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They time the start of their trip to catch the morning of the second day of the Summer Festival. Katara thinks it's fitting—many years ago, they had enjoyed a full first day before an aftershock of the earthquake tore through what should have been a day of joy and recovery. The city's residents had gotten to experience the full two days of the Festival the next year – but Katara never managed to return again at the right time of year. Now, walking through the bustling street with two hands occupied by Avatar and Fire Lord respectively, she finds a small burst of joy thinking of today as the next part of an outing that had been on pause for a quarter of a century.
Their lives sure did get busy.
Though she hadn't been in the highest of moods when they arrived, the rhythm of the city is infectious, and after wandering through the thick crowds every trace of her sulky mood has vanished. The open roads of Daoshu City—temporarily pedestrianised—teem with children, running around with costumes and painted faces, mouths stuffed with food and laughter, hands full of toys and kites and flowers. Her heart warms at the sight—life, not destruction, won out here after all. The festival's older attendees gather around the stalls lining each side of the road, chatting and sampling food. A rousing show of dance or earthbending tricks breaks up the flow every few hundred yards.
Aang's leading them with gusto, having already bought himself an elaborate papercraft hat, the menacing grimace of a painted tigerbear clashing wonderfully with his cheery demeanour. Katara follows with a spring in her step, Zuko strangely quiet in tow.
Katara's mind is on the street food—crispy handfuls of carplet, to be specific—which have stayed in her mind ever since the call of a vendor reached her ears as they descended from Appa at dawn. She'd wager Zuko's is, too, from the way his gaze lingers on the sizzling delicacies atop open fires whenever they pass by a food stall. She catches his eye with a conspiratorial shake of the head. It's difficult when Aang wants to stop every five paces to hoist someone's kite into the air, or make a sweaty child's hair flutter with airbending, or, of course, pose for pictures with the occasional roamer whose head isn't so addled by the heat and colour that they don't recognise the Avatar.
"Ab-tar!" Katara turns her head to see a child the size of her shin pointing at Aang with eyes so wide open they must hurt.
"Ack, I've been found," Aang says, raising his hands and flashing an acquiescing smile to the kid's guardian, a similarly starry-eyed teenager. He slips his hand out of Katara's and kneels to converse with his fan.
Katara takes her chance. She turns to Zuko, who gives a firm, serious nod, and together they scuttle into the nearest side street, following the wafting smells of a food market with guilty smiles on their faces. They have a booking at a restaurant in Bakai later in the afternoon, so they can't lose Aang for real.
Two servings of fried fish and a family-sized bag of crunchy lentils later, she and Zuko find themselves sipping cool coconut water and wandering through a cordoned section of tall stalls dedicated to arts and crafts. Katara takes a long sip and watches him admire the paintings, good eye flitting everywhere. It's nice to forget about it all, just for a moment. The odd weight of the last few weeks have had her on a precarious edge, between all her children uprooting and the everpresent thrum of political tension in Republic City rearing up again from its slumber. This place, of course, has its own problems, but it's hard to picture any on days like these.
"I like this one," Zuko's saying, eyeing up a vast canvas leaning against the side of a red brick apartment, reaching from the ground to roughly his own height. Pale, bright blues muddle down into a green horizon, with short, brown strokes of paint standing out starkly in the foreground.
Katara wrinkles her nose. "What's it supposed to be?"
"They're boats on the water, I think. It's impressionistic."
"Hmm. It looks like one of Sokka's," Katara retorts.
Zuko barks a laugh at that. "I just like how it flows. Fire Nation art hasn't caught up to this, it's all tight lines and, ugh, so much symbolism."
Katara smirks. That was Zuko's running gripe about his new royal portrait, the one specially made for the weird wall of Fire Lords in the main wing of the palace. She thought it was morbid, really, the way they liked to put the current Fire Lord in a hall of extinct ones, but Zuko allowed himself to be rigid about the more harmless traditions, considering how much effort he had put into undoing all the other ones. Though, if they wanted to sit Izumi down for something like that any time during Katara's lifetime, she would have to have some words.
They're debating the merits of a bright jungle landscape with all its trees deliberately miscoloured – and it's dawning on Katara how she really might not understand art – when Aang catches up to them.
