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Hakoda is used to sleepless nights. The war had its massive list of side effects, and sleeplessness, unfortunately, happened to be one of them. It’s not that he has nightmares – weirdly, those haven’t plagued him since the first anniversary of leaving their village in the South Pole (leaving his people, leaving his kids who followed him anyway) to join the war effort. He’s pretty sure that it’s the wariness that gets to him now.
The rational part of him knows that the war is over, that it had been the minute Sozin’s Comet had passed, when Fire Lord Zuko decreed the progress of Fire Nation troops to be stalled indefinitely (before instantly turning to work on other immediate issues), that he and everyone he loves is safe, relatively speaking at least. The battle-hardened veteran inside him thinks otherwise.
He knows these signs from his own men – jumping at shadows, waking at the smallest noise, the looming paranoia and complete disbelief that they were out of any immediate danger – and, worse, he knew them from his own children, who never should have been involved in this war in the first place.
Katara carries a full waterskin about herself all the time, and Sokka has his sword strapped to his belt for the better part of the day. Hakoda’s daughter can barely be seen without water anywhere close to her, and his son assesses the potential danger of a space before getting too comfortable with it.
They both only sleep when they’re sure that the ones they love are safe.
And that’s just Hakoda’s biological kids. He’s pretty sure that he’s adopted the rest by now, and each of the other children have their own massive baggage that they bear far too gracefully for people their age. Hakoda is simultaneously proud of them all and heartbroken that they, as adults, had their children pick up the pieces of a shattered world and glue them back together.
They’re doing an incredible job, of course, which only makes him feel worse about it. Because if teenagers and pre-teens could build an entirely new era of peace in the world, the adults definitely can – and should, as is their duty to the generation that succeeds them.
And yet.
“You’re thinking too loud,” Bato complains, rolling over onto his side. Hakoda doesn’t move from where he’s lying flat on the far-too-comfortable mattress and staring up at the ceiling, but he does hum noncommittally. His partner sighs.
“Do you want to talk about it?”
“We’ve failed the kids,” he says bluntly. “Not – not as parents, but maybe – actually, probably even as parents, but mainly as adults. We should have protected them.”
“We tried,” Bato says softly. “The spirits know that we did. We kept them out of the war for as long as we could, but you know Sokka and Katara would have fought at some point. Better that it’s over than…”
Than. Hakoda had been thinking of the ‘than’ for ages, trying to justify leaving his children at the village with no guarantee of returning. He’d tried to justify all the needless violence that war brought with it, and arrived at the conclusion that there was no justifying it, in the end. War just… was. And now it truly was, in the past tense even. But the effect it had left on his kids was far more tangible.
“You’re right,” he admits. “But they shouldn’t have had to…”
“No,” Bato agrees simply when Hakoda trails away. “They shouldn’t have. But they did, and now we’re here. We can do better now.”
Hakoda hums and sits up against the headboard. Bato doesn’t move except to lean over and blow out the candle before settling back against Hakoda’s side. From this angle, he can see the horribly scarred skin of his arm in full relief. It’s dark, but the memory of how he’d received that injury is vivid in his mind’s eye.
Bato’s okay, he knows that. It would be nice if his mind agreed and left him alone.
There’s a knock at his door.
Bato calls out a vague affirmation to enter, which still strikes Hakoda as an incredibly strange practice, and the door creaks open to admit one very nervous Sokka.
“Hi, son,” Hakoda greets, and Bato sits up next to him, any former hint of sleepiness vanishing instantly. “Did something happen?”
“Not really,” Sokka mutters, shuffling a bit towards them and stopping like he’s still making up his mind about his appearance. Hakoda catches his movement and silently moves so that Sokka can sit next to them on the too-large bed.
Is everything in the Fire Nation this excessive?
The three men sit in silence for what seems like an eternity. Hakoda is almost out of his mind with concern by the time Sokka starts to talk, because his son is never this quiet, but he remains patient and waits for him to speak.
