[FIC] Sense and Sensibility (6/16)
Title: Sense and Sensibility, Chapter Six
Fandom: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Pairing: Eventual Zutara, mentions of Sokka/Suki
Wordcount: 1850
Warnings: none
Summary: Four years after the end of the war, Fire Lord Zuko is told he has two weeks to choose a bride from a group of five girls. Luckily, Uncle Iroh stacked the deck.
Author's Notes: I'm archiving things, so this one (which is my longest finished story to date) was written before season three premiered. Thus it is technically an AU. Chapter titles are from the musical Camelot, because I am a giant dork.
---Chapter Six: Take Me to the Fair---
--Four Years Earlier--
Zuko did not think that stopping for a fair was a good idea.
In fact, he thought it was stupid and pointless. It was stupid because they were too close to the Fire Nation and Sozin’s Comet was drawing ever nearer. It was pointless because they were stopping in the Earth Kingdom town of Bara for its annual Rose Blooming Festival.
The exiled Prince of the Fire Nation had nothing against roses. His mother had been particularly fond of them and Zuko himself thought the multi-hued flowers were pretty, in their way. But when one’s face was plastered on wanted posters all over the world, one did not pause to stare at the pretty flowers. He was, in fact, about to tell his fellow travelers just that.
Katara knew from the look in Zuko’s eyes exactly what he thought of this little side trip. It was kind of funny, in a way. Sokka didn’t like the idea either, but he gave in without much of a fight. Iroh was delighted to be stopping, claiming he’d always wanted to try some of Bara’s famous cherry-flavored tea. Aang was really looking forward to it, since the break had been his idea. Toph, Katara knew, had already mentally put herself in charge of keeping the airbender out of trouble as best she could. That left the group’s resident waterbender to deal with Zuko. Suddenly it wasn’t so funny.
“Come on, it’ll be fun…”
“I won’t have any fun knowing that any minute we could be discovered and captured.”
Katara rolled her eyes. “Like we can’t escape if that happens?”
Zuko turned away. “Just because we’ve escaped before doesn’t mean we’ll be able to do it every time.”
Katara sighed. “Please, Zuko? Everyone else has already gone down to the festival.”
Zuko glared at her. “We’re too noticeable. Maybe the Avatar can hide his tattoos, but I can’t hide this!” He pointed at his scar. Katara’s blue eyes grew as cold as ice, and for a moment Zuko was slightly afraid of what she might do.
“Then don’t hide it. You have to trust that everything will be okay.”
Zuko looked down at the ground. “It hasn’t been my experience that such a thing is possible.” He was surprised when the waterbender took his hands in her darker ones.
Katara smiled sweetly. “We’re going to the Rose Blooming Festival, Zuko. You’re going to enjoy the day, or I swear will make you a hat of roses, including the thorns, and freeze it to your head. Okay?”
Zuko snorted. “Fine.”
Katara grinned. “Good!” She pulled Zuko down the hill, taking him into town, intent on showing him that not everything in the world was cruel.
--Present Day--
Ming-Ming was tired of watching the Fire Lord and the so-called Princess of the Southern Water Tribe together. She was the one who should be Fire Lady, not that peasant upstart! It was her royal and political right. It never crossed Lady Ming-Ming’s mind that maybe, just maybe love was what stood in her way. She wouldn’t have cared even if she had thought of it. So she formulated a plan to remove the Water pest once and for all.
It was all too easy for the Earth King’s niece to convince Vana to go along with her plan. Lani and Kanai were too chatty for their own good. While Ming-Ming knew for a fact that Vana was talkative, the girl was also smart. She wouldn’t give anything away.
It would be Vana that spoke to the servant and paid him. Having one of their servants, even a personal one that had accompanied them from the Earth Kingdom, do the deed was just too risky. Ming-Ming, however, was the one who found the plant. Sunwort was among the deadliest of known plants, and yet Lady Ming-Ming had found a small patch of it growing under a tree in the north garden.
Lani and Kanai would have questioned the action. They were naïve enough to think that one of them could still win Zuko over. But Lady Ming-Ming saw the way he looked at the so-called princess. This was the only way she was going to get what she wanted.
