Chapter Text
“I admit that death is not just about you, it is also about those who love you.” - Peter Greenaway
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Nothing had come easily for Zuko, even after he had been crowned the Fire Nation’s youngest ever Fire Lord. No one had expected it to, but it didn’t help that while dealing with the aftermath of the deadliest war to ever exist, he was also having to deal with his voice breaking during important meetings with all of the nations highest officials. Putting a sixteen year old in charge of the entire nation had been a struggle, and frankly the advisors had been fools to do so even if Zuko was the Crowned Prince at the time. Despite that, Zuko had made the most of all of the responsibility that had been forced upon him. Nearly ten years from his coronation, the nation was doing better than it had in its entire history on earth.
The people of both the Fire Nation and its now massive amount of colonies had learned to live together civilly, growing and expanding off to build diverse families all over the seemingly never ending oceans. This feat had not come without struggle. Zuko was still trying to figure out how to be a better Fire Lord than his father, and his father before that, and all of the Fire Lord before him. In that first year, he had learned of a fight against the motion to remove the Earth Colonies from the Fire Nation getting traction amongst the civilians. That had led to the first attempt on his life after becoming the Fire Lord, and if you asked Zuko about it, he would just tell you that he honestly had expected it to come sooner.
After Zuko had spent time speaking to the families made up of both Earthbenders and his own Firebenders, Zuko had no choice but to remove his support for the proposal he and Aang had come up with together. He knew too much of what it was like to have his family split up, and he would be damned if he was the cause of any more familial pain.
Unbeknownst to the rest of their friends, soon after accepting the position of Fire Lord, Zuko and Aang held their own private meeting together. Zuko had made Aang swear, promise , that if he ever started to become anything like his father, that Aang would put a permanent end to that. When Aang questioned what he meant by this request, Zuko had just given him this deep look that told Aang everything he needed to know. Zuko wanted Aang to promise to kill him if he ever began to resemble his disgrace of a father lord.
After that promise, there had been a couple of close calls where Zuko really had thought it was his ending. If Katara hadn’t been able to calm Aang down, or if Roku’s words of encouragement have pushed Aang to react faster, who knows who would be sitting on the throne now. It’s something none of them like to speak of now, the thought alone bringing a deep sadness to Aang’s face if he thinks about how he had almost killed one of his best friends.
Between Zuko’s family issues, learning to navigate the role of fixing his home nation after a hundred years of destructive war, and the never ending assassination attempts, it had been the longest ten years of his life. But there isn’t much that he would change about it (except for maybe the couple of grey hairs he had noticed popping up). Sokka had seen Zuko regain a trusting relationship with his sister, become one of the most respected officials across all of the nations, and basically rewrite every law in the book to better work for his people how they wished to be served, all without complaining as anyone else would have given in his position.
Sokka’s forgiving nature and Zuko’s stubborn need to make it up to all of them for all the times he had tried to kill them had given way to an easy friendship. Katara, Aang, and Sokka had spent the time right after the end of the war going around to help rebuild different nations, but Sokka found himself visiting the Fire Nation more than just for work. It helped that he had been dating Suki at the time, but getting to see Zuko was another perk of it too. It had been a long time since he had a friend his own age that wasn’t his own sister.
For a small stretch of time over the last two years though, Sokka hadn’t come to visit as much. He had gotten busy back home in the Southern Water Tribe, shadowing his father and learning what he needed to know for when he became Chief someday. As exciting as it was the take over, it was also a lot to think about. He didn’t want to disappoint his father, or his people, and he wanted to learn every single thing that he could so that he didn’t embarrass himself or accidentally start another war.
This was the reason that he had missed out on his usual trips to visit his favorite Hothead Lord and Kyoshi Warrior Leader. Zuko hadn’t let him forget it, either. He regularly found himself on the receiving end of letters closed with the familiar Fire Lord seal and full of delicate words in dark black ink. They were usually just filled with words of encouragement (Zuko knew he was training hard in the South Pole), but this year had all been full of stories of his newborn daughter.
