mochikoz

Unfortunately, the Fire Lord and Fire Lady had not.

“They’ve been in there for hours,” Sokka complained from where he leaned dramatically against the railing near the stern of the ship, gesturing toward the private cabin below deck with a piece of candied ginger he’d stolen from the kitchens earlier. “I’m serious. At this point I miss when they used to lock themselves away for more… entertaining reasons.”

Toph tilted her head toward him. “You’re such a creep.”

“I’m not a creep,” Sokka defended. “I’m nostalgic for when they acted like newlyweds instead of exhausted diplomats.”

“That’s not helping your case,” Katara muttered, though the amusement tugging at her voice betrayed her.

Nearby, Aang rested against Appa’s side. “I get what he means, though,” he admitted. “They used to relax more. Now every time we see them they’re discussing trade routes or council meetings, which is fair, but seems tiring.”

“Mm,” Toph hummed knowingly. “And their heartbeats are awful lately.”

Sokka grimaced. “That sounds medically concerning.”

Katara’s expression softened as she glanced toward the closed cabin door, where muffled voices could still occasionally be heard beneath the creaking of the ship. “I think they’ve both forgotten how to stop.”

Nobody joked after that.

“Do you think they’ll get mad when they find out?” Toph asked.

“She won’t,” Katara replied confidently.

“Zuko, on the other hand…” Aang muttered.

“Good thing we’ll have his wife on our side,” Sokka said brightly.

“And if we don’t?” Aang asked.

Sokka pointed toward Appa without hesitation. “Then you grab Appa and we leave before the entire Restoration work burns down.” He straightened abruptly. “Alright. I’m going to get them.”

Before anyone could stop him, Sokka shoved himself away from the railing and disappeared down the staircase toward the lower deck.

Inside the royal cabin, warmth drifted through the polished wooden walls from the ship’s heating vents while sunlight poured through the round windows overlooking the sea. Scrolls covered nearly every available surface, spread across the low table between you and Zuko, stacked beside ink brushes, tucked carelessly beneath official maps that had slowly begun overtaking the room throughout the journey.

Across from you, Zuko let out an annoyed sigh.

“Did you sign the harbor authorization for the eastern fleet?” you asked while skimming another line of the document in your hands.

“Yesterday,” Zuko replied without looking up. “I left it on your desk.”

You hummed before taking a sip of tea, absentmindedly warming the porcelain between your palms with a flicker of firebending. Amber light glowed briefly beneath your fingertips before fading back into the warmth of the cabin.

“And did you bring everything from my desk?”

He set one scroll aside in favor of another. “Of course.”

“I think you didn’t, my lord.” You lifted your gaze toward him over the edge of the paper. “You’re becoming forgetful already...”

One dark brow lifted as he finally leaned back far enough to look at you properly instead of the paperwork surrounding both of you. Light from the cabin windows caught against the gold threading of his robes, while loose strands of dark hair had begun escaping around his face beneath his royal headpiece. 

“I definitely did.”

You lowered the document slowly. “Well, I cannot find the council seal or the information packet for this summit.”

His expression narrowed thoughtfully for a second before he gestured vaguely toward the growing stacks of scrolls crowding the cabin table, the nearby shelves, and somehow even part of the floor now.

“Maybe you moved them—” His eyes lifted back toward you. “Did you just call me old?”

“I didn’t,” you answered smoothly, allowing yourself a small smile at last. “Move them, I mean. I did call you old.”

That finally pulled a quiet laugh from him, soft enough you nearly missed it beneath the distant crash of waves against the hull outside.

The cabin door burst open.

“There you are, my favorite busy friends,” Sokka announced dramatically.

Neither of you even flinched. Zuko had already reached for another document before Sokka finished speaking while you continued shifting papers around the table in search of the missing packet.

“You say that like we disappeared,” Zuko replied flatly.

“It feels like you did,” Sokka informed him while crossing the cabin, only to stop short in visible horror at the amount of paperwork surrounding both of you. “It somehow looks worse in here now.”

“Sorry, Sokka,” you said while carefully setting another scroll aside. “We’re a little busy trying to find the information packet for the summit.” Your eyes narrowed slightly. “Did you even send it?”

Sokka visibly froze.

“Oh. Right,” he said quickly. “I forgot.”

You stared at him flatly.

“You forgot?”

“See? Not me,” Zuko muttered. “I’m perfectly in my youth...” 

Your gaze snapped toward him just as the candle beside the cabin window flared unexpectedly brighter. A drifting bonsai leaf brushed too close to the flame and blackened instantly at the edges before curling into ash.

Sokka swallowed.

“It was complicated,” he defended quickly.

You pressed two fingers briefly against your temple before exhaling through your nose. “Don’t worry,” you said with the sort of composure that only existed because you had practiced it for years now. “We’ll manage. Like always.” Your eyes lifted back toward him. “Can you at least tell us more about it?”

Sokka snatched a loose sheet of paper from the crowded table and immediately began scribbling across it at alarming speed.

“I can…” He squinted down at the page. “Rewrite it.”

“By memory?” you asked.

“Duh.” He dipped the brush back into ink without hesitation. “I’m the best, if you haven’t figured that out already.”

Zuko finally looked up again, entirely unimpressed. “I’m still waiting for the day.”

A laugh escaped you before you could stop it, quiet but genuine enough that Zuko’s attention shifted toward you at the sound.

Sokka pointed accusingly between the two of you. “See? This is exactly why you both need this.”

Your eyes narrowed slightly. “Need what?”

“The…” Sokka gestured vaguely toward the ceiling, the cabin, the island waiting beyond the windows. “Important political gathering trip.”

“Nothing excites me more than a royal trip,” you replied with exhausting sincerity while finally leaning back in your chair. The movement pulled tension visibly through your shoulders as you closed your eyes for one brief second before opening them again. “Truly. I can already feel myself relaxing.”

Without looking away from the document in his hand, Zuko leaned over just enough to press a quick kiss against your temple before returning his attention to whatever impossibly important report had captured it.

Across the cabin, Sokka opened his mouth to answer, only for Aang to appear suddenly in the doorway behind him with sunlight and sea wind spilling into the room around him.

“We’re here!” he announced brightly. “You should come see this.”

⋆𐙚₊˚⊹♡ ⋆𐙚₊˚⊹

Whaletail Island rose from the sea in sweeping layers of dark volcanic cliffs softened by dense cedar forests and pale ribbons of steam drifting through the mountainside. Sunlight spilled across hanging bridges suspended between narrow stone paths while clusters of wooden cabins disappeared into drifting fog higher along the cliffs. 

The entire place looked impossibly peaceful.

Which immediately made you suspicious.

“You picked a very dramatic location for a summit,” Zuko observed beside you, one hand resting at the small of your back while the ship slowed toward the docks below.

Sokka visibly brightened. “Thank you.”

“Not a compliment.”

Far beneath the ship, harbor workers moved along the docks while pulley lifts carried supplies toward the retreat overlooking the sea. A few Air Acolytes crossed the upper terraces before disappearing between the trees. 

“It’s beautiful,” Katara admitted.

“And isolated,” Toph added approvingly. “I like it already.”

You remained near the railing beside Zuko as the ship finally settled against the docks with a deep groan of wood and steel beneath the waves. Your attention shifted toward the harbor below, instinctively searching for diplomatic ships, royal insignias, or waiting representatives.

“Where are the delegates?”

Aang answered first.

“They’ll probably arrive later.”

Zuko’s eyes narrowed almost imperceptibly.

Sokka jumped in right afterward. “Yeah! Diplomats love arriving late. It’s part of being diplomatic.”

“That doesn’t sound right,” you murmured.

Before either you or Zuko could press further, Katara stepped smoothly between all of you.

“Why don’t we at least settle in first?” she suggested. “We’ve been traveling for hours.”

There wasn’t much room to argue after hours at sea. Judging by the tension still drawn through Zuko’s shoulders, he knew it too. 

Eventually, after entirely too much unloading, Appa complaining loudly while being guided toward the upper terraces, and Sokka somehow nearly falling directly into the harbor within the first ten minutes of arrival, the group finally reached the retreat itself.

The cabins rested high above the cliffs where sea wind moved constantly through the surrounding cedar trees. Steam drifted across the stone walkways connecting the buildings while shallow volcanic streams ran beneath narrow wooden bridges.

Directly in the center of the retreat stood the largest cabin of all. Painted near the entrance in elegant gold lettering were the words:

THE SHINY BUG.

You stopped walking.

“…why is it called that?”

Sokka looked deeply, profoundly proud of himself already.

“Isn’t it majestic?”

Zuko stared at the sign for a long moment before continuing toward the entrance without changing expression.

“I already want to leave.”

The cabin itself was beautiful.

Warm cedar walls framed an enormous central living space centered around a sunken sitting area layered with cushions and low tables already set with tea, fruit, and enough food to feed Appa twice over. Tall windows overlooked the ocean below while soft amber light flickered across the room.

For one moment, everyone seemed uncertain what to do next.

Your friends had clearly expected relief, or relaxation, maybe even gratitude. Instead, the second you and Zuko sat down, both of you reached automatically for work again out of pure instinct.

You had barely unrolled another scroll when Zuko finally spoke without looking up from his own.

“We should probably review the delegate list again once they arrive.”

“Mm.” You nodded distractedly while reaching for a brush. “And if the Northern representatives are attending, we still need to discuss the harbor proposal before tomorrow.”

Around the room, the rest of the Gaang visibly deflated.

Toph groaned loudly enough for it to echo against the ceiling beams.

“Oh, for rock’s sake. They brought the stress with them.”

Aang had just opened his mouth to respond when a loud crash suddenly sounded somewhere deeper inside the cabin.

Zuko was on his feet before the noise fully settled, fire flashing sharply to life across one hand while sparks danced instinctively at your own fingertips beside him. Across the room, Katara bent water from her cup into a suspended ribbon while Toph planted one bare foot against the floorboards, expression sharpening beneath the vibrations traveling through the cabin. Even Aang straightened, air stirring uneasily around his sleeves. Meanwhile, Sokka grabbed a decorative serving tray like it might somehow function as a weapon.

