Chapter Text
A royal child is born on the winter solstice.
It is a bad omen, say the Fire Sages, for a child of the blood to be born on the darkest day of the year. It means a withdrawal of Agni’s blessing. It might even foretell betrayal and treason.
Quietly, the royal family insists that the child was born before midnight on the previous day. The royal birthday is celebrated a day early every year. But the Fire Lord and his second son never forget that Agni’s blessing is not bestowed upon this son. And likewise, the boy’s mother never forgets that there is a threat looming over her firstborn child.
A royal child is born on the summer solstice.
Sokka is determined to get to the North Pole. Aang, apparently, is determined to take them off-track with any possible distraction. Sokka stops sighing quite so pointedly by their third diversion, but he’s starting to accept that this is what travelling with the kid is going to be like.
When Aang hears about how the villagers have tales about mysterious sounds that they sometimes hear in the forest, Aang obviously volunteers the three of them for what might be hunting down a monster, and Sokka and Katara are hardly even surprised anymore. And so yes, Sokka sighs, but it isn’t quite as pointed as before.
They walk around for an hour before returning to Appa to survey the forest from above. The woods are dark and deep, and they didn’t hear anything unusual on their brief stroll, but Sokka figures that if it’s some big forest monster (please don’t be another big forest monster), they’re more likely to see it from above than coincidentally run into it.
They don’t find a forest monster, thank the spirits. But they do find a small clearing and a very tall tower.
Appa lands at the base of the tower, and Sokka starts circling it to find a door.
“You want to knock on the tower?” Katara asks, doubtfully.
“Hey, if someone’s here, maybe they know about the weird noises!” Aang agrees, walking in the opposite direction to Sokka.
(Sokka starts to feel a little nervous, because it seems like Aang and Katara aren’t considering the other option: that whatever is in this tower is the source of the mysterious sounds.)
Sokka isn’t too worried when he crosses paths with Aang - after all, attention to detail is not exactly Aang’s strong suit - but then Sokka finds himself back with Appa and Katara.
“Does this place not have a door?” he asks, confused, looking upwards.
Aang gasps. “There’s a window at the top!” he exclaims, pointing. “Why would there be a window at the top but no door?” When neither Sokka nor Katara seem able to find the answer quickly enough, Aang jumps up with his glider and shouts: “Airbenders!”
Sokka watches him make his way upwards, and then looks to Katara and shrugs. “It’s not a bad guess,” he admits. “I was thinking ‘really tall ladder’.”
He’s looking away, so he doesn’t immediately see what makes Aang yelp. But when Sokka looks up, he sees a spurt of fire flash out of the open window, and no Aang.
“That… doesn’t look like an airbender to me,” Katara says, and then flings herself onto Appa. Sokka follows. “Appa, yip yip!”
Sokka isn’t sure what he’s expecting to find when he tumbles through the opening at the top of the tower, but it’s not… this.
Aang is still by the window, glider dropped to the floor, both hands up in a pacifying gesture. And over by the opposite wall, wide-eyed and clearly terrified, is a teenaged boy.
A boy with two swirls of fire circling him. Sokka has seen kind of a lot of firebending nowadays (way, way too much firebending), but he’s never seen anything like this.
“Hey hey, it’s okay,” Aang says, voice quiet like the boy is a wild animal. Honestly, while the kid looks fairly put-together, he does have the facial expression of a spooked ostrich horse.
Katara has dropped into the room, and is also holding her hands up. Sokka makes the tactical decision to stay in the window itself, ready to drag Aang and Katara back onto Appa if this gets a little too flame-y for his liking.
“I’m sorry,” Aang continues, still gentle, “I didn’t realise this was someone’s home.”
The boy swallows, and his eyes are as wide as saucers, but the fire encircling him slows a little. He opens his mouth, and then closes it again. Sokka thinks he looks like he might be on the verge of a panic attack.
“I’m Aang,” Aang says cheerfully, grinning at the boy like he isn’t actively threatening them with fire. “I’m an airbender! I thought maybe you were an airbender too, since we couldn’t find a door. But unless you’re also the Avatar, I guess not!”
“... There’s a door,” the boy says, and his voice is a little rough.
“Uh, where?” Sokka asks. “It must be pretty well-hidden, because we couldn’t find anything.”
The boy looks to Sokka then, and the sunlight slanting in the window catches his eyes. The boy’s eyes are liquid gold - a colour that Sokka knows to associate with the Fire Nation and has never, not once in his life, thought to associate with beauty. Until, unfortunately, right at this moment.
