Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

There had never been a child born to the Fire Nation’s Imperial line without the gift of fire. The Fire Sages blamed Ursa for Zuko’s apparent lack of bending. ‘The boy just didn’t have enough fire in his blood.’ But Zuko knew they were wrong. Fire courses through his veins, brighter and stronger than anything the Sages could ever imagine. It strains inside of him, waiting for him let it out.

But Zuko doesn’t know how.

He does the exercises every day, breathes in and out like his life depends on it. And though it pains him to do so, he spends countless hours sitting to the side of Azula’s fire bending practice, two years his younger and already a prodigy, committing the sets to memory so he can practice them alone in his room. He does them over and over again until they’d be completely perfect if only he could create the fire that fuels the movements. If only he wasn’t so useless.

‘Be angry, Prince Zuko,’ the Sages say. ‘Fuel your fire with rage.’

Zuko tried so, so hard to be angry. He wrapped himself up in a cloak of rage so thick that would surely allow him to finally, finally, firebend.

‘Nephew,’ his uncle had asked, ‘what is it that has made so angry?’

‘You wouldn’t understand,’ Zuko had snarled. Uncle Iroh, Dragon of the West, legendary firebender. ‘No one can.’ He’d pulled his cloak tighter around his shoulders and made to leave when his uncle had grabbed his wrist.

‘There is no shame in not being a bender. I have known many a man born without the gift of fire. Some of them the greatest men I know.’

‘Were they princes of the Fire Nation? Were they the blessed of Agni himself, born to a line that is centred around his sacred gift? Born to a line that doesn’t tolerate those without fire at their command?’ Zuko spat. ‘You may find no shame in my weakness, but I do. And so does Father.’

Iroh had let him run away after that.

∞

The servant had come a few months later; ‘Prince Zuko. Your father requests your presence at nine hours tomorrow.’

He had expected at least tears when the day came. Instead, it was a quiet calm that overtook him. Ten years old and still not a firebender? Zuko had known that his end would be coming soon. It wasn’t just rage that had fueled him in his futile attempts to firebend, it had been fear. The constant fear looming constantly at his shoulder, (could be tomorrow) the incessant voice refusing to leave him alone, (could be next week) But now he knew, (tomorrow, tomorrow was the day) the fear and worry was gone. He had his date, he had a time for Agni’s sake. Tomorrow at nine Ozai would finally check Zuko’s box off his To Do list.

‘In the throne room?’ Says Zuko quietly.

‘No Prince, the Lord’s own quarters.’

So it was to be done in private. Zuko wasn’t sure how he felt about that, but he guessed it was for the best. He wouldn’t want anyone to think badly of his Father for doing away with him.

‘Thank you. You can go now.’ The servant scurried off, leaving Zuko to his thoughts. Would it be worth writing letters to the people he leaves behind? Father would surely intercept them before they reached their intended recipients. But still, it might be something to do.

Zuko pushed himself up off the ground – he could stop meditating now. He’d tried that for ten years, twelve hours more would do nothing. Retrieving writing materials from the desk Zuko places them on the desk.

He writes a letter for his Uncle Iroh and then, blushing, writes one for Mai, but then he stops. Because he hasn’t got anyone else to write to. Except –

Zuko writes one for his mother. The same woman who abandoned him in the middle of the night, he writes pages upon pages to, all the while knowing she’ll never see them. Knowing he’ll never see her again.

When he’s finished he places all the letters – neatly tied with the names written tidily next to the seal – on the floor by his bed. He packs up his things, but he’s careless with his movements – a stray hand flings out to knock the candle right onto where his letters have been so carefully placed.

When the candle falls it falls in slow motion and he knows it doesn’t really matter because he was never really going to send them, but still – the letters are going to go up in flames – and Zuko won’t be able to anything because he isn’t a fire bender.

He flings out a hand all the same, the same desperate hope that had dictated all his movements previous still hoping that he might suddenly be able to bend.

But this time something is different to all those times before. Because the candle pauses in mid-air, the flame winking out instantly as the same gust of air that has it suspended in the air snuffs out the fire.

Zuko’s eyes widen in alarm. Because he just bent. But that’s not really what Zuko is alarmed about, its more the fact that he just bent air. He was an airbender.

Prince Zuko, Crown Prince of the Fire Nation was airbender. The very same type of bender his family had worked for generations to hunt to extinction.

And he had just used airbending to, in a way, manipulate fire. Air was invisible… so no one would have to know that their Prince wasn’t actually controlling the fire, more, influencing it.

He could panic later – could curse the gods and life itself for giving him the bending he’d always wanted but twisting in such a way that – but for now he had to concentrate.

Zuko wasn’t going to die tomorrow. He would show his father that he could firebend, that he was a son to be proud of – only Zuko himself would ever know any different.

∞

Zuko lets his hand hover over his throat, where a tiny metal pendant contains a tiny whisper of flame. It had been his mother’s, one of the few things of her he had left, and he had ripped out the stone inside and was now using it as the centrepiece for his lie.

Keeping the flame burning inside it sapped constantly at Zuko’s energy, it was a like heartbeat constantly thundering in his ears. But if he was to ever lose concentration and let it go out at a moment when he needed his fire… in front of his Father… Zuko nudges it out of its cage and fans it out until it grows big in his hand.

If his father found out the truth of his fire Zuko was going to be the one snuffed out without a second thought. He would have to be so careful in the meeting, so so careful. One wrong move would have Zuko-

Fire streaks across the courtyard, scarring the grass at Zuko’s feet.

‘Sorry Zuzu! Didn’t see you there,’ Azula calls from across the courtyard. Zuko rolls his eyes.

‘You so did!’ He calls back. Azula laughs softly to herself and Zuko feels his own lips curving into a smile. He wants to be jealous of his sister (eight years old and a firebending prodigy) but he can’t help but be a little proud of his sister. He remembers the first time Azula had ever bent, he’d been six and the first words out of his mouth had been pure awe. (‘Azula, that’s awesome!’)  If everything went the way Zuko planned he wouldn’t have any reason to be jealous - he would be able to train with his sister and sit around the table and trade tips. Zuko missed the easy relationship he’d had with his sister before his life had tumbled down the constricting spiral of fire, fire, fire -

The sound of a bell echoes hauntingly throughout the courtyard. Zuko curses and staggers to his feet, realizing what time it is and already knowing he is going to be late.

Zuko jolts to his feet and runs to the door leading off from the courtyard and into the palace. He stumbles through the never-ending corridors of the palace (are they getting longer?) and barrels into his Father’s wing. Two guards stand either side of the door to his father’s quarters. Zuko pauses for a moment to readjust his hair before nodding to the guards who open the door to let him through.

He approaches flames that shield his father from view – even in his own quarters Father still insists on the wall of flames. Zuko can feel his hands shivering as he kneels down, nose to the floor. A stray hand brushes against the pendant around his neck. All the possible ways what he was about to do could go wrong raced through his mind in that single instant, he can feel himself shaking as he nudges the flame from the pendant and keeps it loosely flaming in his fist.

Fire Lord Ozai waits for a minute before giving Zuko the command to rise.

‘Come here son.’

Zuko hesitates as he realizes just what his father wants him to do.

‘I want to see you, my son. Come stand by my side.’

He nods his head; ‘As you wish, Father,’ and walks forward up the steps. Zuko pauses right in front of the flames and sucks in a breath. He holds out his hands – one fist still loosely clenched - and remembers what he’d practiced the night before. The flames part for him and Zuko hurries through. He encourages the flame in his hand to grow and holds it up to his face.

‘It is good to see you, Father,’ Zuko says as he bows low, adjusting his hand movements to appropriately accommodate for his flame. His Father’s eyebrows quirked up slightly as he stares into the flame cradled in his son’s hand, but smooth out into emotionless nonchalance a fraction of a second later.

‘Zuko,’ his Father acknowledges (his voice monotone, as if he hadn’t just seen his son firebend for the first time in his life). ‘I will inform Master Dezo of this… update. You’ll be expected at classes tomorrow.’

‘Yes, Father.’ Zuko could barely breathe. Him. At firebending practice. His own firebending practice. His Father may not find much interest in Zuko’s newfound ability, but any disappointment Zuko felt at his father’s reaction was still better than the feeling of being dead.

‘Leave me, Zuko,’ His Father waves him away and Zuko parts the flames again and hops through. He pauses at the door to bow once more to his Father and then exits out the door.

He nearly faints into the guard’s arms when he exits; still woozy with relief.

∞

Zuko has his own lessons now, but he still watches Azula’s training. Even though ‘accidental’ bursts of fire land closer to his feet with each passing day he can’t afford to slack off. Despite his best efforts, figuring out how to do his already memorized sets with his fake fire took agonizingly long, meaning he was still fourteen sets behind his younger sister. He watches as Azula goes through her movements again – suddenly perfect (the prodigy) – and sighs softly to himself. Fifteen sets behind.

A bell echoes throughout the courtyard and Zuko heaves himself to his feet and begins the trek to his own lesson. When his father had first set up lessons for Zuko, he’d assumed he’d do them in the same place as Azula, but his father had had somewhere else in mind.

Zuko emerges from the door leading off from the corridor and into the side courtyard. The expanse of grey stone is nearly identical to the one he had just been lounging in, except with one key difference. (no turtleduck pond?) Bordering the courtyard were three looming walls, shielding it from outside view with only one window looking down onto it from the palace walls.

Ozai didn’t want anyone to witness just how bad the Crown Prince was. No, only the Fire Lord himself would get privilege.

Zuko glances up at the singular window ans spots a familiar shadow lurking behind the glass. He pauses momentarily (should he lower himself to the ground or was that a bad idea seeing as the Fire Lord was behind glass and couldn’t really ever tell him to rise so maybe he’d just be stuck there forever and maybe that was exactly what Ozai wanted him to do or maybe Ozai didn’t want Zuko to know he was there so in that case maybe he should-) before bowing down low in the way that is reserved for superiors or elders. Ozai inclined his head slightly and Zuko breathed a sigh of relief and wiped the sweat quickly from his forehead before turning to his teacher.

‘Master Dezo,’ Zuko bowed again, this time nowhere as low as he’d just bowed for his father.

‘My Prince,’ Master Dezo dropped into the proper bow when facing those of royalty, lower than Zuko’s and held for a longer length of time.

The lesson is more subdued than usual, what with their Nation’s supreme ruler watching them like a hawk. Zuko falters embarrassingly several times, progressively getting worse after each stumble. His Father’s gaze bores holes in his back and Zuko is sweating profusely after only a few minutes. (and its not just from the heat)

‘Again.’ Master Dezo orders, his eyes flicking involuntarily to the window where the Fire Lord stands behind the glass.

Zuko drops into the starting stance, passes his hand over his pendant to draw out the fire, and clenches it in his hand. He punches his fist forward and punches air through his fist to send a plume of fire darting forward. The kick is the hard part – he’s had to create a tiny anklet for himself to hide a spark in and its tricky to build up quickly. He kicks his leg forward and sends a strong gust through the anklet. He begs it to grow and flicks his foot to send the air and the flames darting forward. Zuko’s tongue peeks out the side of his mouth as he concentrates on cutting off the end of the flame to keep it in the pendant so he could call on it later.

He’s late to the next move – swinging his leg through and jumping into a flying spin as he does it. His hands move frantically and he hopes Master Dezo only sees it as him trying to smooth his landing and not as an airbender trying to stop the opposing wind currents from snuffing out his flames.

Flames dart out from the wristlets he’s also created to help with these sort of moves – he turns quickly, punching an open palm out in every direction, sending a jet of fire streaming outwards each time. Azula had laughed when she had seen the new jewelry adorning Zuko’s limbs, but Zuko hadn’t cared. It was a sign that he was getting better, a sign of his increasing control over his element. It was a struggle for the first few days each time Zuko added another source of fire. It would feel as though he was being pulled in so many directions, like he was always working, always under pressure.

Zuko guesses that he probably still feels that way, even now, weeks after he had added the final wristlet, but he figures he had just gotten used to it. He’d gotten so good at controlling the fire he could sleep with his mother’s pendant still burning around his neck. The fire had nearly burnt him alive the first few times he’d tried it, but he’d finally gotten it.

Master Dezo pronounces the lesson finished after Zuko finishes the set. Zuko bows once to Master Dezo and then again to his Father – Zuko gulps as he spots the expression on his Father’s face –before walking slowly to the door. He stumbles into the empty corridor and leans back against the wall.

Sometimes maintaining the charade was just so hard. Zuko had seen the look on his Father’s face (pure, undisguised disgust), and knew he’d have to work even harder. Stay up even later, perfect his sets. Pretend he wasn’t scared or stressed or worried or just so so tired.

Airbending required calm. Serenity. Airbending needed Zuko to forget everything he’d ever been told about how to bend and perform the very opposite. Master Dezo would sometimes try to provoke him, try to help Zuko fuel his fire with rage and Zuko would just have to grit his teeth and do his best to ignore the insult. Calm, he would think to himself - his own little mantra, calm, calm, calm.

Zuko was more in control than ever, but why did it feel like he was one wrong move away from having everything fall apart? The realization that his was a charade that he would have to keep up for the rest of his life was only just beginning to dawn on him and Zuko felt sick just thinking about it. He was going to be a Fire Lord… without fire.

It was hard to stay calm when your entire world was cracking around you.

∞

Zuko was thirteen when he thought he’d finally got the hang of it. He’d reinforced his walls and tightened the defences. His world made sense.

He would get up each morning and meditate, the air around the candle’s flame helping it grow larger or smaller with each breath.

A servant would bring him breakfast to eat in his rooms and he’d then go downstairs to meet with Ty Lee. He’d spotted his sister’s friend tumbling and practicing chi blocking one time in the courtyard and had begged to be taught. Azula had scoffed when she’d found out what Zuko was doing instead of watching her lessons, but hadn’t gone and ratted them out to father, which Zuko appreciated. Truth was, Zuko had given up on trying to catch up to Azula. He was still working pretty consistently through the more advanced sets, but he knew that there was no way he’d be able to make blue fire with his airbending. So he’d moved on to different things.

He learnt to flip and tumble and chiblock, and then he taught himself to climb. Up the walls, on the roof, hanging to the ceiling by the tips of his fingertips. He’d taken one glance at some of their more advanced swordsmen in the guards practicing and had gone straight to his uncle to get him set up with Master Piandao to teach him how to use a sword. Well, swords. Zuko had gone a shop in the village on the way to Master Piandao’s and begged his uncle for the dual dao swords because they had looked cool. He’d spent a week with Master Piandao and when he returned he’d kept up the practice.

After he’d practiced with the swords in his room (he was working on using bending with them at the moment) he’d go down to his little side courtyard and practiced his firebending with Master Dezo. Zuko knew he was getting better with using his airbending. He hardly ever faltered with his movements anymore and was only a few sets away from being to call himself a Master. He wouldn’t need to, obviously, Prince Zuko was enough without adding a ‘Master’ to the mix, but it’d be such a great feeling knowing that he’d done it.

He was one set away when it happened.

‘You will learn respect … ’

When a single burst of flame sent his perfect world up in smoke.

‘… and suffering will be your teacher.’

Chapter Text

Zuko doesn’t stop to contemplate the climb as he starts to clamber up the mountainside. The art of scaling the steep mountainsides up to the Air Temples had become almost second nature to him. The Western Air Temple had been the hardest one to scale, probably as he’d been climbing it with a bandage wrapped around a still tender burn and the entire temple had been built upside down. But it had been easier going up the second time, especially after he’d found an airbending scroll detailing how to use bending to better scale mountainsides. There’d been numerous other mostly intact scrolls in the burnt library, but Zuko had already felt sick enough at the thought of even using one orthodox airbending technique, let alone several.

He’d left the scroll in the same place he’d found it – the sheer amount of bones littering the Temple had made the thought of doing more damage almost incomprehensible. Zuko knew deep down what Fire Lord Sozin had done had been the right thing, but looking around at all the bones had made his head hurt and his heart ache. His mind had betrayed him, daring to think about if he’d been born at a time before the war had started, would he have still had to hide his bending? Would he have become an Air Nomad? Zuko had choked at the ridiculousness of the thought. (Would he have been killed right alongside them? Of course he would’ve.)

He’d burnt the bones before leaving. Zuko had glanced at the piles of skeletons one too many times – too small to be adults – and had sent the crew away, sighing. Collecting the bones taken all day, but he’d done it. Because it just felt so wrong to leave their remains lying around on the ground. (Because it could’ve been him.) He knew that cremation was a Fire Nation thing, but he didn’t know any other way to appease the souls of the dead. When he’d finished he’d scattered the ashes to the wind and helped them along with a flick of his wrist. (He’d become so used to firebending that a jet of fire had streamed out as well, but Zuko thought that was ok – the ashes were already burnt, it wouldn’t matter if they were a tad toastier) He hoped that it was enough.

The sight of the skeletons had haunted him all the way to the Northern Temple and it had been a strange relief to know that any bones had been long since cleaned away by the new inhabitants. The realization that the people he saw flying around atop the turrets weren’t actually airbenders had also made emotions fly through him - not just the feeling of any hope that the Avatar may be hiding there being wrenched away, but the strange pang of sadness as he realized that he may really be the last airbender left. If they never found the Avatar, and if all of the Air Nomads had truly been murdered, then Zuko was completely alone. Zuko didn’t know how he felt about that. Did he even want to meet another airbender? If he couldn’t even tell his uncle the truth, could he really tell an enemy of the Fire Nation? They were probably all dead, so it probably wasn’t worth dwelling on.

The Eastern Air Temple had been similar to the Western – piles of bones littered the temple floors and scorch marks seared into various surfaces. He and the crew had spent three days scouring the temple top to bottom and then Zuko had spent a further two days disposing of the bones in a similar fashion to the way he had at the Western Air Temple.

Zuko pushes his hand into a crevice, securing him to the wall, before removing the other to shield his eyes as he looks up to the top of the cliff. A desperate hope flashes through him as he glances up at the intact turrets.

Maybe they’ll see one this time. He can’t really be the last one left. A whole nation wiped out? How could that even be possible…

Zuko hates that the Avatar (*cough cough* his honour) isn’t the first thing on his mind, but as he manipulates the air currents around him to propel himself up the wall, he can’t help but let his thoughts wander straight back to the thought of him truly being the last airbender. (would the avatar count as an airbender, or just ¼ of one?)

He doesn’t know why he’s obsessing over it either. Making his Father proud had been at the forefront of his mind for his entire life and now suddenly… it wasn’t?

Air currents whip around him as he heaves himself over the side of the cliff. He takes a few steps towards the temple to try and find someplace secure enough to use as an anchor point for the rope. A steady looking tree looks like a good option and he ties the end of the rope to it.

He spots the temple’s first set of bones at its base.

Zuko takes the other end of the rope back to the cliff edge and throws it down to the crew waiting at the bottom. Jee and some of the stronger crew members would climb up first to assist Zuko with hauling up his Uncle and then the rest would follow. They’d left Crewman Teruko on board to look after the ship, not that it looked like anyone was around to do it any harm.

His crew lined up before him when they had all managed to get themselves to the top and awaited his order. They were the same as they’d been when he’d first arrived at the Western Air Temple;

“Search this place from top to bottom.”

∞

On Day One Zuko found the library. It was severely damaged and there were no airbenders hiding in the shadows, but he still managed to spend half the day in there – his gaze wandering over the titles of the scrolls that had somehow avoided the Fire Nation’s wrath. Some of the airbending scrolls caught his eye, but he had been more intrigued by the scrolls detailing subjects such as earthbending and the local flora and fauna. This temple had by far the biggest (or least burnt) library.

Day Two yielded the same amount of airbenders, but he had managed to get into some of the tunnels underneath the Temple. The marks scarring the stone corridors told Zuko that the Fire Nation had found them too, but he was weirdly pleased to discover a cache of airbender artifacts that had gone unnoticed by the invaders. He made a mental note to remember to sneak some back to the ship after he’d finished up at the temple (purely for Avatar hunting use).

On Day Three he finally found the chamber that was only accessible to airbenders which had been at every Temple so far. At the previous temples he’d managed to clamber around the building and find a way to look in (at the Northern Temple the mechanist had just let him in) to check that there was no secret airbender society existing inside. It took him just over half the day to find a way into this one.

Zuko clambers back to the spot of weakness he had found on the roof, now equipped with a hammer from Engineer Hanako’s toolkit. He uses one hand to steady himself and the other he raises high above him – the hammer clutched in his fist – and swings in down hard against the tile. Cracks ripple out from the point of contact, but the roof holds firm. Zuko swings again – the cracks ripple out further – and again – he has to adjust his position because the cracks are sneaking out in his direction – and once more –

The roof finally gives way with a final blow from Zuko’s hammer and a chunk of roof falls through. Zuko places the hammer beside him before leaning forward eagerly to look through the gap.

He nearly throws up at the sight.

Bones.

So  many  bones.

Most are swept to the side of the room and Zuko can’t help but notice the old fashioned Fire Nation helmets littered amongst them. The Fire Nation must’ve somehow breached the room, killing any airbenders within.

In the centre of the room was a single skeleton draped in the tattered remains of airbender robes. The position of the bones suddenly makes sense as Zuko pictures one of the airbender Masters standing in the centre of the room, a tornado repelling any firebenders attempting to come close – sending the corpses of friends and enemies alike to all corners.

But even the strongest fell eventually, for there were his bones.

In death, everyone looks the same.

Statues had also been blown to the side, though some still remained standing; ghosts of the spiral they had obviously been originally arranged in. The Fire Nation had wrought so much damage onto the Air Temples. Four temples with similar scars and three littered with bones told Zuko all he needed to know – there was never any Air Army, what had been done upon the Air Nomads had been a massacre of innocents.

Zuko sits back from the sight and stares up into the sun. Approaching the final Air Temple Zuko had thought he was ready to sail to the most remote places in the world should the Southern Temple prove to be yet another dead end, but now…

He was still yet to commence the grueling work of gathering all the bones and helping them on their way and he was already so tired. He was tired of hiding his bending, tired of chasing ghosts across the world all for the sake of a home that would never accept him and tired of seeing the remains of those killed solely for the crime of being like him. Zuko wasn’t sure if he could keep going much longer.

When his feet touch back down onto the dusty stone Zuko hands the hammer back to Hanako and tells her to go find Jee.

‘They can go now.’ He says softly. ‘I want them all back at the ship as soon as possible.’

‘Flameo, little majesty.’ Hanako stuffs her hammer back into her toolkit, the brashness of her reply stemming from her annoyance at having been separated from it for so long. She walks off, not asking Zuko for further elaboration on his commands. The crew don’t know what he does up at the abandoned Temples after everyone else leaves, but they know it’s something he does and they know he won’t tell them, so they stopped pushing the issue.

Zuko watches as the crew slide down the rope, counting them off. His uncle goes last and Zuko steps out slightly from where he was hiding to give him a slight smile. Iroh waves back enthusiastically before starting the descent back down.

As soon as Zuko is sure that everyone is gone he begins gathering bones and bringing them to an edge of the Temple opposite to where his ship is moored. He sets down his first armful (he’s long since overcome his aversion to death) and glances out over at the untouched landscape that has been laid out before him. The sight felt strangely reminiscent of his arrival at the Western Air Temple, only a few weeks into his banishment.

‘What a stunning view.’

Zuko didn’t even spare a glance for his uncle as he gazed out upon the majestic Western Air Temple, the only thought in his mind what he saw, or more, what he didn’t.

He wanted to return home, above all things, and the only way he would be able to do that was with the Avatar in tow. ‘The only view I'm interested in seeing is the Avatar in chains.’ he grumbled, to which his uncle responded with a tone of sympathy.

"You know, the Avatar hasn't been seen for one hundred years. The chances of finding him here are very slim." He told his nephew softly, his gentle reminder only serving to anger Zuko. He had not spent years lying and pretending just for all he’d ever worked towards be snatched away from him.

Zuko grits his teeth in determination. ‘First we'll check each of the air temples, then we'll scour the world, searching even the most remote locations until we find him.’ he assured his uncle, who looked concerned at his proclamation.

‘Prince Zuko, it's only been a week since your banishment. You should take some time to heal and rest.’

Zuko’s fists clench at the suggestion. He knew exactly what he needed to do for things to return to normal, rest and relaxation could come later.

It takes two days for Zuko to scour the Temple for bones. The memory of him first arriving at the Western Air Temple plagues his mind as he works, the conversation playing over and over in his head. He’d been so sure of what he’d wanted back then and what he needed to do to get there, but now he couldn’t help but wonder if his goal had changed.

Zuko knows there are probably more bodies languishing in hidden rooms, but he’s done all he could – the pile already takes up nearly half the courtyard. He takes his time to push any outlying bones into the main pile and stuff the spaces in between bones with dried leaves before stepping back a good distance. The fires inside each of his amulets are still burning, keeping them lit has become as familiar as breathing to him, but he takes a moment to check anyway. He shifts into a stance and takes a deep breath before punching his arm forward to direct a stream of fire towards the pile. The leaves catch alight instantly and the fire begins to pick at the bones. Zuko shifts into a new position and begins to twist the fire around the pile, making it grow and envelope what had been almost the entire population in a cloak of flames…

…for the second time, Zuko reminds himself – this is not the first time these people have burned.

The fire grows bigger and stronger, the bones fading away into ash. Zuko doesn’t need to help it along anymore and only steps in again to control the flames when all the bones have almost completely been turned to ash. He kills the flames with a concentrated stream of wind and takes a moment to look upon the masses of ash. Zuko closes his eyes and lets out a slow breath before kicking out his leg to send a big gust of air to blow it all out onto the forest and sea. A stream of fire also erupts from the movement out of instinct, but it doesn’t make any difference. Certainly not to the airbenders.

Zuko walks over to the balcony edge and watches the gray disappear into the bright landscape.

He doesn’t realize he’s crying until the first tear slides down his cheek.

This is the last time he’ll watch the ashes of the dead nation be carried away with the wind. His nation, his wind.

‘Prince of the Fire Nation,’ he murmurs to himself, ‘And an airbender.

‘The last airbender.’

Because he is alone. He has been for all his life. There is no Avatar for him to find, there probably never will be. His Father had known that, had wanted Zuko to fail, he’d just been too blind to see it.

Too blind until now.

His dagger is light as air as he pulls it from its sheath and raises it to the single plume of hair on his head… and slices it clean through.

He removes the metal band from the bottom and tucks it into his pocket before setting the hair alight in his palm. He waits for a moment, letting the flame take hold, before throwing the remnants of his phoenix tail to the wind. He watches it disappear, more ashes falling to the lush forest floor.

 And in that moment, just like the airbenders, whatever person Zuko used to be is gone.

His hands fall slack to his side as he realizes the full extent of what he’s just done. He knows in his head that he made the right decision, but his heart still aches for the home that was never really a home, but still the only one he ever knew.

He sinks to the ground and cries into his hands.

∞

Zuko jolts as a hand reaches out and touches him on the shoulder.

‘Nephew,’ his uncle says, ‘come back to the ship with me, you cannot start your journey without your things.’

‘Uncle…’ Zuko stutters, his hand drifting to the patch of fuzz marking the stop where his tail had used to be.

‘Only you can find your own path, all I can do is help you along the way. Now come, it is getting dark – none of the crew will notice us returning.’

‘Uncle… I can’t. I can’t go back.’ Zuko whispers, the tears he had shed earlier have dried on his cheeks and the tracks crinkle as he moves.

‘Nobody is asking you too, Zuko.’ His uncle soothes. ‘But the journey you are about to take is not one to be started upon without proper preparation. Come back to the ship with me, the crew does not have to know anything, and let me help you prepare for the road ahead.’ Zuko nods his head numbly and lets Iroh guide him to his feet. ‘For the road you are about to take is a long one, I fear.’

‘How long have you been up here, Uncle?’

‘Long enough.’ His uncle says.

‘You saw me...’

‘Yes.’

They walk silently through the Temple until they reach the tree where Zuko had tied the rope to earlier that week. Iroh approaches the rope first and steadies his hands before beginning his descent. He pauses just before his head is swallowed by the edge of the cliff.

‘Don’t bother dismantling the rope Zuko, if you are just going to come up again later.’ Zuko watches his uncle descend and glances at the rope. He would stay at the temple, he thinks, he has no real plan for what his life was going to turn into and the temple did just so happen to be free at that moment. His hand strays to the empty space at the top his head and he can’t help but begin to wonder is he’d made the right decision. Had he really just turned his back on the only life he’d ever had all because of a few moments of confusion and rage?  

His hair would grow back (the haircut had been dumb anyway) and he could just tie it back up in its phoenix tail and forget he’d ever been without it. It wasn’t too late to repent, find the avatar, become a son his father would be proud of…

But that was the crux of the matter. His father would never be proud of him, would never see Zuko has anything more than a thorn in his side. He sent you away, he never wanted you to come back…

Zuko wasn’t even really a firebender.

He’d been living a lie his whole life, he’d known that before, of course, but he’d swept it to the side.

He starts to climb down the rope, having left it where it was for tomorrow when he returned. Emotions still ran riot inside his mind and he couldn’t help but feel conflicted about what he was doing. But Zuko held fast to his decision, he couldn’t (wouldn’t) continue living out his days in a never ending lie – he was done with fire.

Chapter Text

Zuko follows his uncle onto the ship with his newly shaved scalp obscured from view by the hood of his cloak. In the past he has returned in a similar somber manner after burning the bones, so nothing should seem amiss to the crew. He reminds himself of this as he boards, but he still can’t stop feeling ridiculously paranoid about the situation.

‘Greetings, Teruko,’ his uncle calls out to the crewman on duty as he leads Zuko across the deck towards their rooms.

‘General,’ Teruko acknowledges and then adds, ‘Prince,’ almost as an afterthought. Zuko can’t bring himself to care about the blatant lack of respect for him, he’s still too numb from what he’s just done.

Iroh takes Zuko down to his own room and sits him down on the blood red duvet. The room feels foreign to Zuko, for despite having spent a year on the Wani, he’d somehow only entered his uncle’s room one or two times. He’d poked in his head to quickly shout at his uncle to hurry up, but that had really been the extent of it. Now, in the silence, Zuko has nothing to do but glance around at the place that one of the only people he really cared about had lived for the past year.

Looking at the plain (except for the myriad of useless things he’d picked up from various ports) metal floors and walls, Zuko suddenly remembers why he had never bought himself to fully digest the state in which his uncle was living. Not that it was really that bad, it was more the fact that it wasn’t the best. Wasn’t worthy of royalty. Zuko had been the one banished, not his uncle. It was his fault that his uncle was out in the middle of sea in the Earth Kingdom, a far cry from the luxury of Iroh’s quarters at the palace.

‘I’m sorry, Uncle,’ Zuko whispers. ‘You didn’t deserve this.’

Iroh lets out a short bark of laughter as he busies himself with making a pot of tea in the corner of the room. (Because of course he has a private tea making station in his quarters) ‘Do not fool yourself into thinking that there is anywhere else I would rather be. Back at the palace?’ He chuckles again. ‘No Zuko, by your side is the only place I wish to be. Don’t look so guilty nephew! Knowing that you are forging your own path, even if that means I cannot be with you, will make me the happiest uncle in the world.’

He pours the freshly made tea into two cups and hands one to Zuko before sitting next to him upon the bed. ‘Ginseng.’ He tells Zuko.

The banished prince looks down at the swirling tea and spots the outline of his reflection in its surface. ‘Why are you doing this?’

‘Doing what?’

‘Helping me.’ Zuko can feel tears begin to prick at the corner of his intact eye as he forces his gaze up to meet his uncle’s. ‘You saw what I did at the temple, saw what I am. I’m an airbender, Uncle!’

‘I know.’

‘Then why are you just sitting there?’ Zuko feels hot, angry tears slide down his cheek for the second time that day. ‘You should be doing something! Didn’t you hear me? I am an airbender!’

‘What do you want me to do, Zuko?’ His uncle asks.

‘Kill me!’ Zuko shouts, the pure force of his words knocking the teacup from his uncle’s grasp with a blast of air. The Dragon of the West looks forlornly down at his spilt tea and the sight just angers Zuko more. ‘I’m an enemy of the Fire Nation, my very existence goes against everything our family stands for! How dare you just sit there?’

‘Don’t you dare suggest such a thing. Kill you? Never. To betray you, my son in every way but blood, would be a far greater crime than to betray the corrupt empire that is the Fire Nation.’

‘Corrupt?’ Zuko breathes slowly. More tears prick at his eyes as his uncle expresses his affections for him, but he can’t help but focus his attention on the damning adjective his uncle had used.

‘You know it yourself, Zuko. The war the Fire Nation wages against the rest of the world is unjust and barbaric. I would cut my topknot with you, but I fear it may bring suspicions in future when interacting with other Fire Nation.’

Zuko stares at his uncle, shocked at his words. ‘But the… that’s not why I cut my phoenix tail. Not why I’m running.’

‘Then tell me why.’ His uncle asks, demanding nothing and yet Zuko feels compelled to answer.

‘I’m just tired, Uncle. You saw what I am - my whole life is just one big lie. The Fire Nation was, and never can be, my home. I could keep searching, continuing along this useless quest and pretending to be a good son of the Fire Nation, but I know it won’t ever amount to anything in the end. Not really.

‘And I know I should hand myself in, but you and I both now how that will end. Father won’t bother with another impossible quest, he’ll just finish me off right there on the spot. But I’m not ready to die, Uncle. I used to think I’d be ok with dying, if I knew I was doing the right thing it would be fine, but I don’t see it that way anymore. It’d be like giving up and I’m not ready to do that. There’s a whole world out there and I want to see it – for real though, not just as a series of stops on my way to the Avatar.’ Zuko’s eyes sparkled slightly at the thought. ‘To hell with the Avatar. I don’t want to be Prince Zuko anymore, I just want to be Zuko, and I want to see the world and I want to leave all of this – this stupid quest, my shitty childhood, the big fat lie that’s been my life – behind me.’

‘I’m glad.’ His uncle smiles and leans over to wrap his arms around his nephew. Zuko leans into the touch and hugs his uncle back tightly.

‘And I guess I do know, in my heart – have for a bit now – that what the Fire Nation does is wrong. But I don’t think I’m ready to face that truth yet.’ Zuko whispers.

Iroh sits back to look Zuko in the eye. ‘One day you will have to make a choice, Nephew. But I suspect you will have a while until that day comes. Until then, I implore you to live. Live, Zuko, live free and unbothered and be happy. I want you to laugh and cry and then laugh again. Too much of your life has been stolen from you and now I only wish for you to take it back. Enjoy yourself Nephew, and know that I will always be there for you.’ Iroh draws Zuko in again for another hug before getting to his feet. ‘You’ll be needing supplies, of course.’ He pulls a rucksack from a chest of drawers and begins to fill it with an assortment of items retrieved from his ever growing stash of souvenirs. He pushes the bag into Zuko’s hands and goes back to retrieve another empty sack.

‘I’ll go raid the kitchens while you go collect your things from your room. I will meet you there.’ Zuko nods and watches his uncle exit before finally making his own way to the door. He pulls his hood over his glaringly bare head and slips out from behind the door and into the hallway. The route to his room is short and generally free of crew members, not that any would think anything off about the Prince walking to his own room, but Zuko couldn’t help but feel paranoid. He keeps to the shadows and all but sprints the last few metres to his room. The door slams shut behind him.

Zuko leans back against the door and takes a few seconds to breathe as he glances around at his room. He drops the bag Iroh had given him against the wall and starts pulling items out of drawers and piling them in the middle of the room. Most of his ‘casual’ clothes are blood red and adorned with gold embroidery and Zuko tosses them to the side, along with his spare uniform. The more inconspicuous earth toned tunics and pants go into the bag, but the amount is so little he relents and adds a few of the familiar red items. Deciding to leave his swords up on the wall for the moment, Zuko turns to his chest of souvenirs and precious objects he was able to bring from the Fire Nation.

Though he was thirteen when he left and definitely too old for toys, Iroh had been the one packing for him and had thrown in some of his old plushies. Zuko picks up each one and lays them out on the floor before him and, though he knows he is alone, glances quickly around the room before adding a faded turtleduck plush to the bag. (Lord Awesome Firebender had been a gift from Ursa on Zuko’s fifth birthday)

The rest of the chest’s contents (old Fire Nation cutlery, expensive paintings) hold no interest to Zuko, so he leaves them be. He is still in his uniform, but doesn’t want to draw anyone’s attention by taking it off, so he decides to keep it on. It was strange, Zuko thought, to feel uncomfortable in a uniform you spent so long wishing to wear.

His armour is still on the mannequin and he passes it by on his way to retrieve his dual dao. The armour is clunky and heavy so he leaves it as well. He has no use for it on an island of ghosts.

Zuko meets Iroh back in his uncle’s room. He glances at the bulging sack of food by his uncle’s feet.

‘How’d you convince Cook to give you so much food? She never gives me anything.’

Iroh smiles widely. ‘Cook can be a lovely person if you ask nicely enough.’

