Chapter Text
Every year, Sokka packs up to leave his post as an ambassador for a few months, and Zuko is left with warring emotions. On the one hand, Sokka is hands-down Zuko’s favourite person in the world. Yes, Sokka is undeniably insufferable, but somehow his insufferability fills Zuko with warmth nowadays. And honestly, Sokka is half of the reason that Zuko has survived into his fifth year as Fire Lord - both due to Sokka’s attention to Zuko’s physical safety, and due to him keeping Zuko from going insane.
On the other hand, Sokka’s yearly trip to the Southern Water Tribe means that he switches places with Katara. And while all of Zuko’s friends make a habit of coming to the palace several times a year, and they often arrange to cross paths with Zuko and Sokka when they’re on diplomatic journeys, it’s also the only extended time that Zuko gets to spend with Katara.
It took them three years to get this pattern down. Zuko is really happy with it. The first two years were a little rocky, especially because Zuko got the impression that his friends were constantly babysitting him, but they’ve all grown together enough for this to make sense. And he knows it makes Sokka happy, too, to be able to split his time between the places he feels he belongs.
But the night before Sokka leaves is always a little… tricky.
“I could just wait a few days,” Sokka suggests from where he is lounging on the bed. Zuko looks up from his desk for a moment and raises his eyebrow.
“Or you could actually pack, instead of doing… whatever this is.” Zuko casts a look around Sokka’s room, which has seemed to have suffered a mild, flameless explosion.
Sokka lifts his hands into the air dramatically. He’s lying the wrong way on the bed, with his head hanging off the mattress to look at Zuko upside down. It’s the only Sokka-shaped space on the bed, due to the aforementioned mild explosion of belongings.
“I have deconstructed my room, so that I can reconstruct it into luggage,” Sokka explains.
Zuko looks back down to his report and attempts to conceal a smile.
Zuko doesn’t actually have time to stop working, but he wants to keep Sokka company, and Sokka never minds when Zuko has to balance reading reports with snatches of conversation. That’s why Zuko has a desk in Sokka’s bedroom. It was another great idea of Sokka’s, two years into his life in the Fire Nation.
He puts the report to one side and goes back to combing through the details on the latest draft of a ruling. Zuko is confident that it’s solid because Sokka looked it over for him earlier. It just needs a quick check and royal approval.
“If I wait a few days, I can spend some time with Katara,” Sokka says, as if they don’t have this conversation every year.
“You’re going to spend time with Katara when you come back,” Zuko reminds him. “And Gran Gran is expecting you.”
There’s a brief pause, and Zuko looks back to Sokka to find that he’s beaming. His hair is making a decent attempt at escaping from his wolf tail, aided by gravity, and Sokka’s expression makes something pleasant buzz under Zuko’s skin.
“Have I ever told you how much I love that you call her Gran Gran?”
“You call my uncle ‘Uncle’,” Zuko points out. “And your grandmother gets all huffy if I call her anything else.”
“Yeah, but Uncle is everyone’s uncle,” Sokka insists, waving a hand in the air again. It’s a thing that Sokka does: speaking with his hands. It took Zuko a long time to understand that he isn’t just flailing. Every motion explains something, like emphasis or emotion. It’s just a language that Zuko has only half learned. “Not everyone gets to call Gran Gran ‘Gran Gran’. It’s because she likes you.”
Zuko ducks his head, forcing himself to look away from Sokka before the fact that he’s going to be missing him soon just bursts right out of him. “I threatened her when we first met,” he points out, vaguely guilty in a way that he always feels when it comes to Kanna. Zuko thinks that the constant presence of her guilt is why she insists that he calls her ‘Gran Gran’.
“Yeah,” Sokka agrees. “You also knocked down our wall, kicked my ass in front of everyone, and kidnapped the Avatar.” Zuko wants to flinch, but he knows that this isn’t the end of Sokka’s point, because he knows Sokka - so he waits. “You know, from Gran Gran’s perspective, you were barely an infant when that happened. The fact that you grew up to throw off all the brainwashing and save the world is pretty impressive. From her perspective, I mean.”
Zuko’s guilt never quite recedes. It’s an ever-steady presence in his life, ready to swell up at any moment. But somehow, Sokka always makes him feel like it’s surmountable. Like it can be channeled for good, like its presence is proof that he is good.
“I’m going to miss you,” Zuko finds himself saying. The words fall out of him without permission, but he can’t find it in himself to regret it, because it’s true.
“Aww,” Sokka says, launching himself up to standing and stumbling over his own belongings on the way to Zuko’s desk. He perches himself on the corner, face a little red from where he was previously upside down, and looks at Zuko for a long, extended moment. There’s something soft in Sokka’s smile, something that looks both happy and sad, like maybe Sokka already misses Zuko, too.
