Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Aang was born with five soulmarks.

Rolling waves on his left wrist, a silhouette of a wolfs head on the right. A pair of wings sitting between his shoulder blades. The arrow of the airbender tattoos already on top of his right foot. A dragon circling his left ankle, head resting right in front of its own tail.

The airbender mark presumably represented himself, but that still left four. Four soulmates, somewhere out there for him. Aang couldn’t wait to meet them.

The monks often wondered about them, especially after it was concluded that Aang was the avatar of the generation. Waves could mean a water bender, the dragon could mean fire, maybe if they twisted and stretched the meanings a wolf could be earth. A soulmate for each of the elements, how amazing, how marvelous! Aang would surely bring a new kind of unity to the world.

Aang had liked that thought, of having friends from everywhere.

He couldn’t wait to meet them.

oOo

Sokka was born with an insane amount of soulmarks.

“What can I say,” Sokka would say, grinning, “They universe just can’t get enough of me! I’m destined for greatness!”

Soulmarks were rare and always seemed to follow those who had a destiny waiting for them. The people scrawled on his wrists and ankles and back would have an impact on his life, but there wasn’t even a guarantee they’d stick around. There were tales of soulmates who got married, and others who were friends, and others who had to part ways with each other for one reason or another. Sokka puffed out his chest when confronted by these things and declare he’d keep his soulmates safe and close!

After their mom was taken away, he’d hold Katara close and repeat that. He’d keep her close and he’d keep her safe and he prayed that the dragon on his ankle wasn’t a fire bender. The only person, the only soulmate, he couldn’t make the promise to.

oOo

Katara was born with four soulmates waiting for her.

She loved to hear the myths about soulmates. People who had supposedly known each other before being borns, who had drawn the markings on each other as a promise they would be reunited, that they would find one another again. If that was true, she and Sokka had had no trouble finding each other. But that still left three others out there that she had made a promise to find.

They found Aang, trapped in the ice. He was small, but when he woke up he was radiating with energy that Katara couldn’t help but to enjoy. Sokka was wary of him, grumpy as he always was.

“Your necklace!” He’d said, and she reached up and gently touched her mother’s necklace, the pendant cool to the touch (everything was cold here).

“It was my moth-” She starts, but cuts herself off abruptly as Aang pulls back the sleeve to his left arm and shows her his wrist. It has the waves, the waves on the necklace, the waves on her wrist, the waves on her brothers wrist, and she can’t believe it. This young airbender from 100 years ago… was her soulmate?

Against all odds, despite being born so far apart, they’d still found each other again.

oOo

Toph knew that soulmates existed. She didn’t want to meet hers.

Her parents were so excited about the myriad of marks she sported. So many people that could take care of her, the blind daughter that may as well be made of glass. And they would, she knew they would coddle her and keep her inside and worry over every step she took like she didn’t already have the layout of the house memorized, like every step didn’t give her a perfect read of her surroundings.

She knew where the markings were, what they were supposed to be, but she’d never seen them. Even with her ability to see through vibrations, the marks aren’t upraised or indented or anything. She may as well be staring at a piece of paper.

She met the avatar and his friends and they traveled - terrifyingly by flying though she’d never admit it - and it was several days later that Katar confronted her.

“... do you want to talk about?” Katara had asked. Toph didn’t bother to turn towards her.

“Talk about what?”

“The soulmarks.”

Toph had stilled, hadn’t breathed.

“The what? ”

It made sense, though, in a way she’d never considered. Of course her soulmates would be people who respected her for her bending and didn’t think she was only her blindness.

oOo

Zuko was supposed to carry a nation on his shoulders.

He was left with only four people.

He’d always hated the markings, how they garnered him attention from annoying people who puzzled over them but never the attention that his father instead gave to his sister. He hadn’t hated them when his mom was around, when she’d lay littles kisses on them ‘for your soulmates’ and he’d smile and admit he was excited to know who they were, what they were like. That excitement faded with time, was burned off with the skin around his eye.

