Chapter Text
“You breathe in,” Uncle said, flat hands moving up with his chest as he breathed in deeply. “And then out.” As his hands came back down.
Zuko and Katara mimicked his movements.
Uncle was teaching them bending. He was a skilled firebender and had once studied with a Water Tribe to learn how to bend lightning, learning the ways that the water moved through you. In the couple weeks since they started, Zuko had started rebuilding his tolerance for fire and Katara had begun to find certain aspects of water easier to control now.
“Now,” Uncle began, moving into a stance he had tweaked. It was a firebending stance, and Zuko didn’t understand why Uncle was using firebending stances for a waterbender but he guessed there must be a good reason. It was Uncle. He always knew something everyone else didn’t. “You must feel the elements inside of you. Fire or water, they are there. You must feel them first, before you can ever control them.”
Katara and Zuko both nodded, eyes closing so as to concentrate on that feeling Uncle had described.
A fire within him. A fire he had not used in almost three quarter cycles now. A fire that still burned, ever so dimly, in his chest. He could feel it, a dying fire, just glowing hot coals without a like of flame. It was barely there but it was there.
Zuko opened his eyes, and Katara opened her own only a moment later.
“Now that you have found your element, try to now control it. Inside your body, not outside. Control the flames and the tides inside you.” Uncle explained, breathing in through his nose, his hands still moving with his every breath.
Control. He had to control the hot coals. How could he control something not out of control?
Zuko sucked in a deep breath, squeezing his eyes shut as he forced himself to concentrate on the coals. They were hot, enough to glow white. They were scattered, losing their heat, slowly dimming, almost imperceptible. But Zuko could feel it. He could feel the heat seeping out of them and he could feel the fire that coursed through his veins, the fire he could control, use to reheat these dimming coals. He poured every ounce of his focus into the task, calling to each and every spark, each and every hiss of flame, calling them to his abdomen where the coals cooled still.
Suddenly, he felt like he was on fire, burning from the inside. It died down before Zuko could even react and there, in the place of those damn coals was a warm fire, not a bright, burning heat that it once was but a fire like the ones in the huts. Something to keep warm, not something to destroy nations.
When he opened his eyes, his Uncle looked proud. Like he too could sense the newly burning flames inside of his nephew.
Training with Katara was good. She was skilled for her age, and for the lack of mentors. Even now, just starting her formal training, she was more talented and in control of her bending than most young firebenders. It was fascinating.
Zuko couldn’t imagine how hard it must be, learning from nothing, with nothing, with no one to guide.
He hoped it helped, training with him and Uncle.
Sokka had come with them to watch them train by the ice banks. It was—as it often was—just the three of them. And it was nice, nice in a way Zuko was finally getting used to, nice in a way he was recognizing he was allowed to have.
“You look like you’ve got an upset stomach, ‘Tara.” Sokka said as Katara’s face scrunched up on her third attempt at melting the ice that floated around in the water.
Katara frowned at him. “You look like an upset stomach, Sokka.”
“What does that even mean?”
“I don’t know.” Katara said, shrugging. She went back to her ice, face scrunched up again and—well, Zuko could see the upset stomach look now that Sokka had mentioned it.
Sokka laughed, loud and clear, in that way of his that made his eyes scrunch up and his teeth show.
It was nice, in the South Pole, with them.
That was until it began to snow black.
The raids were supposed to be over. They had what they wanted, Chief said. And yet, here they were, with their black snow and their fire and their destruction.
Katara and Sokka had panicked immediately, so alarmed they could both hardly breathe just at the sight of the stuff. Zuko knew the stories, he knew how they had lost their Anaana and how Katara had been there to witness it.
People were being ushered into their huts, children hiding behind their parents and a village in full panic. Zuko, Sokka and Katara, who always seemed to be too close to trouble, were right by the water the anchor dropped into as the ship came to a grinding halt.
Katara had fallen back in shock and was shaking so bad she couldn’t stand. Sokka was trying to lift her up, get her to her feet so they could run back to the safety of their father. Zuko could only stand in front of them, fingers in flames as he watched the men approach. Even with his tolerance for fire much higher now than it had been when he arrived here in such a similar ship, he was still much too scared of these men to get any closer without a better weapon.
“Lookee here,” One man sneered. “The prince of Caldera. Oh—sorry, ex-prince of Caldera.”
It was both horribly familiar and terribly foreign to hear his native language spoken by someone other than Uncle. Sokka was looking at him with a frown, not understanding the words being said.
“Leave us alone.” Zuko answered them in Calderan, taking a step back, closer to Sokka and Katara.
The second man laughed, and a third one lit his hand on fire. Zuko responded in kind, letting the flames dance on his skin, answering to the tingle in his nerves.
“You’ll be coming with us. If we get you to Caldera, we get the money that’s on your head.”
Zuko bared his teeth at the men, growling like the big snow white wolves that oftentimes roamed the ice. The raiders weren’t fazed. Zuko had expected that.
Behind him, Katara finally stood and Sokka had her behind him, keeping her away from the raiders in whatever way he could.
“Sokka, go back to the village.” Zuko said, slipping back into Oqaatsit nilleq both for Sokka’s understanding and also to keep the raiders in the dark. He was hoping the men did not speak the language of the cold like he did. Sokka began to nod, then shook his head vigorously.
“Not without you.”
The man with the fire in his hand stepped closer. Zuko nudged Sokka, internally begging him to just go.
Sokka didn’t go.
The raiders didn’t care who got caught in the crossfire.
“Come on, dear Prince of ours. Come home.” The first man said, starting to crowd around him, and in consequence around Sokka and Katara too. “Let’s get you on the ship. Your little friends can come too.” He said.