And then Sokka reaches out, and even though it’s a hand reaching to the left side of Zuko’s face, there’s nothing in Zuko that wants to flinch away. Sokka brushes some of Zuko’s loose hair away from his temple and tucks it behind his ear, and lets his fingers linger there for a moment.
“I’m going to miss you, too,” Sokka admits.
And the moment is too heavy somehow, like they’re both waiting, even though Zuko doesn’t know exactly what they’re waiting for. Zuko holds Sokka’s eye contact, despite the fact that this has never been easy for him to do, because everything is easier with Sokka. Everything. Zuko doesn’t know how he got this lucky, thinks that he must have used up all of his bad luck in his childhood so that he can have this now, thinks that if that’s the case then it was worth it.
Sokka clears his throat, and his hand drops. How long had Sokka’s hand been there, fingers feather-light as they lingered at the hinge of Zuko’s jaw? Zuko shakes himself back into the present moment, and looks back down to the work spread across his desk in Sokka’s room.
“If you give me a little while to finish reading these over, I can help you ‘reconstruct’ your luggage,” Zuko says.
“Sure,” Sokka replies, standing up from Zuko’s desk. “Yeah. And it’s fine that I’m not seeing Katara right now, even though she and Aang just broke up, right? It doesn’t, like, make me a bad brother or something?”
Zuko frowns. “They broke up again?” he asks.
“Yeah, didn’t you read her last letter to us?” Sokka rolls his eyes at Zuko’s guilty expression. “It’s fine - I’ll find it for you. It’s somewhere in the deconstruction. Yeah, they’re ‘taking a break’ again.”
Zuko adds some notes to the draft he’s working through, allowing his mind to focus for a moment on the minor adjustment, before returning to Sokka. “It doesn’t make you a bad brother,” Zuko assures him. “Katara and Aang are just going through a phase. It’s hard to be teenagers with the kinds of responsibilities they have, and also figure out how relationships are supposed to work.”
Sokka looks back at him from where he’s hastily folding his heaviest cloak. “Yeah? Is that why you’ve always had an excuse ready for when the whole ‘royal bride’ question comes up?” he asks. Half his mouth lifts in a teasing smile, but Zuko can read curiosity there, too.
Zuko should tell him. Probably. Definitely. But now is not the right time to disclose to Sokka that Zuko thinks he might not be looking for a royal bride because he isn’t sure he wants a bride rather than a-- well.
Zuko changed the law on same-sex relationships pretty swiftly upon ascending the Dragon Throne, not least of all because of an intense conversation with Ty Lee - a person he hadn’t known could be intense - about how nobody had ever explained to her that some people like both men and women. He would have changed the law anyway, but the image of Ty Lee biting her fingernails upon recognising where her own confession was going fueled his haste in getting it done. But there’s a difference between decriminalising relationships and allowing for marriages (and the latter had taken quite some convincing, that first year, to old advisors and stuffy religious leaders), and allowing for same-sex royal marriages.
Zuko should tell Sokka, because he knows that Sokka will be supportive. He’ll come up with a hundred and one plans and help Zuko with a way forward. He’ll listen when Zuko is frustrated, and provide comfort instead of solutions when that’s what Zuko needs. Zuko knows all of this.
But Zuko also knows that Sokka will start reconsidering the way that they are around one another. Sokka will start wondering about whether they’re too emotionally intimate, too physically close, too easy with one another. And he won’t pull away in any big, dramatic way, because Sokka is too good for that - but he will pull away.
Zuko will tell him. Just… not yet.
“Well,” Zuko says with an approximation of a smile, “Mai taught me a lot about how relationships don’t work.” And Sokka laughs at that, because Zuko and Mai had been deliriously happy up until the moment they’d realised that they were happy because they were best friends, and not because they were actually in love. And when they had shifted into a non-romantic relationship and almost nothing changed, it really solidified for Zuko that he has no idea how relationships work at all.
“Where are my good boots?” Sokka asks off-handedly, head stuck in one of his wardrobes. “If I go to the South Pole in Fire Nation boots, my toes are going to last approximately no time at all because they will spontaneously evacuate.”
Zuko lifts the parchment to his right, double-checking the most recent numbers he’s received.
“You put them in the ‘fancy’ wardrobe,” he says.
“I did what?” Sokka pulls his head out of the wardrobe. “Why would I put them in there?”
Zuko hesitates, but the numbers match, so he puts the scroll back down.
“You said you’d never find them among all your other boots, so you’d put them with the ‘fancy nonsense shoes’ so they’d stand out.”