Iroh said he was destined for greatness, that some of the best teas consisted of more than one kind of plant, and Zuko would just stare out of the sea determined to find the avatar, his only hope.

He meet the boy, he sees the blue arrow tattoos, and he knows with a sick kind of dread that there is his soulmate. Well, there had been records of enemies being soulmates before, destined to forever clash until one has died.

He can’t help but to wonder, though, if the airbender sports the other marks as well.

The waterbender with the glaring blue eyes has a necklace with the waves on it that he knows so well and he hates her for it, hates himself for having those same waves on his wrist, hates that she gets to be with her soulmates - maybe soulmates maybe the other water tribe boy was another one.

Hates that he can’t be with them too.

Chapter Text

At first, after Zuko has officially joined the avatar and his friends, has officially become the kid’s firebending teacher, had found out that that all four of them were soulmates through carefully observing the spots he knew the marks would be (a suspicion that had sat like a burning coal in the pit of his stomach for months, that he hadn’t allowed himself to acknowledge until now), he swore to himself that he’d never tell them he finished off the set. Maybe he'd get lucky and they'd think number five had died or something.

Zuko certainly felt a bit dead sometimes.

He keeps the bandages that he always wears well and secure around his wrists and ankles and never exposes much of his back, never enough to let the wings be shown. It’s not all that hard. They all keep a distance from him as if he’s about to start lobbing fireballs at any second, a fair caution he can't fault them for. Even those who pretend not to be scared still flinch - not in fear, more out of habit, out of instinct - if he moves too fast or in a way they deem to be too intimidating. Sokka makes a snarky comment about the bandages once and Zuko says a throw-away thing about a burn or something which prompts another snarky comment out of Sokka. Nobody mentions it again. No one has reason to.

It works for a little while - emphasis on little.

His bending isn’t working, so he and Aang go on a life changing journey and discover that dragons really are alive. He’s too in awe by their majesty to even think about the one that looks so much like the red dragon wrapped around his ankle. He and Aang dance and they learn how to firebend in this new way, a way he hadn’t been taught but suspects if he’d listened to Iroh enough, had been more patient, he would have.

He’ll still have to teach Aang the stances and the movements and the techniques, of course, so he’s not useless. He’s going over a bare-bones idea of how to go about teaching (it felt like it’d been so long since he’d learned to firebend, since he’d had to go through those basics daily, struggling to be on par with Azula) when Aang makes a sound like he’s been strangled. He’s not, of course, and Zuko tries to reign in his heart that had picked up. If the avatar died on his watch, then it would be the end of him too. Katara or Sokka or Toph or all of them would see to that.

“We have to go back!” Aang says, turning Appa around almost too quickly, and he says it like it the most important thing in the world, like the comet could be here right now but getting back to the ancient fire benders and dragons took precedence over the entire world.

“Why?” Zuko asks, trying to stay in this saddle in the middle of the air that he isn’t accustomed to.

“Dragons!” Aang nearly shouts, and his huge eyes were glittering with excitement.

“Yeah, there were two.” Zuko agrees.

“No, Zuko,” Aang drops Appa’s reigns and turns around, pulling off his boot and sock and showing off the oh-so familiar dragon that is wrapped around his ankle, “My soulmates has to be one of them!” Aang insists, putting his sock and boot back on.

It’s freezing up here, but Zuko feels a cold sweat coming on.

“D-, uh, don’t you think the others are enough soulmates?” Zuko asks. Aang had started to turn back to grab the reigns again, but upon Zuko’s question remains facing the firebender. His head is cocked slightly to the side, face twisted into confusion.

“They’re my soulmate, of course I still want them.” And there’s another question there, just under the surface that Aang doesn’t voice but is written plain as day across his features. Had Zuko really paid so much attention to know about Aang soulmates? Why did he even care?

“It’s a dragon, it could be anyone. What makes you think it’s one of the Sun Warriors? Dragons are kind of the symbol for firebenders in general.” Zuko points out.

“But there were actual dragons there! And I didn’t even ask any of them or anything!”

