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Katara long craved to be a mother and now that Kya was twelve months old, she hadn’t changed her mind about that. Even so, she often thought that travelling the world with the Avatar had been a less taxing endeavour.
At least back then, Sokka was in charge of making sure that they got to sleep as often as possible.
While pregnant, she’d confidently proclaimed that she and her wife would outnumber their daughter, that their routines didn’t change too dramatically. Now she understood why Hakoda had laughed at her.
Their trip to Ember Island for a summer vacation couldn’t come any sooner, or so she thought.
As it turned out, a baby (who she loved with everything she had) was still a baby in a paradise literally made for royalty.
Rubbing at her eyes, Katara squinted at the light trickling in through the window and then returned to watching her wife walking back and forth, Kya resting on her shoulder, finally silent.
Azula eyed the child suspiciously until she released a breath and joined her wife on the bed. Katara leaned into her, making sure that it was actually real.
“She’s asleep,” Azula confirmed.
Yawning, Katara replied, “I’m glad one of us is.”
“We can…”
“No,” Katara said adamantly, “your mom agreed to babysit! We are not wasting our only vacation day!”
Azula’s head lolled back but sprang up from the bed to approach the crib, laying her daughter down gently. Katara admired her as she wiped the wetness from Kya’s cheeks before she returned to the bed.
Katara circled her waist and put her head onto her shoulder, breathing in the pleasant smoke scent that her younger self would have never believed that she could love so much.
“And what is it exactly that we are doing with our ‘only vacation day’?” Azula asked.
“I don’t know, you’re the one who used to come here. What would you recommend?”
Azula shrugged and asked, “The beach is probably the natural place to start?”
Somehow invigorated by the answer, Katara shot up and said, “Let’s get ready then!”
Azula groaned but followed without complaint.
S
Azula yawned and squinted against the sun as she trudged through the sand, a lack of sleep did little for any nostalgia that she might have felt for Ember Island.
It was still obviously beautiful and the place that held her least complicated memories with her family.
After a night of her daughter fussing, however, it felt a little too bright.
Despite this, Katara seemed excited so she dutifully weaved through the crowd holding an ice-cream cone in each hand until she found her wife stretched out on a towel.
A smile overtook her exhaustion upon noticing more than one dumbfounded stare at the gorgeous waterbender from hopeless men.
With a bit of extra energy, she breached the final distance and regally sat down beside her as she handed over the second ice cream.
Katara smiled at her brightly and kissed her on the cheek before she started licking it.
“Thank you,” she said between bites.
Satisfied enough by the shock from the onlookers’ faces to no longer need to spare them any looks, Azula lounged back and made a start on her own ice cream as Katara sighed contentedly.
“I see why you came here so much,” Katara mused, staring out into the crystal ocean that she was probably planning to surface on again.
“You’ve been here before, haven’t you?” Azula asked.
“That was different, we were preparing for Sozin’s Comet…Zuko was always grumpy…”
“Doesn’t sound too different to me,” Azula replied and Katara laughed.
“Isn’t your mom watching Izumi today as well?”
“I think so, why do you ask?” Azula said, trying not to blush as Katara unconsciously wiped some stray ice cream from the edge of her mouth.
“Well, what do you think Zuko and Mai are doing today?”
“Mai mentioned potentially playing Kuai Ball,” Azula shrugged.
“Kuai Ball?” Katara asked, Azula’s tiredness returning in an almost foreboding way upon seeing her wife’s interest was piqued.
At the start of their relationship, it had obviously been difficult for Katara to show an interest in Fire Nation culture, so Azula appreciated every effort.
Years after the war ended, it was apparently too difficult for her not to get excited, Azula had to imagine that it had something to do with the chance to play a game that did not involve lobbing snow at each other.
As she chewed at the last bit of ice cream cone, Azula asked, “Do you want to see if they’re still playing? I could show you how to win?”
Katara nodded eagerly in a way that cuts through the princess’s tiredness.