Though Zuko and Mai had a rough few years of breakups and makeups, the pair had decided to split ways for the last time. Zuko understands it was definitely his fault, he had an issue with trusting people but he has gotten better over time. That doesn’t excuse the fact that she was the last person he dated, and how he threw himself completely into his work after that. If asked about it, he always would point out how it isn’t easy for the Fire Lord to go on casual first dates all the time, and Sokka had to give it to him, that was a pretty good excuse if he’s ever heard one.
Zuko’s aversion to branching out into the dating scene wasn’t lost on all of his advisors or his Uncle. There were constant notes in their meeting agendas about the need for an heir, sooner rather than later. He was always ready to argue back, standing at the head of the table with his fists pressed into the dark brown wood, telling them that they have no right to rush him into producing an heir or forcing him into an arranged marriage, and how that isn’t how they were going to run things around here anymore.
What finally wore Zuko down, was Mai showing up at his work-room one afternoon with a small stack of papers in her hands. One Kyoshi Warrior tells anyone that asks to this day how long they were in there speaking, whispered voices in official, serious sounding tones. To anyone else, it sounded like any other business meeting, but it was so much more than that. Mai had spoken to Iroh at length for weeks, deciding that the only way to get Zuko to talk about the idea of an heir was coming up with a proposal. That way, he would have to read through it and take it into consideration as seriously as he would any other document.
Some people would look at the situation from the outside and see a business deal where Zuko is the only one who benefits, but inside it was so different from that. When Mai left his chambers with signed papers, she was glowing as if she held the same fire inside her chest that Firebenders did. Ever since moving from her parents home and into the palace, Mai had been realizing just how much of herself was dictated by her father and his political position. She had changed so much over just the few years, and her sharp edges had smoothed out and her affectionate side had come to see the light more obviously.
No one but Zuko, Iroh, and Mai knew exactly what was in the contract, but the gist of it was that if Zuko was still without a plan to marry and produce an heir by twenty-five, him and Mai would have a child together. It wasn’t an easy decision to make, as by then Zuko was very aware of the way he never wanted to date a woman again, but if there was anyone he trusted more with any future child of his, it would be Mai. She had told him that day of what she had said to Azula at the boiling rock, how she loved him more than she feared her. The sentiment still stood, though it needed a little bit of amending. Mai held Zuko’s hands in her own, and said she loved him more than she feared anyone else, and that she wanted this.
Mai had wanted a kid so much, it wasn’t like she was just doing this to help Zuko out. She wanted someone to treat with all of the unwavering love that she had always wished her parents had shown her for even a moment. Someone to raise to be strong and brave, without losing any of their own personality, and never to serve her or Zuko’s own jobs. Zuko had made amendments to the contract though, telling Mai that she would have as much power as she wished as the mother to the heir of the Fire Nation throne, and that she would always be their mother no matter what Zuko’s love life looked like in the future.
The agreement had gone over well with all of the advisors they had to get it approved with, and three years later they had made good on their deal (for lack of a better word.. It had been anything but romantic, if anything it was laughable.) As soon as Mai fell pregnant, any other topic to write about in Zuko’s letters went out the window. Everything was about this baby, his excitement, his shock at his own excitement, and of course his doubt about the entire thing. He was terrified of being a bad father, or an absent father, or anything like his own excuse for one that was currently behind bars. Just a few years shy of thirty, and Zuko had already held every type of guilt and fear on his shoulders, no one expected the idea of having a child to come any differently to him.
Those fears had burnt up the second Izumi was born. They had received a letter announcing the arrival of the Fire Nation royal child, a daughter for the non-couple. Every nation head had gotten the same formal letter, but the Beifong Metalbending Academy, the Southern Water Tribe chiefs family (and by extension, the Air Nomad nation, formally known as Aang), had all had an invitation to come visit the royal family in a time of celebration.
Sokka had wished he could have joined Katara, Aang, and their crazy three year old in visiting, but his dad had him on the annual Bowhead seal hunting trip and he knew he needed the practice leading a hunting trip. Though, he had made sure to pack up some children’s furs with a note for them to come visit as soon as the child grew into them, and (“mostly decorative”) boomerang for Katara to bring to the new parents for him.