“Aang, he’s not going to be there.” Zuko says with a sigh. There’s no point in keeping up this charade anymore, is there?

“Or she or they!” Aang corrects, starting to shift back to facing forward again. Zuko is already unwrapping the bandages around his left wrist.

“No, Aang,” Zuko keeps the bandage gripped in his left hand and pulls Aang back around with his right, “You won’t find him there.”

The skin of Zuko’s wrist is pale pale pale, constantly covered as it has been. The circle with the spiraling waves is unchanged, the same shade of blue it has been his entire life, contrasting starkly against his skin. There’s legends that say if you try to cut off a soulmark, it will return somewhere else on your body. It will reappear over scars and burns. The fate of it is inescapable.

Aang grabs Zuko’s wrist, a thumb passing over the soulmark as if it will come off with just a gentle rub, making sure that what he’s seeing is real.

Aang has been accepting of Zuko, but surely even the airbender must have his limits. Zuko braces himself for rejection, for hate and anger. Not just over daring to call himself the avatar’s soulmate, but over having hidden it for so long, for lying by omission and just sitting back while the rest of them must have wondered about it, fretted over it, question who is could be, whether it was somebody that Aang would've met when he was a kid but had died in the hundred years that had passed.

Instead, Aang pounces forward, arms wrapping around Zuko. The firebender flinches badly, hands shifting just barely into a defensive position. There’s laughter in his ears and when Aang pulls away he looks overjoyed. It leaves Zuko feeling uneasy.

“Don’t tell the others.” Is the next thing out of Zuko’s mouth, and Aang’s joy recedes a bit. “I… I want to break it to them myself. Katara would kill me if she knew.”

“She’s your soulmate, she won’t kill you.” Aang laughs, but then scratches the back of his neck, looking off at some clouds to his right. “Though, maybe you should break it to her gently.”

“I will.” Zuko promises. “Just… give me time.”

“Of course I will,” Aang grins, “Soulmate.”

Chapter Text

When Sokka sneaks off to go find his dad, Zuko can tell it’s going to be quite a trip.

And he goes with him.

It’s maybe just a little bit stupid, but he’s had dumber ideas - such as chasing the Avatar for years.

They fly in the war balloon and conversation is weird and stilted. He and Zuko had never really spent time just two on two. Sokka did seem to like to hang out at the edges when Zuko was teaching Aang, but other than that the water tribe warrior kept his distance.

They get there and slip into the guard’s quarters, filching each a set of clothes. Sokka turns away from him as he gets dressed but Zuko doesn’t dare. The wing soulmark feels heavy on his back, like a beacon, and he’s irrationally afraid of Sokka seeing it. Maybe when this is over, he’ll get around to telling Sokka, but it seems wrong to jump it on him right now, when Sokka is worried about honor and his father. With Sokka’s back towards him, though, as they both get changed, Zuko has the chance to see the wing soulmark himself.

He knew what it was, had twisted and turned in front of mirrors when he was younger, had convinced his mom to draw it for him at one point. It was another matter to see the wings, small but elegant looking, mirroring each other across the spin’s ridge on Sokka’s back.

Zuko doesn’t stare long. They’re here on a mission and he feels like a creeper doing it. Still, the soulmark feels almost burned behind his eyelids. Who is that one? Aang is surely the airbender tattoo on his right foot, Katara is surely the waves, and Zuko himself is the dragon. That leaves the wolf and the wings. Neither stick out particularly as Toph or Sokka. Maybe they will with time.

After Zuko gets caught, he’s stripped of the guard uniforms and thrown the prison outfits. The bandages, too, were unwrapped from his wrists and tossed away. Without them, Zuko feels exposed, hands wrapping around his wrists to try and hide the markings. A guard comments about them, not to Zuko but to a fellow guard about how if he had tattoos, they’d be something much cooler.

Everything happens so fast after that. Zuko only sees Sokka a couple more times, but apparently Sokka doesn’t see the marks as he makes no comment on them.