“I kind of had a nightmare,” Sokka says, “and then I couldn’t go back to sleep.”
Bato lifts the furs from the corner of the bed and wraps one around Sokka, the familiar weight likely stabilizing and anchoring his son to the present.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Hakoda asks, shifting so that he’s shoulder-to-shoulder with Sokka. He exhales sharply.
“Not really,” he admits. “But Aang swears by the merits of talking about feelings, so I guess I might as well… try? Also, Zuko might have told me that tell you would be a good starting point. Something about his Uncle and tea.”
Hakoda refrains from commenting that most of Zuko’s rambles or advice centered around his Uncle and tea somehow, but it’s a very near thing. He stays silent and waits.
“It was about Yue,” Sokka says at last, gaze automatically moving to the window. There isn’t a direct view of the moon from this angle, but Hakoda has no doubt that his son knows exactly where it is. “I think it was because of everything that happened – I almost couldn’t protect Toph, and then Zuko went and got shot with lightning because the alternative was Katara being shot with lightning, and–”
“Breathe, Sokka,” Bato interrupts, and Sokka responds by burying his face in his chest. Bato’s arms automatically move to wrap around Sokka protectively but over his shoulder, he looks incredibly alarmed at what the teenager had just confessed. Hakoda… kind of gets it.
Guilt was a heavy burden to bear. Especially when it was born of a situation that rendered one helpless to do anything about it. Hakoda knew the feeling intimately, had felt its sting since the day Kya died, and he’d never thought that his son would one day feel it too.
At least he’s equipped to help, he thinks ruefully.
Right now, he lets his son ride out his emotions, simply staying as a solid figure of comfort until he calms down enough to speak and listen – because Hakoda definitely has a lot to say, but he wants to hear out Sokka first. He’d rather not assume anything and end up giving the wrong advice.
When he’s able to talk, Sokka tells him about Yue’s sacrifice. In its entire, excruciatingly heartbreaking detail. Hakoda thinks it’s the first time he really talked about this with… anyone, really.
He gets it too. The loss of Princess Yue is just tragic. It could have been avoided very easily, but for the fact that they were all inexperienced children. And, to be fair, no one would have expected another to attempt to kill the moon. He didn’t even know such a thing was possible.
“And, well. She remembered that she got her life from the moon when she was born, and thought that by sacrificing herself – by returning to the spirit world, she’d be able to help restore the balance of losing the moon.”
Hakoda remembers an old story that his mother used to tell him. He’d loved it as a kid, if a bit conflicted about its Fire Nation origin. A tale of two lovers cast out from the spirit world, living their life as mortals until one found an elixir to help them cross back from this world into their own. Hakoda doesn’t really remember much else of the story except the ending, which led to the lady drinking the elixir and turning into the moon, separated from the man she loved through their immortal lives and their mortal ones.
He holds Sokka closer to him. “It wasn’t your fault, Sokka,” he says. “I hope you know that as tragic as it was, it was her choice.”
Sokka sniffs. “I know. It was hard at first, but… I know. I just felt so… helpless, you know? I couldn’t do anything to stop it, and it was happening, and somehow it felt like if I’d stepped in I might have been able to keep her safe. Or alive, at least. So that she could decide what to do next.”
Hakoda does know. And he knows that Sokka knows too, which was why he came here in the middle of the night. And Hakoda also knows that for some reason, these feelings resurfaced this day of all days.
“On the day of the Comet. I thought we were going to die, Dad,” he mumbles into his shirt, voice cracking horribly at the word ‘die’. “Toph’s hand was slipping, she was going to fall, and I didn’t know what happened to Suki, or Aang, and when we got back they just said that Katara and Zuko were in the infirmary and–” he lets out an awful sound, something between a scream and a cry that makes Hakoda’s heart break into pieces.