Zuko nods at the words before him, finally happy for this draft to be presented in the morning. He puts it to one side and looks up, only to find that Sokka hasn’t moved from the wardrobe. He still has one hand on the wooden frame as he looks over at Zuko, a warm expression on his face.
“What?” Zuko asks, and Sokka shakes his head.
“Have you eaten yet?” Sokka asks, and then doesn’t bother to wait for an answer: “I’ll get something brought here for us.”
Zuko watches Sokka walk to the door in order to make his request to one of the guards outside. And yeah, he already misses Sokka because he knows he’ll be gone in the morning, but it’s hard to feel sad about missing someone when they’re right in front of you.
Sokka leaves in the morning. Zuko says goodbye to him at the ship, allowing for one last, lingering hug to get him through the upcoming Sokka-less months.
“And hey, you know you can actually write letters too, right? Don’t just get Katara to write the letters like you always do. I like your weird, posh writing.”
Zuko pulls back just far enough to look Sokka in the eye. “Making fun of my writing is a really smart move if you want letters from me,” he points out, and Sokka grins.
“Aw, you love it, don’t lie.” He tugs at the collar of Zuko’s robes. “You wouldn’t be so close with Toph if you couldn’t take a little mockery. Oh! We’re going to see Toph so soon, too. Man, I wish we could all get together more often.”
Zuko smiles. This is becoming a yearly tradition, too: Sokka returns for the anniversary festival of the end of the war, and all of their friends get to be together in one place. While Zuko does get to see everyone on a fairly regular basis, it’s still rare for them all to be together. And Zuko never feels more alive than when everyone he loves is in one place.
This year, Azula hasn’t responded to the invitation with an immediate ‘get lost’, so Zuko even has reason to be hopeful there.
“Soon,” Zuko promises.
“Soon,” Sokka agrees, and then he pushes into Zuko’s space to do the familial Water Tribe nose-rub thing that always makes Zuko want to implode a little. He just loves being this close to Sokka, and yes, maybe he loves it a little too much - but nobody ever needs to know that.
“Am I going to get a weirdly intimate goodbye too, Sokka?” a voice calls out, and Zuko wills the heat away from his cheeks as they look up to see Suki approaching.
“Aw, are you jealous, Suks? Get in here!” Sokka invites, lifting one arm from Zuko and reeling Suki in. Suki laughs, her head squished between their shoulders. “You need to look after our boy while I’m away, okay?”
“Looking after your boy is my literal job,” Suki points out. “If he dies, I’m out of work.”
Zuko curls his arm around her, carefully avoiding getting caught by her sharp fan. “I can look after myself,” he points out. He turns a glare onto Sokka, who he assumes is about to protest, only to find that Sokka is frowning pointedly at Suki with a deep blush staining his cheekbones.
Ah, great. Zuko has missed something occurring in this conversation.
And then, abruptly, it really is time for Sokka to go. He knocks his forehead against Zuko’s in a way that reminds Zuko of a cat owl, and then musses up Suki’s hair and has to dodge her half-hearted retaliation.
And then Sokka is gone, the last of his laughter echoing in Zuko’s ears, and he isn’t going to see Sokka for months. Zuko lets Suki pull him close into her side, because while it’s unprofessional, most of his court have accepted that crowning a sixteen-year-old meant accepting some atypical behaviour from the Fire Lord - and Zuko’s friends have long been affectionate to the point of absurdity.
“You okay?” Suki asks, voice low enough that the other guards won’t be able to hear.
Zuko nods. “Yeah. I’ve got to get back to meetings.”
“I know,” Suki replies. “But it’s also okay to be sad. I know it’s hard for you two to say goodbye. Spirits know Sokka always gets so anxious about leaving you.” She knocks her hip into his. “But you’ve still got me, and Katara will be here in two days.”
And then, in a few months, everyone will be here. Katara and Suki will be here, and Sokka will return, and Aang and Toph will fly in on Appa. And Mai and Ty Lee might even be able to convince Azula to come back to the palace, just for a day or two, if she’s up to it.
“Come on,” Suki says. “Let’s go find Uncle. He’ll make the meetings more bearable.”
It’s like Sokka’s departure breaks a seal on the marriage conversation all over again.
“Fire Lord Zuko is only twenty-one,” Uncle Iroh reminds everyone, spreading his hands in a calming gesture. “He is still young for conversations about marriage.”
“And I don’t want my marriage to be arranged,” Zuko adds, maybe a little less calmly than Uncle. His parents’ marriage was arranged, and it was nothing but awful for Mother. Anyone might feel obligated to a marriage with the Fire Lord if it’s proposed, and the idea of that makes Zuko’s stomach turn. Even if he was interested in marrying a woman, and even if he was okay with the idea of having his advisors choose someone, he isn’t going to put anyone in that position.