“Who’s there?” Zuko snapped.

“Come out,” you added, pulse jumping as another loud clatter sounded near the kitchen.

Sokka yelped somewhere behind you. “WHY DOES THE SHINY BUG HAVE INTRUDERS?”

A cabinet door swung shut.

“…you’re all very tense.”

Suki stepped casually out from the kitchen holding a bowl of fruit in one hand and what looked suspiciously like ice cream in the other.

Katara burst into laughter.

Sokka nearly collapsed against the nearest table in relief. “SPIRITS, SUKI.”

“What?” she asked innocently while stealing a piece of fruit from the bowl. “I got hungry.”

Despite everything, warmth spread through your chest at the sight of her. Nearby, Aang grinned while Katara crossed the room to hug her properly, and even Toph looked noticeably less annoyed than usual.

Meanwhile, Sokka looked seconds away from emotionally combusting.

“You brought ice cream?” he asked, staring at the bowl in Suki’s hand like she had descended from the spirits themselves.

Suki smirked faintly before holding out the spoon toward him. “I know what matters in a crisis.”

Sokka accepted the bite with alarming sincerity. “You understand me on a spiritual level.”

Laughing under her breath, Suki caught the front of his tunic and pulled him down just enough to press a quick kiss against his cheek before he could keep talking. 

Suki finally noticed both you and Zuko still standing there fully prepared for combat and straightened at once, lowering the bowl slightly before offering a respectful bow.

“My lord. My lady.”

“Oh, don’t be ridiculous,” you sighed, crossing the room toward her. “Come here!”

You pulled her into a quick embrace before she could protest while behind you, Zuko extinguished the fire still flickering across his hand.

“What are you doing here?” you asked once you pulled back, suspicion already returning.

Suki blinked once.

“Oh,” she answered casually. “Just joining your rest time!”

You slowly lowered your arms.

“Our what?”

From somewhere behind you, Toph muttered, “Uh oh.”

Sokka moved first.

In his rush forward, he nearly slipped on the edge of one of the cushions, catching himself awkwardly against the low table hard enough to rattle half the teacups while still clutching Suki’s ice cream spoon in one hand.

“No one said rest time,” he said quickly, waving the spoon vaguely through the air while panic spread visibly across his face. “Nobody said that. Weird phrase, honestly. Maybe it’s like… a Kyoshi Warrior expression. Right, Suki?”

Beside him, Suki looked genuinely fascinated by how aggressively he was unraveling.

“Uhhh…”

“Sokka,” you said.

He straightened so fast it almost looked painful, nearly dropping the spoon before hastily hiding it behind his back.

“Yes, your ladyship?” he asked nervously, shoulders pulling tighter the moment you crossed your arms.

“Give us the information sheet.”

For one brief second, Sokka looked like he was seriously reconsidering his earlier evacuation plan involving Appa. Beside him, Suki pressed her lips together hard enough to hide a laugh. With deep resignation, he reached into his satchel and carefully handed over the page he had been “rewriting” aboard the ship earlier.

Zuko took the page first while you leaned closer to read over his shoulder. The room gradually fell silent as both of your eyes moved down the document.

Most of it was complete nonsense.

Half the page read like Sokka had attempted to recreate an official summit proposal entirely from memory after sustaining a head injury. Still, buried between badly phrased diplomatic jargon and several aggressively underlined words, there were just enough believable details about Whaletail Island’s harbor restoration and coastal trade routes to explain how this disaster had managed to fool you for several hours.

Then, halfway down the page, your eyes caught the name of the summit:

Southern

Oceanic

Knowledge

Assembly

You looked very slowly toward Sokka.

“We were supposed to believe we’d been invited to an event whose initials spell… SOKA?” Zuko asked, lifting the page slightly between two fingers like perhaps distance alone would make it less ridiculous.

Toph made one strangled noise before dissolving into laughter. 

“You even missed a K, genius,” you said flatly.

Across the room, Katara dragged both hands down her face.

“I mean, it worked until now, you actually believed it—” Sokka started quickly, only to falter the moment your expression hardened further.

He raised both hands in surrender. “I panicked under pressure!”

Beside you, Zuko continued staring at the page in silence. Slowly, the last traces of humor disappeared from his expression. His thumb pressed harder against the edge of the paper until it bent slightly beneath the force while his eyes traced once more across the absurdly written title.  

“You made us waste our time and come here?”

“It wasn’t just me!” Sokka defended, pointing wildly around the room. “It was a group effort!”

Zuko stood abruptly.

The movement was sharp enough to send several nearby scrolls sliding across the low table while the untouched tea beside them rippled inside its cup. He dropped the paper beside it with visible restraint, though the sound still landed harder than it should have inside the sudden silence of the cabin.

That kind of restraint was never a good sign. Not with Zuko.

“Zuko—”

Without another word, he turned and strode out.The cabin shook with the force of the slammed door.

⋆𐙚₊˚⊹♡ ⋆𐙚₊˚⊹

By the time all of you stepped outside, the ocean wind had turned colder.

Farther below, attendants still moved back and forth from the harbor lifts carrying royal trunks, scroll cases, and ceremonial robes toward the upper cabins completely unaware that the summit they were preparing for did not actually exist.

Zuko had stopped near the edge of the main terrace overlooking the cliffs below, one hand braced against the railing while the sea crashed endlessly beneath him.

“This is ridiculous,” he said the moment the rest of you approached. He turned sharply, whatever restraint he’d been holding onto finally snapping. “Do you have any idea how much we left behind to come here? How many things are waiting for us back home while we stand on this island for a summit that doesn’t even exist? And all of you just stood there laughing.”

“Nobody was laughing at you,” Aang tried carefully.

“You forged diplomatic documents.”

“You barely read them!” Sokka blurted out before visibly regretting it.

Katara closed her eyes. “Sokka.”

“What? It’s true!”

Zuko stared at him in complete disbelief. “That’s supposed to help your argument?”

“No, actually,” Sokka admitted quickly, “that one got away from me.”

You crossed your arms tightly against your chest, irritation still burning hot beneath your skin as the cold mountain breeze lifted strands of hair around your face. “You could’ve just asked us to come.”

“And you would’ve said yes?” Katara asked.

The question caught harder than you expected, your first instinct had been to answer at once. 

But somewhere between palace schedules, council meetings, and waking before sunrise beside Zuko only to spend entire days separated by responsibilities before collapsing into bed exhausted long after midnight, you realized you genuinely couldn’t remember the last time either of you had agreed to rest.

The ocean roared faintly beneath the cliffs while familiar faces watched you from across the terrace: Katara watching carefully, Aang trying very hard not to look guilty, Suki lingering near the steps with her arms crossed loosely, and Toph leaning comfortably against one of the wooden posts with the sort of expression that suggested she already knew exactly what everyone in the group was feeling. 

“We didn’t do this because we thought it would be funny,” Katara said finally. “We did it because every time we see you lately, you both look exhausted.”

“You barely sleep,” Aang added. “And when you do, you’re still working.”

“You answer council messages during dinner,” Toph said.

“We are very busy,” Zuko said.

Katara exchanged a look with Aang before turning back toward Zuko. 

“That’s… exactly the problem,” she said, lifting a brow.

Your frustration didn’t disappear all at once. It still sat there stubbornly beneath your ribs, tangled together with embarrassment and irritation and the absurdity of standing on an island because Sokka had forged a summit named after himself. Looking at them now, it became impossible not to see how carefully this entire disaster had actually been planned.

The fact that all of them had crossed half the world to orchestrate this ridiculous scheme because somewhere along the way they had started worrying about you, about both of you… Suddenly the whole thing felt less like a prank and more like a desperate attempt from people who missed their friends.

However, Zuko still looked furious.

“I have to work hard because I’m the Fire Lord,” he said, pacing away from the railing before turning back again. “I’m supposed to fix. I cannot keep disappearing every time people decide I look tired.” 

“You’re not disappearing,” Aang said carefully. “You’re resting.”

Zuko laughed once under his breath, though there wasn’t any humor in it. “You say that like the world politely pauses while I do.”

“You’re right, it doesn’t,” Katara answered, her expression softening as she looked between both of you. “But somewhere along the way, it started feeling like you two forgot you’re people before titles.”

Behind him, heat rippled unevenly through the terrace braziers as he turned back toward the others. 

“We’re leaving.” His gaze moved toward the attendants still unloading belongings farther below. “Stop carrying everything up and bring it back to the ship.”

A few attendants paused mid-step. 

Zuko reached for your hand instinctively after years beside each other, his fingers curling firmly around yours as he turned to leave with every expectation that you would follow him without hesitation.

You didn’t move, and the resistance stopped him short. 

Surprise crossed his face as he turned back toward you, your joined hands still caught between you. You stepped a little closer instead, tightening your grip around his hand instead of letting go.

“It isn’t wise to travel back now,” you said, lowering your voice now that you stood closer to him. “The sea paths are darker after sunset, and the fog near the cliffs will only worsen overnight.”

His jaw tightened.

“And although I understand why you’re angry,” you continued, thumb brushing once against the back of his hand, “they didn’t do this to mock us.”

Behind you, the group remained suspiciously silent, all of them pretending not to stare while very obviously staring.

“We should stay until tomorrow morning at least,” you finished.

Zuko looked at you for a long moment, frustration still written plainly across his expression, though no longer burning quite as sharply as before. 

He looked away before loosening his grip on your hand.

“…fine,” he muttered at last.

Toph grinned immediately. “The rest of us almost died and she got him down with one sentence...”

Sokka cleared his throat.

“So. Hypothetically speaking. How opposed are we to group activities?”

⋆𐙚₊˚⊹♡ ⋆𐙚₊˚⊹

The back terrace behind the cabin overlooked the cliffs directly, quieter than the rest of the retreat below. Stacks of firewood rested beside the enormous stone firepit at the center of the terrace, and half-unpacked crates filled with blankets, decorations, and cooking supplies had been left scattered near the steps after Sokka insisted the attendants leave the rest to them.

