say. He rose.

“Welcome to the Fire Nation,” he said, the cadence clipped by formality. “You honor us with your presence.”

Katara bowed, palms pressed together, the blue of her sleeves a cool cut through the red world. “Thank you, Fire Lord Zuko. The Southern Water Tribe is grateful for your invitation.”

Invited, not summoned. She’d fought for that wording in the letters with Sokka leaning over her shoulder, laughing and tense. She heard it ring now as if it mattered more than it should.

There were courtiers lining the room like lacquered lilies, rigid spines, painted mouths. Their attention pricked at her skin. She kept her eyes on Zuko, on the way his gaze stayed a careful fraction above her head, never quite meeting hers. A muscle flickered beneath his scar, there and gone.

“You must be tired from your journey,” he said. “Arrangements have been made for your comfort. We will speak of the… initiative at a later time, once you’ve rested.”

She wanted to say that rest could come after the work had a spine. She wanted to ask him why his voice sounded like it did when he lied—to other people, not to her. Instead she smiled, small and diplomatic.

“I appreciate your consideration,” she said. “My delegation and I are eager to begin.”

He nodded. A pause opened, awkward and wide as a chasm. He glanced to his left, toward an attendant, as if for a prompt. No one moved.

Her fingers tightened on the scroll she held, and for a heartbeat she was in Ba Sing Se again, the air cold, his hand around her wrist as he blocked her path, the way he’d said her name, raw and wrong. She breathed. She forced that image to fade and replaced it with another: him in a courtyard with a teacup, listening to Aang, awkward and earnest, trying.

“I brought a preliminary outline,” she said, lifting the scroll just enough. “If your schedule allows, I can present the core structure for the center. Staffing. Supplies. The training curriculum.”

His eyes finally, fully, met hers. It was like stepping into sunlight after a long hall. Heat, yes, but not burning. He dropped his gaze almost at once, as if he’d overstepped.

“We can review it,” he said. Softer, the edge shaving off. “This afternoon. With my advisors.”

She heard the plural and felt the old irritation rise: the way rooms filled with men who had never held a bleeding child would debate the best angle to bind a wound. “Of course,” she said. “If I may, I’d also like to tour the site as soon as possible.”

“The west annex,” he said. “I’ll have an escort take you.” Another beat. “Or I can—”

He cut himself off. The court’s stillness sharpened. He stood a shade straighter. “An escort will suffice.”

She couldn’t decide if she was relieved or disappointed. His restraint belonged to the room and the crown, not to the boy who’d stood with her in a city of sand and glass and chosen the right thing too late. The crown had weight. It dragged on him.

A servant approached with a lacquered tray, cups steaming, fragrant as baked oranges and smoke. The scent hit nerve endings she hadn’t known were exposed. Zuko gestured. “Tea, Ambassador.”

Their fingers didn’t touch when she accepted the porcelain, but she felt the heat bleed through the glaze and into her skin. He took his own cup and didn’t drink.

“I hope the journey was uneventful,” he said, and the formality fell awkwardly on a history that had nothing uneventful in it.

“The seas were kind,” she said. “The crew was grateful for the calm.”

“Good.” His mouth twitched, either a swallow or the ghost of a smile. “The port can be… lively.”

Azula’s laughter flashed through her—sharp, electrified. She strangled it. “Your harbor masters were efficient.”

He inclined his head in acknowledgment. Silence again, only the soft crackle from the braziers and the whisper of silk. If she reached with her senses, she could feel the humidity in the room pull for her, the water in the air always a fingertip away. She didn’t reach.

“I’m aware that your presence has drawn attention,” he said finally, eyes going to the line of lords and ladies and then back to her shoulder, not her face. “Some will be… cautious. I expect them to treat you with respect.”

Something fierce in her chest eased. It didn’t matter that he said it like a decree. It mattered that he said it here, where it would do the most good. “I can handle caution,” she said. “I’ve had practice.”

His throat worked. She watched. He set his cup down and the porcelain touched the arm of the throne with a careful click. “I know.”

There it was. Not loud. Not an apology, and not a plea. A small bridge laid between two cliffs.

A courtier cleared his throat. The spell—if it could be called that—thinned. Zuko’s chin lifted a fraction, the Fire Lord’s mask settling more firmly.

“Captain Ren will show you to your quarters,” he said. “We will convene at the second hour.” He paused. “If there is anything you require, inform the staff.”

I require you to look at me like I’m not a problem you have to solve. The thought came without permission and she shoved it down, surprised by the sting behind it.