--------
During dinner, Vana Bei Fong watched as a servant brought Princess Katara a fresh glass of water. She wondered if perhaps Lady Ming-Ming’s plan was too extreme. It was too late now, in any case. Vana had thought of the noblewoman as someone to look up to, something she should aspire to be. Now she had her doubts. Ming-Ming was ruthless to the point of being cruel, and it frightened Vana to think of what the Earth King’s niece might do should any other girl get in her way.
The servant started to pour more water into Katara’s glass. Lady Ming-Ming watched them like a hawk. Vana watched too, her green eyes darker with worry.
“Oh, no thank you,” Katara said to the servant. Ming-Ming’s dark brown eyes narrowed into slits. The servant paused. Vana paled slightly. They both managed to maintain their composure.
“Are you sure, your highness?” the servant asked.
Katara smiled. “Quite sure, thank you.”
Zuko held up his glass. “I’ll take some more, if you don’t mind.”
The servant blanched, but he had no choice but to obey. He poured the water slowly and deliberately, his hands shaking just a little. Vana’s eyes were wide with fear now. The servant vanished as soon as the glass had been filled. Zuko took a sip just as Vana opened her mouth to protest. Vana was shocked into silence. Zuko frowned as he put the glass down.
Katara noticed the change in the Fire Lord’s expression. “Zuko? Is something wrong?” Was it just the candlelight they ate by, or did his eyes look clouded?
Zuko blinked. “I…don’t…” He closed his eyes and fell out of his chair, just barely hearing Katara scream his name before he lost consciousness.
Lady Ming-Ming sat frozen in place. This was not how things were supposed to happen. The upstart was supposed to drink the poison, not the Fire Lord! If the Fire Lord died, it would ruin everything!
“Zuko!” Katara screamed. She was on her knees in an instant, her friend’s head cradled in her lap. “Zuko…”
Iroh was out of his seat the moment Zuko fell. His efforts in reaching his nephew were hindered by courtiers trying to see what had just happened.
Vana couldn’t stand it anymore. “The water was poisoned,” she told Katara, ignoring the glare that Lady Ming-Ming was suddenly sending her way.
Katara was surprised by the information, but she didn’t let that slow her down. “Bring the glass down here,” she instructed. Vana obeyed without hesitation. Katara opened Zuko’s mouth and very carefully bended out the poisoned water, depositing it back into the glass.
Everyone let out a collective sigh of relief when Zuko coughed and opened his eyes. Vana was closest, and she saw the look in Katara’s blue eyes as the waterbender looked down at the Fire Lord. She also saw the way Zuko looked up at Katara, and Vana understood. She stepped back gracefully, moving into the shadows.
--Four Years Earlier--
Zuko stared at the large number of people wandering amongst the enormous but well-trimmed rosebushes. Everyone was traveling in pairs. Pairs of a male and a female. He frowned. “Hey, water-girl.”
Katara turned on him. “It’s Katara, Zuko. My name is Katara.”
He rolled his eyes. “Fine. Katara.”
“Yes?”
He resisted the urge to roll his eyes again at her now sweet-and-innocent tone. “Have you noticed we’re surrounded by couples?”
Katara sniffed, being too ladylike to snort. “So?”
Zuko shook his head. “Never mind.” They entered a tea shop, hoping to find Iroh and maybe the others.
“Hello young lovers!” the server greeted them. “How may I help you today?”
“We’re not lovers,” Zuko growled, treating the server with a particularly nasty glare. Katara nodded in agreement, too dumbstruck to do much else.
The woman just laughed it off. “Don’t be ridiculous. I can see the young lady’s engagement necklace. Besides, the Rose Blooming Festival is for lovers!”
They left the tea shop immediately.
“I am going to kill the Avatar,” Zuko muttered as they headed back up the hill to Appa. “Him for wanting to come to this stupid festival, and then my uncle for knowing but not telling, and then your brother for laughing when he finds out.”
“You’ll be lucky if he laughs,” Katara said seriously. “He’s very overprotective.”
Zuko glared at her. That last statement had been too teasing for his current frame of mind. Katara just smiled at him. He looked away. “Would you find it so funny if you had entered the shop with the Avatar?”
