Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

PROLOGUE

THE EMBER LEFT BEHIND

The palace felt colder than the catacombs.

Even in the Fire Nation’s eternal summer, even with royal guards at every door, even with the halls lined in gold — Zuko felt that same familiar chill press in behind his ribs.

He hadn't slept. Again.

The war was over. He had won. No, they had won.
So why did it still feel like he was losing?

He was now Fire Lord.

He still couldn’t say it out loud without flinching.

The Harmony Restoration had ended in diplomatic chaos, a near civil war, and Aang nearly killing him.

The Avatar.

Zuko gritted his teeth. He didn’t blame Aang. Not entirely.

He’d made Aang promise to kill him.

And Aang had almost kept that promise.

They stood on opposite sides of a battlefield once again — except this time, they weren’t enemies. They were friends. Or at least, they used to be.

But Katara hadn’t turned away.

She had stood by Aang’s side, yes. But she hadn’t looked at Zuko with disgust or hatred.
Only concern.

That was somehow worse.

And he saw it in her — the tension in her shoulders, the weight she still carried. The responsibility that never seemed to leave her hands, even when the world had been "saved."

The others — Toph, Sokka, even Aang — had changed. Moved forward.
But Katara still seemed stuck carrying the world on her back.

And Zuko couldn't help but wonder if anyone else noticed.

He thought he’d buried that part of himself after the Agni Kai. After she saved him — when he’d stepped in front of Azula’s lightning and watched the world fade into blue and silence.

Katara.

He tried not to think of her.
But then he did.

Not the way she’d looked at Aang, clinging to him at Yu Dao like he was her anchor.
Not the way the world cheered for them.

No.

He remembered the catacombs.
The way her hand had trembled against his scar. The way her voice cracked when she spoke about her mother. The way she'd offered to heal him.

He remembered what it felt like to be seen.
And what it felt like months later.

Zuko sat alone on the throne. The fire behind him crackled, but it didn’t warm him.

There were a hundred scrolls on his desk. Treaties, petitions, reports from the colonies. None of them held answers. None of them helped.

Ursa’s disappearance still haunted him like a phantom limb.
The mother who vanished. The sister who shattered. The crown that never quite fit.

He didn’t want to be his father. But every decision felt like a mirror reflecting Ozai’s shadow.

His mind drifted back to his friends.
He thought about their last night in Yu Dao. All of them together again — the Gaang, pretending to laugh like nothing had changed. Like the war hadn’t carved pieces out of them.

Zuko missed them more than he expected. He missed them more than he would ever admit.

He missed her most of all.

He shook the thoughts from his head. They were pointless. Indulgent. She was with Aang now.

He had duties. Papers to sign. War crimes to erase. Cities to rebuild. And a throne to uphold — alone.

But still… the South needed help. The Southern Water Tribe had suffered deeply. Maybe an alliance was overdue. Something lasting. Something healing.

It wasn’t about her.

It was the right thing to do.

THE WATER IN HER CHEST

Katara watched the sky shift above the Western Air Temple, the clouds dragging shadows over the stone ruins where she had once stood victorious. Now the wind just felt...restless.

She should’ve felt at peace. The world was healing. The Avatar had fulfilled his destiny. And somehow, in the aftermath, she had become part of that destiny—his comfort, his anchor, his love.

She loved Aang. That much she was sure of.

But was it the kind of love that lasted a lifetime, or the kind that clung to the past because it didn’t know how to let go?

Aang’s laughter echoed down the corridor—he was helping the younger acolytes reorganize the meditation garden. He was always helping. Always giving. Always hopeful.

Katara leaned against the doorway of her room, her hand tightening around the edge of her blue shawl. The same she wore, before war, before loss, before love became this... complicated.

When they kissed now, it didn’t feel wrong. But it didn’t feel right, either.

She remembered the last time they were in Yu Dao. How tense it had been. How the lines between peacekeeping and politics had blurred. And how she’d looked at Aang—not as a boy she once saved from an iceberg, but as a man who had already made up his mind. About everything. About her.

He had spoken about balance, about how they were meant to be. “It’s in the stars,” he’d said.

But Katara had never cared much for stars. She cared about people. And what scared her most was that she was starting to forget who she was without him.

Her fingers grazed the beaded necklace at her neck. Not her mother's. Not even her own. Aang had made it for her months ago. She'd worn it every day since—but lately, it felt less like a promise and more like a chain.

“Katara?” A soft voice from behind.

She turned. Aang stood there, dirt smudged on his cheek, smiling like the boy she’d once pulled from death. His eyes were bright, but searching.