‘I do ask nicely.’ Zuko splutters.

‘Some ladies just require a more, delicate touch.’

Zuko stiffens. ‘That better not mean what I think that meant.’

Iroh’s grin remained wide as he answered, ‘Of course not, Nephew. Cook and I just share similar interests.’

‘You know what Uncle, I don’t want to hear it.’ Zuko smiles back despite himself, suddenly wondering if he really wanted to leave behind his uncle and the ship he was just beginning to call home.

‘Maybe I shouldn’t go Uncle. I can just tell the crew I realized that my haircut looked like trash and continue onto the poles to search for the Avatar…’ He watches Iroh eagerly, not sure what answer he was hoping for.

‘No.’ Iroh says decisively. ‘You shall leave in the morning.’ He pauses to sit down on the bed and encourages Zuko to join him. ‘Too much of your life has been spent doing what your Father wanted, Nephew. You are nearly fourteen now and you are yet to make the amount of dumb and crazy and rebellious decisions expected of a teenager. Leave in the morning, Nephew, and do things that make you happy. Plant a garden, build a boat, row into town, get a job, make friends! Forget about the quest, if only for a bit.

We will stick to the route you have planned out in the past weeks – take your copy and know that you can always meet back up with us if you want to. Think of this as a learning opportunity if you must. Being the only kid on a ship full of sailors would not be good for any boy. Agni only knows Lu Ten would be tearing his hair out by now, all cooped up like this.’

Zuko nods, smiling. ‘Can I- can I sleep with you tonight?’

‘A sleepover, Nephew?’

Face flushed with embarrassment, Zuko nods. Iroh laughs. ‘Nephew, I’d thought you’d never ask.’

They pull out a spare mattress and load it with pillows and blankets. Iroh turns off the lights with a flick of the wrist and they lie down to go to bed.

In the gloom, Zuko glances over at the vague outline of his uncle.

‘Uncle?’ He calls out softly.

‘Yes, Zuko?’

‘I’m going to miss you.’

‘Me too, Nephew, me too.’

∞

‘So, I guess this is goodbye.’ Zuko and his uncle stand at the top of the cliff, neither willing to be the first to leave.

‘For now.’ Iroh reminds him. ‘We will see each other again one day, and you will be a happier person when we do.’

‘I don’t know what I’m doing.’

‘Does anyone?’

‘You know what I mean.’

‘I think you are telling me, that without an impossible quest imposed upon you by the Fire Lord you are without ideas on what to fill your days with?’

‘Yes!’ Zuko cries, exasperated. ‘I need a purpose, Uncle, and don’t give me that find yourself ostrichhorse dung again!’

‘Have you ever done something for fun, Nephew?’

‘Of course, I do heaps of fun stuff. Firebending practice, sword practice…’

‘Let me cut you off right there.’ Iroh says. ‘I’ve thought of a quest for you to embark on.’

‘And it is?’ Zuko raised his sole eyebrow.

‘I want to you to make a friend.’

‘A friend?’ Zuko spluttered.

He glances around at the temple, empty of people aside from himself and Iroh. ‘And I am to find one where?’

‘Make one.’ Iroh corrected and before Zuko could object once more he pulls the boy into a tight hug. He clings on for a good thirty seconds before stepping back to wipe the tears from his eyes.

‘Goodbye Nephew.’ Iroh says as he walks back to the rope and prepares to go down.

Zuko feels hot tears begin to slide down his cheeks. ‘Goodbye Uncle.’

‘Bring your friend with you when we meet again.’ And then he’s gone, sliding back down to the Wani.

‘I will.’ Zuko whispers, now completely alone.

∞

Zuko sits by the cliff’s edge until the Wani has completely disappeared into the horizon.

Chapter Text

Zuko had already searched the entire Temple twice before, but combing through the neglected buildings for traces of alive airbenders and then again for dead ones were very different things to simply wandering aimlessly. Which, of course, was what Zuko was doing.

‘Find a friend.’ He says angrily, kicking at an out of line pebble that had dared disrupt his path. ‘How in Agni am I supposed to find a friend on a bloody abandoned island.’ Zuko raises his voice, shouting out his question if only to further prove that he is alone.

‘Stupid. 

Stupid, stupid, stupid!’ He is stupid for thinking that this was a good idea. (Leaving everything he had ever known behind just because he was tired of living a life he knew could never last? Stupid, stupid, stupid.)

He had already meandered through all of the temple’s buildings and had stumbled upon a rather grand bedroom that he had immediately called dibs on (because there were obviously other people there to fight him for it.) and after dumping his stuff on the bed, had continued onto the library. It was still just as burnt and wrecked as it had been yesterday, but this time Zuko took the time to squat down in the remains of the library’s vast collection and sift through the ruined scrolls. He had set aside such an impressive collection of scrolls worth saving that he was forced to empty out one of his bags just to transport them all up to his room. Included in the collection were several scrolls on bending that he had found. The section on airbending had been one of the worst damaged but there were still a few remaining under the ash of their comrades. Zuko had nearly passed them by, unsure if he really wanted to contemplate practicing the forbidden practice in its pure form but had then resolved that it was one of the reasons he had left the Wani and that it would be pretty cool to be able to create a giant hurricane (as instructed in Nenzil’s Guide to creating Big Hurricanes with Airbending).

After dumping the scrolls Zuko looked through the rest of the complex and made notes on which places he wanted to come back to. He had been particularly excited to rediscover a courtyard full of garden beds if only to now have something to do with his time. The majority of the bedrooms, aside from his own, looked a lot more like cells than bedrooms in Zuko’s opinion, but maybe the utilitarian dorms were just part of the whole Nomad aesthetic. 

Nearly every room in the Temple had housed at least one skeleton and Zuko couldn’t quite shake the images of the rooms before he had cleared them out before entering. It made for a slightly uncomfortable self imposed tour and Zuko was immensely glad when he completed it.

Next up on his itinerary was the exploration of the vast woodland surrounding the Temple. Zuko had been left at the island after breakfast and several hours had passed since that time. The sun still shined brightly overhead but it was beginning to start its descent. Noting this and then looking back out at the miles of forestation he drew the conclusion that this stage of his tour would be most likely carry over to the next day. The Wani’s crew had been able to scout it out in a day, but that had been with several people all divvying out the space that need to be combed through.

‘A friend.’ Zuko murmurs as he walks beneath the canopy of trees. ‘Where in Agni am I supposed to find a friend?’

∞

After trudging through the same green brush for what seemed to be an eternity, Zuko starts climbing trees. He shimmies up the trunk and sits for a bit at the top before coming down again. Sometimes he would jump down to save himself time. Or he would try and leap from tree to tree, imitating the hog monkeys he and his mother used to go look at on their infrequent trips to Capital Island Zoo. Alone apart from the occasional toad rabbit or lizard rat, Zuko found himself laughing at his own antics. (Was this what fun felt like?)

He hadn’t laughed in years. It felt weird; uncomfortable at first but then exhilarating. Zuko decided that he rather might like a life living on the isolated island if he just got to run around unchecked all day. It felt like he was five again, those days of innocence before the stress and anger and worry all came crashing down and buried him under.

Zuko leans back and sprints forward, leaping over the bush in his path and rolling to his feet. He starts again on his path but a flash of white distracts him. Its gone as quickly as it appeared but Zuko has nothing else to do, so he sprints over to where he saw it.

A trail of paw prints alert him to the creature’s location and Zuko follows it around a bend and all the way to a cave hidden by trees. As he gets closer a strong smell shoves its way up his nose, bringing tears to his eyes.

He comes closer still, finally seeing the inhabitants of the cave.

Inside the cave are three mounds of white, two substantially larger than the first.

‘Air bison.’ Zuko whispers, the shock of the sight rooting him to the spot.

The baby bison raises its head in Zuko’s direction and lets out a scared whine. It scrambles behind its parents who still lie motionless on the ground. Zuko can’t help but wonder why both of the older bison haven’t reacted to his presence in their cave.

He steps forward tentatively, all earlier excitement and energy replaced with caution. Zuko is less than two metres away from the closest adult and it hasn’t made a single movement. Suddenly Zuko notices a slight red tinge to both of the bison’s fur on their bellies. Combining that with their lack of reaction to his arrival, as well as the smell he had been treated to upon coming in range… realization dawns hard and fast.

‘You’re dead.’ He stares blankly at the animal’s lifeless forms. ‘Aren’t you?’

Zuko walks right up to the closest bison and gives it a little push. There’s no reaction. He doesn’t bother trying the other bison, he is already pretty confident in his diagnosis.

Another insistent wail comes from behind the adult bison.

The baby.

The orphan.

Judging by the smell coming from the corpses, it has been alone for days. Probably hasn’t been able to eat for that time as well. Its no small miracle that it has managed to survive without its parents for as long as it has, but Zuko predicts that its luck may soon run out with no one caring for it.

‘A friend.’ Zuko repeats, smiling to himself despite the situation. ‘How does that sound, little buddy? I’m going to be your friend.’

∞

Zuko is covered with scratches and fur when he finally manages to hoist the baby air bison up into his arms without it wriggling away in fright. The ball of fluff weighs the same amount as a hefty pile of books, so Zuko is able to carry it with relative ease. Floof is resting comfortably in his hold, having warmed to the boy after being fed enough berries by said human to make it drowsy with food. Zuko looks slightly concerned as he grips the bison closer to his chest, as if just realizing the gravity of what he’s just signed himself up for.

‘Agni,’ he whispers staring down at the baby bison’s drooping eyes. ‘I have no clue how to look after a bison.’ Zuko looks over at the bush of berries he had bribed the bison with and then back at its sleepy eyes. ‘You can eat those, right? This is you sleeping, not dying?’

The bison opens an eye lazily and stares up at Zuko as if asking, do I look like I’m dying, idiot?

‘Ok ok, not dying. Just sleeping. In my arms. Gosh I’m going to need to feed you and look after you and do all of those things and wow that’s a lot…’ Zuko lowers himself to the cave’s floor and leans back against the rock, knocking back his head to stare up into the gloom. ‘Do you know how to fly? I won’t have to teach you that? Because I don’t know if you’ve noticed buddy but I haven’t faintest clue on how one flies.’

A loud snore is the baby’s only answer.

‘Oh wow, wait a moment.’ Zuko says suddenly. ‘You don’t have a name. You need a name, don’t you bud. I have a name. It’s Zuko.’ He’s all too aware of how stupid he must sound, muttering away to a bison that doesn’t have a clue as to what he is saying, but he’s too stressed to care. ‘I’m going to name you…’

Zuko sits there for a good few minutes contemplating names, gaining a great deal of respect for his parent’s decision making skills in the process because ‘agni, this is hard!’

In the end Zuko decides on Dumpling, because of course he does. (He does briefly consider calling the bison Honour, if only to have finally found it, but decides against it.)

Dumpling shifts in his lap and Zuko looks down in alarm to check if his is okay. Confirming that all was well Zuko takes a moment to reevaluate the situation. He is sitting in a cave in the middle of a forest on Air Temple Island with a baby air bison in his lap and the creature’s dead parents sitting metres away bringing tears to his eyes with their stench.

Two more bodies to burn.

Slowly Zuko gets to his feet, careful not to disturb Dumping in his slumber. He walks slowly to the entrance of the cave and sets the bison carefully down. Creeping back to the parent’s bodies Zuko slowly flicks his fingers in a well practiced motion.

A flame grows in his palm.

He looks back quickly to check that Dumpling is still sleeping soundly at the cave’s entrance before starting.

∞

As Dumping sleeps, Zuko combs his hands through her dirty fur. (After a quick investigation, Zuko has deduced that Dumpling is, in fact, a lady bison.) He threads his fingers through the thick fur and slowly teases out the brambles and knots. Dumpling shifts occasionally beneath his touch, but remains asleep as Zuko finishes his look over.

When he is finished and Dumpling is suitably bramble free, Zuko sits back and contemplates what to do next.

In the end he decides to continue on his tour of the forest to try and see if he could find any more bison. Hesitant to leave Dumpling alone Zuko chooses to take the bison with him. He hoists the floof up in his arms (still asleep) and positions the animal over his hip, and sets out.

∞

Dumpling wakes up after a bit and chooses to amble along beside Zuko, slowing down his pace considerably but not bothering Zuko in the slightest. They make it most of the way around the island (still not a single bison spotted) and Zuko is about to head back to the Air Temple main complex when the rat-hippo stops the pair in their tracks.

Zuko had only read about rat-hippos in books, but in real life the creature was more terrifying than he had ever imagined. It was as big a boulder with a long tapered snout. Long thick teeth curl down over the lip and its tail thrashes madly as it spots Zuko

It growls and prowls slowly towards him, its eyes fixated on Dumpling.

‘Behind me, Dumpling.’ Zuko hisses to the bison and steps in front when he realizes that Dumpling has no idea as to what he is saying. He spreads his hands and lets flames whisper out from the bracelets circling his wrists. Dropping back into a starting stance, Zuko slides forward and punches two jets of flame straight at the rat-hippo.

It jumps to the side, but his flames still manage to graze the beast’s side. The rat-hippo howls at the contact but bounces back almost immediately and lunges for Zuko’s throat. He lets out a cry as he stumbles back to avoid the razor-sharp claws and nearly trips backwards over Dumping. Zuko barely has a moment to reground himself before the rat-hippo is springing back at him, this time its razor teeth aimed for his throat.

Acting entirely on instinct Zuko summons a flame dagger to his right hand and spears it upwards through the beast’s throat. Pushed onwards by momentum, the rat-hippo slams head on into Zuko and though the motion isn’t exactly teeth tearing through his throat the impact slams him to the ground with an ugly thump. Dumpling isn’t hit by the boy and rat-hippo’s falling bodies, but gives a shriek as Zuko falls. From his position on the ground Zuko wonders if the scene of someone she knows being attacked by a rat-hippo is familiar.

He pushes the corpse off him and gets to his knees. Dumpling shuffles eagerly into his arms and Zuko hugs her tight to his chest. ‘I’m sorry,’ he whispers into her fur and buries his head in the gray arrow on her forehead. Dumpling’s legs kick out either side of and she snuggles closer. I could get used to this, Zuko thinks.

Still holding Dumpling tight, Zuko looks over at the rat-hippo’s open mouth and the teeth that fill it. There is something awfully familiar about the jagged edges of its pearly whites.

He realizes suddenly where he has seen a tooth shaped like that before. He had burned it along with Dumpling’s parents, as he could bring himself to remove it from the wound.

An awful conclusion dawns.

When the Fire Nation attacked the Temples, in addition to probably killing off a huge number of bison, they also murdered all of the bison’s caretakers. With nobody left to care for them it made sense that the bison had been forced out into the surrounding forest to find food and that was probably where they encountered the rat-hippos and promptly had their throats ripped out. No wonder he and Dumpling were yet to see a single bison after hours of walking. There were none left. Zuko was honestly surprised even a few had survived as long as they had.

Zuko slowly gets to his feet, still half in shock from the encounter with the rat-hippo as well as his new revelation and starts stumbling back to the Temple with Dumpling clutched tightly in his arms.

∞

He lays Dumpling down on the mattress beside him as he settles down to go to sleep. Zuko can’t help but feel a shiver of excitement as he realizes that he has been at the Temple for less than a day and has already ticked off the one goal Iroh had set for him.

The pair had returned to the Temple half an hour earlier and Dumpling had been very excited about her new surroundings. Zuko had let her wander around for a bit before guiding her to his room for dinner. He was unsure as to what bisons ate so just gave her some of the green things that Iroh had packed and Zuko had no intention of eating himself. After eating his own meal of reheated-in-his-hand dumplings Zuko decides to call it a day and clambers into the bed. (the original blanket all but crumbled in his hand so Zuko was very glad he had bought one of his own) He planned to have Dumpling sleep on the ground for all of three seconds before relenting and pulling her up.

As soon as Zuko snuffs the flames lighting the room Dumpling shuffles over and curls against his stomach. Zuko smiles at the contact and throws an arm around the bison’s form to tuck her even closer.

‘You’re the last one left Dumpling,’ Zuko whispers to the dark, ‘But don’t worry, I’m alone too.

We can be alone together.’

Chapter Text

In the month that had passed since Zuko had adopted Dumpling, the bag of food he had bought with him had slowly been decreasing in its contents. Supplementing their diet with berries Zuko found and the occasional meat from a kill Zuko managed to make, they had been able to draw out the food to last as long as possible.

Dumpling was growing quickly and had nearly tripled in size. Long gone were the days when Zuko could carry her and so were the times when she could fit beside him on the bed without breaking it. Her new size also meant that it was hard for her to squeeze through the doorways of the temple, pretty much confining her to the outside of the temple.

Of course, this meant that Zuko was now also sleeping outside. The pair hadn’t been separated since they first met and Zuko wasn’t planning on leaving her alone just yet.

Of course, he would have to eventually. The seeds Zuko had planted in the garden bed had only recently broken through the dirt and he was struggling to find enough berries to account for a decent meal. It would be easier if Zuko was better at hunting, which he would be if only he could only find the steel inside himself to strike the defenseless animals down. He had no problem with killing the rat-hippos, but the meat was too stringy to be a real option.

And so Zuko was stuck staring numbly down at the map his uncle had packed and only now fully realizing just how far from civilization he has stranded himself. In his tired and half crazed state it had seemed like a good decision, but he should’ve stopped and really considered the implications of what he was doing.

Agni, Iroh should’ve realized how dumb what he was doing was. If the man had shut it with his destiny crap maybe he would’ve realized that finding ones destiny in the middle of the ocean was a very bad idea.

He can’t bring himself to fully regret his actions though. How could he? In front of him Dumpling is lumbering around the courtyard after a butterfly and Zuko smiles at her antics. The baby air bison was very possibly the best thing that had ever happened to him.

The baby air bison.

Dumpling was an air bison.

And air bisons could fly.

Dumpling could fly him to the nearest village to get the supplies.

It was a perfect plan apart from one thing; as far as Zuko knew, Dumpling couldn’t fly. And he had an awful thing that flight was such a thing that needed to be taught by a creature that could actually fly. And Zuko was no such creature.

But he could try. (In a contest between attempting the unlikely and living off meagre amounts of berries for the rest of his life, what else was he supposed to do?)

∞

For Dumpling’s first lesson in flight Zuko takes her up a small hill with a sharp drop of two metres down to a landing on one side. When he was younger one of his tutors told him about how baby birds would learn to fly in an attempt to convince him that walking into searing flames would help him unlock his firebending. Though the story had not convinced him, the little fact had stuck with him.

‘Birds,’ his tutor had told him, ‘before they can fly, they must fall. The fledglings quickly learn that falling from the nest is a lot easier if they open their wings. Once they learn to spread their wings, flapping them is the next step, and soon that flapping becomes flight.

Sometimes it is impossible to achieve something by learning alone, there is a certain amount of instinct required to bend that can only be achieved by encountering a situation that demands it. Some things demand force.’

Zuko figured bison flight would work much the same way. (Yes, it hadn’t worked for him, but he wasn’t a firebender. He was confident that is he had been born a firebender, he would have begun bending long before such steps became necessary)

Dumpling followed Zuko right to the edge of the mini cliff eagerly. On the way to the spot he had picked out Zuko had been feeding her berries to keep her excited and engaged. He waits until she is basically about to fall off before he jumps down to the landing below. Dumpling lets out a tiny mewl of distress as she looks down at the drop which, while small to Zuko, seems impossibly big to her.

Frantic to ease her distress Zuko offers her several more berries which she devours with relish. When he is satisfied she is a lot calmer he takes  a few steps back and gives her a big smile.

‘C’mere Dumps, come onnnnnn,’ he opens his palm to reveal all the berries he still has is an effort to entice her to jump, ‘you can do it, I believe in you!’

Instead of jumping forward like Zuko had hoped, Dumpling does the opposite. She shakes her head in a very humanlike manner and steps back from the edge.

Zuko groans at the failure and tears at his hair angrily. He lets himself stew in his frustrations for a few more moments before stuffing the leftover berries back into the pouch at his waist and trailing dejectedly after Dumpling.

∞

Unable to come up with anymore ideas, Zuko is left to retry his initial idea. He is forced to scout out a new place each time if he wants to get Dumpling to follow him, which is annoying as it is just extra time wasted on a plan that hasn’t worked in the slightest.

After three useless attempts Zuko tries to force Dumpling off the edge in his desperation, but a single terrified sound from the bison stops that idea in its tracks.

He pauses at the noise, his hands still wrapped in her fur. His eyes widen in disbelief as he fully realizes what he has just tried to do.

‘I’m sorry,’ he whispers to her, tears prickling at his eyes, ‘I’m so, so sorry.’

And he is, irrefutably so. Because, he now realizes he is forcing upon his one friend the miserable childhood he himself faced. He has been using a tactic that had been employed by one of the men that had made Zuko’s life such a misery.

He is a horrible friend.

Zuko buries his head in Dumpling’s soft fur and rolls backwards on the grass with the bison in his grasp. He laughs softly and the bison twists in his arms. Dumpling makes a happy noise as she realizes that Zuko is no longer forcing her to do something she doesn’t want to do and Zuko’s face lights up at the sound.

‘Guess we’re right back where we started, aren’t we bud?’

Despite the situation, Zuko can’t help but smile.

∞

Another few days pass until Zuko finally manages to come up with his next plan. He searches the Temple top to bottom to locate a big enough piece of fabric that isn’t about to fall apart and uses the rope from the crew’s climb up the cliffside. Dumpling trails somewhat skeptically behind him as he wanders through the surrounding forest with his materials for a suitable spot to set up.

It takes him the better part of the day to locate a good spot for what he is planning, and half of the next day to finally finish it.

His brilliant plan is set up across the distance between two tall trees and runs down over a downhill slope. He strings up the rope between the two pines using some of the heavy duty knots the other sailors had taught him how to tie on the Wani and then moves onto the sheet. Before attaching the sheet he first slides onto the rope a metal band that he assumed once was a bracelet of an Air Nomad. He then ties the material to the band and makes sure that is secure as well. He ties both ends of the sheet to the band so it can acts as a sort of sling.

Zuko has assembled the contraption down the bottom end of the slope and so, after testing that it can hold both his and Dumpling’s weight he drags the sling to the top of the hill.

The idea for it comes from a faint memory of his mother taking both him and Azula into the trees around their Ember Island house and showing them a similar contraption to the one Zuko had just built that Ursa herself had crafted just for them. His mother had called it the Flying Firefox and had taken Zuko and Azula to the top of the hill so they could ride it down.

Azula had gone first – whooping and yelling the whole way to the bottom where Ursa was waiting with open arms. It had been Zuko’s turn next and though he had been hesitant to go down at first, he had so much time hurtling down that he had insisted on doing it again several more times. The thing that Zuko remembered most vividly about the experience was how he had almost felt like he had been flying. His logic was that is he had felt like flying while zipping down the hill, maybe Dumpling would actually fly.

After his last failed idea he is hesitant to force Dumpling to do anything she doesn’t want to do so he wants to make sure she is comfortable with the plan. Since there is no one at the bottom to catch him when he hurtling down Zuko has put a knot in the rope near the bottom so the hoop the material is tied to is unable to keep hurtling down and crash him into the tree’s awaiting trunk. Knowing this, Zuko is comfortable as he climbs into the sling himself and uses his feet to push him forward.

Suddenly he is speeding down, the wind flushing his face as he goes by.

He is flying.

And then he is not.

The sling slams to a halt with a jolt and Zuko is nearly flung out onto the ground.

He untangles himself clumsily from the fabric and turns around to give Dumpling a thumbs up.

‘You ready Dumps?’

∞

Zuko takes Dumpling down the Firefox a total of twelve times.

She enjoys the ride, but she does not fly.

They come back the next day and repeat the exercise again.

Dumpling remains flightless.

And remains so for the next three days.

On the third day, after ten useless attempts of simulating flight Zuko dismantles the Firefox and trudges wearily back to the Temple with Dumpling skipping happily behind him. He is busy putting away the materials when he suddenly remembers the scrolls he had collected on his first day of staying at the Temple. He races up to his old room to retrieve the sack and pulls it out from under the bed where he had left it and upends the contents out onto the bed.

‘Airbending… bisons… baby bisons…’ Zuko murmurs as he sorts through the scrolls.

‘Ahah!’ He cries as he pulls a scroll out from the pile. A Study on Air Bisons by Monk Sohan was luckily only partly damaged by the fires, making most of the writing still legible to Zuko. He lets the scroll roll out to full length, being mindful not to move it too much lest he rip the old paper. It unfolds to its massive full length and Zuko lays it down on the ground to look at properly. As he scans through paragraphs on very helpful tips on diet and grooming, Zuko can’t help but wonder why he didn’t think to look the scrolls first. He finds the paragraph he is looking for finally and scans it eagerly.

‘… from what I have seen from the Air Bison’s young I have come to the conclusion that the Air Bison’s airbending ability is a lot like ours. I have read a lot of theories that have told me that the Air Bison’s ability to airbend, as they are the original Masters, comes purely from instinct which is to say that Air Bison youth are born with the ability. However, my observation is that, like us mortal benders, the Air Bison’s bending is a lot like ours. Though we are born with a certain degree of instinct regarding the bending of our native element, the ability must be taught and nurtured by the guidance of our elders for it to truly develop.

I observed this after a young Air Bison that I have been watching since birth was orphaned after its parents died fighting off a rat-hippo. I took in this Bison and was surprised to discover it could not yet fly (at this stage it was around a month old). After two months it still could not fly, which was concerning as other young bison I have observed begin their flight at two months. This proved my theory that without its parents/or another bison’s guidance a baby bison would be unable to fly.

After establishing this, I did think to have the Temple’s domesticated Air Bison teach it, but first I wished to see if I myself could show it how to airbend. I began by simply practicing katas in front of her and was astonished by how quickly the Air Bison caught on to what I was doing. Though what she then did was nothing like what I was doing, it seemed that by simply being exposed to bending something clicked inside her. Within a week it was flying, showing me once again what astonishing creatures Air Bison are…’

Zuko sits back on the floor and looks up at the ceiling, absorbing what he has just read.

He knew how to airbend, but only if manipulating the air around fire counted. Aside from the first time he’d manipulated air, he’d only ever used it for ‘firebending’. Even when he tried to airbend in its pure form, when he would scatter the ashes, instinct would force him to push out some of the fire from the bracelets at his wrists. He had ‘firebended’ heaps in front of Dumpling in the past weeks, so clearly exposure to that wasn’t inspiring flight, which meant he would need to learn how to truly air bend.

Luckily he had found several basic airbending scrolls in the library’s scorched remains (some more intact than others) and takes those down to the courtyard to begin his practice. Dumpling is napping in the shade under a tree, but raises her head lazily as Zuko exits from the Temple doorway.

Zuko sits for a bit, studying the forms in the kata illustrated on the page in front of him. He moves his hands, copying the movements whilst seated to try and ingrain them in his memory. Finally satisfied that he has memorized the action, he stands and begins to try the kata.

He stops at the first movement.

His hands drop loosely to his side and he sighs loudly. After trying to hide his ability to airbend for so long, trying to do it purposefully feels so wrong to him. He can’t help but get a sick feeling in his stomach as he attempts the kata again.

And again.

And again.

He finally gets fully through it after several tries, but instead of a gust of air, all that is propelled from Zuko is a line of vomit.

He sits for a moment after that, sweat dribbling down his forehead. Zuko had thought he had moved on from all the self hatred that had come from not being good enough for his father and the hidden shame of being an airbender, but it is a rude awakening to discover he’d just pushed it to the side as he frolicked around the island with Dumpling.

‘This isn’t going to work, Dumpling.’ Zuko whispers, more to himself than the bison sleeping metres away. Dumpling raises her head regardless and slowly pulls herself to her feet to plod over to Zuko’s side.

He laughs as her wet nose brushes his face. Her slobbery tongues licks at his scar and he fights the urge to pull away at the contact.

‘Do you want to hear a story, Dumps?’ Zuko smiles softly at the bison. ‘Well I’m going to tell you anyway, so make yourself comfortable.’

He settles himself back against the side of thec cave and beguns, ‘Once there was a little boy called Zuko and he was the prince of the Fire Nation. Only thing is, he couldn’t firebend. You see, he was actually an airbender…’

∞

In the morning Zuko gets up and tries again. He feels the wind against his face and beneath his fingertips. He moves with it this time, instead of forcing it into his control. It feels stupid, but with no one but Dumpling to witness it, Zuko continues his light footed dance around the courtyard.

The first time he manipulates the wind surrounding him he doesn’t even notice. The tiny wayward breeze slips from his fingers unnoticed.

He runs through the rest of the katas several times over the course of the morning, oblivious as he airbends tiny breezes again and again. He is forced to spend the rest of the day foraging for food as their supplies were now dangerously slow. The next morning he starts again, and the day repeats. Zuko grows increasingly frustrated as each day passes with no obvious progress. He considers taking off his fire trinkets, but each tiny bauble is secured so tightly with years of wax and even some metal he had had the blacksmith weld to each one, that if he did take them off he would be hard pressed to secure them again which would leave him without one of his most effective weapons. So he continues the way he started and though he believes no progress is being made with each morning of katas and meditation, slowly the wind being pushed from his fingertips grows stronger each day.

Dumpling realizes before he does and waddles over to him in the middle of a kata. Her heads cocks to the side as her eyes scan the movements of Zuko’s hands. He pays the bison no mind and starts the kata again, confident in the knowledge that so far his idea is still not working.

The bison thumps her tail softly against the ground in the beat of Zuko’s dance. The kata’s next steps have Zuko turned away from Dumpling, so he doesn’t notice until he turns around and…

She is flying.

Not even a metre off the floor, but still enough for Zuko to fall to his knees at the sight.

‘Dumpling…’ he whispers as the bison drifts slowly back down. ‘You flew!’

Zuko opens his arms wide and beckons Dumpling towards him. ‘Come here you amazing animal!’ He wraps his arms around her neck and buries his face in her fur. He can’t help but marvel at how fast she has grown. After only a month or so, the bison is already just about big enough to carry someone.

Suddenly a thought hits him. ‘How did you do it?’ He stares at the hands wrapped around the bison. ‘I didn’t- I couldn’t…’

He smiles as another thought comes to him. ‘But I bet I did, didn’t I? And I just didn’t realise…’

Zuko sets Dumpling off his lap and gets to his feet eagerly. He starts one of the easiest katas again, paying attention to the air around him as it whispers by and… there

He lets out a shout of surprise as he feels the wind flow forwards around him. Zuko does it again and again and feels the final gust grow stronger each time. Dumpling flies a few more times as he does it, sometimes standing right in front of Zuko to let the wind rush over her as she lifts up into the air.

It is around noon when Zuko finally calls a rest so they still have time to forage before it gets too dark to see. But even though his initial elation goes down as he wanders through the trees, he can’t help but marvel at the face that he can airbend. And not just the halfway airbending he’d been doing for the last few years. Real air bending.

Zuko wonders what his father would think if he could see what his son has become.

He wonders if his father loves him enough to care.

He wonders if he loves his father enough to care that he doesn’t.

Chapter Text

It is another month of tedious training, foraging and practice flights before Zuko finally feels confident enough to set off for the village. It hadn’t taken much to get Dumpling okay with Zuko on her back, but actually getting her off the ground with all the extra weight that was Zuko, was a whole new challenge. Eventually Zuko had realized that Dumpling had to get a bit more confident with flying solo before she was strong enough to carry him, and took a fortnight slowly helping her learn.

The first time she had flown with Zuko aboard was one of the best moments of his life. She only lifted ten or so metres off the ground, but the feeling was so surreal it made him feel like crying. When Dumpling’s feet landed softly back on the ground Zuko just lay down on her back and looked at the sky for a bit, contemplating the few seconds he’d been up there.

When he was flying with Dumpling, it was the most connected to his element he’d ever felt in his life.

They built up the distance slowly; trips around the courtyard turned into trips around the island and then finally up to a flight out to the halfway point between the seaside village and the Temple. Zuko was planning to fly over in the morning and then stay the night to allow Dumpling to rest before making the flight back as a separate trip at a later point. Zuko had realized a few days ago that he had actually neglected to bring any gold with him, so they might be staying over at the town longer depending on what means Zuko was planning to secure the funds they needed to purchase food and other supplies he had forgotten to take with him from the Wani.

Another thing Zuko had been helping Dumpling with was the concept of ‘stay’. He was planning to leave her alone in the forest surrounding the village for the better part of the day while they were there and didn’t want her wandering off. She still enjoyed sleeping for the majority of the day, so as long as Zuko timed it right she should be able to sleep all the way through the time he was away.

They set off first thing in the morning so Zuko is able to have the full day. It takes about three quarters of an hour to finally get to the village, but he suspects that the return trip may take longer if he succeeds in obtaining all the stuff he wants.

He takes his time walking through the trees to find a suitable spot to leave Dumpling and settles on a cave half hidden with vines. Zuko checks it for threats and apologizes before leaves Dumpling in the corner with a handful of berries he had been picking as they walked. He contemplates bringing along his dual dao, but thinks better of it and leaves them leaning against the cave wall.

He wanders in the general direction of where he thinks the town is and muses slowly over his options as he walks.

Stealing was always an option and it was something Zuko was pretty good at, from sneaking around the Palace. But he wasn’t sure if he was willing to go down that path right from the start. Uncle would be so disappointed if he ever found. So he would have to see if he could find a job first. (what would his Father think if he saw his son working like some common servant?) What type was yet to be determined, but Zuko was confident he would be able to easily land himself in a high paying, yet also not overly time consuming, job.

How hard could it be?

∞

Ten minutes passed and Zuko finds himself at the outskirts of the bustling seaside town. The narrow streets are full of people laughing and chatting away with one another. A smile plays at the corner of Zuko’s mouth as he glances over at a group of kids playing in the dirt together.

The smile is gone as quickly as it appeared as Zuko is suddenly very conscious of the amount of eyes trained upon him. His scar. That one detail he had overlooked. Who would want to hire someone with a face like his?

Head down, Zuko pushes through the crowd, muttering apologies as he goes.

The town square is similarly crowded, but much of the traffic is spread out between the makeshift wooden stalls and decrepit store entrances. Hints of the town’s former grandeur, probably dating back to before the war, peek out from the cracked walls of the buildings and houses. A seaside town as large as this one would’ve surely been a center point for roaring trade in the past.

He can’t help but think of his uncle as his gaze flicks over to a small tea shop on the edge of the square. A sign in the window reads

HELP WANTED

ENQUIRE WITHIN

Zuko grins as he makes the split second decision to go inside and see if he can land the job. Though he personally has no taste for the hot leaf juice, he has seen his uncle make it thousands of times before and is confident that it can’t be that hard.

∞

A red faced woman manning the counter puts Zuko to work immediately out back in the kitchen brewing tea. There is one other worker rushing about the cramped space when Zuko enters and he takes only a moment to acknowledge the boy before directing him to the kettles boiling in the corner.

‘You start work on order 13, boy,’ He says, motioning to the line of handwritten orders along the benchtop.  Zuko nods and hurries over to find the order.

Order 13 is thankfully relatively simple and Zuko sets about looking for the green tea leaves. He stands uselessly in the centre of the room, scanning the space for about a minute before the man whacks him with his spoon and direct him to the drawer holding the tea. Zuko mutters his thanks and measures out what he thinks is the right amount and dumps it into the kettle.  He lets instinct guide him as he stirs and strains and places the cups up on the bench to be collected by the waiting staff.

Zuko and the man, who he’s taken to calling Tea Shop Uncle in his head, fall into a bit of a rhythm as they work through more orders, After his eleventh completed order, Zuko reckons he has pretty much worked out what he is doing and is feeling pretty confident as well.

He is just starting his twelfth when the old lady from before bustles into the kitchen with what Zuko recognizes as one of the cups of green tea from his first order.

‘What do you want May?’ Tea Shop Uncle calls out from his bench.

‘Who made this cup of tea?’ She asks and Zuko cautiously raises his hand in reply.

May regards him with annoyance. ‘I thought you said you could brew tea, boy.’

‘I can-‘

‘This is horse dung, not tea! Here Wang taste this, its horrid. I’m surprised the customers weren’t more upset when they received this!’

She hands the cup to Tea Shop Uncle who takes a slow sip before spewing the whole mouthful back out into the sink. ‘By Koh boy, how’d you manage to make it so bad!’ Suddenly his whole expression droops. ‘Wait a moment, how many orders did you put out?’

‘Eleven…’ Zuko says. ‘Why?’

‘Because,’ Tea Shop Uncle moans, ‘if they are all like this, we are going to have eleven customers demanding refunds.’

May puts a hand to her temple and breathes deeply to calm herself. ‘Come with me kid, and Wang, you may as well start on redoing those orders.’

Zuko follows the woman out of the kitchen and to the counter where she then opens up the cash drawer and pulls out a few coins.

‘Here,’ she says as she places them in his palm. ‘Your pay for today. Now go, you’re fired.’ Zuko nods and clenches his fist tight around his scant earnings.