Katara had decided this meant everyone should “make themselves useful.”

Which was how Sokka and Aang conveniently vanished while Katara ended up hanging lights along the cedar beams overhead, guiding each hook neatly into place with small currents of water. Loose strands of hair kept escaping around her face whenever the wind shifted too sharply. Nearby, Suki balanced effortlessly along the railing bordering the terrace, passing decorations down one by one with the kind of ease that made it seem physically impossible for her to ever lose balance. Toph remained sprawled across one of the benches beside the firepit, contributing absolutely nothing. 

You found yourself caught somewhere in the middle of all of it: stacking blankets near the firepit, steadying swaying decorations whenever the wind threatened to pull them sideways again, and trying very hard not to think too much about the argument from earlier.

Above the terrace, unnoticed entirely, the upper balcony doors slid open overhead. Zuko stepped outside intending only to clear his head for a moment, until he heard your laugh below him.

“For the record,” Suki said, “most Fire Ladies probably don’t carry firewood.”

You bent to grab another log from beside the firepit, brushing sawdust from your hands against your robes afterward. “Most Fire Ladies probably don’t get kidnapped into fake summits named after Sokka.”

Suki laughed as she stepped back down onto the terrace stones. “Okay, that’s fair enough.”

Toph stretched lazily across the bench with her arms folded behind her head.

“You know, Toph,” Katara called while adjusting another hanging light overhead with a curl of water, “earthbending the wood closer would actually be helpful.”

Toph tilted her head in her direction. “I’m not intending to be helpful. I’m supervising.”

You glanced over your shoulder at her while setting another blanket beside the firepit. “Remarkable leadership strategy. Truly inspiring for the nation.”

Suki nearly doubled over laughing while Katara looked away with obvious surrender.

“There it is!” Suki said at once, pointing accusingly at you as she leaned against the railing. “That terrifying Fire Lady voice.”

You blinked. “Excuse me?”

“You absolutely have one now. And the stare too.”

Katara nodded without hesitation. “It’s true.”

“I do not.”

“You do,” Suki insisted, grinning. “With Toph just now. And earlier with Sokka? You looked ready to exile him from the nation.”

Toph tilted her head thoughtfully from the bench. “Respect.”

“That wasn’t intentional,” you defended, though the laughter in your voice ruined most of the argument.

Katara shook her head fondly. “We haven’t seen that expression in years.”

“Oh, spirits,” you sighed. 

“No, it’s not bad,” Suki assured, sidestepping in front of you. “Do the scary Fire Lady thing again.”

“I’m not performing for you.”

“Boring.”

You scoffed and sent a quick spark skidding toward the edge of her boot.

Suki dodged with a laugh. “Oh, so now we’re bending at each other…”

Katara pointed a warning finger between both of you while another lantern floated beside her shoulder. “No fire near anything hanging overhead.”

You opened your mouth to defend yourself right as one of the hooks overhead snapped loose with a sharp crack.

The lantern tipped sideways at once. Katara reacted first, pulling water upward from the nearby volcanic stream in a quick arc meant to catch it before it hit the floor. Toph reacted second. The stone beneath the lantern shot upward beneath her bending, knocking it safely back into the air directly toward you.

You caught it instinctively, fire blooming between your hands just enough to keep the flame inside from dying out. Heat spread across your palms as the lantern spun once before the dangling cords tangled immediately around your wrists.

Suki had to grab the railing to steady herself through another burst of laughter. 

“Agni, help me...”

“If only the council could see the Fire Lady now,” Katara managed through her own laughter while unsuccessfully trying to untangle one of the cords.

Suki grinned wickedly. “I have a feeling Zuko would love this view.”

“If he hasn’t seen it before,” Toph added.

“Oh, shut up—”

Embarrassment flared through your bending before you could stop it. The cords blackened beneath a burst of heat far stronger than intended. 

“You’re hot…” Suki started to say, only for her eyes to widen. “Wait—”

The edge of the lantern suddenly caught fire. A second later, part of your sleeve ignited too, flames racing upward fast enough to send immediate panic across your face.

“You’re on fire!” Katara shouted.

“I CAN SEE THAT!”

Suki lunged toward you, smacking at the flames climbing the lantern while laughing far too hard to be genuinely useful. 

“STOP MOVING.”

“I’m not moving!”

Katara pulled water upward from the nearby stream in a narrow twisting current before sending it crashing toward the burning lantern to stop the flames from spreading across the beams.

Suki turned just in time to realize she was directly in the path of it. The wave crashed into both of you hard enough to steal the breath from your lungs.

Suki let out a startled shriek while you sputtered hard enough to nearly lose hold of the lantern, water streaming down your hair and soaking through the front of your robes as the last traces of smoke curled weakly from your sleeve.

Toph had to brace one hand against the bench through another fit of laughter. 

“This,” she declared between helpless cackles, “is the best vacation I’ve ever had.”

“You’re not helping!” Katara protested, though by now she was laughing almost as hard herself while water splashed uselessly across the floor.

Toph lifted her chin from where she leaned against the bench, sounding far too confident for everyone else’s comfort. 

“I can help.”

You barely had time to turn toward her before she tilted her head in your direction.

“Extend your arms.”

You blinked. “What?”

“Trust me and do as I say.”

The instant your sleeves lifted, the stone beneath the terrace answered her bending with a sharp grinding crack. A narrow slab of volcanic tile shot upward between all of you in one clean movement, slicing neatly through the still-burning cords before the flames could spread farther across the beams.

Another section of stone rose beside Katara at the same time, Toph clearly trying to stop the burning lantern from crashing directly onto her.

The entire terrace tilted with it, the floor tilting sideways hard enough to throw everyone off balance.

Suki slipped first on the soaked terrace boards, grabbing your shoulders as her footing vanished beneath her. The motion yanked you sideways just as Katara lunged forward to catch both of you.

“Careful with the pregnant one!” Suki yelped as Katara nearly collided into both of you trying to stop the fall.

Your own footing disappeared a second later. For one horrifying instant, the soaked boards rushed up beneath you before the earth shifted beneath the impact. Toph’s bending rippled through the stone fast enough to soften the ground before any of you hit it. Mud surged upward in a thick uneven mound that caught all three of you in one thoroughly undignified heap instead of against the hard volcanic stone.

You landed first with a startled noise half swallowed by laughter, Suki collapsing sideways beneath you while Katara tumbled into both of you moments later hard enough to send muddy water splashing across the floor.

Mud streaked across Katara’s sleeves and cheek, loose strands of hair plastered against her face. Suki’s dark hair clung damply to her neck and shoulders while muddy water soaked through the front of her clothes. Your own sleeve remained singed at the cuff beneath fresh smears of mud across your hands and knees.

Suki rolled onto her back beside you, breathless with laughter. She pushed wet hair from her forehead.

“Technically speaking…” she managed between breaths, “the fire’s out.”

You stared upward at the swaying lanterns for one disbelieving second before the realization hit you all at once.

“I could’ve literally just put it out myself,” you gasped, laughing hard enough your stomach hurt as you covered part of your face with one muddy hand. “What even happened? You’re all insane!”

“Says the woman married to Zuko,” Toph shot back, sending all of you into a round of laughter. 

Eventually, the laughter softened into smiles and breathless sighs, the kind of quiet closeness that only existed between people who had known each other long enough to survive embarrassment together.

“You have no idea how much I missed this,” you admitted after a while, turning your head enough to look at all of them sprawled across the mud beside you. “And all of you.”

Katara reached across the mud between you to squeeze your hand once.

“We missed you too.”

Warmth spread through your chest so suddenly it almost hurt. Without thinking, you leaned sideways into them, and Katara and Suki shifted closer too, arms wrapping loosely around you in a tangled mess of damp robes, muddy sleeves, and lingering laughter.

Above you, Toph made a dramatic sound of disgust from the bench.

“I might be blind,” she informed the night air, “but I can absolutely tell you’re hugging.”

Suki lifted her head. “You should join.”

“Absolutely not.”

Katara grinned. “Toph…”

“No. I already know you all look emotional. I don’t need to experience it physically too.”

You laughed. “Come here!”

Toph crossed her arms stubbornly for approximately three seconds before releasing an enormous sigh.

“I guess,” she said reluctantly, “if I accidentally fell on top of all of you because I can’t see where I’m going, that would technically be acceptable.”

Before anyone could stop her, Toph planted one bare foot against the bench and launched herself forward with no hesitation.

She landed fully across the group with enough force to nearly knock the breath from your lungs while muddy water splashed across the grass. Katara collapsed into horrified laughter beside you, Suki wheezing so hard she could barely breathe while one of Toph’s elbows dug directly into your ribs.

“TOPH!”

“What?” Toph asked innocently from somewhere in the middle of the pile. “I fell.”

“You elbowed me!”

Katara laughed so hard she nearly curled into herself again while you clung helplessly to all of them, breathless beneath the stars.

After a moment, Suki lifted her head slightly from where she’d half collapsed against Katara’s shoulder.

“You know,” she said thoughtfully, “this feels like a great moment to tell us the baby’s name.”

Katara blinked at her. “What part of this situation says name reveal time to you?”

“Think about it,” Suki insisted. “The baby could have a meaningful name inspired by tonight.”

“Muddy,” Toph suggested immediately.

“Mud-tara,” Suki added.

“Mudpie,” you offered weakly through another laugh.

Katara groaned into her hands while the rest of you lost control again. 

“You’ll know the name when Aang and I are ready.”

You reached over to grab her hand dramatically. “As long as you don’t name the baby something spelling AANG, I think we’ll survive.”

Toph nearly rolled off the pile laughing.

By then, night had settled fully around the retreat, laughter still carrying faintly through the trees below. 

High above the terrace, Zuko stood quietly against the balcony railing overlooking the grounds below. One hand rested loosely against the wood while his gaze remained fixed on you below.