Sokka had met Izumi a few times over the year of her life, and she was the striking image of her mother. And extremely babbly, more so than any other baby Sokka had met. He liked to joke that she got that all from her father. Sokka had never seen so much pride in someone’s face until he first saw Zuko holding a tiny red bundle with pitch black hair in his arms to greet him at the palace doors. He would be lying if the thought of himself in the same position right about now, had he and Suki stayed together, didn’t cross his mind.
Between the royal family, his Kyoshi Warrior friends, and the first ‘free time’ in two long years, there was little stopping Sokka from deciding to stay in the Fire Nation for a while. When he pitched the idea to his father, his excuse for the sudden desire to take a trip was to learn more about the Fire Nation’s relation to his tribe and the other nations so he is prepared for dealing with treaties when he is elected Chief.
So Sokka found himself packing a bag, kissing his sister's forehead goodbye, and getting on a ship. The palace had a revolving door of guests at all times, and had housed everyone in their friend group at one point or another. Now it was Sokka’s turn to spend a few months browsing the Fire Lord’s book collection and building up his spice tolerance.
After all of the time spent visiting, it’s not unusual to see Zuko’s friends and ambassadors walking around the palace, finding ways to busy themselves while he worked or between long meetings with the other officials. Zuko never liked how dark the place had been before he took over all those years ago, but now with the curtains pulled back (both figurative and literally) it opened up the hallways to friendly conversations and laughter.
Sokka found himself wandering the halls alone one morning after about a month of being there. It was hard to sleep in much as the rest of the palace arose with the sun, so his sleep schedule was better than it had been in years after just a few short weeks. Not that he minded though, he enjoyed being able to think about things he walked and explored without the supervising eyes he would have had on him when he was a teen.
It had taken Sokka a little longer to come around to staying in the Fire Nation as a whole than it had to come around to Zuko himself. He still had this residual loathing of seeing the symbols hanging about, until once when he came to visit and they had almost all been removed and replaced with the universal sign for peace that Aang had been telling him would catch on. That was what had caught his attention this bright morning, his fingers brushed up against the intricate carvings along one of the many pillars in one of the many twisting hallways. It had almost distracted him enough that he hadn’t noticed the strangely whispered voices.
Despite this end of the palace usually being empty at this time of the day, it wasn’t like the palace workers to talk so quietly, Zuko had made it very clear that they were to act comfortably and freely inside and outside of the palace walls. Something in Sokka’s brain brought him back to his mischievous teenage days, and his body pressed back against the wall behind the pillar as the voices drew closer. He was not expecting to see two guards stopping feet from where he was, hushed angry whispers shared between them.
“You’re sure that no one has caught on?” The shorter of the two spoke, helmet clanking a little as he looked from side to side down each end of the hallway.
A scoff came from the one who’s back was to Sokka, “Of course not. I think we would both be dead by now if anyone knew about this. Besides, weeks of roaming these halls hasn’t drawn any suspicion yet, we are two steps ahead of them at this point.”
Something in Sokka’s stomach shifted at the sound of that. Whatever ‘this’ was, couldn’t be good judging by their rough tones and paranoid eyes. Sokka tried to place if he knew either of these men’s names, having known most of the workers around here personally by now. As if they could feel eyes on them, the two men stopped speaking and Sokka pressed back into the wall to hide himself again.
There was a beat of silence before one of the unnamed men spoke again, “The Fire Lord should be in his private library by now. You have your dagger, correct?”
“Yes. I will take care of him. ” With that, the two parted ways quickly, a silence agreement between them.
Sokka has never felt so cold in his life, and he didn’t see grass until he was fifteen years old. Dagger? There was only one reason that you would need to bring a dagger into the private chambers of the Fire Lord, alone. He swallowed so harshly that he was surprised they couldn’t hear him. It had been quite a while since Zuko’s life was in danger, with most Ozai sympathizers having been arrested and the Kyoshi Warriors patrolling day in and day out.
Something came over Sokka then, throat tightening as he darted out from his hiding place. It only took him a few paces to catch up to the much shorter guard, long legs helping him. One of his arms easily held the guard’s own arms behind his back, armor digging into his skin roughly as his other arm pressed into his throat to stop him from fighting back for a moment as he was caught by surprise.
“And what do you think you are doing? Plotting an assassination attempt against the Fire Lord behind his own walls?” Sokka spit in his ear.