Bato scoots forward and wraps Sokka into a hug sandwich between the two of them. “I can’t understand how awful that must have felt,” he says honestly, “And I won’t insult you by pretending to. But you’re here now. You’re all here and you’re safe. You did a wonderful job protecting everyone, even when that shouldn’t have been on you.”
“I know,” Sokka says hoarsely. “I know that. It’s just… Zuko got shot with lightning, and I had this thought that I couldn’t protect him – he’s been through such horrible stuff in his life, but this is arguably the closest he’s gotten to – to – um, and I thought – I couldn’t have stopped that, and then I started spiraling. A lot.”
Despite all the emotions twisting Hakoda’s heart into knots, he feels proud of his son for actively talking about his emotions. Sokka tends to bury his struggles in favour of helping others, and while he’d been eerily silent for days after Kya’s death he hadn’t spoken about it again to anyone. It’s a good sign that he came to them this night, asking for comfort, or advice, or whatever they had to offer.
Bato tilts his face to the ceiling, as though asking the spirits for their intervention, and gently maneuvers him so that he’s lying on the bed between both of them. It’s something Sokka hasn’t done since he was seven, but he looks exhausted enough not to care and emotionally drained enough to not mind the steady comfort.
Bato’s talking, saying something that Hakoda can’t hear past the buzzing in his ears, but he snaps out of his daze when his partner tugs his hand and makes him lie down as well. When he looks at the vaguely human-shaped lump of blankets next to him, he realises that Sokka’s already fast asleep. At least the years haven’t rid him of the ability to drift off within seconds of going to bed, he thinks wryly, and kisses his son’s forehead before blowing out the candle.
He smiles at Bato and looks up at the moonlight. Yue’s light. Somewhere inside him, he’s sure that she’s looking out for Sokka. He’s not sure how he can tell, but he’s absolutely certain about it.
And with the knowledge that the spirits are watching over his family, Hakoda rests.
“Are you alright, Aang?”
The question startles him out of his reverie, soft as it was. Aang looks up to see a concerned Zuko, his headpiece askew and hair sticking up like he’d run his hands through it repeatedly in frustration. He has half a mind to turn the question back to his friend, but ultimately decides against it.
“Kind of. I just spoke with Avatar Yangchen.”
Zuko nods and wordlessly sinks down onto the ground next to him. As much as Zuko isn’t all that great with emotional conversations, he knows when silent company is needed – and Aang is more than grateful for his presence right now.
“We talked about what to do with the Air Temples. I told her about your plan to fund their restoration, make them into monuments if that’s what I wanted, and she thought it was a good idea.”
Zuko stills, blinking a few times. His hand is half-extended toward the turtleducks, holding out some loose grains for the adorable creatures, but the movement is arrested right there. Aang gently pushes it down, and Zuko seems to return to reality. He flushes and clears his throat. “Um. Tell her I said thanks?”
Aang snorts.
“I hope you know, whatever you decide to do with the Air Temples, you’ll have my support. Even if it’s just to tell me to back off and leave them be.”
He shakes his head. “No, I know. And I really appreciate what you’re doing. It’s just… I’m the only Air Nomad left. I know I’m supposed to prioritise the safety of the world, but the truth is, most of the negotiations are smooth enough that I’m not needed there. Which would be great, if I actually knew what to do. And so much has changed, and everyone’s–” he chokes to a stop, eyes burning with tears.
Zuko wordlessly pulls him into a hug and lets him cry into his robes. Aang finds that even through all the tears, he can’t stop talking now that he’s started. “I thought I worked through all of this when I was opening my chakras, but it still hurts.”
“You’re allowed to grieve, Aang,” Zuko whispers. “Last year must have been awful for you. It’s a miracle you’ve adjusted this much, with all that’s happened.”
Aang whimpers, and Zuko’s arms tighten around him. “I miss Gyatso,” he mumbles. “They were going to take me away from him. When they told me I was the Avatar. I’d already mastered airbending, and the other kids didn’t want to play with me anymore, and they were going to take away Gyatso too.”