“No,” she answered honestly. Zuko turned back to her in surprise. She tapped his nose. “But Toph would find it funny either way.” She ran ahead, laughing. Zuko stopped, fuming (literally. There was smoke coming out of his nose). Then he ran after her. “Don’t you dare tell any of them!”
--Present Day--
Though he protested that he was fine, Zuko was banned from that evening’s planned activities (not that he would have enjoyed Dessert Night, since he did not share his uncle’s sweet tooth) and confined not only to his rooms but to his bed. Katara insisted on staying with him (on the grounds that she was a waterbender with healing abilities, to avoid any impropriety) to make sure the poison didn’t affect him. The Royal Doctor approved, especially when Zuko’s temperature rose to fever proportions. “It should be gone by tomorrow,” he told her, “but you should stay with him just in case. He might be a little delirious.”
Mostly he was asleep. Katara started to nod off herself around eleven.
“Katara?” Zuko said suddenly. The waterbender was startled awake, but she managed to smile at her “patient”.
“Yes, Zuko?”
“Remember when we went to Bara with the Avatar and Toph and my uncle and your idiot brother for the Rose Blooming Festival? Appa and Momo were there too,” he added as an afterthought.
Katara blinked. Delirious Zuko was apparently random as well as rambling. “Yes...”
“And do you remember how the lady in the tea shop said ‘the Rose Blooming Festival is for lovers’?”
A slight shiver went up Katara’s spine. “Yes, I remember.”
“Do you think… next year, would you like to go to the Rose Blooming Festival with me?”
Katara knew that Zuko wasn’t entirely himself at the moment. But his fever was pretty mild, so he wasn’t completely delirious either.
The Rose Blooming Festival is for lovers…
Such a seemingly simple question.
And just like that, Katara knew. She knew why she felt the way she did when she’d realized Zuko might ask her to marry him just to escape marriage to a girl he hated. She knew why she’d been so angry when Lady Ming-Ming insulted him. She knew what Zuko had really discovered on Music Night. She knew what Zuko was really saying, and she knew how she felt about it.
“I’d love to go with you, Zuko.”
---End Chapter Six---
Fandom: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Pairing: Eventual Zutara, mentions of Sokka/Suki
Wordcount: 1850
Warnings: none
Summary: Four years after the end of the war, Fire Lord Zuko is told he has two weeks to choose a bride from a group of five girls. Luckily, Uncle Iroh stacked the deck.
Author's Notes: I'm archiving things, so this one (which is my longest finished story to date) was written before season three premiered. Thus it is technically an AU. Chapter titles are from the musical Camelot, because I am a giant dork.
---Chapter Six: Take Me to the Fair---
--Four Years Earlier--
Zuko did not think that stopping for a fair was a good idea.
In fact, he thought it was stupid and pointless. It was stupid because they were too close to the Fire Nation and Sozin’s Comet was drawing ever nearer. It was pointless because they were stopping in the Earth Kingdom town of Bara for its annual Rose Blooming Festival.
The exiled Prince of the Fire Nation had nothing against roses. His mother had been particularly fond of them and Zuko himself thought the multi-hued flowers were pretty, in their way. But when one’s face was plastered on wanted posters all over the world, one did not pause to stare at the pretty flowers. He was, in fact, about to tell his fellow travelers just that.
Katara knew from the look in Zuko’s eyes exactly what he thought of this little side trip. It was kind of funny, in a way. Sokka didn’t like the idea either, but he gave in without much of a fight. Iroh was delighted to be stopping, claiming he’d always wanted to try some of Bara’s famous cherry-flavored tea. Aang was really looking forward to it, since the break had been his idea. Toph, Katara knew, had already mentally put herself in charge of keeping the airbender out of trouble as best she could. That left the group’s resident waterbender to deal with Zuko. Suddenly it wasn’t so funny.
“Come on, it’ll be fun…”
“I won’t have any fun knowing that any minute we could be discovered and captured.”
Katara rolled her eyes. “Like we can’t escape if that happens?”
Zuko turned away. “Just because we’ve escaped before doesn’t mean we’ll be able to do it every time.”
Katara sighed. “Please, Zuko? Everyone else has already gone down to the festival.”
