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In the kitchen, after the war:
Zuko and Katara stand side by side, the sun through the window right in front of them blinding their eyes, Toph and Sokka arguing in the backroom and Aang outside in the garden planting flowers. His, at least, always bloom.
“Does the sun still make your bending stronger?” Katara asks him, innocent, handing him a wooden bowl to dry. Their elbows keep bumping, skin to callused skin, but they do not step apart.
Zuko doesn’t really answer—he has a way of doing that. “I don’t use it like that anymore,” he says, and turns then, stepping sideways so he’s facing her (and look, look how much taller he is, how his head bends to hers—look look look); he ducks down and she stares up and his hands curve into a cupped gesture between them, almost sacred in his motion. Katara glances up for just a moment and a sideways strand of his black hair is swooping off his forehead and into his eyes, just the barest hint of dark red tissue visible above sharp-carved cheekbone.
“Look,” he says, and she looks—he lights a single flame in the palm of his hand, small and yellow and steady burning, patient flicker. He breaks one hand away and reaches for hers unexpectedly, the warm harsh touch of his fingertips surprising on her palms. Wrapping his hands around her knuckles, he closes them over the flame, his eyes like soft black ginger, the water sloshing in the kitchen sink; Toph and Sokka’s voices rising high in laughter, flowers being born out in the garden.
It doesn’t hurt at all.
If she were a little braver then, she might’ve locked onto his gaze hard and stone and said, Do you think that he’ll ever grow up? And he would’ve known exactly who she was talking about.
If he were a little braver then, he might not have answered, Yes.
(She’s been brave for so long now.
She’s tired of brave.)
For Sokka’s birthday Suki gives him two new swords which he flings out and swings around at anyone who comes near him, underestimating the potential danger of the situation as he has a habit of doing. In the afternoon he and Zuko go outside and he practices blocking Zuko’s fire with the blade, whipping it into place just fast enough to stop the blows. He laughs, “That the best you got?” and Zuko laughs back like he wouldn’t’ve before (not so wildly competitive now), says, “Bring it on, sword-boy,” and lays his palm flat against the air in a burst of violet flame.
Toph trots down the marble steps and sits down next to Katara on the bottom stair, nursing a dripping red popsicle. “You scared he’s gonna hurt him?” (she jerks her head to Zuko.)
Katara lets out a startled sudden laugh, but when she looks at Toph’s face she sees she’s actually serious. Maybe they just didn’t see it the way she did.
“No,” she says, clearing her throat, “just feel the ground around him—he’s not really trying,” and they both turn their heads to the boys and the sun warms the stone beneath their feet and a pool of melting cherry popsicle is sticky between Toph’s toes and for one uncomfortable moment, Katara knows Toph’s wondering just exactly how she can tell.
At night Zuko is in the garden under the tree, and Katara can see him from her window, his slant pale knees and muddled head beneath the bending willow branches. She slips out of the room; Aang is snoring.
The grass is cool on the soles of her bare feet, the night muggy and warm against her skin. “Zuko,” she says, and he looks up.
“Yeah?”
“Practice bending with me.”
He smiles a little, sideways, and shakes his head. “I don’t think that’s wise,” he answers.
“Yeah?” she breathes (and realizes they’re whispering, doesn’t know why)—“Why’s that?”
He meets her eyes. His lips are curved up to the side in a sort of smirk, the black hair at the crown of his head matted and sticking up, unruly. “Because,” he informs her patiently, “I don’t think you’d respond very well to me kicking your butt.”
Katara laughs. “You’re right, I wouldn’t,” she replies, mock-thoughtful. “Which is why it’s a good thing that’s never going to happen.” She looks back at him and smiles, feels a fierceness in herself she hasn’t sensed in a long, long time. It’s almost like fire, his grin a licking flame. “C’mon,” she whispers, soft, and offers him her hand.
He takes it and stands up, his body closer to hers than she’d intended. They stand a minute too close to each other, crickets humming and blood running and moon between the trees—then they walk, shoulder to shoulder, like they hadn’t just forgotten for a moment how to act around each other.
“Oh, and Zuko?” she says, down by the river, about to begin.
“Yeah?” he answers back, his stance prepared, his hands spread. And looks so earnestly at her.
“Don’t go easy on me,” she warns, and look at that, a seething flame of water.
In the morning Aang is at her shoulder by the window—Sokka and Suki are on the ground swinging hard with swords, and Toph keeps shooting up trunks of earth beneath Zuko’s feet before he can blast her with his fire. Everyone is laughing; the river babbles in its brook.
“We can’t stay here forever,” Aang whispers near her hair, his tone a puzzling mix of firmness and nostalgia. “In this palace.”
“Why not?” Katara answers, her voice louder and her tone uneven, not matching his. The reply a little too quick. “It’s Zuko’s home.”
“Yeah,” Aang responds, “but it’s not ours,” and he kisses her.
“We have to leave here soon,” he says again, his lips beneath her ear, and she can’t even find it in her to say, Maybe.
At the river one night Katara’s bending is touched by fire, her whips tinged by a little more sting, her grunts stained by a little more ache. She’s entirely on the offensive here, every second a new attack, every motion of Zuko’s only made in defense, and she keeps stepping closer and closer, angered by his calmness, frustrated by his continued immunity, until suddenly she’s so close that he stops her, grabs her wrist and holds it too hard in his hand.
“Katara,” he whispers, his breathing heavy and his face too close; her chest heaves, sweat simpering on her brow—“What are you doing?”
Her gaze is level with his chest, staring at the hard pale bones of his clavicle that jut out too harsh like knives, sweat in the concaves there, and she says, “I don’t know.” And heaves a breath. Her eyes tilting up at him, his fingers tight around her wrist—“I have no idea what I’m doing.”
His eyes are dark and close and steely on her stare and from here on out she’s not guessing what’s going to happen next, there’s no more waiting and there’s no more wondering and there’s something solid for once, his eyes darting down to her mouth and his bottom lip falling open, and she wants it said that his fingers tightened once around her wrist before he kissed her, like, Don’t go.
Sokka says, “Maybe soon we should go visit Dad,” with careful eyes and careful hands.
Katara answers, “Maybe,” and Toph gives her a look.
In the springtime the flowers that Aang planted start to bloom, and moving on top of her between the rows of sunflowers Zuko spreads his hands out on the garden floor, fingertips singing black the roots of a single daffodil.