The Warrior's Gambit (Zutara)

III

Sorry for the lateness of this chapter, but as it turns out, my holiday break was actually BUSIER than my school schedule, since my mom was doing family stuff the whole time, as well as I was trying to balance seeing some of my old highschool and middle school friends.

But I digress!

As always, thank you so much to all my reviewers (I'm still behind on replying, I'll get to it eventually...)

"You seem happier tonight." Katara breathed in the night air of the Royal Capitol. The air at home always tasted like 'cold.' Sokka claimed that cold doesn't have a taste, but Katara always disagreed. Cold tasted sharp, like fresh snow. The air here didn't taste just like 'warm', but it tasted like 'city'. It tasted like smoke and Fire Nation food and summer breezes. And, up on the roof, she had a good inhale of it.

Zuko had brought her up here with a small basket, and the pair sat staring at the stars. Zuko had offered her a sweet rice ball with a sticky fruit sauce that clung to her fingers.

"I'm happiest when I'm with you," Zuko admitted frankly, shoulder to shoulder with her.

"I had thought you were mad at me," Katara admitted in a rush, "After...well, after."

"I'll admit I was upset." Zuko titled his head. "But it's fairly impossible to stay mad at you."

Katara nodded to herself, licking off the sauce between her fingers. She realized after a second that Zuko was watching her tongue flicker in the folds of her digits, his pupils darkened and bleeding out into the golden flecks in his eyes. Katara felt a warm blush come all over her body, a shiver that sent her hairs standing upright.

Zuko noticed this and laughed to himself, looking away. Of course, it wouldn't be proper to launch herself at him on the roof, as much as she wanted to.

She looked up, gnawing on her lips. "I haven't had much time to stargaze since I came here," she said out loud, more of a thought than a comment. "It's familiar to do this."

"You study the stars a lot?" Zuko tilted his head.

"We have to. To travel anywhere by sea, I mean, once you're on the waves there's no land masses at all to tell you where you are. It was used a lot more when we visited the North, but we brought it back into use when we started having to go farther out to find fish." Katara gnawed on her nail. "You know them?"

"A bit. I spent a lot of my formative years in military training on the Navy ships with my Uncle. It's when I found Kuzon, remember?"

"Of course, right." Katara laughed to herself. "What's your favorite constellation? Mine is Kaguyagat."

"What? Was that a sneeze?" he said, trying not to sound rude.

"Kaguy..." Katara started again, but saw his blank stare. "You know, the fox. Right there." She pointed up.

"Oh, you mean Hoki Hosi... we call them the brush stars. Like, flickers of ink across the sky," Zuko said.

Katara laughed out loud. "I like mine better."

"I do too," Zuko agreed.

They spent the next hour comparing constellations. Katara realized that of course they'd have a totally different views on the stars, despite looking at the same constellations. It was a weird feeling to think that when her mother was teaching her how to chart the choppy dark seas using The Caribou stars, General Iroh was teaching Zuko the same thing but with a different name. In the beginning, had they this conversation, it would have reminded Katara about how different they were. Now, it just made her smile. She was glad to find out this information.