Dark Puck - Roulette 10b

Song turned out to be very hard to track down that afternoon.  The first place Zuko checked was the turtleduck pond, since they always met there, but Song was not there.  He checked the infirmary next, only to discover that she'd gone to see Yì Suì.  Heading to the room she shared with the young man provided only a curious dragonet and a comment from the guard there that Song had gone off in the direction of the library, which was where he finally found her looking at some medical scrolls.

"Song?" he said, coming up behind her.

Carefully, she put the scroll back, then turned to smile at him.  "Hello, Zuko."

He was holding the box behind his back. "How's your day been?"

"Interesting," Song said with a sigh.  "Yì Suì has another cold.  He's sick far too much."

"Is he going to be all right?" the Firelord asked, briefly sidetracked.

She nodded.  "It is only a cold," she pointed out.  "I was just trying to see if there were other conditions that the constant illnesses might be heralding."

"Ah. Well, I wouldn't know." He frowned a little. "Maybe you could ask Mom?"

"I probably will," she sighed.

Zuko nodded. "All right."

Song ran a hand through her hair — she'd very recently taken to wearing it loose when she wasn't working — and sighed, then smiled at him again.  "Did you need something?"

"Actually, I wanted to talk to you."

"Oh?  What about?"

Here he hesitated, the speech he'd had planned for months flying out of his head.

She blinked.  "Zuko?"

"I…" He trailed off. "…I completely forgot the way I was going to say this."

She kissed him.  "So improvise."  An impish smile: "You're good at that."

He flushed. "Well…I mean, I want to make sure I do this right."

Song laughed lightly.  "I think you're already making a good start."

He coloured a little further. "Um. Well, what I wanted to ask was… I… My grandmother left me these. And I can't give them to you, her will says they have to be owned by someone in her bloodline, but… I mean… if you were… I could loan them to you. For your lifetime. Which really amounts to the same thing, it's just wording it differently. But — "

"What are they?" was the soft question that cut through his babbling.

"Oh, right." He pulled the box out from behind his back and held it out to her.

Curious, Song accepted it, her brown eyes wide.  The box itself was certainly worth almost as much as her home back in the Earth Kingdom.  On opening it to see the array of jewellery inside, her jaw dropped.

"If you marry me, they're yours," he whispered.

Very carefully, Song closed the box and set it on a shelf.  As she slipped her arms around him, she said, "I'd marry you even without them," before kissing him.

He relaxed, and kissed back.  After a few moments, Zuko pulled back. "I think we should announce tonight." Because if we wait I might get blown up again and then we won't for another two months.

Song nodded.  "All right."  And then she paused.  "How are these things announced, anyway?"

"I actually don't know," Zuko admitted after a pause. "I need to ask Mom or Uncle about that. I never really paid much attention when they tried to teach me protocol."

The young doctor slipped her hand in his.  "Maybe we should ask them together."

"All right," he agreed.

Song smiled up at him.  "Would you rather ask General Iroh, or Lady Ursa?"

He considered. "Depends. Who do you think we should tell first?"

"I don't know," the girl answered softly.

"Me, neither."

"Well, who's closer?"

"Dunno, depends where Mom is right now."

"Then let's start to look," replied Song.

"All right," he said. squeezing her hand lightly.

She squeezed back, carefully taking the box of pearls in her other arm, and led Zuko out of the library.  They found Ursa not long after, in her storeroom.

"Lady Ursa?" Song asked, slightly nervous.

She looked up. "Hello," she said, smiling.

The doctor glanced up at her fiancé, uncertain how to word this.

"We…um…well, we need to know how to…announce."

"Yes," Song agreed.

"…Announce what?" Judging by the look on the dowager princess's face, she knew exactly what, but was waiting for explicit confirmation.

"We got engaged," Zuko replied.

Song smiled happily, leaning into the Firelord.

Ursa smiled just as wide. "That's wonderful!"

"But neither of us really know how to announce it," the doctor said.

"Ah, right. Well, when were you planning on announcing?"

"Tonight, if at all possible," Zuko answered.

"We figured it was best to do it very soon," Song added.

Ursa nodded. "No reason to put it off." She then gave them a brief overview of the protocol involved.  Both Song and Zuko paid strict attention, one perhaps more so than the other.

"Thanks, Mom," Zuko said, when she was done.

"No problem."

Song snuck a kiss from her fiancé, then mused, "We ought to let the General know before the official announcement."

"Yeah, probably," he agreed.

"Oh, but before we go—"  Song turned back to Ursa and explained her worry about Yì Suì.

Ursa frowned. "I can't think of anything off the top of my head…"

"You'll let me know if you do?"

"Of course."

"Thank you," Song said, relieved.