Mai sees them. She's seen them before, of course, but she sees them here too. Her eyes rove over them in a glare and Zuko resists trying to hide them away. Marks that meant he couldn’t be only hers, that fate had decided for him that there were four other people out there that were important to him, that he was only one piece of a five-piece puzzle.

They escape, they get on the incredibly impressive war balloon that his sister had come in, and they start to head back to the air bender ruins. Once everything is going, the four others sit down in the galley while Zuko prepares the food. The stove requires a firebender to light, and the food is familiar to him. He knows how to prepare it.

He serves the food and then makes a second trip around the table - a elegant table, odd for a war balloon but fitting for his sister - with cups of tea. After the quick meal he’ll have to return to keeping the balloon on course, but a moment away hopefully won’t hurt. He sets down the second to last cup in front of Hakoda, the remaining cup on the tray being his own

Hakoda’s hand reaches out and grabs Zuko’s wrist. Zuko flinches, the final cup of tea wobbling precariously for a moment. He doesn’t try and pull away. He wonders what Hakoda wants that he didn’t simply voice out loud to grab Zuko's attention.

Then he pieces it together as Hakoda - he has rough rough calloused hand, calloused in a different way than fire bender hands - with considerable more gentleness than the original strike, turns Zuko’s wrist so that the wolf head silhouette is easier to see.

“Huh.” Hakoda says. Zuko dares to look at the man’s face. There isn’t anger there, but something closer to amusement, “Sokka, you left out the part that the Fire Prince was your soulmate.”

“Ha, yeah right.” Sokka says first. Then, “Wait, what?”

Suki and Sokka both clamber over the table, plates pushed aside and cups close to capsizing. Chit Sang mumbles faintly ‘fire prince?’ but it’s ignored as Sokka grabs Zuko’s wrist and twists it at an angle to see it. Both he and Suki don’t look angry or upset either, but surprised and curious. Sokka does like Aang did, a thumb going over the dark gray image. The action is a bit more firm than Aang’s, though, and goes back and forth several times. But the mark of course doesn’t smear or come off.

“You know I was always worried it was a firebender.” Sokka finally says after a long moment. He hasn’t let go of Zuko’s wrist. Suki has taken the final tea cup out of Zuko’s hand and placed it on the table so she can examine the other wrist. 

“Sorry.” The word is out before Zuko can stop it, and it seems to surprise the others enough that he can snatch his hands away, holding them closer to himself.

“I’d heard rumors about the scar-” Chit Sang mumbles, just barely loud enough for Zuko to hear. It doesn’t matter. They can talk about his heritage later.

“He didn’t tell you?” Hakoda asks and Sokka shakes his head, finally returning to his seat, arms crossed.

“Nope! He usually wear bandages around his wrists.” Sokka sounds like he’s trying to be grumpy about it, but there’s this kind of smile that won’t stop tugging about the corners of his mouth.

Bandages. He needs to make sure there were some here, or find another way to cover up the marks before they get back.

“I didn’t want you guys to know.” Zuko admits. “I thought maybe you’d, I don’t know, reject me or something.”

“Maybe a week ago, yeah. Are you going to tell the others?” Sokka asks, still taking this remarkably well.

“Eventually.” Zuko doesn’t meet his eyes, fidgeting with his wrists. Now that he’s once again been made aware of his lack of something around his wrists, he desperately wants the covered, so used to it, so surprised that he’d forgotten. “I just… need time. Aang knows already, but… Katara…”

Sokka nods in understanding, then shakes his head with a chuckle.

“Man, I do not pity you. I can’t decide whether she’ll be excited about it or furious.”

Chapter Text

It spills out of Zuko’s mouth like a tsunami, a huge and powerful thing that he couldn’t stop no matter how hard he tried. He had been building up to this moment, this moment after boarding the ship, finally revealing to Katara that he was the dragon that was eternally on her ankle. But the captain they were looking for was retired, their quest wasn’t over. But the words had sat there on his tongue for too long and poured out the next time he opened his mouth. The apology, the assurance, the whatever it had been he was going to say next, was lost to the truth.

“I’ve seen your necklace before.” Is how he starts it. She stiffens, grip on Appa’s reigns tightening.