“I’ve been looking for you,” he said. “The sky bison nests—there’s a new baby! Do you want to come see?”

She hesitated. “Maybe later.”

His smile faltered, just a little. “Everything okay?”

“I’m just...tired. I need a moment.”

He nodded, but there was something guarded in his expression now. A quiet fear. She could feel it in the air between them.

He stepped forward, brushing a kiss against her temple before leaving. She didn’t return it.

Katara exhaled once he was gone, like she’d been holding her breath for months.

This isn't what I want forever.

The thought came uninvited, quiet and cold.

She pressed a hand to her heart, where the water always lived. It pulsed with memory, with grief, with questions she didn’t yet have the courage to answer.

She still wore the necklace.

But for the first time, she considered taking it off.

THE ICE BETWEEN

The Southern Water Tribe was quieter than he remembered.

Not frozen in time—but still. The bustle of old women tanning pelts, the echoes of kids sliding on ice banks, the familiar creak of wood against water. It hadn’t changed much, not the way other places had.
Yu Dao was boiling over with politics and tension. Omashu was rebuilding itself. Even Ba Sing Se had finally started cleaning up its secrets.

But home?
Home still felt like a memory he could walk through.

---

Sokka leaned against the side of his father’s house, arms crossed, watching snow gather in his bootprints. He’d only planned to stay for a week. Maybe two.

Just a breather after the Harmony Restoration mess. That had nearly torn the world in half—again.

Zuko had sent him a letter. Not about politics, just... a thank you. Brief. Awkward. A start, maybe.

Katara had stayed behind with Aang. Some temple thing. Air Acolytes and spiritual training and quiet meditations that he’d never really understood.

Suki was away too—still stationed in the Earth Kingdom, helping stabilize small towns left hanging after the Fire Nation’s retreat. She sent letters. Thoughtful, careful ones. Full of the things he didn’t know how to say anymore.

He read every word. And replied with a few scribbled lines and a bad sketch of a turtle-duck in a dress.

He never told her why he hadn’t visited yet.

He looked up. The moon was full.

And he still couldn’t kiss her under it.

He’d tried, once. Back when they were in yu dao. Her lips soft. Her hands warm. But all he could feel was the pull of memory. All he could see was Yue’s face, floating just behind Suki’s shoulder, radiant and distant and sad.

He hadn’t kissed Suki under the moonlight since.

---

Everyone else seemed to be figuring things out.

Aang was shaping the future of the Air Nomads.
Katara was with Aang.
Zuko was literally rebuilding an empire.

And him?

He cracked jokes in strategy meetings and threw a boomerang at a nothing.
Now he was just... here. At home. Floating in the space between what had been and what came next.

---

He heard the crunch of snow behind him. Familiar, deliberate steps.

“You’re quieter than usual,” Hakoda said, stepping up beside him.

Sokka didn’t turn. “Just thinking.”

“That usually involves explosives,” his father replied with a small smile.

That got half a grin. “Not this time.”

Hakoda waited.

Sokka sighed. “I don’t know what I’m doing.”

“With your life?”

“Yeah.”

They stood in silence for a moment, watching soft white flurries land on the edges of the ice.

“I keep looking around,” Sokka said. “Everyone’s building something. A new world, a new order, a legacy. And I’m... standing in the snow.”

“There’s no shame in not having an answer right now.”

“I thought I’d feel something, coming home. But it’s like I’ve outgrown it—and still haven’t grown into anything else.”

Hakoda’s expression softened. “You’re not lost, son. You’re searching. That’s different.”

“Feels the same.”

“Then maybe it’s time to explore something new. Not to run—but to move.”

---

Later that night, in the corner of his room, Sokka stared at an old map he used to doodle on as a kid.
The seas were still wide. Uncharted in places. Full of potential.

He thought for a while. But one thing lingered as he looked at the map

"The Navy’s rebuilding. They’re looking for thinkers. Strategists. People who know how to lead without needing to bend.” he thought out loud

He paused, then added:

“Maybe I don’t have a destiny. But maybe I can build something that matters.”

THE WEIGHT OF THE QUIET

Toph Bei Fong hated silence.

Not the good kind — the kind that filled the sky when the sun slipped behind mountains and metal hummed softly beneath her feet. That kind of silence was peace.

This?
This was the kind that felt like abandonment.

After the war, she’d returned to the Bei Fong estate exactly once.

She didn’t expect hugs or tears. She didn’t want them. But a little acknowledgment? A little, “Hey, thanks for helping save the world, sorry we locked you in a metal prison that one time”?

She didn’t even get her parents’ voices.
Just a servant at the gate, nervously offering tea and polite rejection.