The frustration from earlier still weighed heavily on him, worn raw by days of travel, paperwork, expectations, and responsibilities that never truly released either of you. Yet watching you muddy, breathless, tangled in your friends’ arms while laughter lit up your entire face, eased something in him anyway. Not even the grandest Fire Nation celebrations or the most carefully planned palace entertainments had ever drawn a smile from you quite like this one.

Zuko could no longer look at the retreat as time stolen from his duties, and finally began to understand what the others had been trying to give both of you all along.

⋆𐙚₊˚⊹♡ ⋆𐙚₊˚⊹

“What are you looking at?”

Your voice pulled Zuko from whatever thoughts had held his attention beyond the balcony doors. He turned, shoulders still carrying traces of the tension from earlier.

His gaze dropped to your dirt-stained robes.

Yours followed a second later.

“… I asked first,” you said.

You stepped farther into the room, moving behind the folding screen beside the bed, already pulling apart the ruined layers of your clothes.

“The moon,” he answered simply after a moment.

You heard the lid of one of the travel chests open at the foot of the bed.

A laugh escaped you from behind the screen while fabric rustled around you. “The moon?” you repeated in disbelief. “It’s worse than I thought. Fire Lord Zuko driven to moon-gazing by sheer irritation.” You paused. “Would you mind—oh. Thank you.”

Your nightgown appeared neatly draped over the top of the screen before you could finish asking.

“I think the moon is beautiful,” he said while crossing somewhere behind the screen, his footsteps against the wooden floorboards. “Don’t tell Sokka that, though.”

Another laugh escaped you while slipping the nightgown over your head.

“How have you found this… whole thing?” Zuko asked after a moment.

“The retreat?” you asked, stepping out in your nightgown and moving toward the vanity near the door. You dragged a brush through your freshly washed hair while he disappeared behind the screen to change in turn.

“And the betrayal.”

His tone remained serious enough that you had to bite back another laugh. 

“First of all, I like this place,” you said, reaching for one of the incense sticks resting atop the vanity and lighting it with a flick of your finger before setting it carefully into the holder beside the mirror, “What they’ve done with Whaletail Island is beautiful. Honestly, I regret not coming sooner.”

You turned just as he stepped fully back into the room, dark hair still slightly damp around his face while thin ribbons of incense smoke drifted through the space between you. 

“As for what you insist on calling betrayal…” Your lips curved faintly. “I think it deserves another name.” You held his gaze, standing from the vanity. “And I think this is highly necessary, Zuko.”

To your surprise, he nodded. 

He crossed the room and lowered himself onto his usual side of the bed before patting the empty space beside him.

The gesture surprised you enough that you hesitated before walking over and settling beside him atop the blankets. The mattress dipped beneath your weight.

His hand settled over yours where it rested against your stomach.

“I… think so too.”

Your head turned toward him fast enough to pull the beginning of a smile from him. 

“What?”

“I think they were right.”

You stared at him in complete alarm before leaning closer onto your knees and pressing the back of your hand against his forehead.

“Are you feeling unwell?”

He laughed.

Which somehow worried you more.

“Zuko, this is serious—”

You grabbed his face with both hands, squishing his cheeks together until his lips puckered awkwardly.

“I’m going to call Katara. Maybe she can heal whatever this is.”

His eyes narrowed into slits beneath your hands before he caught both your wrists and pulled you forward. The movement sent you falling halfway across him with a startled laugh, your hands trapped loosely behind his head while his own hands found your waist to steady you. 

“Don’t be ridiculous, my lady,” he murmured, though the smile lingering across his face made the title sound softer than teasing.

This close, you could see he truly meant it. His thumb moved absently against your waist beneath the fabric of your nightgown.

“I think…” He exhaled, staring somewhere past you for a moment. “I’ve been so focused on keeping everything together that I stopped noticing how exhausted you are too. And maybe I’ve been unfair about this trip. But you deserve to be happy. Spirits know we both needed to step away before this became too much.”

His golden eyes lifted back to yours.

“And…” he added after a beat, “I suppose I appreciate the others trying to take care of us. Even if Sokka’s methods are questionable.”

You smiled.

“And I think,” he continued with visible reluctance at admitting any of this aloud, “that maybe I needed this too.”

You pressed your nose lightly against his. When you opened your eyes again, he was already watching you.

One of your hands eased from his grasp to rest gently against his cheek.

“You don’t know how much I appreciate hearing you say that,” you whispered. “And how much you’ll appreciate it too.” Your thumb traced the edge of his scar. “I’m exhausted, Zuko. And don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t change being the Fire Lady at your side for anything. But we’re constantly under pressure. Even if it’s understandable… we’re still allowed to rest. We matter too.”

As the words left your lips, Zuko looked entirely defenseless against whatever he felt for you. He would have damned Agni himself before waiting another second to kiss you.

One hand rose to your jaw as he leaned down, capturing your lips with a kind of desperation that made your chest ache. You kissed all the time, it was nearly impossible not to when you had a husband like him, but somewhere between royal meetings, traveling schedules, and interrupted mornings, kisses like this had become rare. 

It tasted different, sweeter somehow, not because the island was beautiful or the night was warm, but because for the first time in far too long, neither of you seemed to be waiting for the next obligation to pull you apart. There was no pressure lingering behind the touch, no expectation beyond simply being together, and somehow that made the kiss feel more consuming than any you had shared in months.

Your fingers slipped into his hair while his hand spread wider against your waist, pulling you closer against him as though he’d been waiting far too long to hold you properly again.

You smiled against his lips when you finally pulled back enough to breathe again.

“So…” you murmured, unable to hide your excitement, “does this mean we’ll participate in the activities Sokka planned tomorrow?”

Zuko rolled his eyes, yet the smile tugging at his mouth ruined any attempt at annoyance. 

“I suppose it wouldn’t hurt.”

Your expression lit up so quickly it made him laugh.

Before he could react, you kissed him again. And again. And once more after that until his laugh disappeared against your mouth while your hands pushed lightly at the collar of his night robes. His hands slid to steady you as you climbed fully atop him.

“If this is the result of Sokka’s dumb decisions,” he muttered as your lips trailed distractedly along his jaw, “I might owe him one.”

You laughed softly against his chest before lifting your head again, fingers wandering lower across warm skin beneath the loosened fabric.

“Careful,” you warned. “You’re starting to sound forgiving.”

“Maybe he—”

“THAT WAS A WARNING SHOT, SUKI!”

The shout rang through the terrace loudly enough to make both of you freeze. A heartbeat later came Suki’s unimpressed voice.

“You dropped the fish before throwing it, genius!”

Then came a loud splash from somewhere below the balcony, followed by Sokka’s yell.

“MY SANDALS!”

You buried your face against Zuko’s chest laughing while he stared at the ceiling in complete disbelief. 

“I’ll just close the balcony doors,” you managed between laughs, climbing reluctantly off him.

Zuko let out a long, deeply offended grunt at the loss of contact.

“Never mind,” he declared. “Not forgiven. Enemy number one.”

Still laughing, you moved back toward your side of the bed after shutting the doors. You barely made it halfway across the mattress before he tugged you straight back against him, rolling you beneath him this time. 

“No,” he said firmly, settling over you with unmistakable intent. “You come back here.”

His mouth brushed yours once more.

“Now… where were we?”

⋆𐙚₊˚⊹♡ ⋆𐙚₊˚⊹

"What? Why?" Zuko asked, confused.

"Just don't." Sokka glanced around as if searching for a hidden enemy, then leaned in and whispered, "It's dangerous. Trust me, man."

Zuko decided not to enter. Not yet. Sokka's warning had left him unsettled. What could possibly be dangerous about you? He needed more information. Maybe Toph or Aang could help.

[...]

"So, what do you think?" Zuko asked Toph, who was sprawled on a flat stone, playing with her space rock—molding it into shapes, flattening it, curling it around her fingers like clay.

"Probably some silly stuff," the earthbender said, not looking up.

"But Sokka said it was dangerous. Maybe she's ill or something." Zuko tried to consider other possibilities. Toph just looked exhausted by the conversation.

"I tried to talk to her earlier this morning…"

"And?"

"She cursed me for opening the tent and letting light into her eyes." Toph blew an annoyed strand of hair from her face. "Sokka usually says dumb things, so I never thought I'd agree with him on anything. But he's right."

She stopped playing with her rock, turned it back into a bracelet, and snapped it around her wrist.

"I don't know what happened, and frankly, I don't give a shit anyway."

Zuko listened, trying to picture you cursing Toph just for trying to check on you. He couldn't. You were such good friends with everyone—especially Toph, since neither of you was into "girly" things. You'd once been caught playing in the mud together: Toph hurling clumps with earthbending, you splashing back with waterbending, both of you laughing like there was no tomorrow. You were Toph's best friend. Why would you treat her badly out of nowhere?

"Thanks for the information… I think," the prince said uncertainly. He noticed, though, that Toph was lying about not caring. Her jaw was tighter than usual. Her blind eyes stared at nothing with something that looked like hurt.

"It was a pleasure talking to you, Sparky." She turned away. "Sadly, I can't say the same about that jerk."

[...]

"Are you sure she did that?" Aang was brushing Appa's thick white fur, his movements slow and soothing. The sky bison rumbled contentedly.

"Yes. And Toph was really mad. More than usual." Zuko couldn't forget the earthbender's expression—a mix of anger and disappointment he'd rarely seen on her face.

"Maybe she ate something bad?"

"But Sokka said it was dangerous to go into her tent. I don't think it's food poisoning." Zuko also couldn't shake Sokka's uncharacteristically serious face. In any other context, it would have been hilarious.

"Sokka and Katara had a strange fever not long ago," Aang said, finally finishing with Appa. The bison looked joyful, tongue lolling. "They said strange things and couldn't do anything alone. Maybe it's that."

"And how did the fever stop?"

"Well…" Aang let out a nervous chuckle. "They had to suck some frozen frogs."

"Frozen what—" Zuko's eyes widened.

