Chapter Text
It rained the day his mother disappeared. It’s rare for it to rain in the Fire Nation at all, but on that day, it poured. Perhaps that’s why Zuko remembers it in such detail. The rain confined everyone to the inside of the palace for hours, and his grandfather’s funeral and his father’s coronation had to be rescheduled to the following day. The mood in the palace was solemn. Even Azula seemed unusually glum. Their father didn’t allow any visitors that day, not even Mai or Ty Lee. This left them to their own devices as the rest of the palace was in quiet chaos.
Zuko was meant to stay inside, his father demanded it. He even instructed Zuko’s personal guard to keep a closer eye on him to make sure he didn’t leave the palace. But Zuko was always good at sneaking around, and he slipped out through the window in the middle of the day, when the guard thought he was taking a nap.
The rain soaked him to the bone in seconds. He always hated the rain. It was almost impossible to firebend in it, especially in a downpour of this magnitude. But he was determined to find his mother, and he knew she wasn’t in the palace. If he had to walk all the way to the Earth Kingdom to find her, he would.
First he went to the turtleduck pond. It was deserted. Even the turtleducks themselves were nowhere in sight, likely hiding from the rain. He searched the garden, ran through the courtyard, peeked into the window of her room. She was nowhere.
When his mother proved to be nowhere on the palace grounds, he walked down the hill behind the palace, through the gates, and into the city. People gave him strange looks as he passed, some with recognition, some with confusion, some with envy at his clearly expensive attire. He made it all the way to the street vendors before the guards found him, and dragged him screaming back to the palace.
“What were you doing out there to begin with?” Azula asked him that night, after their father had sent him to his room without dinner.
“I…”
“What was it, Zuzu?”
“I was looking for Mom.” He looked down at his feet as he said it, refusing to meet her gaze.
Azula scoffs. “That’s stupid,” she said, though her voice broke just a bit when she spoke. “Mom’s not here. I told you, nobody knows where she is. What makes you think you’d be able to find her?”
“I don’t know,” Zuko said. “I just thought… maybe I could.”
It wasn’t the last time Zuko tried to look for his mother. Over the next few months, he tried again and again. Eventually, after a particularly frightening conversation with his father, Zuko stopped. He tried to forget about his mother. She was gone and was never coming back. But he still kept returning to the turtleduck pond, every day, as though she would be sitting there waiting for him. He’d bring out crumbs and seeds and throw them to the turtleducks, pat them gently on their heads when they waddled up beside him. It was the only thing he had to remember his mother by after she left, the closest thing to being with her again.
When he was banished, even that was taken away. Like it had been stolen from him.