Toph walked away without a word.

She’d walked away before. This time, she didn’t look back.

She threw herself into something else — something hers.

The metalbending school wasn’t about redemption or rebellion anymore. It was a place where kids could be loud, dirty, powerful — and still worth something. Especially to themselves.

She taught the way she lived: loud, fast, and hard. Most students quit. Some stayed. A few learned.

That was enough.

She didn’t get letters like Katara did. She couldn't read them anyway.

But she noticed when the visits stopped.

Aang used to drop in, all sky-laughter and airy optimism. Lately, he was too busy being the bridge between the past and the future.

Zuko never said he was coming. She just felt him — all tension and guilt and quiet.

And Sokka?

Toph scoffed. Sokka used to show up just to annoy her.
He hadn’t in months.

She thought about Yu Dao, about the Harmony Restoration Movement. That time felt like their last real moment together — standing on the edge of change, fighting side by side, trying to shape a better world. With Zuko as Firelord

Back when they still fit together.

Now, they had scattered like leaves after a storm. And Toph… stayed rooted.

Everyone was busy becoming something.
Toph was already someone.

So why did she feel like the only one standing still?

She didn’t ask. She didn’t complain. She trained. She taught. She smacked metal into form and called it progress.

When the nights stretched too long, she lay flat on the stone, palms pressed into the earth, listening to vibrations no one else heard.

Not because she was sad. No way. Just... keeping track of things.

Let the others chase harmony and rebuilding.
Let them write their stories in scrolls, and speeches.

Toph Bei Fong had built hers from stone and steel.
And she didn’t need anyone to read it to know it mattered.

THE AIR BETWEEN US

The sky was quiet again.

High above the newly restored Southern Air Temple, the wind glided beneath Appa’s saddle with a gentle, almost reverent touch. Aang closed his eyes and leaned into it.

For a few seconds, he could almost pretend everything was simple again.

But the world had changed.

And so had he.

The Harmony Restoration Movement had ended, but peace — real peace — was still a question, not an answer. Yu Dao hadn’t broken apart, but something inside him nearly had.

He remembered standing there, in the dust and confusion, the weight of generations pressing down on his shoulders. The Avatar State surged in his veins. Zuko stood before him. He was forced to choose. To fulfil his promise to end his friend. The fire lord, Zuko.

And for one terrifying moment… he almost forgot who he was.

Almost.

Katara’s voice brought him back.

Not duty. Not the Avatar Spirit.
Her.

He still loved her.

He always would.

But love wasn’t always steady.

It used to feel like a glider in the wind — light, effortless, natural.
Now… it felt more like a tether.

Katara was kind. Devoted. Fierce.

But lately, Aang found himself wondering if he was the one holding her down. If, in trying to share a future, he had made her carry too much of his.

They rarely fought, but that was part of the problem.

She didn’t speak her doubts.

And he didn’t know how to ask.

she loved him too. He was sure of that much.

But lately, it felt like he was holding hands with a memory.

She still smiled at him. She still kissed him. But when he looked in her eyes, he saw the ocean — deep, wide… and far away.

He didn’t know when the space between them had grown so wide. Maybe it had been there since the war ended. Maybe the weight they carried wasn't something they could share anymore.

He didn’t blame her.

Sometimes he saw Luma — one of the Air Acolytes — in the courtyard, laughing as she learned Air Nomad literature.

She reminded him of the Air Nomads: patient, lighthearted, free.

He didn’t feel anything, not like what he had with Katara.

But he noticed.

Not her, exactly — but the ease.

And it made him wonder if love was meant to be a constant climb, or if peace could live in simplicity too.

He missed everyone.

Toph, who always said what needed to be said, whether he wanted to hear it or not.
Sokka, whose jokes somehow held the group together when nothing else could.
Zuko, whose fire had nearly consumed them all — but in the end, burned away his own chains too.

He told himself they’d meet again — when things calmed down.

But peace, he was learning, wasn’t quiet.
It was messy. Demanding. Restless.

Like the wind.

He now knew peace wasn’t quiet.
It was loud, and complicated, and full of questions.

And the world had decided it was his job to answer them.

The sky darkened above the temple.

Aang sat in stillness, surrounded by the hum of the mountain, the quiet breath of the world.

He was the last airbender.
The bridge between worlds.
The boy who saved the world.

But lately, he wondered…

Was he trying to hold on too tightly?

To Katara.
To the past.
To the version of himself he thought he should be.

He let the wind carry that thought away — for now.

Chapter Text

CHAPTER ONE

The sea didn’t sing to her the way it used to.