Sokka was trained in just about every type of weapon under the sun, a master of his craft in sword fighting, beyond skilled with a boomerang, even picking up bow and arrow in his late teens. He was also fairly good in hand to hand combat, but with the adrenaline pumping through him, sleep still clouding his brain, he hadn’t expected the man to get free from his hold so easily.
A glimmer of a knife being unsheathed at the guards side catches Sokka’s eye, and his hand instinctively goes to his own. He was now extremely thankful he had decided to do some close range sparring practice later and took the time to clip his dagger to his belt before he left his chambers.
Now face to face, each of the men equal with their small but deadly weapons, Sokka can see this guard couldn’t be much older than himself. Before he had any time to dwell on that horrifying fact, there was a knife coming straight for his abdomen.
Sokka reacted just in time, fingers wrapping around his wrist tight, the sharp curve of the end of his dagger just centimeters from cutting the dark blue fabric of his tunic. Their faces were so close now, dark brown eyes boring straight into his own bright blue ones. With the close distance, Sokka’s other hand made the split second decision to knock the protective helmet right off of the young man's head. Now, the guard seemed aware of his need to restrain Sokka, the two men in a slight tug of war, knives in hand and struggling against the strength of each other.
Suddenly a shout was pulled from Sokka’s throat with such force, and there was a piercing pain in Sokka’s upper thigh. He tore his eyes away for just a moment to see that the assassins knife was stuck through the thin fabric of his pants directly into the muscle underneath. In their shoving back and forth, somehow he had gotten leverage enough to knee his own hand, aiming the weapon directly at whatever part he could reach first. Blood was now soaking his clothes and beginning to drip down the blade to the royal rugs that lined every hallway in the entire palace.
Using the rush of pain as motivation, Sokka threw his entire body weight back away from the man. He kept his hand tight to his wrist, shoving back at the same time and the knife was yanked from his leg. Sokka would swear later that he had seen white, but wouldn’t admit the whimper to Tui and La came from himself.
“What does the Fire Lord’s life mean to you, you should be loyal to your home tribe!” The man's voice rang from somewhere distant as Sokka regained his balance. He shifted on his feet, testing what it was like to put weight on his now injured leg before he shoved himself shoulders first at the guy.
Instead of an answer, Sokka slammed him into the pillar he had been hiding behind just moments before, hearing the crack of his head hitting the mable without the protection of his helmet to ease the pain. The impact caused the assassin's hand to drop from Sokka’s wrist, jutting out to land a punch right into his jaw. Sokka felt his head snap to the side more than he felt it, having just enough time to duck before another punch was thrown.
He took the opportunity to grab onto his arm at the elbow, shifting his body around so his back was to his attacker and throw the man’s weight over his shoulder. The height difference made it easy, but the weight of the armor proved difficult as the guard tumbled over Sokka and into the ground. The sharp metal edges jabbed at him as they made contact in different places, the movement causing one of his shoulder pieces to slice the skin behind Sokka’s ear.
The clanging sound echoes, and Sokka begins to wonder how much longer before someone finally heard them and came to his rescue (or maybe another assassin would hear, and Sokka would be shit out of luck). He didn’t think about that too much, because there was a boot coming directly at his knee now, causing Sokka to come crashing down on him. Are you fucking kidding me? How does he still have the energy to fight?!
Sokka’s immediate reflex was to start slashing at the man below him, his knife grating against the armor and scuffing it but not doing much damage otherwise. Somewhere in the shuffle of forearms and punches and jabs, the assassins knife went skidding across the floor and just out of both of their reaches. This was his chance, if he didn’t take it, who knows how long he would continue to fight this man and what the outcome could be.
Mind you, Sokka had never intentionally killed someone, not even when fighting to end the war with the Avatar. It wasn’t the way of his tribe. They hunted animals, but never wasted any of it, respecting nature. That respect transferred to humans, and sometimes it had been to the disadvantage of their own people like when the Southern Raiders had come to his village two decades before when they had fought them off the best that they could without the intent to kill. It is important to him that you know that, as his knife dug into the gap of skin between the left chest and shoulder pieces of silver armor below him.