"MAYBE SHE ISN'T SICK, I DON'T KNOW!"

"HOW THE HELL AM I GOING TO FIND FROZEN FROGS HERE?" Zuko was already spiraling, imagining the worst.

"HOLY SHIT! CAN'T YOU ASSHOLES STOP SCREAMING? YOU'RE HURTING MY EARS!" Toph appeared out of nowhere, covering her ears with both hands.

"Why do you guys keep using bad words in front of Appa and Momo?" Aang asked in a withering tone. "They're innocent creatures…"

[...]

Zuko was running out of options. Nobody could explain what was wrong with you. The list of people he could ask was nearly exhausted. There was only one person left.

"Katara."

She didn't seem to hear him.

The waterbender was kneeling at the edge of a river, washing clothes and sheets. She'd submerge the fabric, rub it clean, then dry it with a simple bending motion—pulling the water out in a shimmering curtain. Being a waterbending master had its advantages. She used her bending for everything, making daily chores a thousand times easier. It was impossible not to watch her and feel awe at how naturally she connected with the water, how effortlessly she commanded it.

Then Zuko noticed one sheet was different from the others. It had a red stain.

"Is that blood?"

Katara nearly jumped out of her skin. She'd been so distracted she hadn't heard him approach—hadn't heard him call her name. And now she'd been caught holding that incriminating sheet. Your incriminating sheet.

"B-Blood? I don't know what you're talking about!" She quickly hid the fabric behind her back.

Zuko resisted the urge to roll his eyes. He might be trying to become a better person, but that didn't mean he'd let himself be made a fool of.

"I can still see the sheet behind you," he said flatly.

Katara's face flushed. She hated lying, but she hated being caught in a lie even more.

"Sorry." She stopped hiding the cloth. "I didn't want you to see that."

"Why not?" Zuko looked again at the red stain. Now he was certain.

"It's… kind of embarrassing to explain." She returned to cleaning the sheet, her focus intense on making the stain disappear.

"I won't judge. I promise."

"It's a woman thing." Katara kept her eyes on her work. "Usually we don't want people to notice when we're on our period. You know?"

"Oh."

As the stain dissolved and vanished into the river's current, Zuko's mind clicked into place. Your period. Of course. How could he be so dense? He felt heat creep up his neck.

"So that's all this fuss is about…"

"Yes. That's why I'm washing this." She lifted the now-clean sheet. "Even when we try to be careful, accidents happen." With a simple gesture, she pulled the water from the fabric, drying it instantly.

"Accidents. Right." Zuko pretended to agree. He understood the general concept of a period, but that was all. Part of him had never been interested in knowing more. Another part had never had access—the subject was taboo among most women he'd known. "I suppose it's impossible to be careful enough."

Katara immediately noticed how little he actually knew. A playful smile curved her lips.

"You know you're not fooling anyone, right?"

"What do you—"

"Zuko, it's okay not to know things." Her smile softened into something tender. "Really."

"I-I—" The prince stammered, blushing again. He wanted to understand these "girly things." He wanted to know how to make you feel better. But it was so difficult to ask. "I don't—"

"Don't worry. I won't tease you." Katara stood up, basket of clean clothes in hand.

Zuko looked away, staring at the distant camp. He imagined you trapped in that tent, acting irritable for a reason you couldn't control. He wanted to help you. And if that meant swallowing his shame and his male pride, he would.

"Fine," he said, pinching the bridge of his nose. "But don't tell Sokka."

"Why would I—"

"Don't tell Toph either."

"But why—"

"Actually, don't tell anyone."

[...]

Today, your period was winning.

Your mood was shit. You'd spent the whole night twisting and turning because of hellish cramps, so it was only natural that you wanted to sleep late. But then Toph—unaware of your situation—had tried to talk to you, and you'd been incredibly rude. Even if you had tried to explain, Toph wouldn't have understood; she hadn't had her first period yet. Still, you had no right to curse her just for saying hello.

As if the universe was punishing you, you'd also discovered that you'd stained one of the sheets. On top of that, your horrible cramps had returned. Thankfully, Katara had come to your rescue—helping with the pain, offering to wash the tragic sheet.

Now, after everything, you didn't know what you wanted. You wanted to apologize to Toph, but you were afraid of what might happen if your mood swung again. Your body was limp. Your breasts were swollen. Your back ached fiercely. Everything told you not to get up.

So you didn't.

You were almost asleep again when you felt someone enter the tent. Thinking it was Toph, you sat up automatically and started apologizing.

"I know nothing I say will change what I did, but I really—" You stopped. It wasn't your best friend standing there.

It was the guy you liked.

"Zuko?"

"Sorry for coming in without asking," he said, his expression apologetic. "Can I stay here?"

"I'd love you to, but…" You did want him there. But you were afraid of being rude to him too. And he was the last person you wanted to make a bad impression on. "I'm not very well today."

"I know."

"You… know?" you asked, trying to sound casual. The word came out slightly nervous.

"Yeah." He rubbed the back of his neck, looking just as nervous as you felt. "But I don't mind."

Your heart hammered. Being alone with him always made you restless, but the thought that he might know about your period made you want to bury your face in the ground and disappear. You knew it was normal to menstruate. You knew it was stupid to perpetuate the idea that guys shouldn't know. But the idea of talking about it with him terrified you.

You tried to say something. The words died in your throat. What if he thought you were disgusting? What if—

"I-I bought you something!" Zuko started rummaging through a small bag you hadn't noticed before.

When he finally pulled out his prize, you saw it was a very poorly wrapped package.

"You didn't have to—"

"It's chocolate. Katara said it could help." He handed it to you without meeting your eyes.

You opened it carefully. Inside were several chocolate bars: white chocolate, dark chocolate, one with chestnuts, and one with an extremely reddish color. Some were slightly broken, a little melted, but most were fine.

"I didn't know which flavor you like best, so I bought one of each." Your ears burned just imagining him buying all that for you.

"Where did you—"

"I borrowed Appa to go to the nearest market." He shifted his weight. "But they ended up getting kind of…"

You tried not to laugh at his frustrated expression.

Your shame began to fade. He didn't think you were disgusting. In fact, he'd been worried enough to take a mini trip, to spend his money on sweets for you, to attempt wrapping them—even if he'd clearly failed. Imagining him doing all that made your heart warm to the point of tears.

Your mood swing was getting the best of you again.

Zuko's eyes widened the moment he saw your tears.

"I-I'm sorry! I—" He started to get up. "I'll leave you alone!"

You quickly caught him by the wrist, laughing despite yourself. Your tears salted your mouth as you giggled, but you didn't care. Meanwhile, Zuko stared at you with an expression of utter confusion.

"I'm happy, you dork."

"But why are you crying?" He looked so worried you almost felt guilty for laughing.

"Period things. I'm fine, really." You wiped your tears away. "Now sit here with me. I'm curious about this red one."

Zuko sighed with relief and sat beside you, crossing his legs. You let go of his wrist, surprised at your own boldness. You were the kind of person who got embarrassed just by touching his shoulder during training, who became flustered by the smallest accidental brush of fingers.

"It's a Fire Nation traditional chocolate." He broke off a piece and offered it to you. "I thought you might want to try it."

You took the bizarrely red piece from his hand and tried not to sweat.

"I hope this isn't too spicy—"

It was.

"ZUKO!"

"WHAT!" He practically jumped.

"WATER!" you screamed as your tongue erupted in flames.

The prince began frantically turning over sheets until he finally found a canteen lost in a corner of the tent. You didn't wait for him to hand it to you—you snatched it from his grip and drank until the burning sensation finally subsided.

You steadied your breathing. Then you faced him.

Zuko was sweating bullets.

"Are you feeling better?" he asked, genuinely worried.

"It was an outstanding experience," you replied with a grin. "But I prefer not to repeat it."

"Yeah. I won't buy that one for you next time."

"Next time?" You couldn't ignore that. What did he mean, next time?

"Ah…"

He started blushing again. Every time he talked about things he'd done for you, or how he wanted to be with you, his face turned red as a tomato. But you never got to hear his answer—because your cramps returned with a vengeance, making you double over and clutch your belly.

"Hey, are you—"

"Cramps. Awful ones." You lay down, still holding your stomach. "Sorry for ruining the mood."

"Don't apologize. It's not your fault."

You couldn't agree or disagree. The pain was too intense. The guy of your dreams was right beside you, and you couldn't even look at him.

Then you felt something warm settle over your belly. Hot—but not enough to hurt. Cozy. And little by little, the pain began to ebb.

You only understood what it was when the heat shifted and you recognized the shape of a hand. His hand.

"Katara said heat can help with the pain," Zuko said quietly, sliding his palm over your belly in a slow, careful circle. "Do you feel better?"

"Yes." A pleased expression softened your face. "It feels nice."

"Good. I've never done this before."

"What about Mai?" you asked, trying not to sound jealous. He was being so supportive—you couldn't help but imagine him trying to please his ex-girlfriend in every possible way.

"Mai hardly ever commented on how she felt. Even when she was more… sensitive…" He cleared his throat. "She was no different. It's not that I never wanted to help. She just never let me get close enough."

"I see." You imagined him trying to reach out, and Mai pushing him away. You felt sad for him. "Well, I'm happy to be the first one." Shyly, you placed your hand over his. "I'll give you a lot of work to make up for it."

A smile lit up his face—the most beautiful thing in the world, and one that was becoming more common the more time he spent with you and the rest of the Gaang.

"Am I supposed to be afraid?" he replied, a hint of playfulness in his voice.

"Women on their period can be the most dangerous thing, you know."

"Yeah. Sokka said so."

"Sokka what?"

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 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 picking at 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 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 real, 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 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 mark of a life lived entirely outside of the boundaries he had once drawn around the two of you.

"Zuko? Hellooo? Earth to Zuko—" Sokka starts, trailing off as he follows the unwavering, dead-eyed trajectory of Zuko’s stare.