Zuko’s heart breaks for the kid. He knows Air Nomad traditions, has read pretty much every scroll that the world has to offer about the lost race. The monks in Air Temples had no materialistic desires or worldly possessions save the airbenders’ gliders, and the bonds they formed with other living souls carried all the more importance for it. Aang told him multiple stories about the things he’d get up to with the older monk, and he’d read Roku’s journals (which he’d found carefully hidden by his mother in Ember Island) and knew that he’d been about as close to a father as monks in a monastery could get.
At the very least, he’d been Aang’s primary guardian. At most, he’d been his closest friend.
“That’s why I ran away,” Aang concludes. “Into the storm. That’s how I got lost in the iceberg.”
Zuko exhales shakily. Spirits, if Aang hadn’t run away, he would have died in Sozin’s genocide calls, Avatar or not. As much as Zuko wishes his friend could have his guardian back, he’s sort of thankful that Aang ran away. At least he’s here now, alive.
“You know that the raids weren’t your fault, right?”
Aang sniffs, but nods. “Yeah. I know. Katara made it clear when I told her the story, and Sokka said the same thing too.”
“Good.”
Aang hums but doesn’t move. “Sorry,” he says suddenly. “For, um… this.”
“Buddy, if I’m allowed to wake up screaming because of nightmares, you’re allowed to cry into my robes for a bit. You’re grieving. As much as I wish it was a linear process, it just doesn’t work like that.”
Aang remains silent for a long time, and Zuko almost wonders whether he’s fallen asleep.
“Does it get better? Sometimes I’m alright, on other days I’m just… sad, but I can do the things I’d normally do, but sometimes it just hurts.”
Zuko takes a moment to get his reply together. It’s a question that deserves a good response, and Zuko doesn’t want to fumble it and imply the wrong thing.
“I still think about my cousin sometimes,” he starts slowly.
“You have a cousin?”
Zuko remembers Lu Ten’s letters from the war front (which he’d snuck past Mom by asking for a different, personal hawk at his window) and how he’d help him with his bending forms. How he’d pull him out of rigorous lessons when he noticed Zuko’s exhaustion and dragged him off on some adventure that usually tired him out enough that he’d fall asleep against his cousin’s shoulder when they stopped for a break under the shade of a tree.
“Had,” he corrects softly. Aang’s eyes widen with understanding, but he doesn’t say anything else. “Lu Ten died in the war. That’s why Uncle ended the siege of Ba Sing Se. That’s not what I was going to talk about – I meant that I still think a lot about him, some days. And it hurts, a lot. He’d write to me twice a week from the front, even if he didn’t have much to say. Sometimes I wake up and forget, and I expect to see a hawk at the window.”
“And then you remember,” Aang murmurs. “That’s how I felt when I saw the giant Pai Sho board in the Western Air Temple. For a second, I kind of hoped that Gyatso would be waiting on the other side of the board. He always cheated with bending,” he adds with a small grin.
Zuko smiles. Talking about his cousin is hard, he’s only really done so with Uncle before. But if it helps Aang, he doesn’t regret it.
“My point is, it’s like you said. Some days you’re fine, some days you’re kind of sad, other days you just want to curl up in your bed and stay there forever. And… to answer your question, I’m afraid I have to say no. It doesn’t get easier – Uncle still doesn’t work on the anniversaries, and I’m kind of useless that whole week too, since my mom vanished that time too. I guess you just get better at dealing with it. It helps to talk to others, of course. I wasn’t allowed to talk about my mother at all after her disappearance, and I internalized a lot of what I felt.”
Aang opens his mouth, no doubt to express his concern, but Zuko holds up a hand to stop him. “I’m telling you this because I don’t want you to make that mistake. Katara and Suki would love to listen to you, and Sokka would give you advice if you need it. Toph… Toph’s just good at helping others sort out their feelings,” he concedes, and it’s true. She’s remarkably astute. “And you know that I’m here for you too.”