Zuko glared at her. “We’re too noticeable. Maybe the Avatar can hide his tattoos, but I can’t hide this!” He pointed at his scar. Katara’s blue eyes grew as cold as ice, and for a moment Zuko was slightly afraid of what she might do.
“Then don’t hide it. You have to trust that everything will be okay.”
Zuko looked down at the ground. “It hasn’t been my experience that such a thing is possible.” He was surprised when the waterbender took his hands in her darker ones.
Katara smiled sweetly. “We’re going to the Rose Blooming Festival, Zuko. You’re going to enjoy the day, or I swear will make you a hat of roses, including the thorns, and freeze it to your head. Okay?”
Zuko snorted. “Fine.”
Katara grinned. “Good!” She pulled Zuko down the hill, taking him into town, intent on showing him that not everything in the world was cruel.
--Present Day--
Ming-Ming was tired of watching the Fire Lord and the so-called Princess of the Southern Water Tribe together. She was the one who should be Fire Lady, not that peasant upstart! It was her royal and political right. It never crossed Lady Ming-Ming’s mind that maybe, just maybe love was what stood in her way. She wouldn’t have cared even if she had thought of it. So she formulated a plan to remove the Water pest once and for all.
It was all too easy for the Earth King’s niece to convince Vana to go along with her plan. Lani and Kanai were too chatty for their own good. While Ming-Ming knew for a fact that Vana was talkative, the girl was also smart. She wouldn’t give anything away.
It would be Vana that spoke to the servant and paid him. Having one of their servants, even a personal one that had accompanied them from the Earth Kingdom, do the deed was just too risky. Ming-Ming, however, was the one who found the plant. Sunwort was among the deadliest of known plants, and yet Lady Ming-Ming had found a small patch of it growing under a tree in the north garden.
Lani and Kanai would have questioned the action. They were naïve enough to think that one of them could still win Zuko over. But Lady Ming-Ming saw the way he looked at the so-called princess. This was the only way she was going to get what she wanted.
--------
During dinner, Vana Bei Fong watched as a servant brought Princess Katara a fresh glass of water. She wondered if perhaps Lady Ming-Ming’s plan was too extreme. It was too late now, in any case. Vana had thought of the noblewoman as someone to look up to, something she should aspire to be. Now she had her doubts. Ming-Ming was ruthless to the point of being cruel, and it frightened Vana to think of what the Earth King’s niece might do should any other girl get in her way.
The servant started to pour more water into Katara’s glass. Lady Ming-Ming watched them like a hawk. Vana watched too, her green eyes darker with worry.
“Oh, no thank you,” Katara said to the servant. Ming-Ming’s dark brown eyes narrowed into slits. The servant paused. Vana paled slightly. They both managed to maintain their composure.
“Are you sure, your highness?” the servant asked.
Katara smiled. “Quite sure, thank you.”
Zuko held up his glass. “I’ll take some more, if you don’t mind.”
The servant blanched, but he had no choice but to obey. He poured the water slowly and deliberately, his hands shaking just a little. Vana’s eyes were wide with fear now. The servant vanished as soon as the glass had been filled. Zuko took a sip just as Vana opened her mouth to protest. Vana was shocked into silence. Zuko frowned as he put the glass down.
Katara noticed the change in the Fire Lord’s expression. “Zuko? Is something wrong?” Was it just the candlelight they ate by, or did his eyes look clouded?
Zuko blinked. “I…don’t…” He closed his eyes and fell out of his chair, just barely hearing Katara scream his name before he lost consciousness.
Lady Ming-Ming sat frozen in place. This was not how things were supposed to happen. The upstart was supposed to drink the poison, not the Fire Lord! If the Fire Lord died, it would ruin everything!
“Zuko!” Katara screamed. She was on her knees in an instant, her friend’s head cradled in her lap. “Zuko…”
Iroh was out of his seat the moment Zuko fell. His efforts in reaching his nephew were hindered by courtiers trying to see what had just happened.
Vana couldn’t stand it anymore. “The water was poisoned,” she told Katara, ignoring the glare that Lady Ming-Ming was suddenly sending her way.