‘Sorry,’ he says, ‘I didn’t realize my tea was that bad.’

May scoffs, ‘Kid, your tea is awful. Now get out of here, I’ve got some pissy customers to deal with, thanks to you.’

Zuko’s cheeks flush red as he swallows quickly and stashes the money in his pocket. ‘Thanks.’ He says and May makes a shooing motion with her hands. Zuko nods awkwardly once more and then makes a hasty exit out onto the street.

∞

As Zuko wanders the town square, he kneads the hard metal of the coins between his fingers as he tries to think of what on earth he is to do next. He has come to realize, through a quick reevaluation of his entire life and all he believes in, that in addition to tea making, he would most likely suck at bread making, bartering and clothes making. And since those are the only stores looking to hire, he seems to be in a little bit of a pickle as far as money making goes.

His thoughts flick back to Dumpling, who he has left alone in the forest. The position of the sun indicates that it is midafternoon, so whatever Zuko is going to do, he needs to do it quickly.

Zuko is suddenly shaken from his thoughts as a loud bang sounds from a few metres to his left. He glances over at the commotion to see two red faced men yelling at each other over the top of the box they must’ve dropped moments before.

‘Bloody box is made of the worst wood I’ve seen in a while,’ one of the men, a rotund man with a bald head and a short mustache cries. ‘Check out these splinters Hin, I told you this order would be more pain than it was worth!’

‘They were on sale!’ The other yells back, equally rounded but this one with a full head of hair, ‘when we make a huge profit of these you’ll be eating your words.’

The first man doesn’t look happy about it, but lets out a defeated sigh. ‘Fine, let’s get the bloody thing inside. But we’ll be seeing no profit HIn, not a single coin of it.’

They bend and heave the heavy box up onto their shoulders once more and carry it into what must be their shop. Zuko is watching them go when a familiar sight in the storefront draws his attention. He walks closer to peer at the price tag and then recounts the sum of coins in his palm.

Its just the right amount. 

∞

The mask feels foreign against his skin as he clambers up onto the roof of the tea house to peer down at the square below. He thinks about going back to Dumpling to retrieve his swords, but decides against it in favour of getting back to the island as quickly as possible.

Through the slits in the mask, Zuko analyses each shop to pick out his target. He decides on a crowded bakery manned by a red faced young man sweating under the demands of the many customers.

He slides down off the building and lands quietly on the cobbles of the alleyway. He draws his hood up over his head and sneaks closer to the stall. Everyone is to focused on themselves to notice the small figure walking by, sticking close to the shadows and Zuko goes by undisturbed. When he reaches the throng of people surrounding the bakery, he slips around to the back and looks for a window or a back door to sneak through.

There is a window about three metres off the ground, but that’s it for viable entry points so Zuko is forced to figure out how to reach it. He scans the alley for any convenient boxes to stand atop of before resigning himself to the fact that he will have to climb. It isn’t that big of a problem – he’s pretty good at climbing walls (its almost like they want him to break in), its just that it kind of hurts his fingers and toes and can Zuko really be bothered dealing with that?

Zuko glances around the alley quickly to see if anyone is watching and then quickly clambered up the wall. His fingers and toes are only hurting slightly by the time he hauls himself into the open window. The smell of freshly baked bread greets him immediately and he closes his eyes to breathe it in. Below him three rosy cheeked women bustle around the kitchen, too involved in their task to have spotted him yet.

He slowly lowers himself down onto the bench beneath and prays that none of the women turn around. His feet are about a metre short of the bench so he is forced to drop. Zuko attempts to land silently, but the table shakes so badly under his weight that the women turn around immediately.

Zuko swears.

The women scream.

He can already hear footsteps running towards the kitchen so he acts quickly, grabbing armfuls of bread and stuffing them in the bag at his side. People start to pour in and Zuko starts as he sees the baker himself come barreling towards him with a heavy looking rolling pin clutched in his fist.

Zuko scrambles up to the window and fumbles out. He lands with a roll and jumps to his feet. He hears a roar as the baker rounds the corner into the alley accompanied by several other marketgoers. Wasting no time, Zuko runs in the opposite direction through the various alleyways running throughout the town. He is much faster than his pursuers, but they know the town a lot better than he does, so it seems that he is always no more than a hundred metres ahead.

As he rounds another corner, out of the corner of his eye Zuko spots a sign hanging over a decrepit entryway reading,

EARTH RUMBLE

Making a split decision, Zuko barrels inside. He tears the mask off his face and stuffs it into the bag with the bread. A heavy set ticket seller stands in the middle of the tunnel barring his way, but Zuko has no time or money to spare so he vaults straight over the man. Apparently used to things like that happening, the seller barely moves from his spot, only turning slightly to call out a gruff ‘Stop. Come back.’ Before turning back around.

Zuko runs down the tunnel, the bread jiggling at his hip, and enters out into an overwhelmingly loud and crowded stadium. He dives into the crowd, drawing a few protests as he pushes people aside, and positions himself at the back, hidden by the crowd.

He watches as the baker stumbles in through the entrance, takes one look at the crowded stadium, slumps his shoulders in defeat, and turns back around to head back to his bakery.

Zuko considers leaving, but he worries that the baker may be lurking around keeping watch for a while yet and also, the game in front of him looks intriguing.

Two men circle each other in the middle of an earthen square, one muscly and the other stick thin.

A third man steps into the ring to cry out ‘The Big Bad Hippo! And the Gecko!’ He steps out again almost immediately and the two men launch at each other immediatley. Zuko stares, transfixed, as the skinny one (whom he imagined was the Gecko) summoned massive walls out of the earth and leaped onto them with ridiculous ease. From his newfound cantage point, the Gecko rained down rocks upon the Big Bad Hippo, who, to Zuko’s bewilderment, would catch them in his mouth and chew them up within seconds. This pattern continued for a few moments longer, but then the Big Bad Hippo started to rock slowly from side to side… and the earth beneath his feet moved with him.

The Gecko manages to keep ahold of his wall, but he isn’t focusing on the Hippo, so doesn’t see the boulder hurtling towards him. He turns back around moments before the rock strikes home and manages to pull up a wall just in time.

Zuko winces as the rock smashes through the thin defence and knocks the Gecko straight out of the circle.

‘The Big Had Hippo has won!’ The third man reenters the square with a small green sack and makes his way over to the winner. ‘You prize money, sir.’

‘The Hippo is pleased.’ The Hippo grunts as he accepts the money.

‘And let this match be just a taste of what you’ll be seeing at the next Earth Rumble in a few weeks! Spots are still open for hopeful competitors! Next show match is this time in three days time. Thankyou for your time Gaoling!’

The crowd slowly disperse out the doors and Zuko lets himself be drawn along with them. At the exits the ticketseller is handing out flyers to all who pass and shoves one into Zuko’s hands. He looks down at the page.

EARTH RUMBLE TOURNAMENT IV

‘So this is what that man had been talking about,’ he thinks as he reads through the gambling, audience and prospective competitor information. His gaze snags on the prize money and he can feel himself salivating at the thought of having that much cash. (Only a few weeks have passed since he had taken a break from being a Prince and he was already acting more like a peasant that he ever imagined possible.)

Zuko glances down at the dirt footpath under him and focuses his gaze on a large rock. ‘I wonder..’

Moving his hand slowly, Zuko swirls air under the stone and commands it to lift. He smiles as the rock comes to a stop in front of his face and he snatches it out of the air. Little bit of practice and Zuko was sure the competition (and the money) would be his.

He rechecks the dates on the pamphlet before heading back to the forest. The bread and mask at his hip are a comforting weight, a sign of his success and all that is sure to be his in the future. He may be a worthless Fire Nation son, but at least he would be eating well.

Chapter Text

‘You know Dumpling, I reckon there’s a reason earth is the opposite element to air.’ Zuko had been practicing Earthbending for the past week and though he’s pretty successful moving rocks and pebbles, he’s been struggling to actually split the Earth. Even if there is already a fault running through the ground, his air just doesn’t have that sort of strength. He’s gone back few times to see more matches, but its just made him even more disheartened to watch the actual Earthbenders manipulate the Earth so easily. Ungrateful pricks didn’t realize how lucky they were.

The bread he had stolen the week before had run out earlier this morning, so he and Dumpling would need to make the flight back into the village later that day to nab some more food. He had wanted to get in a good few hours of Earthbending practice but since it was looking like he would be getting nowhere any time soon and he was starving, he heads into the village early.

Dumpling had been fine to make the long trip over Gaoling the week before as well as the few times they’d gone back over to watch matches and so Zuko was confident she’d make it comfortably this time as well. The air bison even seemed to enjoy the trip, so Zuko felt no grief over making her give him a lift over. He did feel a bit bad to have to leave her all alone in the forest, but she would just sleep the whole time so its not like the time spent was a huge drain on her health.

Riding in takes a bit less than twenty minutes and they land down in pretty much the same spot as the week before. Zuko drops Dumpling off in the cave and throws her a branch from a nearby berry bush to keep her from moving before heading off into the village.

He’s worn a long black cloak to cover his dual dao and to hide his face. The last time he’d turned up to the village he’d been looking for a job so had dressed a lot differently, but this time he was under no illusions that he would be doing anything but stealing.

He dons the Blue Spirit mask just before the treeline and moves stealthily through the side streets and in through to the main courtyard. The market is just as it had been the first time he had come; busy, loud and full of the smell of sweet smelling food. He already knew, from the times he’d come back to watch Earth Rumble fights, that the baker had boarded up the window at the back of his stall so that wasn’t going to be an option. But Zuko had had time to consider his next target, and it wasn’t going to be a stall this time. Instead, he was planning to break in to the big fancy mansion on the other side of town. On his way back to Dumpling a few nights ago, he had stopped by the place to scout it out for defences and was pretty confident in his ability to bypass them easily.

His main goal, the kitchen, had an easily accessible window just above ground level that would be simple for him to breach. The Beifong house was on the other side of the town, but there was no real forest for him to leave Dumpling on that side of town so Zuko had to make the trek over.

The wall circling the estate, though high, is easy to scale and Zuko drops down from it and into a shrub. He has picked his spot well, it is out of the way so not many guards and it is also opposite to the window.

After making sure nobody is around, he creeps closer and backs himself up against the wall. There are no smells wafting up to them that could indicate someone was currently cooking inside which is a good sign. He’s come just after the lunch would’ve been served and is hoping that the cooks may be taking a break in between meals. He squats down, peeks in through the window to see if anyone is inside and, seeing no one, takes the opportunity to slip inside. He jimmies the lock with one of his duals to heft it open and since the noise the window makes is pretty loud, the fact that nobody comes running fills him with confidence. He is definitely wanting to avoid a repeat of what happened at the baker’s the week before.

He goes straight for the huge pantry coming off the kitchen and fills his bag with everything he sees. Some of the food inside is stuff that he hadn’t realized he’d missed a lot from the palace until that moment, and he stuffs it eagerly into his bag. A great majority of what he sees is foreign to him, being Earth Kingdom cuisine, but he adds it in anyway.

Zuko is back out the window and over the wall without a single incident. He starts walking back towards the village when suddenly the ground drops out from beneath his feet.

He lands down in a cave with his legs taking the brunt of the impact. Zuko staggers slightly as he struggles to get his balance and looks up to survey where he had-

A large wet nose pokes at his stomach and he startles violently. Surrounding him from all sides are huge dark creatures - badgermoles, Zuko recognizes them suddenly from books he had read in the Royal library in the Fire Nation.

‘Stealing food?’ A voice calls out. ‘How rude.’ Zuko swings to face the source of the sound and is surprised to see a short girl, dressed in finery, making her way towards him. The badgermoles part to either side as she walks forward and stops a metre from Zuko. From the close distance, Zuko has a good view of her face. The sun beams down through the hole above him and makes her dull, white eyes shine. Dull, white…

‘You’re blind.’ He says abruptly.

‘And you’re a thief.’

Zuko glances up at the sky as if to say, ‘Agni, give me strength,’ and then turns back to the girl. He speaks slowly so she can understand. ‘Look kid, I don’t want any trouble so if you’ll just let me on my wa-‘

He is suddenly aware of the fact he cannot move his feet.

‘I’m blind,’ the girl drawls and raises her hand higher to make the rock encasing his feet spread all the way to his knees. ‘Not stupid.’

Panicking slightly now, Zuko grabs one of his dao swords in his free hand. ‘I need this food, I have people depending on me that could die without me. You have to let me go!’

The girl chuckles. ‘Relax, hot head. I’m not going to get you in trouble – you’re the single most interesting thing that has happened to all year! Do you know how boring it is to treated like you’re completely helpless all the time. I mean, you wouldn’t, but take my word for it.’

‘I don’t get where you’re going with this.’ Zuko says cautiously.

‘You’re interesting, my life’s boring. So I’m going to let you go, but only if you promise to come back.’

‘I promise.’ Zuko says readily, having absolutely no intention of returning.

‘Did you know that through the vibrations I feel in the earth, I can tell when people are lying to me? So unless you want to get thrown in the dungeons beneath my house, you better mean it when you say you’re going to come back.’ The rock grows to cover his whole bottom half and makes Zuko panic just enough for him to agree.

‘I’ll see you at the same spot you jumped the wall, this time tomorrow.’ The rock retreats back into the earth at his feet and he feels himself slowly rising upwards towards the hole.

‘I’m Toph, by the way.’ The girl says from below him.

‘Zuko.’ He tells her, just before the gap closes and he finds himself standing right where he had been before. The encounter had been less than a minute long, but felt strangely longer.

∞

Zuko hadn’t thought he was going to come back the next day, but for some reason, he did.

And then he came the day after.

And the day after that.

Toph was sarcastic and rude, but she was also funny and interesting. They spend a lot of their time practicing Earthbending after Zuko figured out how to tell her that he was one without technically lying.

‘You’re so good at Earthbending,’ he had said on the second day whilst watching Toph practice. ‘I’m trash at it.’

‘You’re an Earthbender?’

‘A very bad one.’ He’d said, which was technically true. He lifted a loose stone of the ground and dropped it over Toph’s head. The girl had redirected it to the floor with ease.

He’d also managed to convince her that his complete inability to shape Earth was all down to his complete trashness at the element and she spent a whole heap of the time they spent together insulting him on that fact.

But despite that, he found that his affinity for air made him rather talented at not only defending himself, but launching counter attacks by turning his opponent’s attack against them. He was already feeling pretty confident in his ability to land some earnings from the upcoming Earth Rumble Tournament, based on his occasional wins against Toph. (the girl was an Azula-level prodigy, occasional wins was all he could ask for)

‘Hey Toph,’ he says, still lying down in the same spot he had landed after she had thrown a boulder at him.

‘What? You ready to get pummeled again?’ The ground beneath him shakes threateningly.

‘No, no! I think that’s enough bending for today. I was actually going to ask if you would want to come meet my friend, Dumpling.’

‘Who the hell is called Dumpling? That is the single most stupid thing I’ve heard come out of your mouth in a while, and you’re pretty stupid.’

Zuko flushes red. ‘Its good name.’ He mumbles.

‘Whatever, I don’t have to be back for another thirty minutes so let’s go meet this Dumpling.’

∞

The walk through the village and out to Dumpling takes fifteen minutes in itself, but, as Zuko assures Toph, the way back will be much quicker. Zuko leads her to a spot right outside the cave before stopping.

Toph’s feet shuffle nervously in the dirt. ‘What on earth is in that cave? Zuko, maybe we shouldn-‘

Dumpling comes hurtling out of the cave at full speed and barrels straight towards the pair, her six paws pounding the ground.

Zuko laughs at the look on Toph’s face as Dumpling comes right up and licks her full in the face.

‘Toph – meet Dumpling, Dumpling – meet Toph!’

Clearly unimpressed by the enthusiastic greeting she has just been given, Toph erects a wall to separate her from the bison. ‘That.’ she seethes, ‘Was. Disgusting.’

‘She likes you.’

‘What even is she? And you named it Dumpling? Dumpling!?’

‘She’s an air bison, y’know, like, one of the extinct ones.’

Toph huffs. ‘Of course she is. Anways, I’d better get going, don’t want to be late..’

Zuko runs to catch up with her. ‘Wait a sec Toph! I’ve got a much faster way.’

∞

There is not a single thing, Toph has discovered, that she hates more than flying.

‘How much fun is this?’ Zuko calls out, apparently oblivious to her suffering. ‘I hope you’re comfortable back there!’ Or maybe, Toph thinks, fully aware of her situation and enjoying it.

‘I hate you.’ Toph grits out, but her voice is muffled by the fur in her mouth.

‘Sorry!’ Zuko says chirpily. ‘Didn’t quite catch that!’

She swears into Dumpling’s fur and braces herself as she lifts up her head for just long enough to scream obscenities at Zuko before burying her face back down.

‘I’m sorry you feel that way!’ Is that – laughter? – that Toph hears. To think she had ever liked this boy. ‘Don’t worry, we’re nearly there. We just have to land first, you might want to hold on tight because this could be a bit of a steep ride down.’

And with that casual warning, the bison curves down and hurtles at an almost vertical angle, straight down to the area outside the Beifong house. Toph screams and grips at the fur desperately to stop her from flying of the back.

Dumpling draws up abruptly, metres from the ground and lands with a soft thump on the grass. Top groans loudly and rolls straight off the side of the bison and lands face down on the ground. She doesn’t move.

‘You right there?’ Zuko slides easily off the side of Dumpling and stares down at the unmoving girl.

‘Leave me alone.’ She mumbles. ‘I’m never going to go anywhere with you ever again.’

He hits her with a rock. ‘Ow!’ She huffs.

‘You’re going to take that back when you hear what I’ve got to say.’

‘No, I’m not.’

‘Next week, you’re going to sneak out and meet me here and we’re going to go into the village… where the Earth Rumble Tournament is being held… and we’re going to win it.’

Toph grunts, interested but not quite willing to show it. ‘I’ll come. But come back tomorrow, I have to go die in a hole.’

Zuko watches, amused, as she sinks slowly into the Earth and is transported, he assumes, back to her bedroom.

‘Come one Dumps,’ he hops back onto the bison, hoping nobody had spotted the great white creature as it had flown it, and urges her up into the sky. ‘We’ve gotta get some practice in so we can take home that cash prize next week.’

∞

Toph meets Zuko outside at the organized time and they creep over into the village together. The streets are shadowed in darkness, but Toph doesn’t care and Zuko is used to it, so they make their way in relative confidence down to the Pit.

Pre Agni Kai Zuko wouldn’t have batted an eye at the amount required for entry into the qualification rounds, but a lot had changed since then. The little he had, slightly under what was required, had been acquired in its entirety through various small thefts. The whole way down he had been planning out what he would do should he be denied access to the event but he should not have worried, as Toph took in the price and simply chucked one of her bracelets at the thick man collecting entry cash.

‘I think you’ll find it payment for the both of us,’ she says, narrowing her eyes as if to almost invite conflict.

‘Oh, yes, yes. It is quite enough, though I must wonder at what a little girl could be wanting at a place like this.’

Toph rolls her eyes. ‘First place. Now, where do we go?’

The man chuckles. ‘Right through that door over there.’ He points over to a side door leading off the main entry tunnel that Zuko had never noticed before.

‘Cheers mate.’ Toph calls, imitating the man’s deep accent. The man scowls as the mockery but leaves them to walk by and in through the doorway.

They emerge out into a narrow corridor where a wrinkled old lady lies in wait to have them write their names on scraps of paper which are to be put into a large stone bowl. ‘Ring names.’ She squawks as she hands them the paper and a pencil.

Toph stuffs her slip in Zuko’s hands for him to write. ‘The Blind Bandit,’ she dictates.

‘That’s good,’ Zuko admits. ‘All of mine are rubbish.’

‘Throw them at me.’

‘Uhhh, Sword man?’

She makes a noise of disgust. ‘That is trash. Any others?’

‘The Air Bison.’

‘Tell me you’re not serious.’

‘This is hard, okay!’ Zuko stops himself from telling her that those two had been some of the better ideas he’d thrown around with Dumpling on the ride over. ‘Dumpling thought they were great.’

‘Dumpling doesn’t know any better.’

Zuko scowls. ‘You give me a name then, if you’re so good at it.’

She pauses a moment. ‘Do you have that stupid mask you like to wear?’

His hand strays to the bag at his hip. ‘Yeah? What about it?’

‘What did you say that it was again?’

‘The Blue Spirit.’ They’d been over the story of the mask a few days ago when Zuko mentioned it and Toph revealed that she had never heard the tale before. (‘They’re peasant tales, do I look like a peasant?’ Zuko had struggled to stop himself from divulging the fact that when he had first heard the tale he had most certainly not been a peasant either.)

‘The Blue Spirit!’ She says triumphantly. ‘Write that down.’

‘Its not bad…’ Zuko admits. He writes it down and adds it to bowl. The name is also an excuse to hide his big ugly burn, which Zuko is grateful for.

‘Now,’ Toph says with a  grin. ‘Lets go win this thing.’ She hooks her arm around Zuko’s and powers down the corridor eagerly.

The lady coughs behind them. ‘Its that way for competitors,’ she says, pointing in the opposite direction. Toph turns and scowls at the lady.

‘Could’ve told us that before.’ She sniffs.

‘There’s a sign.’ Zuko looks and sure enough, there is a big sign with a big arrow pointing in the other direction.

‘Zuko,’ Toph hisses in his ear. ‘What is the point of having working eyes if you’re going to be so damn blind.’

‘I resent that tone, young lady.’ He hisses back.

She stamps painfully hard down on his foot and stalks forward down towards the arena, leaving Zuko to limp hurriedly to catch up.

∞

Zuko is confident that every single person in the arena is currently underestimating Toph, and hopefully, himself as well. They stand in a circle, facing outwards at the crowd who felt like turning up to the qualifiers, and Zuko is overwhelmingly conscious of the size difference between him and the man next to him. It doesn’t not help in the least that the man next to the first guy is even bigger. 

His stream of fearful thoughts is interrupted as the host emerges from the side door holding the big grey bowl of names. ‘Ladies! Gentlemen!’ He calls. ‘The first match of the day will beeeeeeeeee!’

He sticks a hand into the slips and draws two out. ‘Pebbles!’ A relatively skinny man steps out from the circle, his hands the size of plates. Zuko wouldn’t be too upset if this was the guy he was facing, but is more grateful than not when the next name called is not his own. ‘The Blind Bandit!’

Toph steps out from the circle and is met with little applause. ‘Go back home, little girl!’, he hears someone in the audience shout. Zuko rolls his eyes. They would all be eating their words when Toph beat the crap out of everyone in the room.

Sure enough, minutes later, ‘Pebbles’ is lying groaning on the ground after being downed by a few casual flicks of Toph’s hands. ‘That girl is crazy,’ one of the competitors near Zuko mumbles as a few shocked claps ring out across the arena. ‘I swear – if I get slammed by a girl…’

More matches are played out before Zuko and though most are horrifically one sided and quick, there are occasional matches against two well matched players. After those matches finally finish up, the loser is sometimes asked to remain and kept competing instead of being immediately booted out. Just over half of the people trying out will get in, so as soon as you win at least one game you’re pretty safe.

Zuko’s name is the next to be called out and he ascends nervously up to the ring. His hands fidget with the clunky mask covering his face as he waits for his opponent.

He is depressed, though not surprised, to see that ‘Hunkman’ is a giant of a man. At the sight, Zuko can’t help but wonder how on earth he fit through the doorway.

‘Take your positions, lads.’

Then he can’t help but wonder why the hell he thought this was a good idea. He wasn’t even an earthbender, how could he possibly hope to survive, let alone win the tournament?

Hunkman cracks his knuckles and rolls his shoulders out in what Zuko imagines to be a tactic to make his opponents feel threatened. It kind of works.

‘Alright,’ the host says. ‘Have at it then.’

Zuko, who had been expecting the classic, ‘three, two, one’ is caught completely off guard. He barely manages to dodge the rock that is thrown straight at his head, and only that happens by the grace of his light feet.

He is much more prepared when the second rock comes his way, and he is able to catch it in a net of air which catapults it straight back at Hunkman. It smashes straight into the man, but he doesn’t seem to be bothered in the least. He just chucks another rock his way and the pattern continues.

‘Pathetic!’ He hears Toph call out. ‘I’m blind and I’m still offended by the sight of this lacklustre match!’

Zuko grits his teeth and deflects yet another rock. Toph was right, this was pathetic… and also going nowhere. He needed to change tactics soon or he and Hunkman could be stuck repeating the same sequence for the rest of the night.

He thinks quickly, which is hard to do with rocks flying at you from every angle, and comes up with something kind of decent. It’s a trash plan, but better than nothing.

The next a rock hurtles at him, Zuko simply places it down at his feet. And the next time, and the time after that. He soon has amasses about ten rocks and, after deflecting one more quickly, calls them all to his command. The effort it takes is draining, so much so that he is unable to catch the next rock flying at him and it catches him in the shoulder, forcing him to drop half of the rocks.

Hunkman has seen what Zuko is doing and quickly trying to gather a heap of his own rocks to use as defence. It is this attempt at protecting himself that turns out to be his downfall, as he is so distracted that he doesn’t quite comprehend that Zuko has released his rocks until there is one slamming into his face. As Zuko had hoped, all the rocks hitting him at the one time is what finally throws him out of the ring.

He grins madly at Toph who shoots him a sarcastic thumbs up. ‘Took you long enough,’ she mouths, but he can see the slight lift at the corner of her mouth that makes him feel ridiculously proud of himself. It’s a strange feeling.

Chapter Text

Toph is dragged away for the whole of the next day to attend a tea party, so Zuko is forced to practice alone. He’s realized that the only sort of attacking he’ll be doing is counterattacking, so spends the whole day throwing rocks in different directions around the island.

He meets Toph in the tunnels running below the town around sunset.

‘You’re late.’ Toph complains as he rushes over to meet her.

‘You were early!’ He replies back, well aware that he had spent what was probably a little too much time giving Dumpling a goodbye scratch.

He’s glad that he has someone by his side, because Zuko can’t help but feel nervous as they walk down into the arena and assemble to the side of the main stage. There is a certain feeling to it that reminds him of a ten year old Zuko making his way into the Firelord’s private quarters. He is on the other side of the world and his Father still haunts his every move. What would Ozai say if he knew his son was competing in an Earth bending tournament in an underground (probably illegal) fighting ring. Probably something like, ‘I don’t have a son’.

The host wastes no time introducing the matches, there are a lot to get through, after all. Toph, of course, downs her first opponent easily. Zuko is able to mirror her actions and progresses to the second round, though with considerably less ease. He had been matched against a heavily built woman called ‘the Mountain’, who had a thankfully similar style to the Hunkman’s. This meant that Zuko was able to enact the same tactic of turning his opponent’s attacks against them, but earnt a lot more bruises for his efforts as the Mountain apparently understood the concept of movement more than the Hunkman had.

He grumbles miserably to Toph about the pain, but she is unimpressed.

‘Its your own fault for being so trash at earthbending.’

‘Hey!’

‘Its true.’ Pipes up the man on the other side of Toph. ‘That wasn’t very good.’

Toph slaps him heartily on the back and glares at Zuko as if to say, ‘See? What did I say?’

‘Oh, shut up.’ Zuko snarks back, and seeing Toph open her mouth adds, ‘both of you!’

His next opponent uses an annoyingly unique tactic that favours speed attacks over the pure brute force that he had encountered previously. However, as what was probably a result of being an airbender, Zuko was very light on his feet. What the arena’s crowd thought when he jumped ten metres into the air, he does not know, but hopes that the action can be explained away by earthbending.

And thus, the ‘Tigermonkey man’ is defeated with a swift blow to the head after Zuko blinds him with dusty air, leaps over his head and smacks him with a rock. Toph looks vaguely impressed.

‘Never seen that tactic before,’ she says when he sits back down. Zuko can’t tell if she’s being sarcastic (most likely, it is Toph after all) or not and takes the praise regardless.

The original 32 contestants are now whittled down to 8, which means Zuko only has to beat one more person to earn a cash payout.

His match comes right after Toph’s and is against, to Zuko’s amusement, ‘The Airbender’. The lanky man is dressed in what Zuko guesses are supposed to be Airbender robes, but are actually, completely inaccurate. Agni knew that he had spent enough time looking through scrolls of Airbenders in his search for the Avatar, and then again at the Temple when he’d been bored, to be able to tell the difference.

Zuko had been watching the man’s previous games and knew that he liked using dust particles (hence the ‘Airbender’) to blind his opponent before coming in with a brute force attack. It had been by imitating the man’s tactic that Zuko had defeated Tigermonkey man, so now he’d just have to see if he could beat the Airbender at his own game.

The Airbender goes for dust tactic immediately. Dust swirls around Zuko in big, blinding sheets. People who had lost previously to the Airbender had gone down in a fit of coughing, so Zuko made sure he kept his airways free by manipulating the flow of air around him. He dives to the right quickly and just avoids the boulder that cuts through the dust and spears into the spot where Zuko had been before.

As soon as it passes overhead, he leaps back up to take control of the dust with the Airbender momentarily distracted by the effort launching the boulder took. This time, instead of focusing the dust around his opponent, Zuko drags the whole pit under the haze. The crowd makes a noise, whether from amazement or annoyance, he cannot tell.

The Airbender tries to banish the dust, but as soon as he returns some to the ground, Zuko just bends it straight back up.

Zuko himself is unable to see anything as well, but he has a plan for it.

A few nights before, he had finally got around to asking Toph the question that had been plaguing him forever. ‘How do you see?’ He had said.

Toph raises an eyebrow in response and answers drily, ‘I don’t.’

‘You know what I mean!’

‘I really don’t.’

‘Oh you do!’ Zuko says. ‘I mean, how do you know where everything is, even though you’re blind?’

‘Well, I’m the best Earthbender to have ever existed – I see through the earth. If its on the ground or made of dirt, I can see it. Easy as that.’

Her answer has made Zuko wonder, if she could see through the earth, could he see through the air?

Zuko focuses as hard as he can, trying desperately to pinpoint the Airbender amid the haze. (He’s all too aware that Toph’s natural connection to her element was something he could never match, but even a hint of her skill would have the world trembling at his feet)

A faint pull at his gut turns his hands to the right, the effort makes him woozy and sends a sharp pain through his skull, but he is still well enough to send a loose boulder crashing straight towards what he hoped was the Airbender.

He hears the triumphant thwack as the boulder strikes home, and then a thump as the man’s body falls down onto the ground. Zuko lowers the dust dramatically, and is met with smatterings of applause. Its slightly tentative, as the crowd have no real idea what went on under the dust, but there is an unconscious man lying in front of them and that is a clear indication that applause is deserved.

‘How’d you spot him with all that dust circling round? I thought that sorta thing was real hard for you working eyeball people.’ Toph asks when he returns to the bench.

‘I used your wacky earth eyes thing.’ Zuko tells her, with more than a hint of satisfaction.

‘You so did not.’

‘Yeah I did!’ He says. ‘But my head hurts like it just got ran through by a pack of ostrich horses. How do you do it all the time?’

‘Because I’m better than you dummy.’

Zuko doesn’t watch the last match of the round – he’s too busy cradling his aching head, but Toph gives running commentary, so its not like he misses very much. (‘What an idiot! And this guy calls himself a pro. I swear, if he’s a pro then so is my Aunt bloody Baa!’)

The host steps up to into the arena and shakes around the bowl. There are only four slips of paper left so there’s no real need to do so, but the man is evidentially fond of theatrics.

He plucks out the first slip, ‘And the first match of the fourth round will be… The Blind Bandit!’ Next to him, Toph cracks her knuckles ominously and Zuko prays that the name on the slip the host has just picked out isn’t-

‘Versus the Blue Spirit!’

Toph laughs loudly. ‘You’re so doomed,’ she says as she pulls Zuko up to the arena beside her. ‘But don’t worry, I’ll go easy on you, wouldn’t want to ruin the pretty face under the mask.’

‘Gee Toph,’ Zuko mutters, ‘you’re too kind.’

They take their places opposite each other and Zuko is reminded of the practice fights he and Toph had fought over the last couple of days. If the scores from those were anything to go by, she had this match pretty much in the bag.

Toph is the most skilled Earthbender Zuko has ever seen. She is connected to the earth in a way that Zuko would never be able to achieve. The way she manipulates earth – its crazy. With a flick of her wrist Zuko is catapulted straight into the air and the ground beneath him thrusts upwards and launches him into the air.

Its only because she had tried this movie on Zuko before that he is able to stop himself from being thrown straight out of the ring and into the crowd. He lands softly on his feet, but as soon as he does, Toph has him pinned down again. The only way for him to stay where she can’t get him is to keep up in the air, but he can only do this for seconds at a time and is bombarded immediately upon returning to the ground. Up in the air he tries to hit Toph, but she bats the feeble hits away easily and returns the favour, except with an even bigger rock that nearly takes his head off.

‘Toph!’ He shouts as he comes close to losing it yet again, ‘You almost killed me!’

‘Who’s Toph?’ She pelts another rock his way. ‘I’m the Blind Bandit!’

‘Sorry!’ Zuko dodges again and swings his head to the side to narrowly avoiding the incoming rock. He starts to turn back around and jumps again into the air. ‘Blind Bandit, please don’t kill me-‘

Something hard cracks against his mask and everything goes black.

∞

When he finally comes around Toph is leaning against the wall beside him, tossing a rock between her hands. Zuko groans as he sits up, ‘Where am I?’ he murmurs.

Toph pushes her rock back down into the floor and get to her feet. Coins jangle nosily in the bag at her hip as she moves. ‘Where they put you when you get knocked out to wait for you to wake up.

C’mon loser.’ The earth rises underneath him and rocky hands force to him to stand. ‘Let’s gooooooo.’

He wobbles on unsteady legs and steadies himself against the wall. He closes his eyes – ‘One moment… okay. Let’s go.’

Zuko is dragged out into the familiar hallway and down to where they came in. Toph pauses in front of the lady at the desk and shoves Zuko at her. ‘Blue Spirit.’ She says. The woman looks lazily over at Toph.

‘And?’

‘His prize?’

‘Ohhh,’ the woman checks a list in front of her. ‘Yep, Blue Spirit.’ She reaches behind her into the wall and hands the small bag to Zuko. ‘Your prize.’

Zuko takes it from her and murmurs his thanks. The bag feels heavy in his grasp. ‘We did it.’ He whispers to Toph, still staring at bag in shock.

She rolls her eyes. ‘Yes we did numptie, now lets go!’

∞

Something feels different when Zuko wakes up the next day. He confident that it doesn’t stem from all the food he and Toph had bought the previous night, its more like his whole world has been suddenly turned on its head.

It’s a sensation that is hauntingly familiar.

(‘Banished? Uncle- I can’t be banished! Father-‘)

Two years have passed since then, Zuko can feel it in his bones. The Prince of the Fire Nation has been banished from the Fire Nation for exactly one year and he is no closer, probably further away, to going back. He isn’t yet sure if he even wants to go back. (He wants to go home. But even he doesn’t know where that is.)

When he left his uncle on the Wani he had done so with the abstract mission of ‘finding himself’, but the only finding he’s done is find a baby air bison. He’s completed his uncle’s objective, but made no progress on his own.

He wanders out to the cliff, swings his legs over the lip and looks out at the ocean where the Wani had sailed months earlier. Something needed to change, he couldn’t stay at the Temple forever. Couldn’t hide from the rest of his life forever. He wasn’t ready to make any big life changing decisions yet, that could wait, but he also couldn’t remain where he was.

He would have to leave. Today.

∞

Zuko spends the entire morning packing his bags. He had thought it would be quick – he hadn’t bought a heap of things in the first place, but finds himself wasting away the day harvesting his meagre garden and gathering up the seedlings that were yet to grow fully but he could use later. He packs everything with obsessive care into his bags and drags them outside to where Dumpling waits.

He spends another hour or so scouring the Temple to try and find the room with the air bison saddles that he remembers from his initial days at the Temple. When he finally finds it, the only vaguely intact saddle is riddled with holes and fraying at the edges, but its all he has so he is forced to make do with the lacklustre quality.

Dumpling is dubious of the saddle at first, but after Zuko bribes her with apples she allows Zuko to put it on her and load on his bags. He’s a little worried she won’t be able to cope with the additional weight, but the bison is nearly full grown (to his knowledge) and a lot stronger than she had been when Zuko had first found her.

He considers flying off into the horizon immediately for a moment, but he can’t bring himself to do it and touches down outside the Beifong’s late in the afternoon. The earth sucks him down immediately and, he and Dumpling are transported down into the tunnels below.

‘Why’d you bring Dumpling over?’ She says immediately. ‘Because you’ve got me all wrong if you think I’m going near that beast ever again.’

‘Uh,’ Zuko struggled for words. ‘Well that’s good then. Because I’m – uh – leaving and Dumpling is coming with me.’

The ground shakes under his feet. ‘You’re what?’

‘Uh, leaving. I’m going. Away. From here.’