Zuko’s glare hardened. “Sokka, you need to go now before they trap you and ‘Tara.” He told him, still speaking in Oqaatsit nilleq, reveling in the confused looks the men shot each other as he spoke. Sokka just shook his head again.
“I’m not leaving you here with them.” He spat, looking at the men like they were the poison that had sickened the earth. He wasn’t too far off.
The second man tried to reach out, tried to grab Sokka. “Are you insulting us?” He asked. “Is this savage insulting us?” But before he could lay a single dirty hand on Sokka, Zuko pushed him back with the hand that was on fire, effectively burning through the man’s thick coat and pushing him back into the snow.
“Don’t touch them!” Zuko yelled in his mother tongue, both hands now in flames, trying his hardest to glare, even with one eye permanently squinting. The men didn’t look too scared. They just looked annoyed. Zuko hated it. He hated them with every ounce of fire in his body, hated them so much it burned through his veins.
“You don’t want to hang around these raw meat eaters, do you, Zuko? You want to come home, to Caldera. To your nation.” One of the men said, Zuko couldn’t tell which was which anymore. They all blended together in one big melting pot of hatred and intense anger.
“I don’t want to go back to a nation who would watch a man burn his son.” Zuko spat. “I know you want me dead. I know the easiest way is to bring me back there. I won’t go with you.”
It was then that the men finally seemed angry. Not annoyed, not slightly irritated. No, Zuko could feel the heat of anger radiating off of them, the snow melting at their feet. Even the man he had burned, now stood back up though staggering, was steaming, literally steaming, with his anger.
“Fine.” A raider said, tone flat, like his father’s was when he didn’t get what he wanted and had to get his hands dirty. “You won’t come with us? We’ll just have to take someone else.”
Zuko didn’t react in time. The raider reached forward and grabbed Sokka by the wolf tail and dragged him forward, knocking Zuko over and leaving Katara unprotected.
“Sokka!”
“Get off of me!” Sokka yelled, struggling in the man’s grasp.
“Shut up you runt!” The raider shouted back. But Sokka didn’t understand his words, so he didn’t shut up. He yelled and kicked and headbutted the man all while Zuko was getting back onto his feet.
Behind him, the tribesmen were finally showing up—why had it taken so damn long?
Hakoda and Bato, along with Uncle, Kiugak, Iñuksuk and Hanta.
“Let go of him!” Zuko shouted in Calderan, lighting his hands on fire again. They had been snuffed out by the snow when he fell. Zuko threw himself at the man, wrapping his hands around the raider’s beefy arms, burning him badly. He didn’t care. He just needed to get Sokka away from them.
“Agh! Get off!” The raider screamed, letting go of Sokka to instead reach for Zuko.
Of course. It had been a trap. The man knew Zuko would jump into danger to protect Sokka and Katara. Zuko had fallen for it, and now he would be sent back to Caldera to burn at his father’s hands again.
Big, meaty hands wrapped around his arms, and then the other raiders joined their partner to hold him down as he screamed. He kicked one of them, and was kicked back twice as hard, and Zuko could only think that Katara and Sokka shouldn’t need to see him fail.
He thrashed, too cold now, covered by hands and rope and snow, to bring out his only weapon.
He could hear Sokka yelling, yelling so loudly, yelling in a way it sounded more like a wail than a shout. He could hear Katara too. Crying, he thought, lest his ears deceive him. “Let go of him!” They begged in a language the raiders could not understand and would answer to even if they did. “Please let him go!” They cried and Zuko felt he might cry too.
“Sokka! Katara!” Chief Hakoda was near now, most likely too glad his children were alive to notice Zuko thrashing and fighting on the ground only two meters away.
“Ataata! Zuko! They have Zuko!” Sokka yelled.
“Nephew!” Uncle cried out.
Zuko kicked and tried to bring out his fire. His hands stayed wet and bare, but he landed a hit on one of his captors. He would have celebrated if not for the sudden bright light and the—
Fire.
The feeling of being burned inside and outside. The smell of his skin cooking under the glare of heat. The pain—the unbearable pain—that came with it all. It was like the Agni Kai all over again, though the burn did not touch his face this time. Instead, the fire burned through his anorak and left a searing mark on his chest.
“That’ll teach you to stop fighting.” The man who had burned him grumbled.
Zuko was in too much pain to move.
“Nephew!” Uncle cried again. Zuko couldn’t answer, too weak, vision too blurred, hearing out of wack, like the other side of his face had been burned, like he was blind and deaf, more so than he already was.
Fire.
More fire?
The raiders jumped back, only one stayed at Zuko’s side, glaring with his teeth bared in the direction the new fire had come from. Another bolt of white hot flames in their direction, sailing over Zuko and the raider to land at the feet of the other two who had backed off.
Zuko couldn’t remember much after that, too much pain clouding his mind, too weak to do anything except breathe. All he remembered was fire. Fire and people calling his name. He remembered the binds being cut loose and more yelling of his name. He was too weak to react to them, too weak to do anything but begin to cry. He didn’t know who had their arms wrapped around him, but they were suspiciously small, and he swore there were more than a single pair of arms. He didn’t know who it was, by his side, but he sobbed and sobbed, pain and fear finally taking hold as he cried into the shoulder of the closest person, who whispered in his ear. He didn’t know which language it was, whether it was his uncle speaking to him in reassuring Calderan or Sokka and Katara who spoke in fearful Oqaatsit nilleq. All he knew was that he cried and cried and cried until he passed out where he sat in the snow, arms wrapped around him and a new burn to be treated.