Aang smiles. “Thanks, Sifu Hotman.”
Zuko sighs and flicks Aang’s arrow lightly. The young airbender squeaks and rubs it balefully, but flings himself at Zuko once more. Fortunately, this time he isn’t crying.
“You know, you’re not so bad at helping others with feelings either,” he says, voice muffled by the thick material of his robes.
“Thanks,” he says wryly. “I’m serious, though. If you need someone to talk at, I’m your guy.”
Aang nods, but bites his lip. “There was something else, actually. When I spoke to Yangchen, she said that she rethought her advice about killing Ozai on the day of the comet. She said that it’s what she and any other airbending Avatar would have done, but I wasn’t ‘any airbending Avatar’. I was the last of my people, and she said that it was good that I’d found a way to end it without betraying my morals.”
“That’s great, Aang,” Zuko says, a bit confused. He hadn’t really thought about why Aang had been so distressed about the prospect of killing Ozai, but he’d given it a good musing before his coronation when he’d had nothing else to do, and it made a lot of sense to him then.
“She said that I didn’t have to carry the legacy of the Air Nomads alone, that she’d help me with our traditions.” A tear drips down his face, and Aang wipes it away. “And that all the other Air Avatars would help, too.”
Zuko is stunned. He wouldn’t expect anything else of them, really, because 1) who wouldn’t drop everything to help someone as nice as Aang, and 2) all the past Avatars were ridiculously protective of their future lives. Also, it would be really unfair to Aang, a twelve-year-old, to be expected to revive the traditions of a culture whose nuances would have been less known to an actual kid. Zuko silently resolves to help Aang however he can, if only to take some amount of pressure off his friend.
“She said one thing I didn’t really get, though. She said that the documentation of our texts can be something that Roku’s descendant can arrange. Thing is, I didn’t know Roku had descendants.”
… Agni, why do these things keep happening to him?
“Um. I might – I might be his great-grandson. From my mother’s side.”
Aang stares, and Zuko tries not to squirm.
“You’re what?”
The Fire Nation Royal palace is huge, and Hakoda’s lost. He’s also too embarrassed to ask any passing dignitaries or attendants for directions, as a self-declared master of navigation. He’s been the captain of his fleet for three years, and knows his way around a map. And yet, for all his directional senses, he’s lost. The spirits are probably laughing at him from whatever dimension their world is in. He sincerely hopes Bato doesn’t find out, because as much as he loves the man, he won’t be hearing the end of this until his dying day.
The architect who designed the palace must have hated other people, Hakoda concludes. This place is a labyrinth.
He experimentally knocks at a door and is greeted by an affable, if somewhat confused Iroh.
“Chief Hakoda,” he greets. “I wasn’t expecting a visit.”
This hardly counts as a visit, anyway. Hakoda shrugs.
“I had a break between meetings, and thought I’d talk to the only other responsible adult here that all the kids trust.” Which isn’t entirely inaccurate, because he’d been meaning to talk to Iroh anyway. Just not right now.
The older man shoots him a look, and he remembers belatedly that Iroh is also a parent and has the built-in lie detector that comes with raising one’s kids.
Besides, he probably had to deal with a lot of caginess from Zuko.
The look is one Hakoda is familiar with, of course. Usually, he’s the one sporting it. It’s the I-know-you’re-lying-but-I’m-not-going-to-call-it-out look. The look that Sokka got when he fibbed about how not one, but two fishhooks had gotten stuck in his finger. The look that Katara got when she’d accidentally frozen her hair with her own bending and lied through her teeth about it.
Iroh invites him in anyway, and Hakoda thinks, oh well, and enters.