Sokka goes 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 of the group. 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 would spend late nights studying at. You changed your route to class. You ghosted and then left the group chats completely.

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 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.

The first time Aang got you out of the house to teach you, he was all smiles.

Bright and hopeful, excited to share something that mattered to him. You don’t think you’d ever seen him look that happy, especially by the fourth attempt.

Airbending.

The others thought you might pick something up eventually. Water, earth, maybe even fire, but nothing ever came of it. And deep down, you knew nothing ever would.

You weren’t a bender.

You weren’t going to wake up one day and move the ground beneath your feet, or shift water with your hands, or throw fire. It wasn’t something you could learn. It wasn’t something anyone could promise you. You weren't born to be able to bend.

But Aang didn’t let it go.

And you didn’t have the heart to take that from him, no matter how much it pained you.

So you let him pull you out of the tower you’d been calling home for years now and take you to the Southern Air Temple.

You’d been there before, back when it was you, Katara, and Sokka, following him around while he showed you around. You’d seen far greater things, but the temple in ruins always settled heavily in your heart. It felt different now. More overgrown. Quieter.

Still beautiful though.

And you knew how much it meant to him.

You ran your hand along one of the columns as you walked, the stone cool under your fingers. You wondered if he ever thought about what this place used to be. If being here made it harder or easier.

“Okay,” Aang says, clapping his hands together as he turns to you. “Airbending. My area of expertise.”

His grin widens. And just like that, he looks like himself again.

You cross your arms loosely, raising a brow at him. “Confident?”

He moves past you, then circles back, positioning himself a few feet away. His posture shifts without him thinking about it. He looks lighter on his feet, shoulders relaxed, arms loose at his sides.

“I have to be,” Aang says easily. “I’ve only been doing this my whole life.” He steps back a little, giving you space. “Besides, you've made it through three trials. You haven't given up.”

“Three failures,” you correct.

“Three attempts,” he says, like it matters.

You sigh, finding your sandals more interesting, the dirt beneath them crunching with every press-down you make. You're pulled out of the hole you begin making up in your mind when Aang claps loudly again. The crack had made you flinch.

“Okay! Airbending isn’t about forcing anything,” he starts. “That’s why it’s hard to explain. You don’t grab it like the earth beneath your feet, or push it like fire. You… move with it.”

You nod, even if you don’t fully get it.

He gestures for you to stand straighter. “Feet apart. Don't stand too stiffly. You don’t want to lock yourself in place.”

You adjust, trying to copy him.

“Good,” he says. “Now, don’t think about making something happen. Just focus on what’s already there.”

“The air,” you say.

“Yeah.” He gives a small nod. “It’s everywhere. You don’t need to have a source like water or earth. You just… connect to it.”

You take a breath, slower this time.

Behind him, the wind moves through the open temple, brushing past the columns, slipping through broken archways. You can feel it on your skin, faint but constant.

“Okay,” he says. “Follow me.”

He steps into motion, slow and controlled. His arms move in a wide circle, like he’s tracing something invisible.

You mirror him. At least, you try to. Your movements feel heavier. Less natural. Like you’re thinking about every step instead of letting it happen.

“Loosen up,” he says gently. “You’re resisting it.”

“I’m not trying to,” you mutter.

“I know...”

You exhale, forcing yourself to relax your shoulders. Your arms follow his again, slower this time, less rigid. You shift, trying to follow what he’s doing again.

“Better?”

“Yeah. That’s good,” he says. “Now just…move your arms. Slow at first.”

You copy him, lifting your hands and pushing them forward in the same motion he just showed you.

Nothing happens.

You try again.

Still nothing.

Aang doesn’t say anything right away. He just watches on, further heightening the fact that you were aware he was observing your every move.

“Try not to think about it too much,” he says after a second.

You let out a small breath. “That’s kind of hard not to, especially when I’m trying to make something happen.”

“I know,” he says. “But if you focus on making it happen, it won’t.”

You glance at him. “That doesn’t sound very helpful.”

He laughs. “It’s true, though. Don’t think on it too much.”

You shake your head a little, but you try again anyway. This time slower.

Less stiff, more loose.

Going with the flow.

For a second, it almost feels right.

Almost.

“Now shift your weight,” he adds. “Don’t stay rooted. Airbenders don’t stand still if they can help it.”

You step lightly to the side, copying the way he moves. He’s already adjusted, already onto the next move before you've barely finished the previous action.

You’re a step behind. Always a step behind. Never able to keep up with the rest of them.

“Okay,” he says. “Now guide it.”

Your arms move through the air, and for a second, you almost think you feel something pulse within your palms.

But it’s gone before you can figure out what it might be.

Probably nothing to be honest.

You drop your hands with a huff. “Yeah. Still nothing.”

Aang steps closer, not an ounce of discouragement on his face. “That’s okay. It takes time. With more practice, you're bound to get something out of it. It gets easier. Trust me.”

“For you maybe,” you say. “You’ve been doing this since you were a kid.”

“Yeah, but that doesn’t mean you can’t learn something from it.”

You give him a look. “Aang, I can’t move a leaf, I couldn't shift the water from the stream, I couldn't move the stupid pebble that Toph had me attempt to move. Zuko even tried having me light the fire for the camp we set up. We almost froze. I can't move anything!”

“Not yet,” he corrects. Oh, how you wonder where he gets his patience and his calm from? Something you were surely running out of.

You sigh, but there’s no real frustration behind it. Yet, anyway.

He hesitates for a second, then moves behind you. “Can I?” he asks.

You nod. His hands hover near yours before settling lightly over them. Gentle, warm to the touch.

“Let me guide you,” he says.

You feel him push your arms through the same motions as before. Slower this time. More steady.

“Breathe,” he adds quietly. The warmth of his words tickles your ear.

You try to match his pace, his breathing. Inhale. Exhale. Repeat.

The air moves around you, brushing past your arms, your face. You can feel the wind, how it responds to him. The subtle breeze he lets swim in and out through your hair.

“Feel that?” he asks.

“Yeah.”

You almost laugh at the sensation, but you keep going. Letting your hands move with his instead of trying to lead on your own.

For a second, the motions feel easier. Like you’re not working as hard to exert them, act them out.

There's barely anything happening. Most of which is done by Aang. But the air in front of your hands stirs.

You pause.

“Did you—”

“I saw it,” Aang says quickly, a little quieter now. “Keep going.”

Your focus breaks.

And just like that, it’s gone. You let your arms fall.

“Of course.” You huff in defeat.

Aang doesn’t move away right away. “You felt it, though, right?” he asks.

“Barely.”

“It’s still something.”

You turn your head slightly, glancing back at him. “It only worked because you were helping. I’m not even sure that was me just now.”

“Maybe,” he says. “Or maybe you just needed to stop trying so hard.”

You don’t answer that.

After a second, his hands drop away from yours. You miss the warmth of them in an instant. The lack of his touch makes you want to pull him close again.

“Do you want to try again?” he asks. Chin dipping to try and get your eyes to meet his own. They don't. He looks down at the ground before waiting for your response.

You look at your hands, then back at him.

“Maybe later, if that’s okay.”

"It's okay. We can take a break."

-

The hill you found and settled on feels nice and cool underneath your touch as the sun dips.

Long shadows stretch across the mountains, swallowing the land around them, making it quieter. Emptier. At peace.

You and Aang sit side by side, and you disturb a patch of grass by pulling grass stems from the ground. You'd guess your anxiety was to blame for impulsively messing with perfectly good grass. Aang had lain back, eyes darting up at the sky. His thoughts wandering, you'd guess as much, seeing as his fingers stopped tapping against his stomach.

For a while, neither of you speaks.

The wind moves gently through the open air, brushing past softly, reminding you of the reason for being there in the first place. You figured Aang could've been reminded of home. Of everything he lost, but who were you to speak for him?

Aang exhales slowly.

“It’s weird,” he says.

You glance at him. “What is?”

He doesn’t look at you. Just out.

“The sky. The temple, all the antiques we keep finding. Everything.”

His fingers curl slightly against the grass as he sits up.

“I used to think the temples would always feel full,” he admits. “Like, no matter what happened… I could come back, and it’d still feel like home. Still… alive.” There’s a pause. “But it only reminds me of how everyone I've ever known...is gone.”

That lands heavier than anything he’s said all day.

You don’t interrupt. You just listen.

“They’re gone,” he continues, voice quieter now. “The monks. My friends. Gyatso. The stories they all used to tell, the way we used to celebrate, the food we would eat… even the stupid games we played.” A soft, broken laugh slips out of him. “I’m the only one left who remembers any of it.”

Your chest tightens.

“I don’t even know if I remember it right anymore.” He finally looks down at his hands. "I keep thinking that if I die, my culture dies with me. What if I forget something important?” he whispers. “What if it all just… disappears with me? No one but me can carry on my past. My whole life rests in my hands.”

There it is. His fear. It hits you harder than you expected. Because for once, this isn’t about being the Avatar.

This is just a boy, a man now, sitting in the ruins of his home, terrified of being the last voice of his people.

You don’t think. You don’t weigh your next words. You just… say it.

“Then I’ll carry it with you.”

Aang freezes.

You don’t stop.

“I’ll learn it,” you add quickly, heart racing now. “All of it. The stories, the traditions... Whatever you remember, I’ll remember too. I won’t let it disappear.”

He’s staring at you now.

Completely still. Like he’s not sure he heard you right.

“And if you’re worried about it ending…” You hesitate, then push through it anyway, the words tumbling out before you can stop them.

“I’ll give you a legacy.”

The silence falls heavily on you both. You look out into the valley, feeling the wind settle.

And the second it leaves your mouth, you second-guess your words.

Oh.

Oh no.

Your breath catches. “I-I didn’t mean—”

Aang’s expression changes.

“You’d… What?” he asks softly.

You shake your head quickly, heat rushing to your face. “I didn’t mean it like that, I just mean, I mean I did, but not—” you let out a nervous breath, stumbling over yourself. “I just meant I’d help. However you needed, I—”

“You’d give me children?” he interrupts.

