Chapter Text
Zuko
Every letter he wrote to her, he rewrote a dozen times.
He wasn’t sure how it started, but ever since they saved each other’s lives, he felt like she deserved his best…and only his best. So he would write and rewrite, scratching out phrases that made no sense or words that made him seem awkward.
Not that he wasn’t awkward.
Oh, he certainly was.
But he wanted to seem cool for her.
She was always the coolest of his friends, and not in the literal sense of the whole “born and raised at the South Pole” thing. Despite his group of closest friends including half a dozen people who had saved the world with their individually impressive skills, she was the most impressive of the bunch.
And that was saying something, because the Avatar was among them.
There was just something about her. She commanded respect wherever she went, not just because of her talents as a Master Waterbender, but because of who she was as a person.
She was brave, unafraid to stand up against injustice. Smart, ready to lead their group at a moment’s notice. Kind, available to be a listening ear to any friend or stranger. Logical, somehow always knew what the right decision would be.
She was unlike anyone else, and Zuko was proud to call her his friend. Perhaps even his best friend.
In the years since the war, they’d kept up correspondence, writing letters back and forth every few weeks. For a while, she would visit two or three times a year with Aang, their presence brightening up his stuffy palace with laughter and friendship.
But in the past two years or so, he hadn’t seen her at all. Aang had stopped by for a brief emergency conference in the spring, but from his few letters, Zuko had gathered that he was quite busy these days.
Even though the visits had been scarce, she still wrote to Zuko with regularity, keeping him abreast of the happenings in the Southern Water Tribe. Sokka was terrible at remembering to write, so she included Sokka and Suki’s updates in her letters.
In turn, Zuko kept his correspondence with her lighthearted. He never mentioned the political challenges he faced in his own council chambers, or spoke of the deep-set bags that had developed under his eyes after many sleepless nights. He told her instead of the turtleducks in his garden and their new hatchlings, or wrote about his favorite restaurant in Caldera City that he visited on the rare moments that he left the palace.
Life as the Fire Lord was not treating Zuko well, and he didn’t want her to know.
She’d always been a bit of a mother figure in their group, and he knew that if he mentioned even one of the tumultuous meetings he’d had recently, she’d be beside herself with worry. Perhaps she’d even hop a boat, sail to the Fire Nation, and try to solve the problems for him.
He wouldn’t put it past her.
But this time it was simply too much. Today’s meeting had officially crossed the line of what he could muscle through by himself. Now, at half past midnight, Zuko still paced back and forth in his chambers, unsure of what to do. This was not the kind of situation where he could sit idly by and let whatever happened happen.
He needed some advice.
So for the fifth time that night, he sat down at the desk, put pen to paper, and started with a single, desperate line.
Katara, I have a problem.
Katara
After you’d seen the world, being stuck in the Southern Water Tribe got boring a lot faster than it used to.
She’d been back in her hometown for going on sixteen months now, and it was getting old. There were only so many told and retold stories she could bear to hear from Gran-Gran, and if she had to sit through one more family dinner where she was forced to watch Sokka and Suki fawn over each other, she might scream.
There wasn’t a good enough reason to leave.
Ever since her split with Aang, business calls from outside the Southern Water Tribe were few and far between. They’d settled things in the North several years back. The Earth Kingdom was doing some rather successful political rebuilding on its own. And the Fire Nation? Well, the most she got to see of Zuko these days was his letters, written in neat black ink on paper that smelled faintly of smoke.
She wrote to him monthly, sometimes twice a month. She often focused those writings on the happenings around her instead of including details of her personal life. She’d tell him about Sokka’s misadventures and how the tribe was rebuilding. She’d share about the new litter of otter penguins she saw on a walk the other day.
But nothing about herself.
The wild thing was that reading his replies was starting to become a highlight of her miserable existence in the South. Hearing from Zuko felt like looking through a window to the outside world, getting to experience foreign cultures once again, being reminded that there were people out there with lives that were exciting and vibrant and filled with intrigue. She loved when he told her about the topics on the agenda for council meetings or described the happenings of the summer festival in detail. Heck, reading his dinner menu for the week would be more exciting than anything she had going on.
And that was the crux of it all, wasn’t it?
See, she and Aang had broken up one year and five months prior – to the day. Aang had been the one to put that final nail in the coffin, and after that awkward conversation, Katara had taken a month to herself. She hid out in the Earth Kingdom, staying with Toph, for three weeks before making the trek back to the South Pole. And since she arrived home, she’d yet to leave again.
Toph was the only one who knew the whole truth, having wrung the entire story out of an emotionally vulnerable Katara three days after she arrived on her doorstep. Toph had listened surprisingly well, only offering a few choice words at the end of the tale about how stupid Aang was.
The two women stayed connected through correspondence as well, though less frequently than the letters with Zuko. Toph had invited Katara to come back to the Earth Kingdom that fall, but she had avoided committing to the invitation so far.
As much as she was starting to hate it in her hometown, Katara couldn’t bear to leave.
She had pretty much resolved herself to staying single, living in the Southern Water Tribe the rest of her days.
But you know what they say about resolutions…
…they’re made to be broken.