His chambers are less like a royal’s and close to some businessman whose preferred good to trade is tea. There are packets of blends stacked neatly on the shelves, and there are at least three visible tea sets scattered in strategic spots around the room. One has exactly two cups too, and Hakoda has a feeling he knows exactly who it’s for.
His suspicions are confirmed when Iroh decidedly does not pick that set to serve from.
“I believe you had something to say, Chief Hakoda?” the retired general asks mildly, pouring out some water and heating it up with his firebending. Hakoda can’t help but stare at the casual display – most firebenders he’s encountered tend to think of their element as a tool or a weapon to wield. This is admittedly along a similar vein, but it’s so incongruent with his experience because of its domesticity.
“I did,” he says. “And, please, call me Hakoda. I don’t bother with formalities outside formal meetings.”
Iroh smiles. “Of course. Then you must call me Iroh.”
He sets down the kettle and spoons out an appropriate amount of leaves to steep in the water. At least, Hakoda assumes it’s an appropriate amount. He has no frame of reference when it comes to tea, anyway. They couldn’t get much of it imported to the South Pole, not when their regular travel routes past the established borders were being monitored by Fire Nation Raiders (who have reportedly retreated to the mainlands).
“I was going to talk to you about the kids, actually,” Hakoda says bluntly. If this is an informal meeting, then he’s not going to perform his usual routine with politicians. He also suspects that Iroh, like his nephew, hates the needless posturing in court.
“Ah. They have been through much, but I think they should emerge from their ordeals far stronger and wiser than before they faced them.”
“That’s the thing,” Hakoda says. “I’d rather they didn’t have to face them in the first place.”
Iroh’s expression turns sad, and he carefully pours out two cups of tea and waits until he’s taken a sip to respond. “I don’t know how much things might have changed if I’d acted differently,” he starts slowly, and Hakoda doesn’t know what he’s talking about. The dragon hunts? Besieging Ba Sing Se? “But I hope I might have been able to spare the suffering of at least my nephew if I’d stepped in sooner.”
“Not the soldiers who fought for and against you?”
A flash of guilt crosses Iroh’s eyes, even though the question had been nothing but open curiosity. Any animosity Hakoda had to the man had evaporated upon learning about his efforts to stop the war the moment he’d realised it was wrong. Oh, and all that he’d done to keep Zuko from working himself to death while hunting for the Avatar.
“I truly do not know what I might have done differently,” he admits. “It shouldn’t have taken a personal loss for me to realise that my grandfather’s mission was wrong, and it definitely shouldn’t have taken a spectacle made of an act of abuse for me to step in and help my nephew.”
He meets Hakoda’s eye at that, steel under the Fire Nation gold.
“I’ve made several mistakes in the past, and others have suffered for it. I have also vowed to not stand by and watch, so while it might not absolve me of my wrongdoings, I feel like I’ve done something worthwhile all the same. But like you said, I do wish that the children hadn’t been brought into this.”
Hakoda also remembers that Iroh’s son had died in the war.
“How old was he?” he asks softly.
“He turned twenty the week before it happened,” the old general says dully. Hakoda reaches out and grasps his shoulder in solidarity – he can’t imagine ever losing one of his kids. If Kya’s death had rendered him cracked for better part of the following year, losing Katara or Sokka would shatter him to pieces. The man nods gratefully and takes another sip of the tea.
“Your nephew is doing a remarkable job.” It’s an abrupt change in topic, but Hakoda has a feeling that Iroh doesn’t want to linger on the subject of his son’s death and all his regrets. “I don’t think he realises it, but it’s true.”
“I know,” Iroh says. “You can see it in the way the people are changing. Unfortunately, one cannot observe this shift from within the council chambers, which I believe is why Zuko hasn’t understood it yet.”
“Sokka said something about dragging him to the markets, so I don’t think that should be a problem anymore.”
“Ah. I heard from Piandao that he resumed his swordfighting lessons?”
“He did. I think he’s nearly done with them, as long as he keeps training.”