‘Why?’ Toph exclaims. ‘This was great, this is great! We’re champions here, why would you want to leave it behind?’ And me, her unsaid words hang heavy in the air between them, why would you leave me alone? When you know you’re the only one I have?

‘Look, Toph, I’m sorry. I just need to do some things, work some stuff out – work myself out.’

She’s still frowning, but the ground stills.

‘Oh Toph, no!’ He says, ‘Don’t cry.’

She sniffs angrily and wipes her eyes quickly. ‘I’m not,’ she says. ‘Why would I? I don’t care.’

Zuko wonders if Toph can tell when she, herself, is lying.

‘Well, I’ll miss you.’

Toph’s hands clench and then release. ‘Come here,’ she murmurs.

‘What?’

She repeats it, louder this time. ‘Come here.’

Zuko smiles as he realises what’s happening. He walks forward and leans into the hug, holding the small girl close to her chest. ‘I’ll come back one day.’ He says and hopes that he’s telling the truth.

Toph pulls back and punches him in the chest. He stumbles back. ‘Ow! What was that for?’

She doesn’t answer as she’s disappeared into the ground. Blinking hard to stop the tears, Zuko heads back to Dumpling and starts to rise out of the hole above and out into the sky-

‘Wait!’ Toph is running towards him, something brown clutched in her hand. She thrusts the bag of her last night’s winnings into his hand. ‘Take it, you need it more than I do anyway.’

‘Toph I-‘

‘With you being so poor and everything.’ She adds quickly, as if to downplay her kindness.

He smiles. ‘Thanks. Seriously, I mean it.’

Toph crosses her arms and pretends to look angry. ‘Now get out of here, you’re ruining the view.’

‘I’m coming back!’ He yells as Dumpling lifts up and into the sky.

‘You better!’ Toph yells back. ‘Or I’m coming to you!’

∞

Zuko doesn't even have a plan. He just heads up, up and away... going west over glorious blue seas and cloudy serene skies.

‘How pretty is this!’ He scratches Dumpling’s side and the bison makes a pleased sound. It’s beginning to grow dark though, so he nudges Dumpling towards the direction of the mainland.

Five minutes later, he hears the sound of high whistling and the rhythmic rumble of thunder, growing closer and closer to Zuko.

A storm is growing, and it is gaining.

‘Faster, Dumpling!’ Zuko urges her onwards. ‘You have to go faster!’

Rain pelts down and the thunder grows loudly and closer. The wind is picking up and Zuko feels like he is about to be blown right off Dumpling’s back. He clutches tightly at his bags to make sure they don’t fall loose.

‘Come one Dumpling!’ He screams over the roar, his voice is hoarse and soft, and the wind plucks it straight from his mouth and it is lost over the wind.

He pushes her down towards the sea where the wind is weaker, still pushing her in the direction of the mainland. It is useless, the mainland is another long hour away – the storm will have killed them long before them – but he has to try.

Its hard to open his eyes, they’re so weighted down my the rain, but he manages to force them open and scans the surrounding sea for anything that could save them.

That’s when he spots it. A lump of greens and browns and yellows amidst a sea of blue and grey. Its an island.

Its their salvation.

He urges Dumpling towards it, not bothering to scream and just pulls at her fur to redirect her. He’ll apologise later.

The storm is deafening and the rain is getting so strong that Zuko can’t even see a metre in front of him. He pushes Dumpling lower still to make sure that when they reach the island they don’t sail right over it. He presses his face into Dumpling’s fur for a moment, just to give himself a second to breath. It all changed so quickly, everything was perfect – and then it all went wrong.

Zuko looks back up again and peers into the air in front of him.

Its green! A tree? A forest, even?

He peers forward to try and get a closer look and then-

bang

Dumpling crashes into the tree and Zuko is thrown from the saddle, landing unconscious on the forest floor.

Chapter Text

Zuko comes around a few hours later and finds himself still trapped in darkness. An itchy piece of fabric has been wrapped tight around his eyes and is obscuring his vision. A rope is also wound tight around his waist, securing him to something wooden that is also, annoyingly itchy.

‘Where am I?’ Zuko demands, ‘Who’s there?’

‘Hey Suki!’ A girl calls from somewhere nearby. ‘The Fire Nation boy is awake!’

‘No!’ Zuko splutters, ‘I’m not, I-‘ he pauses, ‘I’m an earthbender!’

He hears footsteps come closer and another voice, still female, replies dryly, ‘Yeah, and that’s why you look exactly like a firebender.’

‘No seriously, I’m an earthbender. Get me out of these ropes and I’ll bend a rock at you.’ He waits a moment and, getting no answer adds, ‘By the way, you haven’t happened to have seen a huge fluffy white animal with an arrow on its forehead?’

‘Its behind you, adorable bugger followed us all the way back to the village.’ The second voice tells him and, as if on cue, a big wet tongue drags its way all over Zuko’s face.

‘Dumpling!’ Zuko murmurs, keeping his mouth shut and mumbling to avoid the spit, ‘Stop!’

He stops complaining when that same tongue dislodges the blindfold and lifts it up and over Zuko’s eyes. Two girls stand before him – dressed in green dresses and with matching white make up. The threatening way they look at Zuko reminds him scarily of Azula and he is suddenly a lot more scared than he had been before. They’re in the middle of a town square and he can see a few villagers start to gather silently. He’s relieved to see the pile of his belongings off to the side of the pole he’s tied to.

‘Cute.’ The first girl says and wanders over to give Dumpling an affectionate scratch.

‘Gross, more like.’ The second girl replies. ‘I wonder what ash and murder tastes like.’ Zuko assumes that this is Suki and is probably the head of whatever weird warrior cult the makeup represented.

‘What do you want from me?’ Zuko asks, feeling even less confident now covered in bison slobber. ‘And again, not from the Fire Nation.’

‘Whatever, its not like you’re much of a threat.’ Suki says and Zuko frowns at the comment. She looks around and spots an old man waddling over. ‘Oh great, you’re here!’

‘So I’m assuming this is the guy that ploughed into our fruit field and that be his beast?’ He huffs, leaning heavily on his cane.

Suki nods. ‘What do you want us to do with him? Says he’s an earthbender so we could get him to help out in the fields.’

‘A very bad earthbender,’ Zuko says quickly. Being forced to do any real earthbending would be a sure fire way to expose him. He wasn’t sure about the island’s view on airbenders, but it was better not to risk it.

‘So we make him work off the damages around the village then,’ Suki suggests.

The man agrees, ‘I’ll let you work that one out Suki, don’t worry, I trust you completely.’

Zuko sees Suki grit her teeth and nod. The man, who Zuko guesses was the village head, wanders back off the way he came. Looking annoyed Suki mumbles something about ‘Shoha and his weekly Pai Sho games’ and ‘imagine being so lazy you make a 15 year old do your job’.

‘Okay,’ Suki walks over to Zuko and unties the rope around his waist. ‘Come with me.’ Zuko rubs thankfully at his wrists – the flaming lockets had begun to get a bit too hot for him, pressed tght against his skin for such an extended time.

‘What are you making me do?’ Zuko demands. ‘And why, might I add, because I didn’t mean to land here, there was just a storm and we-‘

‘Crashed into our fruit trees and wrecked a whole heap of produce? Fa, the lady who manages those fields, started crying when she saw what you did. You’ve lost us a decent portion of the crop and you’re going to help out around the village to make up for it.’ Suki answers. ‘Now come on, we’re only planning of keeping you for a few days so don’t look so upset.’

‘What about Dumpling?’ He asks. Suki looks at him in confusion before following his gaze.

‘You named it Dumpling?’

Zuko crosses his arms. ‘Yeah, I did. And it’s a good name.’

‘Wow.’ Suki deadpans. ‘We actually thought you could be a threat.’

‘I could be a threat if I wanted to be.’

‘That’s the spirit.’ She tells him. ‘Now follow me, Meyan will keep an eye on Dumpling. The sooner you finish making up for all the fruit trees you bashed the better. You and that big fat beast are ruining the landscape.’

She leads Zuko around to the back of one of the houses and hands him an axe. She gestures to the pile of wood. ‘Have at it. I’m just going to be in that building over there training, so no funny business. Come get me when you’re finished.’

Zuko looks from the wood stacked on the floor and back at the axe in hand. ‘What am I supposed to do?’

Suki looks at him in disbelief. ‘Please tell me you know how to chop wood.’

He rolls the axe in his hand hesitantly. ‘I could probably do it, but no, I’ve never done it before.’

She sighs and takes the axe from his hand. ‘Watch me, idiot.’

He can’t help but feel ridiculously stupid as Suki demonstrates the simple action. ‘You got that?’ She asks as she hands the axe back to him. ‘We’re wanting to keep you around for the next few days so it will be awfully inconvenient should you chop off a hand.’

‘No.’ Zuko switches his grip so the axe fits in his hand more comfortably. ‘I’m sure I can handle this. So, you want all of it cut like that?’ He looks dubiously at the piles.

‘Should take up the rest of the day. Someone will come around with food later. Does your beast need anything special?’

‘Dumpling will eat anything you shove at her. She’s always regurgitating something or the other, so I have a suspicion that she may be eating rocks or something when I’m not looking.’

Suki nods at the information. ‘We’ll give her something, maybe not rocks though. I’m going now, so don’t do anything dumb.’

Zuko gives her one of the sarcastic salutes Toph had always been fond of and gets to work.

After only a few minutes he has gained a whole heap of respect for the servants back at the Fire Nation who had chopped the wood for the numerous fires around the Palace.

After half an hour he has gained about ten splinters. He is yet to make a dent in the giant stack of wood.

∞

The sky is dark when Zuko finally finishes up with the last of the wood. He always gets nervous in the dark as his lockets give off a faint light due to the flames, but it looks like nobody noticed. Despite the paranoia that the lockets cause, Zuko does have to be thankful as without their light helping him cut all the wood in the dimming light, he probably would’ve lost a finger. His arms feel about to drop off from the effort chopping the wood took and he feels about to collapse as he makes his way over to the building Suki is in. Well, he hopes she’s still inside. It had been hours since the girl had first left him. A villager had come over in the meantime and handed him a bowl of soup that Suki had instructed to give him, but there had been no sign of the girl herself.

He is relieved to see Dumpling chewing happily on something outside the building and gives her a scratch as he walks up to the door. The build of it is vaguely similar to the ones he was used to back at the Fire Nation, though it is much less ornate, and he opens it easily. Suki isn’t the only one inside when he enters though, there are roughly seven of the makeup wearing girls who don’t even look up from their practice as Zuko walks in. He stands in the doorway, transfixed by the skill evident in their movements.

‘You just gonna stand there looking all night?’ Suki finally says and motions for the girl fighting her to go join someone else.

‘I, um,’ Zuko scratches uncomfortably at his head, ‘your fighting is awesome.’

‘Thanks, I know.’ She pauses. ‘We saw those dual dao swords you have in your bags, you know how to use them or did you just steal them?’

He coughs awkwardly and swallows. ‘I can use them.’

‘Maybe we can spar tomorrow after you finish up with whatever work I figure out for you to do.’ It wasn’t a question, more of a passing thought.

‘Yeah. We could do that.’

‘You’re staying in the practice room anyway to sleep because no one particularly wants you in their house and we don’t dislike you enough to keep you in a barn. The bison is fine outside?’

‘Yeah, she’ll just stay wherever you leave her. Laziest animal I’ve ever met.’

Suki laughs a bit at Zuko’s comment. ‘She was adorable today. Half of the village came by to give her a pat. Even the old lady whose fruit trees you mowed down came by. She started crying again though.’

‘Oh. Sorry.’

‘Don’t be, Fa cries at everything. She cries when the sun sets.’

‘Must get annoying.’

‘It does, yeah.’ Suki turns around to look at the girls behind her. ‘We’re finishing up now, so you may as well come in and set up your bedroll.’

‘Uh, its back with my stuff.’

‘We bought it up, its over there in the corner.’ Zuko glances around and sure enough, the blood red roll is leaning against the far wall. It only takes a few seconds to roll it out, but by the time he is finished most of the warriors have left. Only Suki remains to pack up some of the mats.

‘So, what is this island called? I never asked.’

‘Kyoshi.’ Suki replies. ‘We’re the Kyoshi warriors, if that was what you were going to ask next. There’s a group of us in every village on the island.’

‘No boys allowed?’ Zuko asks.

‘What, trying to join?’ Suki laughs as she pulls something out of the cupboard in the corner.

‘Just wondering.’

Zuko realises it’s a bedroll and watches as she lays it out on the ground on the other side of the room.

‘Avatar Kyoshi, the one who founded us, started the Warriors as a girls only group and its just stayed that way. At least in our village. Apparently some of the other groups around the island let boys join – there’s no real super strict guidelines on the matter. For us its really just the fact that all the boys here are too busy fishing or farming and the ones that aren’t don’t want to wear the uniform.’

She gestures to the outfit she’s in before starting to unbutton the sides to get out of it.

‘You don’t have to keep a watch on me, you know. I’m not about to run away.’

‘I sleep here, you dolt.  Lots of pointy weapons in this room, someone has to look after them.’

Zuko must look unconvinced because Suki adds, ‘Parents died pretty soon after I was born so I can sleep wherever and most nights, I bed down here. Don’t think you’re special. Now go to sleep, you make for boring conversation.’

‘Goodnight.’

‘Loser.’

∞

Its not until Zuko’s fourth day on the island (well, fifth if you count the one where he was unconscious) that he finally finishes the his tasks early enough to spar with Suki.

The other Kyoshi Warriors sit to the side to watch the event take place. They all have this look on their faces that Zuko interprets to mean, ‘You’re going to lose but it will be interesting to watch.’

‘You wanna warm up?’ Suki asks as he swings his dual daos experimentally.

‘No,’ Zuko lies, ‘I’m all good. Ready to go.’

Suki flares her fans. ‘Then let’s go.’

He gulps, and Suki launches straight at him. The girl is a blur of flashing greens and white and he only just manages to dart away to the side. She’s onto him again immediately, her fans whirling down and trying to hit at the pressure points Ty Lee had always been so fond of. Its only the instinct drilled into him from the practice matches he had had with the acrobat that he is able to stop himself from falling victim to the tactic.

Zuko tries to get on the offensive, but Suki’s fans snap shut as soon as he does and the hard wood deflects him every time. The fans flick back open and Suki whirls towards him again. He tries to hold his ground but finds himself slowly being forced back into the wall.

His back hits the wall and he cries out as Suki’s left fan cracks down, distracted by the impact of the wall he had allowed her to get through his defences. His right dao clatters to the ground and his hand hangs limp from the wrist down. Suki goes for the other wrist almost immediately but Zuko manages to fend her off.

‘That hurt,’ he grits out.

She rolls her eyes, ‘Its meant to.’

Zuko thrusts forward suddenly towards Suki and the girl is forced to take a step back to avoid the jab. He hefts the dao experimentally in his grip before jabbing forward again, but this time he uses the forward momentum to flip over Suki’s head in a move he had spent many mornings go over with Ty Lee. Off to the side, one of warriors whistles lowly as Zuko, now on the other side of Suki, points his dao at her neck.

‘I win.’ He says.

He watches as Suki drops her fans and her hands slowly raise in-

Her foot slides back and kicks up into his dao, sending it flying from his grip. She catches it in her hand whilst the other jabs hard at the pressure points, which, in his startled state he has left exposed and he crumples to the floor. Suki presses the dao to his neck. ‘You were saying?’

Zuko laughs, surprising himself at the sound. (He’d just lost… but why did he feel so happy?)

‘That was fun.’

Suki stands and pulls Zuko to his feet. ‘You’re a better fighter than I had you pegged for.’

He smiles and he wobbles unsteadily on his slack legs. ‘Thanks, I think.’

‘It’s a compliment, trust me.’

‘Still, I just got beaten pretty badly.’

Suki hums. ‘You had me there for a moment.’

‘Only because you didn’t know I could flip like that.’

One of the other warriors laughs. ‘You should’ve seen the look on Suki’s face!’

‘It was pretty surprising.’ Suki tells him.

‘But still,’ Zuko says, ‘You’ve gotta show me how you do some of those moves!’

‘You’d want to stay here on the island even longer than you have to?’ Suki asks, raising an eyebrow. ‘I would’ve thought you’d be raring to get out of here after a week of chopping wood and dragging carts.’

‘I’m starting to warm up to the place.’ He glances out the window to where Dumpling is being crawled all over by children from the villages and adds, ‘And I think Dumpling is to.’

‘There’s be a few things you’d have to do…’

‘Like what?’ He asks, but his mind is already thinking back to the conversation he’d had with Suki on his first night.

Suki doesn’t answer, but nods towards the wall where the warriors have pulled open a cupboard to reveal it to be full of the green uniforms and bottles of the face paint they all wore. ‘You’ll look fantastic,’ she assures him.

‘I don’t know if green is really my colour.’

Suki laughs. ‘Zuko, put on the damned dress.’

Chapter Text

‘You know,’ Suki is leaning lazily against a tree, watching in vague amusement as Zuko struggles to load a heavy branch onto the sled, ‘you’ve never shown us your earthbending.’

Zuko glances around at Suki. ‘Why are you bringing that up now? And shouldn’t you be helping? Its not like I’m required to do these chores anymore.’

‘Just… wondering.’ She throws a stick at the pile Zuko has amassed. ‘And there, consider yourself helped.’

He rolls his eyes. ‘Thanks.’

‘So, earthbending…’ Suki starts again. ‘Look, I wouldn’t rat you out if you actually aren’t an-‘ She breaks off with a cry as a sharp rock hits her in the shoulder.

Zuko lifts another one and suspends it in the air between them. ‘Nope, I’m an earthbender, just a super bad one.’

He laughs and propels the rock towards her. ‘Now quit being lazy and help me out here. I can’t drag this back alone!’ Suki throws the rock back at him, but she still smiles as she comes over to help pull.

‘You’d be able to if you just tried harder in the strength sessions.’

Zuko frowns. ‘I try! Don’t you see me afterwards, flopping around like a dying unagi?’

‘You flatter yourself if you think I pay that much attention to you.’ Suki grins, ‘but that is a pretty apt description.’

He and Dumpling had been on Kyoshi Island for a few weeks now and Zuko was beginning to wonder if it could be a full time arrangement. The children in the village worshipped the bison, Zuko enjoyed training with the Kyoshi warriors and his daily flights over the beach with Dumpling (more often than not, there would be a few others in the saddle with them. If it wasn’t Suki or another warrior, it was a couple of the obsessed children who had drawn up a schedule for who got to go) were some of the most glorious moments of his life.

Yes, he thinks, he could get used to this life.

At that moment he is wearing plain Earth Kingdom clothes that Suki had given him after complaining about the state of the ones he’d bought with him. She didn’t mention the fact that they, along with the red items also in his bag, were of obvious Fire Nation make. Suki had donned casual wear as well, forgoing the usual uniform of the Kyoshi Warriors. On days that Zuko was patrolling he’d wear the uniform and makeup, but he needed help doing the makeup so it wasn’t something he could just wear for the hell of it. Suki however, was very fond of the uniform and so the fact she was in casual was something out of the ordinary.

‘Do we have training tonight?’ Zuko asks. He liked the training, but much preferred the nights where they instead got together to ear sugary buns and practice sparring against different types of weapons. (Fans were great, but Zuko was very fond of his dual dao.)

‘No, just the sparring.’ Suki answers. ‘Fanon has been practicing with her battle axe so I’ll be interested to see how that works out.’

‘She got me to spar with her yesterday in the morning. She’s scary good for someone who’s self-taught and only started a few weeks ago.’

‘You use fans?’

Zuko nods and Suki snorts. ‘Well you’re still absolute rubbish with fans so it makes sense that she’d be beating you. I’m more interested to see how she does against someone more competent.’

‘Ha ha, very funny.’ He replies. ‘Are we having the buns again tonight or something else?’

‘Nope, it’s the buns again.’ She sounds vaguely disappointed at the repetition, but Zuko has seen her guzzle ten in under a minute so knows that she is probably the one who made the decision. ‘Oh, and Geze is bringing some of her dad’s fish that we can bake.’

‘Might throw Dumpling one, she’s a sucker for any type of fish.’

Suki hums in agreement. ‘We still are yet to find out who took a bite out of Shaonung’s catch, you may want to make sure that Dumpling stays innocent of that particular crime, wouldn’t want you to be getting in anymore trouble, now, would we?’

‘She would never do such a thing.’ Zuko laughs. ‘She’s a perfect saint.’

Zuko was also getting used to having someone to talk to (Toph had been great but he really hadn’t spend a whole heap of time with her). Him and Suki still slept together in the training room and she insisted on helping him out with his fanwork everyday. (‘If I have to fight beside someone, you better bet that I’ll be making sure that they’re at least halfway competent.’) Though Zuko would be the last to admit it, the one on one session, though exhausting, were actually quite fun.

Sometimes he wondered about how his Uncle was going and thought about when (and if) he would finally return to the Wani. He couldn’t really just spend the rest of his life in the Earth Kingdom, banished or not he was still a prince of the Fire Nation. And besides, from what Zuko had gleaned from the occasional merchants that visited Kyoshi, the war was getting closer every single day. No matter how much he wanted to try, there was no running from it.

‘I’ve been thinking of experimenting with throwing knives,’ Suki tells him and Zuko is jolted from his thoughts.

He laughs, ‘Surely you have enough ways to kill someone already.’ One day Zuko would have to pick a side, outright oppose his father or crawl back to the Wani and keep pretending.

‘As if you could ever have to many.’ She scoffs.

But he could wait a little longer.

∞

The trek back to the village takes a little over half and hour hauling all the wood, and they are sweaty and gross by the time the tops of the houses come into view.

‘Oh thank god.’ Suki huffs. ‘Next time, I don’t care if all the children in the world want to climb on top of your flying donkey, we are bringing it along.’

‘I doubt she wants to haul wood either.’ Zuko says to Suki, but he’s slightly distracted by a hauntingly familiar smell permeating the air around him.

‘Do you smell that?’ He asks her, but she doesn’t reply.

‘Someone’s screaming.’ She says suddenly. Zuko can’t hear it (he only has one ear that actually works properly, so its not all that weird) but he’s just realised what the smell is.

‘Fire.’ He drops the rope.

Suki drops hers as well. ‘Leave the wood. We need to go.’

 There’s a group of people already assembled outside the burning bakery when Suki and Zuko sprint over.

‘What’s happened!’ Suki demands, trying to take control of the chaos surrounding her.

A woman, who Zuko recognizes as the blacksmith looks over from where she’s comforting a distraught baker. ‘We don’t know, Gene was outside talking with me and suddenly the building is in flames. I’ve gotten people running for water, but this building is probably gone.’

Suki nods, glancing frantically around as she does. ‘Oh, okay. Um, me and Zuko will go grab some more, do what you can here.’

They start running down to the shore when a sudden scream makes them turn back around. Suki pales as she see where it has come from. ‘Oh no.’ A young boy is hanging out the second story window.

‘Do I jump!’ He yells down, looking terrified.

‘Its too far.’ Suki whispers and Zuko starts running. ‘Zuko! What are you doing!’

He pushes his way past the frantic villagers and dives through the doorway. Air curls beneath his fingers and he pushes the flame to either side. He knows as soon as he does it that his bending will be horrifyingly obvious to the villagers behind him, but his thoughts aren’t on that.

The bakery was somewhere Zuko had been before, so he manages to find the stairway up despite the suffocating smoke pressing in from all sides that, despite all his self taught airbending skills, he is struggling to keep from choking him. The fire is less intense on the second level, but Zuko’s eyes are burning so it takes him a moment to locate the terrified child. He walks right up to the boy and slings him over his shoulder. His knees buckle under the weight but he manages to stay upright.

‘Hold on,’ Zuko chokes out. The fire is silent, but its still deafening to Zuko. Noise blares in his ears and his heart is thumping so loudly it might as well jump out of his chest. But amidst it all the boy hears and his iron grip wraps around Zuko’s waist. Both hands free now, Zuko tries to create an air bubble around him and the boy as he runs through the house.

Everything is hot and intense and there are flames everywhere – flames hot like the one that seared his face that wrecked his future that ruined all his work that… that got him to where he was today.

Zuko tumbles out the door and gasps at the air, his throat scorched. He sets the boy down on the ground – he’s passed out from the smoke, Zuko’s air bubble didn’t work as well as he would have liked – and looks up into the eyes of the villagers.

‘Firebender.’ He hears one whisper.

‘You’re a firebender.’ Louder, this time. He doesn’t say anything to defend himself, how could he? What could he possibly say? ‘No, sorry, I’m an airbender. Y’know, the ones that were all murdered by the Fire Nation and if you were caught harbouring you would all die especially seeing as hey, what’s this? I’m the Prince of the Fire Nation!’ Zuko can’t say anything, can only stand there and let all the villagers come to the same assumption. He hears the sound of metal leaving its pouch, smoke is still pouring out the door – why is nobody stopping it? Someone put out the fire or it will burn burn burn burn…

He runs.

Dumpling is still outside the training room when he sprints up and he shoos the children away hurriedly. He’ll have time to be surprised that they had all remained despite all the yelling going on down in the village centre, albeit a good few hundred metres away, once he’s in the air. He rushes in through the door to hastily stuff all his possessions back into his bags. In the weeks that he’d been at the island he’d grown complacent, too comfortable. Had he forgotten who he was? Had he really thought it would last any longer than it had? His life seemed like a never ending loop of lies that always ended up blowing up in his face. (Why did everything always end in flames?)

Nobody from the village has come running after him, there was a building currently on fire so it made sense, but the look on their faces when he’d emerged from the bakery urged him faster. (Get away, you’re not wanted here, not wanted anywhere)

He straps the bags onto Dumplings saddle that is still on from the morning’s ride and clambers on. With a pang, he realises that he has left his fans and uniform inside the cupboard, but it’s too late to run back inside, he needs to go.

‘Lets go Dumpling.’ Zuko murmurs and the bison grunts lazily. Her feet start to lift off the ground when Suki’s voice makes them both freeze.

‘Zuko!’ She yells. ‘Don’t you dare leave!’

He twists around in his seat to look at her. ‘I have to, you saw how they all looked at me.’

‘I don’t understand Zuko, you’re an earthbender! You didn’t manipulate fire, it must have been a trick of the light, you can’t manipulate two elements!’ Zuko can see her mind whirring. ‘You, you’re the Avatar!’

Zuko nearly falls out of the saddle. ‘The Avatar? You think I’m the Avatar?’

‘Well, ye-‘

‘Sorry, Suki. But I’m definitely not the Avatar. If I was my life would be a whole lot easier… or a heap more complicated, I don’t know because, again, not the Avatar..’

She’s silent for a moment, not quite knowing what to say next. ‘You’re really leaving? We could talk to the others, you saved Maohe’s life just then!’

‘Can you really tell me that they’ll all be able to ever look at me without thinking that I’m about to burn them to crisp?’

‘You’re being unreasonable, Zuko!’ Suki rubs quickly at her eyes. ‘Of course it won’t go back to how it was before, you’re a firebender! But who’s to say we can’t still have fun? Its just, you’re a great friend and I’ve only known you for a few weeks!’

‘I’m going to miss you too, and I’ll promise I’ll come back one day. But right now I don’t think Kyoshi is the place I want to be. Its been great, but right now I just need somewhere different.’

Suki nods and glances over her shoulder to the village centre in the distance. ‘You better get going then, you big fat firebending earthbending dork.’

‘I’m coming back.’ He tells her again. The conversation seems eerily familiar to his two previous farewells.

‘Or I’ll be coming after you.’ Suki unhooks her fans from her belt and thrusts them up at him. ‘Take these. You need to keep up your practice and I know you didn’t take yours.’

Zuko takes the fans. ‘Suki, I-‘

‘Oh shut up. Just go, and don’t you dare forget me.’

He smiles as he lifts off the ground, he can see people from the village starting to trickle out in their direction and he is in no rush to incriminate Suki for daring to be friends with him. ‘I could never.’

Zuko tucks the fans into his belt and Dumpling kicks off into the sky. He could always go back and visit Toph, he supposes, but it was becoming a bit of pain to pretend to earthbend using air, and there was a whole world out there that he had never seen…

‘Whatever way you want, Dumpling.’ He tells her. ‘Its your turn to choose.’ And the freedom to choose your own way was a wonderful thing.

∞

Dumpling drops down into a lush forest as the sun begins to drop below the horizon. It was the furthest Dumpling had ever flown, the flight had lasted for hours. Zuko had remained awake the entire time, looking out at the clouds above and the villages below in quiet appreciation, but as soon as they hit the ground he is ready to roll straight into his bedroll.

Common sense stops him from falling asleep right where he lands (they’re in Earth Kingdom territory and he is pretty obviously Fire Nation, there was no knowing if one crazed villager bent on revenge might take the opportunity to bury a sword in his side, even despite the fact that Zuko hadn’t slept deeply since his mother had disappeared) and he takes an extra few minutes to scout out an okay looking cave. He lights it up with a burst of flame to check there is no other inhabitants before guiding Dumpling into the cave. The bison flops down against the wall and Zuko realizes that to retrieve his bedroll he needs to move Dumpling over and get to her left side.

He looks the bison over, already asleep, and sighs. Zuko lifts up one of her legs and slides under it to bury himself in her warm fur. A cricket chirps somewhere in the forest outside and Zuko is slowly lulled to sleep by the rhythmic beat of Dumpling’s huge heart.

∞

The next morning Zuko goes to see if he can find some water. He had neglected to take any with him from Kyoshi and was beginning to feel a bit parched. Dumpling ambles alongside him and they find a fast running stream coursing through rocks not too far from the cave. Zuko squats down by the side to fill up one of the bottles when a wet nose shoves him forward into the water.

‘Dumpling!’ He splutters, soaked from head to toe. Wet hair droops down over his eyes and he pushes it away, momentarily distracted by its length.

The bison makes a noise that could be interpreted as a laugh and trundles in after him, splashing him even more. Zuko smiles despite himself and sits back in the water to watch the sight. His fingers swirl in the water absentmindedly as he watches Dumpling frolic.

Suddenly, he’s struck with a thought and lifts his hand back out of the water. When he was younger he’d made sure that his lockets wouldn’t go out in water by manipulating the air to keep the water out. (After Azula had pushed him in the turtleduck pond and he had had to go to a mortifying training session without the ability to produce flame he’d made it a priority) So Zuko knew that he could in a way manipulate water with air, but just how far could he push it? He could firebend successfully and manipulate earth to a certain extent, so who was to say the same couldn’t be done for water?

Zuko breathes deep and pushes his hands forward to create a constant flow of air directed into the water. He tried to imagine a sort of tornado of air that could funnel the water upwards into the sky and his hands moved with the thought. Suddenly, the water moves.

It spirals upwards with the funnel, twirling and spiraling up and up and up… and then it falls, Zuko’s concentration broken by his surprise.

His thoughts flash back to the look on Suki’s face as she’d told him that he was the Avatar and he had been completely caught out by the theory. But really, he was manipulating all four elements, wasn’t he? It’s a cruel irony, Zuko thinks, that has soon as he had abandoned his quest for Avatar, he’d turned into some twisted version of the figure. Maybe it was a sign that he would forever be haunted by the choices he has made.

Deep in thought, Zuko somehow doesn’t hear the light rustle of leaves as dark figure creep through the trees above him. All he hears in the thump of feet as they hit the ground and a voice saying, ‘Surrender, or I’ll run you through.’

The pointed end of the hooked sword pressing into his throat leaves no room for resistance.

Chapter Text

Zuko slowly raises his hands above his head, all too conscious of the fact that one abrupt motion could kill him. Dumpling, bless her, is somehow completely unaware of the situation.

‘Don’t hurt the bison,’ Zuko says quietly, ‘she’s harmless.’

The swordsman doesn’t acknowledge the statement. ‘So you’re a waterbender, huh. Don’t get many of those around here.’ He’s whispering, though for what reason eludes Zuko.

‘Yep.’ Zuko says, annoyed to have gotten himself trapped in this lie again. ‘Waterbender, that’s me.’

‘So, how do you feel about joining the Freedom Fighters? Your Fire Nation looks and that big nasty burn scar tell me you might me sympathetic of our cause.’ The sword tip presses a little harder against his throat. ‘You could help us a lot if you join kid, and I dread to imagine what might happen to you should you take the other option.’

Zuko swallows slowly. ‘No, I think I can help you.’

‘No parents?’

He pauses. ‘No parents.’ He says finally. ‘Just me and Dumpling.’

The sword is lifted from his throat and the figure wades around to offer him a hand. ‘I’m Jet.’

‘Zuko.’

‘Well Zuko,’ he says with a smile. He’s speaking louder now, so the people up in the trees can hear. ‘Welcome to the Freedom Fighters.’

∞

Zuko stares up at the maze of wooden platforms and bridges spanning the treetops overhead. ‘Are they strong enough for Dumpling?’

Jet looks up contemplatively. ‘Platforms should be fine, just keep away from the bridges.’

∞

By the time Zuko and Dumpling land on the platform, Jet has disappeared and a girl named Smellerbee shows him to his bunk. He’s fully aware that he and Dumpling had every opportunity to fly away, but its not like he has anything more interesting to do with his time, so he stays.

‘You’re below me,’ she tells him, ‘so don’t be annoying.’

Zuko nods in agreement, but a quick sniff of the cramped room has him privately deciding to sleep outside with Dumpling.

∞

Meals are served in a large room that is at the intersection of three main bridges and is cooked by scrawny boy named Steamhopper. Zuko has several questions regarding the safety of cooking food in a wooden structure, but the food is good so he doesn’t voice these worries. Somehow, Steamhopper has already arranged for Dumpling’s meals by the time dinner rolls around and directs Zuko to the bison’s large mound of vegetables.

‘Since air bison are vegetarian I put out an array of-‘

Zuko pauses. ‘Air bison are what now?’

‘Vegetarian?’ Steamhopper says nervously. ‘You know, they eat no meat.’

‘No, she definitely eats meat.’

‘Sorry then, I’ll try and add some into her meals for tomorrow, I was just going off stories my mum used to tell me about the Air Nomads. She always said that they swore to never hurt another being and their mounts would do the same.’

Zuko’s mind flashes back to the burnt bison manual and the ruined beyond being readable pages on what he had guessed was nutrition. He quickly takes a glance into Dumpling’s mouth to look at her teeth. He curses himself for not checking this earlier as they are quite glaringly, flat.

‘Is it bad for a herbivore to eat meat?’ Zuko asks Steamhopper nervously.

‘I’m not really an animal guy, but I’d imagine it would just make them a bit sick and they’d probably throw it back up pretty soon after.’

Suddenly remembering all the times Dumpling would vomit after eating meals and how he’d just assumed that she’d eaten something weird, Zuko curses himself for not realizing earlier.

‘You know Steamhopper,’ he says, ‘maybe we’ll stick to the all veg diet for Dumpling.’

∞

The next morning Zuko wakes up early. (Though not a firebender, years in the Fire Nation has him up with the sun) He takes Dumpling for a flight over the forest to try to clear his head.

It doesn’t work. It feels swampy and cloudy and thick with indecision. The feeling is a sharp contrast to the clear choice outlined for him on that upside down morning only days earlier and is, he thinks, the result of not knowing what to do next.

He flies for an hour and by the end, he still doesn’t know what to do.

So he stays.

‘I thought maybe that you’d taken off when I saw you gone.’ Jet remarks when Zuko slinks into the meal hall.

‘No.’ Zuko replies. ‘I’ve got nowhere to fly off to.’ Maybe next time the anniversary of his banishment rolls around he’ll head north easterly towards Ba Sing Se. His uncle had always said it was beautiful.

∞

Jet stands up on one of the tables as the plates are being packed away. ‘Night scouts reported new group of Firebenders camped out near the easterly fringe. Combat group can expect to leave in five minutes. Grab your stuff and regroup back here, rest of you, clear off.’

Conversation grow louder at the prospect of a fight, but not nearly loud enough for the occasion to be very rare. Zuko imagines that it must happen at least every couple of days by the way people are talking about it.

Obviously noting that Zuko is looking a bit lost amongst the moving crowd, Jet yells out, ‘Zuko, that’s you. They’re positioned by a river so you won’t need much.’ Zuko nods tightly in reply and follows Smellerbee out the door.

∞

The reality of what he is doing doesn’t sink in until Jet’s final finger goes down.

Here is the Prince of the Fire Nation; and he is up in a tree and about to attack his own subjects. It makes him feel sick. What kind of Prince was he? No wonder his Father had banished him.

Smellerbee drops down from the branch and pulls Zuko with her as she jumps. He lands with a thud on the ground, clearly not prepared for the landing. Jet made sure that Zuko was in the tree closest to the river though, so the ground he lands on his soft with its proximity to the water.

His head feels noisy and crowded and full – how could he do this? Fight against his own countrymen?

Fighting rages around him, flames swirling and children – because that’s what the Freedom Fighters were, small and weak and innocent and too young to be - crying out because it burns.

The sickening smell of burning flesh permeates the air. He knows it well. The memory of it remains strong even though the event itself exists in tatters in his mind.