“Thank you,” she said. She bowed again, lower this time, a gesture to the office rather than the person wearing it.

When she straightened, his gaze snagged on the necklace at her throat—her mother’s—and then flicked away. Not fast enough to hide it. Her heart did a small, unpleasant twist.

She turned to go. Her feet whispered across the stone, her hair brushing the back of her neck where sweat was beginning to gather. The doors loomed again. Two steps, three. She told herself not to look back.

She looked back.

He was watching her, finally unguarded in the second he thought she wouldn’t see. The burned side of his face didn’t change his expression; it never had. His eyes did. They were tired and bright and so full of intent that she felt it across the room. Caught, he schooled his features at once, and the Fire Lord stared from the dais again, remote as any statue.

She inclined her head, just enough to say that she’d noticed, that she understood more than he wanted her to. Then she walked out into the hotter, freer hall.

Captain Ren bowed and began to lead her through a maze of corridors painted with battles that seemed quieter now than they had when she was a child. Katara followed, her mind already on the west annex and blueprints rolled in her bag, on herbs and clean water and training schedules. But behind all of it, pulsing, was the image of him in the glow of the braziers, hands steady on the arms of a chair he hadn’t chosen and a voice he was still learning to use.

She tightened her grip on the scroll and tasted the slight bitterness of tea on her tongue. The day would move forward. There would be tours and plans and lines traced across maps. The room behind her might have been made of carved dragons and ritual, but it had contained something else too, brief as it was.

It would have to be enough for now.

The sun had slid lower by the time a page appeared at her door, requesting her presence for a “customary tour.” Katara smoothed her sleeves and followed the boy through a lattice of hallways that smelled faintly of jasmine and hot stone. The doors to the gardens opened with a muted groan. Heat spilled over her skin, gentler than the throne room’s braziers, alive with green.

Zuko waited at the threshold, the crown still in place, his posture formal as if the hedges were judges and the koi would take notes. A silver-thread cloak lay over his shoulders despite the warmth. For a heartbeat, she saw him as he’d been on Appa’s back once, wind in his hair, then it blinked away. He stepped aside to let her pass first.

“Ambassador,” he said. His tone tried for neutral and hit careful. “These were my mother’s favorites.”

He gestured to a row of flame lilies lifting red-edged petals toward the waning light. She let herself slow. The air was damp here; the gardeners had watered recently. Leaves beaded with droplets, and the water in them called to her like a familiar song. She kept her hands still.

“They’re beautiful,” she said. “We don’t have many flowers like this in the south. The cold is… practical.” The words were nothing, safe and small. Still, they softened something in his face.

“My uncle used to say the lilies are stubborn. They burn at the edges even when the rains come.” He paused. “He liked stubborn things.”

“I can’t imagine why,” she said before she could stop herself. It was light, a tiny push. His mouth almost, almost became a smile.

They walked a path of smooth stone that curved past a grove of citrus trees, the fruit still green. Attendants hovered a respectful distance behind, so still they might have been topiaries. Zuko guided without touching, pointing out pavilions with carved beams and a sun-warmed bench where, he said, “the royal tutors thought better.” His voice went thinner on that, like he’d clipped out the heart of the memory and thrown it away.

She listened, nodded, asked a question about the rain catchment that fed the garden’s channels. He answered in measured detail, grateful for something he could quantify. The conversation slid along the surface like a beetle skating on a pond. Every time it threatened to sink, one of them nudged it back.

They turned a corner and the path widened to a soft, grassy slope. A small pavilion cast shade over a careful stone arrangement that trickled water into a circular pool. The sound was clean. Katara’s shoulders, unnoticed until now in their stiffness, loosened a fraction.

“Turtle ducks,” Zuko said, and there it was again, that unarmored tone she’d heard only in private, when no one else was listening.

She followed his gaze. A mother turtle duck glided across the green glass surface, four round, downy ducklings plinking after her. One straggled, paddling furiously, little feet a blur. Katara felt air catch in her chest and then release. It was so ordinary. It was so good.

They stopped at the edge. He did not step onto the stones overhanging the water, and she realized, with a twist of something that made her throat tight, that he was keeping a polite distance from the place where he’d once thrown something and watched it sink.

She knelt despite her skirts, letting the damp cool the fabric at her knees. The ducklings came curious, bobbing, tiny eyes bright. She drew a thread of water up from the pool’s surface with a flick of her fingers—a thin ribbon only she could see. It hovered, caught the light, and she spun it into a simple loop before letting it drip back soundlessly.