"There you are!" He eyes Katara's coconut and leans over to take a long sip from her straw. When she bats him away with a laugh, he sets his sights on Zuko's. "I let you guys go because you looked sort of grumpy. Sorry about that, but, you know, an—"
"If you say an Avatar is never off duty, Aang–"
"Anyway. Look what I found." He thrusts a large cupful of seasoned puffed rice out towards them. "They're just like the ones from the Si Wong villages that Zuko likes! I didn't think they'd have them here in Daoshu, too." He breathes in the mustardy smell before wrinkling his nose. "Zingy."
Katara tries a handful, carefully tipping it out of the cone-shaped cup fashioned out of old newspaper into her hand. The fresh heat is a delicious contrast to her cool, mild coconut water. Next to her, Zuko's already on his second handful, when she notices that Aang has turned bright red.
Of course. She looks down into the rings of chopped green chilli in the mixture. Saying this is too spicy for Aang would be an understatement. She holds in her laughter and hands him her coconut out of pity, glancing to see if Zuko has noticed. Sadly for her and luckily for Aang, he's far too entranced by the food in front of him.
"What?" Zuko says finally, suddenly noticing both their attention on him. "Do I have something on my face?"
Aang shakes his head bravely, though his throat bulges with the effort of suppressing a cough. Katara pats his back, choosing to take his side this time.
"Nope," she murmurs, taking the cup out of Zuko's hand and pouring more into her hand. "Just thinking how great these are, right, Zuko? We should definitely get more before we leave."
They stop at a trinket store next. Katara buys an antique navigational map of the southern Earth Kingdom for Sokka, while Aang and Zuko ponder over what the kids might like. Katara picks her brain hard, but she can't remember if Bumi's stamp collection is still an ongoing thing, and that stings unexpectedly. They buy another outrageous headpiece, for Toph, this one with a screaming monkey painted on the facade, and Katara picks up a set of spicy teas for Kya and her roommates. When Zuko sees her map he wanders in again for another for his private collection, while Aang and Katara wait outside and try their best to admire more paintings.
They stumble upon a row of face painters. Aang whispers to her in mock dismay, about how few Avatars there are this time around. A young woman with thick-petalled, white flowers trailing in her hair—the ceremonial norm for this region—is asking the girl seated in front of her, with remarkable patience, to describe the pattern she wants.
"Dragon!"
"Ooh! Great choice!" She holds out a palette of paints in front of the girl, her movements wide. "A red dragon? Or maybe even a yellow one?"
The girl sticks out her lip in deep concentration, and Katara feels a rush of laughter from how much it reminds her of her dear students in the South, resolute in the face of complex waterbending katas.
"Blue," she decides, hesitantly, "but it has to look real!"
The young woman twists her mouth in thought—Katara doesn't envy her, and not only because she doesn't have an artistic bone in her body. Her face is striking, eyes lined thickly with kohl. A gem glitters in the fold of her nostril, like so many of Katara's fellow workers at the hospital all those years ago, but unlike them, her hair only reaches to her shoulder. She wonders what other fashions have changed through the years.
"Blue," the woman nods, following it with an exaggerated wince for the girl's benefit. "Well, you see, all the dragons we know about are red, or green—"
"Real dragons can be blue," Zuko interjects, a wink directed more at Aang than the kid—Katara didn't notice him return. He crouches to describe it to both the girl and the woman, while she and Aang indulge each other in knowing grins over their heads. Zuko's so much better with kids—with diplomacy, that's the broader skill here—than he knows.
It's mid-afternoon when they enter the little hilltop restaurant in Bakai, the one Katara insisted on going to on every trip, ever since the first time she was here. The heat sweltered as the afternoon wore on, and the quick flight on Appa's back cooled her momentarily, but not nearly enough. She picks the seat closest to a whirring electric fan and slumps down with a sigh, relishing the cool air billowing her hair against her face. Zuko, unperturbed by the heat, goes to the counter to order. Unlike in Daoshu, he gets no strange looks here. That's just another reason why Katara likes it.
She looks around. This little shop is as unpolished as it ever was, and nearly empty today. She supposes most people are in the city for the celebrations. Katara remembers the first evening she had spent here with Aang vividly, the vicious whirlwind of days leading up to when she first saw him again after their wedding. For a brief couple of months a million years ago, this little town had been her entire life—long hours of healing that left her fingertips wrinkled, moving amongst the wreckage, rain pattering in her ears at all hours like she'd never witnessed before.
The awful weight of undisclosed affection in her heart for one of the men in front of her, a frenzy of guilt for the other. She hadn't been so raw, so unprepared, since the war.