The boy blinks hard, and then shrugs. “I don’t know,” he admits. “But somewhere.”
“That’s Sokka!” Aang introduces him. He doesn’t seem nervous about the firebending at all anymore, and Sokka watches as the fire thins again, until it’s basically just two strands of yellow-gold, and then it’s gone entirely. “And this is Katara. They’re my friends.”
“You shouldn’t be here,” the boy says. “There are-- Nobody’s supposed to be here. There are monsters in the forest, you could--”
He looks past Sokka then, presumably toward the forest, but his eyes catch on Appa instead.
“And that’s Appa!” Aang introduces. “He’s my friend, too.”
“That’s…” the boy starts, and then shakes his head. “That’s not possible.”
And suddenly he’s moving. Sokka flinches back because, hello, firebender, but the boy isn’t heading in Sokka’s direction. He’s running across the tower to the tallest set of bookshelves that Sokka has ever seen, and then the kid flings himself at the shelves to climb up. He grabs a green book and jumps down, and then flicks through for a moment while the three intruders stare in confusion.
The boy turns the book around and shoves it at Aang. “A flying bison,” he declares, voice urgent now. “But my book says that they’re extinct.”
Aang takes the book from him and turns the page. “This is so cool! Is it a book of animals?” he asks.
“How can you have a flying bison?” the firebender asks, urgent and serious. “And-- And you said you’re an airbender, but they’re extinct, too.” He looks back to the bookshelves, frowning, like he’s trying to figure out which book would prove him correct on that front.
“Aang is the last airbender,” Katara explains, her voice gentle. “And Appa is the last flying bison.”
“Oh,” the boy replies. He looks back to the three of them again, eyes flitting over them all, and then he shakes his head. “You can’t be here, though. This isn’t-- You have to go.”
Sokka finally jumps in from the window ledge and dusts off his hands. The kid is weird, he decides, but he isn’t trouble.
Katara, it seems, does not agree. When Sokka looks to her, her mouth and brow are both pinched in that look she gets when something is deeply wrong with the world.
“What’s your name?” Katara asks.
The boy looks to the window again, beyond Appa to the forest. His hands are trembling, Sokka notices. “Zuko,” he says.
“What are you so worried about, Zuko?” Katara asks. She takes a step towards the boy, who promptly takes a step backwards.
“People aren’t supposed to be up here,” Zuko says, stiffly. His eyes dart from Katara to the window and back. “You should go.”
“Okay,” Katara replies, nodding. “We will, sure. But maybe we could give you a lift down?”
There’s a long stretch of silence. Sokka is starting to follow Katara’s thread of thought. Zuko knows that there’s a door, but not where it is. Zuko knows that there are no airbenders or flying bison, but only from his collection of books. Zuko is very deliberately avoiding coming close to any of them, but while he’s clearly afraid, his fear seems to be aimed at something that isn’t them. And then there’s the large crescent-moon scar framing his left eye.
As Sokka starts to really look around at the tower, his suspicions only deepen.
This is a whole home. There’s a little kitchen area, and a bed up some wooden steps, and--
And over by the window ledge in which Sokka had been standing just moments ago, there’s a length of chain and some handcuffs.
Okay. Right. No monster in the forest in the classical sense, but Sokka recognises with slowly dawning horror: aren’t the worst monsters usually people?
“Down,” the boy eventually says, and he looks dazed with it. Those beautiful golden eyes are looking outside again, and they all watch as he tries to process the offer. Zuko moves toward the window slowly, and then hesitates there. “I… Could you bring me back up afterwards?”
Now that Zuko is looking away from them, Sokka turns to meet Katara’s eyes.
Katara looks just as panicked and lost as Sokka does. She mouths what do we do? , and Sokka looks to the Avatar, the bridge between realms, for guidance.
Aang seems to be just noticing the chains on the wall.
Zuko turns back, frowning.
“Uh, yeah, buddy,” Sokka says. “We can take you wherever you want. Where are you from? You’re obviously Fire Nation, not from the Earth Kingdom.”
Zuko’s frown deepens. “I’m from here,” he says, gesturing to the tower. And oh spirits, that is so not the right answer at all.
“Did you… grow up in this tower?” Sokka asks, aiming for casual and missing it by a mile. He didn’t even realise that his voice could get to this pitch.
Luckily, Zuko doesn’t seem to notice that anything is wrong. But also, very unfortunately, Zuko doesn’t seem to realise that there’s anything for Sokka to be minorly freaking out about.
