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Chapter Text

A woman holds her two children close upon that night, soft words spoken to them as the moon shines in through a crack in the ceiling. She speaks of tales grander than them, than their little village, of a world once full of life and of hope, when the balance of the nations was kept and all was at peace.

She tells them the story of the Avatar.

Long ago, it is said that the four bending nations lived together in peace and harmony, in a balance that was maintained only by the Avatar, the bearer of all four elements themselves. This Avatar was reborn, again and again, and as the cycle carried on, the Avatar was always there to keep the peace, and to ensure that the world did not fall out of balance.

The Avatar has not been heard from in a very, very long time. Indeed, even before then, the last few Avatars known to the world were said to have been cursed—always broken or killed far too early, never fully realizing their potential, for better or for worse. It was as if the world had decided it no longer needed an Avatar. At least, this is what the Fire Nation would have its citizens believe.

The last Fire Nation Avatar, Avatar Roku, was said to have been a bright and promising young boy, smart and strong-willed and empowered, it seemed, with the very warmth and strength of fire itself, even at such a young age—but he was also said to have been a surprisingly even-tempered and calm child, one who evened out the more brash young boy that was his best friend, Sozin. Heir to the Fire Nation throne, Sozin was said to have been born on the very same day as Roku himself—and the two became fast friends throughout their childhoods, until one day when the two were 6 years old, the Royal Family made plans for a vacation in the Earth Kingdom. It must have only seemed natural to have invited Roku, the Crown Prince's best friend—and though he was young, truly far too young to have been traveling so far without his family, who were they to deny such a request from the Royal Family itself?

Illness took him, in the end; Earth Kingdom illness, a fever unlike any that the Fire Nation royal healers had seen the likes of before which beset the child just days after he had returned from the trip. They say that in his final hours, his tiny body twice tried to fight off the fever with glowing eyes and swirling elements—the first, and last, signs that he was the world's newest Avatar. And yet, in the end, he simply stopped fighting—as if he knew it was no use, that he was only prolonging his inevitable death. (Legend always said that an Avatar who died while at their most powerful would break the cycle—so perhaps it was for the best that young Roku did give in, in the end.)

The next Avatar was Gyatso, an airbender of great promise and wisdom. He spent much of his youth traveling the world alone, healing ills between people and solving as many of the world's problems as he could, fulfilling well his role of Avatar; however, in his later years, he retreated to rejoin his own people, as the world seemed at peace. Avatar Gyatso spent his days, then, helping to raise the next generation of airbenders for the world. Rumor was that he angered the sages in this way—that he took a particular shine to a young prodigy that he saw as a surrogate son, and was thusly ordered to return to his full-time Avatar duties and travel the world again, as he had done before. It was immediately after the Avatar left to carry out the sages' wishes that Fire Lord Sozin had attacked, utilizing the power of the hundred-year comet to wipe out the Air Nomads completely.

But not Gyatso. Though he was never confirmed to have been found anywhere, many claim that he traveled the world in secret after the genocide, never publicly appearing again as the Avatar but instead operating in some sort of secret society, always one step ahead of those who sought him out. No one knows exactly when or how he died—but it is likely that when he did, it was on his own terms, perhaps of old age, or of simple illness. His death, at least, could not be attributed to the Fire Nation at all, much to the Fire Lord's chagrin.

After Gyatso came Ila, of the Southern Water Tribe. She was reportedly a very clever and well-mannered girl, and she was confirmed—in secret—as the Avatar at just 15 years of age, having developed a talent for both water and earthbending. But before she could leave to fully realize her title as the Avatar, the Fire Nation began to attack her village, taking more and more waterbenders each time.

Ila might have managed to hide her status as the Avatar, true—but this was not enough. At the age of 17, she was taken, alongside the last other remaining waterbender in the tribe, and imprisoned. Avatar Ila eventually tried to break free from her imprisonment, and to free her fellow tribesmen as well, using both her water and earthbending—and thusly revealing herself as the Avatar—but she was overpowered by the Fire Nation soldiers who guarded the prisoners, and was killed.

The Avatar that came after her was perhaps the most elusive of any Avatar—never officially coming forward as the Avatar at all. However, legends do speak of a man who traveled the Earth Kingdom, doing what he could to help those he came across—but never using the elements to do so, and never once traveling beyond the Earth Kingdom's borders. As such, the man was renown as a kindred spirit—but it was not until much later, when his appearances had grown farther and farther between, that people began to whisper that perhaps he was the Avatar, maintaining balance in the only way he could dare without drawing the attention of the Fire Nation.

No one knows what became of him—or if he is still out there at all. The Avatar has not been heard from in years, in any case—whether as the Avatar, or simply as the traveling friend-to-the-Earth-Kingdom who many had revered. The Fire Nation, of course, has relished in this respite, branding the Avatar as a worthless coward worthy only of mocking and not respect. The Avatar has not been feared for many seasons—the Avatar has not posed a threat to anyone for many seasons. The Fire Nation has spread itself over the globe, conquering all in its path, unchallenged.

The Fire Nation is at peace, and the world is at war.

The mother, clad in blue, falls silent as her story ends. The words she has used have been kinder, gentler than the tale she knows, softened for her children, but at the heart of the story the truth still remains, unyielding. She strokes her daughter's hair as she blinks sleepily up at her, eyes wide and full of an innocence that only a child could have in this time of war. Her brother sleeps already, his soft snoring proof enough of his slumber. Their mother stoops to give him a kiss to the forehead, even as her remaining child begins to drift off, and she stays there, sitting beside the two of them, and hums softly, a quiet lullaby for her two precious children.

She remains at their side for a long time, well after they are both deep in sleep. She does not want to leave them, even for the night. Fear grips her, that something horrible will happen if she leaves them alone here, even though the fear is silly. Still, the feeling remains—some sense of foreboding.

"Kya," comes the soft voice of her husband, as he comes into the room, gentle gaze resting on each of their children in turn. She smiles in spite of herself at the love she sees there, and at the depth of the love she sees when he turns his eyes on her.

"Kya," he repeats. "Come along to bed."

Reluctantly, she rises, careful not to disturb her son and daughter's dreams, and follows her husband into their room, the outer room of their house of ice. Their children will be safe. If anything is to happen, they will be the first to know. They will be safe.

Elsewhere, a mother clad in robes of red kisses her sleeping son on the cheek, not having to worry about his safety at all.

The next day, ash falls from the sky in the blue-clad mother's village.

Chapter Text

"Come now," the red-clad mother tells her children. "Hurry. The Fire Lord is waiting."

As she ushers the two of them to the throne room, where her husband has requested audience, she pauses a moment to take in their appearances... well. It's good enough, at least. They are wearing their best clothes, as she had requested of them; the palace servants had done well on presentation, at the very least. She is not, of course, one usually so taken with appearances—but this was the Fire Lord; if they offended him...

She will not think of it, in any case. She leads her children into the room then, where flames lick around the raised throne of their ruler and her husband sits already, awaiting their arrival and staring up at the Fire Lord himself. Her children sit down on one side of their father, while she takes her place at his left.

The meeting is dull, at first. Her husband seems to want to flaunt their eldest's knowledge, and she performs well, reciting facts and history like it comes easily to her. It does, of course—all had always come easy for their daughter. She was a natural-born prodigy in many ways.

Then she is demonstrating her katas to the Fire Lord, and her mother tenses as she glances at her son. He has always felt lesser, she knows—born after, and always in the shadow of, a sister such as his. But even she knows that try as he might, her son is not ready for a demonstration like the one that has just taken place, even as her daughter bows and retakes her seat. But she also knows her son—knows, even before he speaks, that he will want to try, too.

He always tries. He always tries so hard. She loves him so—but she fears this is not the time.

Still, it is done. He has spoken his intent to demonstrate his own learnings, and now he, too, is performing dances of flame for the Fire Lord, who stares down intently over interlinked hands. But even without being a bender of flame herself, she can see that his forms are slightly off; he is not naturally talented like her daughter, though she admires him so for trying anyway.

As she watches, one misplaced kick lands him unceremoniously on the ground; she rises then suddenly, without thinking, eyes wide and worry flaring up for her child. But before she can move to him, he has gotten to his feet again, to try once more—

Then her son has leapt, kicking out with one ungraceful motion and sending a weak flame into the air above him, and as he falls to the ground, a sudden gust of wind, almost unnoticeable, bursts out from where he lands, rustling the bottom of her robes even as she takes a few hasty steps towards him. She need not have worried at all, it seems—his fall had been cushioned.

But his spirits are still dampened; as she reaches him, one gentle hand on his shoulder and helping him up, her son mumbles, almost as if to himself - "I failed." Clearly he has not noticed the wind. His head is down, and though she cannot yet see his face, she can hear in his voice that he is close to tears.

"No," she breathes to him, soothing, as she turns her son to face her and places both hands upon his shoulders. "Be proud of who you are, my son. Someone who keeps fighting, even though it's hard," and yet still she keeps her voice soft, her words just murmurs, unwilling to truly disrupt the hush that has befallen the room, because she knows.

She knows what the gust of wind has meant, untrained and instinctive as it had been.

Air. Her son has airbended.

And she is not the only one to have realized this. Nor is she the only one to have realized exactly what it meant.

"Go to your chambers at once," the Fire Lord orders, abruptly, breaking the silence, and without a word she rises and leads her children away, but notices as she goes that her husband does not leave. The Fire Lord had not been addressing him. They intend to discuss this, she knows. She only hopes that their decision will be merciful.

After all, would it not do more good to raise the Avatar here, as one of their own?

She makes certain to keep her son close to her as she leads him to his chambers, never once letting her hand leave his shoulder.

———

It is later, after she has put both of her children to bed, that she begins to pack a bag. Her husband has not returned to their chambers, and she fears the worst. What if the Fire Lord had ordered—no. She mustn't think of that. She busies herself with the packing instead, not fully dedicating her time and mind to it but spending enough effort to keep herself sufficiently distracted. She is not certain why she packs. It is possible that all will be fine, and this will not even be necessary.

And yet.

Her son. The Avatar. What if they mean to hurt him—or worse? She will have to leave, and take him with her, if that is the case. She will not allow any harm to come to her son. Not while there is breath left in her body.

Sudden fear grips her then. What if he has already been hurt? All the while she has been busying herself in her own chamber—but she should have been watching over her children! What if...

She allows herself no more time to worry on it. Her children's rooms are next to each other, thankfully, and across from her own. She will not have far to go. As she rises, half-packed bag still sitting on her own bed, she makes her way to her son's room first, moving through the doorway and then freezing when she sees that is her daughter instead who stands there, playing idly with the dagger that she knows belongs to him.

She moves to her daughter, and without a word extends her hand, giving her a look even as she fights rising terror. Her daughter sets the knife in her hand, and she slips it into her robes.

"Where is your brother?" she asks her child, and though she tries to keep her tone gentle, kind, there is a sharpness to her words that surely makes itself very clear.

"Dad took him into the throne room," her daughter tells her innocently. "He said he and the Fire Lord had business with him." She smiles then, up at her mother, and though it's a blithe thing, not outwardly portraying any ill intentions, she shudders to realize that perhaps it means that her daughter is pleased. Does she know just what could be happening—?

No. There is no time to chide her, or to pause at all—without a word, the woman takes off running, frantic footfalls echoing throughout the halls of the palace as she hurries to find her son. The throne room. He is in the throne room. Surely she can't be too late already...

She bursts forth into the room, the edges of her robes likely billowing a bit behind her in some dramatic fashion, and her eyes widen as she takes in the scene before her.

The Fire Lord, on his throne—to be expected, that. And her husband, standing some ways in front of him, hatred clear in his features.

And her son—her son is kneeling before a father whose hand is already outstretched towards him in a stance that she knows means flame is forthcoming. Even from where she stands, she can see her son's shoulders shake with the tears she is sure he is spilling, and then her husband's raised hand moves, just slightly, and she does too.

"Stop!" she cries as she rushes forward, and in that same instant she sees him jerk, surprised—but the flame still bursts forth from his hand, still sears the flesh before it, and no, no, no, her son, her precious child—

She's at his side in an instant, where he's crumpled to the ground, and one side of his face is horrible. It's taken the full brunt of the blast, she can tell, though her husband's shock had been enough to keep the rest of him safe. Not that he will be safe for long—this is bad, so bad, and she cradles him to her and tries to whisper soothing words to him, even as he writhes in torment.

She hears him let out a whimper, agony clear in his voice, and then he falls silent, limp in her trembling arms. Unconscious, it seems, probably from the pain. She doesn't know if this is better or worse. All she does know is that her child, her baby—he's hurt, so so hurt and the monsters who did this to him are just staring, not even making a move to finish to job, as if waiting for her next move.

She whips her head up to glare at them, eyes likely wild with her rising panic.

"Why are you doing this?" she asks, desperation clawing forth in her tone even as she tries to keep herself calm, to reason with them. "He is on our side now! If you kill him, he'll only be born again—you will have to find him all over again!"

"Are you a fool?" her husband snaps at her, though his words are slow and condescending even in his anger, as if he is speaking to someone simpler than she. His mouth is twisted in what might be a grin or a grimace—she can't be sure. She looks away then, back to her son. "The next in the cycle is air, and the Air Nomads are dead. Finally the world will be free of this wretch once and for—"

"Hold your tongue, child," the Fire Lord interrupts him, and though he does not raise his voice, his tone is cold and commanding enough to silence the man. She still knows, though—knows what her husband has meant, realizes why they have decided that her child must die. Is it true? Could the cycle truly be broken? "This matters not. The decision does not concern you." The old man's latter words are spoken to her, and she feels his icy gaze resting upon her.

"He is my son," she replies, surprising herself in the strength of her voice as she lifts her head, tearing her own gaze away from her broken child to meet the Fire Lord's eyes without fear. "This concerns me."

"Very well," he says to her, and the contempt in his voice is clear. He is sneering at her, she thinks. "Take your precious son and go, if you wish. But you will not be welcome within our borders." He smiles then, a wicked, twisted thing. Because he knows, just as well as she does, what his words mean for her, for them both. Her child, hurting now as he is, needs a healer, and a good one, she is certain, or he will not survive for long—and the Fire Lord is counting on this. She knows he is. He wishes to hurt her deliberately, in even making this offer of apparent mercy, empty as it is.

"Do you mean to say that this is exile?" she manages, cradling the limp child she is holding closer to her chest, though attempting to keep her face impassive. She sees her husband's narrowed eyes focus on their son—no. Her son. The revulsion she sees in those hateful eyes is enough to tell her that he is no father to her child.

"Yes," the Fire Lord answers her, coldly. "If you or the boy is found in the Fire Nation ever again, my soldiers will not hesitate to kill you on the spot." He gives her another smile, as if he's being polite. "I wish both of you the best of health."

She seethes at his words, but wastes no time in protesting them. There are no more words for her to speak now. The Fire Lord need not be told that she understands just how cruel his 'kindness' truly is. But she will not let him win—him or her husband.

They think that her son has no chance of surviving. They think that she has no chance of saving him.

They underestimate, clearly, the depth of her love for Zuko.

Ursa gathers her son in her arms and runs.

Chapter Text

It has been nearly two weeks. Two weeks since Ursa had fled the palace, a burned and broken child in her arms; two weeks since Ozai had scarred his own son.

Two weeks since she had realized that Zuko—her Zuko—was the Avatar.

He is only eight years old, and already he has been so horribly hurt by the world. Not just physically—as she would wager that his heart bore scars just as much as his face now did, though her son scarcely wakes up now. Most of his time is consumed by fitful sleep, feverish, even as the infection in his wounded face rages on.

Ursa had done all that she could on her own, had gotten him to a healer as fast as she could have possibly managed. She had even stopped within the borders of the Fire Nation twice to have his wound treated; a great risk, she knew, but when the alternative was the certainty of his death, she would take what she could. But it had taken far too long to get him to a good Earth Kingdom healer, across the water as the nation was—she had only found one such healer four days ago, just ashore, who was thankfully willing to take her Fire Nation coins.

And yet her son still hardly wakes, now. Of course his wound had been infected—what more could she have hoped for, besides him living? Even that seemed uncertain—he is so weak, so broken, and the healers here do not speak of his health with hope. But Ursa will not give up her own hope in her child. He has always tried so hard - he is at heart a boy who would never stop fighting for something that he wanted or that he believed in, that much she knows. She will only have to hope now that he will fight for his own life.

Even as she thinks the words from where she sits at his bedside, she retrieves the dagger from inside her clothes; though they are simpler now, Earth Kingdom, she still keeps the knife that she had stashed in her robes prior, even though she had sold the clothes she had worn before. She'd had money with her, sure—but even that would run out soon, and her son needs everything she can give him, now.

She turns the dagger over in her hands, eyes flitting down to take in the inscription. Never give up without a fight. It is silly, she knows, the comfort it gives her, but it does—for reading it she can almost hear her son's voice again, as he had read it aloud upon receiving it, how he had smiled... The words were so him, and she has to trust that Zuko will not give up now, either. He is a strong, determined boy. Surely an infection cannot defeat him. He will pull through, she thinks. He has to.

And yet she remembers the rumors, even back in her own small village, of the Avatar's curse. Avatar Ila gone at just 17, Avatar Gyatso's own people taken from him with he himself not long to follow... and had not Avatar Roku herself passed from illness at just 6 years old? But no... Zuko is different. He will have to be.

She reaches out a hand to stroke the uninjured side of her son's face, brushing hair from his good eye as if it mattered at all, as if he would awaken at any moment—and then she rises, letting out a steely breath.

She had come from a small village, sure - Hira'a, where the arrival of the Fire Lord himself, in order to demand that she marry his son, had come as a complete shock. (Fire Lord Azulon had claimed that her grandmother, Ta Min, had once been courted by the great Fire Lord Sozin, before she had denied him and fled, never to be found again. But her family had been found, eventually, and Ursa had been forced to carry out the deed that Ta Min could not, in marrying into the Royal Family.) And yet, small village or not, she had grown up knowing how to handle herself—of course she had had to, because though her mother was a renowned herbalist, she had split from her father when Ursa had been quite young. Money had to be made, and Ursa had always done what she could to help.

Now again she finds herself in that position. She has to do what she can to help. The meager supplies of money she had brought with her from the palace will be gone soon—not to mention that they will need Earth Kingdom money before long, if they intend to ever leave this place. Not every town will accept Fire Nation funds so readily.

Money has to be made—and as Ursa rises to her feet, moving to retrieve and don her darker cloak from where her things were piled, she pulls out the blue mask she had acquired prior, staring at it with a frown.

It had reminded her of her youth, of plays put on in her hometown, and of a man who she would never again see. He had trusted in her then. She had let him down.

She will not let Zuko down.

Yes, money has to be made. She puts on the mask and pulls her cloak tight around her, places the dagger more readily onto her hip, then flees out the window, relishing in the feeling of the night air.

——

One year since she and Zuko had left the Fire Nation to begin anew.

Her son is practicing with his dao blades not far from where Ursa sits, carefully opening a letter, the sight of which had filled her with a now-familiar combination of dread and hope.