Its voice was hoarse now—dragged over ice and memory, murmuring things she no longer wanted to hear. The waves curled and collapsed against the shoreline like they were too tired to fight the pull anymore.

Katara stood at the edge of the docks, the Southern wind pulling at her braids. Behind her, the tribe bustled—new infrastructure being built with the whisper of modernization tucked into every corner. Someone had mentioned a council. Someone else had muttered the word “progress.”

But it all felt hollow.

Everywhere else was racing toward the future.

And somehow, her home still felt stuck in the past.

Or maybe it was just her.

She tugged her fur coat tighter. It hadn’t fit right since she'd come back— it felt awfully heavy at the shoulders, too tight at the heart.

She’d returned to the South a year ago, carrying only a fresh wound and a version of herself she barely recognized. She was tired. Not from war, but from after. From the strange quiet that followed.

She thought about Sokka, who'd gone off on his own to forge his own path. She didn’t realise how much she missed his silly jokes that always seemed to cheer her up and the way she had to be the mature one.

He thought drifted to back to the temple.
She’d broken up with Aang to find herself. But here she was staring at the ice alone.

There were days she didn’t speak. Weeks she didn’t bend. She healed people by instinct, her hands moving like water—but never touching anything deeper than the surface.

Her hands went instinctively to her neck, where the necklace Aang made her once sat.

She'd taken off the necklace since before their breakup. It now rested quietly in a carved wooden box beneath her bed.

“Long morning?” her father’s voice broke softly through the breeze.

Katara didn’t turn around. “They’re all long.”

Hakoda stepped up beside her, his presence solid, warm, a tether to something steady. “You’ve been standing here for hours.”

“I’m watching the ice melt.” she said, staring into nothing.

“Poetic,” he murmured. “Also concerning.”

She gave a soft, humorless laugh. “I just… I don’t know, Dad. It’s like I came back, but nothing fits. Everyone’s talking about change, but I feel like I’m… waiting.”

“For what?” he asked looking at her softly.

She didn’t answer.

Later that evening, Hakoda found her alone in her room.

He cleared his throat. “A letter came.”

She looked up.

“It’s from the Fire Nation,” he continued. “From Zuko.”

Her hands stilled. “Zuko” she repeated, tasting the name in her mouth. It oddly felt strange.

He smiled. “He’s invited the South to participate in a diplomatic summit. To talk about trade, culture, education, maybe an alliance someday.”

She said nothing.

“I was going to go,” he said. “But I think… maybe it’s not my place anymore.”

She blinked. “What?”

Hakoda stepped forward, voice gentle but firm. “They need to see the South’s future. Not its past.”

He placed the scroll on the table at the corner of her room.

“And you, Katara… you’ve changed. You’ve seen more than most chiefs. You understand both healing and war. You’re the bridge now. Not just the Avatar’s shadow.”

She felt something shift in her chest. The weight of purpose. The ache of uncertainty.

“I don’t know if I can represent us,” she whispered. “I don’t even know who I am anymore.”

“That’s exactly why you should go.”

That night, she stood on the shoreline again.

The moon hung above like a quiet question.

Katara pressed a hand to her chest. Where the water always lived. Where things still moved—quiet, restless, unsatisfied.

Zuko's name echoed softly in her mind. A face she hadn’t seen in a year. A choice she didn’t fully understand.

The sea didn’t sing to her.

But it was calling, nonetheless.

------------

Zuko hadn’t slept again.

He sat alone in the Fire Lord’s study, the red lacquered walls glowing dimly in the lamplight. Outside, the capital was quiet, wrapped in the kind of hush that came with too many rules and not enough peace.

He stared at the map stretched across the table. Territories outlined in gold. Colonies outlined in blood.

One nation.

That was the goal, right?

He dragged his fingers through his hair, he sighed in exhaustion.

He's found his mother, Ursa, six months ago.
She now resides in the palace with her daughter,

He thought her presence would anchor him. Heal something. Answer the questions he’d been too afraid to ask since he was a child.

Instead, it unsettled everything.

She was kind. Quiet. Worn thin by whatever life she’d lived in hiding. She smiled at him softly, with kind eyes, like she was trying to remember who she was.

He didn’t blame her.

Most days, he wasn’t sure either.

Mai had broken up with him a long time ago. Since the Harmony Restoration Movement.

Zuko hadn’t fought it.

Mai was… nice. Steady. Thoughtful. But she deserved better. After were never able to understand each other properly.

She said he was good.

He wasn’t sure that was true.