“Yeah,” Zuko replies, and then looks back out of the window again. “But I’ve always wanted to know what the grass feels like.”
Sokka is definitely freaking out. He meets Katara’s eyes again and tries his best to communicate yes, we are kidnapping this kid without words. It’s not something that they’ve ever had to communicate silently before, but Sokka thinks that they’re on the same page.
“Okay,” Zuko says, and nods decisively. “Okay. I’ll go down with you. As long as you swear that you’ll bring me back up.”
“We won’t trap you or anything,” Aang insists, and then visibly winces. While part of Sokka wants to throw something at him for the wording, it doesn’t seem like Zuko is too bothered.
So all they need to do is convince this kid that he doesn’t want to be taken back to his prison. That shouldn’t be so difficult, Sokka decides.
Aang clambers out of the window onto Appa, and Katara smiles kindly at Zuko before following. Sokka goes next, and then turns and holds a hand out for Zuko.
Zuko swallows, looking at Appa’s saddle and then down and down and down to the ground.
“It’s okay,” Sokka insists, hand still extended. “I won’t let you fall.”
Zuko meets his eyes, and then a determined expression falls over his features. He grasps Sokka’s hand and all but launches himself onto Appa. He’s surprisingly graceful about it, but he doesn’t let go of his death grip on Sokka’s hand.
And then Appa starts to descend, and Sokka feels like he’s watching a whole play just on Zuko’s face.
Zuko goes from amazed and slack-jawed to terrified to wondrous and back again, like he can’t quite figure out what he’s supposed to be feeling but it’s definitely too much. Sokka doesn’t look away for a moment of it. The sunlight is bright, and Zuko is so pale that he could be made of porcelain or well-packed ice, but his skin looks soft and his expression is ever-changing.
He might be the most beautiful thing that Sokka has ever seen.
The grass is so close, and Zuko feels like he might burst, and he isn’t sure if it’s a good or bad feeling.
When the sky bison (sky bison!) lands, Zuko finds himself unable to keep his eyes open. He squeezes them shut. Maybe he’s dreaming. Maybe this isn’t real at all.
(Zuko doesn’t know if he wants to be dreaming or not.)
After several moments, the hand that he’s clinging to - warm, alien-feeling, but also comforting - tightens to get his attention.
Zuko swallows down panic, and breathes deeply, and then opens his eyes and looks at Sokka. It’s safer than looking elsewhere, even if Sokka is a whole other person. He’s living and breathing, and somehow smiling and frowning at the same time, which is complicated and Zuko doesn’t know what to do with it.
Sokka’s eyes are not quite the same colour as the sky. Zuko can’t figure out exactly what the difference is. But surely this is enough for Zuko to be overwhelmed by, without needing to take in anything else.
Eventually, Katara clears her throat. She sounds like she’s trying not to laugh, presumably at Zuko, who is presumably acting strangely in some way that Zuko can’t pinpoint because he has no basis for what is normal to them.
“You have really nice eyes,” he tells Sokka, because it’s true and he doesn’t see a reason not to say it. Sokka goes immediately red. Zuko guesses there was a reason not to say it after all.
“Um. Thank you,” Sokka replies, and now Katara is definitely laughing. “I like your eyes, too.”
“Hey! Aren’t you guys going to get down?” Aang asks.
Down. Down to the grass.
Zuko finally pulls his gaze away from Sokka, but he doesn’t let go, because the grass is right there.
“Oh,” Zuko says, looking at it. Is it greener up close?
“Come on,” Sokka says softly. “Let’s go have a look at that grass, huh?”
Sokka lets go of him to hop down from the bison, but then he holds a hand up toward Zuko.
Well. There’s the world, Zuko thinks; you’ve been looking for it forever now. You’ve climbed out of that window and tried to scale the tower for it. And it’s right there.
Zuko pushes his terror away, scowls, and jumps down from the bison.
His bare feet hit the grass.
It’s soft.
Zuko falls to his knees.
He breathes deeply, and it smells different down here. He can smell the grass. There’s a breeze picking up, and it touches him from multiple angles, and the rustling of the leaves is far above his head.
Zuko opens his eyes and runs his fingers through the grass. It parts for him, tickles against his palm.
“You okay there?” Sokka asks from behind him.
Zuko knows what the grass smells like now. He knows what the ground feels like under his feet and his fingers. He knows that Sokka’s eyes aren’t quite the same colour as the sky, but they’re still clear and bright and blue.