Katara was surprised by the information, but she didn’t let that slow her down. “Bring the glass down here,” she instructed. Vana obeyed without hesitation. Katara opened Zuko’s mouth and very carefully bended out the poisoned water, depositing it back into the glass.
Everyone let out a collective sigh of relief when Zuko coughed and opened his eyes. Vana was closest, and she saw the look in Katara’s blue eyes as the waterbender looked down at the Fire Lord. She also saw the way Zuko looked up at Katara, and Vana understood. She stepped back gracefully, moving into the shadows.
--Four Years Earlier--
Zuko stared at the large number of people wandering amongst the enormous but well-trimmed rosebushes. Everyone was traveling in pairs. Pairs of a male and a female. He frowned. “Hey, water-girl.”
Katara turned on him. “It’s Katara, Zuko. My name is Katara.”
He rolled his eyes. “Fine. Katara.”
“Yes?”
He resisted the urge to roll his eyes again at her now sweet-and-innocent tone. “Have you noticed we’re surrounded by couples?”
Katara sniffed, being too ladylike to snort. “So?”
Zuko shook his head. “Never mind.” They entered a tea shop, hoping to find Iroh and maybe the others.
“Hello young lovers!” the server greeted them. “How may I help you today?”
“We’re not lovers,” Zuko growled, treating the server with a particularly nasty glare. Katara nodded in agreement, too dumbstruck to do much else.
The woman just laughed it off. “Don’t be ridiculous. I can see the young lady’s engagement necklace. Besides, the Rose Blooming Festival is for lovers!”
They left the tea shop immediately.
“I am going to kill the Avatar,” Zuko muttered as they headed back up the hill to Appa. “Him for wanting to come to this stupid festival, and then my uncle for knowing but not telling, and then your brother for laughing when he finds out.”
“You’ll be lucky if he laughs,” Katara said seriously. “He’s very overprotective.”
Zuko glared at her. That last statement had been too teasing for his current frame of mind. Katara just smiled at him. He looked away. “Would you find it so funny if you had entered the shop with the Avatar?”
“No,” she answered honestly. Zuko turned back to her in surprise. She tapped his nose. “But Toph would find it funny either way.” She ran ahead, laughing. Zuko stopped, fuming (literally. There was smoke coming out of his nose). Then he ran after her. “Don’t you dare tell any of them!”
--Present Day--
Though he protested that he was fine, Zuko was banned from that evening’s planned activities (not that he would have enjoyed Dessert Night, since he did not share his uncle’s sweet tooth) and confined not only to his rooms but to his bed. Katara insisted on staying with him (on the grounds that she was a waterbender with healing abilities, to avoid any impropriety) to make sure the poison didn’t affect him. The Royal Doctor approved, especially when Zuko’s temperature rose to fever proportions. “It should be gone by tomorrow,” he told her, “but you should stay with him just in case. He might be a little delirious.”
Mostly he was asleep. Katara started to nod off herself around eleven.
“Katara?” Zuko said suddenly. The waterbender was startled awake, but she managed to smile at her “patient”.
“Yes, Zuko?”
“Remember when we went to Bara with the Avatar and Toph and my uncle and your idiot brother for the Rose Blooming Festival? Appa and Momo were there too,” he added as an afterthought.
Katara blinked. Delirious Zuko was apparently random as well as rambling. “Yes...”
“And do you remember how the lady in the tea shop said ‘the Rose Blooming Festival is for lovers’?”
A slight shiver went up Katara’s spine. “Yes, I remember.”
“Do you think… next year, would you like to go to the Rose Blooming Festival with me?”
Katara knew that Zuko wasn’t entirely himself at the moment. But his fever was pretty mild, so he wasn’t completely delirious either.
The Rose Blooming Festival is for lovers…
Such a seemingly simple question.
And just like that, Katara knew. She knew why she felt the way she did when she’d realized Zuko might ask her to marry him just to escape marriage to a girl he hated. She knew why she’d been so angry when Lady Ming-Ming insulted him. She knew what Zuko had really discovered on Music Night. She knew what Zuko was really saying, and she knew how she felt about it.
“I’d love to go with you, Zuko.”
---End Chapter Six---