Zuko watched, hands clasped behind his back to keep from fidgeting. “They remember people,” he said. “The turtle ducks. If you feed them once, they’ll think you’re a friend.”

“And if you throw a rock?” The question slipped out quiet, not accusing, just true. He went very still.

“I don’t,” he started, then stopped. He looked at the birds, not at her. “I shouldn’t have done that.”

There was a long breath. The mother duck ushered her brood closer to the reeds, then changed her mind and glided back, bold. The bravest duckling pecked at the surface where Katara’s hand had been. She extended her palm and let the water rise again, a small, shimmering dome that slid over the duck’s head and left it blinking, unbothered. The duckling shook itself as if pleased with its own bravery.

Katara felt her mouth lift. She glanced sideways at Zuko. He had the same expression she did—softened, edges undone. He caught her looking and didn’t look away fast enough. For the first time that day, they shared something without words.

“My mother used to bring me here,” he said, voice low. “She said patience isn’t the same as waiting. That I should sit, and they’d come when they wanted.” He faltered, then, as if he’d stepped off a ledge he hadn’t seen. The attendants were far enough that they couldn’t hear, or pretended they couldn’t. “I don’t… I haven’t said that in a long time.”

“I used to sit on a cliff by the village when the ice was breaking,” Katara said, matching him in the offering. “Listen to the cracks and the water underneath the frozen surface. It sounded like a song, if you were patient. Sokka always said it sounded like the world groaning.” She smiled, small. “He wasn’t wrong.”

He huffed something that wanted to be laughter and was careful not to be too loud. The ducklings darted after a bug, the littlest one a beat behind. Katara reached out with a slow gesture, nudging the water into a gentle push that helped it catch up. The mother duck didn’t object.

“You’re good with them,” Zuko said, almost amused. “Of course you are.”

“Water likes me,” she said lightly. “It does most of the work.”

His gaze flicked to her then, really to her, not to the space near her shoulder. The late light caught the brown of his eyes and warmed it. The wind shifted, and a strand of his hair escaped the crown. He didn’t notice.

“I’m glad you’re here,” he said, and there was no ceremony in it. “Not just for the council.” He swallowed. “For this.”

Heat gathered low in her belly—unrelated to the climate, simple and complicated at once. She looked back at the pond so she wouldn’t have to hold that look too long and give too much away. Her hand drifted over the water; the surface answered. She let a thin curl trail from her fingertip, a ribbon the ducklings chased, squeaking.

“Me too,” she said. It was the truth that fit in a small space.

They stayed longer than the tour demanded, not talking much. The sky went more orange. Somewhere farther in the garden, a bell rang to mark the hour. Zuko straightened, the mantle settling over his shoulders again. He nodded toward a path lined with lanterns not yet lit.

“There’s a camellia walk,” he offered, tone returning to official, but softer at the edges. “If you’d like to see.”

She rose, smoothing her skirt where the damp had kissed it. The mother turtle duck made a sound like approval. Katara glanced back, gave the smallest of salutes to the pond, then fell into step beside him, their shoulders close enough that if either of them turned too quickly, they would brush. Neither did. The crack in the tension had let in air. It wasn’t enough to change the world, but it was easier to breathe.

Her rooms were beautiful and wrong.

The attendants bowed out with quiet efficiency, leaving behind a tray of fresh fruit, a steaming pot of jasmine tea, and a room that breathed heat even with the shutters open. The ceiling beams were lacquered a deep red that caught the lamplight. Silk hangings softened the walls, their patterns of golden clouds and cranes stitched with care. The bed was large, the mattress too soft, the sheets like cool river-slick stone against her fingertips.

Katara set her bag down and unrolled one of her blueprints on the low table as if she would be able to keep working. The lines wavered. Her hands were steady, but her chest felt tight, like a shirt laced too close. The silence pressed in and made the room feel larger, emptier, too polished to touch.

She poured tea because it gave her something to do. The scent rose, delicate and sweet, and she missed the sharp bite of sea air and the familiar creak of her father’s house in the wind. She missed the sounds of voices moving through the same space she did—Sokka’s laughter, Gran-Gran’s quiet humming, the thud and slide of boots on packed-snow floors. Even the palace’s constant, distant noise of fire—braziers, kitchens, the soft exhale of warm air through vents—made her skin prickle.

She took a sip. The tea cooled on her tongue too fast.