“You don’t love me. You left without goodbye. You don’t trust me enough” she had said when he returned from Yu dao, after leaving without a single word to her. “And I think maybe… you’re in love with a ghost.”

Zuko hadn’t answered.

Not because she was wrong. But because he didn’t know which ghost she meant. She had tried to make things work after he became Fire Lord. But their relationship wasn't built to withstand the storms.

Now, with nothing but firelight and scrolls for company, he tried to focus. Rebuilding rail lines. Land distribution. Trade reform. Diplomatic visits to the Earth Kingdom and the Northern Air Temples.

And the South.

The Southern Water Tribe still bore the deepest scars. Generations stolen. Culture erased.

He wanted to make it right.

Not for Katara.

Not only for her.

But when he wrote the letter inviting the South to the summit, his hand had trembled for the first time in years.

Zuko leaned back in his chair, exhaustion pressed behind his eyes like smoke that wouldn’t clear.

He thought about the Harmony Restoration.

About standing on that battlefield with Aang’s power humming against his skin, the rest of his friends watching.

He thought about them—what was left of them.

Aang, carrying the weight of every dead airbender and smiling anyway.
Sokka, laughing too loudly, somewhere far away, forging his own path.
Toph, pretending she didn’t miss them.

And Katara.

She ended things with Aang almost a year ago. She returned home to the south. Probably to find herself again.

He thought of her often.

Not always in clear images. Sometimes it was just the way she stood. The way her eyes sharpened when she spoke. The softness in her hands when she healed him after the Agni Kai.

She hadn't looked at him like he was a monster.

Even when everyone else had.

And she still forgave him after he betrayed his friends trust.

A knock interrupted his thoughts.

“Fire Lord,” said a guard. “The Southern delegation has accepted the invitation. Their representative arrives in six days.”

“Who is it?” Zuko asked, heart quickening for reasons he couldn’t name.

“Chief Hakoda’s daughter.”

Silence bloomed in his chest.

He nodded once. “Prepare her guest quarters.”

As the guard bowed and left, Zuko let out a slow breath.

Six days.

He had six days to become the version of himself he kept pretending he already was.

He turned back to the map, but it no longer looked like a plan.

It looked like a question.

His heart bore the weight of possibilities he didn’t dare say out loud. He sighed deeply again, massaging his temple to stop the headache

--------------------

The wind was different now.
Sharper. Less playful.

It still carried him when he glided across the sky, still whispered secrets of forgotten peaks and still mountains. But it no longer felt like home. Not really.

Not since she left.

Katara hadn’t said it with cruelty. She hadn’t even raised her voice. Just a quiet, tired sadness that settled between them like ash.
Aang… I love you. But this isn’t working anymore.
No tears. Just truth.

Sometimes, he wished she had screamed.

Now, the Southern Air Temple was full of Air Acolytes, eager-eyed students in orange and cream, studying old scrolls and memorizing rituals he remembered too well
They looked to him like he was a living relic — a bridge to the past.

And maybe he was.

But bridges were meant to be crossed, not lived on.

He watched Luma from the temple balcony.
She laughed easily, her voice lilting like windchimes. Not a bender — just a girl from Omashu who had followed the promise of peace up a mountain and stayed.

She reminded him of the Air Nomads — not the warriors in history books, but the people he remembered. Curious. Joyful. Free.

He didn’t love her. Not like Katara.
Not yet. Maybe not ever.
But she was easy to be around.
And right now, ease felt like mercy.

Beneath the clouds, the world was changing fast.

Industrialization.
He'd seen Cranefish Town from the sky — the belching smoke stacks, the rows of tenements, the clamor of progress. Some said it was the future. Aang wasn’t so sure.

He thought about Toph. The last time they met was in Cranefish Town. To resolve the rising tensions between benders and non-benders, about unions and riots, about progress with teeth.

There was always something else demanding his attention — a settlement dispute in the Earth Kingdom, a festival to attend, a petition to sign.

He was the Avatar. The bridge. The balance. The keeper of peace.

But lately, he felt like a cork jammed in a dam that kept cracking wider.

He dreamed about her sometimes.
Katara.
Not always as his love. Sometimes just his friend — the girl with sharp eyes and sharper words, who once pulled him from an iceberg and taught him what it meant to fight. What it meant to love.

In the dream, she was always walking away.
And he never called her back.

He wondered if she’d found peace. Or if she, too, was haunted by all the things they never said.

In the quiet moments — between council meetings and acolyte lessons, between sky bison rides and treaty scrolls — Aang sat alone in the skyroom.

He lit the incense. Closed his eyes.

And listened.

But the wind didn’t speak in answers anymore.

Only questions.