Smellerbee screams his name. ‘Get up and help!’

Her voice is young and shrill and terrified – this was their combat squad? – but it snaps him out of his thoughts like a slap to the face.

He staggers to his feet and feels the heat of the fire on his face. (one for the other side?) Quickly, he fumbles for the water and funnels it up as fast as he can. His hasty work sprays over the clearing and though doesn’t put out anything entirely, the flames start to flicker and weaken.

Its useless though, for whatever flames he manages to douse there will be five more burning stronger than the last. Pretend as he might, he’s not a waterbender and his control just isn’t enough to assist… but water isn’t the only element he can manipulate...

He funnels water up and sprays it over a flame… and squashes the air around three near it.

Water sprays over a fire tearing up a tree… and the flame heading straight towards Smellerbee miraculously peters out just before it reaches her.

A fire is put out just before it reaches Longshot’s vantage point… and one of the Freedom Fighter’s swords twists to the side just before it hits the Fire Nation soldier, concussing instead of killing.

But it’s not enough. The whole plan was stupid to begin with. There is no way the Freedom Fighters could ever win against such experienced combatants.

‘You’ve gotta tell Jet to withdraw!’ He yells to Smellerbee amid the chaos.

She looks momentarily torn, but she does as Zuko says and scampers over to the boy. Zuko, though mainly otherwise distracted, watches to see her make it safely over and sees as Jet’s eyes narrow in his direction.

He’s scared that Jet won’t call the withdraw, but he does and the shrill bird whistle echoes out over the clearing.

The reaction is immediate as they all disengage and head back to the trees. Some stop to heave a body over their shoulder, and Zuko tries to cover them as best he can before making his own hasty exit.

He throws up as soon as they get a safe distance away.

∞

‘What kind of bullshit was that?’ Zuko demands as soon as they get back to the treetop hideout. ‘You sent us in, outnumbered, against a highly skilled division! What were you thinking?’

Jet doesn’t reply immediately, instead chews slowly on his infuriating stalk of hay.

‘Those… monsters … they tear down our homes and slaughter our families Zuko? Don’t you remember that? We need to take them down, whatever it takes.’

‘You just killed five children and seriously injured at least five more! You pretend that you’re some savior but really, you’re the real murderer.’

Jet wipes quickly at his eyes and Zuko is all too aware that he’s still a child himself. ‘Don’t you dare call me that.’

‘Then start thinking your decisions over and make sure that your revenge doesn’t get other people killed in the process!’

‘Help me then Zuko.’ Jet replies. ‘You seem to know what you’re talking about, help me lead the Freedom Fighters.’

Zuko remains silent, too surprised to refuse.

∞

The message arrives on the Wani’s third day in port. Iroh is in town, seated at the gem of a tea shop that he had discovered tucked away in a packed alleyway. His jasmine tea (with a delectable cake to the side) has just been placed before him when Teruko arrives.

 ‘General,’ the crewman comes straight up to the table, ‘we have received word from Admiral Zhao that he would like to stop by the ship to greet the Prince and discuss his progress on finding the Avatar.’

Iroh takes a slow sip of his tea.

It had been several months since he had left his nephew at the Airbender Island and the boy was constantly on his mind. He knew, of course, that telling Zuko to leave was the right choice, but the care he held for the boy had him worrying nonstop over his wellbeing. Despite this, each morning he couldn’t help but wonder if it would be the day he and Zuko would finally reunite. He found himself paying closer attention to the crowds around him as well, glancing under cowls of cloaks in the hopes that one face would bear the familiar markings of the boy who’d become like a son to the old man. Each time he did so (and saw no scar) he had to remind himself that no matter what happened, he would see the boy again.  

In the passing months the Wani crew had circled up to the Northern Water Tribes (though didn’t actually enter the Nation’s waters as Iroh was reluctant to risk being ambushed by a stray patrol) and were now coming back down to sail by the Southern Tribes.

‘Tell Genji to send a hawk to Zhao informing him of our departure to the Southern Tribes and that we are unable to meet with him for at least another few weeks.’

‘So I take it we will not be staying in town for the planned two weeks.’ Teruko says.

‘No.’ Iroh confirms, taking another long sip of his tea. He was in no mood to see the General and doubted he ever would be, but he may as well put it off as long as possible. In any case, he needed time to come up with an excuse for as to why the Prince wasn’t on the Prince’s ship. ‘We leave tomorrow morning.’

Teruko nods and turns away into the bustling crowd and heads in the direction of the Wani, leaving Iroh to finish his tea in peace.

∞

‘We go in at night and surround the clearing with the jelly. I’ll head in with Longshot and Jet, and we’ll lay it out and light it.’

Over the past few months Zuko had taken the time to carve out mini figurines to represent different Freedom Fighters, and he positions them now on the map in front of him. He’s planning to leave a gap in the circle so the soldiers can easily escape, but he’d been pulling stunts like that for months now and Jet was still none the wiser. But still, using ‘the enemy’ instead of ‘the firebenders’ made it easier for him to forget exactly who he was planning against.

Jet claps him on the soldier. ‘Man, Zuko. Remind me again what we’d do without you.’

‘Die.’ He replies. The kids around him chuckle at his words, but Jet remains silent. Even now, Jet still hasn’t forgiven Zuko for calling him a murderer. It doesn’t matter too much to Zuko though, because that was exactly was he’d been.

He moves the Longshot figurine to indicate his position and sets it down on a slight vantage point from where his arrows could do the most damage. The figurines remind him all too much of his uncle’s battle figures that he’d sometimes let Zuko play with.

He can’t help but wonder what Iroh was doing at that moment. Was he still waiting for Zuko to return? Did he wake up everyday and walk up onto the ship deck and think maybe today could be the day his nephew returns, arm in arm with his new friend?

Zuko imagines dropping down on the deck with Dumpling, and wonders what the reaction of his uncle would be. His heart aches at the thought, but despite the pain, he still isn’t ready to go back.

He just hopes his uncle is doing okay without him.

∞

When the plume of smoke is spotted straight ahead, Iroh has no choice but to investigate.

A single boy, his face covered in traditional water tribe face paint, wielding crude instruments that caused no harm to the well-trained crew, meets the Wani when it pulls in to shore. He is quickly dispatched to the side. (though attempts several more attacks immediately after)

‘Calm yourself, young man.’ Iroh tells him as he steps sideways to avoid the flying stick and to the side again to avoid its return. ‘We mean your village no harm, we simply want to know if you’ve seen the Avatar.’

A girl answers, bearing a striking resemblance to the boy, now that his paint is mostly rubbed away. ‘No. We haven’t’.’’ She answers too quickly for it to be the truth, but now Iroh has asked he and his crew can return to their course and await Zuko’s return.

‘Thankyou, you’ve been most helpful. Now, me and my crew will be going-‘

A high-pitched scream interrupts him and Iroh’s eyes flick straight to the young boy, dressed in airbender robes, hurtling down towards him on the back of an otter penguin.

Iroh sighs softly. The Avatar had been missing for 100 years. Why now did he have to return?

Right when Zuko was finally beginning to accept himself and that his father had sent him on an impossible quest, that impossible quest had just become possible.

∞

‘Don’t you guys think that rescue was just a little too easy?’ Sokka asks when they’re a safe distance from the firebender’s ship, cruising comfortably through the icy air.

‘Nah,’ Aang says, ‘they probably just haven’t met an Airbender before.’

∞

Teruko again comes to Iroh with a message from the Admiral Zhao. ‘The admiral requests the presence of the Prince Zuko and yourself in his chambers tonight.’

Iroh senses the question in his words; how could Zuko report to the Admiral’s chambers when he wasn’t even onboard the ship? ‘Tell the Admiral that the Prince is still poorly, but I would be honoured to meet with him.’

As he watches Teruko walk away, and remembers the Admiral’s smiling face at the Agni Kai years ago, he is again thankful that Zuko is not with him.

∞

‘Everyone probably just abandoned it when the Fire Nation came.’ Aang says casually to Sokka and Katara as they walk through the Temple. He phrases it as if he is answering their question, but they all know that he’s just trying to reassure himself. Aang shakes his head, trying to get out any of the bad thoughts he’d been having and smiles widely. ‘Chase me!’

With his airbender powers Aang is of course faster and leaves Sokka and Katara lagging far behind. Aware of his slow companions, Aang stops occasionally to lead them through the maze of corridors and pathways that Sokka would never have been able to find on his own.

Suddenly Aang disappears downwards and Sokka climbs hastily after him, going faster as he hears the sounds of sobbing.

When he emerges from the rows of ivy he realizes what has upset Aang.

Skeletons, still loosely covered in tattered Firebender uniforms, surround the edges of the room, having been pushed to the side by the skeleton in the middle, dressed in Airbender robes with a big pendant around his neck.

‘Aang…’ He says softly. ‘I’m so, so, sorry.’

∞

Zuko glances back at Jet, ‘Ready?’

The boy spits out his straw and tightens the grip on his swords. ‘Ready.’

And the clearing goes up in flames.

∞

When Katara comes to there is a sharp blade at her throat, held by a scary looking girl dressed in green robes and a full face of white makeup.

Where did you get the bison?’

Chapter Text

‘Appa?’ Katara asks, caught out by the question. ‘He’s Aang’s!’

Aang grins, ‘that’s me – I’m Aang!’

‘Fanon,’ Suki says, her knife still at Katara’s throat, ‘can I get a confirmation on the gender?’

The Warrior standing next to Appa, presumably Fanon, takes a quick look. ‘The girl’s right Suki, this is no Dumpling.’

An annoyed expression flashes across Suki’s face as she withdraws the knife, returning it to a sheath somewhere within the folds of her dress. ‘What do you want with Kyoshi?’

‘This island is named after Kyoshi?’ Aang asks suddenly. ‘I know Kyoshi!’

Suki looks unconvinced. ‘Sure, arrow kid. You know the Avatar that’s been dead for 400 years. Try again.’

‘No really. I know her, because I’m the Avatar!’

‘Impossible.’ Suki says flatly. ‘Come one girls, throw these idiots back to the Unagi.’

The Warriors begin to advance, fans splayed out threateningly.

‘C’mon Aang,’ Katara hisses, ‘do some airbending…’

Aang bursts from the ropes binding him in a flurry of wind and rises high up, causing the gathered warriors to gasp.

‘He really is the Avatar!’ An old man shouts as Aang slowly drifts back down to the ground.

Aang looks just about ready to pull out his marble trick and bathe in the admiration, when Suki interrupts.

‘If you’re the Avatar, show us another element.’ She had gasped with the rest at Aang’s jump, but unlike the others, she wasn’t convinced that he really was the Avatar.

‘Go on,’ she goads. ‘Water, earth or fire. You take your pick, Avatar.’

Aang scratches awkwardly at the back of his head. ‘About that- I’m still learning the other elements, so Air is all I can do at the moment.’ Suki looks just about ready to throw him back to the Unagi so he adds quickly, ‘but we are heading to the Northern Water Tribe now so I can learn water.’

There’s a moment of awkward silence as Suki tries to decide what to do.

Aang shuffles nervously as Suki murmurs to the old man. He fidgets quickly in his pockets. ‘Does anyone want to see a marble trick?’

∞

‘Dessert for breakfast!’ Aang exclaims as the platters are set before him. ‘Man, these people sure know how to treat an Avatar!’

‘Not everyone thinks you’re the Avatar, Aang.’ Katara reminds him, but her comment goes unnoticed by Aang who is busy tucking into the meal.

He waves a chopstick in the air, ‘We get this lovely room, they’re repainting Kyoshi’s statue for me and Appa is being looked af-‘

Suddenly the door bangs open and the gaggle of girls who had been caring for Appa stumble in. ‘Aaangeeeee!’ One whines. ‘Can we go for a ride on Appaaaa?’

Aang looks mournfully down at all the food he still hasn’t gotten to and then back to the girl’s eager grins. ‘Sure! Though Appa can’t take all of you at once, so maybe I’ll just do you five on the left first…’

There’s a sound of protest from the back of the group. ‘Not fair! I was next on the Dumpling list before Zuko left, so it should be me.’

‘That’s true,’ another pipes up. ‘We should really do it by the list.’

Aang glances over at Katara, but the girl has no answers either. ‘Uh, what list?’ He asks. ‘And who’s this Dumpling everyone keeps talking about?’

The villager who has come in to set down yet another dish replies. ‘A few months back a boy, named Zuko, came to the village with an animal much like yours-‘

‘An air bison?’

‘I think so.’ The woman replies, though doesn’t seem to sure about her knowledge of the breed. ‘He claimed to be an earthbender and we were taken in by the lie, attributing his Fire Nation features and the burn across his face as proof of the violence he had faced by Fire Nation soldiers. Everyone thought he was a nice boy, that he wished Kyoshi no harm. Even the Warriors were taken in by his ruse, the boy joined their ranks for the later part of his stay-‘

Sokka interrupts, ‘A boy joined that group of girls?’

‘Yes he did.’ The villager tells him. ‘That entire group got very attached to him, especially Suki, the leader. She was especially upset when he left.’

‘Why did he leave?’ Aang pesters. ‘Do you know where he went?’

‘The boy was a Firebender, he fled from the village after he was discovered and we have no idea where he headed. Last we saw the bison was flying North.’

‘Did you hear that Katara? There are more air bison in the world, maybe that means there are still airbenders as well!’

Sokka, who had previously been lost in thought pipes up at this comment from Aang. ‘Dude’s a firebender. He probably nabbed the bison when he was off committing genocide.’

‘Sokka!’ Katara hisses, but the damage is done and Aang’s face falls immediately.

‘Y’know,’ he says, ‘I might go take some of the girls on a ride with Appa. I’ll see you guys later.’

Aang leaves quickly, followed by the arguing girls and the villager, leaving Katara and Sokka alone in the room.

‘Do you want any food, Sokka?’ Katara offers. ‘They’ve bought us so much.’

Sokka shakes his head as he gets to his feet. ‘I’m good thanks. I- I’ve got somewhere to go.’

On his way out he grabs several buns and Katara rolls her eyes.

‘Where are you going anyway-‘ But Sokka is already out the door and Katara is left alone to watch as the door shudders as it is swung back across. She sighs softly to herself and pockets another bun before heading out the door herself to start gathering supplies.

∞

‘Anything else you want to teach us?’ Suki laughs as Sokka lands heavily on the ground of the studio.

‘By Kyoshi,’ Fanon laughs. ‘He’s even worse than Zuko was.’

∞

It wasn’t often that Zuko found himself in hand-to-hand combat against a Firebender as that was usually the sort of thing he tried to avoid. When he blew up entire clearings or funneled water to help out the people battling amidst raging fires, there was a certain detachment from the reality of what he was doing; killing his own citizens.

But after what he’d just seen? His hands itched to get into the fight himself, be the one to enact justice against those who’d committed such horrible things.

Jet would probably skin him alive afterwards, for going so blatantly against what the plan had been, but Zuko couldn’t just stand by and watch as the Fire Nation soldiers murdered the old man were he stood, and all for the crime of accidentally stumbling into the clearing. (and anyway, Zuko was the one who made the plan in the first place, so technically as long as he was the one doing it, it’s all part of the plan)

As Zuko blocks another swing at his side, he glances over at the man he’s risking his life to protect. The poor bugger looks completely out of it, gazing wistfully into the distance as the clash of steal and hiss of fire swallows the competing sounds of the forest. That same total ignorance of his surroundings is probably what led the idiot to wander into a Fire Nation encampment in the first place, Zuko thinks.

A voice rings out high above him.

Jet.

‘Get out of there Zuko!’ He warns. (What he actually says is a mix of code Zuko had made then figure out after someone had yelled out their plan one too many times.) ‘We’re about to blow this whole encampment!’

Zuko plunges his dao into the chest of his current opponent and parries strikes from another as he darts over to the old man and starts to pull him away and into the trees.

He gets out not a moment too soon, crossing the edge of the clearing mere seconds before the whole clearing goes up in flames. There’s a familiar pang in his heart as he hears the screams of burning men ring out, but the feeling is quickly forgotten as Zuko turns his attention to the man.

He curses angrily as he sees the crude arrow sticking out of his unmoving chest. Tears threaten to fall and he wipes hastily at his own eyes.

The feeling of rage that overcomes him in that moment makes him see how Jet could’ve been pushed to be the way he was… but also, at the same time, reminds Zuko of just how sick and twisted Jet had the capacity to be – to be able to see so much suffering and pain, and still be able to justify enacting the same violence on others.

∞

‘Normally we don’t teach outsiders. Let alone boys.’ Suki says, looking down upon Sokka, kneeling on the ground before her. Somewhere behind her someone coughs loudly, making a noise that sounds a little like ‘Zuko’. Suki glares quickly over her shoulder before turning back to Sokka to answer his plea for an exception to be made.

‘But you have to follow all of our traditions.’ Suki tells him.

‘Of course!’

‘And I mean, all of them.’

…

Sokka stares at the dress that is bought out from a cupboard at his agreeance. ‘Do I really have to wear that?’

A girl laughs. ‘The makeup as well!’

‘Why, do you not want to be taught anymore?’ Suki raises an eyebrow.

‘No!’ Sokka says quickly and grabs the dress off Fanon. ‘It’s just, it’s a bit girly, that’s all. Did that guy Zuko have to wear it?’

Suki frowns. ‘Yeah, he did.’ She says flatly, and Sokka realizes he’s hit a nerve.

‘And damn, he looked good.’ Someone jokes and Suki’s lips twerk up a little, though the same reminiscent look remains.

‘But this isn’t a dress, Sokka.’ Suki tells him after a moment. ‘This is a warrior’s uniform. The gold signifies the honor of a warrior's heart, and the silk threads symbolize the brave blood that flows through their veins. You should be proud to wear it.’

Sokka looks at the dress thoughtfully, suddenly seeing it in a new light. ‘Ok. I look good in everything, so this should be no problem.’

Suki raises an eyebrow at this, but helps him do the makeup all the same.

∞

Admiral Zhao pours Iroh’s tea for him and sets it before the General. Iroh takes a quick sniff, before taking a long sip.

He sets it down. ‘Why did you invite me here Admiral?’

‘I’ve been talking to members of your crew and it sounds as though our Prince found the Avatar… before subsequently – uh – misplacing the fugitive.’

Iroh takes another long sip before replying. ‘And what of it Zhao? It is not your mission to capture the Avatar.’

‘It is now. You will hand over all relevant information regarding the Avatar to me and I will also be transferring half of your crew to my own control.’ There’s a certain drawl to his voice that sets Iroh’s teeth on edge.

‘In light of this, does the Prince have any new orders?’

Zhao smiles, his teeth bared in a sickly grin. ‘The Prince’s orders remain the same. It seems we have a bit of a competition on our hands, doesn’t it General? We’ll see who tracks down the Avatar first.’ He rises from his position on the ground and walks towards the door. He stops just before the exit to look Iroh over. ‘I have no doubt we shall meet again on our travels General. And I do hope the Prince recovers quickly, so I may see him for a nice … chat.’

Iroh hides his grimace with another long sip. ‘Yes, we must all pray that Prince Zuko has a speedy recovery. Have a good day, Admiral.’

∞

‘You’re getting better.’ Suki tells Sokka as he manages to block her strike.

Sokka grins, ‘Thanks,’ and hits back with an easily countered strike at her stomach.

Suki laughs as she twirls sideways to avoid a follow up swing. ‘I guess all that time with Aang must’ve done you some good, you’ve got some real natural talent.’

‘Why don’t you believe he’s the Avatar? He’s the only Airbender seen in a hundred years and there’s been no evidence of another Avatar in any of the other Nations.’ Sokka doesn’t mention the Avatar state that he’d witnessed Aang go into after seeing the corpses of the Airbenders in the secret cave; even he wouldn’t believe it if someone told him that a 12 year old boy with glowing eyes could wreak such damage.

Suki snaps her fan shut at the question and steps back from the fight. ‘You’ve heard about Zuko, right? No doubt one of the townspeople have told you.’

‘Yeah, I know who he was. Apparently you were pretty attached to him.’

There’s a question in Sokka’s comment, but Suki doesn’t seem to pick up on it. ‘So you already know that he was a Firebender then. Well, when he arrived he claimed to be an Earthbender, but never actually bent in front of anyone until the day of the fire. I was the only one that saw it, but I swear on my life he bent both fire and earth.’

‘You said people thought he might’ve been half Fire Nation half Earth. Maybe people can sometimes bend two elements if they have mixed parents?’

This wasn’t possible, and they both knew it. Nobody but the Avatar could bend more than one element, that was just the way it was. But Suki doesn’t have time to argue the statement because at that moment the village chief appears in the doorway.

‘Firebenders!’ He gasps. ‘They’re attacking the island! Girls, come quick.’

‘I’m not a girl-‘ Sokka starts to protest, but quickly follows Suki out the door and into the street.

Already soldiers are pouring into the village centre and flames are beginning to lick up the sides of many of the town’s houses. Amid the screams of the citizens of Kyoshi comes a loud voice calling for the Avatar to reveal himself.

Sokka’s eyes track the voice back to a stoutly built Fire Nation soldier with hideous sideburns and is about to go running towards him when Suki pulls him back. ‘You need to find Aang and get out of here!’

‘What about you?’

‘We’ll hold them off,’ she flicks her fan open in an indication of how she’s planning to go about it. ‘Now go! There’s no time to say goodbye.’

‘What about, ‘I’m sorry’?’

Suki looks urgently at the destruction going on around them but brings her attention back around to Sokka. ‘What do you have to be sorry for?’

‘I treated you like a girl, when I should’ve treated you like a warrior!’

Suki smiles slightly despite the chaos. ‘Sokka, I am a warrior,’ she leans closer and kisses him slowly on the cheek. She pulls back. ‘But I’m also a girl.’

Sokka looks flustered. ‘What about that guy? Zuko?’

She laughs as she gets to her feet, preparing to run into the fight. ‘Zuko? Who gave you that idea, we were just friends.’ She turns away. ‘Now go!’

∞

‘We need to wait, Jet.’ Zuko hisses to the boy next to him. They’ve been waiting up in the treetops for hours, but the below encampment of soldiers is not yet as susceptible to an attack as Zuko would like. ‘Rushing into an attack like this – a bigger than normal group – could turn out bad it you don’t play it well.’

Jet nods stiffly, but looks as if he is about to listen to Zuko’s advice and settle back for a few more hours, when suddenly three foreign looking youths stumble into the clearing.

‘Just wait and listen to what they say!’ Zuko holds Jet back. ‘And besides, you need to signal everyone before you launch down and do something stupid.’

He bristles under Zuko’s restraining grip, but does as told. They lean in further towards the clearing, trying to make out the conversation between the two groups. The foreigners appear to be unknown to the Firebenders – an observation that is confirmed as the Fire Nation soldiers draw their swords.

‘Agni,’ Zuko whispers (hoping Jet doesn’t recognize the distinctly Fire Nation curse) ‘they’re gonna be slaughtered.’

Jet grits his teeth around the piece of hay in his mouth and gestures at Longshot to loose an arrow into the head soldier. ’Not if I have anything to do with it – now c’mon Zuko, this is the distraction we’ve been waiting for!’

From the tree over Longshot notches an arrow to his bow and lets fly, sending the leader to the ground. Jet whistles shrilly and jumps down, leaving no choice but for the rest of the Freedom Fighters to follow, swinging down from the trees in their meagre numbers.

Zuko stays up in the tree tops to swing down to the river before dropping down on the soft dirt. By the time he is down there are already fires raging, and he focuses his attention on dousing those.

The fight is over quickly – Zuko turns away from the river to douse yet another fire and finds the entire squad of soldiers on the ground. Jet gets to introductions straight away.

‘I’m Jet.’ He tells them. ‘That’s Sneers, Longshot, The Dude and Pipsqueak.’

Zuko coughs loudly and Jet rolls his eyes in his direction.

‘And yeah, scarface over there is Zuko. He looks angry, but don’t worry. That’s just his permanent face.’

The Water Tribe boy looks immediately suspicious. ‘You’re the firebender Suki told us about!’

Zuko startles at the mention of Suki. ‘Whah? No- I’m-‘

Jet answers it for him. ‘I know the dude looks like an ashmaker, but he’s actually a waterbender, if you’d believe it. Show ‘em Zuko.’

In his current unsettled state Zuko only manages a slight water tornado lifting a mere metre out of the water, but the shocked look on the face of the Water Tribe girl tells him that he’s been convincing enough.

‘You’re a water bender!’ She exclaims. ‘Maybe you can teach me and Aang a few things!’

‘I’m pretty bad,’ Zuko says hurriedly, ‘you’d probably know more than me.’ As he says it his gaze locks on the third foreigner, who is dressed in hauntingly familiar attire.

‘You’re an Airbender.’ Zuko realizes, horrified.

The boy, Aang, lifts easily of the ground in a display of his skills. ‘Not just an Airbender – I’m the Avatar!’

Zuko feels like he’s about to faint.

Chapter Text

Sokka watches, immediately suspicious, as Zuko pales at Aang’s proclamation. The boy tries to speak but ends up instead just flapping his mouth around in a pretty decent imitation of a fish.

‘I’m just...’ he waves his hand vaguely in the direction that the Freedom Fighters had come from, ‘I’ll see you at base.’

Jet gives him a cursory concerned glance, but doesn’t say anything as Zuko stumbles away.

‘Don’t you think that was a bit weird?’ Sokka says slowly, his eyes still scanning the forest that Zuko had just disappeared into.

‘Look Sokka, I know Zuko’s a bit weird, but he’s got the Freedom Fighter’s best interests at heart. As for,’ Jet gestures lazily at Aang, ‘his reaction to your pal, I don’t where that came from. But look, kid’s got trauma, that’s all I can say.’ Dropping that line of conversation, Jet starts to look eagerly around the clearing. ‘Now, what do you say guys? Let’s get this campsite cleaned up.’

As the Freedom Fighters set about the clearing Sokka makes his away over to Katara and Aang, the conversation he’d had with Suki about how she’d seen ‘Zuko’ manipulate both earth and fire ringing in his ears. ‘I don’t know about you guys, but I’m a bit sus about that Zuko character.’

‘Is this your ‘instincts’ again?’ Katara mocks, one eye glancing over at Jet who is leaning against a tree at the other side of the clearing.

‘I’m serious Katara, I don’t think we should trust these people, especially not that waterbender. What’s a waterbender doing here anyway?’

‘I’m here, aren’t I Sokka? And these guys just saved our lives! You could do to be a little bit more grateful.’

‘Yeah Sokka!’ Aang pipes up. ‘These guys are great!’

Sensing a futile battle Sokka huffs and goes to lean against his own tree, taking care to be as far away from Jet as possible.

∞

‘Hey Jet,’ Zuko says, pulling the boy to the side and into the meal hall. The party had just returned to the base with the foreigners and Zuko was stressed beyond words. He’d spent the time waiting for them to return pacing angrily up and down the various wooden paths, trying to pick apart all the thoughts going through his head. ‘Try not to say anything about Dumpling, yeah? I’ve asked the others and they agree that we should try and be a little bit cautious when dealing with these people.’

‘Yeah, yeah.’ Jet laughs. ‘I won’t say anything, but don’t you think that sometimes you can be a bit too cautious Zuko?’

‘Just don’t say anything, ok?’ Zuko can see the Water Tribe boy’s eyes glancing suspiciously over at him and he feels himself stiffen under the scrutiny.

‘I’ve got you, don’t worry! Though, if this guy is really the Avatar like he says he is, I reckon we have nothing to worry about.’ Jet looks about to return to the group milling outside when he suddenly asks, ‘Why are you walking around like a wet cloth? You’ve hardly said a word since Aang told you he was the Avatar.’

Sorry for not being super chatty Jet, but I’ve just spent the last year trying to come to terms with the fact that my father never loved me and sent me on a wild goose chase only for that same ‘wild goose’ to be later shoved it my face and-

‘Just… surprised, that’s all. Never really thought that the Avatar existed.’ Zuko says finally. ‘He has been gone for 100 years and that’s a lot of time in which the world needed someone to set it straight and nobody showed up.’

‘S’pose that’s true.’ Jet laughs. ‘Wonder what he’s been doing this whole time. Now, are you going to come with us?’

Zuko shakes his head – he’s not ready to be reminded that the Avatar is mere metres away (all he has to do is grab him and run, and he’d be welcomed home back to the Fire Nation; a hero)

‘I reckon I might just spend some time with Dumpling down in the forest, if that’s all right with you.’ Zuko all too often has a tendency to rush into things without thinking about them, but if the past few months has taught him anything, its that taking the time to think things over and being late is always better than rushing in, only to dive headfirst off a cliff. ‘You’re not planning on doing anything at tonight’s gathering, are you?’

‘Nope,’ Jet tells him. ‘Plain old boring summary of what’s happened this week. Feel free to take tomorrow morning’s patrol off as well, I think one of the foreigners might be coming along so we’d have a man extra anyway… you know what? I don’t want to see you for a good few days. You were clearly uncomfortable earlier and I want you to be in the right headspace when you come back.’

Zuko nods, his head still a mess of what ifs. ‘Yeah, I might take you up on that. Though, are you sure that taking a stranger on a patrol is a good idea, y’know, in terms of security?’

‘Trust me, Zuko,’ Jet pats him reassuringly on the shoulder. ‘Despite what you may think, I know what I’m doing.’

∞

‘Hey Sokka, I know you aren’t totally on board with the Freedom Fighter’s cause, but I am really glad you agreed to come on this patrol.’

Sokka nods stiffly. ‘Yeah, you’re welcome.’ He looks around awkwardly. ‘Hey, do you mind if I hop over to that tree over there? It would give me a better view of the path.’ He says, pointing.

‘Go for it.’ Jet says and Sokka immediately takes the chance to leave the boy’s side.

It’s only a few minutes later that Sokka spots a figure trundling down the road. He uses his machete to signal to the others in the trees, but only afterwards gets a clear view of the man.

‘Wait no!’ He hisses over to Jet, ‘He’s just an old man!’

His words fall on deaf ears as Jet descends down from the canopy, quickly followed by the other Freedom Fighters. Sokka slides down as well, but he’s much less used to the maneuver as the others and hits the ground moments later.

He watches, horrified, as the Freedom Fighters start to beat up the old Fire Nation man.

‘Stop!’ Sokka shouts, pushing Jet away from man. ‘What are you doing? He’s not a threat!’

‘He’s Fire Nation, Sokka!’ Jet says, speaking slowly as if to a young child. ‘Have him searched.’

Sokka stands to the side, his protests of the Freedom Fighter’s treatment of the man going on deaf ears.

Pipsqueak piles the man’s possessions into a rough hessian bag and starts to walk away with the Freedom Fighters. Sokka hesitates momentarily to help the old man to his feet and shoot him a regretful glance and goes to catch up with the retreating party.

As he approaches he hears Jet say to the others, ‘Zuko’s away for the moment, but when he returns maybe don’t mention this to him. You know how he doesn’t quite understand the…uh… necessity, of things like this.’

Those surrounding Jet nod compliantly and Sokka suddenly has even more questions about the ‘waterbender’.

∞

Zuko has two options.

To do as his Father would want him to… or to not.

Within those two choices are various other paths, but the big question remains the same.

He thinks of all the people he’s met whose lives have been impacted by the Fire Nation and wonders how he could possibly be complicit in helping such a movement… but wouldn’t he also be doing the right thing if he tried to help all those people from a position from which he might potentially have more influence?

Zuko leans back into Dumpling’s thick fur. ‘What should I do Dumps?’ He murmurs, a strange part of him half expecting an answer.

He waits, stewing in the silence before saying softly, ‘I’d have to leave you behind, of course, if I went back to the Fire Nation. We killed all the dragons, the animals of our own element – there’d be no way my Father would let a native air animal like you live. But I’m sure if I asked Suki or Toph – maybe not Toph – could look after you.’

There’s a moment of silence before Zuko adds; ‘But after everything, would I even be able to do anything to help?’

Zuko had told himself over and over again that his Father didn’t care about him; that the Fire Lord would be pleased if he didn’t return, so why did he still think that he could still have any sway over anything should he return?

He had tried to create change once… and hadn’t had another chance.

‘I guess…’ Zuko says slowly, ‘I’m just going to let them leave.’

He settles more comfortably into Dumpling’s side. ‘Agni Dumpling, what am I doing?’

Was this it? Was that the decision that he’d been running from for so long?

So… what now?

‘I think…’ Zuko turns his gaze to Dumpling’s closed eyes. ‘I’ll just stay here a while.’

∞

‘Now listen, you are not to blow the dam until I give the signal. If the reservoir isn’t full, the Fire Nation troops could survive.’ Sokka watches, horrified, as Jet gives speaks to the Duke and Smellerbee, immediately thankful that he’d taken the chance to follow the group when they had left the treetop base.

‘But what about the people in the town?’ The Duke asks. ‘Won’t they be wiped out as well?’

‘Look Duke,’ Jet places a hand on the boy’s shoulder, ‘that’s the price of ridding this area of the Fire Nation.’ He turns to Longshot, Sokka still not quite believing what he’s hearing. ‘Now don’t blow the dam until I give the signal – got it?’

Longshot nods as the Duke asks tentatively, ‘Aren’t we going to wait for Zuko to get back?’

‘He doesn’t get it,’ Jet says flatly. ‘But when we’re done – then he’ll understand that this was necessary.’

Sokka frowns at the comment, but his thoughts are interrupted by the sudden sound of rustling coming from behind him.

Without further warning he is suddenly jerked backwards by his wolf-tail and a knife held close against his throat.

‘Where do you think you’re going?’ Smellerbee sneers, pressing the knife closer.

Jet, still standing near the edge of the cliff, grins as Smellerbee and Pipsqueak, still holding a part of Sokka’s wolf-tail, drag him over. ‘I’m so glad you decided to join us Sokka!’ Jet says as Smellerbee and Pipsqueak send Sokka to his knees in front of him.

‘I heard your plan to destroy the Earth Kingdom town.’

‘Our plan,’ Jet tells him, ‘is to rid the valley of the Fire Nation.’

‘There are people living there, Jet!’ Sokka pleads. ‘Mothers and fathers and children!’

‘We can’t win without making some sacrifices.’ Jet almost sighs as he gives argument, the tired tone indicting that he has made the same point to someone else many times before.

Sokka points an accusing finger at Jet. ‘You lied to Katara and Aang about the forest fire!’ The conversation they’d had earlier; about how the old man had supposedly been hiding a knife and how the Fire Nation was planning to burn down the forest, floods back immediately, and Sokka can’t help but wonder how many other things Jet might’ve been lying about. He’s suddenly bitter that Katara and Aang hadn’t even taken a moment to listen to his theories about Jet; had they not been so infatuated with him Sokka might not have ended up in his current situation.

‘Because they don’t understand the demands of war, not like you and I do.’

‘I do understand.’ Sokka grits out. ‘I understand that there’s nothing you won’t do to get what you want. You’re not a Freedom Fighter, Jet. You’re a murderer.’

Jet’s eyes flash and his mouth sets in a stubborn line. ‘You don’t know what you’re talking about.’ He hisses. ‘I was hoping you’d have an open mind, but I can see you’ve made your choice.’

Sensing what’s about to happen Sokka tries to make a break for it, but Jet’s hooked swords pin him down before he’s even moved from his position. Pipsqueak comes behind him and forces his hands together to stop him from making any further attempts at escape.

‘I can’t let you warn Katara and Aang.’ Jet says stiffly. ‘Smellerbee, Pipsqueak, take him for a walk; a long walk.’

‘You can’t do this, Jet!’

Jet doesn’t even turn around to face him as he answers, ‘Cheer up, Sokka. We’re going to win a great victory against the Fire Nation today.’

∞

‘Jet, I’m sorry about how Sokka’s been acting.’ Katara says, trying to speed up in an effort to stay level with Jet.

‘No worries,’ Jet smiles, ‘He already apologized.’

∞

‘Come on!’ Smellerbee shoves at Sokka, ‘Move along.’

Sokka bristles under Pipsqueak’s grip. ‘How can you stand by and do nothing while Jet wipes out a whole town?’

‘Hey listen Sok-‘ Pipsqueak starts, but stops immediately when he notices a figure emerging from the bushes up ahead.

‘Zuko!’ He grins, ‘And hey! You bought Dumpling.’

The figure, who Sokka know recognizes as the waterbender from before looks horrified as he turns to face the group.

‘Dumpling?’ Sokka says and Pipsqueak claps a hand over his mouth.

‘Gee, soz Zuko! I forgot that Jet told us not to say anything.’ Pipsqueak says, not even wincing as Sokka bites at the huge hand muffling his attempts at speech.

Zuko doesn’t seem to hear, too busy making obvious gestures to halt (that were probably meant to be subtle) at something in the bush. Too late, the air bison stumbles out into the clear.

‘You liar!’ Sokka yells, Pipsqueak’s hand finally coming away from his mouth as Sokka swings his head wildly to dislodge it, ‘You’re so the guy Suki told us abou-‘

‘What are you guys doing?’ Zuko interrupts, still trying to push the bison back behind the tree line as if nobody had noticed it yet.

