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When Li and Bao entered the mess hall, they weren’t quite sure what they had interrupted, but they were certain it couldn’t be anything good. There were four soldiers seated around a table with drinks in their hands and smiles on their faces. None of them looked that familiar—they hadn’t served under General Iroh with them, so they must’ve been some of Ozai’s recruits. All four men were leaning excitedly towards a small figure sitting at the end of the table.
Prince Zuko. Drunk as a rabbit-skunk.
Li and Bao exchanged a quick look.
“Hey!” One of the men called to them, gesturing to come in. “Join us, please. We were just having a nice chat with our esteemed commanding officer.” The way he said it was dripping with sarcasm, and the other three men chuckled. The prince didn’t seem to notice.
Instead, Prince Zuko seemed thrilled to have more friends join the party. He smiled—a bizarre sight to see, to say the least—and waved them in. While he was distracted, Bao noticed a soldier stealthily refill the boy’s drink. She wondered briefly just how much the prince had had to drink so far.
Li sat down beside the boy, and Bao sat down on his other side. This close, she could see that the kid was clearly the drunkest one in the room. The soldiers looked fairly sober, if a little rowdy from a couple drinks, but the boy was completely gone. His cheeks were bright red, his eyes glassy with heavy lids, and a few strands of his hair were falling messily from his phoenix tail. Still, he grinned happily in her face.
“Do you want a drink?” The prince’s breath smelled like a distillery, and Bao tried not to pull a face. She shook her head politely. “I came in here to steal some and they caught me,” he gestured vaguely to the men around the table, “but said they wouldn’t tell Uncle so long as I had a drink with them. That’s really nice, I think. They’re really nice.” He smiled at everyone, completely unaware that the smiles he got back were less than friendly.
“Hey, watch this,” one of the men said, elbowing Li and winking at him. He turned his attention back to the prince. “Tell our friends what you were saying earlier, about what we’re doing out here.”
“We’re gonna capture the avatar,” Prince Zuko exclaimed just a bit too loudly, leaning forward over the table and nearly sending his drink toppling over. He caught it and clumsily took a large swig.
“You hear that?” One of the soldiers looked at Bao with a poorly hidden smile. “We’re gonna capture the avatar.” He turned back to the prince. “And why are we doing this?”
“So we can go home! My father said once I capture the avatar I’ll be welcomed back to the Fire Nation with open arms,” he finished with a large flourish, opening his arms wide to demonstrate for everyone. The soldiers roared with laughter, one banging his fist on the table joyfully.
“Wow, your dad was so nice to give you the chance to come back,” a soldier said with fake sincerity.
“Yeah, he must,” another started to say, cutting himself off to chuckle and wipe a tear from his eye, “he must really love you!”
“He does!” Prince Zuko announced happily, sending the men into another fit of howling laughter.
“That’s enough,” Li interrupted, looking as angry as Bao felt. The soldiers stopped laughing, the room growing uncomfortably quiet as they realized the two newcomers weren’t down to ridicule the young prince.
And Prince Zuko, for what it was worth, seemed to be coming to a realization himself. He looked around at everyone, his eyes blank.
“He does love me,” he said, voice barely above a whisper. One of the soldiers snickered, and Bao thought she might actually jump clear over the table to throttle his neck. She probably would have, if not for the sudden sob that erupted from beside her.
Everyone in the room went silent, watching intently as the prince seemed to curl in on himself in his chair. He tilted his head down and his phoenix tail bobbed softly along with his hiccupping breaths as he tried and failed to hold back his tears.
“Oh, no way,” one of the soldiers muttered. They all looked at each other mirthfully, and Bao had a feeling they were about to fall into another fit of laughter.
Before they could, she stood from her seat and planted her hands on the table. “Get out,” she ordered. She was almost positive everyone at the table outranked her, but the fury she felt boiling in her veins made it so she didn’t really care. When a soldier looked like he might argue, she fixed him with a stare that she hoped to Agni was intimidating. “Now.”
The men got up from the table to shuffle out, but not without a few more chuckles and quiet insults.
When they were gone, Bao kneeled down beside Prince Zuko’s chair. The boy looked wrecked. His face was blotchy and already covered in tear tracks, his pinched expression looking almost painful. He looked at her with a vacant look in his eyes.
“H-he does love m-me,” he croaked. It sounded more like a question to Bao.
“I’m sure he does,” she said, hoping he couldn’t tell she was lying through her teeth. She didn’t know the Firelord, but she figured she didn’t really need to know him to know how he felt about his son. The fact that they were out here at sea in the first place was answer enough. That the boy had to catch a practically mythical figure was answer enough. The angry red scar painting the prince’s face was answer enough.
Prince Zuko just crumbled further, his face screwing up as he started to sob harder. Bao glanced over at Li, who looked just as lost as she felt. Bao stood, placing a comforting hand on the prince’s shoulder. It shook under her fingers.
“Why don’t we get you back to your room, sir,” she offered. The prince nodded, but when he tried to stand he stumbled and nearly fell flat on his face. Bao helped him up and quickly figured out that she was just going to have to carry most of his weight, which wasn’t really a problem considering he was about half her size. She was struck once again with how young he really was, another rush of anger shooting through her as she wondered what exactly those soldiers thought they were doing getting the boy so drunk.
Bao walked towards the door, the prince dragging his feet uselessly beside her as he continued to sob. When she passed Li, she mouthed Get General Iroh, figuring he was much better equipped to handle the situation.
When a guard arrived suddenly in Iroh’s quarters and told him his nephew had been found drunk off his ass with a few members of the crew, the first thing he felt was fear. He had lived long enough to see too many men learn to drown their sorrows in alcohol, enough to blot out the rest of the world, until they were hollow shells of what they used to be. The thought of Zuko, a boy barely stepping into his teen years but with enough pain to fill a lifetime, drinking himself into a stupor every day, sent a wave of fear crashing over Iroh.
When he actually saw his nephew, collapsed on the floor of his own quarters with a young guard hovering nervously above him, Iroh just felt immense sadness.
He sent the guards away and closed the door to give them some privacy.
Zuko looked so unbelievably small like this, curled up with his arms wrapped around his body, shoulders shaking with each heavy, wet breath. When Iroh came closer, the boy looked up at him with an expression not unlike a kicked polar bear puppy. His heart clenched.
“I’m sorry, Uncle,” Zuko whined, covering his face in shame. Sighing, Iroh sat down beside his nephew and pulled him into his lap to cradle against his chest like he did when his nephew was a young boy. He was almost too big for this sort of thing, but Iroh figured that, just this once, he would allow himself to indulge a bit. He doubted Zuko would remember much in the morning, anyway.
“It’s alright, Prince Zuko,” he hushed gently, rocking back and forth just a bit. He allowed his nephew to sob into his shoulder, soaking through the fabric as he clutched the front of his robes, desperately clinging to him as if he might disappear at any moment. After a while, the sobbing gave way to hiccups, which gave way to the occasional soft sniffle. Iroh still hugged him close, rubbing a comforting hand across Zuko’s back.
“Father loves me,” his nephew whispered, so quiet Iroh almost didn’t catch it.
“I love you,” he replied. A truth in response to a lie.
“I want to go home,” Zuko whimpered. He sounded so young.
“I know.”
“I want to go home.”
“I know.”
“I want to go home, Uncle.”
Iroh sighed and just held him tighter. There wasn’t much else he felt he could do to make his nephew feel better. He just hoped that someday Zuko would come to realize home could be anywhere, with anyone, and perhaps even one day come to find that home was right here, in his uncle’s embrace.