"You're welcome," Ursa said with a small smile, and Zuko and Song made their way to the general's office.  Iroh was clearly delighted to hear their news, which relieved Song.  She knew the old man well by now, but there had been a small, doubting part of her that wondered if the fabled Dragon of the West would consider a peasant doctor from the Earth Kingdom good enough for his nephew.

"Congratulations," he said, grinning. "You're announcing tonight?"

Zuko nodded. "Didn't want to risk waiting."

"Best to do it now, before something urgent comes up," Song commented.

Iroh nodded, and gave his nephew a searching look. Zuko shrugged. "It'll be a surprise, I don't think we need to worry. But go ahead, better safe than sorry."

"Yes," agreed his fiancée, stealing another kiss from him.

Zuko was more than happy to kiss her back.

*          *          *

That evening, in a highly unusual occurrence, both Zuko and Song dined with the court.  Zuko being there was an unusual enough event, but for the foreign doctor to join him there?  Finally, after he felt the tension had gotten plenty high enough, Zuko rose from his seat to make his announcement.

For a moment, there was stunned silence.

Then a girl sitting near the back of the hall, the Lady Zhan, who was a mite obsessed with her Firelord, ran out. And then the dam broke.

Worried, Song looked up at Zuko, ignoring the chatter for the time being.  He squeezed her hand, trying to let her know not to worry.  It was a little late for that, but she managed a smile for him anyway — a smile that widened slightly when she overheard one of Zuko's guards muttering, "You'd think they'd remember that if it wasn't for her, he'd be dead."

"Not the kind of thing they remember. Besides, half of them think I'm unkillable," Zuko muttered back.

"Ingrates," was the answer.  "I know for a fact that a full third of them have either been treated by her, or had children treated by her."

"I know."

The guard fell silent after that, and Song shook her head.  "I was expecting this," she told Zuko.

"So was I. But I was hoping they'd be a little more mature," muttered the Firelord.

The chatty guard — Li Shang, Song remembered, that was his name — snorted.

"I know, I know, I shouldn't've," Zuko said, a little wryly.

"Never would have pegged you for an optimist, my lord," was the smart reply.

"True, it's new for me. I'm not sure I like it."

Song laughed.  "I like it."  She smiled up at Zuko.

He almost-smiled back at her. "All right then."

The fallout over the next several days was not pretty — the noble houses, particularly Lady Zhan's, were furious that Zuko had not chosen a bride from among them, and the Firelord spent most of his time dealing with it. As a result of this, he had almost no time to spend with his fiancée, and was once again going dangerously short on food and sleep.

Kouji did what he could to alleviate Zuko's lack of food, at least, catching the Firelord several times a day and talking him into eating at least a few bites of whatever he was carrying with him.

The fallout being mostly dealt with, they then had to turn to planning the wedding itself.

This, too, was an enormous task. It was the first truly magnificent event since the end of the war, to say nothing of Zuko's near-legendary status, and the fact that he was marrying a woman from the Earth Kingdom.

Nobody was truly surprised when Kouji, by now promoted to Zuko's personal assistant, wound up becoming involved with the plans, along with Song and Ty Lee, as the women still hoped for a double-wedding.  Zuko wasn't going to object — he tried to help out with the plans as often as possible, cutting back a few more hours of sleep to do so.

Haru tried to help once or twice, but found himself in over his head.  It didn't help that he wasn't looking forward to the reaction from Ty Lee's family once people got past Zuko's engagement.

The reaction, when it came, was… not quite as explosive as he'd feared, given her father's reaction to learning of their involvement in the first place. Haru was faced with cold disapproval from her older sisters, avid interest from her younger sisters, tightly-reined anger from her father, and very little reaction from her mother, who seemed to have entirely given up on her middle daughter becoming Respectable.

Much to the earthbender's relief, his parents arrived in the Fire Nation not long after, and both of them, at least, seemed to approve — both of his choice in bride, and his choice to remain there.  Ty Lee was very polite with his parents, nervous about resentment carried over from the war.

What little there was (on the part of Haru's mother) vanished very quickly when she saw how happy her son was with the little acrobat.  His father, Tyro, seemed very amused, and even commented in her hearing that it was a relief to know Haru would marry someone able to keep him in line.

Upon hearing that, the young noblewoman relaxed and threw herself even more eagerly into the plans, which were progressing nicely with aid from Kouji.

Finally, in the morning of the day when the seasons changed from spring to summer, Song and Zuko and Ty Lee and Haru were wed.

The ceremony itself was brief. The reception was endless.

Somehow, Haru and Ty Lee managed to sneak away after a mere two hours.  Song and Zuko were not so lucky.  After five hours, Qiang helpfully caused a distraction to enable the royal couple to flee. Song had even, after much argument, persuaded Zuko to go away for a couple days for a honeymoon.

She'd also managed to find all the paperwork he tried to sneak along and passed it to Ursa to replace in his study.

He didn't even notice it was gone.