‘A scouting mission.’ Smellerbee answers quickly.

Zuko looks unconvinced. ‘Sure, and that’s why Water Tribe is all tied up.’

Sensing an opportunity in the memory of all the times Jet had asked his fellow Fighters not to tell Zuko about every time he did something unsavoury, Sokka blurts out; ‘Jet’s planning to flood the whole town!’

Zuko swears under his breath. ‘That stupid plan? I thought we had thrown that out ages ago.’ He narrows his gaze at Pipsqueak and Smellerbee. ‘And you guys are going along with it?’

‘Sorry Zuko,’ Smellerbee says, ‘but sacrifices need to be made if we want to-‘

‘Oh shut it with that bullshit.’ Zuko looks torn as he stares at the three people in front of him. Two of whom he has known for months and the other a complete stranger.

Sokka watches, transfixed, as Zuko takes a deep breath, and suddenly feels two huge gusts of air blow to either side of him, knocking Smellerbee and Pipsqueak right on top of a hidden trap, sending them swinging straight up into air.

‘You’re an airbender.’ Sokka whispers, shocked. ‘But- what? You were a waterbender a few days ago, and man, Suki said you were and earthbender and a firebender…’ Sokka pauses, making the obvious connection, ‘shit mate, you’re the Avatar!’

‘I’m really not.’ Zuko says. ‘And speak quieter; Smellerbee and Pipsqueak don’t need to hear your whack conspiracies.’

‘Then how do you explain the fact you can bend all four elements?’

‘I’m not going to explain anything, now get on Dumpling.’

Zuko hops onto Dumpling’s back and Sokka follows after a moment’s hesitation. ‘We’re going to need to double back for Appa, your bison is tiny as.’

‘My bison?’ Zuko repeats. ‘You have one as well?’

Sokka claps him on the shoulder, ‘Yep, and it’s got a much better name than yours.’

∞

Zuko watches as all the villagers flood past, between Dumpling and Appa they had already gotten all the children and elderly out, so now it was just the last few stragglers coming through the gates.

‘Hey,’ Sokka comes up behind him. ‘Aang’s going to be over the moon when I tell him there’s another Avatar and another bison as well!’

‘About that.’ Zuko says suddenly. ‘I’d really appreciate if you didn’t tell anyone – including your Avatar – about me. Though again, not an Avatar.’

Sokka looks shocked. ‘Why wouldn’t you want to tell him? He was devastated when he found out about the genocide, this would make him feel so much better about everything.’ Sokka doesn’t continue on to ask Zuko, if not the Avatar, what he could possibly be, and Zuko doesn’t really feel like bringing the topic up himself, so lets it stay unknown to the Water Tribe boy.

Sure Zuko had made up his mind about not hunting the Avatar, but turning around straight away and helping him? ‘There’s a lot you don’t know about me Sokka, so please, just keep quiet about,’ Zuko waves his hands to indicate both himself and Dumpling, ‘everything.’

He sighs. ‘Okay, I won’t say anything. But I do hope that you’ll change your mind one day, and come find us. We don’t exactly do a very good job at masking our trail.’ Sokka glances over at the town, for now intact, but very surely to be devastated in moments.

Zuko smiles slightly. ‘Yeah. One day – maybe.’

Sokka makes to hop on Appa but pauses just before he does. ‘Are you going to stay with the Freedom Fighters?’

‘No.’ The answer comes naturally, without Zuko having to even think about it. ‘This was only ever supposed to be a short stay, and I think Jet’s finally taken it too far.’

‘Where will you go?’

‘I’ve got some people that I would like to check in on.’

‘Suki?’

‘Yeah, her. But there’s someone else I really need to see.’ There’s no invitation for further questions and Sokka doesn’t press.

‘I’ll be seeing you then.’ Sokka hops fully onto the back of the bison.

Zuko lifts a hand in goodbye. ‘You’re heading over to try and find them?’

‘Are you heading back to the base?’

‘Nah,’ Zuko pats the bags on Dumpling’s side. ‘Got all my stuff here.’ He develops a more sombre expression. ‘Goodbye Sokka.’

‘Goodbye Zuko.’

Chapter Text

Zuko leaves a message for Jet with Steamhopper before he leaves, but decides not to wait around to say goodbye in person.

He was done with goodbyes.

Ten minutes north of Gaipan Zuko sets down and takes out an old map. If his Uncle had done as he’d promised Zuko, the Wani should be roughly half way down the west coast of the Earth Kingdom. Factoring in a few delays or favourable winds, Zuko has approximately… the entire west coast to patrol.

‘Better get started then.’ Zuko rolls up the map and puts it back in the bag, feeling a slight spring to his step as he thinks about seeing his Uncle again. He had no plans to stick around on the Wani, but it had been well over a year since he’d left and Zuko was raring to see his Uncle again.

He runs a hand fondly through Dumpling’s fur. ‘He’s going to love you, Dumpling, I already know it.’

∞

Two weeks passed without a single sign of the Wani in any of the ports along the west coast and not a single person reported seeing the old design cruiser either. He started at the town furthest north and worked his way down so the Wani wouldn’t be able to pass without him spotting it first. It took him about two week to work the entire way down before flying right back up to the top to start again.

He was only a few towns in when he noticed something strange at one of the ports.

Taking up most of the port was a huge Fire Nation vessel, and though Fire Nation ships weren’t uncommon, a ship of this size was definitely not as common.

‘What’s going on with the ship?’ Zuko asks one man working in the nearby shipyard. ‘Why is such a huge ship docked in the harbour? Is something going on at the Pohuai Stronghold?’

The grizzled old man raises an eyebrow at Zuko’s questions. ‘Whaddya mean you haven’t heard? Words out that Yuyan archers have got the Avatar of all people locked up in their damned stronghold. Don’t know how it happened or if its even true, but one of them fancy Fire Nation admirals rocked up a few days ago to check it out.’

‘The Avatar?’

‘Aye,’ the man says, ‘if you can believe it.’

Zuko nods slowly, shooting a glance over at the foreboding stronghold in the distance as he does so. He knew he’d said he wasn’t going to help the Avatar, and that still stood; but saving the boy from  what could very likely turn into a lifetime of imprisonment was a little grey zone that Zuko felt pretty confident acting in.

‘Thankyou.’

The old man grins toothlessly. ‘Anytime, kid.’

∞

Before the guards following them can catch up Aang opens up his staff and starts twirling it to propel him upwards.

‘Hold on!’ He shouts at the masked figure in front of him, still facing the guards with his dual daos in hand. Aang starts to lift off the ground and hooks his legs around the figure who still hasn’t turned around. They lift higher upwards, floating over the first wall with the figure deflecting the arrows fired at them with formidable accuracy.

Losing momentum and having exhausted himself in the fight to get out of the stronghold itself, Aang yells out, ‘I can’t keep this up! We’re going down!’

But suddenly, instead of going down, they’re propelled upwards, a strong current coming out of nowhere from somewhere below Aang. It lifts them high up over the second wall and just when Aang feels himself dropping downwards a second gust sends them hurtling over the third and final wall.

They land hard, tumbling to the ground. The masked figure is on is feet immediately, already running for the treeline.

He must’ve sensed that Aang isn’t following because he turns after a few metres. ‘What are you doing? Do you want to be captured?’

The voice is strangely familiar, but Aang couldn’t quite pick it. ‘You’re an airbender! Aren’t you?’

However, Aang never gets a reply as a blunt arrow slams into the side of his head and everything in plunged into darkness.

∞

When he comes around he’s alone in the forest; the masked figure nowhere in sight. Aang shakes his head in an effort to bring his vision back in focus, but there is still no sign of anyone.

He gets to his feet slowly; head pounding, and tries to figure out where he is.

Suddenly he spots the lake to his right and he is reminded of what he’d been doing in the forest in the first place.

Quickly he goes to gather some more of the frogs and makes his way back to the cave, the knowledge that he wasn’t the only airbender left hanging heavy on his mind.

He places a frog in both Katara and Sokka’s mouths and sits back to wait for the remedy to take effect.

‘Aang,’ Sokka warbles, the sound muffled by the frog in his mouth. ‘How was your trip? Did you make any new friends?’

‘No Sokka,’ Aang says. ‘I didn’t.’ The reply, though negative, has a sort of excited tone to it. There was another airbender somewhere out there, and even if Aang has to wait years to find the masked figure, just knowing he isn’t alone is enough to fill him with hope.  

When both of the sibling’s are more coherent Aang tells them what happened, playing down the danger he was in as much as possible as soon as he sees the look of Katara’s face.

‘Do you know what this means?’ Aang says and Katara smiles. ‘I’m not alone anymore.’

She reaches out and touches his arm. ‘You were never alone Aang, not with us here.’

‘I know.’

∞

Mere weeks after Zhao had first commandeered half of the Wani’s crew, he was back once more to take the rest to assist in his siege of the Northern Water Tribe. Along with the demand for crewmembers, Zhao had also told Iroh that he’d be welcome to join the fleet going north, should he wish.

‘The Prince, I’m afraid,’ Zhao had said, ‘due to his Father’s decree is unable to come. However, no such restraint applies to you. Though, I understand with the Prince still…. sick …. you may be hesitant to abandon the boy.’

Iroh was torn for what to do. What if Zuko came looking for him, and he was nowhere to be found? The Wani would have just been starting to make its way down the west coast of the Earth Kingdom according to Zuko’s plan, but should Iroh take up the offer from Zhao he would be nowhere near the Earth Kingdom.

But, on the other hand, Iroh knew there was a reason Zhao was taking a fleet to the Northern Water Tribe. No doubt the Avatar was currently there, trying to learn waterbending from the remaining waterbending masters.

If Iroh didn’t go with Zhao, there would be nobody to stop the captain from getting his hands on not only the last waterbending masters, but the last native airbender as well. Since his failed siege of Ba Sing Se, Iroh had learnt a lot about balance.

He could not let the Avatar fall to the Fire Nation.

‘My apologies, nephew.’ He whispers as Zhao’s guards lead him up the gangplank.

∞

Katara watches, horrified, as the Fire Nation soldiers enter the clearing, Aang still seated cross legged on the ground and fully absorbed in the spirit world. The soldiers flanking the leading man leap forward to face Sokka who is already running forward.

It takes her only moments to get over her initial shock before Katara is leaping into combat against the firebenders as well, her already lethal skills amplified by both the full moon and the proximity to the sacred water. But despite having the advantage, the more numerable and experienced firebenders slowly force her back.

‘Yue!’ She yells. ‘Get Aang on Appa and get him out of here!’

Yue obeys immediately, running for Aang when she suddenly halts in her tracks as she spots something on the other side of the pond. ‘No!’

The Fire Nation leader holds up the bag he had used to scoop Tui out from the pond. He holds a flaming hand up to the bag. ‘I’d stand down if I were you.’

Katara’s mouth sets in a thin line as she drops her hands to her side. ‘Let Tui go.’

Suddenly Aang gasps and his eyes fly open, settling on the scene before him. ‘Tui!’

‘Make another move Avatar and the fish dies.’ The fire in the leader’s hand moves closer to the bag.

Aang’s mouth opens and closes as he tries to work out what to say, still trying to adjust to the situation he has been thrust into. ‘Destroying the moon won't hurt just the Water Tribe. It will hurt everyone, including you. Without the moon, everything would fall out of balance. You have no idea what kind of chaos that would unleash on the world.’

‘He’s right Zhao.’ A strangely familiar Fire Nation man steps into view, and Katara realises it’s the same man who had come to the Southern Water Tribe after her and Aang had triggered the trap in the derelict Fire Nation ship.

‘General Iroh,’ Zhao sneers, his gaze flicking momentarily to the arrival before back over to Aang and Katara to make sure they don’t take his distraction as an opportunity to attack. ‘Why am I not surprised to discover your treachery?’

Katara feels her wrists being pulled together behind her back as one the firebenders takes the opportunity of her own distraction to approach her with decreased risk of being attacked.

‘I'm no traitor, Zhao, the Fire Nation needs the moon, too; we all depend on the balance.’ The general lowers himself into a fighting stance. ‘Whatever you do to that spirit I'll unleash on you ten-fold. Let it go, now!’

Zhao grins sickly and releases the koi fish back into the pond and, for a moment, looks as if he might leave it at that.

‘No!’ Yue screams, her voice cracking as Zhao slices into the defenceless fish with a focused slice of fire.

Iroh recoils as flames blaze out from the pond and the clearing is sent into grey as the moon overhead fades out. He immediatley begins firebending at Zhao, but the damage is done.

The moon is gone.

∞

By the fourth week of waiting there are posters advertising a reward for the capture of the ‘Blue Spirit’ dotting the sides of buildings in pretty decent amount of the coastal towns, the search for the criminal after Zuko started stealing much needed funds and food under the alias.

For what feels like the hundredth time Zuko has arrived back at the town of Wiashu, the rough midpoint of the coast, and is again at the portmaster’s office to ask after any Fire Nation ship arrivals since he’d last been at the town.

‘No, kid.’ The man groans when he enters. ‘We’ve not had a single one of their ships, not since the last time you asked. Words out that they’ve all been wrecked up at the North Water Tribe.’

Zuko nods tightly and exits back out the door. He wonders whether the Wani had been among one of the Fire Nation fleet that was reported to have been massacred by a giant water spirit, but surely the leader of the attack wouldn’t have wasted their time on a small outdated vessel.  

The portmaster’s voice comes calling out after him, ‘Why do you even want to know? Those ships are bad news and if I were you, I’d stop asking around after them.’

He doesn’t stop to reply, but finds a strange reassurance at the portmaster telling him to call his search off. Four fruitless weeks have gone by, and there’s a few other people he wants to see.

‘Sorry Uncle,’ he whispers as the sea fades into the distance behind Dumpling.

∞

Aang looks down at the countryside below and points out the huge estate. ‘That must be it!’

‘Maybe set Appa down here Aang, and we’ll walk the rest of the way over.’ Katara says and Aang directs Appa towards the ground.

Sokka opens his eyes and rolls over to peer over the edge of the saddle. ‘So this is that Beifong house, huh.’

Appa touches down on the green grass on the edge of the forest about hundred metres away from the mansion’s wall. Katara turns around to face the group, ‘So, do we want to go around the front or sneak over the wall maybe?’

But nobody has the time to answer as suddenly a voice rings out. ‘Dumpling! You’re back!’

Sokka jolts upright and turns around to see the Blind Bandit, barely recognizable from how she had been in the ring; so dressed up in layers upon layers of finery.

‘Damn you Zuko, do you know how bored I’ve been since you left? You didn’t even come back for the Earth Rumb- wait. Why is there three of you….’

The girl suddenly goes into a defensive stance. ‘Off the bison, now. All of you.’ Wordlessly they all slide off the bison. ‘Twinkle toes.’ She sneers. ‘What are you doing here, and where did you get the bison?’

‘Appa?’ Aang asks. ‘Why would you think I’d stolen him?’

‘Don’t answer to Twinkle Toes,’ Sokka hisses, ‘it’s not manly!’ The joke comes naturally despite all of the thoughts going through Sokka’s head. Of course this random Earth Kingdom girl knew Zuko.

‘Wait a moment,’ Katara says. ‘You know that Zuko guy from Kyoshi! Sokka, Aang, remember on Kyoshi that firebender who had a bison named Dumpling?’

Toph raises an eyebrow. ‘Firebender? I don’t think so. He was an earthbender.’ – Sokka tries not to roll his eyes – ‘Now how did you find me?’

‘Well, a crazy king told me I had to find an earthbender who listens to the earth. And then I had a vision in a magic swamp and –‘

Katara cuts Aang of as she notices Toph’s evident look of disbelief. ‘What Aang is trying to say is; he’s the Avatar. And if he doesn’t master earthbending soon, he won’t be able to defeat the Fire Lord.’

‘Not my problem,’ Toph replies, starting to walk away. Though she’s trying to hide it, the disappointment from thinking Appa was carrying someone else is evident on her face. ‘Now, get out of here.’

Sokka tries to protest, but the ground has swallowed her up before he can even begin.

Despite the failed first meeting, Aang grins. ‘Time to try the front door?’

Sokka nods and starts to follow Aang, but Katara looks troubled as she starts walking along with them.

‘What are the chances that there are two guys named Zuko with previously thought to be extinct animals running around?’

‘Pretty low,’ Aang offers.

‘What are you saying, Katara?’ Sokka asks despite already having a pretty good idea of what her answer is going to be.

‘What if they’re the same person?’

Aang looks confused. ‘But they bend different elements?’

‘What if..’ Katara pauses, trying to gather her thoughts, ‘when you were frozen in that block of ice, you died – just for a bit – but you were still reincarnated. And I reckon that thar waterbender from Gaipan – the one that got so scared when he found out you were the Avatar – is the same Zuko that Toph and Suki knew!’

Sokka scratches awkwardly at his head. ‘Well, he’s not here now so we may as well just continue on with getting Aang an earthbending teacher. It’s not like the guy, if he is actually the Avatar, seems very invested in saving the world from the Firelord.’

∞

He waits outside for a few hours, but gives up eventually and ends up knocking at the door.

‘What do you want?’ The butler demands when he opens the door.

‘Ah, sorry sir, but I’m looking for Toph.’

The butler sneers, ‘The Little Lady is missing. Now clear off before I call the guards.’

Zuko stumbles back as the door is slammed in his face.

‘Missing?’ He repeats softly.

He’s got the same shocked look on his face as he stumbles down the steps and past a gardener working on the hedges to either side of the path.

‘You know the Lady?’ The gardener asks, raising an eyebrow.

‘Yeah, I did.’

‘Well, don’t tell anyone I told you, but apparently the Avatar himself came and snatched her up.’

Zuko takes a moment to process the words. ‘The Avatar?’

The gardener laughs and points his cutters at Zuko’s shocked expression. ‘That’s what I looked like as well! Didn’t believe it for a second though – the Avatar at Gaoling? And after all this time too? Not a chance! To be quite frank, I reckon the Lady fell down a well or something and the Lord’s just trying to cover it up.’

‘Yeah.’ Zuko says, continuing on down the path. ‘The Avatar in Gaoling? What would be the odds?’

∞

Suki has been thinking about going and doing something to help the war effort ever since the Avatar and his group had left Kyoshi, but the necessary repairs needing to be done to the village meant that she and the other warriors hadn’t been able to leave for a few weeks.

She hadn’t quite known what she wanted to do to help with the war effort until a few days earlier when a small group of refugees arrived in Kyoshi heading to the northern Earth Kingdom from a tiny string of islands south of Suki’s. The group, full of children and elderly, had begged the village head to spare just a few warrior’s to help protect them, if only for a week or so, and Suki had been happy to oblige.

They had spent most of the morning packing and were preparing to leave on an outgoing merchant’s ship that afternoon. About half of the girls were staying back to protect the island, but Suki had a good chunk of about ten going with her.

Suddenly she hears a knock at the door.

‘Fanon,’ She calls out, ‘I swear if this is you and you still haven’t collected the bread like I told you to…’

She turns around as the door slides open, revealing…

‘Hey.’ Zuko says, waving awkwardly.

∞

‘So,’ Toh says, ‘you’re not a firebender, you just used dust to manipulate the air around you… and you ran off because?’

‘He was scared Toh, we don’t tend to do a lot of questions first, attack later when it comes to people we think are firebenders.’ Suki says quickly.

‘Yeah we do, why do you think he’s still alive?’

Zuko coughs. ‘I’ve had some… bad experiences.’

Fanon, standing beside Toh, doesn’t take her eyes off Zuko. ‘Do you trust him Suki?’

‘I do.’

She nods. ‘Then that’s good enough for me.’ She turns to the rest of the gathered warriors who Suki had summoned to inform them of the new addition to the leaving party. ‘Lay off him guys, we fought with him for weeks and he never hurt a fly. Now let’s start stocking the boat.’

Those around her nod and start to stream out, though Toh shoots Zuko a sceptical glance and she closes the door behind her, leaving Suki and Zuko alone together.

‘So,’ Suki says after a moment. ‘you’re an airbender.’

‘Don’t ask me how it happened because I really have no idea.’

‘But that’s so cool though; that you can use air to manipulate the other elements.’

‘Yeah,’ Zuko says, ‘I guess it is pretty cool. Though I do have to ask that you don’t tell anyone, the Fire Nation massacred all the Air Nomads and I’d bet they wouldn’t have any qualms about finishing off another.’ Even if that airbender was their prince…

Suki places a hand on his shoulder. ‘You can trust me Zuko, now let’s get you kitted out.’ She pulls a dress from a cupboard, ‘It’s not your old one – someone took that one – so you’re going to have to deal with this one. It might be a bit large though, sorry.’

Zuko wonders if that ‘someone’ was one of the Avatar’s group. ‘Don’t worry, I don’t mind. Being back with you guys is good enough.’

Chapter Text

When Iroh had finally managed to make his way to the Southern Air Temple, there was someone there; it just wasn’t Zuko.

He’d sat down for tea with the monk, but had quickly left to continue his search.

If not at the Temple, he’d have to assume that Zuko was somewhere in the Earth Kingdom – but the Earth Kingdom was a very big place.

He turns to his boiling kettle and pours two cups, one for him and one for the girl opposite.

‘Here is your tea.’ The girl looks blankly at him, not quite understanding what this stranger, whom she’d knocked off their feet only moments before, was offering. ‘You seem a little young to be traveling alone.’

She finally takes the cup. ‘You seem a little too old.’

Iroh laughs. ‘Perhaps I am.’

‘I know what you’re thinking,’ she says, casually, as she sips at her tea. ‘I look like I can’t handle myself.’

‘I wasn’t thinking that.’

‘You wouldn’t even let me pour my own cup of tea!’ 

‘I poured your tea because I wanted to and for no other reason.’

She sighs and puts down her cup. ‘People see me and think I’m weak. They wasn’t to take care of me, but I can take care of myself, by myself.

Iroh smiles. ‘You sound like my nephew, always thinking you need to do things on your own, without anyone. There is nothing wrong with letting the people who love you help you. Not that I love, I just met you.’

Laughing, the girl asks, ‘Where is your nephew?

‘I’ve been trying to find him.’

‘Is he lost?’

Iroh takes another sip, ‘For a while, yes. But hopefully not anymore. He needed to figure out who he is and he went away.’

‘So now you’re trying to find him.’

‘Yes.’

‘You nephew is very lucky, even if he doesn’t know it.’ She stands up, brushing the dirt from her skirts. ‘Thank you.’

Iroh takes back the offered cup with a smile. ‘My pleasure. Sharing tea with a fascinating stranger is one of life’s true delights.’

‘No,’ the girl says, her eyes flicking around at the path she had been walking along, thinking of the people she herself had left behind. ‘Thankyou for what you said. It helped me.’

‘I’m glad.’

∞

Toph side eyes Iroh, who is sitting now on the other side of the tent, upright and pouring tea even though his lightning injury is only a day old.

‘You could come with us, you know. Aang needs a firebending teacher.’

Iroh passes her a cup and she takes it without protest.

‘I need to find my nephew first.’

‘But you’ll come back?’ Toph asks.

‘Maybe.’

There’s a moment of silence as Iroh takes about long sip of his tea.

‘About – about your nephew, if Azula is your niece, does that make your nephew the prince?’

Iroh smiles sadly. ‘It’s… complicated. Life hasn’t been very kind to him.’

Toph nods, staring down at her tea. ‘I hope you find him.’

‘As do I.’

∞

Suki comes stomping into the little side room the Kyoshi Warriors had commandeered for themselves when they’d decided to stick around at Full Moon Bay, her heavy steps eliciting groans from those who had taken the night shift and were now trying to sleep.

‘Guess who’s outside, girls.’ She says to Zuko.

‘Who?’ Zuko answers, not really in the mood for a guessing game.

‘The Avatar and his group!’

Fanon peeks out from under her blanket, rolling her eyes. ‘We know – there’s like seventy of them out there.’

‘No idiot, the real guy – remember, that group that came a few months ago?’

‘How could we forget?’ Someone says at the same time Fanon whistles and jeers, ‘Is Sokka out there too Suki?’

Suki blushes slightly, but it’s impossible to catch under the layers of white paint.

‘Why are you telling us this?’ Zuko says. ‘Surely they’ll just be on their way soon enough. I would think the Avatar would have lots of important Avatar things to do.’

‘Well that’s the thing – they are leaving.’

‘And?’

‘They’re leaving through Serpent’s Pass… and I’m going with them.’

Fanon sits up straight in her bedroll. ‘You can’t ditch us Suki! We didn’t agree to come with you just so you could run off with Water Tribe at the first opportunity!’

Suki waves her hands placatingly. ‘I’d be coming back, of course. All I want to do is make sure they get safely over to the other side.’

Zuko lays back against the wall and looks over at Suki again. ‘So you’re wanting me to cover your hours?’

‘No,’ Suki says. ‘I want you to come with me.’

‘Why?’ Zuko asks, startled by the request.

‘We’re going through dangerous territory, it would be convenient to have someone of your… skill… joining us.’

Toh lifts an eyebrow. ‘You mean his earthbending? Judging by what I’ve seen his level of bending is nowhere near good enough to be any sort of real help.’

‘She’s right you know.’ Zuko says, trying to pretend he doesn’t know exactly what Suki is implying. He wondered if Suki realised that the Avatar was an airbender as well, rendering any sort of discreet help Zuko would offer not really that helpful compared to what the Avatar could do.

‘Just come on, Zuko, a bit of extra help is always good.’

Fanon sticks a hand out from under the blanket she had retreated back under. ‘Just get out of here Zuko, some of us are trying to sleep.’

Zuko eyes Suki. ‘What about Dumpling? Couldn’t we just fly them over?’

Suki leans closer to Zuko to whisper in his ear. ‘I just thought that you might like to keep the fact that you’re… you, a secret. You told me that you don’t want anyone knowing you’re an airbender and the fact they’ve heard about or seen that you can bend at least two different elements might make them connect the dots.’

‘I wasn’t planning on telling anyone, I would’ve thought the makeup might disguise me enough. My scar is my biggest identifying feature after all.’

Suki nods. ‘So what? We just tell them we have no idea where you are but we just stumbled upon Dumpling?’

‘Yeah?’

∞

The Avatar’s group has already started to leave through the makeshift campground and so Suki has to jog over to catch up.

‘Wait!’ Suki calls. ‘We can help get you over!’

Sokka turns at the sound of Suki’s voice. ‘Suki!’ He cries. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘We know you’ve lost Appa so can’t fly over, but we’ve something kind of similar.’

He looks puzzled. ‘What do you have?’

Suki doesn’t need to answer as at that moment Aang shouts, ‘Appa!’

Slowly the white beast comes closer down and a strange look comes over Aang’s face as he lowers his hand. ‘But- that’s not Appa…’

‘No.’ Suki confirms. ‘This is Dumpling.’

Katara’s mouth drops slightly. ‘Where’s the owner – Zuko, wasn’t it?’

Suki pauses a moment and glances over at Zuko before replying, ‘We don’t know where Zuko is, one day Dumpling just arrived back at Kyoshi. Very weird, we have no idea what happened.’

Up on the bison Zuko suddenly spots Toph and curses himself for not remembering that she was now accompanying the Avatar’s group.

He jumps down from the bison, immediately attracting everyone’s attention.

‘And who’s this?’ Sokka eyes Zuko, making him shift uncomfortably at the scrutiny as he tries to move his hands behind his back in an effort to pelt Toph with pebbles as a silent request for her to not call Suki out on her lies.

Toph seems to get the message as her mouth sets in a thin line and her two blind eyes lock on Zuko in what he interprets as a ‘we’ll talk about this later’ type glare.

‘This…’ Suki says slowly, ‘is Lee!’

‘Hi.’ He says, trying to keep his speech as minimal as possible should any of the group somehow pick his voice.

Aang, meanwhile, has slowly approached the bison and is stroking its fur slowly. ‘Another bison..’ he murmurs. Blushing furiously and slight tears coming to his eyes Aang takes a quick look at the back of Dumpling before returning to stroking her nose. ‘You’re a girl, aren’t you? Just you wait until you meet Appa, he’s been missing his friends, like you must be as well.’

Katara looks softly over at Aang. ‘Another airbender and now another bison, surely this means that there must be even more somewhere!’

Aang grins and Zuko realises with a certain degree of horror that he is the airbender Katara is talking about. His gut twists as his gaze rests on Aang, who is surely consumed by the fact that he could be the last of his kind, but there are some conversations he isn’t ready to have. Maybe it would be better for Aang to think he’s alone, or wonder if he’ll ever see the airbending Blue Spirit again, rather than be told that his one remaining kin is descended from those who ordered the initial genocide. Telling people like Suki (and probably Toph is about five minutes – curse her lie detecting abilities), people who you know and who aren’t airbenders themselves, is very different to telling a stranger of the same ability who has been very likely dreaming about your existence and who looks about to fall apart at the mere sight of an air bison. His thoughts flick back to that moment when Aang’s eyes had locked eyes with his, moments before the arrow hit his head, and the hope in his voice as he’d realised just how they’d made it over the final two barriers.

No, Zuko thinks. Aang can remember the Blue Spirit as his hero and nothing more.

Suki grins. ‘So we thought we’d give you a lift! Though we’d probably have to do it in two groups as though she doesn’t really look it, Dumpling is still a baby.’

Aang nods, confirming this fact as he sticks his head into a compliant Dumpling’s mouth. He pulls it back out and glances up at Dumpling critically, eyes still glazed, before realising something – ‘She doesn’t have a saddle.’

Zuko winces as Toph stares very pointedly at him.

‘Well,’ Suki says, apologetically, ‘there isn’t a great many working air bison saddles around these days. But she does have some ropes strung around her belly for when we want to secure bags, so you could always hold onto those?’

Aang nods and then suggests, ‘Do we want to do three per trip, plus you and Lee?’

Suki nods and is about to start organising the groups when Zuko says quickly, ‘I need to grab something, be back soon.’ She nods and he marches off quickly, waiting around the corner until he hears Toph loudly announce that she needs to piss and comes stomping right his way.

She turns the corner. ‘Lee?’

‘It’s a good name!’ Zuko protests. ‘And anyway, Suki came up with it.’

‘What’s with the get up?’

‘It’s formal Kyoshi Warrior wear. And I don’t want them knowing who I am.’

‘So Katara’s theory about you is right then? You’re the second Avatar?’

Zuko’s eyes widen in alarm. ‘Why does everything think that!’

She rolls her eyes. ‘People have reported seeing you bend fire, water and earth. You bend the same amount of elements as Aang – what on earth did you suppose people would think?’

He pauses, considering the statement, but still feels uneasy at the fact that people were thinking he was the Avatar.

‘So,’ Toph crosses her arms. ‘If you’re not the Avatar, what are you?’

He purses his lips. ‘Promise you want tell anyone.’

‘What are we? Five? Of course I’m not going to tell anyone.’

Zuko glances around quickly, wringing his hands as he turns back to Toph. He takes a breath. ‘I’m an airbender.’

‘Shit.’ There’s a moment of silence before she speaks again. ‘So that’s why you were such a trash earthbender.’

Zuko stares at her for moment, shocked, before his mouth breaks into a smile. ‘Yeah, that would be why.’

‘So what? This whole time you’ve just been using air to pretend bend everything else?’

‘Yeah.’ He replies. ‘Air.’ He splays open a fist sending a slight breeze into Toph’s face. ‘Earth.’ He lifts a rock from the ground that she catches easily. ‘Water.’ A puddle near their feet starts to tornado upwards, its tip licking at Toph’s legs. ‘And… fire.’ Slowly, similar to riding a bike again after months, he pushes a tiny tendril of flame from the anklet at his wrist and flits it around Toph’s head before extinguishing it with a flick of the wrist.

‘Cool.’ She says, ridiculously nonchalant. ‘So what, your parents were runaway airbenders or something?’

‘No, they weren’t.’ He looks down at his hands. ‘I have no idea how – or why – this happened.’

Toph claps him on the shoulder. ‘Well, it’s pretty cool all the same. Now, we better get back to this dumb group. I’m telling you Zuko, they are all idiots. This Avatar? Not the sort of person we want in charge of our salvation, but luckily, they’ve got me, so I’ll soon have him whipped into shape.’

‘Good on you Toph.’ Zuko replies.

‘Don’t sound so disbelieving; I trained you, didn’t I?’

‘You just said that I was a trash earthbender.’

She raises an eyebrow. ‘You weren’t even an earthbender. Of course you were going to be trash. But, point is, that if you had been an earthbender, you would’ve been great.’

‘Thanks?’

She grins. ‘You’re welcome, buddy.’

They emerge from around the corner to see Katara seated atop Dumpling with the earth kingdom couple. Suki is standing to the side, murmuring something to Sokka, as she affixes some the group’s bags to Dumpling’s side.

‘Looks like you’re trip two.’ Zuko says to Toph.

‘I think I’ll pass. Don’t think I’ve forgotten my first flight on your beast.’ Zuko has the grace to look slightly apologetic.

‘And yet you’ll ride on the Avatar’s?’

‘He had a saddle.’ Toph huffs.

‘So you’re going to walk over then?’

‘We’ll see.’

∞

‘So..’ Sokka says, approaching her as she starts to attach the bags to Dumpling’s side. ‘I don’t remember this Lee kid. Is he new?’

Suki knows exactly what he’s trying to ask but doesn’t deign him with that information. ‘Yes he is, he came in on a merchant ship a few days before Dumpling turned up.’

‘And if he’s so new, why are you taking him along?’

‘He grew up on a farm.’ Suki says quickly, hoping that Sokka doesn’t notice the delay of the answer. ‘Has a knack with animals, he’s our best flyer.’

Sokka’s mouth sets in thin line. ‘You can tell me if its Zuko. I know he can bend multiple elements.’

‘Why would I tell you that when his name is Lee?’ She says with a smile. Glancing over her shoulder she’s overwhelmingly relieved to spot Zuko coming over.

‘Lee!’ She shouts, and can see Sokka bristle beside her.  ‘We’re about to leave, so you might want to move it.’

‘It was uh… nice seeing you again.’ Zuko whispers.

Toph grins. ‘You too dumbass.’

He grins back, standing awkwardly next to her until Suki yells out for him to hurry up and he jogs over to hop on Dumpling.

Katara looks up as he settles himself at Dumpling’s head. ‘You know Toph?’

Zuko searches for an answer. ‘Uh, no. Just started talking to her then. She’s nice.’

She raises an eyebrow. ‘Nice, huh?’

‘Yeah?’

Suki punches his shoulder. ‘Time for lift off Lee, we want to be back in time to do the second trip in the daylight.’

Zuko nods and Dumpling starts to push off the ground; his attempts to make the ascent as smooth as possible not as successful as he would’ve liked, judging by the cries of the earth kingdom couple.

∞

They drop the trio on the other side of the pass, still in rugged landscape but past the most treacherous grounds. Zuko remains seated atop Dumpling as Suki jumps down to help with the bags and mutter with Katara. From their sideward glances over at the pregnant lady, who is seated on the ground with her husband, panting heavily, Zuko can make a pretty decent assumption as to what they’re murmuring about.

Katara clasps Suki’s hands in hers and speaks just loudly enough for Zuko to hear. ‘Just, hurry back, will you?’

Suki nods and climbs straight back onto Dumpling, clearly not wanting to waste any time. As soon as she’s secure Zuko takes off.

’Dumpling may take longer on the second trip.’ Zuko warns, turning around to face Suki and letting the bison cruise forward.

‘Katara reckons it will be a while before anything happens so as long as there isn’t any real delays we should be fine.’

Minutes of silence pass before Suki asks, ‘Does Sokka know why you can bend multiple elements?’

‘So he recognized me, did he?’

‘Yeah, he did.’ Suki keeps the answer short, indicating that she still wants the answer to her initial question.

‘All he knows it that I’m not the Avatar, though I’m not sure how convincing I was.’

‘Well, it is the logical explanation. I know that when you told me what it actually was I was shocked – it’s just so far outside of what I’d ever assume. People would be hard-pressed to believe that there were more airbenders and so little information about them that airbenders fake bending other elements would be even more unimaginable.’

At some point during Suki’s talk Zuko’s fingers had found their way to the bracelets on his wrists and he looks down at them now. ‘Yeah, I don’t think I would’ve ever thought something like this could happen…. I- I was never meant to be an airbender.’

‘What were you meant to be?’ Suki asks softly, her eyes flicking momentarily to the bracelets, a question in her gaze.

Zuko wrestles with himself in his head, trying to figure out if he wanted to tell her.

Not yet, he decides.

‘Just… not this.’

Suki nods, deciding not to push it.

‘Could you-‘ He says suddenly.

‘Yes?’

‘Could you talk with Sokka on the way over. I don’t really want him knowing too much more than he already does and I’m not that great at deflecting questions.’

‘I can do that.’

∞

As she’d promised Suki sits with Sokka for the ride over the pass, though Zuko is all too aware of the boy’s constant watch. Toph sits next to him, her hands wrapped around the ropes in a death grip though sometimes scrabbling for Zuko himself in times of slight wind.