How could he ever go back?
Zuko springs to his feet, filled with sudden energy, and runs for the nearest tree.
“Whoa!” Aang yelps as he passes.
Zuko stretches out his arms like he’s reaching for the rafters, and he leaps. He grabs a low branch and swings himself up, and then he does it again and again, until he’s looking down at the three strangers - three people - from a totally new angle.
This is what the bark of a living tree feels like against his palms and the soles of his feet!
And abruptly, Zuko wants to cry.
(He has to go back, doesn’t he? He can’t just abandon Mother. Spirits, if she comes back and he isn’t in the tower, what is she going to think?)
He sits down heavily on the branch and tries to catch his breath, but it’s come loose in his chest.
(How could he do this to her? Mother has only ever asked him for one thing, and it’s for Zuko’s own good. He must be the worst son in the whole world. Mother deserves a better son than him. How could he do this to her?)
Aang settles next to him on the branch.
“Hi, Zuko,” he says, twirling the glider. “Are you okay up here? You seemed happy before.”
Zuko looks up at the tower. It’s a whole new angle. The whole world is a whole new angle. It makes Zuko feel a little dizzy.
“I have to go back,” he says, and then swallows. “I’m not supposed to be down here.”
“Why not?” Aang asks, tilting his head.
Maybe Mother will get Zuko a book on airbenders if he asks. He has an airbending scroll with his waterbending and earthbending scrolls - they’re much harder to find, Mother says - but he doesn’t really know anything about the Air Nomads except that they’re extinct.
“It’s not safe,” he explains.
Aang shrugs. “Yeah, but… nothing is safe, not really?”
“You don’t understand,” Zuko says, looking at the leaves of the tree they’re sitting in. He knows this kind of leaf; sometimes, they get carried by the breeze to his window.
“Well you could tell me, then I would understand,” Aang suggests.
Zuko frowns. “There are monsters,” he explains. “There are monsters after me, specifically.”
“Oh,” Aang replies. “That sounds scary. But my friends and I have experience with monsters - we’ll keep you safe if you stick with us, promise.”
Aang grins, and he looks so sure of himself. Zuko feels doubtful, but he looks down to the other two.
“Katara is a waterbender,” Aang explains. “And Sokka has his boomerang. And I’m an airbender, and you’re a firebender - what monsters would stand a chance?”
The monsters aren’t the only problem, of course. There’s also Mother, who will be devastated and furious if she finds out what Zuko is doing right now. But Mother also isn’t due to return until much later tonight, and Zuko is already down here, isn’t he? What difference does it make if he doesn’t go back up straight away?
While Zuko is in the midst of convincing himself to stay down here a little longer, a flutter of feathers and fur catches his eye, and then he is almost knocked from the branch by the sudden weight of a peakitten in his arms.
“Miso,” Zuko greets her, allowing her to settle before hugging her to his chest. Miso’s claws dig into his shoulders and she flaps her wings again, meowing angrily. “Hi, yes, we’re down here now. Did you go looking for me in the tower?”
Miso pecks at Zuko’s hair, pulling a section loose from his phoenix tail.
Aang laughs from next to him and tries to extend a hand to Miso, who responds with a squawk and a valiant attempt at maiming him. Miso flutters off again and perches on a nearby branch to preen through her bright feathers and glare at Aang.
“Okay,” Zuko says eventually. “I can stay down here for a little while.”
They eventually manage to coax Zuko down from the tree.
Aang is helpful, because he’s helpful by nature and he seems to have internalised that something is deeply wrong here.
(Sokka is less helpful, because Katara thinks that he might spontaneously develop hearts in his eyes at any moment, but… at least he’s unhelpful in a way that’s kind of funny?)
Katara isn’t sure if Aang is doing it deliberately, but he slowly convinces Zuko to let them show him the village by the edge of the forest. Zuko looks more than a little dazed by the idea, but he eventually nods and follows them back to Appa.
Sokka holds Zuko by his forearms as they fly properly, high above the trees. Zuko is laughing, but it’s edged with a note of hysteria. Katara shifts to sit next to Aang at the front of the saddle.
“He’s never been outside of the tower,” she states, because she needs to say it out loud.
Aang, who manages to make everything terrible about his own life seem livable and breathable, throws Katara a drawn and worried glance. “Yeah,” he replies.
“He’s never going back to the tower,” Katara declares.
Aang nods.