She had purchased the blades for Zuko not long after they had moved into their own home, about eight months ago now. It is not much, their home—though Ursa offers her services as a herbalist in this town, and it makes her good enough money, they cannot afford to live frivolously. And they have to keep their heads down, either way, else someone recognize them, and news be sent back to the Fire Nation that the Avatar still lives.

He has lived, indeed, but he is certainly worse for wear. One side of his handsome face will always bear a scar now—she'd had to cut his hair short after the initial injury, as so much of it on that side had been singed and damaged. At least now his dark brown locks have grown back somewhat, short and fluffy now, just long enough that they could offer Zuko a bit of comfort as far as his scar went. The boy would never say anything, of course—but Ursa suspects that he likes having his bangs so long, simply so that he can hide a little easier behind them. In any case, she hasn't cut his hair in a while, simply on account of this. Whether or not her suspicions are correct, Zuko never says anything about it, so she figures it does not matter all that much either way.

But his scar is not the only damage that has been done. He is blind in that eye now—and though he never outright tells her so, Ursa suspects that his vision has suffered in his good eye, too, as he moves with a lot more hesitance, and not just the kind that comes from being traumatized. Infection can do that to one's vision, she knows—so she had gotten him the dao blades, hoping that learning them might help restore some confidence in the boy. Agni knows that he cannot practice his firebending here—not that she thinks that he would. She has not seen him so much as conjure a single ember at all in the past year, and she has sat through enough panic attacks with him to know that even the sight of Fire Nation soldiers carrying the element can set him off. It had been a long while since the days of his panic attacks, at the very least—he is healing, ever so slowly—but she doubts he would so easily be able to firebend himself any time soon. Of course, as the Avatar, he will have to, one day—but she will not push him. Not now. He has enough to deal with as it is. Only nine years old, and already her son has been forced to grow up so fast. He does not play anymore, not even now that they'd moved to live on their own in this town and the other children sometimes come around to ask him. He hardly speaks much at all to anyone but her, though.

As Ursa lifts her gaze to watch him, she cannot help but smile slightly, hoping that he might see. She does all that she can to encourage him nowadays—and his skill with his dao blades is something to be proud of. He'd studied for a while with Master Piandao before they'd had to leave, but his training had been cut short. She is glad that he is coming along so well, now, even without his master to train him. She is confident that her son soon will be able to defend himself.

Zuko catches her gaze then, and she widens her smile at him, a gentle, reassuring thing, she hopes. He blinks for a moment, seemingly taken aback to find she had been watching—then, slowly, shyly, he returns her smile, giving her a little bow. (She hopes this means his vision isn't poor enough to not catch her expressions, near enough as she is to him in the room.) Then it is back to practicing, the intent, almost angry expression melting back onto his face as he swings the dual swords with practiced grace.

That smile. At least she knows that her child is still in there, somewhere, though now so often he hides that part of himself behind steel and determination.

She returns her gaze back to the letter. It was addressed, at least on the outside, not to Ursa of the Fire Nation, but to Tae-Jin of the Earth Kingdom—her new name, the herbalist in this small village. She knows before she has even pulled the letter out, however, that inside will be a different story, and indeed it is. As she unfolds it, she takes in how it is addressed—Dear Ursa—though the characters there are not the same ones she had used during her time in the capital.

Iroh. They had been corresponding for a good six months now, ever since the first letter had shown up on her doorstep. She was surprised then that he had found her so quickly—and had almost fled the town with her son immediately, desperate to keep him safe.

But Iroh is not affiliated with the crown anymore—this much she knows. He had never returned to the capital after the loss of Lu Ten just over a year ago; the rumor was that after the loss of his son, and upon hearing the news that his nephew, too, had perished due to sudden illness back in the capital (alongside his poor, poor mother), the General had gone mad, fleeing from his post and his responsibilities never to be heard from again. Eight months ago, after four months of silence from the crown prince, Ursa had heard, in whispers in the port, that Fire Lord Azulon had revoked Iroh's birthright.

Ozai is now in line to the throne, and Iroh has been presumed dead.

Ursa, of course, knows better. The letter that had arrived on her doorstep (courtesy of a particularly plump-looking messenger hawk) had surprised her—but what was inside, at the very least, calmed her nerves somehow. She did not know the extent of the gesture—only that the Pai Sho tile meant something far more. She has heard only whispers, of a secret society—one dedicated to the support of the Avatar, and having something (though just what, she isn't sure) to do with Pai Sho. She supposes assuming that the White Lotus tile enclosed in the letter was related might have been a stretch, true—but she has nothing else to cling to, and she wants to trust Iroh. She has to. (She wears the White Lotus tile around her neck, now. Some part of her thinks it may come in handy, one day.)

When Iroh had contacted her, he had not known that Zuko was still alive. That, at least, was a relief. Even if she had somehow been obvious enough for the old general to have tracked her down—Zuko, at least, was safe. It was not until a few letters in that she had breached the subject, revealing to Iroh the truth—that Zuko had not died at all.

She had been subtle about it at first. Zuko and she had been exiled, for reasons she could not name. Only after she was certain Iroh would not turn her in did she reveal the truth to him—though of course, even then, it was written in her best attempt at a code, much like all of their letters were. (Letters could be intercepted, after all.) Yes, Li is a very special boy. This is part of why we had to leave home so suddenly. I suspect he will grow into a man of many talents.

Iroh had agreed to come meet with her, though when was unclear. Zuko will need a firebending teacher, once he is a little older; the Avatar has a duty to the world, she knows, as much as she loves her son. He has to master the four elements—and then, perhaps, he will have to restore balance somehow, if he can.

All in due time. He is still young yet. Still far too young. She has not even touched on the topic of him being the Avatar yet—though she is certain that he must know, what with all that had happened. Still, they never discuss it; it is still so early...

But. Early or not, her son will need a firebending master at some point. If the legends are true, the elements will have to be learned in order—that means fire, air, water, then earth.

She tries not to think about what the second one entails. He has at least demonstrated the capacity for airbending, before, what with the incident a year ago—but with no more airbending masters, no airbenders at all, left in the world, it falls to Ursa to think of some other way for her son to learn. They have time, yes—but eventually, he will have to master airbending, and he will have to master it before he can tackle waterbending. Ursa supposes they would have to pay visits to the air temples themselves—for while the Air Nomads are no longer around, perhaps some of their teachings still are, somewhere. It is the best they can hope for, truly.

As far as a firebending teacher, however, there is none possible but Iroh. Ursa and her son certainly cannot return to the Fire Nation. And though part of her fears a trap in his agreeing to meet with her, to train her child in due time, she knows it is foolish to have such fears. He has her address—he knows where she and Zuko were staying, has known for months now, and he has done nothing to cause them harm so far. She doubts that he will do so now.

Still, it does not hurt to be careful. She keeps her dagger (Zuko's dagger, she corrects herself mentally—though she has never, in truth, gotten around to giving it back to the boy) on her at all times now, just in case—though honestly, she holds no delusions that she would be able to take on the Dragon of the West with simply a dagger.

The vial of poison she keeps hidden on her person, though, with which she could coat the dagger ... it might make things an slightly different story. If she is to be lucky.

Either way, she will do what she can, as she always does. And if the time comes for her son to need defending, well—she will not hesitate to offer what she can. Perhaps she can, at the very least, allow him to escape.

Iroh's letter is vague, as always. But she suspects that he means to show up soon. I hope that soon I may stop in for some tea, before this cold season ends. Hot tea is always best in the chilly weather, after all. The last official day of winter is tomorrow, by the Earth Kingdom's calendar. If Ursa is not wrong, she thinks that perhaps he means to turn up then. She is prepared, either way—she feels for her dagger, satisfied to find it where it always was at her hip. Not that she is expecting to have to use it. But it does not hurt to be careful.

A knock at the door startles her. She is surprised—she has only just read the words, and he is here already? After all, she doubts any customers would come this late at night—unless, perhaps, someone is in dire need of her services. Either way, she stands, signaling for Zuko to go to his room, and makes her way to the door.

It is not Iroh. Two men stand there, dressed in clothes that seemed suspiciously too Earth Kingdom. (Perhaps that is a silly thought. Still, she cannot help but be paranoid.)

"Hello," the taller of the men greets her. "Are you Tae-Jin?"

"Yes," she answers them, attempting to keep her tone light, and flashing them a small, hopefully welcoming smile. She cannot afford to be curt or draw any suspicion, not if they have ill intent. "That's me. Did you need something, gentlemen?"

"We just had a few questions to ask of you," the shorter man tells her, and as she watches, she sees him glance inside behind her, as if looking for something—or someone. She does not look back, but she silently prays that Zuko has not decided today to be disobedient. He usually is not—so if she is lucky, he is back in his room by now already, as she has instructed him.

"Could we come inside?" the taller man asks, and though the words would normally have been friendly, she thinks, she can hear the threat looming in them.

"I'm sorry," Ursa tells them, with what she hopes is a sheepish looking grin. "But you see, my little Li has only just gotten to sleep. You know children. Do you think you could come back tomorrow?"

"So you don't live alone, then?" is all she's answered with, by the shorter man, who seems to be trying to move closer, as if to shoulder his way into the house. She will not let him, not if it kills her. That is for certain.

"Of course not," she laughs. "I'm not sure how I would possibly manage if so! No, my Li helps me out around the house. If you come by tomorrow, I can introduce you to him." She will be gone by tomorrow. They will not stay here.

"Oh, no, no," the taller man tells her, giving her his own obviously feigned smile. "We wouldn't want to impose, miss. We'll just be on our way. Ask our... survey questions of someone else, instead."

"Very well, then," she replies brightly. "Have a nice night, boys!" Then she moves as if to close to door in their faces, curtness coming forth even if she has not meant it to.

But she does not close the door completely—does not bring it to a full latch. She pauses, listening to the sounds of the men retreating a bit farther—then fully shuts the door and moves to the window, cracking it open.

She sees them, along with three other men, gathered not too far away. She cannot make out what they are saying, but they speak in hushed voices to one another, and she knows. These men mean trouble.

Have they found her, then? She closes the window, cursing her own vanity; if only she had cut her hair... if she had become less recognizable—but no. There is no time to dwell on it. They are here now, and they clearly are not leaving. She has no doubt that soon they will be upon her and her son, probably to take him back to the Fire Nation to be disposed of. Does Fire Lord Azulon finally intend to finish the job, then? Ha. She will not let him, not while she still breathes. She will not let him.

She could run. Take Zuko and flee, and probably get away before they could catch her.

And yet there is the matter of Iroh—Iroh, who intends to come here within mere hours, if she is not wrong. Who knows if they will be able to get in contact again? Even now, she only has means of answering his letters by way of the plump hawk he always sends; it had left after the last letter, today, as if not expecting a reply from her at all. Probably because Iroh intended to meet them so soon. She cannot even dare to leave a note behind for him, if she is to take Zuko and flee; surely her home will be searched, and anything hinting towards their next location would be a grave error to make.

Zuko needs a firebending teacher. Nevermind a mother—what kind of guide and ally for the Avatar would she be, if she were to let this chance slip by? He needs this. She cannot take this from him.

Her mind is made up, and without another word she flips over the letter from Iroh on the desk, scrawling a hasty note of her own there. She moves, then, to her son's room, where she sees him already curled up in his bed. Has he gone to sleep already? He must have been tired—

"Zuko?" Ursa murmurs to him, as she reaches his side, softly shaking his shoulder. He turns his head up to blink at her, sleepily, though she knows not if she has roused him or if he had not yet drifted off.

"Zuko, my love," she breathes, stroking his hair, as he sits up slowly. "I have to leave now, for a while. Your uncle will be here soon. Can you let him in, when he gets here?"

That seems to wake her son up, and he stares at her, confusion evident on his features. "Uncle...? What—"

She shakes her head, silencing him with one hand. "There is no time, darling. I'm sorry. Just... I promise, Zuko. Everything I've done, I've done to protect you."

As she stands from where she had stooped, she sees the alarm growing in his expression. "Mom?" he whispers, voice hoarse, as if he realizes this is a goodbye.

"I love you," she tells him, and she is surprised that there are no tears in her eyes, even now. "Never forget who you are."

And before he can protest, before he can say another word, she turns and exits his room, shuts the door behind her, and leaves out the back entrance.

She climbs atop the ostrich horse she uses for deliveries, using the bundle of empty sacks that had been lying there to cradle to her chest—all bundled together, she hopes they will look, in the darkness, like a child, held closely as she flees in the night. Then she takes one look back at her home, with her son inside—she must go, now. Any moment, he might try to follow her, and she cannot have that.

Ursa rides the ostrich horse into the night, dagger at her hip and poison in her belt, and careful to make sure that the men see her leave, carefully noting that all of them have taken notice (she cannot have anyone searching the house, not when Zuko must remain undiscovered for another few hours at least). A few hours is doable. She can distract them for that long—and they will follow her, she knows.

She will keep her son safe.

Chapter Text

It has been two weeks since Zuko and his uncle had fled the city, and two weeks, too, since Zuko has eaten a truly decent meal.

His stomach grumbles even as he sits, at the base of a large tree and shaded by its huge branches. It's a nice spot in the woods, actually—he isn't uncomfortable, really, or he hadn't been until his hunger had woken him that morning. He and Uncle had not eaten since the morning before; they could not really afford to eat a whole lot now anyway, considering they were sort of on the run.

Iroh has not fully explained (though Zuko has not exactly asked him), but the boy knows that there is reason to their haphazard routes, and to their complete lack of traveling through any cities so far. He knows enough to connect the dots—someone is after him, probably. The note had told him as much. It feels weird to think that it is likely Fire Nation, because he is Fire Nation—except he isn't, anymore. He is an enemy.

His stomach growls again and he sighs, shifting a little against the tree in an effort to somehow distract himself from the gnawing in his belly. His uncle is not here now (though Zuko knows that he never goes far—he worries too much for that, he thinks), so perhaps he is off finding them something. In the meantime, he will just have to wait. He misses his mother's cooking.

But then, he misses a lot of things about her.

Almost on instinct, his fingers move to his pocket, feeling for the paper that is folded there, has been folded there for two weeks now. The letter where she had left her final note to Uncle Iroh.

Zuko removes the paper and unfolds it in his lap, staring. He cannot easily read the words themselves at this distance, not unless he wants to bring the page right up to his face (and even then, he is likely to still have a bit trouble, as his remaining vision is honestly quite poor)—but he had asked his uncle to read it to him, before, and he has not forgotten.

I am doing what I can to draw them away. Take care of him.

"Why couldn't you take care of me?" he mumbles, to himself, a bitter-sounding tone to his words even as he scowls down at the letter. Her last, hastily scrawled words before she had vanished into the night. He will never forget them—part of him, perhaps, fears that when he does, it will mean that she is truly gone.

But as bitter as he seems, as angry as he feels, clutching the parchment tighter in shaking hands, threatening to ball up into fists (he would never, never—would not harm the only thing he has left of her), he thinks the emptiness he feels is, at heart, more overwhelming than the anger. Not quite numbness, not really—he'd thought of it as that, at first, but he has since come to realize that the word did not fit at all. He is not numb—he is grieving, certainly, but in a hollow, aching sort of way, he thinks. Like part of him has gone, with her.

Perhaps it is silly. Childish, even. He does not care. He is nine years old and if he wants to miss his mother he will do so. Better than missing his father.

(Who he does miss, sometimes, admittedly, even after all that has happened, even after what he had tried to do to him. He is not proud of missing him, but it is hard to forget, sometimes, how happy their family had been once, their visits to Ember Island, and the way his father had loved him then, held him then, when he had been young, when he hadn't been the Avatar—)

He exhales, shakily, closing his eyes out of habit even when it does not make nearly as much difference now.

"I did not know you were awake, nephew," a sudden voice startles him, and he blinks open his eyes to turn to its source—Uncle Iroh, of course.

"It's hard to stay asleep when my stomach's practically eating itself," Zuko tells his uncle, and though it's said like a complaint, Uncle still laughs anyway, smiles at him, and Zuko feels bad for sounding ungrateful.

"It's a good thing I found us something to eat, then," Uncle replies, and then he sits down in front of him, a considerable distance away, and Zuko thinks he is pulling something out of his bag. He can't tell quite what it is at this distance, but he doesn't have to wonder for long—"A nice, fat lizard carp," his uncle tells him as he seems to be striking up a fire. "Something like this will be nice for a change, won't it? Even I am growing a bit tired of nuts and berries—though I know they probably do me more good than a full belly does." A patting noise and motion around his midsection tells Zuko that his uncle is patting his own stomach at the words. (Silly, that—only a year ago, his uncle had been a war general. Zuko highly doubts he's let himself go that much in that time, despite what he might say. He certainly doesn't seem all that huge.)

He appreciates all that his uncle does for him, even if his uncle would probably deny that it was for him at all if confronted. Still—it isn't hard to see that he does a lot for Zuko, goes to every measure he can to make sure he is comfortable. He speaks aloud a lot of times when Zuko thinks he might normally not, as if narrating the nuances and details of things that Zuko's damaged vision cannot quite pick up—though he never goes to the extent of offering him help doing the simple things like walking or carrying his bag, like passerby had used to do occasionally in the old town, for the poor, blind herbalist's son. Zuko is glad of this, at least—he had always resented the help he was offered, because poor vision or not, he didn't want or need it. He could still see well enough to get himself around, and even if he couldn't, he is sure he would manage anyway on his own. He would find a way.

As Iroh cooks the lizard carp over the fire he has started, Zuko notes yet another thing that makes him feel bad for acting ungrateful at times. His uncle is careful of Zuko's ... aversion, to fire—never confronting him about it or even mentioning it (yet—though Zuko knows, once his uncle starts to teach him firebending, which he surely will in time, it will have to be brought up), and taking extra care that Zuko is not made uncomfortable. Even now, the fire he has made is a good distance away from Zuko (so that was why he had sat so far away)—and he had started it without bending at all. The boy doesn't bother to tell him that it isn't the bending that bothers him about fire anymore, but the heat and the sound and the color (he still remembers hot hot bright loud flame at his face and then pain, more pain than he had ever felt) and settles for simply appreciating the gesture.

"Thank you, Uncle," he says aloud finally, quietly, looking down at the letter still in his hand. He doesn't mean just for the lizard carp, and he is sure Uncle knows this.

But he doesn't say anything about it. "Of course," Iroh replies. "I would not let a nephew of mine starve!" The words are light, humorous even, but Zuko knows they mean more than it sounds like. He is grateful for his uncle's presence, even if he wishes for his mother at times.

Zuko glances back at the letter in his lap. He studies it for what seems a long while, imagining how the characters look on the page despite the fact that what he sees are mere dark blurs.

Then Iroh is speaking again. "It looks like our meal is done. Once we have finished here, I think we should head into town."

Zuko looks up, surprised, but does not protest, only nodding his assent as he folds the letter back up again and moves to join his uncle for the meal. Iroh must have noticed his shock, though, because he is speaking again, softer now that Zuko is nearer.

"Don't worry. From what I have heard, this town has been untouched by the war so far. We will be safe there."