No, she doesn't miss being twenty-five, any more than she misses being fourteen, even if Sokka would never believe that. Both she and the town are thriving, and tranquil, in the way they never could have been in the face of tragedy back then, real or imagined, public or personal.
"You know, you could have saved that seat for someone who really needs it," Aang says admonishingly, glancing around; Katara follows his gaze to the cluster of elderly patrons on the table over, who look, she has to admit, rather parched and sweaty.
She glares at him. "Since you're never off duty, I'm sure you could tend to anyone here if they get heatstroke, right?"
Aang grins, outdone, just as Zuko returns to the table with a bottle of wine and three glasses.
"They really do have the sexiest waiters here," Aang says emphatically.
Katara bites her lip and takes the items out of Zuko's hands before he can retort. She pours three glasses evenly. "Putting that teashop experience to use, are we?"
Zuko smiles, settling opposite her, next to Aang. He offers up a toast, "You know this is sort of our anniversary. This festival."
Katara has been thinking the same. There were things that came after, of course, more official, happier. But Zuko's right in certain ways.
Aang loosens with a laugh, his arm landing around the back of Zuko's chair and knees touching Katara's under the table. "Yeah, the anniversary of when I was so messed up about you guys that I couldn't get out of my week-long spirit coma."
She wants to chastise him for that, the reminder still striking unease in her stomach, but it is a little funny.
Zuko looks surprisingly sober. "This was—when I knew. We were all together in that guesthouse, remember? You did your bloodbending on me."
Katara's brow furrows, her memory hazy. "No, I'm pretty sure that was the first day of the festival. Because the morning after was when I knew—"
Aang looks up from his cup, eyes strangely sharp, stopping her words in her throat.
"That was when I knew," he breathes, "that you might feel the same way about Zuko that I did. I knew you knew it too, we just couldn't pluck up the courage to talk about it—"
"—and that's when the earthquake hit."
It's all coming back now. They had been so young and so scared, and for what?
Zuko clears his throat. "Clearly you both have a better memory than me," he says. Katara notices him fiddling with his bracelet, the one had Aang made—and modified—a sliver of her silver woven through his gold, suspended forever by Aang's instantly recognisable air nomad-style knots. "All I remember is the feeling. We were suddenly all alone in this crazy, busy city. You—you were doing it to me and Aang was almost watching over me and I felt welcome. Like it was this secret, an understanding just between the three of us."
Katara's suddenly weightless, watching him, watching Aang watch him, so tenderly that she almost wants to look away. She knows exactly what he means, but she can't quite put it in words the way he's gotten so good at doing. She takes so long to gather her thoughts that their food arrives, and then the moment is gone.
"Aang, come here," Katara chides, sitting up on her knees on Appa's saddle to look beyond the brush.
"Just a minute," Aang yelps. He's still scribbling away furiously into that dusty little notebook. Katara sighs and flops back into the plush rugs guarding Appa's back. Somewhere in the years, she had missed when Aang picked up journaling, though it was likely his younger son's influence that made Aang a little more studious. It was Tenzin who had bought him those journals in the first place, an entire stack of them from some artisanal paper press in the far eastern reaches of the Fire Nation.
Katara sighs and wonders where he is now, if he's settling in wherever he is. His first letter would probably be waiting for her when she got back. He'd been a jumpy, nervous wreck the night before he left for his first ever solo trip around the world, before he would come back home for his tattoos. If only some of Aang had rubbed off on him, in the same way, or even something of the nerve that his elder siblings had, but he always was the most anxious of her children. She wonders where he had got it—certainly not from either of them.
That was the night Katara's heart had nearly torn in half, an unexpected flood of emptiness after sending him off at the sparkling shore of the island and coming back to wander the silent corridors of her home.
Still, just as well. Now she's free to put it back together, however temporary that salve might be, with an impulsive trip back to the place it had first felt unimaginably whole.
"I'm almost done," Aang mutters again, as if Katara had asked after him twice. She snorts and turns to catch the ghost of a smile on Zuko's face.
Decidedly turning her attention to him, Katara edges forward and copies Zuko so they're lying together on their stomachs before the forward edge of the saddle, eyes out over the outcrop on which they rest. Katara winds her arm through his and rests her forehead on the cool nook of his shoulder. For a moment, they simply watch the wave of twilight settle over the sloping valley of Daoshu below.
"It's so different," Zuko says suddenly. "From the last time I came here, I mean. What is it, twenty years?"
"Twenty-five, more like," Katara amends, slipping her hold to press a kiss onto that shoulder.