That stops you. Your mouth opens agape, then shuts.

His voice is so quiet you almost miss it. You look at him properly now. Really take in the man before you. Give him children? You'd be stupid not to want a family with him.

Something in your chest settles warmly.

“Yeah,” you say, softer this time. “If you wanted me to. The only thing I could really give back.” You release a nervous laugh.

Aang’s eyes search yours, like he’s trying to find any sign of hesitation. Doubt. Anything that screamed that you were just trying to make up for what you lacked in, but you weren't

There isn’t any. Because you meant it. Even if you didn’t take into account how much you did until just now.

“You don’t have to do that,” he says, but there’s no strength behind it. No real push. No malice. Just a hint of genuineness.

“I know,” you reply. A beat. “I want to, though.”

That hits him harder than anything else.

You see it in the way his breath stutters slightly, the way his shoulders drop just a fraction, like something inside him is loosening up for the first time all day.

“You’d really…” he starts, then stops, swallowing. “…you’d learn everything?”

You nod. “Everything you’re willing to teach me.”

For a moment, he doesn’t say anything. Then his hand reaches for yours. Slowly, hesitant. Like he’s still asking permission to touch you, when he has every right to. When you don’t pull away, his fingers tighten slightly around yours.

“That means a lot to me, Y/n,” he admits, voice barely above a whisper. "I never even considered the idea of having children right now.

You smile, just a little. “I figured. It looked like your heart stopped for a second there.”

A soft huff of breath leaves him. almost a laugh, but not quite.

The wind returns, gentle once more, curling around the two of you as if it felt the heaviness settle between you. Like it had listened in.

Aang glances down at your joined hands, then back up at you.

For once, he doesn’t try to turn it into a joke right away. He just looks at you.

Like he’s still catching up to what you said and what it means. Not just the words, but the fact that you meant them. That you said them so easily, like it wasn’t something huge you placed in his lap.

It was.

You can tell by the way he keeps holding your hand, squeezing every now and then, like letting go would break up the moment too fast.

“I don’t know what to say,” he admits after a while.

You let out a small breath through your nose. “You don’t have to say anything.”

“I feel like I should.”

“You don’t have to.”

His mouth twitches a little at that, but it fades just as quickly.

“I just…” He looks away for a second, out at the valley below, at the fading light and shadows. “I’ve spent so much time thinking about what I lost that I never really thought about what could still happen. What I could still have.”

Your thumb brushes lightly over his knuckles before you can think better of it. Aang notices. His shoulders loosen again, but not enough.

“You make it sound simple,” he says.

“It’s not simple.”

This turns his attention back on you.

“It’s just not impossible either,” you say quietly. “There’s a difference.”

He studies your face for a second, and you can almost see the thoughts moving behind his eyes. Aang was never very good at hiding what he felt, but this is different. He's less open. More careful. Like he’s afraid of letting this conversation go in the wrong direction. Of making you angry.

“You'd really give me children?” he asks again.

Not because he didn’t hear you the first time. Because he needs to.

You nod once. “Yeah.”

“And learn all of it?”

“Yes.”

“The stories, the customs, the food, the prayers, the weird games—”

You smile a little. “You’re really trying to sell it now.”

That earns a breath of a laugh. Then he goes quiet again.

“Even if you can’t bend?”

There it is. You had a feeling it would come back to that.

You look down at your lap for a second before answering.

“Especially then.”

Aang frowns. You take a breath.

“I can’t give back from the lack of bending,” you say. “I know that. I know I’ll never be part of your culture in the same way you were born into it.” You pause, picking at a blade of grass near your knee. “But that doesn’t mean I can’t love it because it matters to you. It doesn’t mean I can’t help keep it alive. This could be one of the only things I can give back.”

His face changes at that. Softens. Something about those words gets through to him in a way the other words of the gang couldn't. Maybe it's because he knows you’re not saying it to make him feel better.

You’re saying it because you’ve already decided.

“I don’t want you to think this is all you’re good for,” he says after a moment.

You look at him, caught a little off guard.

“What?”

He turns toward you more fully now, his hand tightening around yours.

“The only thing you could really give back?” he repeats softly, using your own words. “Don’t say it like that.”

Heat crawls up your neck in half embarrassment, and half of something else.

“I just meant—”

“I know what you meant.” His voice stays gentle, but there’s something firmer in it now. “But you make it sound like you have to make up for something.”

You open your mouth, then close it. Because there isn’t a clean lie waiting to spill past your lips. Aang notices that too.

“You don’t owe me a legacy,” he says. “And you don’t owe me children just because you can’t bend.”

Your throat tightens a little.

“I know,” you say, but it comes out softer than you intended.

He watches you for another second, then shifts closer, close enough that your heads are leaning against each other.

“You don’t have to try and even the score for what you think you're lacking in,” he says. “Not for me.”

His words land hard. Too hard.

Because some part of you had thought exactly that, even if you didn’t want to say it out loud. That if you could never stand beside the others in the way they did, through bending, through power, through something useful, then maybe you could still give him something that mattered.

Something lasting.

You stare down at your lap for a second, blinking against the sting behind your eyes.

“I didn’t mean for it to sound like that,” you say quietly. “I’m not trying to make up with children for my lack of bending with you.”

“I know.” He says it immediately. Reassurance following his understanding. “I know you’re not.”

It helps. His words. A little.

You breathe out slowly.

“I just hate that I can’t help out sometimes,” you admit. "Heck, even Sokka is out there being a hero... But what can I do?"

Aang goes still. Because he finally understands what’s underneath all of the hurt you've bottled up inside of yourself.

The discouragement after every attempt. The way you'd look away from everyone's eyes after every attempt. The way you'd say it’s fine, when it clearly wasn't.

He shifts again, this time dipping his head enough that he can see your face better.

“What can you do?” he repeats quietly. And it's just him, sitting with the question instead of brushing it off.

You don’t answer right away because you’ve already answered it a hundred times in your head. Nothing, was always your response. He frowns as though the crease in your forehead gave you away.

“You think being a hero is just about bending?” he asks.

You give a small shrug. “It helps.”

“That’s not what I asked.”

You glance at him, a little caught. He doesn’t look away.

“You think Sokka is a hero, but he can't bend?” Aang presses.

You hesitate. “Yes, but—”

“But what?”

You sigh, frustrated now. “But he still does things, Aang. He fights. He plans. He actually contributes when something goes wrong.” You shake your head a little. “When things get bad, I’m just… there.”

The words come out flatter than you meant them to. Like you’ve said them before. To yourself. Too many times.

Aang’s expression tightens.

“You’re not ‘just there,’” he says.

You don’t argue. You don’t agree either. You just look away again.

“Do you remember the canyon?” he asks suddenly.

You frown slightly. “What about it?”

“You were the one who figured out how to settle the feud between the Gan Jin and the Zhang tribes,” he says. “You made them work together to get us out of being eaten by those canyon crawlers.”

“Wasn't that you—”

“And the village near the volcano?” he continues. “You were the one who convinced the villagers that they needed to evacuate.”

You shake your head. “That’s not—”

“And when Appa got hurt,” he adds, quieter now, “you stayed with him the whole night. You looked over him, you lost sleep over it too.”

You go still because you do remember that memory.

You remember thinking it didn’t count. That it wasn’t enough.

“That’s not fighting, though,” you say, softer now.

“No,” Aang agrees. “It’s not.”

He leans in just slightly, not crowding you, just enough that you can’t ignore him.

“But it’s helping.”

You swallow.

“It’s paying attention,” he continues. “It’s seeing things the rest of us miss because we’re too busy trying to win something.”

His voice softens. “And it matters.”

You look at him again because he’s not trying to make you feel better.

He’s not reaching just to say something nice. He means it.

“But when something actually happens—” you start.

“You’re there,” he says, cutting in gently this time. “You don’t run. You don’t hide. You stay.”

Your chest tightens.

“That’s not nothing.”

The wind shifts around you again. You look down at your interlocked hands.

“It doesn’t feel like enough sometimes,” you admit.

Aang nods. “I know.”

That catches you off guard.

“I get that, trust me,” he adds. “I’ve felt that too.”

You blink at him. “You?”

“Yeah.” A small, almost self-conscious smile tugs at his mouth. “Being the Avatar doesn’t automatically make you feel invincible.”

You let out a quiet breath. That… comforts you more than you expected it to.

Aang studies your face for another second, then reaches out again. This time, slower, more deliberate, as he nudges your right cheek with his left hand, before pressing a gentle kiss on it. You don’t pull away.

“I'm sorry if we made you feel that way. You don’t have to be like the rest of us to matter,” he says.

You let that sit. It doesn’t fix everything. But it settles the war that was waged inside you anyway.

“You really believe that?” you ask.

He nods.

“I wouldn’t be sitting here with you if I didn’t.”

That makes you look at him again. A small, uneven smile pulls at your lips.

“You’re really bad at letting people wallow in their self-pity,” you mutter.

He smiles back, softer now. “Yeah,” he says. “I’ve been told that.”

You huff out a quiet laugh, shaking your head.

"Why do you keep talking like bending is the only part worth carrying on?”

That shuts you up again.

He’s not angry. If anything, he sounds a little sad. A little frustrated that you still can’t see what he’s trying to tell you.

“My people weren’t just airbenders,” he says. “They were monks, teachers, healers. They made toys for kids and baked fruit pies and played games and told stories they’d told a hundred times before.” A small smile pulls at his mouth. “They were annoying sometimes. And stubborn. And really nosy.”

A laugh slips out of you before you can stop it. Aang smiles a little wider when he hears it.

“My culture didn’t live in bending alone,” he says. “It lived in how we treated people. What we believed. How we lived.”

He looks down at your joined hands. “And you’ve been trying to understand that part of me since the day we met.”

Your heart settles.

“So no,” he says softly. “You wouldn’t be giving me the only thing you could offer.”

You swallow.

“Aang…”

“You’d just be giving me more of you.”