"I wasn't worried," he replies, words probably a tad too sharp, but he makes no attempt to say anything more. Iroh is too far for him to make out well, but he sees him nod and tilt his head a bit, and Zuko imagines he is smiling at him.

"Of course," Uncle says to him kindly. "Now, let's eat."

——

The town is calmer than Zuko had expected, less populated than the one he and his mother had lived in for so long. Earth Kingdom towns aren't so bad, really—though he admits he misses home. (No, he corrects himself, he misses the Fire Nation. It is not home, not anymore, cannot be home, not now that he is the Avatar.) As he and his uncle make their way into town, they pass a group of men using their earthbending to ... do something. He isn't sure entirely what—build some sort of structure or building, maybe? Whatever it is, they all seem to be working together, the movements he can catch synchronized completely. Zuko has never met any earthbenders before, not that he can remember—there had not been any in the previous town—and he lingers a bit as they pass them, feeling the vibrations as the earth is moved and frowning a bit in thought. He supposes that, technically, he is also an earthbender, though it is odd to think about.

Iroh seems to notice his pause, and then he, too, is turning to the earthbenders, approaching them and waving a greeting. Zuko follows with some trepidation, staying behind his uncle as has sort of been his habit ever since ... well. Ever since a year or so ago. (Except just two weeks before it had been his mother who he had a habit of tailing when he felt nervous, instead.)

"Good morning," Iroh says to the men, and a few respond to him in a manner that does not sound unfriendly. "Do you think perhaps one of you could point out the nearest inn for a couple of weary travelers?"

"Refugees?" one man, whose deep voice seems to be almost commanding in its confidence (some sort of authority?), asks, and though Zuko can't see where any of these men are looking exactly, he can still almost feel their eyes on his scarred face. He looks at Uncle, not wanting to look at the earthbenders any longer, and catches his head moving in a nod.

"We have come a long way," Uncle tells them. "And it would certainly be nice to sleep on a bed again."

"I'm sure it would be," the deep-voiced man agrees. "My name is Tyro. I'm the leader of this village. We don't have much in the way of inns here—we're a mining town—but my wife, Senge, runs the shop here, and there's a barn just out back. We would be more than willing to let you stay there for the night."

Zuko expects his uncle to decline—that is what is polite, he thinks—but instead his Uncle gives a pleased sort of nod. "That would be very kind of you. I know that I will feel better once I know that my nephew has a roof over his head, even if only for the night."

"You and your nephew will be safe here," another man says, not Tyro this time. "The Fire Nation wouldn't dare attack our town."

"Good to hear," Zuko mumbles, as he hears the assurances. He looks down at his feet, feeling wholly out of place all of a sudden. These people hate the Fire Nation, he realizes. Is it like this everywhere? He'd heard whispers, in the other town, but never as blatant as this. Did they really believe that his nation would attack an innocent village?

... Would his nation attack an innocent village?

"Ah, and where are my manners?" Iroh adds cheerfully as Tyro starts to move out of the group. Zuko looks up to see making some kind of gesture with his hands, probably for them to follow. They do. "Let me introduce myself—my name is Mushi, and this is Li. You said your wife's name was Senge?"

"Yes, it is," Tyro says, as he leads them through the town, presumably to his wife's shop. "And my son's name is Haru. He's about Li's age—maybe a year or two older."

"How wonderful," Uncle replies. "Perhaps Li will finally make a friend!" He laughs a little as he says it, and Zuko narrows his eyes. He tunes out the rest of their conversation then.

It does not take long to reach the shop anyway. Senge is a nice enough woman, older maybe (he can tell a little in the way she carries herself—plus, her hair seems to be a shade of gray, not unlike Tyro's own silver) and she does not hesitate to agree to her husband's earlier suggestion of them staying in their barn, though she does chide him a little (good-naturedly) on making those sorts of decisions without her input. Tyro laughs. It is somewhat odd for Zuko to be around a married couple such as this—they are such a stark contrast to his own parents, it is almost shocking.

When Iroh offers to brew a pot of tea, Senge not-too-subtly sends Zuko out back to meet with her son, hinting that she would like for the two to become friends. Zuko guesses he's glad that he won't have to sit around a stuffy shop making small talk—but he isn't sure that making small talk with some strange kid will be so much fun either.

It turns out that small talk isn't what's on the agenda first, however. When Zuko finds Haru, he isn't just playing—he's practicing. Earthbending. A number of rocks seem to litter the ground, and one by one, Haru lifts each, seemingly an exercise in control. Zuko stops and stares, watching, fascinated.

"Oh, hi," Haru says, as he turns to look at Zuko. "Who're you?"

"Li," he tells him. "My uncle and I are staying in your barn tonight." Zuko thinks Haru nods, then. "Where did you learn to do that?"

"My dad taught me," Haru tells him, and Zuko blinks at him for a moment, unsure what to say. Then he turns to stare at the rocks littering the ground, frowning in thought. He concentrates for a long moment, brow furrowing, and feels for a small, particularly jagged-outlined form, then focuses hard on it, moving one hand up and forward almost instinctively. It takes a lot of effort, and it seems like forever passes - but then, suddenly, the rock is moving, up up up into the air.

"You're an earthbender, too!" Haru exclaims, sounding surprised, and Zuko is, too—he had almost forgotten about the other boy's presence entirely. The rock drops, making a hard thump when it hits the ground again, though in truth it hadn't had far to fall—he'd only managed to move it upwards about a foot off the ground. When he tries to move it again, he finds he can only give it a little nudge; has he exhausted his chi already? Or had that first move only been beginner's luck?

"I guess I am," Zuko says to Haru, quietly, looking back up at him. He thinks Haru must be smiling at him.

"That's great!" he tells him, sounding excited now. "I haven't met another earthbender my age before."

Zuko resists the urge to point out that they aren't the same age (Senge had said Haru was a little older, after all), settling on a simple "Oh" instead. There is a long pause, and perhaps with someone else the silence would be awkward, but Haru seems to be concentrating again, and then two rocks move upwards at once, spiraling in the air.

"You said your dad teaches you?" Zuko says then, and he turns to offer the other boy a shy—and probably somewhat awkward-looking, but hey, he's doing his best—smile.

——

One night turns out to be one month, once Tyro gets a taste for Uncle Iroh's apparently-amazing tea brewing skills. (Uncle will only ever say that the secret is 'proper aging,' even if Zuko isn't sure if he means the tea, the time he steeps it, or his own age and experience.) He refers him to the town's resident tea shop (which Zuko finds just a little silly—that they have a tea shop, and not an inn, but that's the Earth Kingdom, he supposes) and before long, his uncle has a job, helping out the older man who runs the place. There isn't a vacant place for them to stay in town, though, not yet at least, so they end up just paying Haru's family rent to keep staying in the barn, for now. (Rent had not even been Tyro and Senge's idea—it was Uncle who had insisted on paying it.)

Zuko doesn't know if his uncle means for this to be long-term. He guesses he wouldn't mind, really, if they lived here for a while. (Though he would hope they would get a real place—not just keep staying in a smelly barn.) Haru is nice enough, and Zuko thinks they might even be friends. They spend a lot of their time together nowadays; Haru likes to practice his earthbending, and Zuko likes to watch. Sometimes Haru even tries to give him lessons of his own, passed on from his father. Zuko tries to follow along as best he can, though it's difficult to try and copy the forms when he can't quite see the finer details (and he doesn't really want to remind Haru that he can't see as well as he can, even if it means he might get better instruction. Haru is so far one of the only people who treats him like he isn't useless, and he would like to keep it that way.)

It feels wrong, almost, trying to bend the earth. Uncle tells him it is because it is out of order, because he is meant to master fire and air first, before he can truly master earthbending. Zuko isn't so sure about that—if that were true, why would he be able to bend earth yet at all?—but he is sure that whatever the reason, it does not come easy for him. There is a block in his mind where earthbending should flow, it seems; perhaps he will simply never be any good. (But he is not, naturally, exceptionally good at anything, not even firebending, even when he had not struggled with his panic. Zuko often thinks that the world has messed something up, to have made an Avatar who isn't a natural prodigy. Would not his sister have been a better choice? She had always excelled where he did not, and his father had—well. Zuko has not been born lucky as she has been, that is the point.)

It is on one of these such days, when Haru and Zuko are out spending the day in the woods (though never too far from town), Haru practicing drawing rocks out of the soil below their feet, when Haru notices the letter Zuko is holding in his hands. He supposes notices would be the wrong word—while he isn't exactly obvious about it, he doesn't really make any huge attempts to hide the paper either, occasionally pulling it out to glance at it when he's feeling particularly far from home. He guesses it's only his luck that Haru would be the one to notice it was a habit and not just a coincidence, that it happened more than once.

"Hey, Li, what is that, anyway?" he asks Zuko, tone and voice casual, but his sudden ceasing of his earthbending giving away his curiosity. (Zuko knew Haru—if he really didn't care either way, he would have just kept on practicing while he asked.) "You're always looking at it."

Zuko pauses, considers lying to him, considers snapping to him or brushing him off—but does none of these things.

Instead, he tells him the truth.

"It's a letter," he replies, quietly. "My mom wrote something on it, just before she..." He trails off then, looking away, and hoping that the gesture will explain enough to Haru. When no more words are forthcoming after his abrupt silence, he shrugs noncommittally and makes as if to begin folding the letter back up.

"Can I see it?" Haru asks him mildly, and Zuko shakes his head sharply then, bites his lip and says nothing, only returns it quickly to his pocket. He knows, even if he did want to show his friend the letter (and really, he does not) that he could not. He isn't sure what the letter itself says, but he figures there might be information there that Haru could not read—not to mention the note from his mother itself, which would definitely be a hard thing to explain.

Thankfully, Haru seems to understand. There's a pause, and while Zuko is looking away deliberately, he bets that he nods. "Okay," he agrees. "No problem." Then he is turning back to face forward again, almost as if nothing had happened.

"Want to try out this earthbending move my dad showed me?" he asks then, and Zuko tells him he does.

——

From then on, whenever Haru notices Zuko looking at the letter, he will pause in whatever he's doing. He doesn't always speak, when he does—sometime he will just fall silent, as if paying some sort of quiet respect, and allow Zuko a moment to look at it before they move on with whatever had been going on. Other times, though, he does speak—questions, always about Zuko's mother, but surprisingly not the type he had been expecting. 'How did you lose her' or 'how long ago', he might have assumed—but instead, Haru asked things about who she was, how she was, little things—and all things which, surprisingly, seemed to help Zuko with his numbness rather than hinder him. It was like, whenever he answered, a part of her was there again—as if in remembering her, and sharing his memories with someone else, he could keep her alive.

"What color were her eyes?" Haru asks of him one such time, before adding, as if it wasn't clear enough already, "Your mother's, I mean."

Zuko looks up from the letter, folds it, and places it neatly back in his pocket. "The same color as mine, almost, except darker," he says. "I think someone once called them ochre. Whatever that means."

"That's cool," Haru tells him. "I've always thought you and your uncle's eyes were pretty unique. I guess she was his sister, huh?"

Zuko blinks; he guesses, living this far into the Earth Kingdom and in such a small village, that Haru has never known the connotations behind having warmer-toned eyes. They were commonly associated with the Fire Nation, he knew—he and his mother had faced at least some small amount of trepidation, before, in the last town, because of their eyes. It's odd, for him, to be here in a place so far from his old home, not just physically, but in this way as well. Haru has probably never even seen a Fire Nation citizen—well. Unless you were to count Zuko or his uncle.

Oh, right. Haru had ended that last part with a very audible question, and he hadn't said anything yet. "Something like that," Zuko replies, and then he focuses on the two rocks Haru had just been practicing with, lifting them somewhat ungracefully and then attempting to do as he had, swirling them around each other in the air. He manages it, surprisingly, but he can't hold it for long, and before more than a few heartbeats have passed, the rocks are crashing back to the ground, that feeling of wrongness settling in Zuko's chest again. He does not like the feeling of earthbending, even while he does like the feelings of triumph he feels when he manages to do it. But it just feels... wrong, and besides, he isn't very naturally talented. Maybe uncle was right about the order of things. Huh.

"Good job," Haru tells him. "You're a natural!"

Zuko rolls his eyes. Sure I am. He doesn't say the words aloud. He's working on that whole gratitude thing. After all, his friend is being quite patient with him. It's been five weeks since he and his uncle started staying here - surely Haru should be growing tired of Zuko's lack of any real talent as far as earthbending, but instead he simply remains encouraging.

A sudden noise, from the village nearby, catches him off guard. A blast of some sort—Haru hasn't noticed it, but even as Zuko whirls around to direct his full attention towards the town, listening closely, he feels his stomach drop.

He can hear it, that awful, familiar sound—

Fire.

The town is on fire.

"Li?" Haru says. "What's—"

Then he, too, freezes, looking off into the distance, and Zuko's eyes widen as he realizes the trails of darkness in the air must be smoke.

"Oh, no," is all Haru gasps, and then he's running. Zuko is right behind him, panting in an effort to keep up, because Haru is taller than him by a fair bit, and they have to get home right now.

He doesn't know how long it takes to get back, because time doesn't seem to exist for him anymore. All he knows is that once they are there, he follows Haru closely to the center of town, despite all of his trepidation (he knows this is where the flames are coming from, knows he isn't safe here), and barely breathes once he realizes what is happening.

Fire Nation soldiers are here. That much, he guesses, should have been obvious.

But there are so many.

They outnumber the earthbenders here ten to one, he can tell, even just through comparing the mass of red (and fire, so much fire) to the familiar browns and greens of the town's earthbenders. And yet still, they are fighting, and Zuko thinks he can hear Tyro's deep voice calling out, leading the resistance.

He manages to deal for a long time, frozen beside Haru, before he just can't anymore—the flames are too much, the heat and the ash and the smoke and the screaming. People are being hurt. Buildings are being set aflame.

He runs, ducks into the nearest building he can find that's not made up at least partly of wood, a small, earthbending-made shack that they'd made to store tools. He curls into a ball in the corner, focusing on his breathing the way his mother had instructed him, so long ago, and pictures her stroking his hair like she had then.

By the time he is calm, and by the time he is willing to come out of hiding, the fight is over.

And the earthbenders have lost.

So many have been injured. Zuko doesn't know what all happens, but somehow or other, the town's healer gets those he can treated, and burials are arranged for those who have not made it, though they will not occur until tomorrow. The firebenders have gone. Haru, who catches Zuko as he wanders sort of aimlessly around as all the commotion dies down, tells him that they have said they will be back tomorrow, and that the town will have to submit then. He says that his father will never give up.

But later, back in the shop, while Haru and Zuko are sent out back while the adults discuss matters, Zuko overhears Tyro saying that there will be no more deaths, not anymore. He intends to surrender.

Zuko doesn't say anything to Haru about it. There is nothing to say. Instead, he pulls out the folded paper from his pocket and stares. Haru doesn't ask him any questions this time.

——

The next morning brings more tragedy. Tyro does not get his chance to surrender. He had been taken in the night, along with all of the other earthbenders—simply gone, without a trace. As the Ffire Nation soldiers gather the villagers after they march into town, they are told that they have taken them to work in prison camps. This is what happens when you try and fight back, they say. This is what happens when you mess with the Fire Nation.

Zuko shivers as he is led back to the barn by his uncle after the soldiers have dispersed. Is this the Nation he has grown up supporting? What kind of soldiers were they, to threaten and kidnap the people he has always been told they only intend to protect? The Earth Kingdom was a different nation, sure—but the motive behind the war had always been to spread Fire Nation prosperity and wellbeing across the world, hadn't it?

He isn't sure anymore.

"Nephew," his uncle says to him, voice soft. "Gather your things. We are leaving tonight."

"What?" he says, sharply, turning at last to fully look at him, snapping out of his panicked stupor completely for the first time that day. "But I thought..."

"I'm sorry," Iroh sighs. "I know that we have made friends here. But it is not safe, not anymore. And if they are to recognize you..."

Zuko grits his teeth. "It's not fair," he snaps. "What if I don't care about safety? Haru is my friend! His father—they took him! He..."

"Zuko," his uncle says, and Zuko is surprised both by the use of his real name (though they are alone in the barn, he knows) and by the sharpness of his own tone, though it is not unkind. "Listen to me. I know that you mean well. But the best way to help your friend is not to stay here. You know that."

Zuko falls silent then, clenching his hands into fists, and entirely unable to think up a snappy response. What can he even say, to that? He knows, deep down, that his uncle must be right.

He is the Avatar. Even if his uncle does not say the words, they hang in the air, looming over him, and he shrinks down a bit suddenly, no longer outwardly projecting any sort of frustration or anger. Instead, he withdraws in upon himself, raising his gaze a bit to try and meet Iroh's eyes.

"I understand," he says, hoarsely, and then he turns and slips into the little makeshift hay bed he has called his own for the past five weeks. It is not even evening, and yet he is so tired.

Iroh says nothing. Zuko sleeps.

——

When he awakens, it is late afternoon, he thinks—perhaps early evening. He moves quickly out of the barn, one thing at the forefront of his mind: Haru. He must talk to Haru.

He knows he doesn't have much time. He wishes he had not slept their last day together away, but then—he guesses Haru probably needed some time alone, anyway. His father...

Well. Zuko will not think on it. As it is, he has found Haru already—just on the edge of the woods, sitting upon the ground. He swirls two rocks out in front of him, but it seems somewhat idle, like his mind is somewhere else entirely.

"Haru," Zuko says, and his voice is raspy (or raspier than usual) from disuse. His friend jumps a little, obviously not having noticed him—then he rises and turns to face him.

"Li? What is it? I... I don't know if we should earthbend today," come's Haru's voice, and though his tone is mild, Zuko hears the slight tremor there.

"My uncle and I are leaving," Zuko blurts out. "Tonight. We can't stay here anymore."

"No," Haru says, softly, but there is no force to it; instead there is a defeated, sad quality to his voice. "Li, you can't..."

"It isn't my choice," Zuko cuts him off, curtly, words only half-true. He stares at the ground, not willing to meet the other boy's eyes—though he knows he would not be able to see it anyway, he does not want to face the hurt that he knows will be there, in his gaze, like not looking could somehow make it not real.

"Li," Haru tries again, his tone sharper now. "We're the only ones left." His voice breaks, a little, like he might cry, but he doesn't—at least, Zuko is fairly certain he doesn't. He guesses Haru could be crying silently, but there is no telltale shake of his shoulders, no visible tremor in any part of him besides his voice.

Zuko doesn't know what to say, anymore. "I'm sorry," he settles on telling him. "About your dad." For a long moment, he stares at his feet; then he lifts his head at last, face and voice both steely. "I have to go, Haru. You'll move on. You're strong."

He thinks his words have been reassuring, maybe - so he is shocked when Haru is suddenly angry, taking an abrupt and jerky step forward and whole body language changing without so much as a warning. Zuko imagines his face drawn into a furious scowl. "You have no right to say something like that to me!" Haru is shouting at him, and Zuko flinches away, taking a step backwards without really meaning to, eyes widening in surprise. "Like I could just move on after losing my best friend - and after losing my dad!"