“Let’s go then,” Azula said, triumphantly taking her wife’s hand to go off in search of her brother and sister-in-law.
With the multiple eyes on them, she almost wished that her awkward fourteen-year-old self could see who she would marry.
S
They won another match and yet Mai scowled openly at her husband as the opposing team timidly left the court.,
“What?” Zuko demanded.
“They’re letting us win! This was supposed to be fun,” Mai exclaimed.
“Why would they let us win?” Zuko asked obliviously.
“Oh I don’t know, Fire Lord Zuko, why would they let you win?” the Fire Lady shot back, their two friends chuckling at the marital argument, neither of them disagreeing with Mai.
Zuko frowned and said, “I can order them not to…”
“I have a better idea,” Mai interjected upon noticing someone who was incapable of feeding Zuko’s ego.
Even if holding hands with her wife meant that Princess Azula was essentially a completely different person from the last time they’d played over a decade ago, she was confident that she was the perfect person for a fair match.
It was for this reason that she tore across the court over to her sister-in-law, not even bothering to greet her as she asked, “Do the two of you want to play?”
Katara’s eyebrows shot up and she looked to Azula who was nodding.
Not mentioning that was the reason that they’d come over, she just allowed Mai to point out where they needed to stand.
As Mai returned to the other side of the net, she caught Katara whispering to her wife that she still didn’t know how to play and Azula assuring her that she would pick it up.
For the longest time, she hadn’t really understood their relationship, she couldn’t imagine two people who could be more quite literally opposites of each other.
All the same, she had never questioned it. After a few matches, she no longer had any reason to question their compatibility.
For the first match, it was mostly Azula who carried her team, consisting of her wife who mostly stood back and watched and two of the least cowardly opponents they’d faced thus far. Having the princess on their side was apparently reason enough to actually try.
Even so, having his sister on the court seemed to invigorate Zuko into action and it reached the point where the ball was basically volleyed between the siblings for the majority of the game, but an unnecessary flip from the princess threw the ball past Zuko’s range of motion while still being skillfully in range.
The Fire Lord huffed but made no comment, though his frustration got progressively worse as his sister-in-law joined in on the next round to assist Azula.
Their two teammates become almost utterly superfluous once she really became involved.
The firebender and waterbender miraculously moved in perfect sync to throw back each volley onto their side of the net, it didn’t even make it to their second row of players.
All throughout this, Mai’s smile returned.
They may not be winning, but there was no need to be bored when she was truly being challenged for the first time that day. When he asked her later, she would claim that it had nothing to do with the multiple times that the ball hit him in the face.
S
Never before had Katara realised how difficult it was to wash away sand from her body, but after a great day with her wife, it was difficult to be upset about that fact.
It almost felt like the kind of date that they could have had in their youth if they hadn’t first been mortal enemies and then Azula spent years in prison, not that it was often that she thought about any of that anymore.
The presence of Kya made it hard for any sliver of a doubt to creep in anymore, not that she’d had any at all since they started living in the Southern Water Tribe together all those years ago.
A cooing as she approached their vacation room only reinforced this as it was followed by the sound of her wife’s voice:
“...Your mama was amazing, Uncle Zuko didn’t see the ball coming…”
Katara grinned broadly as she entered the room and Azula trailed off but continued to bounce the child.
Kya was clearly far from sleeping with her hands tightly around her mother’s neck as she smiled at the waterbender in much the same way that she was.
Azula also smiled so Katara approached to circle her hands around her waist and lay her chin on her shoulder so that she could look at Kya and still enjoy being close to her wife.
Right now she was having trouble remembering their sleepless night, this felt all too perfect, especially as Kya’s small hand began to grab playfully at her nose.
“I don’t think she’s going to sleep tonight either,” Azula said, though she did not sound the least bit worried about that fact.
“I can try and get her down while you get changed and get some sleep?” Katara offered but the princess was shaking her head even before she finished talking.
“I would rather stay like this for a while,” Azula assured.
Katara hummed in agreement.