“We understand, of course,” General Shoji responds, not sounding like he understands at all. “But it is prudent to find a good match for you, and to secure the line of succession. General Iroh and Princess Azula are currently the only options we have, and the princess is no more interested in a match than you are.”
Zuko’s glare deepens. “Have you been talking to her about this? Azula doesn’t need to be bothered with questions about the royal succession.”
Azula’s recovery has been slow and non-linear, and the last thing she needs is to think that the weight of the Fire Nation’s future is on her back. She needs to be able to figure out what it means to be Azula without all of that.
Which means that maybe Zuko needs to take this all a little more seriously.
Zuko slumps back in his seat, only half listening as his advisors assure him that they have been leaving Azula alone as commanded. He pinches the bridge of his nose, nodding at appropriate points, and then dismisses everyone as soon as he can get away with it.
“You know,” Uncle Iroh says, pouring a fresh cup of tea, “arranging a marriage is not your only option. You may consider… courting someone.”
Zuko sighs, but he also accepts the offer of tea. The warm cup feels good between his palms.
“They’re worried I’ll choose someone inappropriate, I guess,” he says.
“Inappropriate?” Uncle Iroh asks, and Zuko looks up to find a twinkle in his Uncle’s eye.
Does he know that Zuko means that a match might not be female? Would he care?
“I don’t know,” Zuko adds, awkwardly. “Like someone who isn’t from the Fire Nation, since so many of my friends aren’t from here. Or someone who isn’t…” He hesitates, glancing up at Uncle Iroh and away again. “Um. Who might make the line of succession… more complicated.”
“Ah.” Uncle Iroh takes a sip of his tea. “You mean like a… waterbender.”
Zuko grasps onto the rope he’s been tossed in the conversation. “Right! A waterbending child in the line of succession would be a problem.”
Uncle Iroh hums, quiet for a long moment, and then says: “Well, yes, but children don’t need to come from the womb of a marriage, as long as they are legitimately heired by you.”
“Uncle!” Zuko protests.
“There have been surrogates in the royal line before, dear nephew,” Uncle Iroh explains. “And it needn’t be the result of anything… unsavoury. There are devices for--”
“Stop, stop talking,” Zuko insists. “Okay. I get it. It wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world if I married a… waterbender.” He clears his throat. “It wouldn't be the worst thing for the line of succession.”
Uncle Iroh chuckles. “Some people wouldn’t be happy, but nephew - I am more concerned for your happiness than theirs. There is much you have been forced to give up in life, for the sake of duty.” He reaches forward and places a hand on Zuko’s wrist. “This does not need to be one of those things. And a good match… can make your life of duty much easier.”
Zuko smiles, thinking about how much easier life is with Sokka around.
(Not that… Obviously, not that Sokka is an option.)
“Yeah,” Zuko replies. “I get that. Thanks, Uncle.”
Uncle squeezes Zuko’s wrist, and then lets him go. “And if there is ever a nice Water Tribe friend you would like to introduce me to in that capacity. I would perhaps be less scandalised than you expect.”
Zuko nods at his guards to let in his next meeting, and then eyes Uncle Iroh as he exits the room, wondering.
Katara arrives early the next evening.
Zuko is not informed immediately, because he’s deep in discussion about tree law at the time. Sometimes, being the Fire Lord is the least interesting job in the world. If Sokka were here, he would find a way to make tree law seem interesting, but as it is, Zuko is trying to force himself to pay attention for long enough to discern why the existing rules aren’t working.
And then the meeting closes, Zuko rubs at his temples to ease his stress headache, and then he finds himself with an armful of Katara.
Zuko’s guards don’t even react. It would be so, so easy for any of Zuko’s friends to assassinate him.
“Hey, Katara,” Zuko greets, folding his arms around her. “It’s so good to see you. Did you find your rooms already? Have you eaten?”
“I waited for you,” Katara responds. She pulls back, and then adds in a low tone: “You look tired.”
“I have one more meeting and some papers before I can retire for the evening,” Zuko replies, ignoring her comment on his appearance. “But Suki is off-duty, so you could have dinner with her, and I’ll join you afterwards?”
“We’ll have dinner waiting.” Katara smiles up at him. “You took tomorrow off, right?”
Zuko assumes that Katara is asking because they’re trying to establish this as part of their pattern. The first full day of Katara being back in the royal palace is supposed to be dedicated to getting her up to speed to take over Sokka’s ambassador duties, which is a solid excuse for Zuko to refuse to put anything else into his calendar for the day - which means that it turns into a few hours of work with Katara, and a whole day to catch up.