There is a pause, then, and all he hears are Haru's angry breaths, like he is struggling to keep himself from bending a rock into Zuko's head (no, he doubts that's actually the case, he is always so quick to assume others mean him harm but Haru would never hurt him) or like he expects Zuko to say something back. He must take too long, though, biting his lip and staring at the other boy instead of answering, because before he can actually reply, Haru speaks again.

"It's not so easy," Haru says. The rage and shouting is gone now, leaving behind only a coldness that nearly makes Zuko shiver. "You should know. Could you forget your mother?"

Zuko feels cold all over, and he thinks he stops breathing for a moment, staring. His fingers move of their own accord to feel for the letter still folded in his pocket. He rests them on it for a long moment, frozen where he stands and silence deafening around him as Haru simply stares at him.

And then, without saying another word, Zuko turns and runs.

——

When he comes back to town from his impromptu escapade in the woods, it is nearly nightfall. Haru is nowhere to be found on his way back—he is probably already asleep—and he finds his uncle in the barn, gathering up the last of their things. Zuko does not say goodbye. They leave.

They travel through the night. Zuko isn't tired - probably because he slept so much of the day, he thinks. Eventually, though, Iroh says that they must rest, and the two settle down for the night. But Zuko does not sleep. Not yet. Instead, he lays curled with one hand held out somewhat awkwardly in front of him, clutching the letter near his chest.

He is angry—so angry, and he does not even know who at. The soldiers? Haru? Himself? Maybe all three. Everything is unfair and he wants to scream and shout until his throat is raw. His chest hurts.

Mostly he is angry with Haru, and not even for a good reason, he knows. But he's so so upset and hurt, because why couldn't he just understand? Zuko had not wanted to leave him. He doesn't have a choice. Why can't he understand?

But a part of him, the more mature, too-old-too-fast part of him that seems to be growing every day, knows that Haru had been right. How can he justify telling others to move on, when he himself cannot seem to let go of the past?

If Zuko were stronger, he thinks he might clench and unclench the muscles of his hand, aim at the letter, and conjure up a flame.

But he is not strong, and when he does point a trembling hand at the page, he finds no flame will come. He does not know if it is out of fear of the fire itself, or simple inability to sever the last tie he has to her. When he realizes that he cannot act, that he is so undeniably weak, he shudders, freezing for one long moment as he stares blankly ahead of him at the parchment.

Then he rolls over onto his side and buries his face into his knees, letter still held tightly in his grasp. And if he is crying, warm tears spilling forth unbidden from useless eyes and body shaking with quiet sobs muffled by his uncle's snoring, it is not like there is anyone around to see him do so anyway.

Chapter Text

The seasons come and go and Zuko hardly knows when they pass. When he had been younger—or at least, for about the year that he had started truly developing his firebending skill, before it had all gone wrong—he had, innately, seemed to sense when summer came, and winter as well, most likely because of the influence of the sun. He is so out of touch with his inner fire now, though, that it seems he can no longer even feel the sun's pull—not unless he really tries. Uncle assures him he can unlock it again, with time. Part of him does believe him, because it's Uncle, the only adult left in the world that he can trust—but another part still doubts, wondering if perhaps he has failed as Avatar already. Has he locked his firebending forever, and thus ruined any chances of ever truly learning the other elements? (Is that even possible? He wouldn't doubt it, not with how much the universe seems to love him—facetiousness entirely intended.)

Zuko and Iroh travel the Earth Kingdom for a long while, seemingly aimless—and eventually, Zuko's answer does come. Before that, though, there is a lot of traveling—and he is not even sure completely why, because when they do stop to rest anywhere, there does not seem to be anyone truly after them. He can't help but hope that maybe, just maybe, he has gotten lucky—maybe the Fire Nation (and how odd it is, still, to think that—the Fire Nation as the enemy) does not yet know that he still lives. Azula had always been the lucky one, of course, but he can't be blamed for hoping, can he?

Where they rest, there are often people to meet, and friends to make—or at least, this is what Uncle would say. Zuko is not so sure, but he makes a few nonetheless—but never like Haru. He will never meet anyone else like Haru again, he thinks, because now he knows, knows what the curse of being the Avatar means. He knows he cannot ever be so close, and he knows that to care about others means accepting that he will have to leave them. (Except Uncle. Still part of him fears even that may end up the case, one day. After all, nothing had stopped the world from snatching his mother from him, had it?)

But those who he does meet are not without their interesting qualities, nonetheless. There is Suresh, a very young son of a soldier killed in the war who begs and begs to hold Zuko's dao blades, though Zuko denies him at first—he seems too young, likely only 6 or 7. (Zuko had not touched the blades his mother had given him until at least six months after she—well. After. Now, he keeps them at his back always, practicing with them often as he had done before. He does not hardly need the letter anymore.) Of course, he ends up giving in; Suresh's father had died for this war, and Zuko will be damned if he lets this boy follow in those footsteps. He needs to know to defend himself, and Zuko does not just go so far as to let him hold the blades—he teaches him a bit, what he can, before he and Uncle have to move on. (He doubts, at the time, that Suresh's mother would be very happy upon knowing, so he hides it—but just before they leave, she sees them, and she says nothing, instead simply giving Zuko a nod, as if in some show of wearied, begrudging approval. He doesn't know what to think.)

There is Udaya, a teenage girl much older than he whose entire family is nowhere to be seen—an orphan, and yet she owns the small house they stay in, in that town. Zuko wonders if she truly owns it, or if she is simply like them, staying at a temporary home. But what place could she call home now, with no family to share it with? (She seems implicitly to trust Zuko, at the very least, perhaps because he is so young, but she never stops flinching away from Uncle. He wonders just what all could have happened to her, to warrant this sort of reaction. He doesn't ask, and before he can think much more on it, they're moving on again, and he never knows.)

There are Bhanu and Etsu, two twin siblings about his age whose older sister is a healer, offering them shelter in her home. Zuko is stunned at the playful optimism the two seem still capable of showing in this time of war, and even more so when he hears his uncle speaking with their older sister. Their mother, it turns out, has only recently been killed in a cruel display by the Fire Nation soldiers who had apparently come through their town. Zuko feels cold and guilty to hear it, even if he knows he had nothing to do with it, not really. He's almost happy, this time, when they leave. He doesn't think he can stand to see those smiling faces anymore, not knowing what he knows.

There are more, of course, more children and grown-ups alike that he meets alongside his Uncle, though hardly enough that he should have any sort of trouble remembering their names or their stories—just more than he would like to think of, now. The first ones are the ones to stick with him—Haru most of all—and after that, the others become less and less memorable, it seems, even though their stories hardly change. It is almost as if he grows used to it—and the thought of that, indeed, makes him feel cold and ill. All of the people he meets seem to have something in common, though; they have all, in some way, been hurt by the Fire Nation, even those who have not lost someone dear to them.

Zuko learns, over time, just what that means. He learns what his former nation is like, not through words, but through experiencing it for himself—in the way that he hears Udaya crying during that night in her home, or in the way he sees Etsu tense when her older sister puts the fire on for a meal.

He feels colder than ever when he realizes just how cruel his own people are—and just how much the Earth Kingdom hates them.

He doesn't know when he had started to agree with them.

——

It is when Zuko is eleven years old, nearing twelve, that he and Iroh hear news from the mainland—and his uncle seems more than just displeased.

Fire Lord Azulon has died, and Fire Lord Ozai has taken his place upon the throne.

There is an urgency, then, that his uncle has not displayed before. He has been content to this point to let Zuko wait, work up the courage to firebend again on his own—but that ends now. Though Iroh is gentle about it, Zuko realizes that he is acting out of necessity—clearly he fears that his father will be a much crueler Fire Lord than his predecessor, and he fears that Zuko himself will have to be prepared.

(For what, he does not like to think about. Defending himself from assassination? Leading a war effort? Killing the Fire Lord himself - his own father? All seem unappealing to Zuko, but he knows better than to complain—much, at least. After all, it changes nothing.)

So he learns. Slowly, but he does—with Uncle teaching him, starting from the basics and working their way up, but with a decided earnestness in the lessons. He must master firebending, so that he can master the other elements. He does not have a choice. Not anymore. In truth, he doubts he ever did.

For some months, they do not go into any towns, instead choosing to remain in more remote locations, places where Zuko can practice his firebending without fear of discovery. (Zuko turns twelve on the road; his uncle prepares a meal as extravagant as they can manage, going out of his way to trap and cook a whole possum-chicken to split between them. Zuko isn't sure where he manages to acquire the seasonings, but the meat is decidedly Fire Nation in taste, spicy and flavorful. He's torn between nostalgia and revulsion, eating something that tastes so much like his old home, but he doesn't tell Uncle the second part, at any rate. He appreciates the gesture, if nothing else.)

It's slow going, his learning process. First he must work past his own block, his fear—and even once he has (for the most part—and perhaps he cannot wish for any more than that), he does not seem to catch on to things as easily as his sister had. Zuko often grows frustrated with his training, but his uncle is generally quite patient. (He doesn't know how he can be, not with such a useless student as himself. He hates it. He needs to be better, needs to.)

Eventually, though, they enter a town at last, Iroh claiming that he wants to sleep on a real bed again, even if only for a short while. They find a nice inn there, and they are set up with a room for a couple of nights. (They cannot afford any more. Begging and stealing can only get one so far.)

The man who runs the inn when they get there, Gopan, is not the innkeeper, as it turns out, but her son instead, a man of surprising youth. He cannot be more than 20, even though he acts much older (but then, he would have to, what with the weight of the responsibilities on his shoulders). His mother has apparently been ill for some time—months, now, and with no sign yet of recovery. It is all that this man must be able to do, to keep her business afloat.

And to keep his younger sister, Kei, fed. Kei is older than Zuko, he can see even before he is told—as she towers over him, practically, at her fifteen years of age. He thinks maybe she might even be somewhat tall for her age—and waifish at that, thin and bony in form. Her slenderness is not the healthy kind, but instead the telltale sign of a life of undernourishment. Zuko has seen so many Earth Kingdom children now and so many of them are like her, thin and underfed. He cannot help but wonder if perhaps the Fire Nation is to blame, at least in some part, for this too. After all, he seems to find his birth nation responsible for a lot of terrible things, these days. What would be one more?

Kei, at least, seems to share his own trepidation for the Fire Nation—but not in the same way, not even in the usual Earth Kingdom way. No, Kei despises the Fire Nation, swears she hates them with every fiber of her being, even if she doesn't say this in as many words. She says it instead in many other ways, the way she squares her shoulders to stare (glare, more probably, he assumes) at a poster on the outside of the inn wall. The Fire Nation has been here already, of course—left posters like this, propaganda he bets by the colors even without reading the words, because this town is under their occupation, even if not actively. She displays her hatred even more so in the way she treats him and Iroh—because while Zuko cannot see exactly where her gaze is directed, cannot pinpoint what part of him she stares at so intensely, he knows somehow that it must be his eyes, and Uncle's too.

Kei does not trust him or his uncle. Zuko doubts Gopan does either, but he is an adult—it's more expected of him not to trust strangers in general, really. But Kei... Kei distrusts Zuko from the start, and it's odd, because while he's met others in the past who he simply didn't get along with or didn't interact with (more often than not, really, because he's sort of antisocial, to be frank) this is different. Kei does not just mistrust him. Zuko gets the feeling that she might truly hate him.

He can't find it in himself to blame her, not entirely. She's deadset on becoming a soldier, like her older sister before her had been, though Zuko only learns this from Gopan and not Kei herself. And Zuko notices her practicing some sort of swordsmanship out behind the inn the morning after the first night they spend there, with dual blades slightly shorter than his own dao blades that he thinks might be called butterfly swords, if he remembers his teachings with Piandao—and if he's guessed correctly from what he can make out of their shape. Kei swings with force and courage, even if he doesn't note a whole lot of skill or grace behind her attacks, yet—but she's self taught, probably never once had a lesson at all.

When he quietly offers to practice with her, Kei balks. "Why would I want to practice with someone like you?" she sneers at him. "You can't even see two stones' throws in front of you. I overheard your uncle mentioning it to my brother." Zuko privately doubts his uncle had said anything in such cruel words—or hopes he hadn't, at least. Kei's voice has been harsh, tone leaving no room for arguing, and she turns back to her own practicing now, as if meaning to dismiss him.

Zuko does not allow himself to be dismissed. "Maybe because you need someone to practice with," he snaps. "Your forms are sloppy. Even someone like me can see that." He withdraws his own blades, falling into a familiar stance and shooting Kei an expression that he hopes isn't quite as furious as he feels—somewhat menacing, yes, but if she's already afraid of him for having Fire Nation eyes (and he knows, hostile as she might act, that her hostility is rooted in fear), he can't afford to look like he wants to outright attack her. (Even though he does—but only sparring, not seriously.)

Kei responds with her own fury, though—moving forward even as she barks out an angry reply. "What would you even know?" She's slashing out towards him, possibly in outright intent to harm him—though Zuko would much likelier bet that she simply isn't thinking, not that she really consciously wants to hurt him. (She does not strike him as the type to think much of anything through—they would have something in common, there, if what Uncle always says is true.) But Kei's slash utilizes both blades at once, forming what looks like an X shape through the air as she lashes out; Zuko dodges easily, his smaller size making him much quicker than her, and whirls to strike out himself, though using the hilt of one blade instead, hitting at her tangled arms with one quick jab and then easily unbalancing her with another. She falls to the ground, and Zuko looks down at her with what he hopes is an appropriately condescending sneer of his own.

"It's not a good idea to use both swords at once for the same thing," he says. "That's the cardinal rule of two-bladed combat—one hand to defend, and one to strike." In truth, he's simply parroting back words spoken to him by Piandao, so many years ago, though he had not gotten much further in his lessons—but it had been enough, and what he had learned had stayed with him.

"But both looks cooler," Kei grumbles from where she is on the ground, and then slowly picks herself back up. Zuko hopes what he hears is begrudging respect in her voice, though in truth it is probably more likely that he's simply coming off as a know-it-all and not any sort of impressive foe.

"But it's not practical," Zuko sighs, sheathing his blades again and crossing his arms in front of him. "It just makes you off balance, and your arms get all tangled like that. Even one strike to the right place can leave you wide open. You aren't considering defense."

"Fine," Kei says. "If you know so much, teach me, Wise One." Her words drip with cold, biting sarcasm, but as she does fall into what looks to be her favored fighting stance afterwards, Zuko takes it as a cue to do just that—try and teach her, though part of him suspects she means instead for them to spar. (What is he doing, this is a horrible idea. He is no teacher. Still—)

"You shouldn't put your dominant side so far forward," he tells her, quirking an eyebrow. (Actually—he hasn't seen himself truly clearly in any mirror since the incident, but he knows half of his face was burned fairly badly. Does he even have two eyebrows anymore? Oh, well.) "Your right hand is your dominant one, right? Mine's my left—but really both, I guess. So I can't speak from a lot of experience, since I don't usually have that problem..." He trails off for a moment, forgetting where he had been going with the words.

"Your left hand is your dominant," Kei deadpans when he doesn't immediately continue his thought. There's a silence, Zuko simply staring at her, unsure if she means for him to reply, and then she scoffs. "Of course it would be."

Is that a jab? Just because the characters for 'left' can also mean 'immoral'—? "Both are dominant," Zuko corrects her, though it's more of a grumble, through gritted teeth. (He doesn't tell her that in the Fire Nation royal family, left-handedness was actually seen as a gift, on account of the ease at learning to use both hands that typically came with it.)

She shrugs at him, a clear motion in the bobbing of the outline of her shoulders. "Whatever. Means the same, doesn't it?"

Kei does end up practicing with him, in the end, though at one point she makes sure to tell him that it does not make them friends. Zuko is a little baffled, but does not protest; he had not suggested that they would be friends at all.

——

It's the next morning, when Zuko wants to get out of the inn for a bit (his uncle's snoring can be a bit much sometimes), that he runs into her again, walking along the path outside. He follows her without really thinking about it, though she does grumble at him about it—but she doesn't tell him to leave, so he stays. He doesn't really have anything better to do, not until he and Uncle move on from this town to somewhere more isolated, and he can practice his firebending again.

He gets the feeling that not much has changed between him and Kei. The air is tense, even as they silently walk further into town—the practice yesterday has not done much to help her apparent hatred for him. It isn't as if being hated is a totally foreign idea to him, so he does his best to shrug it off.

When Kei is the one to suddenly break the silence, though, Zuko is at least slightly startled—but not by the words she ends up speaking. "I know you're Fire Nation, you know."

He glances at her, but does not react with any huge amount of emotion at her words; after all, he had already suspected she had distrusted him, on account of his eyes. Kei herself looks over at him as well, at the same moment that he looks her way—he imagines she must be meeting those Fire Nation eyes then.

"I'm not Fire Nation," he says, finally, mildly, and it's not a lie, not really. He isn't Fire Nation anymore - but he isn't really any nation, is he? "But even if I were, what would it matter?

Kei stops, spins to face him then, practically spitting in her obvious anger. "The Fire Nation ruined everything! They're the ones who made everything go wrong, and made my mother sick!"

He frowns, looking down at his feet, unable to meet her gaze now even if he knows he isn't able to fully see it anyway. "The Fire Nation brought disease to the town?"

"The Fire Nation are a disease," she spits. "They killed my sister, and if my mother dies they'll have killed her too."

Zuko thinks maybe she is giving the Fire Nation too much credit, implying that they would deliberately bring illness somewhere as if part of some grander scheme. He says nothing of it, nor of his suspicions that she simply wants someone to vilify. Instead he nods, as if in understanding. Okay. The Fire Nation has done this. The Fire Nation is to blame.

That now-familiar feeling hits him yet again, as it has so many times in these past years, like he's cold right down to his stomach. The sun is blinding as it peeks over the horizon, past the rows of shops. Its warmth should touch him, but it feels as if it does not.

They don't talk then, not for a long while. He simply follows her on her stroll, as she seems to be appraising the various stands they pass, he imagines, what with the way she's turning towards so many of them. But no one else seems to be about yet—too early, Zuko guesses, though he has started to wonder if Kei has wandered out here for a reason. Perhaps Gopan has given her some money to spend. He doesn't ask.

It's a little later, when the sun is a little higher in the sky (though still fairly low—it isn't too far past dawn, still) when they do, at last, meet other people. 

And Zuko immediately wishes they hadn't.

Five men seem to be following them, he realizes as he hears their footsteps and glances back. They're too far to make out, for him—but he can see from their shapes that they are big. Maybe it's a coincidence, so he waits—until a few moments later, when the footsteps are still there. He looks back—yes. Definitely following them.

"Kei," he hisses, and she turns them, obviously not having heard them before. (Zuko had never believed that drivel about impaired senses improving your other ones, but he can believe that maybe he just pays attention more on account of his vision. He has to now, at any rate.)

