The Prince's Choice (Zutara)

XX

This is it. The chapter I think you've all been waiting for.

--

Much to Katara's own surprise, she ended up enjoying the rest of the party. She had thought that this entire night would be filled with anxiety and unease. Perhaps it would have been, had Zuko not danced with her.

There was something freeing about the dance, afterwards. Some part of her that was able to let herself enjoy this wildly opulent party with all the glorious food and drinks and with all the people she now called friends.

It was because she knew something: something was going to break tonight. It was going to be the end of it, the end of this little 'game' she'd been playing with Zuko, playing with herself. It was going to be the end of pretending that she was here just for her own selfish reasons. It was going to be the end of Katara's fight - the fight that she'd been having with herself about the way she was ever so quickly falling for the prince.

She may even call this night a beginning, but that didn't seem apt to her. It wasn't a beginning as much as it was a natural jump from one part to the next. To say it would be a beginning would be to say, in her mind, that this came from nowhere. That it would be as though she was just now entering this competition for real, without counting anything that had happened before. But, that wasn't true. She would never enter this competition with her heart open, she couldn't imagine a possibility where an alternative self would do that. Her heart had needed to be coaxed open.

And this? It felt fairly inevitable to Katara, and if she'd been paying enough attention, she may have felt it from the moment she knocked Zuko off the roof.

Something was going to come to its apex tonight. She wasn't sure to what extent it would be, but something was going to happen that would be irreversible.

She didn't think it would be the 'L-word' from either of them. She'd be rather shocked if it was. Still, she didn't think it would just be both of them sitting there, twiddling their thumbs and talking about the weather.

But Katara wasn't going to wax poetic about this all night, which surprised even her. Some part of her brain just said, 'fuck it, I'm done' and she couldn't have bribed her mind into overthinking this if she wanted to.

So, Katara took advantage of this rare moment where her brain took a vacation to be able to dance with her friends.

Many people noticed her wrapped fingers, but Katara just brushed it off, forging an excuse that got wilder and wilder each time. Aiga was in stitches about it the whole night - "Next ball all the girls will be wearing ribbon gloves!" she said, which was probably true - until Katara commanded her to leave her the heck alone and go find her boyfriend.

Katara found herself not looking for the Prince as much as she had been before. A part of her body felt settled; she didn't have to fear a lack of emotions from him. Their dance, the way his fingers had brushed along the edge of her neck, down her back, and on her arms, and the softness of his tone had very concretely assured Katara of his emotions. Besides, now that he'd had his one personal request, the streams of people who still wanted to tell him this or talk to him about that seemed never ending. Katara crossed paths with him once or twice, only to see him holding back sighs and trying very desperately to sound interested in cabbage-sustaining practices in the Earth Kingdom.

While many of her friends danced with this person or that - men asking beautiful and very off-limit ladies for just a moment of enjoyment - no one else approached Katara. It was as though Zuko's dancing with her had claimed her. Usually, Katara would have very vocally objected to being 'claimed' but tonight she was pleased, since she was pretty sure Zhi wouldn't approve of her breaking some toes.