She doesn’t talk much.

Aang spends the whole ride clambering around Dumpling, patting her fur and jumping off to fly beside her on his glider.

‘You fly her well.’ Aang remarks, coming up on Zuko’s left. ‘This reminds of when I was at the Temple, going on flights with the bison.’

‘You must miss them.’ Zuko says, his voice strained.

He flips onto his back, gazing at the sky above as he absorbs Zuko’s statement. ‘Yeah, I do.’

The wind whispers by and Aang spins again, flitting under Dumpling’s belly. She growls happily as Aang comes up in front of her.

‘But I think – I think they’d be proud of me. Of what I’m doing.’ Zuko nods and Aang continues. ‘A few weeks back I was captured by the Fire Nation but someone came and saved me – another airbender.’

‘So you’re not alone, not really.’

‘No, I’m not.’ Aang says. ‘But after all this time for an airbender just to appear? Sometimes I think I dreamt it all up.’

‘You didn’t.’

‘I hope so.’

Dumpling touches down on the ground and Toph almost flies off the bison. Suki jumps down shortly after, walking hurriedly over to where Katara sits with the Earth Kingdom couple.

‘Toph,’ Katara calls, ‘could you make us a tent.’ Toph nods, still looking slightly green and stalks over.

‘Lee.’ Suki says. ‘Get us some water, will you? And Sokka, can you start the fire?’

Realising just what is happening, Zuko takes off gladly, returning with the water a few minutes later.

‘I’m going to go find Dumpling some food, I’ll be back soon to fly back.’

Suki nods and Zuko leaves. In no mood to speak to anyone, he takes his time, only realising just how long he’s taking when the sky above is darkening.

He wanders back into the clearing, finding Suki sitting with Sokka around the fire. ‘We ready to leave?’ He asks.

Suki looks at Sokka, pressing a quick kiss to his cheek and murmuring goodbyes into his ear. He stands up, straightening the folds of her dress. ‘Yep.’ She shoots a look over at the Earth Kingdom couple’s tent and smiles slightly as she hears the baby’s squeals. ‘Goodbye Sokka.’

Sokka smiles. ‘I hope we can see each other soon.’

She grins as she hops up behind Zuko. ‘Me too.’

∞

‘Look Azula!’ Ty Lee says, ‘We’ve picked the trail back up again.’

‘I saw that already, Ty Lee.’ Azula drawls, lying.

Mai bends down to the fur and takes some up in her hand. ‘It’s still pretty fresh. We might want to go on foot from here so it’s not scared off. We can leave the mongoose lizards tied up at these trees – they shouldn’t go too far.’

No,’ Azula says, glancing over her shoulder at her companions. ‘We’ll take them, they’re quiet enough.’ Mai nods obediently and gets back atop her mount.

The trail of fur takes them through to a clearing and, just as Azula had hoped, the Avatar’s bison.

She holds up a hand, indicating a halt. ‘The bison isn’t alone. I’d say roughly a dozen, get ready to fight girls.’

Surrounding the bison are green clad warriors, their packs and bags set up against the trees as well as a few weapons. Many are tending to the bison and as far as Azula can spot there is no sentry. Either the group was dumb as rocks or had just stumbled upon the bison.

‘My, my,’ Azula grins, riding on into the clearing. ‘You’re easy to find. It’s really astounding my brother hasn’t captured you yet. To be honest, I don’t have a clue as to what dear Zuzu is doing.’

One of the warriors, brandishing a fan, steps forward. Her stance tells Azula that she must be the leader. ‘What do you want with us?’

‘Who are you? The Avatar’s fan girls?’

Ty Lee grins. ‘Oh, I get it. Good one, Azula.’

The leader doesn’t move, though all of her fellow warriors now also have their fans open. ‘If you’re looking for the Avatar, you’re out of luck.’

Mai sighs. ‘I knew this was a waste of time.’

‘No Avatar, huh.’ Azula drawls, sliding down from the mongoose lizard. ‘Well, that’s okay. Any friend of the Avatar is an enemy of mine.’ She slices her hand through the air, sending a jet of fire streaming towards the bison. The warriors step together, blocking the flame, but the bison is still shocked enough that it rears back… exposing a second, smaller bison crouched behind.

‘My,’ Azula laughs as Mai and Ty Lee leap off their mounts to join her on the ground. ‘A second bison? It’s my lucky day.’

The green clad warriors launch forward, though one pauses to hurriedly whisper something in the leader’s ear. But as soon as it occurs, the moment over and they’re both leaping at the Fire Nation girls. With their matching dress and makeup it’s hard to distinguish between them, but Azula finds herself fighting against the leader.

She sends a bolt straight at the girl’s chest but its redirected into a nearby tree, the bigger bison again rearing back in terror. Strangely, the smaller appears more relaxed. ‘Afraid of fire, I see.’ She sneers. ‘That’s good. You should be.’

The leader unsheathes her sword. ‘Go, Appa! Dumpling! Get out of here!’ She yells as she charges Azula.

With an uncanny ease, Azula somersaults out of the way, knocking Suki’s sword from her hand and into a tree. She fires yet another blast her way, but the girl blocks with her shield. Out of the corner of her eye Azula sees the bigger bison starting to fly upwards, but the smaller remains stationery.

Somewhere within the chaos a voice, startingly familiar, yells out. ‘Dumpling! Go!’ A memory nags at her, but the leader comes at her straight away and the memory flees, forgotten.

The larger bison moans loudly and the smaller, Dumpling apparently, looks upwards. Almost reluctantly the smaller takes flight, looking back mournfully as she begins to lift upwards.

‘Agni,’ Azula curses as another warrior comes from behind to throw her fans at the back of her head, allowing the leader to leap up from the ground. The girl grabs for a branch that is blazing from the result of some of Azula’s missed shots. She waves it above her head in an attempt to make the bison leave.

‘Get out of here! You have to find Aang!’ She shouts. ‘We’ll be okay!’

Finally, the bigger beast back off, flying away. The second lingers longer, shooting a mournful glance down at the warriors, before following the first away and off into the sky.

Angrily, Azula sends a blaze of blue careening into the leader’s shield. The girl steps back, readjusting her stance and brandishes her fan.

Despite herself, Azula smiles. ‘Don’t you know that fans just make flames stronger?’

∞

The material of the prison dress is rough against her body, the cold conditions of the cell not doing much either to make her feel comfortable. After they’d been forced to surrender, the Fire Nation girl had led them back to her campsite and had entrusted them to a new guard, though before she’d left the firebender had snatched three of their uniforms along with their pots of war paint. Suki got a sick feeling in her stomach when she thought about what she was planning to do with them.

Zuko sat next to her, his makeup still intact. Suki had told the guards that the paint didn’t come off and so far none of the guards had pushed for its removal. The airbender hadn’t told Suki why he had to not be recognized by anyone, but she trusted enough to take his word for it and tried to make sure no attention was bought to him. Of course, if he was that well known it was inevitable that he’d eventually be caught, his scar was just too memorable. Then again, many people had similar wounds from hundred years of war.

Since the battle he hadn’t said a word, seemingly shaken up by something he’d seen.

Suddenly the door bangs open, a buff Fire Nation sergeant barging in. ‘Who’s your leader?’

Suki stands immediately. ‘I am.’ She says, positioning her body in such a way as to shield her fellow warriors, just in case.

The sergeant is about to unlock the current chain connecting her to wall when there is a rustling behind her.

‘I’m the leader as well.’ Zuko says and in that moment, Suki wants to throttle him. ‘We’re co-leaders.’ He says, slightly awkwardly.

The sergeant’s eyes narrow. ‘I don’t have time for this.’ He growls and reaches out to take both Suki and Zuko’s chains in his grip.

‘What do you think you’re doing?’ Suki hisses as they’re led out.

Zuko stares straight ahead. ‘I know where they’re taking us.’

‘And?’

‘I’m not letting them take you alone.’

‘What about that whole, not bringing attention to yourself?’

‘If I’m going to be discovered, I may as well do it in a high security prison.’ His words indicate that he might be trying for a joke, though his tone doesn’t quite match up. ‘Go big or go home, right? That’s what Fanon always says.’

Suki stares at him for a good long moment, though her expression is fond. ‘Why are you such a bloody dumbass?’

Chapter Text

‘Smellerbee!’ Jet hisses, staring from behind the pole at the old man cradling his – hot – cup of tea. ‘Did you see that?’

Smellerbee glances lazily over. ‘See what?’

∞

‘Nice dress,’ the guard sneers, shoving the regulation prison attire at Zuko’s chest. He gestures to a doorway across from him, indicating for Zuko to enter. He and Suki had been separated immediatley upon entering the prison, their differing genders an obstacle Zuko had forgotten about when he’d initially volunteered to come with Suki. ‘And scrub that paint off while you’re at it.’

Zuko nods obediently and enters through the doorway, folding up his Kyoshi garb and changing into the prison uniform. There’s a stout basin in the corner, filled with murky water and Zuko reluctantly uses it to scrub at his face. He tries to leave some covering the scar, but it ends up just drawing more attention to the burn, so he rubs it off completely.

The guard calls for him to hurry up and Zuko quickly sheds his jewellery. He feels suddenly off balance as he removes them, likes he’s lost a part of himself.

He’s reluctant to leave them, but he’s surely about to go and be pat down and there’s nowhere he could hide them without it being discovered. The flames in each start to slowly peter out as he releases his grip on their surrounding air flow – when suddenly he has an idea.

Quickly, Zuko ties them all together and moves his hands quickly to create a strong current, hoisting them up in the air.

He walks over to the door, the bundle of jewellery suspended behind him, and exits out into the corridor.

‘Raise your arms.’ The guard says gruffly and Zuko does as he’s told, trying not to look at the jewellery swooping down below the guard’s eyesight and up to the shadows of the ceiling behind him.

He’s searched thoroughly, the guard even going so far as to thump him hard on the back several times and squeeze at his stomach to check for anything Zuko may’ve swallowed to keep in hidden.

When the guard’s satisfied that Zuko isn’t hiding anything he claps pairs of shackles onto his wrists and ankles, and steps back. ‘Through to the next door.’ Pointing, as though it wasn’t very obviously labelled with a sign saying, ‘EXIT’.

Zuko feels the guard’s gaze on him the entire way to the door and he feels his heart in his mouth as he brings the jewellery down to the shadows of the corners of the floor and sends it quickly through the door in front of him and then up into his pant leg.

The guard follows behind him, entering through the door and coughing loudly to alert the desk clerk.

Startled, the man looks up at Zuko and nearly falls from his seat as he does so. Flustered, he rushes to regain his balance and pulls a pile of paper in front of him.

‘So this is that second warrior leader.’ He pushes his spectacles further up his nose and the guard gives a nod of affirmation.

‘Bending ability?’

‘Non-bender,’ the guard replies, ‘though not confirmed.’

The clerk nods and jots the information down. Studying Zuko for a moment longer he adds, dictating aloud, ‘Ethnicity; Fire Nation.’ He fishes for a moment under his desk and pulls out a tag, passing it the guard to hang around Zuko’s neck.

‘Permission to put you in the cooler.’ The guard sneers, his breath hot on Zuko’s neck. ‘We don’t know you ain’t Agni blessed, so may as well.’

Zuko feels a chill run down his spine as the guard’s cold fingers brushed his skin, he tries to stop himself from shaking visibly.

The clerk adds a few more observations before pulling down a large poster that looks like a table of cells. ‘Put him with the non-benders for now; block 9 cell 4.’

Zuko feels the guard clench the fabric of his t-shirt and he’s pushed towards a door to the left. The guard stops to unlock it and then leads Zuko through, marching him through the complex, past cells and dank hallways, all the way cell block 9.

The block guard unlocks cell 4 and Zuko is shoved in, instantly glad that apart from him the cell looks uninhabited. He wasn’t really in the mood for a roommate.

‘Nice scar you got there, kid.’ The block guard jeers as he locks the door.

‘A bit like some of those drawings of that Prince Zuko, isn’t it?’ Zuko’s initial guard remarks, though Zuko can’t see his expression through the small window.

‘Apparently it’s become a thing now, that’s what I heard.’ The other replies. ‘Fire Lord did it first and now there’s heaps of disowned kids running around with their eye all wrecked.’

‘Its on the wrong side though, innit? The Prince’s is on the other eye, I thought.’

Their voices grow fainter as they start walking away from the cell door, but Zuko just makes out a final remark from the block guard.

‘I reckon you’re right. Poor kid, not only does he have a great galumphing scar, he got it on the wrong side.’

∞

‘He’s lying,’ Toph whispers to Sokka as they walk to the exit. Sokka glances quickly over his shoulder at the prone figure, with Smellerbee and Longshot standing protectively around. He glances back ahead quickly.

Katara and Aang are walking in front, peering in at the different cells.

‘Aang!’ Katara cries suddenly. ‘It’s Appa!’

Aang sprints over, rushing into the cell. He stops suddenly, still beaming, though looks slightly confused. ‘There’s a second bison!’

Sokka peers in, his eyes widening. ‘It’s Dumpling.’

∞

Iroh spends a few weeks wandering around Ba Sing Se – the place is huge, it takes a month to scour a single ring for any sign of his nephew. He never manages to get into the upper ring, but he doesn’t wish to risk it and regardless, how would a Fire Nation boy ever make it through to the heavily guarded upper ring?

There are several tea places hiring and he sticks around in a few as a casual to earn a bit of cash to restock his supplies before continuing his search. At one of the tea shops, a ramshackle affair, he’d even had a boy try and attack him for being a firebender and though the boy had been right, it hadn’t stopped him being shoved into the back of a Dai Li van.

He walked straight back out of Ba Sing Se a few days afterwards.

∞

The catacombs are too cold, too vast, for one person alone. Glimmering rocks press in on her from all sides, too many ways to turn but nowhere to go.

Katara is so alone.

Her only relief is the knowledge that surely by now her friends would have noticed she was missing. Time had passed slowly, but she was confident that it had passed. The hollow feeling in her stomach let her know it had been at the very least a few hours.

She slumps back down on a smooth round rock and cradles her head in her hands. She should’ve realised something was very off in Ba Sing Se from the start, rather than letting her uneasiness fester and end up with her trapped, away from the rest of the group.

Suddenly she hears the grinding of rocks against each other and startles violently as part of the wall falls away and Aang stumbles in.

She leaps to her feet. ‘Aang! You’re here!’ She runs over, wrapping the smaller boy in her arms.

Aang pulls away quickly. ‘We have to go help Sokka and Toph.’

Katara squeezes Aang’s hands. ‘Let’s go.’

∞

Suki is housed in block 4, her and Zuko only seeing the other at lunchtimes. She’d been assigned to cleaning, whilst he’d somehow made his way down to laundry, spending the day scrubbing at gross uniforms in freezing water.

It took all of his control not to warm the water with airbending, but the tag around his neck and the look in the eyes of all those returned from the cooler steadies his hands. If someone noticed his water was warmer than the others there would be no doubt in the eyes of the guards that they’d sussed themselves out a firebender.

Each lunchtime, snatching sparse moments of privacy, Suki and him had tried to brainstorm plans for escape, but none had had enough backing to actually put it to test.

‘We’re getting out of here.’ Suki whispers to Zuko as they take their seats. ‘It’s going to happen soon, I promise.’

Zuko believed her, he just worried that soon wouldn’t be soon enough for him. So far nobody had really connected him to the banished Prince – the majority of Fire Nation citizens would have only ever seen him in the occasional royal family portrait pasted around the towns, and those were, along with being highly inaccurate, highly outdated. Most citizens would only have heard about his scar; he’d sat for no portraits after the incident.

But there was always a chance one of the prison’s higher ups would’ve known him, maybe one of them could’ve been at that fatal Agni Kai. All he could do was pray that they hadn’t been.

∞

‘You miss Zuko, don’t you?’ Sokka says, passing his hands through the bison’s thick fur. ‘Don’t worry, I’m sure you’ll meet back up with him soon.’

He’d been spending a lot of time with Dumpling lately, at first he’d told himself it was out of worry for Suki (the bison had been with her, what did finding Dumpling in an Earth Kingdom prison mean for where she was?) but after time it had turned into the simple enjoyment Sokka found in her presence. At the start, he and Katara had alternated flying her, but now it was solely Sokka who took the reins each trip.

‘Don’t worry, I’m not jealous.’ Sokka throws her a berry. ‘I miss people as well.’

He knows she can’t understand what he’s saying, but he would almost swear that at his words she’d curled up closer around him. He pats her head. ‘Thanks, Dumps.’ He says.

The sky up above was glimmering with millions of stars, so different from the ones back at the South Pole. Strangely, he didn’t find himself missing them as much as he did usually.

Everyone else was already set up inside their tents, but Sokka wasn’t really in the mood to construct his own. Instead, he presses himself further into Dumpling’s fur.

‘Goodnight, Dumpling.’

∞

Hakoda places one hand on Sokka’s shoulder and one on Katara’s. Sokka wants to cry, but he can’t – not in front of his father. He needs to be strong, strong for him and strong for the others.

‘We lost today, but we’ve never been this close.’ He kneels down and Sokka feels something at that back of his throat, choking him. ‘We tasted victory, and that counts for something.’

Katara speaks first, her voice cutting through the numbness Sokka feels. ‘We’ll miss you too, Dad.’ She leans in to hug Hakoda and Sokka follows, his arms clenching tight around his father’s waist, not quite believing that they are to be separated once more.

He pulls back finally. ‘Bye, Dad. We won't be apart for too long this time. I promise.’

Aang, already seated atop Appa with tears clouding his eyes, calls out, ‘We can fit a few more on Dumpling.’

Sokka watches as those who had elected to stay prisoners glance between themselves. Suddenly, Hakoda speaks. 

‘Pipsqueak.’ He says. ‘You are big and strong, but don’t forget you are still a child. Go, now, while you can.’

The youth stares, not quite comprehending what Hakoda is telling him to do.

Smellerbee comes forward and takes him by the hand. ‘C’mon Pip. You’re with us.’

He lets himself be led towards the smaller bison and Aang rests his gaze back over those remaining. Katara places a hand on his shoulder as he wipes at his tears. With a look at Katara, Aang slowly rises to his feet.

‘Thank you all,’ he says, choking up slightly as he says it. ‘For being so brave and so strong. I'm gonna make this up to you.’

Hakoda nods. ‘Now go, before it’s too late.’

Aang nods and sits back down on Appa and begins to rise slowly off the ground.

‘Up, Dumpling.’ Sokka says, trying to keep his voice steady.

After so much time longing to see his father again, Sokka had never imagined that he would be the one leaving.

∞

The mattress beneath him is barely worthy of that title, it’s thin and scratchy and all together extremely uncomfortable. But after weeks of lying down upon it each night, Zuko’s gotten used to the texture. He’s no stranger to sleeping rough, after all.

There is still nobody in the bed opposite him and for that he is grateful. There’s a certain something to be said about time alone.

The day had been long and hard due to the summer solstice. Guards had been eager to tire out anyone with thoughts of rebellion on their minds due to the auspicious day. As a result, Zuko was ready to fall asleep instantly-

And he almost did.

But suddenly, startling Zuko into a seated position, a dim glow illuminates the corner of his cell.

‘Avatar Roku.’ He breathes, scarcely able to process what he’s seeing.

The ethereal man inclines his head. ‘Airbender.’ He acknowledges Zuko.

‘Why – why are you here?’ Zuko whispers, blinking repeatedly to make sure what he’s seeing is real.

‘Sozin’s great-grandson.’ Roku pauses. ‘And mine.’

‘What?’ Zuko says, ‘your – your what?’

Roku’s image glides closer and a strange chill slithers its way up Zuko’s spine. ‘You never asked your mother about her parents? Never wondered why you’re an Airbender?’

‘Why I’m – but, you were a firebender…’

‘And the Avatar.’ Roku says gently. ‘As the Avatar you have one goal, always.’

For a moment, neither one of them speaks.

‘Balance.’ Zuko whispers, finally.

‘Yes.’ Roku replies. ‘Sozin tipped the scales way out of balance by murdering the Airbenders and the spirits don’t like it when that happens.’

‘And so what? They created one more to replace an entire race?’

Roku places a hand on Zuko’s. ‘No,’ Roku said. ‘You were created to help build them back up.’

‘To build them back up? But how do I do that?’ Roku’s form has started to shake, becoming more translucent by the second. ‘Build them back up? Roku!’

‘Help the Avatar, Zuko.’ Roku says, his voice as faint as a far off breeze. ‘It is your destiny.’

∞

Nobody sees Sokka leave. He takes Dumpling – she’s more used to him flying than Appa is – and asks Smellerbee about the prison’s location. The Freedom Fighters had an uncanny knowledge of everything Fire Nation.

He sets Dumpling down on the edge of the volcano.

‘We need to find some place to put you, don’t we?’ He whispers, leading Dumpling down the volcano’s side. There had been another reason he’d taken Dumpling – the air bison had a strange ability to stay put where you asked it to for hours and even days on end. Sokka couldn’t help but wonder why Zuko’s bison would’ve needed that abilty.

Finally, he finds a cave just obscure enough to feel confident in leaving Dumpling there. ‘Stay there.’ He says, scratching her fondly between the eyes as he hands her a handful of berries. He leaves a bag of food by the other side of the cave for her to discover should she become hungry. Dumpling grumbles compliantly and lays down, her eyes focused on Sokka as he creeps out of the cave.

Slowly, he climbs to the edge of the crater, looking anxiously down at the surrounding moat through thick steam. Just when he thinks it’s useless, he spots the metal wire going across the moat and over to the prison, very obviously used for ferrying people across. Painstakingly, he makes his way around, bypassing the guards out front.

He approaches the wire carefully and carefully tears two strips of fabric from his tunic and wraps them around his hands. Then he takes his sword out, positioning it over the wire and clutching both side. He can feel the sharp edge of the sword despite his wrappings, but grits his teeth and tries to ignore it.

Sokka steps forward, takes a deep breath…

And leaps forward.

He whizzes down, gripping onto his sword as tight as possible, his teeth chattering as he tries to keep his mouth clamped to keep from screaming.

The end comes into view and Sokka readies himself to jump off before he crashes into the floor.

‘Three,’ he whispers, ‘two… one!’ He releases the hand gripping the sharp edge and falls to the sand metres below the landing. The wrapping on his right hand are cut up and bloody, so he unravels the wrapping from his left and applies that to his cut up palm. He tests holding his sword in his right hand and swears as he accidentally drops it out of pain. He sticks it back in his belt, annoyed, and starts clambering up the side.

Sokka steals quietly inside, hitting the jackpot almost immediately as he comes across a supply closet containing guard uniforms. He puts one on, arranging it so the lump of his sword doesn’t stand out against the smooth fit. It’s nearly morning when he’s done and he creeps out slowly, praying that nobody spots him exiting.

Bells are ringing in the distance and he follows the noise, coming out into a brick courtyard where a circle has been formed around a lone firebender and a guard.

Sokka watches, shocked, as the guard provokes the prisoner – Chit Sang – until finally the man firebends, at which the guard is immediately on top of himself, holding him arms behind his back. His eyes lock with Sokka’s.

‘Help me take him in.’ He says and Sokka has no choice but to follow, holding one of Chit Sang’s arms behind him and helping the elder guard throw him into a small icy room.

‘Can you believe this guy?’ The guard laughs and Sokka searches quickly for something to say.

‘Prisoners!’ He blurts. ‘Am I right?’

An uncomfortable moment later Sokka glances into the ‘cooler’. ‘Man,’ he says. ‘It sure looks cold in there.’

‘That’s why we call it the cooler,’ the guard replies, the unsaid ‘idiot’ lingering between them at the end of the sentence. ‘He won’t be firebending in there.’

Sokka nods, about to ask another question when suddenly he hears footsteps coming down the hall towards them and the guard whispers, ‘The Warden! Look alive!’

Hurriedly, Sokka turns and faces upright with his back against the wall. The Warden reaches the cell they’re guarding and pulls open the door.

‘So Chit Sang, I hear you used firebending to try to escape. You should know better.’ The Warden sneers, glaring down at the shivering Firebender.

‘I wasn't trying to escape.’ Chit Sang grits out, his teeth chattering.

‘He's lying! I saw it with my own eyes!’ The guard chimes in, though is pushed quickly to the side by one of the Warden’s bodyguards.

‘No one has ever, ever escaped from here.’ The Warden says, his voice like nails on a chalkboard in Sokka’s ears. ‘I'd sooner jump in the Boiling Lake myself than let that record fall. Don't forget it. Now go back to your shivering.’ The Warden slams the door shut and stalks down the hall, his bodyguards following behind.

‘Hey,’ Sokka says to the guard. ‘Can I ask you a question about the prison?’

‘What, you new?’

‘Yeah,’ he says and the guard nods. ‘So this prison houses Fire Nation enemies, including war prisoners, right?’

‘Right.’

‘I was wondering, just out of interest, if there are any Water Tribe prisoners?’

‘Water Tribe?’ The guard scoffs. ‘They’re all holed up in their icy little town up north, you’d find none here.’

Sokka feels his heart sink. He’d come all this way… for nothing?

He feels the other guard clap a hand on his back and lets himself be led back to the courtyard, all the while thinking about how on earth he’s going to get back out of the prison. So consumed by his thoughts, he almost doesn’t notice her.

‘Suki?’ He whispers.

∞

He waits until he spots her cleaning the next day as he’d had no chance to creep into her cell – it had been too risky, anyone could’ve come in.

‘Suki.’ He whispers, trying to act nonchalant. ‘It’s Sokka.’

She whirls around instantly, her broom almost taking him out. ‘Sokka!’ She whispers, ‘it’s really you!’

He glances around the room. ‘Are the other Kyoshi Warriors here?’

‘No.’ She replies. ‘They just took me, because I’m the leader and – uh – Lee, because he pretended he was also the leader so I didn’t have to come alone.’

‘Where is he?’

‘Laundry – but Sokka, what are you doing here?’

Sokka grins. ‘I’m busting you out.’

‘But, how?’

His grin fades. ‘I had an idea, but it’s not going to work – I need a firebender.’

Suki closes her eyes, trying to decide on what to say. ‘Lee – Lee can firebend.’

‘Lee? You mean Zuko Lee? So he’s really the Avatar – three elements at least, can he bend air?’

‘Look Sokka, that’s really not my place to say – you’ll need to ask him yourself – but tell me the plan and I can pass it-‘

Suddenly the bell starts to ring and Suki curses. ‘Shoot Sokka, you’re going to need to meet me here again tomorrow, tell me then.’

Sokka nods, watching as she leaves, his head whirring.

∞

He meets Suki the next day and tells her the plan. She takes it all in, committing it to memory so she can pass it onto Zuko when they meet for lunch.

‘Give him this.’ He tells her, pressing a wrench into her hands which she stuffs hastily down her shirt.

Before they can exchange a few more words, a few ‘how are you’s and what not, the bell rings again and Sokka is left to wander around the prison, looking official, for the rest of the day. He can only hope that Suki has passed on the message.

He hears footsteps coming towards him and straightens himself, trying to look as normal as possible.

‘Yeah, new arrivals coming at dawn.’ He hears one of the guards say and his ears perk up immediately.

‘Anything interesting?’ The other replies.

‘Nah, just the usual. Some robbers, a couple traitors, some war prisoners, though I did hear there might be a pirate.’ They continue past Sokka and down the hall, their voices muffled by the distance.

War prisoners… that could mean his father was coming after all! He only had to hope now that the plan worked.

∞

The cooler is unbearably cold – it takes a heap of his energy just to keep the jewellery under his shirt burning – and he isn’t even a real firebender, so he shivers at how cold it would feel to someone who was connected to the sun.

After Suki had told him the plan and given him the wrench, he’d chosen to wait for the next day to get caught so they’d be better prepared for a night time escape. The plan was brilliant, Zuko wasn’t even annoyed he hadn’t thought of it, it was that good.

During laundry he’d teased a bit of flame from his hidden bracelets and set the drying guard’s uniforms alight, an act that had had the ‘Uncomfirmed’ necklace torn off him (how could he not be a firebender after setting something on fire?) and been thrown straight into the cooler.

He’s almost through the screws on the floor and onto the sides when he hears footsteps and he is forced to hide everything quickly behind a large icicle.

The door swings open and a pinched face with official headgear looms over him. ‘So we’ve caught out an undocumented firebender have we – ‘ he pauses. ‘My, my, my. Guards, I do think we’ve found ourselves a royal treat. Prince Zuko, how far you’ve fallen.’

Zuko sits there, unable to make a sound. He’d been recognised.

‘I’m going to love hearing what your father has to say about this – his traitor son.’ The Warden sneers and Zuko blanches at the mention on his father. Slowly, the Warden pulls back from the cooler doorway.

‘I’ll be back tomorrow… your highness.’ The door slams shut with a crash and Zuko is frozen in place.

Slowly, he rises from his stupor. He checks his jewellery – all but the necklace have gone out and its too cold to use it’s flame to light the others, so Zuko just prays that it doesn’t flutter out as well before he’s released by Sokka later on. At the thought of Sokka he’s suddenly reminded of why he was in the cooler in the first place.

Time was ticking and Zuko needed to get the cooler loose – or else he’d be having a family reunion he was not ready for.

∞

Sokka comes a few hours later, just as Zuko is finishing. He has an excited, nervous air to him as they quietly roll the cooler down to the water’s edge.

Two people rush up to help them down, one Suki and the other…

‘Well done, Sokka.’ The man claps him on the back and Suki must sense his confusion because she whispers, ‘His dad.’

Zuko nods and they slowly push the cooler into the water, jumping in and using Sokka’s sword to push off.

‘What now?’ Suki whispers.

Sokka points to the water flowing beneath them. ‘We let the current take us across, it’s going to be slow but this fog will last us.’

‘It’s so hot.’ She says, after an hour.

‘I know.’ Sokka replies gritting his teeth. ‘We just gotta last it out.’ He peeks his head over the top of the cooler quickly. ‘Only a hundred or so metres and we’re across.’

The entire trip Sokka had been side-eyeing Zuko, but there being on opposite sides had meant Sokka hadn’t been able to say what was on his mind.

Finally, the cooler beaches itself on the other side – and just in time too as the sun was nearly fully in the sky and the fog almost entirely gone. They bail out quickly and cover themselves in mud from the canyon’s side to disguise them as they climb up.

Sokka leads them upwards and past a gap between sentries at the canyon’s top. ‘This way.’ He whispers and leads them down the rock and to a small cave in which…

‘Dumpling!’ Zuko whispers, running forward to hug the bison. He glances accusingly back at Sokka. ‘You left her here for days?’

‘With food.’ Sokka protests.

Zuko nods and runs his hands through her fur. ‘Guess I did that a little as well, didn’t I Dumps.’

Suddenly the warning bells start to blare and Sokka rushes forward to mount Dumpling.

‘We need to go, now!’ Everyone clambers on hurriedly, there being a moment of confusion as both Sokka and Zuko go for the reins with Sokka edging backwards immediately when he realises what’s happening.

‘Go, Dumpling!’ Zuko urges and the air bison flies immediately out of the cave and out of range before any of the sentries even spot her.

‘Hey, Zuko.’ Sokka asks, when they’re a way away from the prison.

‘Yeah?’ Zuko replies… ‘Shit.’

‘Ah ha!’ Sokka grins. ‘So it is you.’ He glances back at Suki who’s rolling her eyes. ‘So – Zuko – Aang is going to be so excited when he meets you, another Avatar means another Airbender! Man, he’s going to be over the moon, the whole ‘last airbender’ thing is really weighing on him.’

Zuko is silent and Sokka thinks he hears the murmur of, ‘my destiny’.

‘I’m not the Avatar.’ He says, after a moment.

‘Then what are you?’

There’s another moment of silence.

‘I’m a firebender.’

Sokka stares, dumbfounded.

‘I use the heat of things to manipulate them.’

‘That – that’s not possible. It doesn’t work like that!’

‘Oh no.’ Zuko says. ‘It definitely does.’

Sokka sits in contemplation for another long moment. ‘Well, how do you feel about being Aang’s firebending teacher?’

‘I- I’d rather not.’

Sokka claps him on the back. ‘Well too bad, Zuko. You’re the only one we got.’

∞

Suki watches as Sokka and Hakoda embrace Katara and Aang from Zuko’s side. She’ll go and say hi in a moment as well, but first she needs to ask Zuko something.

‘Why did you lie back there?’ She says and Zuko stiffens under her touch.

‘It’s complicated. But I’ll tell you later, I promise.’

Suki knocks him on the shoulder. ‘Tonight. You’ll tell me tonight.’

Then she runs forward, hugging Aang and Katara.

Sokka glances back at Zuko and grins. ‘Oh, and by the way Aang. I’ve found you a firebending teacher – say hi Zuko!’

‘Hey everyone. Zuko here.’

Chapter Text

‘You’re not a firebender.’ Toph hisses in his ear before saying, louder, ‘We can trust him, so get that dumb look off your face Katara.’

Katara keeps that ‘dumb look’ very firmly on her face, but murmurs a quick ‘Sure,’ and turns back to her father. Toph gestures over her shoulder, ‘come get some food, Katara’s made some more of her gloop.’

Zuko looks over his shoulder at Suki, who shakes her head slowly. ‘Sorry,’ he says, ‘I just have to speak with Suki for a moment.’ Toph’s eyes narrow at the Kyoshi warrior, but she lets Zuko go without comment.

They slip behind a pole and Suki places her hands on Zuko’s shoulders. ‘Why?’ She demands. ‘Why lie? They’re not going to buy the ‘firebending moves every single other element’ for much longer, the fact that Sokka let it slide and everyone is nodding along currently is no indicator for what they’ll think when their brains kick in. And besides Zuko, you’re safe here, if they accept a firebender what’s stopping them from accepting an airbender? Kysohi, Aang would kill for another airbender, god knows how lost he must be, thinking he’s the only one.’

‘When, when I was in prison, Avatar Roku came to me.’

‘For real?’

‘Yeah.’ Zuko replies, slightly dazed by the admission itself. ‘He came to my cell and told me it was my destiny to help the Avatar restore balance – how else can I do that but help him master all the elements?’

‘But Zuko, you’re not really a firebender, so aren’t you almost hindering him by not letting him go and find a teacher who actually is a bender?’

‘I know all the katas, all the theory, Agni, I pretended to be a firebender for years. I can teach him, But - ’

‘But what?’

‘I spent the first fourteen years of my life only doing what other people told me to do and when I stopped – started doing what I wanted to do, it felt great. This whole destiny thing… what if I’m just chaining myself back down again?’

Suki nods. ‘Do you, do you want to help Aang?’

Zuko clutches awkwardly at his neck, avoiding her gaze. ‘It’s complicated.’

‘Why is it complicated? Is this something to do with why you won’t tell Aang you’re an airbender?

‘Well, well yeah. It’s part of it.’

He sits down on the nearby bench and Suki joins him. ‘Look Suki, you’re right when you said that the Avatar would be overjoyed to know he isn’t alone, but I’m too scared that he finds out what I am… it would turn something that made him so hopeful into… into something not. What I am? It’s the opposite of hopeful.’

‘What are you, Zuko? For I doubt that it could be as bad as you make out.’

Zuko sighs, his gaze trailing upwards and out into the twinkling sky. ‘You know, my whole life I’ve never been good enough, always a disappointment to everyone. And- and I know that nothing has really changed.’

‘Zuko!’ Suki punches him on the arm. ‘I don’t think you’re a disappointment.’

‘Just- just wait and hear what I have to say. The reason I was flying around the world doing whatever, was because I’d been sent to find the Avatar and could only return when I found him. But of course, at the time I thought it was impossible, so ran away to try and discover what I wanted to do. I never expected the Avatar to return and when I heard I tried to stay as far away from him as possible. Of course, wherever I went I always seemed to stumble upon him – maybe it was part of the whole ‘destiny’ thing.

‘But I don’t think I’ve ever made up my mind – if I wanted to help the Avatar or not. And before you look at me like that, the decision was a bit more complicated for me. You see, the reason I was hunting for the Avatar was because I’d been banished.’ He gestures at his burn. ‘This, I got from my father, as punishment for refusing to fight – an act that eventually caused my banishment. Remember me telling you I’ve never been good enough, always a disappointment? Well a lot of that came down to the fact I was never a good firebender – for obvious reasons. And the reason that was such a problem was, and why I don’t even know if I should be teaching the Avatar firebending…

‘Agni, I can’t believe I’m telling you this, is because I’m the son of the man I’ll be helping the Avatar to kill – I’m not just Zuko, I’m Prince Zuko – Prince Zuko, Crown Prince – though I guess not anymore – of the Fire Nation.’

‘Oh, Zuko.’ Suki breathes out and is about to say something when suddenly the sound of a crash rings out behind them. They both startle, jumping upright to search for the cause of the noise.

Sokka stands behind the column, two broken bowls of what Zuko assumes is Katara’s gloop and an angry look on his face.