He can see her tense a little, looking stiffer than before, but she does not answer him audibly, instead veering to head off through what seems to be an alleyway. Startled, Zuko follows her best as he can, even as she takes them on a rather twisting and turning path, obviously now in an effort to lose whoever had been tailing them. She nearly loses Zuko—so when she does finally come to a stop, cursing quietly as they both look up at a dead end, he can almost believe that they will be safe anyway, that their pursuers might have been deterred.

He's wrong, of course. Barely a moment passes before loud footsteps make the two of them turn. Zuko stares at the five approaching shapes, clenching his hands into fists beside him.

"Well, well, well," says a loud voice, in a line Zuko thinks sounds very cliche and very stupid. It seems to come from the man in front, the tallest one, who he would bet is the leader. "What do we have here?" the man continues, and Zuko is sure if he could see his face more clearly the guy would be leering. He's practically swaggering up to them, like he's some sort of big shot - but Zuko thinks his word choice leaves a lot to be desired, frankly. Trite. He's heard much better in the plays he used to sit in on, back in the Fire Nation.

"Looks like a coupla kiddos," one of the other men answers, to what had obviously been a rhetorical question anyway. First guy plays along, though, answering back after a beat—

"Well, kiddos, we're going to have to kindly ask that you give us your funds. Just drop them on the ground in front of you, and no one will have to get hurt, alright?"

Zuko draws in a sharp intake of breath at the words, but he does not let his surprise show on his face—choosing instead to glare, tensing his whole body up even as he catches movement out of the corner of his eye from Kei. Is she feeling in her pockets—? Oh. Well, if she has been, she's clearly found nothing—though he thinks maybe she is trying to be discreet, anyway.

He certainly doesn't have any money. Perhaps if they just—

"We don't have anything," Kei growls, before he can finish his thought. "Leave us alone."

"Well, ain't that rude?" laughs one of the men, and Zuko has lost track at this point of which voice belongs to who. He hears no mirth in the laughter—only coldness. "I think you're lying. And I think we'll get that money out of you, no matter what we have to do to get it." The sound of a blade unsheathing, then several more. Oh.

Zuko had almost not considered this a possibility. Maybe by now he would have expected it, from the Fire Nation—roughing up a couple of children. It would seem like nothing, practically, after all the horrors he had heard so far.

But these men are Earth Kingdom. He sees the browns and greens that adorn them, knows by their dialect that they are not from his homeland. They aren't soldiers—just thugs, and they're from the Earth Kingdom. He can hardly believe it.

He will have to, and quickly, however. Already the men have started their approach, and almost instinctively he falls into a fighting stance, drawing his blades. He will defend himself. He will not back down.

He feels Kei shift beside him, turns to see that she's holding her own blades out.

They're just kids, in the end. Two kids trying to fight against a group of adults far more skilled than they are. They do not come close to being an even match.

But Zuko fights as hard as he can, ducking and weaving and slicing with his blades. He supposes in a way his reluctance to kill hinders him now, as he aims for places meant to incapacitate, not to kill. Some of his blows do hit, and if they had been aimed at more fatal places, perhaps he might have stood a chance then.

At least one of the men isn't afraid to aim to kill, though, even against a couple of kids. He's the largest one, the one Zuko has presumed the leader, and his movements betray a deep rage that almost frightens Zuko, as he's suddenly face to face with the man. He matches his blows as best he can, thankful the man isn't a bender, but in the end he only barely manages to dodge the strike of a blade meant for his neck. It slices down into his shoulder instead, and the gash is deep and agonizing. Zuko cries out, stumbles—does not fall, but nearly, staggering lower to the ground than before, swaying just a little on his feet. Another of the men looms behind the first, and Zuko tenses his muscles, clutching his blades tighter, ready to lash out in defense if this man is to strike, too.

A noise from nearby makes him turn, slightly, even without thinking, even as he himself remains in so much danger. It's Kei—she's pinned, three of the men surrounding her now that Zuko isn't weaving between all of them. She struggles, angry, but it's clear that even she can't beat all three. He is already fearing his own odds against the two he faces.

They're going to die. These men are going to kill them, and Zuko's breath catches in his throat at the realization.

"Ready to give in, runt?" the man before him spits, but it's with some undertone of sick satisfaction, and Zuko thinks if he could see his face more clearly, the man would certainly be smiling. "We won't spare you, not now that you've been such trouble, but we can make sure to make it quick."

Zuko stares at the man. His blood runs cold, fearful, and then—

Angry.

"No," he says, and stands up tall, and then everything goes white.

——

In a room long-forgotten by nearly all except the dead, ungazed upon for many years by any human eyes, hundreds upon hundreds of statues' gazes suddenly begin to glow, though there is not a single soul to bear witness.

In a temple of green carved into a steep mountainside, where a woman sits alone, meditating, the eyes of five benders on the mural before her alight.

And past a long, weary and winding road in the Fire Nation, in a temple of more russet hue, more bright lights shine, this time concentrated at the temple's uppermost portion.

"Send word to Fire Lord Ozai at once," says one of the sages of the temple, gravely, to his appalled-looking confrere.

"What would you have me tell him?" the other sage asks him, looking like he already knows the answer, just not in so many words—as if he won't believe it until he hears it confirmed. The first sage's expression is grim.

"Tell him that his suspicions were correct," he replies. "The Avatar is alive."

——

When Zuko next awakens, the smell of cinders is distinct in the air.

Chapter Text

It's odd, but Aang has never really thought of Gyatso as the Avatar. It's not that he doesn't know that of course the old airbender is—just that he never acts like it, never acts like he's above anyone else or treats Aang like he is any less. Though he guesses that the Avatar is supposed to treat everyone fairly, maybe? At any rate, Gyatso is more like a father figure to the boy anyway; he'd singled him out at an early age because of his rising skill in bending, and much of Aang's young life had thusly been spent as protege to the Avatar himself.

He won't lie; though it's great to get to hang out with Gyatso, baking and playing Pai Sho and practicing fun new airbending forms, there are some downsides to it. At the age of twelve, he's already got his tattoos—a clear mark of just how much help Gyatso has been to him as a mentor (or perhaps simply a mark of his own talents)—and this means that, when it comes to the other kids his age, Aang can be a little shunned. It's not that his peers intentionally treat him badly—but instead that they're so obsessed with the concept of fairness, even in games Aang's devised himself, that they're never too keen on the idea of letting the Avatar's apprentice join in on their fun. After all, that wouldn't be fair, would it?

The treatment from his yearmates is also unfortunately not the only negativity Aang faces. He's seen the way the elders look at him—they seem to outright resent him, though in part this might just be because they are, as Gyatso says, 'stuffy old men who can't see past their noses half the time.' Or something like that. Maybe it's the world they're annoyed at instead of Aang? They are old and grumpy, after all. (Not that he'd ever say that to their faces! Probably. The monks are to be respected, grumpy or not!) Aang suspects, though, that at least partway it is him that they are angry at. He's heard on more than one occasion a remark directed at Gyatso that seems to imply that he is wasting his time in taking on an apprentice of sorts at all, that it's unheard of for an Avatar to devote this much time to a simple 'pet project.' Aang tries to not worry about it. After all, all in all his life isn't that bad, and he's having fun. Gyatso has lots to teach him, and Aang's happy to learn.

Until the day when he isn't.

It isn't like he means to snoop. Gyatso sometimes encourages Aang to try following his mentor from time to time without being caught, a test of the nimbleness and lightness of foot that an airbender is supposed to be able to show. Aang has clearly passed this time—Gyatso hasn't noticed him at all, for the first time in the history of ever—but he is starting to think this is for different reasons. After all, the older man is clearly troubled by something as he makes his way up to the room where the elders' council often meets—not exactly in the state of mind to notice his student tailing him. Aang watches his teacher enter the room from where he looks on, hidden around a corner. He supposes that the other monks are already present.

He briefly considers leaving, but Gyatso seems so worried and he can't help being curious, and it isn't like he's hurting anything, not really, by creeping up onto the ceiling above them and peering in through a gap in the vines. He sees that the whole council isn't there—it's just Gyatso, Tashi, and the High Monk, Pasang. Well—he'll leave if they talk about something too personal, he tells himself. Except that, as soon as he manages to strain his ears enough to catch their conversation, what he hears is personal—but not in the way he expects.

"Aang is a very special young boy. He's far surpassed any other bender among his peers. He needs a mentor most suited to his skill level," Gyatso is saying. A far off feeling of rising dread begins to settle in Aang's chest. Why are they talking about him?

"You cannot continue to hide from your own destiny," Tashi replies then, with clear malice in his voice. Aang can see the way he holds himself that he's practically bristling - and he probably would have gone on, too, were it not for Pasang speaking then.

"Gyatso," the senior monk says, and though his tone is firm, it's in that same, soft, kind sort of voice that the elder is prone to using (Aang has to strain to hear from his place up among the vines above their heads.) "I know you mean well, but you are letting your affection for the boy cloud your judgment. Surely he could make do with another teacher in your stead. You know this."

"All I want is what is best for him," Gyatso says resolutely.

"But what we need is what's best for the world, not one boy," Pasang tells him, and his voice is louder now, sharper. "You are the Avatar. You cannot let your fondness for this child keep you from maintaining the balance of the world. You have seen as well as we have that storm clouds are gathering. War may soon be upon us, and you must be ready."

"If that is what it comes to, then I will be," Gyatso responds. Pasang is not tempered by the words.

"No," the High Monk says. "We need you, Gyatso. You and Aang must be separated. You must leave, and return to your duties as the Avatar. It is your responsibility to keep the peace."

Whatever Gyatso has to say then, Aang doesn't hear it. He's off—and he doesn't know where he's going, not at first, he just needs to get away, away from the revelation he's been witness to. They're going to take Gyatso away—send him away because of him.

His feet or his bending or both (he doesn't quite know) eventually carry him to his bedroom, one way or another. Once he's there, he slams the door behind him, taking a moment to lean against it. He's surprised to find that he's practically seething. 

How can they do this? They're going to take away the one person who really cares about me! Instinctively, he brings his arms up to curl a bit around himself, even as he works to calm his temper. He can't get mad. The monks are only doing what's best...

What's best for the world.

What is best for the world?

Gyatso is the Avatar. And if what Pasang had said is true, then war might be coming. Aang knows his mentor—and he knows that no matter what, Gyatso will continue to fight to stay at Aang's side, even if it means the both of them go off traveling instead. He can't say that it wouldn't be nice—an adventure like that. But what if the monks are right? What if he's only a distraction to the Avatar?

He's been stupid. It isn't the monks he should be mad at—not really. As his anger finally leaves him completely, he lifts one hand to his forehead, fear and confusion gripping him. What am I supposed to do? he thinks, his chest feeling tight and achey as he fights to steady his breathing.

He moves then, to sit upon his bed, lay back and stare up at his ceiling as he mulls it all over. But no matter how long he lays there and thinks about it, he comes back, again and again, to the same answer—he is the problem. If he were only to leave... by the time he arrives at the Eastern Air Temple, perhaps Gyatso will have moved on, decided not to fight in the absence of his protege. Maybe the world can still be safe.

He doesn't know how much time passes, but eventually, Aang comes to his decision.

——

For the first time in what feels like a very long time, Gyatso is well and truly angry. So the monks think that affection for others is a weakness! Had not so many Avatars before him shared his care for those around them? What fault could they possibly find in his caring for Aang? The boy is his student—and perhaps, in truth, Gyatso sees in him also a surrogate son. At any rate, he will not be satisfied with the monks' decision; though Pasang is the High Monk and to be respected, he will not simply discard his own feelings entirely. So they want him to travel the world again? Fine. But he will not do so without his apprentice in tow—or, at least, without offering the option to him. (If Aang wants to stay, well, that is another story. But assuming he does not...)

He reaches Aang's room, and with just one steady rap of his fist, the door swings open. "Aang," Gyatso calls out softly, into the darkness. "I know you may have heard what the monks have been saying lately. But I promise, I'm not going to let them take you away from me—"

He pauses. The bedroom is dark enough that he hadn't looked too closely at first, but with each flash of lightning it becomes more and more clear that it the room is empty. Where...?

"Aang?" he tries, glancing around as his eyes adjust to the dimness. Something catches his eye upon the bed: a scroll, which he wastes no time in moving to and unrolling.

His eyes widen.

It seems no time at all passes before Gyatso is on his way out into the storm, clinging as tightly as he can to Nima's back. (There'd been no time to find her saddle, and so he must cling to her sodden fur with nothing but his own shaking limbs, best as he can.) He has to find Aang; he can't let the boy die out here, not in a storm like this. Appa is a fine young bison, but he is just that—young, only 6 years old—and this storm is bad enough to be causing even Nima trouble. Gyatso only hopes they will not be too late.

Buffeted by the wind and rain, he peers forward as his bison continues to soar through the storm, carrying them onward in spite of the harshness of the weather. He hopes that she will be able to track them down—sky bison always did seem to have a sense for one another, and he knows she is his only chance now at finding Aang. So he lets her lead on, in the direction of the Eastern Air Temple, though he notes she is already a little off course. Is this her following where Appa himself had gone, or is the storm simply affecting her direction? He hopes it is not the latter. He does not have much time; any moment now, he knows Aang could be gone, lost at the bottom of the sea forever.

How could he have let this happen?

He doesn't know for how long they search, but eventually, their efforts prove fruitful. In the distance, Gyatso sees the shape of a sky bison: Appa, his rider clinging desperately to him. They seem to be struggling to even stay in the air, the storm tossing them every which way. Gyatso barks a hurried command to Nima to go faster, please, don't let them die and she's roaring her own concern even as she soars towards Aang and his bison. Please, let us reach them, Gyatso thinks, tightening his grip on Nima's fur.

His prayers go unanswered. A sudden strike of lightning sends Aang toppling off of his partner, and Appa himself is sent downwards too in the chaos, the both of them tumbling towards the ocean with no sign of stopping. Gyatso knows then that he will not reach them. His apprentice will die, and there is nothing he can do.

But he has to do something. He has to.

And just like that, everything goes white.

——

When Gyatso comes to, he doesn't understand what's happened. It's been years since he's not been in control of the Avatar State—he'd mastered it long ago, and had never had a problem since. And yet here he is, waking up clearly from the state itself and with no recollection of what he did during it.

It takes a moment for him to adjust. He is back on Nima, though he is lying down now. The storm still rages on around them, and a sudden jolt upon her back causes him to nearly fall, grabbing suddenly for her fur and only barely hanging on. It's then that he finally looks around him—the rain still falling around him, though oddly some of it interspersed with sleet (the first signs of a coming blizzard, instead of the rainstorm?)—and then it slowly sinks in that Aang is not here.

Neither Appa nor Aang is visible anywhere. He searches the water below them with a frantic gaze, but finds only miles and miles of open ocean, chunks of ice beginning to form in it from the onset cold. There is no sign of his apprentice or his bison. They are simply gone—and their absence is a stab of horror in Gyatso's chest. In a storm like this, even if he were to dive down and search... there would be no hope in finding them, not even in recovering their bodies. They are gone.

He has failed.

Burying his face into Nima's fur, he takes a moment to collect himself, and then tells the bison to take them home.

Meanwhile, the boy in the iceberg begins his 100 year slumber.

Chapter Text

Azula has a habit of lying—has had a habit of lying since she was very young, she thinks—and though she’s not entirely sure why she does it, except that it helps her to feel a little more in control, she certainly knows where it has come from.

Her father has been lying for six years now. In fact, she thinks perhaps he has been lying for much longer.

He is certainly good at it, to have kept up the facade for this long. She can only hope to be as good as him when it comes to spinning falsehoods one day. 

Azula knows that six years ago, her father had been ordered to kill his son—her brother, the Avatar —by Fire Lord Azulon. She knows that when her mother had found out what was happening, she had rushed to the Fire Lord’s throne room to try and stop it, and Azula had never seen either of them again.

Azula also knows that the palace servants speak of a double murder, when they gossip, except that they have named the wrong suspect. The rumor is that her uncle, mad with grief over the loss of his own son Lu Ten, had returned to the palace to take away his brother’s son in a fit of jealousy, and that Fire Lady Ursa had been struck down in her efforts to save the Prince’s life. (No one, it seems, remembers how at one point, the rumor had been instead that Iroh never returned from the siege at Ba Sing Se at all; years have passed since then, and the memories of the commonfolk seem fickle, from where she stands.)

But Azula is aware of how easy it is to manipulate this sort of gossip. After all, how many times has she carefully spoken of something within earshot of the most chatty guards or servants, knowing as she does so that the gossip will surely reach the outer streets of Caldera City before the week is up? No, it must have been very easy for her father to have nudged things into place as he saw fit, until the story worked in his favor. Until no one would dare doubt the circumstances of the Prince and his mother’s deaths, for fear of being insensitive towards their poor Fire Lord, who surely only kept quiet about the losses out of grief over who had committed the crimes—his own traitor brother.

It’s just like the rumors she hears about the Avatar—who has apparently been killed by Fire Lord Ozai not six years ago, but ten, in either Fire Fountain City or Shu Jing Village, depending on who is telling the story. Azula isn’t certain why her father has chosen to hide the truth about this information; perhaps, she thinks, it is for multiple reasons, notable among them the shame of being tied to the Avatar by blood and the poor public opinion that would come about if their people learned that their Fire Lord had killed a child. (The age of the Avatar slain by their glorious Fire Lord is, of course, never specified.)

Azula knows the truth about all of these things, and yet she holds her tongue. In truth, she had never had a choice at all; her father lets these rumors spread, knowing she will hear them, and never once speaks to her about the matter, almost as if he is daring her to speak out—daring her to challenge him. Of course she does not. She is not stupid. Her father is the Fire Lord, and she must not let her loyalty to him be doubted. She does not want to be treated like her brother had been.

Except that in the past year or so, that has become harder and harder to prevent. In the absence of another heir, with no backup or spare to fall back on, Ozai pushes her harder and harder, somehow managing to demand perfection even more than he has in the years before (and she had always strived to be perfect). And yet, even when her forms are perfect, even when she can summon blue flames and call forth lightning to her fingertips, he is not satisfied. He is never satisfied. She thinks, perhaps, without Zuko around to take his anger out on, without even her mother to direct any scorn towards, that Azula is simply the only option he has left. And so she must be more than perfect. (And when she is more than perfect, it is still not enough. It will never be enough.)

The friends she’d once made at the Royal Fire Academy for Girls are gone now, and the palace has never felt more lonely (not that she would ever admit this). She thinks of her mother, who had surely died thinking of her daughter as nothing more than a monster; she thinks of her soft and spineless uncle, who had certainly been killed by assassins by now, sent by her father, or else would he not have shown up at the palace long ago? (She supposes, if he was as much of a quitter and a loser as she’d once surmised, that maybe he had simply decided not to return of his own accord. Either way, it doesn’t matter—he is gone, and she will never have to sit through a boring pai sho game again, like he had used to rope her into before he’d gone to war.)

She thinks of her little brother, weak and soft-hearted and gone forever. She remembers how small he’d been once, how her mother had made her promise to be a good influence on him, a good big sister—and in the end it hadn’t even mattered, had it, even if she had tried her best (hard though it had been for her, especially when he was so easy to push around), when she’d remembered to? He is dead now all the same, and so is her mother.