“From when you stole it?” She says, cold and hot at the same time. Zuko remembers what he saw her do to the captain just a few moments ago, how the man’s limbs had bent and twisted to the ground without his consent, something cold and fearful settling into Zuko’s stomach as he’d watched, and he’s almost surprised that she hasn’t done that to him throughout this whole trip.

“No,” Comes next. He has control of his tongue again, but if he’s gone this far he may as well come clean. “I’ve seen it my whole life.”

He can see the gears working in her head as she slowly turns to face him, face making it clear that if he’s lying - maybe even if he isn’t - she’s going to kill him. He’s already got the bandages off of his wrists, both of them, and all it takes is a small wave of one hand to set the fabric aflame as they fall behind them.

He doesn’t see her look at his wrists, but he feels the pain in his cheek that registers a second too later. She’s slapped him, and it stings. Not nearly as much as burning his face had, the blinding pain that had made the world go white and red and his own screaming being the only thing he could hear. And yet it feels so much worse in another way.

He can still see, and he sees how betrayed and furious Katara looks, eyes blue flames like his sister has. Fury like his sister has. Thinking he is complete waste of space like his sister does. It feels like his sister is there, next to him, laughing and laughing and laughing like Katara slapping Zuko is the best joke in the world.

“Your soulmates are so lucky they don’t know you.” She’d once said and now it sits at the forefront of his head, winding around and around his thoughts. They were lucky before they knew him, before he was a part of their group. He should’ve stayed away.

“We’re dealing with this later.” Katara growls and turns back around so fast that Zuko gets whiplash.

Zuko mentally goes over what he owns. Half of it is sitting the saddle right now. He should be able to get out of her hair in maybe five minutes after they return to camp.

He doesn’t know what he’ll do next.

They confront the man that killed Katara’s mother. She almost kills him, and the display of her waterbending ability is awe-inspiring as well as terrifying. He imagines himself in retired man’s spot, begging for his life with daggers of ice bearing down on him. But wouldn’t it just be what he deserved?

Katara stops before they get back on Appa. She turns to him, and all Zuko can think is ‘This is it, this is when she abandons you’.

“I think I get it.”

“What?”

The words don’t process, refuse to process. The rain is still coming down in sheets. Katara bends it so that she’s sheltered, but Zuko is completely soaked and makes no effort to get any drier.

“I’m not happy with it, I’m still not totally okay with you… but I think I get it.” Katara says almost quietly. Her hand is rubbing a circle into the waves on her wrist and Zuko consciously stops himself from mimicking the action.

“Wh-” Zuko starts again, but stops because saying ‘what’ again seems stupid and he doesn’t want her any more angry at her than she already is. Still, it’s enough to get Katara to elaborate.

“I always grew up with Sokka. Soulmates were always just a part of my life. Meeting Aang was so… amazing, finally meeting a new one. Even though Toph got on my nerves when we first met, it was still exciting to mark another off the list. And every time I look at you now, I’m thinking about our first meeting. And there’s nothing good about it.” She says with a sigh, looking like the anger has momentarily been taken out of her sails. She looks off into the distance, like she can see their first meeting playing out again.

“I’m sorry.” Zuko says, not quite sure how much he means it.

“But… you were alone. You didn’t have anybody, did you? Maybe having soulmates terrifies you. Maybe you keep thinking of that first meeting too, and you knew that I’d be angry.” She looks back at him, emotions on her face hard to parse through. “You should’ve told me. But… now I know. I don’t have to wonder anymore.”

Zuko doesn’t say anything. She’s still angry at him. But maybe with time, it’ll be okay. He’s waited his whole life for his soulmates, he can wait a little longer for them to accept him.

Chapter Text

“We’re soulmates.”

Zuko says it expecting an outburst, for Toph to be fuming like Katara, or maybe excited like Aang had been. Instead, her reaction was maybe closer to what Sokka had been like. Toph snorted and shrugged, a quick pump up and down of her shoulders. Every move Toph makes screams earthbender, and Zuko is almost surprised when the earth doesn’t move in turn with the shrug.