“And is his shoulder still bothering him?”
Hakoda sobers. While Sokka had broken his leg falling off an airship, it had healed rather quickly and effectively thanks to Katara’s healing. His shoulder, on the other hand, still ached from time to time as an aftereffect of the strain it had undergone when he’d held on to Toph with all his might that horrible day.
“He says it’s better, but I don’t know how better it is. His mobility is a little restricted, which I know bothers him, but I think Zuko helped with how to adapt to it.”
Iroh nods. “Hmm. I think I know of some herbs that can be mixed into a balm,” he offers. “I’m not sure if the ingredients are easy to acquire in the South Pole, but I could always order a shipment to be made regularly to your village. I’ve never tried it myself, but I’m told it’s rather effective on tense muscles.”
Between this and the burn cream – salve, whatever – Zuko had offered Bato, Hakoda doesn’t know what to do. He won’t reject it, though – if it helps Sokka, he’s going to take it.
“You have my gratitude, then,” he says formally, inclining his head and shaping the flame in Fire Nation fashion.
Iroh waves it away. “Please. You helped my nephew whenever you could, consider this a debt repaid.”
Hakoda almost flounders for a reply, but is interrupted by a gentle knock at the door. Upon Iroh’s call of admission, Zuko pokes his head into the study.
“Uncle, I was wondering if – Chief Hakoda, I wasn’t expecting to see you here!”
“I was just stopping by to speak with your Uncle,” he lies smoothly, even though that was exactly what he’d just done. “If you need a private moment, I don’t mind–”
“Oh, no, it’s fine. It’s just that I have a meeting with General Bujing, and I’d rather not be, um…”
The name clearly means something to Iroh, who instantly sets aside his tea and rises. The warm glint in his eye hardens to something a little less forgiving and more resembling the experienced general that the man is. He idly wonders if Iroh still has his rank among all the treachery and desertion, but he’s almost certain that if it had been lost at any point, Zuko would have reinstated the title by now.
“I’ll be right there, nephew. I hope you don’t mind,” he adds to Hakoda, who shakes his head and rises as well. Zuko has already disappeared, probably moving towards the council chambers as soon as his request was made.
“No, not at all. I was meaning to leave anyway.” Hakoda makes for the door, and steps aside to let Iroh practically march towards his nephew’s side. Whoever this ‘Bujing’ is, Hakoda doesn’t envy him. He shuts the door to Iroh’s chambers gently behind him and is halfway down the corridor when he stops and swears. Loudly.
He’s still lost.
Two years into Fire Lord Zuko’s reign, an announcement is made about the incredible amount of reforms made to the governance of the Fire Nation. Even all the way in Ba Sing Se, Iroh hears the news from his patrons and realises that it’s about time he visited his nephew.
He’s met with a few surprises.
“Uncle!” Zuko practically sprints up the corridor to greet him with a hug, which Iroh returns with equal enthusiasm. He loves The Jasmine Dragon, but dearly misses Zuko when he’s in Ba Sing Se. He has no doubt that his nephew feels the same way, of course. “I didn’t know you’d be visiting.”
“I thought it was about time,” he responds, squeezing Zuko slightly and letting go only to hold him an arm’s length away. “I also heard about your reforms. How long had you been planning this?”
Zuko shrugs. “Remember when I went to the South Pole last year for my birthday and the Winter Solstice celebrations? I was complaining to Sokka about the generals and may have mentioned in passing that I kind of wanted to replace them all, and when he visited the Fire Nation for the Fire Days festival he had this huge action plan made, with potential steps to be taken and everything.”
Iroh nods and lets Zuko lead him into their shared parlor.
“I went over his plan, which was way too detailed, by the way, and thought that it made a lot of sense. And I was already preparing a list of council members I suspected were loyal to Ozai, so we wrote back and forth on how to move forward from there. I thought of implementing a new Constitution and governing structure since the old one didn’t work out after the war, even when I managed to replace about half of them. But since we don’t really have a good Constitution, I drafted one and kept returning to it whenever I noticed something missing or needed reworking.