Unlacing her boots felt like admitting something she didn’t want to say out loud. She curled her toes into the rug and stared at the patterns, letting the wool’s scratch anchor her. Outside her window, the city glowed; light spilled up from tiers of streets and down from lanterns strung in lines like constellations pulled to earth. The capital climbed the mountainside in terraces and sharp roofs, each one alive. It should have been beautiful. It was. It was also a reminder that she was alone in the middle of it.

She moved to the window and pushed the shutter wider, letting hot night air crawl over her skin. Far below, a courtyard echoed with a burst of laughter and then hushed. The palace walls looked like calm stone from up here, but she could feel the weight of eyes and expectation embedded in them. Somewhere beyond the sprawl of rooftops and bridges and canals, the ocean breathed—a steady pull she couldn’t hear but knew was there. It called in a way she wasn’t ready to answer.

She caught her reflection ghosting on the glass and looked away. Zuko’s face rose in her mind uninvited—how he’d stood at the edge of the turtle duck pond like he was afraid to step wrong, how his voice had slipped when he said my mother. The crown had pressed a straight line into the place where his hair met his skull. She’d wanted to reach up and fix the stray lock that had fallen—ridiculous, impulsive—and the thought of that made her stomach twist.

He’d said I’m glad you’re here and made it sound like a risk. She believed him. She didn’t know if believing him would be enough.

Katara leaned her forearms on the window frame and let her gaze climb to the palace roofs, to the highest towers. Fire banners stirred in a breeze she couldn’t feel. It was easier to be angry at the Fire Nation when it had been a fleet of ships and a faceless general. It was harder when it was a boy who stood too straight and tried too hard and wore a crown that looked like armor.

The day replayed in pieces: the council chamber with its cold ceremony, the careful greetings, the garden’s damp air, the ducklings cutting small wakes. The smallest crack they’d found felt fragile now, as if the night wind could close it and leave only polished distance behind. She pressed her palms flat to the sill until the sting grounded her.

Was this a mistake?

The question came quiet, honest. She had been so sure boarding the ship—that her skills mattered more than history, that she could hold both diplomacy and memory in her hands and not let one slip. But standing alone in rooms that weren’t hers, in a city that had carved scars into her life, she felt the gap between what she wanted to build and where she stood.

She thought of the healers she planned to train, of the mothers and grandfathers who would come through the center’s doors, of burns eased by cool water and fevers brought down with herbs she could identify by scent even blindfolded. She thought of the way Zuko’s posture had shifted when she’d asked about rain catchment, how numbers had calmed him like a steady breath. She thought of his flinch that wasn’t quite a flinch when she’d asked about the rock at the pond, and the way he didn’t defend himself. He just said I shouldn’t have done that.

He was a Fire Lord with a court that would gladly see her fail. He was also the boy who had sat beneath a mountain of regret and learned to move differently because someone had loved him enough to show him how. She had seen those glimmers once out in the world, on a bison with no roof over their heads and no obligations pressing at their spines. Could they survive under all this weight?

The city hummed, indifferent to her questions. A firework unfurled low over one of the outer districts, a single bloom of red that faded quickly. She wondered if it marked a wedding, a birth, or just the excuse of a warm night. She wanted that small, uncomplicated celebration—people gathered in a circle because being together was reason enough. She wanted, suddenly and fiercely, not to be watched for what she represented but known for who she was.

Her hand lifted, almost without thought, and drew a thin thread of water from the pitcher on the tray. It rose obediently, cool against her knuckles, and curled around her wrist like a bracelet before she let it slip back with a sound like a sigh. The motion soothed the tight place in her chest. Water did that—took shape and then released it, flowed where it could, moved around what it couldn’t shift, wore down what resisted.

She wasn’t a rock in someone else’s garden. She didn’t have to be.

Katara turned from the window and crossed back to the bed. She folded her outer robes with care and set them over a chair, then slid beneath the sheets. The pillow smelled faintly of rice starch and the barest trace of smoke, nothing like home. She lay on her side and stared at the gold stitching on the canopy until it blurred. If she closed her eyes, she knew the dreams would come—ice cracking, flames licking, hands reaching. She wasn’t ready for that. Not yet.

She pressed her fingertips to the place under her ribs where the day’s heat had settled. The question remained, stubborn as any lily: mistake or necessary step into a place that needed her, that he needed her? She didn’t have the answer. All she had was the memory of small duck feet paddling hard, a boy-turned-king saying I’m glad you’re here like an offering, and the knowledge that morning would come whether she was ready or not.

Outside, the city breathed. Inside, she did too, and told herself it was enough for now.