“Figured.” Toph says.

They’re both a little ways from the beach house. It was the only time Zuko could manage to find away, when he’d realized that he’d never told Toph and Toph can’t see that he’s not wearing bandages anymore, that the marks are there for anyone to see if they can see and Toph can’t see and Zuko is so stupid to have taken this long to tell her. She seems completely unconcerned with this revelation.

“... you figured?” Zuko says once his shock over her lack of reactions wears off and he can kind words again. Toph shrugs once more, not facing Zuko as she sits down on the sand. Zuko sits down next to her.

“I’ve got four of em, and dragons are pretty clearly firebenders. It’s kind of obvious.” She smirks, and the surprise has had enough time to settle in that Zuko actually gives a small huff of laughter, smiling slightly. It is kind of obvious.

“Yours isn’t.” He says. “Aang’s and Katara’s are really obvious, but your’s and Sokka’s are weird.”

“A real shame they’re not names.” Toph doesn’t sound like she finds it a shame at all. She sounds like she hardly cares. “No confusion, clean and simple.”

“I can’t decide whether that would’ve been better or worse.” Zuko tries to imagine it, names in place of the marks that have always always been there. He tries to remember when he first learned their names, how earth shattering an event it would’ve been. He can’t imagine it. “You’re the wings though, right?”

“I guess. Terrible mark for an earthbender. I really must’ve had a sense of humor, huh?” Toph can’t see his expressions, but apparently the confusion is rolling off of him just that strongly that she snorts and shakes her head. “What, never heard that one? Katara loves to talk about how we all knew each other when we were spirits, before we were born or whatever.” Toph sticks her tongue out. Zuko furrows his brow.

“It… sounds a bit familiar? I never really looked into all of those theories about what soulmarks were or why people had them.” Zuko says, but it tastes bitter on his tongue as he realizes the lie in it. He had, once upon a time, years ago when he was young and wide-eyed and excited and curious over the prospects of soulmates.

“Me neither. Never really wanted to meet them.” Toph lies down, hands beneath her head and half-lidded eyes directed at the sky she couldn’t see.

“I know I’m not what you probably expected-” Zuko’s insides squirmed. Of course if she had put together her soulmate was a firebender, she would loathe them, hate them, never want to see them.

“Damn right you ain’t.” Toph cut into what he was saying, grinning, “You’re way better!”

“B… better?” Zuko can hardly believe the word that had come out of her mouth.

“Yeah! You’ve fought me, burned my feet, been a royal pain in all of our butts, and that makes you way better than what my parents said you’d be.” Toph’s nose turns up, crinkling in distaste. “They always went on and on about how my soulmates would be able to support me, that my blindness would make life so hard that I clearly needed four people to help me. Which is kind of bullshit. If anything, all four of you need me.” She grins again, and Zuko let out an amused huff of air.

“I… my mom really liked my marks.” He says, and when he blinks he can still see her smiling face as she traced the markings, making up stories for the people he would surely one day meet. “My dad and Azusa, though… most of the fire nation believe in the one soul thing.”

“Mm.” Toph makes an understanding noise, nodding her head a bit. “So, what? They think you’re one fifth of a person?”

“Something like that.” Zuko says with a huff. Not something like that, totally and completely that. Words tossed around about how he was clearly not as good as his sister because he was only one fifth of himself, one small piece of a soul, had followed him his entire childhood, whispered behind his back or mocked right in front of him.

There’s a silence between them, not totally comfortable but not stiff and awkward. It’s like they’re both letting the new information about the others childhood sink in. They had both been viewed as less, as needing their soulmates to be whole. He felt whole, with them here, he didn’t regret finding them, meeting them, joining them. But the fear of rejection he’d carried for years coupled with the ingrained panic that he was nothing without them, useless and unable to meet expectations.

They didn’t say anything to each other for a long time, sitting and relaxing, and despite the end of the world approaching, brought about by his own father’s hands, Zuko found himself, in this small handful of time, content.