Although perhaps his spirit lives on still, somewhere. Two years ago, she had been with her father when he’d received word from the Sages that the Avatar lived—that the cycle had not been broken. She knows that her father would not have allowed her brother to live (knows also that her mother would not have left her if she was alive, even if she thought her a monster—would she?), so she knows what this means well enough—somewhere in the world, the Avatar is now a child of six years old, toddling around with her brother’s stolen soul beneath their skin. 

She knows that she would be the first to learn if the Avatar was to be found and killed (and try though her father might, so far, he has had no luck in this endeavor). She also knows that the Avatar’s whereabouts have become increasingly more important to her in the past year—for entirely different reasons than her father’s own.

Azula had thought, once, that her father had loved her. But she is not stupid; alone in the palace with him for the past six years (save for her grandfather, who she had seen little of in his final years), the truth has slowly made itself clear to her, especially in the past year. Her father does not love her, and perhaps never has. (She isn’t sure if her mother had ever loved her, even. Perhaps the only person to have ever truly loved her had been Zuko—and isn’t that just hilarious, that the only person who had ever really given a shit about her had only done so because he’d gotten the concepts of love and fear so inextricably entangled that there was no telling now how much of it had been genuine?) Fire Lord Ozai does not even trust her. And Azula knows, just as sure as she knows anything else, that this lack of trust is extremely dangerous.

She is in a very precarious position, as things stand. She is her father’s only living heir, true, but he isn’t so old yet that another heir would truly be an issue. And she has sensed the building tension this past year. Her father does not trust her, perhaps even fears her (as he should)—and that is a dangerous position for her to be in. No, she doesn’t have a choice now; she knows, if she wishes to keep her birthright, to claim her place upon the throne one day, that she will have to act soon.

But Azula is not a fool. The rising tension between her and her father speaks of a growing apprehension on his end; surely he has anticipated that someday soon, she might make a bid for the throne. And this means that each day she waits, she risks him acting out to put a stop to things before she can ever challenge him at all. (How, she is not sure, but she knows he has no shortage of options—perhaps she might be sent away on an impossibly lengthy mission, or else he will invent some imagined show of disrespect so he can justify challenging her to an Agni Kai before she is truly ready. Whatever method he devises to be rid of her does not matter; she simply knows he will do so, soon enough.) 

As things stand, she isn’t certain she would be able to challenge her father, but she will not let him steal her future from her. She deserves to claim her rightful place as the head of the Fire Nation.

And she will, with the help of the Avatar. The Avatar, Azula has realized, is her chance. Though they will be yet a child, if she can find them, convince their guardians she means to end the war and ‘bring back balance’ (the sorts of things she knows the supposed seeker of balance and harmony will eat right up—and if some of her brother’s memories are in there, enough for this new Avatar to fear-love-respect her, all the better), perhaps even train them in firebending until they are ready to stand at her side and aid her… then, one day, within the next decade even, she will be ready to face her father once and for all. And with the Avatar’s help, she will certainly win.

(Afterwards, she will deal with the Avatar. But that is a concern for later.)

Azula’s mind is made up. She knows what she must do—knows that this is the only path left for her. And she will not fail.

Standing before the Fire Lord’s throne room as the attendants finally call her in and shake her from her thoughts, Azula makes her way inside to make a request she knows her father will not deny, happy as he will be to simply be rid of her—a ship, and a crew (with a few particularly essential members), all the resources she needs to track down the Avatar.

(And if he assumes, irresponsibly, that she means to fall in line and bring the Avatar back to him to slay, as someone more fool than she might do, that is his own fault, isn’t it?)

Chapter Text

Iroh isn’t sure where things had begun to go so wrong. Certainly the idea of visiting the Northern Air Temple had been sound, as had been the plans made in order to get here; Iroh had called in favors with his nearby White Lotus contacts, gotten them two eelhounds courtesy of Jeong Jeong (who, in turn, had written to Master Piandao in Shu Jing to have them sent), and they had waited some careful months since their last air temple visit (though that one had been in the south, instead) before arranging for this one, just in case someone had spotted them at the other temple and would be anticipating the next visit they made. 

They had heard tales, before coming to the temple, of living airbenders who had been spotted there, and so this time their usual story had been changed; instead of simply being travelling Earth Kingdom refugees (with young Li either an earthbender or a nonbender, typically depending on the people they were interacting with) Zuko and Iroh were refugees from the Fire Nation, who had fled when the young boy displayed airbending abilities, his uncle fearing for the safety of an airbender child within the Fire Nation’s borders. Iroh had known they would be taking a chance by declaring their nation of origin so openly, but he had also known that honesty and truth in oneself was something the Air Nomads had supposedly prized, and besides, it seemed disrespectful, perhaps, to march in with the gold eyes and pale skin of these people’s murderers and to dare to still claim to be Earth Kingdom despite this. If anyone would see through such a lie, Iroh had thought, it would be airbenders, and if they wanted to get into their good graces enough for Zuko to learn from them, they needed to be honest. (The fact that Zuko is the Avatar is something he could bring up later, and only when he is sure it is safe enough to do so—until then, Zuko would simply be an airbender.)

When Iroh and Zuko had made the climb (well—more accurately, when their eelhounds had made the climb) to see not Air Nomads, but a community of people who used all manner of contraptions to achieve some of what the airbenders once had, Iroh had not considered it a loss. He had not truly allowed himself to get his hopes up entirely about what they would find there in the first place—had assumed the stories they heard had been fabricated or exaggerated, that there was likely no way a community of airbenders had truly survived under the Fire Nation’s noses for this long. He had, for the most part, expected to arrive to find the temple much the same as the last one they had visited, perhaps with one or two surviving (and likely very old) airbenders who had managed to hide themselves away, at the most.

In a way, to find this thriving community—benders though they may not have been—had been better than Iroh could have hoped for, as he was certain that there was still much to be learned from them, as far as Zuko’s studies were concerned. There had been no time to talk about changing their story—they'd barely walked away from their eelhounds (Iroh had left the little winged lemur they had found at the other air temple in charge of watching them, and the creature had seemingly taken his words as a request to promptly lay down and nap upon the temple's stone floor—oh well, as long as he stayed out of trouble) before they’d been approached by the people who lived at the temple; though they seemed somewhat wary of them, they hadn’t driven them out for being Fire Nation, and Iroh had counted that as a win.

But now the trust Iroh had placed in these people had been called quite suddenly into question. Teo, the boy who had approached them in a clear effort to befriend Zuko (and how excited he had seemed at the prospect of speaking to “a real airbender!”), had brought them to an untouched corridor in the temple when Zuko had seemed uninterested in trying out the gliders, probably hoping to soften him up to the idea over time instead (though he had, at the very least, given Zuko a spare glider, apparently one of the first prototypes they had made, when Teo’s father had been trying to more perfectly mimic the original airbenders’ glider designs in order to better understand them.) 

“This part of the temple is completely untouched,” Teo had told them with that bright smile of his. “Only an airbender can open the door.” And then he’d looked at Zuko with such unhesitant awe and wonder, not quite expectantly but still enough that Iroh had known immediately that his compassionate nephew would have never been able to deny the other child. Zuko had paused only a moment to reach back and tug at his own braid (something of a nervous habit—Iroh suspected it was something he did to psyche himself up, in a way) and then, taking a deep breath, had done the best he could to use his instinctive airbending abilities to generate a gust of wind to power the door’s opening mechanisms.

And now Iroh stands in the open doorway and wishes he had not trusted quite so easily.

The room that had been meant to be untouched is instead filled with Fire Nation weapons, the insignia of Iroh’s birthplace now filling him only with a heavy dread and shame. (He even thinks that he might recognize some of the more aged looking designs upon some of the walls—indicating a lasting partnership, much to his dismay at the thought.) 

There are two men in the room, in what seems to be a rather uneasy (for one of them, at least) business exchange, and though they haven’t been formally introduced yet, Iroh is certain that the man with the wild hair and even wilder eyebrows must be Teo’s father, the mechanist behind the various technological marvels that this temple is now home to.

The other man is, unfortunately, one that Iroh recognizes from his days in the Fire Nation military—War Minister Qin, the cabinet member who had overseen the military and its technology, and who likely still does so now unless his position has changed in the past six or so years. Just as Iroh recognizes him, it seems that he, too, has a good memory, as he turns to look at the doorway and then takes a step back in apparent shock. “General Iroh?” Qin says, disbelief clear in his voice, before his surprised expression melts into one that is much more dangerous, eyes narrowing and brows furrowing as he stares at him.

But he’s only noticed Iroh, and he cannot be allowed to notice Zuko. The Fire Nation still has not found them—still has no outright confirmation that Prince Zuko still lives. Even if Iroh could take Zuko and leave now, could get away (and he knows he likely could), the Fire Nation’s subsequent knowledge of the Avatar’s identity would make things much more complicated for him and his nephew; until now, they had benefited greatly from the clear confusion on the Fire Nation’s part when it came to the current status or identity of the Avatar (as they had, it seemed, assumed Zuko likely dead), but if they are to learn that the Avatar is without a doubt Zuko, if they are able to narrow their search down by such a degree, Iroh and Zuko would lose that advantage.

It takes him less than a heartbeat to process these truths, and then he’s surging forward, falling back onto old knowledge he hadn’t had to rely on for some years now. Still, the stance he assumes feels familiar anyway, and before Qin can so much as react Iroh is lashing out with a quick hand to jab at the man’s temple with a carefully precise amount of force. He crumples to the ground, and Iroh wastes no more time than is necessary to confirm he has been knocked out before spinning on his heel to look back towards his nephew again.

“W-What did you do?” Teo’s father gasps, at the same time that his son—looking horrified from the doorway—throws out a shaking hand to point it at his father accusingly.

“You’re giving them weapons? How could you do this?” Teo exclaims as he gestures, his words overlapping the last few of his father’s.

“I have to! If I don’t, they’ll destroy this place—our home!” The justification doesn’t matter much to Iroh, except that it means that the mechanist at least isn’t truly loyal to the Fire Nation—simply has been pushed to this point out of desperation. The thought is of little comfort, but at least it is some degree better than the alternative. Iroh rushes forward to where Zuko is frozen with wide, clouded eyes, sinking to his knees to place his hands gently on the boy’s shoulders.

“Nephew, you must leave here immediately,” he tells him, voice firm even while his touch is gentle. Teo wheels past him, into the room, but Iroh does not turn his attention away from his nephew; they have precious little time. Knocking someone out certainly doesn’t last as long as the theatre likes to pretend it does.

“What? What do you mean? Not—not without you!” Zuko stammers in response, eyes still wide and fearful (though the one on his scarred side considerably less so).

“You can’t expect this to end well!” comes the frantic shout from behind them—the mechanist, seemingly addressed at Iroh, ignoring his son. “He—he hasn’t come alone! He never comes alone! He’s the only one who comes through the trap door, but there’ll be more of them, and if—if they don’t get what they want, they’ll—”

Iroh moves one hand off of Zuko’s shoulder to raise it in a sharp gesture for silence—which the other man, surprisingly, obliges. Of course Iroh had figured Qin had not come alone; such an important member of the Fire Lord’s cabinet would not travel without some escort. “Nephew,” he says again, still not daring to use the boy’s name in case Qin is stirring yet, although his voice is hushed enough that it likely wouldn’t matter—still, it’s worth it to be careful. “I will meet back up with you as soon as I can, but you must go. Take the eelhounds back to Jeong Jeong—they will remember the way—and ask him for his help.”

Zuko still looks like he wants to argue, but there’s simply no time for that, so Iroh hushes him with a hand at his mouth in a gesture of quiet, even as Zuko glares back at him, hurt and anger clear in his eyes. “Teo,” Iroh adds, rising and turning towards the other child, who is still glaring at his father. “Might I trouble you to take my nephew back to where we’ve left our eelhounds?”

Zuko’s voice shakes as he cuts in, sounding furious and tearful all at once. “Uncle, no, I won’t go with him! I’m not leaving you!”

“Zuko, please,” Iroh says, voice quieting even more as he turns back to look at the boy, and having been reassured enough by the unmoving form of Qin upon the ground to use his name. “The Fire Nation are already here. I will do what I can to hold them off, so that they do not find you, but you must let me do this for you. I promise that I can handle a few Fire Nation soldiers—we will see each other again, and soon.” He moves forward—slowly telegraphing his motions as he always does with his nephew, even if he’s clearly come to trust him so much more by now than he had in those first few months—to stoop again and pull the boy into a brief hug, hoping he does not notice the slight shake in his hands as he does so. “Just as a baby turtleseal finds its way back to the ocean, I will find my way back to you. I am asking you to trust me. Can you do that for me, Zuko?”

Zuko stares back at him for a long moment after he has pulled away, expression distraught now rather than furious, tears spilling over in his good eye, and then responds, voice hoarse: “Okay, Uncle.”

“Thank you,” he tells him, then turns once more to address the others in the room, making a decision. “Please understand what is at stake here. He is the Avatar. The Fire Nation cannot find him.” 

The mechanist looks stricken at the words; meanwhile, Teo’s own face turns determined, and he wheels himself forward to look up at Iroh, nodding at him. “I’ll take him to your eelhounds. You can count on me.” He glances back at his father, expression turning more grim. “We aren’t done talking about this, Dad.” And then he moves, towards Zuko, and they are both gone.

Iroh bends down to grab the body that’s still lying on the floor, drags it over to where he is sure the trap door that’s been mentioned must be, and lays him down there. Then he looks up at Teo’s father, frowning deeply as he regards the other man.

“They—they’ll destroy everything,” the mechanist says, pleadingly. “If I don’t cooperate—”

“I know,” Iroh says. “That is why you will cooperate. And if, perhaps, you have started to see the error of your ways, you will have time to get your people out before the Fire Nation returns.”

“We have nowhere to go,” the mechanist protests weakly. “What would you have us do?”

“I hear Ba Sing Se is nice this time of year,” Iroh tells him, not unkindly. “And accepting refugees. It will not be forever. The Avatar will bring balance back to the world, in time.” He offers the other man a gentle smile. “That is his destiny, just as it is mine to guide him on his path as best as I can.” Iroh checks once more on Qin, who is still unconscious, but seems close to stirring; they cannot have much time left at all. “Send him down, to where his men are.” 

The mechanist stares at him for a moment, and then moves to do so, even as Iroh sees the visible shake in his limbs—sees how terrified he is. Once the War Minister has been sent down, Teo’s father turns to Iroh again, eyes much sadder now. “What will you do?” he asks him.

“When they come,” and he knows this eventuality is mere moments away now, with what he’s set in motion, “I will fight—and I will do whatever it takes to distract them until my nephew is safe. Go now—move to the corner of the room, and cower if you think it more convincing. I am a Fire Nation fugitive who has broken into your temple; we have nothing more to do with each other.”

Teo’s father stares at him a moment, then quickly moves to the edge of the workshop, sinking to his knees and placing a still-shaking hand on the wall to steady himself; as he takes in the reality of Iroh’s plan, likely realizing just what his association with the Fire Nation has caused, directly or otherwise—the Avatar will lose his guide, and a boy will lose his guardian (for at least however long it will take Iroh to get himself free from the clutches of these men and until he deems it safe enough to return)—his free hand raises to his face, as if he wishes to hide himself from the truth of the situation he has found himself in.

The noise of the trapdoor mechanism below them activating again tells them that men are being sent up now. Iroh takes one last look at the man who has helped to seal his fate from across the room and finds he does not blame him.

“I love my son,” the mechanist tells him quietly, and there’s a desperation to his voice, like he’s trying to justify himself in the only way he knows how, the only way he even dares to hope the other man might understand.

“As do I mine,” Iroh replies, and he draws in a deep, steadying breath as he raises his hands and prepares to fight for that love.

— — —

It has been six years since that first shower of ash fell upon her village, but Katara has never truly forgotten it. There are just some things, she supposes, that never leave you. Even now, years after the fact, she feels her mother’s absence strongly, just as much as she feels that of her father’s—whose departure from their village had ensured her and Sokka’s roles as new caretakers of the children and elders in his stead. (And, of course, she will never forget the haunting sight of those cinders floating down from the sky, forever marking the occasion and searing it into her nightmares.)

Now she and Sokka must step forward to fill the shoes of those who have left, even if they can never dream of measuring up. Sometimes, this means piled-on and endlessly tiring responsibilities, like scrounging up what little food they can for their village, and still other times it means difficult decisions—decisions which they do not always agree on. Katara wishes more than ever that her mother was here now, because she is sure more than anything else that her mother would not let Sokka act so sealpig-headed. 

In some ways, it hurts to think of her mother so casually, but all the same it gives her some degree of strength, too; there is a power in the hatred that she harbors in her heart for her mother’s killer, and the spite she feels towards him and his wicked nation. Sure, Katara does not normally like to think of herself as a particularly hateful person, nor one who dwells on past grudges too often… but there is strength to be drawn from her hatred, and she would be a fool to ignore it completely. And so she does not force her thoughts away from her mother—lets her mind wander to her whenever it sees fit—and deep at her core, she holds onto the memories, to the feelings, clutches them tightly to her chest and intends never to let them go. They will keep her strong. They will keep her moving.

And she will keep moving—just as she is doing now, trekking across snowy hill after snowy hill on foot and on her own ( thanks for nothing, Sokka! ) because she is sure that their village’s recently banished visitor can’t have actually gotten far. (She hopes. Otherwise, she will have come out here for nothing.) Though he has a speed advantage over her thanks to his sky bison (and isn’t that still so amazing, to see such an impossibly huge and impossibly living creature like that, as if he had stepped right out of her mother’s stories?), he’d said the animal was tired, and they’d set off in this direction on foot not too long ago. If it was rest that Appa needed, Katara bets that they’ll have stopped somewhere for said rest before the boy and his bison head off to the closest air temple. Except that Katara is also pretty certain that those air temple clothes Aang is wearing can’t be keeping him very warm at all—so she has to do her best to fix that.

She shifts the tigerseal coat in her hold, trying not to cringe as she regards the koalaotter fur lining it and thinks about how their visitor had turned down an offered meal just a few hours earlier, citing the animal meat as the issue. Perhaps it won’t be the most comfortable thing for him to wear, but if the choice is between wearing it and freezing to death, maybe she can still convince him? She hopes so. 

As she crests another hill, Katara glances up and feels her breath hitch as she catches sight of exactly who she’s come out looking for—Aang and his bison are both resting in a rounded ice formation, and as she approaches and waves in greeting with a free arm, she sees the boy look up and then jump to his feet with a surprised grin, flying quite a few feet up and forward through the air and out of his resting spot before sinking rather gracefully to land upon the snowy ground, his feet hardly disturbing the surface of the snow.

Hastening her pace, she makes her way quickly towards him just as he moves forward to meet her halfway, expression still that same mixture of shocked and joyful.

“Katara!” he chirps happily, bouncing a little on his feet as he does so. “What are you doing out here? Did—did Sokka change his mind?”