They land back in the village, and it’s easier to convince Zuko to leave Appa this time. He still falls to his knees and touches the ground, and Katara might have actual nightmares about why he’s so fascinated by the dirt. But he’s also fascinated by the houses, and by the stalls, and by every single person that passes.
Slowly, Zuko goes from being filled with fascination to looking like he might collapse at any moment. Katara’s entire being is drawn towards fixing this issue.
“Let’s get something to eat, maybe sit somewhere quiet,” she suggests, leading the boys toward a food stall. This leads to Zuko being fascinated by the coins in her purse, and Katara trying not to cry as she explains how she knows which coins to hand over for their food.
Katara has them sit in an empty patch of grass by the back of the stalls. They’re close enough to Appa to watch him graze, close enough to the village to hear some semblance of the bustle as they partake in their weekly small market, and far enough away that Katara thinks Zuko might be able to relax.
“I’ve never seen that bending form before,” Aang points out happily. “The one where your fire was like a rope - it was so cool! Where did you learn it? Do you have a firebending master? I’m looking for a firebending master.”
Zuko watches Aang until he stops talking, and then hesitates like he’s waiting for his turn to speak. “I don’t have a firebending master,” he explains. “I mostly learned by myself, I think?”
“I know how that feels,” Katara sympathises. “I’m the only waterbender of my tribe. I’m looking for a master, too.”
“What do you mean, you think?” Sokka asks, frowning in confusion.
Zuko frowns right back at him, and then shrugs. “I also have some scrolls,” he explains, looking back to Katara. “But uh, not firebending scrolls, so it’s… a process.”
Katara sits up straighter. “Do you have waterbending scrolls?”
“Yeah, a few,” Zuko replies. He pauses again, eyes narrowing, and then asks: “Do you want them?”
And the thing is: Katara does want them. Her fingers feel like they’re itching for them already. She wants anything she can get, any scrap of understanding of her own power. And they belong to the Water Tribes, not to the Fire Nation or the Earth Kingdom. It would be right for her to take them, to learn from them, wouldn’t it?
But it would also mean suggesting that they go back to Zuko’s tower. And more than Katara wants those scrolls, she wants Zuko to never go back to that tower.
Slowly, Katara makes herself relax. “No, it’s okay,” she says. “We’re heading for the North Pole to find a waterbending master for me and Aang, anyway.”
Zuko blinks. “For both of you?” he asks. “But I thought you were an airbender?”
Aang is excitedly describing what sounds like a grand adventure from a storybook. Zuko already knew that the Avatar has been missing for a hundred years - he has multiple books which reference this - but he honestly assumed that the whole Avatar story was just a myth. But here is Aang, a child who is supposed to put an end to a century of war.
This group plans to save the word. It’s… a lot. Aren’t they supposed to be with parents? Who is keeping them safe? Zuko wants to ask, but he’s afraid to find out the answer. He’s afraid that they’re all alone in the world.
They have each other, Zuko supposes.
(He shifts closer to Sokka, who seems to want to sit close to Zuko. Sokka is warm; Zuko can tell even though they’re not technically touching. His smile is warm, too.)
But how can they trust one another? The Water Tribe pair are family, but Aang isn’t. Aang doesn’t have any family at all. How does he know who he can trust?
“And maybe you could teach me firebending!” Aang suggests, breathless at the end of a longwinded explanation.
Zuko blinks hard, trying to catch up. “I can’t teach you,” he says. “I don’t know how to firebend.”
“But you could teach me that cool fire rope thing?”
Zuko shrugs. He’s pretty sure that’s not a real firebending move. “Didn’t you say you need to keep travelling? I’m not sure I know anything well enough to teach it to you right now.”
Katara tenses. Zuko tenses in response, but Katara just sits up straighter. “Well, Zuko,” she says, her voice very careful around the edges, “we were thinking that maybe you would want to come with us.”
Zuko goes cold.
They said they would take Zuko home. Zuko made them promise before he stepped out the window. He made them promise, but they had no intention of taking him back up to the tower, did they? Aang is the Avatar, and he needs to learn firebending, and Zuko is a firebender.
How had Zuko been so stupid? How had he been so stupid? Mother has warned him so many times that he can’t trust anyone. Why is Zuko such a slow learner?
“Oh, hey,” Sokka says, shifting to face him. “Are you okay?”
“It makes sense, doesn’t it?” Katara asks. “We could show you the world. There’s-- There’s a lot more to the world than your tower, Zuko.”