“Then all the assassination attempts started happening, and the New Ozai Society was active, and it–”
“Zuko, wait,” Uncle interrupts, just as they reach the joint parlour. “Did you draft an entire Constitution in the last year?”
“Um, yeah? I thought the old laws were pretty terrible and war-centric, since Sozin rewrote all of them a century ago. To be fair, he never really got through with abolishing equal marriage rights, but he did a lot of other terrible things to our people.”
And that excludes just about every other terrible thing he’d done to people of the other nations, Iroh fills in when Zuko doesn’t say it.
“That’s not what I meant, Zuko. Did you consult anyone else while drafting the document, or…”
“I did use our older official documents and histories as a frame of reference,” Zuko says. “And I asked King Bumi for help since he’s actually a hundred years old, but it was mostly on my own. I didn’t want to tell anyone else about it and end up getting it leaked. That wouldn’t have gone over well with the people.”
Agni, he doesn’t even realise it.
“It wouldn’t have,” Iroh agrees. “You circulated copies of the Constitution throughout the nation, I assume?”
“Of course. They deserve the transparency, unlike when they had to guess at what was legal and what wasn’t. It allowed for a lot of abuse of power, which I’d like to avoid.”
Iroh smiles at his nephew. Zuko looks exhausted, but there’s a spark in his eye at the prospect of ruling that hadn’t been there in the two years Iroh had assisted him with his duties. With the new cabinet of ministers in place (or at least with the screening process complete), things should get a lot easier for Zuko, especially since he’ll only have to concern himself with matters of the greatest importance.
“I’ll have reports sent to me summarising the latest changes, of course,” Zuko adds. “But the Ministers won’t have to come to me for approval any time there’s need for action. They’ll only need my approval for bigger decisions, like on a nation-wide level. I’m also planning on appointing regional governors who they can contact if it’s a district issue, but we haven’t finalised the borders of each district yet.”
“It sounds like you’ve been up to a lot, then,” Iroh says lightly.
Zuko blinks and nods. “Yeah.”
His nephew’s eyes find something on the fine red blankets and he frowns. “Druk, what did I say about hiding in Uncle’s chambers?”
Almost as if in response to his question, a dragon – an honest-to-goodness dragon hatchling – pokes its head out of the covers. Its scales are a deep red, almost blending in perfectly with the sheets, and the dragon – Druk, apparently – chirps a little before hopping onto Zuko’s shoulder. The way Zuko lifts an eyebrow, like he’s waiting for a serious reply, reminds Iroh of Ursa. The two of them had been somewhat close when Lu Ten had been younger, before Iroh’s military career had drawn him away from the palace for long periods at a time.
It was the same look that Lu Ten had been on the receiving end of when he’d accidentally broken a pot while playing around with his swords, then proceeded to blame it on a rogue Komodo-rhino.
She’d made him clean it up (with the appropriate safety gear, of course) in the end, but it was clear to anyone watching that she’d been highly amused by the falsehood.
Point was, Zuko looks exactly like an amused-exasperated parent at this moment, only the kid caught in the middle of an act was a dragon.
“Were you ever going to mention the dragon?” he asks, because he really shouldn’t have expected anything else.
Zuko blinks, and flushes. “Um. I only got him last week. Uncle, meet Druk. Druk, Uncle Iroh.”
Druk chirps out what Iroh assumes is a hello, and Iroh waves back in reply. Zuko looks like he wishes the ground would swallow him, which at this point is not an uncommon expression to see on him. And really, Iroh can’t even say he’s surprised. His nephew just happened to be able to find things that by all accounts shouldn’t be able to be found, or at least figure out a way to track them down.
This might as well just happen, he thinks, and lets Zuko ramble.