Katara bites her lip and shakes her head, one gloved hand coming up to fiddle with one of her hair loops in a nervous habit she still hasn’t quite broken. “Well…,” she replies, shifting a little on her own feet (though not quite so much as Aang seems wont to do). “Not exactly. But—banishing you for a mistake was wrong! And it definitely isn’t worth letting you freeze to death over!” 

Aang’s smile falls a little as he blinks back at her, and the bouncing he’s been doing seems to slow. “Katara, like I said, I really don’t want to cause problems between you and your family,” he says. “Besides, I’m not going to freeze to death! The monks taught me to regulate the temperature of the air around me. I’ll be fine!” Even as he says it, though, she thinks she sees a slight tremble in his shoulders, and she wonders how hard he might be fighting not to let his teeth chatter. She narrows her eyes at him suspiciously, crossing her arms and saying nothing.

“Okay, well maybe we airbenders can’t maintain our body temperatures nearly as well as firebenders,” he says after a moment, shrugging. “But it’s only for a couple hours at the most, until Appa’s rested up enough to head out. He’s already starting to do better. Right, buddy?” The last bit is louder, thrown over his shoulder with a seemingly involuntary smile that always seems to appear when he’s addressing his huge, furry friend. Appa answers with a loud grumble.

“Even if it’s just for a couple hours, I’d feel better if I knew you weren’t shivering through them,” Katara says, and then holds out the coat she’d brought for him. “Here. Can you put this on, at least?”

Aang regards it with a wary look, shifting a little backwards. “It’s … made from dead animal skins, isn’t it.” The question doesn’t sound like a question.

“Yes,” Katara sighs; having anticipated this doesn’t make it any less awkward.

“Not exactly my idea of cozy,” he mutters, still staring at the offered coat with narrowed eyes, and making no move to grab it from her.

“I grabbed one that hadn’t been dyed with shark-squid ink yet, at least,” she tells him. She fights to keep from huffing out the words; she is, admittedly, a little exasperated by the situation, even though she’d seen it coming. Really—she’d gone to the trouble of finding a coat that was still a natural orange-brown, instead of dyed blue, in the hopes that maybe it’d entice him a little more that way (being closer to his own nation’s colors)—and yet all her efforts have been for nothing, so it seems.

Aang looks uncomfortable, like he isn’t quite sure how to tell her no. “Um… well, that’s not really the issue,” he tries, before Katara sighs and cuts him off with a wave of her hand, pulling the coat back to hold it close to her chest again.

“Fine, fine,” she says. “I won’t argue with you about it. But I will argue with Sokka to make sure you can come back and stay in the village at least for tonight. You shouldn’t be out here for too long without shelter.” As if to punctuate her statement and emphasize her determination, she stomps one foot down onto the snowy ground below her, though the motion is a little less dramatic than she had been hoping for. Still, she puts the coat over her shoulder to free her hands, if nothing else, and then crosses her arms.

“If you’re sure?” Aang responds, and this time what’s not a question sounds like one, instead of the other way around. “I don’t know if your tribe will be okay with…”

As he starts to trail off, Katara jumps in. “If the Fire Navy hasn’t shown up by now, they have to realize they aren’t going to,” she huffs. “And if I talk some sense into them, they’ll realize that they can’t leave a child out in the ice to freeze. Even if it’s just for a little while, you can come back and get warmed up—until Appa’s ready to go.” She tries her best to smile at him, hoping the look is encouraging rather than obviously forced.

“Well, then, thank you,” Aang says, smiling back much more brightly. She thinks it’s genuine, too, although she supposes she doesn’t know him all that well—maybe he’s just really good at feigning this sort of cheer. 

She’s just about to ask him to head back with her (they can get back even quicker if they’re riding on Appa, too, even if he’s too tired to fly for now) when a shout of her name from behind them makes her whirl around, smile immediately dropping from her face when she sees who it is. Really, if Sokka thinks he’s going to come out here and make things even worse —

But Sokka looks almost apologetic, as he hurries down towards them, and Katara eases up a little on the glare she’s been giving him, though she’s crossing her arms again, tapping her foot a little as she waits to hear whatever he’s followed her to say.

“Look,” Sokka begins with, as he reaches them, and he raises both hands as if in appeasement, probably at the sour look she’s giving him. “I’m…” He sighs, and his gaze moves from her to Aang, behind her. “About earlier.”

Well. Maybe he’s seen sense after all—unlikely though she’d thought that was, before. She quirks one eyebrow at him, but says nothing for a decently long moment; Aang doesn’t speak up either, though she figures his silence is intended to come across more as patiently waiting for Sokka to continue than the air of disdain she’s trying to project.

Sokka shifts his weight a little, but doesn’t outright shuffle his feet. “I thought about it, and it wouldn’t really make a lot of sense for you to have tried to signal the Fire Navy, since…”

“Since he’s pretty clearly an airbender?” Katara chimes in, and she’s pretty sure the look on her face has shifted thoroughly from disdainful to smug by now.

“Right.” Sokka’s voice is a little strained, and Katara thinks that maybe he’s resisting the urge to roll his eyes. “Anyway, no Fire Navy ships have shown up, and they probably would have by now if they were going to, so … I’m,” he goes on, one arm moving up for a hand to scratch at the back of his neck in a somewhat embarrassed gesture. “... sorry. It wasn’t fair of me to judge you like that, without even knowing you.”

Katara can’t help but widen her eyes at that; she had known that Sokka had changed his mind, sure, but she hadn’t actually expected him to come out and apologize. She’s actually pretty proud of him—slowly, she feels a smile settling onto her face, genuine this time, as she looks from him to Aang.

“It’s no problem, really,” says the airbender with a smile of his own. “You’re forgiven.”

Katara lets her arms fall to her sides at last, no longer doing her best to project her feelings of I-was-right-and-you-were-wrong outwardly in Sokka’s direction—until her mind starts to catch up to what’s happened, and then she’s smirking at him, one hand going to her hip instead. It isn’t like Sokka to change his mind so quickly, she thinks—at least not without outside help nudging him along. Her grandmother had been on Sokka’s side in the moment, sure, but after seeing how much Katara had been affected, and how she had stormed off… It was likely that she, at least, had felt bad about the whole ordeal.

“Gran Gran talked to you, didn’t she?” she asks him, smugness creeping back into her voice.

Sokka, whose attention had been on Aang, turns his gaze back to her, gesturing rather wildly with his arms as he does and sputtering for a moment. “Hey! I was going to come after you even before Gran Gran decided to meddle! I wasn’t about to let you run off without me.” It’s at this point that Katara notices the rather heavy-looking set of bags slung over either of Sokka’s shoulders—and she blinks, taking a single step back unthinkingly in her shock as she processes what she’s seeing.

Aang, it seems, has drawn a different conclusion, however; from the corner of her eye, she sees him step forward to stand beside her, raising an arm in what is probably a placating gesture, perhaps having assumed he really had come between their family after all. “Katara wasn’t going to run off, Sokka,” he says quickly, “She was just bringing me—”

“Nope!” Sokka interrupts, raising one hand in a gesture meant to further cut him off, but his expression isn’t actually angry. “Don’t want to hear it. Honestly, Katara, can you really look me in the eyes and tell me you aren’t over the moon at the idea of getting out and learning to control your magic water powers?” It’s his turn to raise an eyebrow at her, now, though without meaning to she finds herself distracted from the question by the same tired argument they always seem to have, and like always she jumps to her own element’s defense—

“You know it’s not ‘magic,’ it’s—!”

“Bending, yes, I know,” he acquiesces. (Katara is a little surprised; that’s the quickest he’s ever folded on that issue.) “Point is, arrow boy and his snot monster here are your chance at figuring out that part of yourself, and …” At this point, he steps forward and closes the distance between them, raising one hand to rest it on her shoulder (the one that isn’t currently covered with a tigerseal coat) and giving her a small smile. “I’d be a pretty bad brother if I didn’t come along and help you out, especially when Fire Nation creeps could be anywhere out there.”

Katara rolls her eyes, though she can’t help but smile back at him. “I don’t need to be protected.” Still, exciting though the idea of leaving to seek a waterbending teacher may be, she’d not been thinking entirely clearly when she’d brought it up earlier, in her anger, to Gran Gran. “And anyway, the village—”

Now Sokka cuts her off, smile not faltering. “Gran Gran said she can look after things while we’re gone.” He tightens his grip on her shoulder, giving it a reassuring squeeze. “She wants us to go—she helped me pack.” His small smile broadens a little, and Katara feels tension she hadn’t known was present leave her body as she stares back at him. Her eyes are starting to feel a little wet.

She launches herself forward then to wrap her arms around her brother, pulling him close to her own body (though mindful of how quickly she moves to do so, not wanting to send the tigerseal coat still resting on her shoulder falling to the ground) and pressing her face into his shoulder for a long moment as she tries to fight back the tears she’s teetering on the edge of. “Thanks, Sokka,” she mumbles into the thick fabric of his own parka as he hugs her back tightly, and then she pulls back a little, still close enough to speak her next words just for her brother to hear. “I wouldn’t have gone without you, you know.” She moves out of the hug fully now, squeezing her brother one last time before she does, hoping to convey her gratitude and love for him even if he’d been a little nut-brained earlier that day.

He snorts out something close to a laugh, though Katara knows her brother well enough to understand that he’s only making light of what she’s said to hide how much it had affected him. (She knows better than anyone how much he fears losing the people he loves, how much their father’s departure has affected them both; she hopes, more than anything, that he understands the truth behind her own admission, that she would never dream of leaving the village without him at her side.) “Then it’s a good thing I came to find you, isn’t it?” Sokka says, and Katara only gives him a light, good-natured shove in response.

“Well, I’m happy to have you two on board!” Aang says brightly, reminding her of his presence beside them. She turns to smile at him, now, and he beams back. “I think Appa’s actually rested up enough now to go, but—should I have him take you back to your village first, so you can say goodbye?” The question is sincere, and she knows he would do it in a heartbeat, but still she waves it off.

“No, that’s okay,” she tells him, not letting her smile drop from her face even as a wave of muted sadness hits her. “I’ll see them again.” She knows she can’t go back now—can’t risk losing her nerve, not when she’s so close to getting out there and seeing the world at last.

“And I already said enough goodbyes for the both of us before I came out here.” Sokka pats her on the shoulder (the one that’s got the coat on it, now, so she sees more than feels the gesture) and moves towards the giant bison that’s climbed down from the ice formation before them sometime during their hug—Aang had probably done something to gesture for him to come over, she thinks. Turning to look back in the direction they’d come from, Katara can’t help the tight feeling in her chest and the thick feeling in her throat as she thinks about the village, even though she knows they’ll be back eventually. Sokka’s voice comes again, shaking her from her brief reverie. “They’ll be fine without us for a little while.”

“You’re right,” she tells him as she turns back, watching Aang airbend himself effortlessly up onto the saddle of the sky bison. “Hey, Aang,” she adds as she climbs up onto the saddle herself with his help. “Thanks for not taking back your offer of a ride just because my brother was being a massive jerk earlier.” She stifles a laugh into her sleeve as she settles down on Appa’s back, hearing the indignant noise Sokka has made at her words.

“Anytime!” Aang says, having a harder time stifling his own laughter as he meets her eyes.

“Hey!” Sokka shouts, but provides no other defense of himself—he falls silent, instead, as he hands Aang and Katara the bags he’s brought (as well as the tigerseal coat, which had apparently fallen from Katara’s shoulder as she climbed up) and then taking their offered arms to help climb up himself. As he moves to sit beside her, he crosses his arms and huffs dramatically, and Katara resists the urge to roll her eyes at him again (though fondly) for the second time in the past hour.

Turning to watch as Aang moves to where the reins are, Katara grabs onto the light-hearted feeling she has in her stomach and holds it tightly, not wanting to let go. She knows what it is—has been feeling it off and on since Aang had come into their lives—and she doesn’t think she wants it to leave. 

Aang might not be the Avatar, but she knows what his existence might mean for the world even still—his arrival back into the world has brought back knowledge that’s been missing and forgotten for a century, knowledge that the Avatar, wherever and whoever they are, will need. And maybe—just maybe—with Aang’s help, the Avatar can bring back balance to the world, just like in the stories her mother and grandmother had often told her. 

Katara had never stopped believing in the Avatar, not really, and now, with Aang looking over his shoulder and babbling excitedly at them about making a stop at the nearby temple, just past the Patola Mountain range, and how afterwards before they head north he wants to show them giant koi and hopping llamas and hogmonkeys, she thinks her belief has only strengthened. Aang has renewed her hope by a huge amount, breathing life back into a dream she hadn’t even known had begun to dwindle in the way that only an airbender probably could. 

Katara holds onto the fluttering in her belly and the tingling in her limbs, and thinks maybe it feels something like flying.

“Appa! Yip yip!” 

Yes, Katara thinks as they rise up into the sky (her brother yelping in alarm beside her)—it does.

Chapter Text

Zuko regrets agreeing to Uncle’s plan immediately, but he follows Teo dutifully through the temple anyway, knowing—as much as he hates it—that his uncle would be furious with him for turning back now. So instead he fights to keep his breathing under control (if there is one good thing about having spent the past few years learning firebending under Uncle’s careful guidance, it is the breath control he has learned—which, he’s found, has many other practical applications, much as he typically hates to admit having to rely on the methods at all) and keeps quiet as Teo leads him quickly through the confusing architecture and finally back to where the eelhounds are still waiting at the temple’s edge.

“You should get out of here quickly,” Teo tells him, as if he wasn’t planning to already. Then, quieter: “I’m sorry.”

Zuko sighs as he nudges the sleeping form of the monstrous little hanger-on they’d picked up at the last air temple, having the nerve to curl up and nap here by the eelhounds as if nothing at all is wrong. He supposes nothing is, for the creature; there’s no way he can understand what’s happened, what’s happening still. 

The small, fuzzy beast chitters in what sounds like annoyance as he stirs, and then after the briefest of stretches and an audible yawn he’s skittering up the side of Zuko’s leg and coming to rest on his shoulder, where soft fur soon presses up against his neck and a long tail curls around the back of his head. (He’s long since given up trying to deter the animal from his chosen perch, much as it had annoyed him at first. If he’s honest with himself, Zuko finds his presence comforting, not that he’d admit that out loud.) 

“Not your fault,” is all he says to Teo after the brief pause, moving a little unsteadily up to tap his hand in a particular rhythm on the side of one of the two mounts (he wishes his limbs would stop shaking—it’ll be fine, Uncle knows how to handle himself, they’ll be back together soon and it’ll be fine ), the huge creature responding by sinking down to the temple’s stone floor, ready for him to get on.

“Good luck,” he hears Teo say as brightly as he can manage (Zuko doesn’t answer—doesn’t know what to say, really) as Zuko checks to make sure the bags are still secured to the eelhound’s sides and then takes a deep breath to steady himself. Right. Time to move. Climbing up is going to be… an ordeal. Even with the eelhound laying down like this, it’s still a pretty large animal, and he’d had his uncle’s reassuring presence at his side before in case of any issues, even if he hadn’t accepted his help. Still, he doesn’t exactly have much of a choice—so he scrambles up as gracefully as he can in spite of his still-trembling limbs and settles himself onto the saddle, ignoring the little chattering noises of protest the lemur on his shoulder makes as he’s jostled around by the movement (he does not, however, detach himself from Zuko’s shoulder).

And then Zuko is squeezing the eelhound’s sides with his legs to signal it to move, and in one quick and fluid motion it rises to its paws and sets off down the steep slope they had climbed just a few short hours before (Zuko hears rather than sees the other eelhound following them, and for a moment he can almost convince himself that his uncle is riding atop it like before, that if he turns to try and look back he’ll make out the familiar bulky shape of the person he trusts most in the world, the person he’s leaving behind ).

He can’t let himself spiral, and so as they make their way quickly down the mountain Zuko reaches one hand up (the other clutching tightly to the reins) to stroke the lemur on his shoulder. He thinks the repetitive motion is of more benefit to him than it is to his furry friend, even as the little animal chirps appreciatively at him. It’s calming, even if it’s not quite enough.

But that’s alright. He can do this. Uncle is trusting him to keep it together until they’ve reunited (and that has to be soon, Uncle promised him, it has to be soon).

He grits his teeth around harsh, anxious breaths and tries (fails) not to think about the last time he’d been assured that such a parting wouldn’t be forever. 

I have to leave now, for a while. Your uncle will be here soon. But a while had turned into a year, and then a year had turned into two, and three, and four and five.

He is certain, by this point, that a while has turned into forever. (His mind wanders briefly to the letter still folded neatly and tucked away in one of their bags. He makes no move to retrieve it.)

Zuko isn’t sure anymore what spirits he’s meant to pray to—who he’s allowed to pray to (certainly not Agni, anymore, but does he have the right to ask for anything from Earth Kingdom spirits, when he was born in the nation that’s been terrorizing those who tell their stories for a century? does being the Avatar give him any more right to those spirits than he might have otherwise?), but nonetheless he sends out a prayer anyway, muttering it to himself as he bows his head and moves his hand away from the lemur to rest it over his own body, over his inner flame (even if he no longer prays to the sun spirit specifically).

“Don’t let Uncle break his promise. Please.”

He hopes someone has heard. (He doubts anyone has, and if so, that they would care.) 

He feels that hope and that doubt at war within him, but neither feeling wins. (Not yet.)

—

The moon is in the sky by the time the eelhounds make it down the mountain, across the water, and back to Jeong Jeong’s camp; they promptly collapse there, clearly worn out from the long day of travel, and Zuko can’t help but feel sorry for them, going so long without rest. Even he had eventually nodded off atop his own eelhound halfway across the water, as had the lemur—he’d woken up much closer to the shore with the lemur gnawing on his hair tie, not entirely sure whether his braid had come undone of its own accord sometime during the trip or if the animal had somehow managed to pry it out of his hair to chew on without waking him. 

Exhausted though they may be now, the creatures are clearly just as fast as Jeong Jeong had said they were. Zuko can’t imagine how long sailing across that stretch of water might have taken, nor how tiring and difficult scaling the mountain would have been without them. (Still, had their initial journey taken longer than it had, maybe they would have missed the rendezvous Teo’s father had been having with the Fire Nation entirely, and Uncle would be with him now. … He doesn’t want to dwell on it, at any rate.) Zuko makes sure to grab the glider-staff he’d been gifted before he leaves the resting creatures, fastening it to his back the way Teo had shown him.

Zuko’s relieved to find the people in the camp recognize him without prompting; the less awkward conversation he has to endure, the better, as far as he’s concerned. He’s led into Jeong Jeong’s tent a short while after one of the men disappears to talk to him (and the lemur, who has still yet to stop following Zuko everywhere, comes with), and, noticing the man appears to be kneeling, he lets himself sink to his knees as well, anxiety prickling at his skin. At least Jeong Jeong is turned to face him, instead of facing dramatically away as he had been when he and Uncle had come in to speak with him the day before. Zuko had tuned out much of their conversation, as it had revolved at least partially around pai sho, something he had little interest in. Now he wishes he had paid more attention to it, so that he might know better how to act around the unfamiliar man (Uncle’s old pai sho friend or not, his presence is still at least a little intimidating).