It had taken them a while to find the same part of the mountain Zuko had wanted to land on; he and Aang argued for nearly an hour, both claiming they knew the right spot while the other had forgotten. Though her memory was spotty, Katara was pretty sure that the place they finally landed wasn't the right one, but Aang insisted that this outcrop only felt smaller because the tip of it must have collapsed, something that caused Appa to give an alarming grunt.
Who knows, he might be right. Because the town below feels so much bigger, closer, than in her memory, a jumble of tall buildings, palm trees and greying concrete reaching as far as she can see. It takes Katara a moment to make out the hospital she had worked such long days at, its flat tin roof almost unrecognisable among the winding streets and brick buildings that grow around it now like a living creature. She'd always had to take Appa – and some of her fellow healers paid rickshaw pullers to take them an hour across narrow, leaf-strewn dirt paths whenever they ventured to Daoshu City. It's probably a fifteen-minute ride on a local tram line now.
"I still can't believe you haven't been back since," Katara says, lowering her voice to match the steadily darkening sky. "I mean, the few times I came back were for work reasons, but still. Aang still gets invited to random ceremonies."
"I think a part of me never wanted to be here without you two. I just—I wanted it to be pristine, special, in my memory."
"Is it?"
"Special?" Zuko repeats, a little embarrassment creeping into his face now.
"Mmm," Katara nods, pushing back a strand of hair. His is greyer than hers, silvery and adding so much regal wisdom to his face, even when he's changed out of his usual garb for one of Aang's cosy kaftans. She has half a mind to do the same.
"Yeah. Of course. Because it's the three of us here."
Katara bites back a breathless smile and leans over—for that, he gets a kiss. Or maybe two.
Zuko always kisses without caution, like a kid making the most of it before he gets caught, even now. When they come back to each other after long stretches of time apart like this one, it always catches her by surprise, striking girlish delight in Katara's gut every time.
A low whistle, obnoxiously aided by airbending, interrupts them.
Katara pulls back an inch just to laugh—she feels impudent, putting on a show—and it's been a long time since she's felt like that.
"Why don't you stop jeering and come over here?" Zuko calls. "And since when are you such a scholar? Can you even see in that light?"
"I'm the Avatar, Zuko," Aang replies like he's pleasantly placating a confused child. "You really think I can damage my eyesight just like that?"
A blatant lie in such a tone might have gotten under Zuko's skin once. "I'm setting up a meeting for you with Izumi's eyeglass maker," he says, out-adulting Aang with grace. "He's the best in the country."
Aang's next rebuttal doesn't make it out of his mouth because Katara interrupts them, despite how much she enjoys the ribbing. "Both of you, stop. Aang, please put that down and get up here before I waterbend you off this mountain."
"With what water—" Aang starts, but he's already climbing.
"In your veins," Katara adds icily.
"Oh. We haven't done that in a while. Don't you think Zuko will get jealous if his favourite activity—"
Katara grabs his arm and yanks him towards her.
"Ow," he says, "you know my joints aren't what they used to be." And then he's lying next to her, all three of them on their backs. Katara winds her arms through both of theirs. Poor Appa, unused to the humidity, is already asleep under them.
The last remains of the soft twilight will leave them soon. Katara can already see a few winking stars in the purple sky, but it won't get fully dark this close to the city. She breathes deeply. An open night sky, a bright moon, normally invite her to awaken, to bend, but on either side of her, Aang and Zuko are still, an unexpected hush falling over them both.
Katara thinks of the word Zuko had used. Pristine. The place certainly wasn't, and neither was the timing. It was never going to be a clean thing, least of all for the carnage that had brought them together here all those years ago. She wondered often in those early days if she and Aang would have married, if they had known, before.
It had still been magical. One of the truest gifts she has ever known. And now that there are more pressing things, like her children all growing up and away, like the world slowly shifting into something new under her feet, it's an anchor.
Aang turns to his side, one arm gliding across her stomach to meet Zuko's hand in a clasp. "Happy not-anniversary," he whispers, and Zuko gives a soft sigh of agreement.
Katara lays her hand over theirs and squeezes. She looks up at the vastness of the stars and thinks about the angry little girl on the ice a thousand miles away, the strange boy in the iceberg, and the angrier, stranger young prince. She blinks hard, and tries not to let the wonder reach her eyes, because she can't have them both fussing over her now, can't find the words to explain why her tears are tears of happiness.