It turns out that Zuko’s assumption is incorrect. Katara was checking that Zuko didn’t have any significant duties the next day because--
“Oh no,” Zuko laments, staring at the bottles.
“Oh yes,” Katara insists, pouring a cup for Suki. “Toph sends her best wishes!”
Which is how Zuko ends up more than a little tipsy, blinking owlishly as Katara complains about everything that’s been bothering her, with the distinct and conspicuous absence of any mention of Aang.
“And you know what,” Katara says, gesturing with her cup in a way that reminds Zuko of Sokka. Pink liquid sloshes to the lip of her cup, but Zuko can’t quite track the movement enough to see if she spilled anything. “You know what? The Northern Water Tribe, too!”
“Yeah!” Suki agrees with gusto, the way she’s been agreeing with every statement Katara has made. “Wait, what about them?”
“Every time we-- Every time I’m single for more than a few days, they start asking my Dad about matchmaking,” she says. “My Dad! As if he has the power to set me up with someone. Who do they think they are? Who do they think I am?”
“Yeah!” Suki agrees.
Zuko frowns and leans forward, elbows resting on the table in a way that is definitely unbefitting of his station. “Wait, they’re trying to arrange a marriage for you?”
Katara glares. “What? You think I’m going to-- not be single again soon, so I can’t think about being matchmade with someone else?”
Zuko blinks, following Katara’s anger but not her train of thought. “No, I mean-- I didn’t realise that’s a thing that people were trying to do to you, too.”
“Too?” Katara asks, straightening in her seat. “Oh no. You’re being set up?”
Suki snorts into her glass from her place on Katara’s bed. “They keep trying,” Suki explains. “But then Zuko gets all sad and Sokka gets all frowny, so good luck on that one.”
“They’re worried about the line of succession,” Zuko explains. He feels a little more sober now, largely because he can once again feel the weight of his very real responsibilities. “It’s like they don’t realise that I’m worried about it, too. But I don’t want someone to marry me because they feel like they have to. And I’d like…” He trails off for a moment, eyes on the warm pink of Toph’s favourite drink. “I’d like to at least have a chance to marry for love?” He feels his mouth tug down into a frown. “But I guess they don’t think that’s worth it.”
“Oh, Zuko,” Katara says, and reaches across the table to grasp at Zuko’s hand. Zuko smiles up at her, a little wobbly from the alcohol. “You should get to marry for love. Tell them to get lost. That’s what I’m doing.”
Suki snorts. “Zuko is obviously going to marry for love. Don’t get all sappy about it.”
“I am telling them to get lost,” Zuko explains. “And Uncle is supporting me! He even said today that I shouldn’t worry if I want to marry a waterbender or something.”
And then Zuko meets Katara’s eyes, horrified, and they both burst into hiccoughing laughter.
“Oh Tui and La, can you imagine?” Katara eventually gasps out between pearls of laughter. “I would be the Fire Lady!”
“Fire Lady Katara,” Zuko says, and he isn’t sure why it’s so funny to him, but somehow nothing has ever been funnier.
“Oh no, oh no - the next Fire Lord might be a waterbender,” Katara says, and her pink drink is all over the table now - how did that happen?
Zuko snorts. “No, Uncle said we’d use a surrogate to make sure that doesn’t happen. He even--” Zuko tries to catch his breath as laughter threatens to bubble up again, “he said-- oh Agni, he said there are devices to aid--”
And Zuko can’t finish the sentence, because the laugh bursts out of him too soon.
“Oh no,” Katara says, her face creased in mirth. “Oh no, that’s so bad, tell me that Uncle didn’t really say--”
“Um,” Suki says from the bed. “Guys, I don’t think Iroh was really talking about waterbenders?”
But Zuko is too far gone to hear whatever entirely sensible thing Suki is likely to add to the conversation. “Can you imagine, though? Fire Lady Katara?”
And then he stops laughing, because an amazing idea has just flashed across his mind like lightning, and he needs to stop to catch it properly.
Katara has stopped laughing, too. Zuko looks up at her, and they’re both wide-eyed in amazement.
“It’s perfect,” Katara says. “The North would have to stop bothering me.”
“And so would my advisors,” Zuko says.
“And they would give us unlimited time together,” Katara adds, “because we would be going on dates.”
“It would be the perfect vacation from all the relationship stuff.”
“Um, what’s happening?” Suki asks.
Katara and Zuko grin at one another, loosened by alcohol and laughter, and Katara explains:
“I’m going to date the Fire Lord.”