His words are so simple they almost hurt. You don’t know what to do with them. So for a second, you do nothing. Then your hand tightens around his. His eyes flick down to it, then back to your face.

You shake your head a little, a laugh leaving you, thin and shaky. “You always know how to make me feel stupid in the nicest way possible.”

That finally gets a real laugh out of him.

“You’re not stupid.”

“Mm.”

“You’re not.” He presses firmly, gently.

You look over at him. “I heard you the first time.”

“Good.”

The breeze picks up around the two of you, cooler now that the sun has dropped. It lifts a few strands of your hair and brushes the fabric on his sleeves.

Aang leans back on one hand, still facing you.

“I think I’d like that,” he says after a while.

You blink. “What part?”

He smiles, small and careful. A beat. “All of it.”

Something in you eases. Not all the way, but enough to let you breathe easier.

“Even if I can't bend?”

He tilts his head, brows furrowing in feigned shock. “You can't bend!”

You let out an offended noise and shove at his shoulder.

He laughs, catching your wrist before you can do it again.

“I’m kidding,” he says.

“You’re not.”

“Okay, maybe a little.”

You roll your eyes, but you’re smiling a lot brighter now, and he is too, and the heaviness from a minute ago doesn’t feel quite so sharp in your chest.

He keeps hold of your wrist for a second longer than he needs to. Long enough for the mood to shift again. Just slightly.

His smile fades first, not into sadness, but something more aware. Serious. You felt it too. The tension.

The way he raised his hand and his thumb brushed once, almost absentmindedly, over the side of your face.

“Aang,” you say softly.

His eyes avert from your lips, falling on your softening gaze.

You lost your train of thought, the words you wanted to say falling off the tip of your tongue. Maybe it was nothing. His name just felt easier than everything else sitting between you.

His eyes search your face anyway.

“Yeah?”

You shake your head, but not because you want to take it back.

“Nothing.”

His mouth curves faintly. “You sure?”

“No.”

He studies you for another moment, then glances out at the valley again.

“You want to stay here tonight,” he says. “If you want, of course.”

You lift a brow. “You mean avoid going back and getting interrogated by Katara?”

“That too.”

You smile. “Tempting.”

“Very. It’s quiet here.”

You look around. The grass. The temple in the far distance, worn down but still standing strong, like Aang.

“It is.”

Aang nods, then looks back at you. Letting the quiet air take over as he took in his favorite view. You. Who went back to pulling at the patch of grass you disrupted, he can't help but let his smile grow.

“I love you.”

There it is again. His plain honesty. It always got the best of you. You feel your face heat up, but there’s no point in pretending you didn't hear him.

“I love you too,” you say, expression timid, but still facing the ground.

His heart beats faster. This was it for him. You were it. All he'd ever want, so long as the universe allowed you and him to last. To be.

His shoulders drop. His mouth softens. He looks younger for a second, and older too. Like the boy and the man he’s still becoming are both sitting right here beside you. Making your head spin and your heart full.

The wind curls between you again. Gentle. Familiar.

And this time, when the silence returns, it doesn’t feel empty.

It feels full.

Aang glances at your joined hands once more, then back at you, his expression almost shy despite everything you’ve just said.

"So you really want children with me?"

"Yes, Aang." Your grin grows as you stifle a laugh.

“Do you want to start...on our legacy?” he asks.

You smile.

“Right now?” you ask.

Aang freezes. “Right now?”

You shrug, biting back another laugh. “You’re the one who asked.”

His brain immediately starts short-circuiting.

“Okay, wait, hold on—” he lets go of your hand just to gesture wildly, before stopping again. “I didn’t mean like right now, right now, I meant like, someday right now. Future right now. Not, this exact moment on a hill—”

You’re fully laughing now.

“Aang—”

“No, because there’s—there’s steps!” he insists, pointing at the ground like the steps might appear if he believes hard enough. “There are definitely steps. We skipped all of them.”

“You asked!”

“I didn’t think you’d say yes that fast!”

You tilt your head. “You wanted me to say no?”

“No!” he says immediately. “No, definitely not that either, just, maybe a warning? A little preparation time?”

You grin. “You’re panicking.”

“I am not panicking,” he says, voice an octave higher than usual. “I am calmly evaluating a very big, important, life thing—”

He stops. Looks at you. You’re still smiling at him like this is the best thing that’s ever happened.

“You’re serious, though,” he says, quieter now.

You nod. “Yeah.”

That does it. He exhales, shoulders dropping, all that frantic energy softening just a little.

“Okay.”

A beat.

“Okay,” he repeats, like he’s trying to convince himself he’s got this.

Then.

“Not right now, though,” he adds quickly.

You laugh. “Not right now.”

“Good,” he says, relieved. “Because I think I’d pass out.”

“You’d pass out?”

“Immediately.”

You bump his shoulder. “Avatar, master of all four elements… defeated by the talk of children.”

He points at you. “You’re the one who started it!”

“You asked!”

“And I regret nothing,” he says quickly, then pauses.

You laugh again, leaning your head against him. He relaxes this time, letting your head rest against his shoulder, still a little flustered but smiling anyway.

“We can start with the easy stuff,” he mutters.

“Like what?”

“Like… teaching you those games I used to play here,” he says. “Much safer.”

You hum. “Yeah, probably a good place to start.”

“Definitely a good place to start,” he agrees.

A beat.

“Still saying yes, though.”

There’s utter silence, one that Zuko appreciates after the last three hours of deliberations that be taken place in this very hall. When you do get to the top, he catches the knowing look you give him, one that secretly says that you’ve got his back.

You strut over to him, standing aside your husband as he sits comfortably, your palms landing on both his shoulders as you turn to the two spectators. “I must ask you to release my husband back to me. We have duties of our own.” You announce, voice measured and smile calculated.

A soft huff of amusement leaves Zuko’s throat, something only you heard as you watch the General and Chamberlain exchange a silent look before bowing down to the Royal couple, taking a leave. You both watch as they flock out of the hall, waiting till the door clicks shut before he sighs in relief, looking up at you with tired eyes.

“Here, have a seat.” Zuko moves, unfolding his legs and moving aside to let you plop down next to him. You smooth down your dress as you watch your boyfriend dismissing the guards too, a moment of peace just to the two of you.

“It’s a nice view from up here. Everything is so small.” You whisper as you gaze out at the hall, the place is enveloped in partial darkness with fewer lamps than usual that are lit. Zuko turns back to you as you snatch his hand from him, resting it on your own thigh, running your own fingers through his and applying mild pressure and massaging his hand.

Zuko’s eyes bounce between your face and your hands that are cradling his, your previous words swirling in his head. “Why would you say that?” Zuko whispers, voice carrying no maliciousness, plain curiosity.

Your eyes stay on your hands, both of yours cradling his, and a small smile twitches on your lips. “Oh, it is a good thing if they think that we’re busy at our job of creating the future heir.” Your voice carries a playful lilt, finally glancing up at him, mirroring soft smile on his face too.

You and Zuko had been intimate before, but only on your wedding night three months ago, just to consummate the marriage. It’s not your fault, how does one bear themselves completely to a stranger? It was a wonderful partnership. Your father, the ruler of the biggest colony off the mainland, someone that Zuko desperately needed the support of, then was born this arranged marriage. Despite all that, Zuko was nothing but gentle, reassuring and just perfect with you on the first night.

A friendship had blossomed between this husband and wife, the moment you do have together, rarely, would be filled with conversation and soft laughter, exchanging stories and cracking jokes. But no, you haven’t been intimate since then. Two adults with hectic schedules, like running a nation.

A comfortable silence settles, you continue your ministration on his hand, a soft sigh falls from Zuko’s lips as the muscles in his arms loosen a little. Your husband watches you, his gaze endearing, as he watches you just exist in his proximity.

You’d noticed a change in him recently, after his ‘adventure’ that he disappeared off to a month ago, leaving you incharge of the nation to join the avatar and his other friends which ultimately lead to them saving the world again. But since then, he’d also been aiding in the reconstruction of Republic City, and hence more work. Other than that, he’d also been more pensive, getting lost in thought more often.

“You mustn’t overwork yourself and resist sleep to avoid the nightmares.” You interrupt the silence and you feel Zuko stiffen ever so slightly beside you. Since he came back, he’d been having recurring nightmares, something he thought he did a good job hiding them but apparently not. Zuko opens his mouth to say something, a halfhearted excuse about to fly out of his mouth but you don’t let him speak.

“I will not force you to talk about it. But, I wanted to reassure you that if you do, I am willing.” You say, voice soft as you stop massaging his hands, resorting to simply intertwine his finger with one of your hand, the other going on top of his hand.

Zuko continues watching you, his thoughts running a mile per hour. Yes, he’d been having nightmares, dying and coming back does that to a person but he’d been trying his best to not disturb your slumber as you rested beside him on the shared futon. A warmth seeps into his heart at your genuine concern for him.

Zuko raises your intertwined hands lifting all three hands up to press a kiss to the hand that covers his. You watch as he lifts it to his lips, pressing them to the back of your hand, watching you, eyes baring into yours as his lips linger for a few moments too long.

“I think we should retire to out chambers for the night.” He whispers abruptly, lips still against your hand, drawing a giggling from your lips immediately. “We have duties to perform.” He reiterates, not only his eyes darkening, but his voice still carrying a joking tone.

“Oh, Agni.” You continue to giggle, loud laughter as a smile stretches on Zuko’s lips too, heat on your cheeks and his. Zuko drops your hands but leans closer to you, propping his hand next to your hip to press a kiss onto your cheek as you continue to laugh.

“We mustn’t make false promises to our courts.” He murmurs against your cheek, your hands sneaking up to his chest, scrunching his robes in your hand, turning your face to press a kiss to his properly, soft chuckles still leaving your lips onto his.

“Have I awaken a dormant beast?” You whisper, into his lips, wide smile against his wide smile goes back to press adding chaste kiss to his lips. “Only if you’re willing, of course.” Zuko reassures, gentlemanly as ever.

“To our chambers it is.”