The edges of Zuko’s vision have gone grey. He tries to take a good breath, but it feels like there’s no room for the air in his lungs. How is he supposed to get back? He’s going to die in the woods trying to find his way home. Mother is going to come back to the tower and Zuko will be gone, and she will be so upset--
“Whoa, Zuko, it’s okay,” a voice says near his ear, and somewhere in the back of Zuko’s consciousness, he’s aware that it’s Sokka’s voice. But all Zuko can process is that it’s an unknown voice, that he’s in an unknown place, and the world stretches out so wide from every angle. The world is so big, and Zuko is stuck in it. “Zuko, can you hear me?”
“You said you’d take me back,” Zuko hears himself say. His lips are numb. “You said…”
Zuko is going to die out here.
“Zuko, you don’t have to go back,” Katara says, and she leans forward to touch his wrist. Zuko flinches back, and drops the food she bought for him. It falls to the grass - grass he’d been so excited to see, to touch. How has he been so stupid? How has he spent so many years fantasising about the ground? “You don’t have to be locked away. Don’t you get it?”
You don’t have to go back, he hears, and he understands that it means you have to come with us.
Zuko folds his arms around himself. They’re going so far away. If he stays here, maybe he can find his way back through the woods - maybe, if he’s really lucky, Mother will think to come looking for him in this village. All he has to do right now is protect himself from these three.
“Katara,” Aang says, and he sounds quiet now. “I think... he wants to go back.”
“But,” Katara starts, and when Zuko finds it in himself to look up at her, there are tears in her eyes. “But why?”
Zuko is so tired. It makes his bones ache. He looks away from Katara, because there’s so much information on her face, because there’s so much emotion pouring from her and Zuko doesn’t understand it. But when he looks at Sokka, it isn’t any better.
Sokka swallows. “What if… What if you just try it out? Stay with us for a couple of days?” he suggests. “I know this must be a lot to get used to, but…”
“Did you lie to me when you said you’d take me back?” Zuko asks, and he barely recognises his own voice, harsh and piercing and furious.
Sokka looks taken aback. “I…”
“I want to go back to the tower,” he says. “And… And if you’re not going to take me back, please tell me now so that I can start walking before it gets dark.”
He thinks before Mother gets home, and then he realises that even if he does get through the woods unharmed and miraculously find the tower, and even if he does it before Mother is back, he still won’t be able to get back in. He’ll have to wait for Mother, and then she will know. She’ll know what a terrible son he is.
Zuko closes his eyes. He thinks he might burst into tears or flames at any moment. He doesn’t know which.
“Okay,” Sokka says, low and quiet.
“What? Sokka!” Katara snaps. “We can’t leave him back there!”
Sokka clears his throat. Zuko opens his tired eyes again, and finds that Sokka’s expression is completely new. He looks as sad and tired as Zuko feels. Sokka looks over at his sister, and shrugs. “But if we don’t, are we any better than whoever put him there?”
Zuko doesn’t know what that means. Mother keeps him in the tower to keep him alive. They’re not better than Mother. They’re liars, and they’re cheats, and they tricked Zuko into thinking they wanted to be his friends.
Zuko tightens his arms around himself.
“We can’t,” Katara says again.
“I think we have to,” Aang adds. “If it’s what he wants.”
Sokka stands then, and Zuko feels very vulnerable on the ground, and feeling vulnerable just makes him angrier. He misses being surrounded by walls and knowing he’s safe.
“Okay, Zuko.” Sokka speaks like the words are being torn unwillingly from him. “It’s okay. We’ll take you home.”
Zuko’s relief is almost as crushing as his panic had been. He breathes, and nods, and returns to the bison in a haze of emotion.
It’s only been a few hours, Sokka thinks. He shouldn’t feel like his whole being is shattered, just by watching a firebender climb back into a window.
(But he does. He feels like he’s never going to be the same again, now that he knows he’s capable of doing something this awful. Leaving Zuko here might be the worst thing he’ll ever do.)
“Zuko,” Sokka calls, and he wants to climb after him, but Zuko’s shoulders go stiff and Sokka is reminded that he is not welcome. “I’m… I’m sorry,” he tries.
Zuko looks at him through the window, and he’s still the most beautiful thing that Sokka has ever seen, even unhealthily pale, even looking at Sokka like he never wants to see him again.
Zuko nods eventually, and it’s a clear dismissal. Sokka drops his head to his hands as Appa takes flight, drawing them further and further from the tower.
Nobody talks for a long time.
Zuko feels like he can breathe again once the others are gone.
And then:
“Zuko,” Mother says from the chair in the corner.