Chapter Text
The prison is dark.
It’s also damp, but not the kind that Luke likes; the prison is damp in a way that makes his skin crawl and exudes an aura of rot that lives within the walls. Despite the dampness, however, being this close to the volcano that lends Caldera City its name is almost a guarantee that the very air of the corridors are as scorching as Agni himself.
He hasn’t been down here, not recently at least. Not that he can remember at all, actually. But no matter. It should be easy enough to find the girl.
Father had said her name was Leia, and that she was a member of the group that kept starting uprisings to the southwest. He’d said she was a bender, too—an earthbender, if he has to guess; there aren’t any water or airbenders left, and firebenders would never be so disloyal that they would deliberately attack their own countries’ ships.
He rounds a corner and hesitates, sighting the guard at the end of this stretch of hall. This must be it, then.
When the guard sees him, he bows. “Prince Luke.”
“Is the girl down here?”
The guard nods. “Second cell to the right around the corner, sir.”
Luke follows the directions, halting in front of the bars. He’s never been more aware of his lack of bending ability, and more aware of the jian strapped to his hip, than right at this moment.
The girl in the cell is young, maybe only a little older than him, and she snarls as he draws closer. “Another one of you?”
“Wait, someone came earlier?” Luke asks, confusion clouding his expression. The girl sighs and rolls her eyes, and he can see the faint outline of smoke drifting up from her fingertips. So. There is such a thing as a disloyal firebender, then.
“Don’t they put you on a schedule or something? Yes, the Fire Lord did come. And no, I still don’t feel like discussing anything until I know whether the prince has accepted my challenge!”
It dawns on him with the subtlety of the caldera spewing. She doesn’t know who I am.
“What challenge?” he asks cautiously, remaining in the shadows. Now that he’s confident in his anonymity, he’d very much like to keep it, please and thank you.
“An Agni Kai,” she says, gaze determined. Luke’s heart skips a beat.
“The prince isn’t a bender,” he replies carefully.
And Leia smirks. “Exactly.”
Unnerved, he nods and backs away. “I’ll...tell him.”
She nods decisively, still smirking, and Luke feels his stomach sink.
When Father finds him, hours later, Luke is sitting on the floor in front of his bed. He’s leaning against the scarlet foot of the bed, head tipped back as he stares blankly at the ceiling. The man approaches, stopping several feet away. “You saw the girl.”
His voice makes certain that Luke knows it’s no question, but he nods anyway. “Yeah. She….She challenged me. To an Agni Kai. But I don’t—she didn’t know it was me. She told me to tell the prince that she was challenging him..”
“Hmm.”
He says nothing else for several minutes, allowing Luke to stew in his thoughts and worry of what Father’s reaction will be. The girl had clearly already made Father aware of her challenge to Luke, of course, but Father hasn’t told him of the Agni Kai yet. That fact leaves him uneasy, feeling like the ground will crumble beneath him at any moment. Why hasn’t Father told him?
“I won’t let the knowledge of the duel leave this room,” Father says finally, gaze on him but somehow looking beyond in that way he has. Like Luke is merely a pawn. “If that’s what you want.”
It is, Luke wants to say. Instead, he says, “It isn’t.”
Father nods. Voice smooth, he replies, “Then I expect you to be practicing with your tutors daily from now until the duel. Understood?”
He nods, and Father leaves, the interaction leaving Luke feeling as empty as it always does.
“You need to give yourself a steady base.”
“I am giving myself a steady base!”
“No, you’re not.” Kanan punctuates the sentence with another step and another thrust, sending a rock the size of Chopper hurtling toward him. Ezra yelps, pivoting at the last second and thrusting an arm up and, with it, a stone barely bigger than his fist up toward Kanan’s rock. The bigger rock, of course, crushes his pebble when it hits the hill behind Ezra.
“Stop pivoting. You can’t just dodge it; you’re not an airbender.”
“But what if it’s coming at me and my defense is like that last one?!”
“Then tough luck, kid. C’mon. Let’s go see if they’re back from reconnaissance yet.”
Ezra trails behind as Kanan leads the way back to camp. All too soon, he sees Sabine fiddling with something that looks suspiciously like a firework while Hera and Zeb are trying to get an actual fire started.
“It was a lot easier when we had Leia here,” Hera mutters as Kanan comes to a stop next to her. “Almost forgotten h—there we go.” A spark hits the dry grass, coaxing it quickly to a sizable flame, and Hera sits back on her heels in relief as Zeb stands to stretch.
“‘ow’d trainin’ go, kid? You get ‘it with any rocks again?”
“It was just the once,” Ezra says, frowning at the comment. “And no, I didn’t.”
“He nearly did, but he ducked.”
Zeb chuckles as Ezra shoots a glare at Kanan. “Sorry if I didn’t wanna get nailed in the head with a boulder!”
“Just relax, kiddo. I wouldn’t have let it actually hit you.”
Grumbling, Ezra stalks off toward Hera. “You want help with anything?”
“Be my guest,” she says, passing him a tunic from a Fire Nation commoner. Not that that’s much out of the ordinary for them, though. They’ve amassed a lot over the years. It always helps to have backups of the clothes they use to blend in, especially when traveling with Chopper.
He finds the tear on the tunic’s sleeve easily enough and sits, scooting closer to Hera as she sits all the way down, too, and pulls the sewing kit—Sabine had brought it with her from home, back when she first joined their small family—closer to them.
Ezra threads his needle absently, paying only enough attention to it to make sure he’s not stabbing himself before sticking it through the torn sleeve of the shirt. He starts stitching it silently, allowing his thoughts to wander as Hera does the same with a similar shirt beside him.
“So. What’s on your mind?”
He jumps at the sudden address, shooting her a glance for just long enough to confirm her own gaze is still on the fabric. Sighing, Ezra says, “I’m worried.”
“About Leia?”
He nods. “Sabine’s been just...distant, since she left, and like I get that but I’m just worried that Leia won’t come back and like already without her we’re kind of a mess and if she doesn’t come back and Sabine stays distant too—“
“Ezra,” Hera sets her sewing down, resting a hand on his shoulder. “Leia will be okay. And so will Sabine. They’re both strong, and they both know how to manage with both their relationship and the war. Leia’s survived the Fire Nation before. She can do it again.”
He nods. “Yeah, I know they’ll both be okay, I just...worry.”
“I know. That’s normal, Ezra. It’s normal to worry about people you care about. And it’s even harder when you feel helpless, because Leia’s the one out there and we’re all stuck back here. But she’ll be fine. We only have a couple of weeks until the eclipse. She can survive until then.” He nods again, and Hera embraces him with one arm.
“Thanks.”
She makes a sound of acknowledgement, and Ezra closes his eyes, vague memories of his own mom holding him the same way as a child floating to the surface of his mind.