A gasp of breath escaped from the young man, eyes widening as his fingers dug into the front of Sokka’s shirt. A burst of something deep in his chest he had never felt before took over, wrist shifting to twist the knife in deeper. Sokka had seen his fair share of death, had been struck by it more times than a kid should have before he even hit puberty, but this was different. He felt the life slipping from the boy, he was just a boy , under him. His face paled, his jaw went slack, and deep brown eyes glassed over as the moments passed.
As if all of a sudden sensing what had just occurred, Sokka heard dozens of footsteps echoing and coming closer. He just killed someone. But he did it to save his own life. Right? Sokka ignored his own question, as his eyes caught onto someone further down the North end of the hall for the first time since the fight broke out.
It was the other guard, assassin?, eyes set in a piercing glare as he stalked forward. “You’re a dead man, just like your precious Fire Lord. If you live through that,” He spit, pure hatred in his voice as his eyes singled in on the obvious wound on Sokka’s leg.
Leaving the knife in the chest of the dead man, Sokka scrambled to his feet. His pants and hands covered in red as he had to catch himself on the closest tapestry hanging on the stone walls. Before he could get into another fight, he turned his back to the man as he kneeled over what he assumed was his friend, and fought through the pain to take a sharp corner out of the crime scene.
He could hear the distance voices of women he recognized as the Kyoshi Warriors, shouting for a medic and for more guards. He just killed someone . Sokka tripped over his own feet as he slammed his shoulder into a large shelf in the hallway, just barely squeezing himself between the shelf and wall, into the hidden opening behind it. Thank Spirits that Zuko had made sure they knew every inch of the palace.
Sokka is plunged into darkness as he uses the last of his energy to shove the shelf back into place before he slides down the stone wall, bloody hand covering his mouth tightly. A sob rips through his chest, salty tears falling from his eyelashes before he even has time to recognize that he had started crying.
He pulls himself back further into the tunnel with the hand not on his face, muffled whimper as he drags his bleeding leg behind him. Cobwebs catch in his wolf tail, dust covering his already soiled clothes. Sokka had never felt so dirty in his life. Not when he was gutting fish for his village, not after a full day of training with Piandao and sweating through all of his clothes, not even when he spent weeks without a real bath while traveling with his sister and the Avatar. This was a kind of dirty that went deeper than just his skin, deep enough he could feel it in his bones. It was a feeling, that in this moment, he wasn’t sure he was ever going to get rid of it. He couldn’t even think of what it was like just half an hour before, when he had been clean.
Sokka wasn’t stupid. He knew that in order to take down Fire Lord Ozai, and to end the hundred year war, he had been the cause of lost lives. But in war time, it was different, and it hadn’t felt so real then. He was more detached from it then. He could at least pretend it hadn’t happened, he didn’t have to look the soldiers in the eye as the life drained from their bodies. He didn’t have to feel their pulses stop under his own fingertips. He didn’t have their blood currently covering his hands and face, growing sticky as it dried and smelling sickeningly of metal. Sokka hadn’t felt this light headed since Sozin’s comet.
It’s when he starts to slump against the cold floor that he starts to wish he had been able to make it somewhere safe. Even if he screamed out now, would anyone even be able to hear him? Or just the man hiding in plain sight, acting as though he was there to protect their Fire Lord, waiting for him to show weekend so he could offer the finishing strike. Maybe he didn’t even need to be there, maybe the young man’s blade had done that already. It had been long enough to drive deep into his muscle, and Sokka sword he had hit bone. His strength behind the thrust of his weapon was enough to cause serious damage, especially in the leg Sokka had hurt so many years before and had never quite healed correctly.
Keeping his eyes open became more of a chore than it seemed worth it. His mind was spinning so fast that the only thing to keep himself from vomiting was to press his already dirty forehead to the cold, blackened stone floor.
Slowly, his ears started to ring in an unusual way. And he would swear on everything he owns that he could hear Katara, she was laughing. But it wasn’t the grown up Katara, the one with a child and husband, it was little Katara. Now, Sokka was even more confused. When had he opened his eyes? More importantly, when had he gotten home?
Maybe he needed a nap… That’s what he remembered telling himself just before his body went limp against the floor, more blood around him than probably in him at this point. Sokka was going to bleed out in this corridor and
he had just killed someone.