‘Suki.’ He says, snatching his club from his belt. ‘Step away from him.’

‘Sokka!’ Suki shouts. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Didn’t you hear him Suki? He’s the son of the Firelord! Fire Nation troops are probably on their way at this very moment!’ His hand shakes slightly as he points his club at Zuko. ‘I can’t believe I trusted you! I should’ve known. There is no such thing as a good firebender.’

‘Sokka!’ Suki admonishes. ‘Put the club down right now. You don’t understand!’

Summoned by the noise Katara and Aang rush over, the rest of the Western Air Temple inhabitants following close behind.

‘What’s going on?’ Katara says, glaring right at Zuko.

Sokka doesn’t take his eyes off Zuko. ‘Why don’t you ask the Prince of the Fire Nation over here.’

‘Prince of the Fire Nation?’ Katara repeats as Toph scoffs, ‘Yeah and I’m the Avatar.’

Sokka makes to step closer to Zuko but Suki steps in front to block him. ‘You don’t have to say anything Zuko – Sokka, you have no idea what you’re talking about.’

‘What do you mean he doesn’t have to say anything! You heard it yourself – he’s the enemy!’

Suki’s gaze hardens. ‘How dare you judge him by a few overheard words, you know nothing of him! And you don’t deserve to, if you are just going to-‘ She breaks off abruptly as Zuko places a hand on her shoulder.

‘Suki – it’s alright. Sokka’s right I- I need to explain… everything.’

Reluctantly Suki steps to the side, eyeing Sokka’s unmoved club.

‘First of all, yeah, I’m the Prince of the Fire Nation.’

Zuko sees Toph’s head shoot up and some of the Freedom Fighters, who were only just now realising who Zuko was, gaping at each other is horror. Katara has a hand over her mouth.

‘But I’m also not a firebender.’ He points at his wrists. ‘You see these? These are flames, I push air into them and fire comes out.’ He pushes a gust forward and Sokka leaps back. ‘Fooled everyone, even my Father.’

Aang’s eyes widen. ‘Air…’

‘Yeah, Prince of the Fire Nation and… airbender. I was the one who broke you out of Pouhai, if you were wondering.’

‘You were… you were the Blue Spirit?’

‘Uh… yeah?’

Steamhopper looks shocked. ‘There are warrants out for your arrest up the entire west coast! That’s more than we ever had combined.’

Katara rounds on Toph. ‘You can tell when people are lying – did you just decide to keep this information to yourself?’

‘Oh shove off it Princess, of course I didn’t know. I only found out about the whole ‘not even an earthbender thing’ back at Serpent’s Pass.’ Toph replies.

‘Serpent’s Pass?’ Katara demands now. ‘He was at Serpent’s Pass?’

Aang stares at Toph. ‘You’ve known for weeks and you never told me?’

‘I uh, asked her not to – sorry.’ Zuko volunteers. ‘And yeah, I was Lee.’

‘Knew it.’ Sokka says quietly.

‘But earthbending and waterbending?’ Katara asks. ‘How did you manage that?’

Zuko reaches out a hand, making Sokka tense, but he only lifts up a rock a few metres away. ‘Well earthbending I just lifted up smaller rocks and disturbed dust.’ He lets the rock drop and turns his attention to the fountain. ‘And water I just…’ he rolls his wrist and flicks his hand around, a spiral of water following his command and lifting upwards. ‘Sort of like a funnel I guess.’

‘No wonder everyone thought you were an Avatar.’ Suki remarks from off to the side.

‘All this is great, but are we forgetting that he is the Prince of the Fire Nation?!’ Sokka demands.

‘We are not our parents!’ Toph shouts suddenly. ‘I’m not my parents as much as you are yours.’ Sokka’s eyes flash involuntarily over to where Hakoda is standing. ‘Sure, I’m mad that Zuko lied – I mean, if this is how everyone reacts he was probably smart to – but are you really going to tell me that the kid who was banished, is an airbender, ran away, helped the Avatar and your dumb ass escape from prisons, is wanted by the Fire Nation and a Kyoshi Warrior… is loyal to the Fire Nation?’

‘It’s different though – he’s the Prince!’ Sokka says, though he sounds less sure.

‘Fine,’ Toph turns to Zuko. ‘let’s see, shall we? Zuko, who’s side are you on? Ours or nutjob murder daddy?’

Suki places a hand on Zuko’s arm as he stares at Toph in silence.

Finally, after what feels like years, for all the silence and suspicion that radiates from all sides, Zuko speaks.

‘You, I’m on your side. I – I’m here to help the Avatar.’

Toph clicks her tongue. ‘Truth.’

Suddenly Zuko feels something barrel into his side.

It’s the Avatar.

… hugging him.

‘Thankyou.’ He hears, though the sound is muffled. ‘Thankyou.’

Zuko has a sneaking suspicion he doesn’t just mean the Pohaui stronghold.

Finally, Sokka lowers his club. ‘So, what now? You still planning on teaching Aang firebending? Because if so, I’m going to have a few questions about how good of a teacher you are being, y’know, not a firebender.’

‘I know all the theory – and I’ve had some experience with deflecting fire – I can teach him the basics… but no, I’m probably not going to be able to get him up to a super high standard.’

‘Why do I even have to learn firebending?’ Aang asks, pulling himself away from Zuko’s chest. ‘Can’t I just get those bracelets, do what you do?’

‘You’re going to have to trust me when I say that fake bending is very different to the real thing. If you’re going to beat my Father, you need to be strong. Really strong. My fakebending wasn’t a way to face a problem, it was a way to avoid it. You don’t get the option of running, not if you want to win.’

Sokka crosses his arms. ‘So, pray tell, where exactly we’re supposed to find someone who can get Aang strong enough to go up against the Firelord?’

‘I know someone.’ Zuko says.

Sokka scoffs. ‘Who?’

‘The Firelord’s brother – my uncle. Or, as you could know him, the Dragon of the West.’

‘You’re kidding right? We don’t need more Fire Nation royalty.’

‘No,’ Zuko replies. ‘I’m not. My uncle isn’t like that, he’s probably the reason I’m with you guys anyway. You can trust him.’

‘And if we he’s wrong,’ Toph pipes up, ‘I’ll just throw him off a cliff.’

‘Fine.’ Sokka says. ‘Where do we find the guy?’

‘Oh, where to find him?’ Zuko repeats. ‘I have no idea.’

∞

Zuko shows Aang the basic katas he’d learnt as a kid and the Avatar’s inability to produce fire is all too reminiscent of his own failures.

‘It’s useless.’ Aang says. ‘Can’t I just try the jewellery?’

‘No,’ Zuko repeats for what must be the fifteenth time that day. ‘It would be useless. Now, try again.’

Sokka glances over from where he’s brushing Dumpling. They’re getting the bisons ready for a flight over to the Earth Kingdom. They’re going off Zuko’s planned route for the Wani, but judging by the success he had using that last time Zuko is a bit scared they’ll never be able to find him.

When he’d told them about the route only Toph and Suki had looked at him with any degree of trust. Aang was also trusting, but he didn’t count. Even after the argument last night Sokka had refused to let Zuko out of his sight. Suki still wasn’t talking to Sokka for the moment, but from the way they’d chatted away on the flight from Boiling Rock Zuko was confident that it wouldn’t last. Suki was, at that moment, off searching for food with Katara, though for most of the morning she’d occupied position to the side of Zuko and directly opposite Sokka so she could stare him down.

Zuko couldn’t believe that Sokka hadn’t been scared away.

‘Did you know this is supposed to be your easiest element to learn, other than air?’ Zuko remarks, watching Aang.

‘Oh great,’ Aang replies, ‘now I know that I suppose I’ll just go and do it then.’

‘Well, for one,’ Zuko continues, pointedly ignoring Aang, ‘it’s your previous incarnation’s element and second, a lot of the katas are very similar.’ This was something he’d noticed at the Southern Air Temple.

‘I guess they are,’ Aang says, moving his hands slowly, trying to remember the moves he’d had drilled into him more than a century before.

‘Fire flows, just like air. But what’s different about fire, is that it has to come from you.’

‘But how do I do that?’ Aang asks.

‘Well, I never really figured that one out.’ Zuko says wryly.

‘Well shit.’ Sokka calls out. ‘What’s the plan now, your highness?’

Zuko’s fists clench and he forces himself not to turn Sokka’s way. ‘My masters always said you need to take all the hatred and anger inside of you and force it into existence as a material entity. You could try that?’

Aang scratched awkwardly at his head. ‘Is there a less negative way to do it? I just don’t think I have that kind of anger – not enough to fight someone, that is.’

‘Use your hatred of him.’ Zuko stops himself from saying Father just in time.

‘I’ve never met him!’ Aang protests. ‘How am I supposed to hate a guy I’ve never met?’

‘I hate him!’ Sokka pipes up. ‘I would slice him up into itty bitty pieces and feed them to Appa if   I could.’

Zuko stiffens slightly. ‘They’re vegetarian.’ He mutters.

‘You need to go back to the source.’ Toph says, Zuko startling at her voice.

‘I thought you had gone berry picking?’  Sokka asks.

‘Me? Berry picking? I don’t think so.’ She replies.

‘What do you mean, the source?’ Aang says. Zuko thinks he knows what Toph is about to talk about. Back in the Earth Kingdom he’d met all the badgermoles responsible for her formidable bending powers.

Toph explains and when she’s finished she turns to Zuko. ‘What’s the source of Firebending? Do you know?’

‘Yeah,’ Zuko says. ‘I think I do.’

∞

‘What do you think we should do?’ Aang whispers. The sun is just starting to rise in the horizon – it had been the dead of night when they’d snuck away from the Air Temple as Sokka had been too suspicious of Zuko to let them go under his careful watch.

‘Think about our place in the universe?’ Zuko whispers back and Aang sighs.

Suddenly a sandaled foot comes into view to the side of the grate. A heavy set tattooed man wearing a feathered head garment stares down at them.

‘Who is down there?’

∞

Zuko stares at the flame in the Sun Warrior chief’s hands. He shouldn’t be doing this, he needs to stop and tell them the truth. He isn’t a firebender, he’s an airbender. What right does he have to be facing the dragons? Let alone carrying their Eternal Flame.

But he reaches out his hands regardless and lets the air whisper around the flame and guide it into his palm. Aang watches him, probably wondering if Zuko was going to say anything, before taking his own. The Avatar fumbles slightly with it, recoiling back from the heat held in his hands.

‘I’m sorry, I’m just a little nervous!’ Aang says, before peering closer. ‘It’s like a little heartbeat.’

‘Fire is life.’ The Chief smiles, ‘not just destruction. You will take your flames up there. The cave of the masters is beneath that rock.’

Zuko follows his finger up to a mountain in the distance. He inclines his head towards the Warrior Chief. ‘Thankyou.’

Aang bows slightly as well, before following Zuko into the forest.

‘Hurry up.’ Zuko says, pausing to let the boy catch up.

‘I can’t! If I go any faster my flame will go out.’ Aang protests. ‘Why can’t I just use air to keep it going – that’s what you’re doing.’

‘Who are we here for Aang? Me or you?’ Zuko turns away, making a point to go even faster up the steep slope. ‘It’s going to go out.’ He calls over his shoulder. ‘You need to give it more juice!’

‘But what if I can’t control it?’

‘You can do it.’ Zuko says. ‘I believe in you.’

Aang smiles and his flame grows slightly in his palm, only diminishing slightly by the time they reach the top of the mountain.

The Sun Warriors have assembled at the top and the sound of drums thunders in Zuko’s ears.

The Chief waits for them in the centre. ‘Facing the judgment of the firebending masters will be very dangerous for you. Your ancestors are directly responsible for the dragons' disappearance.’ Zuko looks to the floor. ‘The masters might not be so happy to see you.’

‘But once they find out I’m the Avatar..’ Aang starts.

The Chief scoffs.’ Have you forgotten that you vanished, allowing the Fire Nation to wreak havoc on the world?’ Aang flushes a guilty red. ‘The decline of the dragons is your burden, too.’

There’s silence as the drums stop abruptly and the Chief comes towards them, taking a sliver of fire from each of their flames and passing one sliver to each line of Sun Warriors.

The flame erupts, spinning down the line until the entire top of the mountain is glowing with the light of the flames Zuko and Aang had carried.

‘Chanters!’ The Chief shouts and the drums start up again, fire dances even higher, and warriors start bow down.

Zuko and Aang approach the stairs and slowly begin to climb. Zuko’s limbs feel like lead – is he walking to his death? Would the dragons really let an airbender approach them? He might as well be asking for himself to be killed.

‘Are we sure about this Zuko?’ Aang asks as they near the top.

‘No.’ Zuko says, and continues climbing. Aang gulps, but follows on behind.

They both step out onto the top and the music cuts off abruptly.

‘Those who wish to meet the masters,’ the Chief shouts, his voice amplified by a metal device, ’Ran and Shaw, will now present their fire.’

Zuko and Aang bow down, prostrating themselves in front of the cave entrances.

‘Sound the call!’ The Chief shouts, giving way to a deafening horn blast. Birds scatter upwards and ground beneath them trembles.

‘Zuko!’ Aang whispers.

‘What?’ He hisses.

‘My flame went out.’

‘What?’

‘Can I have some of yours?’

‘No!’ Zuko replies, stealing his flame away from reaching fingers. ‘Make your own!’

‘I can’t!’ Aang protests and Zuko closes his eyes, sighing.

Reluctantly, Zuko offers out his flame. ‘Fine, take some. But only a little.’

Aang reaches out greedily when suddenly the ground shakes again and Aang falls into Zuko, extinguishing his flame immediately.

‘Uh oh.’ He whispers.

‘What are we going to do now!’ Zuko exclaims, staring down at his hands. He couldn’t just use the flame in his bracelets – could he?

‘No! Not that.’ Aang says, pointing at something over Zuko’s head. ‘It’s the dragons!’

Zuko scrambles to his feet. ‘It’s the masters.’ He says, his voice weak as he spins slowly on his heels, turning around so he can see both of the looming dragons.

‘I think they want us to do the Dragon Dance with them.’

‘What,’ Zuko hisses, ‘about this situation gives you any indication that the giant fucking dragons, want us to dance?’

‘We have to do something! We can’t just stand and do nothing.’ Aang protests and Zuko is answer truthfully, (‘I think I’m shaking too much to even do the first move.’) so instead murmurs, ‘Fine.’

They slide into first position, facing opposite ways and to Zuko’s surprise, he doesn’t end up falling on his face. In fact, the moves seem to steady him as he progresses, his dance growing sharper and stronger with each step. The red dragon flies to the side of him, mirroring his movements with its own massive grace.

A chill shoots through him as he moves into the final position and the dragon freezes behind him.

He straightens up to find the blue dragon staring straight at him and the jewellery adorning his limbs feels suddenly impossibly heavy. The dragon blinks slowly before letting out a piercing screech and dives at Zuko.

The dragon barrels straight into Zuko, one massive claw digging painfully into his shoulder and lifting him up into the sky. He hears Aang scream his name and watches, helplessly, as the red dragon spews fire straight at Aang’s face and the boy is engulfed in the ironically beautiful fire.

‘Aang…’ Zuko whispers, closing his eyes and letting the dragon fly off with him. He’d been a fool to think this tribe would just let them – a Fire Nation Prince and a catastrophically absent Avatar – walk in and expect to learn the secrets of Firebending.

Suddenly he is thrown to the ground and his eyes blink open to a fire lit cavern, the blue dragon seated mere metres away in all its overwhelming glory. Is he going to be eaten? Kept as a pet? Turned into firewood?

What could the dragon possibly want from him, if not to slaughter him in a similar fashion as had been done to Aa-

‘Zuko.’ A hauntingly familiar voice cracks through the crackling of fire.

‘Roku!’ Zuko exclaims, shocked by the transparent figure appearing before him yet again. ‘But how? It’s not the solstice or anything… and why?’

The old man reaches a hand out and – impossibly – rests it on the dragon’s scales. ‘I have a.. special, connection with the dragons. And why? For you Zuko. You’re no firebender, even with your airbending trickery you never would’ve survived the vortex.’

‘Aang?...’

‘Is alive. The secrets that you both came to learn were never meant for you Zuko.’

‘I should be thanking you then.’ Zuko replies, inclining his head.

Roku smiles. ‘And Shaw as well, I would think.’

Zuko hurries to thank the dragon as well, feeling smaller every second he looks up at the imposing figure.

‘But Roku, why have you bought me here?’

The elder Avatar glances over to Shaw, who nods. ‘You have the heart of an airbender… but also a firebender Zuko. You’ve a hard road ahead, and you will need a guide – and it needs you too.’

‘It?’ Zuko breathes, glancing around nervously.

Suddenly he spots it, peeking it’s tiny head out from behind Shaw’s massive form. Barely the size of one of the larger dragon’s toenails, it creeps forward to Zuko.

‘Another dragon?’

‘I have great hopes for the future. Make sure you see them through.’ Roku replies and Zuko thinks he knows what the man means. This dragon – the one that has crawled into his lap, its tiny heart beating under his hand – is a new beginning. Not just for him, but for everyone.

‘I will.’ Zuko whispers. ‘Does it have a name?’

‘He.’ Roku replies. ‘And no, that is for you to decide.’

‘Honour.’ He laughs, wiping at his eyes to stop the tears that are forming there. ‘Your name is Honour.’

Because I think I’ve finally found it.

Chapter Text

‘I understand you’re looking for your uncle?’ Roku says after a moment.

‘Uh, yes.’ Zuko replies, tearing his eyes away from Honour. ‘We are.’

Roku smiles and leans forward, tapping the small dragon between the eyes. ‘She will guide you. Now go – find him.’

‘Thanks you!’ Zuko splutters. ‘Thank you so much, it’s an hon-‘

He’s cut off as he suddenly feels Shaw’s claws dig into his shoulders, the grip much softer than the initial trip. She soars upwards through lightless tunnels and Honour squawks loudly in his arms, whether from fright or glee Zuko can’t tell.

And then, finally, they burst upwards and Zuko’s eyes sting in the overwhelming intensity of the sun. Time must’ve been warped down in the caves, for the vortex still circles around Aang, just as vibrant as he remembered.

As if suddenly aware of Zuko’s arrival, the fire surrounded Aang dies down revealing the Avatar wielding huge flames of his own.

‘Zuko?!’ He yells, spinning around to try and find where the dragon has taken him.

‘Aang!’ Zuko yells back. ‘I’m okay!’

Slowly, Shaw lowers him to the ground and he runs forward, after pausing to bow to Shaw, and over to where Aang stands.

‘I thought you were dead.’ Aang says, grinning wildly.

‘Same here.’ Zuko says, watching as Aang’s eyes widen as they land on the dragon in his arms.

‘What’s that?’ He whispers.

‘This,’ Zuko is the one grinning like an idiot now. ‘is Honour. And she’s taking us to my uncle.’

 ∞

The only thing that stops Sokka from punching Zuko right in the face as soon as he arrives back at the Air Temple, is the terrifyingly cute dragon-like creature in his arms.

‘What…’ Sokka hardly dares to take his eyes off it. ‘is that?’

Zuko scratches it behind it’s ears and the beast lets out a gorgeous squawk that will haunt Sokka for the rest of his days.

‘It’s a dragon, Sokka!’ Aang exclaims. ‘Isn’t it amazing!’

‘Dragons are extinct.’ Sokka says decisively as the animal decides to use that very moment to stare straight back at Sokka, it’s black gaze seeming to bore holes in his chest. ‘They’re dead – all of them.’

Haru coughs pointedly. ‘I think you may want to check again, Sokka.’

And Sokka does look again, over the leathery purple wings and the parchment toned fur following its spine all the way down to where it fans out in a tail that is way too big for the rest of its body. Two stubby horns peek out from the top of its head and the claws that are currently wrapped around Zuko’s arms look sharp enough to slit a throat.

‘It really is a dragon, isn’t it?’ Sokka says, feeling slightly defeated for a moment before the horror truly sets in. ‘Why on earth do you have a dragon!’

‘The firebending masters gave it to him!’ Aang offers excitedly. ‘Apparently it’s going to guide us to his uncle.’

‘Yeah and I’m the Fire Lord.’ Sokka replies. ‘Does it come with a Fire Nation royalty compass or something?’

‘Roku told me that she can guide us to him.’ Zuko says quietly.

‘And we’re really going to trust a dead man?’

Aang bristles. ‘Hey, that dead man is me.’

Sokka groans. ‘You know what I mean, how do we know this Is legit?’

‘Well it’s better than searching the entire Earth Kingdom.’ Katara says, though she herself still looks dubious. ‘We’ve always listened to the past Avatars, why stop now? Like Aang said; that dead man is him, I say if we can trust Aang, we can trust Roku as well.’

‘What’s its name?’ Toph interrupts suddenly. At the immediate lack of response she clarifies, ‘of the dragon. What did you call it?’

‘Oh,’ Zuko glances down at the dragon in his arms. ‘Honour. I called her Honour.’

Toph blinks. ‘That… is veritable trash. You named it Honour? Seriously?’

‘Hey!’ Zuko protests, but Toph continues on.

‘I mean, what did I expect from the guy who called his air bison, Dumpling?’

Hearing her name, Dumpling moans loudly.

Glancing her way, and then back over to Toph, Zuko frowns slightly. ‘They’re not that bad.’

‘It could’ve been worse.’ Sokka agrees.

‘Yeah, imagine if you’d called it something like Foo Foo Cuddly Pops?’ Toph says and Sokka’s cheeks redden noticeably.

Suki, though smiling at the conversation, chooses not to add to it. ‘Well, everything is prepped to leave, we just need to tie up Dumpling and we can leave.’

Katara glances behind at the gathered crowd. Hakoda, Smellerbee, Teo… would they be coming with them to the Earth Kingdom? They had gained three people (plus a dragon, apparently) but the two bisons had already been packed to capacity on the retreat from the Fire Nation, a longer trip with even more would be asking for a repeat of that disastrous time they’d over exerted everyone running from Azula.

As if sensing her question Hakoda clears his throat. ‘I can stay back with anyone who isn’t needed on this mission.’

‘Dad!’ Katara admonishes. ‘I’ve just got you back – I’m not about to lose you again!’

‘He’s right though, Katara.’ Sokka says quietly, he knows that Katara understands this as well. ‘It’s a long trip, Appa and Dumpling can’t carry everyone.’

Aang glances around nervously. Of course he knew which people he wanted with him, but he didn’t want to say it out loud.

But luckily, he doesn’t need to.

‘I’ll stay.’ Teo volunteers first and Haru follows after with a glance at Hakoda. Haru seemed to be in love with the man, everyone had seen them talking beside the campfire when Hakoda wasn’t with his children – Haru ate up his every word.

The Duke, Smellerbee and Pipsqueak volunteered as group and Suki moved to volunteer as well, but Sokka reached quickly for her hand when she started to raise it.

‘To come with us.’ He corrected quickly. ‘You volunteer to come with us.’

Suki rolls her eyes, but she doesn’t move to stand with Hakoda.

There’s a moment of silence as Katara stares sadly at her father. ‘Dad-‘ She starts, but Toph cuts her off, ‘You can cry when we’re actually ready to leave, Katara.’

‘Oh.’ Katara blusters. ‘You’re right, yes. We need to pack Dumpling. Dumpling, yes. Ok, um, I’ll start getting the bags.’

She glances around quickly, looking completely out of her depth, before hurrying quickly off.

Aang makes to follow her, but Hakoda shakes his head. ‘Don’t worry Aang, I’ll get her, you guys pack.’

Hakoda walks off calmly and everyone watches him leave.

‘What does he mean, ‘’you guys pack’’?’ Toph grumbles. ‘I thought that was what Katara was running off to do.’

‘Mmm.’ Suki agrees. ‘And that’s why she ran off in the opposite direction to where the bags are. C’mon Toph, you can help me.’

Suki places a hand on Toph’s shoulder and she blushes bright red at the contact, but lets Suki lead her away without complaint.

‘Toph takes orders from Suki?’ Haru raises an eyebrow after the pair.

‘Have you met Suki?’ Sokka laughs. ‘She’s terrifying! We better do as she says as well and go help. Dumpling! With me.’

Had Zuko been not completely lost in gazing at Honour, he might have been offended by how eagerly Dumpling ambles after Sokka, but as Honour hiccups delicately in his arms, he can’t bring himself to care.

∞

Katara doesn’t talk much on the ride over, she’d been mostly silent since she’d returned with Hakoda to the fully laden Appa and Dumpling. She sits aboard Appa with Aang and Toph, with Sokka flying Dumpling in front. It was a strange configuration, Appa didn’t seem used to flying second, but it was made necessary by the purple dragon leading Zuko, who was of course sitting on Dumpling.

‘What did your father say to Katara?’ Suki whispers after a stall in conversation occurs an hour out from the Temple.

‘Probably just something about how we’ll all be together eventually.’ Sokka replies. ‘She took our mother’s death the hardest, and it made dad leaving so much worse. It’s probably tearing her apart, having to do it all over again for what? The third time now?’

‘Oh.’ Suki says. ‘Never knew my parents, but I’d imagine it would be hard.’

‘Yeah.’ Sokka looks ahead stiffly. ‘It is.’

∞

The town is huge, situated at a main bridge in the east of the Earth Kingdom and sprawling outwards for miles.

Honour sits uselessly atop Zuko’s shoulders as the group survey the town from the edge of the forest.

‘So that magical dragon of yours can’t even finish the job?’ Toph mutters. ‘How do we even know your uncle is here? Bloody thing could’ve led us to any random town.’

‘The place is huge.’ Katara says. ‘Where do we start?’

‘Tea shops.’ Zuko responds, resolutely. ‘My uncle doesn’t go anywhere without sitting down to a cup of tea. We should spread out, ask around for the tea shops and check in on all that we can find.’

‘But Zuko,’ Suki says, ‘none of us know what your uncle looks like. I don’t think we’ll be able to spot him without you – old rotund man isn’t exactly the rarest thing ever.’

‘Oh, you’re right of course.’ Honour crawls down into his arms. ‘Looks like we’ll have to go together.’

‘Are you planning to take the dragon with you?’ Toph raises an eyebrow.

Zuko looks down hurriedly, as if realising just for the first time that a dragon may be slightly out of the ordinary.

‘I’ll look after it.’ Katara says quietly. ‘While you go into the town, that is. Six is a bit of an inconspicuous number, anyhow.’

‘Oh, um.’ Zuko clutches Honour a bit closer to his chest. ‘Ok.’

He holds her close for a moment longer before handing her over into Katara’s hesitant arms. She curls her hands slowly around the dragon, unsure as to how to properly hold her.

She looks around and back over at the bisons. ‘I’ll stay here, you guys go on.’

‘Ok.’ Suki says. ‘We’ll be back soon.’

∞

They find him in the fourth teashop they visit, sipping from a chipped teacup in the dank corner of the back alley establishment. They’d stopped by the first clothes shop they saw, the wanted posters pasted all over the Kingdom made it necessary, so Zuko didn’t think his identity would be obvious to anyone.

But Iroh noticed him straight away.

He places his cup down hastily and pushes his chair back away from the table. ‘Zuko!’ Iroh exclaims, his eyes as jolly and inviting as Zuko had remembered.

‘Uncle.’ Zuko whispers, his feet seemingly frozen to the floor as he stares transfixed, at the amazingly real sight of his uncle.

He feels two warm hugs pull him in and though he can’t bring himself to return the action, he rests his head on Iroh’s shoulder. The smell of tea is strong and familiar in the worn threads of his tunic.

‘No way!’ He hears Toph cry out. ‘You’re the tea guy’s nephew!’

∞

‘You taught him well.’ Iroh tells him, a passing comment as he trains Aang and stops by to steal some of the tea that he’d earlier made for Zuko. Iroh liked to pour a cup for him as well when he was making the tea and then come back and drink the untouched tea later on. He would do the exact same thing back on the Wani, and though it had made Zuko mad then, he couldn’t help but smile when his uncle did it now.

‘I couldn’t even help him create fire, we had to go find the dragons for that.’ Zuko replies, looking dejectedly down for a moment before Honour twisted around violently in his arms, making him start.

Iroh smiles fondly at him, his cheerful attitude had not wavered since Zuko had first seen him in the teashop but neither had Zuko’s, really. ‘Of course, Ra and Sha. But don’t think that makes your contribution any less important.’ He says the dragon’s names with a certain degree of familiarity and Zuko suddenly realises… Dragon of the West. His uncle had never killed the last dragons, he had probably learnt from them like Aang had. It did explain the more flowing and almost dance-like movements Iroh was helping Aang develop.

‘Thanks. You should probably get back now though, Aang can be a bit flighty during training sometimes.’ Zuko advises. ‘Not the most focused person I’ve ever met.’

Iroh laughs, a warm and comforting boom. ‘I’d imagine you’re right, airbenders would be a flighty sort, would they not?’

Zuko smiles. ‘I guess I haven’t exactly disproved that theory.’

‘No.’ Iroh agrees, his smile still there but slightly bittersweet. ‘You haven’t.’

‘But I’m here now, aren’t I Uncle?’

‘Yes Zuko, you’re here now.’

∞

‘And then,’ Sokka says, the light from the fire illuminating him as he leaps about. ‘The Principal walked in! And we’d told Aang it was a bad idea, I’d sat him down and said, ‘’Son, you are the Avatar. Inviting lots of firebending kids to a dance party is a really terrible idea.’’ ‘

Zuko wonders where Sokka got the material for the beard.

‘Like the school band is even there, it’s very hard to pretend that no sir, this is not a dance party. Hide, - remember him? - had ratted us out, and of course, Aang was there in his bloody red headband over his tattoo like a little ‘I’m the Avatar’ sign right on top of his head. So we think that it’s all over, but suddenly everyone has a red headband on and we just sliiiide right out the back of the cave without anyone noticing!’

Iroh claps enthusiastically, wiping at his eyes. ‘Reminds me of my school days.’ He says. ‘Fire Nation dance parties were the wildest things, I’m glad you were bringing them back!’

‘A bit risky though?’ Suki smirks. ‘Imagine, the Fire Lord wins the war after discovering Avatar at a dance party!’

‘It was fun though.’ Katara says, the usually disapproving character now slightly red-faced as she glances in Aang’s direction.

Toph mimes vomiting.

‘I reckon it was useful.’ Sokka laughs. ‘Picture this; Fire lord dethroned in dance battle to the death!’

Aang laughs along with him. ‘He won’t stand a chance against my Phoenix Flight. Kuzon always said if I wasn’t the Avatar I could be a professional dancer.’

Iroh claps his hands. ‘The Phoenix Flight! I haven’t heard of that in decades. It was a bit of a vintage move in my day, but I do hope it’s coming back, was always a bit of fun.’

‘I’ve never seen my father dance.’ Zuko puts in mildly.

‘My brother has two left feet, made our dancing instructor cry every week. Of course, one of the first things he did when he became Fire Lord was dismiss her.’

‘So it’s a viable battle tactic to consider!’ Sokka laughs. ‘We may have to do more dancing Aang, make sure you’re fully prepared.’

‘Fully prepared? I was born prepared, Sokka.’ Aang leaps to his feet it demonstrate just how prepared to dance he is.

‘Show me some of your moves, oh great and noble Avatar.’ Katara smiles and Aang blushes a deep red.

‘I present.’ He says grandly. ‘The Firechicken.’ Aang swoops his head downwards, his hands tucked into his armpits and his arms flapping. He spins round faster and faster, his feet moving in some strange intricate pattern that has Iroh clapping madly.

Aang ends abruptly with a final click of his feet against the hard floor and straightens back up, his eyes glowing.

‘He doesn’t stand a chance.’ Katara says seriously amid the smattering of applause, and Aang beams at her praise.

Zuko however, can’t quite bring himself to celebrate the dance.

‘But it’s not a dance battle to the death, is it?’ He says angrily.

‘Zuko!’ Iroh starts, but Zuko cuts him off.

‘Have you even thought about what you’re going to do Aang?’ He says. ‘Because I can tell you what my father will be doing. He’ll be trying to kill you, flames going straight for your throat, your heart, your lungs – he’ll keep them from killing you until you go into the Avatar State though. I’m not sure how long that would take, but he’d wait it out. That’s just how he is, he draws these things out. This is a hundred year war, not a two day one. He can wait, and he will wait. It will be long and painful and you’ll be burning everywhere.

That way he can end the Avatar line for good.’

‘I-‘ Aang seems lost for words, his joyous expression from mere seconds ago completely wiped from his face. Instead, he stands there looking scared.

‘You still have time Aang.’ Zuko says more gently as he stands up and starts to leave. He can tell that his words have made the others uncomfortable. ‘But he’ll be trying to kill you, and I would assume that you will have to do the same.’

∞

The sound of birds alert Katara to the risen morning and she sits up groggily in her sleeping sack. Suki still slumbers next to her and she has to move carefully as to not disturb her. The tent was only intended for one, but it’s not like Suki had had the opportunity to bring supplies with her from Boiling Rock.

But her care is for nothing and Suki is suddenly startled awake by yells from outside the tent.

‘What was that?’ She asks, rubbing at her eyes.

Katara peeks her head out from the tent. ‘Sokka!’ She yells. ‘What on earth are you yelping about out there?’

Sokka turns to her from where he stands in front of Aang’s tent. There’s a frog in his left hand that is no doubt destined to disturb Aang’s rest and a white sheet of paper clutched in the other. He holds the note up for Katara to see, but she is too far away to make out the words scribbled on it.

‘Aang’s gone.’ He says. ‘All that stuff Zuko was saying last night… he’s up and run.’

‘Is he coming back?’ Suki says, emerging from the tent behind Katara.

Sokka reads back over the note again. ‘He says he is – just that he needs to figure some stuff out first.’

Zuko, who must’ve emerged from his tent at the noise, looks horrified. Honour however, settled comfortably on his left shoulder, merely looks ruffled by the early wakeup.

‘But the comet arrives in mere days!’ Zuko exclaims.

Sokka glares at him. ‘Then you should’ve thought it through more before you went at him last night! And besides, after Ba Sing Se fell the Fire Nation has really already won. Nothing worse can happen if we just give Aang some time to better master Firebending!’

‘That’s where you’re wrong.’ Iroh says and everyone swivels around in his direction. He holds a teapot in his hands, having probably just returned from the stream to fill it. His expression is grim. ‘I know my brother and I know just how far he will go to ensure he is unopposed. I have every belief that Ozai will attempt to harness the comet’s power to decimate the Earth Kingdom, just as my grandfather did with the Air Nomads.’

Katara holds a shaking hand to her mouth. ‘Oh… god no.’

Zuko pulls the note from Sokka’s hands and studies it intently. ‘This gives us nothing! ‘’Don’t worry, I’ll be back. But there’s somewhere I have to go – it’s like it was calling me. I just need to figure some stuff out, don’t worry for me.’’ ‘ He reads the letter aloud, before shoving it back into Sokka’s grip before the dragon on his shoulder can snatch it from his hands. ‘Where is ‘it’? What even is it?’

‘Momo’s gone too.’ Sokka adds forlornly. ‘How are we going to find him?’

‘I don’t think we will be able to.’ Iroh says, but before anyone can say anything he continues, ‘we must trust that Aang will find his way and in the meantime I propose we prepare for the comet’s arrival.’

‘How do we do that?’ Katara doesn’t bother to hide her tear rimmed eyes. She looks shattered, the news of only a few minutes ago already taking its toll. ‘Without Aang… where do we go?’

‘Well first up, I believe I may have some friends that we can visit in Omashu.’

∞

She’s always been first. The best firebender, Ozai’s favourite… the only thing that had never gone her way had been her place has second born. But now that didn’t matter, it was if Zuko had never even been there.

Tomorrow she would be crowned Firelord. Didn’t that have a glorious ring to it – Firelord Azula? Firelord Zuko simply didn’t sound right. She imagines that the crown would fit wrong around his topknot anyhow, he just didn’t have the potential for it.

But she did. This was what she’d been born for, what she’d been working towards for so long. Who would dare try and deny her this? Certainly not the Avatar, none of her soldiers had seen hide nor hair of the boy for weeks. And not Zuko either. He was gone, murdered in the Wani’s explosion if Admiral Jhao was to be believed. She wasn’t sure how she felt about his supposed death. He’d never been rude to her, he’d even congratulated every time she completed a new set. But he’d always represented what she didn’t have. The claim to the throne, his mother… but it didn’t matter now, did it? He was gone and she had everything she’d ever wanted.

Everything.

She’d arrested Mai and Ty Lee that morning. They’d managed to render a good third of the Air Fleet useless before she and the guards had been able to put them in chains. Of course, they’d taken a good third of her soldiers as well.

They hadn’t left the Air Field, Azula had had them chained to the lead airship. Commander Kai had clear instructions to drop them off at Boiling Rock on their way to the Earth Kingdom. ‘You don’t even have to stop.’ She told the man. ‘Dump them in the lake for all I care, watch them burn.’

Because she didn’t care. She really didn’t care. She had everything she could ever need, remember?