What seems to be a dozen or so warm lights surround the man’s kneeling form, positioned haphazardly near the floor around him, and Zuko knows from their size and the way the gentle flames (blurred though they may seem to him) flicker that they are candles, likely for the purposes of meditation. He’s mostly conquered his fear of fire long ago—had to have, to have been learning from Uncle—but perhaps the anxiety hasn’t completely disappeared yet, because he still feels his stomach churn slightly at the presence of so many spots of uncontrolled flame in the tent with them. 

It’s different if the flames are his or Uncle’s, he thinks, because he trusts Uncle not to let fire hurt him (again), but even if Jeong Jeong extends his control to these flames (and he doesn’t seem to be doing that now, at least, with the way they flicker unevenly, unless his breathing patterns are very, very odd), he doesn’t know the man enough to trust him in the same way he trusts his uncle, even if they are apparently friends.

The tent is silent for a long while as Zuko fidgets, unsure if he’s meant to speak first. Surely Jeong Jeong has noticed the absence of his uncle by now; what is there to even say, really, except that he’s gone?

Still, Jeong Jeong seems to expect an explanation, because his rough voice breaks the uneasy silence soon enough. “Your uncle?” 

Zuko shifts his weight a little, resisting the urge to reach up and pat at the lemur’s fur (he doesn’t need calming down, not yet). “We got separated,” he manages, voice raspier than usual thanks to hours of disuse. “He said to ask you for help.”

Jeong Jeong moves his arms up towards his face, and Zuko imagines he is probably looking at him over interlinked hands now, a gesture that reminds him of his grandfather (he pushes that thought away as quickly as it comes, tamping down on the fear that rises in his chest at the memory of the last day he had seen those cold eyes watching him over clasped hands). “Separated,” Jeong Jeong repeats, and then is silent, as if prompting him to explain further.

Zuko’s head hurts a little; he doesn’t want to talk about it, really, just as he doesn’t want to even think about it. “Look, what does it matter?” he replies, fighting to keep his voice at least somewhat level in spite of the building tightness in his chest. “He’s gone, and you’re supposed to help me until he’s …” He pauses, huffs out a breath of uncertain air, and fiddles with one of the strings of his tunic, near the bottom. “... Back.” 

“I am not supposed to do anything,” Jeong Jeong says, voice unreadable (expression unreadable, too, as always for Zuko, but nonetheless he can’t help but imagine the man glaring at him anyway). 

Zuko tenses and narrows his eyes. “But you…” His voice wavers a little, and he stops briefly as he fights for control of it. “You have to help! Otherwise, my uncle did all of this for—for nothing!” He makes a desperate, wild gesture with his arms as he speaks, even if he doesn’t quite know what he means to convey. He’s raised his volume significantly, but considering it had stopped his voice from shaking, it’d been the better alternative. He would rather appear ill-tempered (likely true) than weak (also true, but much more shameful). 

“Do not misunderstand me,” Jeong Jeong replies. “I will help you, but I am not obligated to do so.” (Zuko grits his teeth and barely stops himself from interrupting; he had never claimed anyone obligated to do anything for him, only that this man is meant to be his uncle’s friend, is supposed to help him because he is supposed to care .) “No one in this world owes you anything, no matter what you think your destiny might be.”

Zuko thinks of his uncle for a long moment, and how all he wants right now is to find him again. Jeong Jeong does not speak up to fill the silence. Finally, Zuko manages to answer him, terse and grumbled. “I don’t care about my destiny.” In the moment, he finds he truly doesn’t. It’s Uncle who is always talking about his path as the Avatar, the ability he apparently has to return balance to the world if he so chooses, how he must trust in destiny to guide him as his friend and guardian. Right now all he wants to guide him is his uncle, not some fate he might never measure up to.

There’s a silence then, for a few long moments, while the lemur that has been offering his silent support thus far moves his face closer to nuzzle at Zuko’s ear, perhaps sensing his trepidation. Zuko moves both of his hands to smooth down the fabric of his shirt unnecessarily, desperate as he is for something to do with them as he waits for Jeong Jeong to say something. (The little creature perched on his shoulder chitters as he does, as if demanding attention instead, but Zuko doesn’t relent. Yet.)

Finally, Jeong Jeong speaks again. “Explain to me what happened at the air temple,” he says. “I cannot help you if I am left in the dark.” He moves his arms in some kind of sweeping motion, likely meaning to indicate the candles around them in the sort of gesture that only an old person with an annoying fondness for metaphor can do. (It reminds Zuko of Uncle, a little. He resents that.)

Zuko drops his hands to his side and balls them up into fists, clenching his jaw as he thinks back on the events of the day. He squeezes his eyes shut, fighting to remain calm verbally even as nausea flares up in the back of his throat. “The Fire Nation was there,” he explains carefully, slowly. “Uncle held them off so I could escape without them noticing me.” It’s hard to swallow, but he tries to, after he’s said what he can. He feels sick. How could he have left Uncle there, even if he had asked him to? He’s a coward and a terrible nephew for listening, for leaving him there to get hurt or worse—

“I see,” comes Jeong Jeong’s voice, suddenly, and it snaps him out of his brief spiral. Zuko notes with a start that he can feel the flames in the tent around him in a way he hadn’t been conscious of a few moments ago, and as he opens his eyes again he notices the candle fires shrinking back to their earlier size, having grown in his moment of panic. He lets out a harsh breath at the realization. It’s been a long time since he’s bent involuntarily like that—he hadn’t consciously reached for the flames, hadn’t meant to influence them at all. And yet he had. He feels like a child, letting his emotions get the better of him and bending without deliberate intent.

“The fire responds to your distress, Prince Zuko, even without you having meant it to,” Jeong Jeong says then, and Zuko snaps his head up (to the lemur’s quiet protest as he’s jolted by the movement). “This demonstrates the depth of your connection to the element, but you must learn better control, or risk destruction.”

Zuko lets the anger flare up in his chest then, happy to have something to cling to other than the shame and fear he’d felt before. “I’m not a prince,” he snaps. Not anymore. “And you’re not my teacher.” He crosses his arms and does his best to send a glare across the tent at the old man, furious at him for acting like he has more right to instruct him than his uncle. (His uncle, who is missing. His uncle, who he let down—)

“Perhaps not,” Jeong Jeong answers him, his own voice louder than before, though it’s unclear if it’s anger that motivates him to raise it. “But do not forget fire’s violent nature. Those of us burdened to carry it in our hearts must remember how much pain it can cause.”

Zuko can’t help but scoff then, tilting his head at the man wryly and lifting one hand up to carefully and obviously brush his fingertips across the left side of his face. “Yeah, I don’t think I’m ever going to forget that,” he spits out, enough bitterness dripping in his tone that he hopes it will manifest itself tangibly in the room and drown them both. (It doesn’t.)

The silence after that feels heavy and awkward. Zuko almost regrets what he’s done (he’s never wanted anyone’s pity)—but only almost. The old man had been out of line, and he deserves to feel bad about it. He drops his hand and returns both arms to his sides, clenching them into fists again to keep himself from fidgeting with them.

“No, no, I suppose not,” Jeong Jeong says at last, his voice softer now. He still sounds serious, but the sharpness present in his tone earlier is gone now. “I apologize; I forget myself.” He rises from his kneeling position then, turning around and moving to crouch at the very back of the tent, back to Zuko so he can’t see what he’s doing (not that he would be likely to make out what it was anyway, if he’d been facing him). 

Zuko hasn’t been dismissed, so he shifts a little on his knees (uneasiness creeping back into his limbs) and lets his fists unclench, moving one hand up to finally relent and pet the lemur while he waits uncertainly for Jeong Jeong to say or do something else. After a few moments (petting the little lemur is, as always, calming, and he even finds himself smiling the smallest bit at the animal’s pleased chattering), Jeong Jeong finally finishes whatever he had been doing and moves back towards him, stooping to hold out what seems to be, based on shape and color, a folded sheet of parchment.

“Here—you will need this, if you are to receive help from my contact in Mò Cè Shì,” Jeong Jeong tells him, and Zuko feels a flutter in his stomach at the words, even though he isn’t certain why. Has he been there before? He can’t be certain—the name sounds sort of familiar, but he’d never really paid much attention to the names of places in his travels with Uncle, especially not in the first few years… “It will not be safe for you to stay here with the Fire Nation so close. Take one of the eelhounds; the woman you find in Mò Cè Shì will send it back to where it belongs once you’ve made it to her.” Zuko grabs the parchment (he notes as his fingers brush over it that it’s been tied shut with rough twine, likely close to the same color, as he hadn’t noticed anything before grabbing it) and stows it in the pocket of his pants for now.

Jeong Jeong’s holding something of a similar shape and size, from what he can tell (another letter?), and he moves away from him again, this time turned to the side as he bends down to grab something Zuko can’t make out except for its color (green) and seemingly tucking the first object away inside it. The motions afterward appear to indicate he’s plugged whatever-it-is shut somehow. As the man grabs for one of the candles in the room with his newly free hand and holds it over the thing, Zuko only feels his confusion and annoyance build, wishing yet again for his uncle, this time simply for his tendency to narrate the little nuances of things he does that he knows Zuko cannot see. (In the past, he’d taken it for granted, thought the act silly and unnecessary—but perhaps his uncle knows him better than he knows himself, because he finds himself increasingly frustrated by his inability to understand exactly what’s going on here.)

Unable to hold back any longer, Zuko mutters, “What are you doing?”—and hopes his words have been loud enough for an old man’s ears to pick up.

Apparently so, because there’s a heavy sigh from Jeong Jeong (he doesn’t have to be rude about it!) as he spins back around to face him. “It will be fastest—and safest—for the other eelhound to make its way home under the ocean, instead of atop it. This bamboo—and this wax seal—will keep the missive it carries dry.”

“Oh.” Zuko doesn’t know what else to say, really, though he is quietly grateful for the explanation, even if he’s annoyed at the apparent weariness in delivering it. Zuko turns his head sharply as Jeong Jeong starts to move past him—on his left side, much to his discomfort—and watches him carefully as he does. The man motions with his arm just as he passes, close enough for Zuko to more or less pick out the shape of his hand (though had he not turned his head, he wouldn’t have)—open, and likely gesturing for him to stay put. Zuko makes no move to get up, and assumes he’s guessed right when the old man doesn’t return to demand he follow him.

It’s a while before Jeong Jeong comes back; Zuko passes the time by petting—and definitely not cooing at—a rather affectionate lemur. (The little animal is unquestionably just a hanger-on that Zuko never explicitly wanted to follow him if anyone asks, but come on, it’s impossible to have spent the time he has with the creature and not have come to love him dearly. He only wishes he could think of a fitting name for him—but alas, he hasn’t quite yet.) When Jeong Jeong does return, there’s someone else with him.

“This is Chey,” Jeong Jeong says, as Zuko stands and turns around to face the two of them. “He will accompany you as far as Mò Cè Shì.”

“Pleased to meet you, kid,” says Chey, and his voice is more light and youthful than Zuko’s expecting (not young by any means, but certainly not the deep, rough, extremely-old-man voice he anticipates coming from someone who keeps company like Jeong Jeong and, by extension, Uncle). “Any friend of Jeong Jeong’s is a friend of mine.”

I’m not his friend, and I’m not a kid, Zuko thinks sourly, but doesn’t answer except to shrug a shoulder at him in a noncommittal greeting. The lemur currently perched on said shoulder chirps loudly. 

“And who’s this little fella?” Chey’s voice is bright and friendly, and Zuko fights to keep his expression neutral (or his version of neutral, at least, which he’s been told is sort of a half-scowl) in spite of his desire to glare sullenly. “He got a name?” Zuko doesn’t need to see the man’s face to guess that he’s probably looking at the lemur with some kind of embarrassingly fond expression, judging by the tone of his voice.

“No.” Zuko’s answer is short as he crosses his arms and frowns at the man for a moment. Then, feeling a little self-conscious at the ensuing silence, he speaks up again, quieter as he tilts his head down to blink in the direction of his feet: “Nothing’s stuck yet.”

“Well, maybe we’ll find one for him along the way!” Chey says.

Zuko uncrosses his arms and only shrugs in reply. He doubts it. Nothing he or Uncle have tried yet has seemed to fit. (The longest time the lemur has had a name was a week, once, when he’d gone by Catgator—but, in the end, they’d decided that didn’t fit, either.) He thinks the little creature is cursed to be nameless forever, personally, not that the lemur seems to mind too terribly.

Chey continues to talk as he leads him out of Jeong Jeong’s tent and shows him to another one a fair distance away, but Zuko honestly isn’t sure of half of what’s said to him; he’s sort of starting to tune the guy out. It’s late and he’s tired—and, at the very least, Chey seems to sense this, because at last he leaves him alone to sleep for the night, although he reminds him they should get an early start the next day. (Of course, Zuko’s been rising with the dawn again for over a year now, ever since he’d gotten back in touch with his inner flame; waking up early isn’t exactly going to be an issue for him.)

His lemur friend is chittering at him again, this time clearly hungry, and so Zuko makes sure to grab some dried fruits from their bags for him before they sleep—though he doesn’t intend to eat any himself, even though he hasn’t eaten since that morning. He really doesn’t feel hungry, anyway. 

Soon enough, though, he finds the lemur has climbed up onto his shoulders and is pawing insistently at his face, and he blinks as he realizes he’s holding out one of the dried papayas in front of his mouth. Huffing out a breath that’s somewhere between exasperated and amused, he grabs the fruit from the lemur’s paws (trying not to think about where they’ve been) and eats it quickly, just to placate him. He seems satisfied enough at that.

As the two of them lay down to rest for what’s left of the night (the lemur curling up contentedly on his chest), Zuko tries very carefully not to think of his uncle (or his mother) as he falls asleep. He doesn’t want to invite any nightmares.

It doesn’t work; he dreams of his grandfather and father instead.

———

Sokka tries his best to keep the frown off of his face as they scale the paths at the side of the mountain, although Aang isn’t currently looking his way. It’d been a few days of travel (flying and resting as needed) to get to the Patola Mountain Range, and during that time he and Katara had tried—gently as they could—to point out to Aang that the possibility of finding any other airbenders at the temple is low, especially after 100 years. Unfortunately, the kid hadn’t really seemed interested in listening. 

Sokka isn’t quite sure what they’re going to find in the temple once they reach it, but he’s sure it’s not going to be good. Even now, Aang’s hopes seem high—he’s babbling excitedly to Katara some distance ahead of where Sokka has trailed behind them, clutching idly at his growling stomach as he ponders just how badly what they discover is going to hurt the airbender. He feels his stomach clench for different reasons than his hunger at the thought of the pain that’s certainly awaiting the boy up ahead. Maybe this is what he needs, in order to stop denying what’s happened, but that doesn’t mean Sokka doesn’t feel pretty bad about it still.

As Katara listens dutifully to whatever Aang is chattering excitedly about now, chiming in occasionally with clear interest, Sokka instead turns his attention towards the side of the mountain as they make their way up. They’d started climbing the spiralling path not too long ago (Aang had said that the climb—apparently brief enough—was part of the experience), and Sokka is expecting to just get a glimpse of the incline below them, to see how far up they are already. Instead, his eyes widen as he spots something out of place sticking out of the side of the mountain some distance behind them.

Glancing up to where Katara and Aang are still carrying on, Sokka figures he can catch up easily enough at the pace they’re going, so he turns without a word to make his way back towards the place where the thing he’s spotted is. It’s probably just a jutting rock, but he’s curious enough to check, even knowing the unlikelihood of it being anything important.

He stops just above the thing and stoops down to look. That… doesn’t look like any sort of rock formation he knows of, at least. As he moves to lay flat on his stomach and lean his head over for a better look, he can make out an almost perfectly squared off shape that seems to be emerging from the cliffside not too far below him—he can probably reach for it if he really tries, but he doesn’t want to risk falling, thank you—with a circle shape hollowed out in the center. As he squints and leans his head a little farther to get a better look, he can see that the stone around the thing is cracked in places, and an entirely different color than the slightly shiny gray object that’s apparently been driven into the mountain.

“Hey, Sokka, what are you looking at?” comes Aang’s voice suddenly, and Sokka almost slides off the cliff entirely in his ensuing surprise (thankfully, Aang reaches down to steady him).

Shaking his head (and trying not to think about what a fall that would have been), Sokka scoots back and then gets to his feet, frowning at Aang’s innocent expression. Hadn’t he said that no one but an airbender could get up here—and only with a flying bison? The object Sokka’s noticed, though, reminds him a lot of the climbing spikes they sometimes use back home, when hunting parties have occasionally fallen into crevices and the like. Maybe the kid just hadn’t mentioned that the airbenders had something similar?

“Aang, do you recognize that?” he asks him, gesturing down the cliff at the probably-climbing-spike with one gloved hand.

Aang leans over (much less carefully than Sokka had) to peer down at the object, squinting and seeming to consider it for a moment before he leans back and shrugs. “Not really? But it kind of just looks like a weird rock.” He must notice Sokka’s expression, because his own unworried one slowly shifts into an uncertain frown. “Why? Is it not just a weird rock?”

Sokka turns to Katara and sees the look on her face—as she apparently tries to communicate best she can with her eyes that he should drop it (yes, Katara, he gets it, there’s no need to keep glancing pointedly between him and Aang like that)—and then lets out as steady a breath as he can manage, crossing his arms and shaking his head. 

“No, no, you’re right,” he tells Aang. “Just a weird rock.” At Aang’s continued frown, he goes on with a forced laugh: “You know me, I can get a little … overly suspicious sometimes.” Slowly, Aang’s face evens back out into a smile, and Sokka does his best to smile back.

“Suspicious? Try paranoid!” Katara chimes in, probably trying to distract them both from the definitely-a-climbing-spike. “You thought Aang was a Fire Nation spy!"

“And I’ve seen the error of my ways!” Sokka argues with a roll of his eyes, moving to start forward past her—she starts walking as he reaches her side, keeping pace with him. “He’s not nearly crafty enough to be a spy.”

“Really? That’s what clued you in, and not the airbending?” 

Though Sokka doesn’t look her way, he can imagine the raised eyebrow and the look of incredulity that surely must be on his sister’s face. Throwing up his own arms dramatically and preparing to respond with something equally biting, he’s stopped when Aang suddenly floats down between them (the ensuing breeze sending Sokka stumbling away a step or two, though thankfully not dangerously close to the cliff’s edge).

“Hey, guys, come on, we don’t have to fight!” Aang says brightly. “I think I’d make a pretty bad Fire Nation spy, too. Though I do have a friend in the Fire Nation!”

That gives Sokka pause. He glances over at Katara, mostly-fake argument forgotten, and sees her return his uneasy look. “You… do?” he prompts slowly, when Katara doesn’t say anything and Aang doesn’t go on immediately.

“Yeah!” Aang replies; Sokka’s gaze is still on Katara, but he can hear the smile in the airbender’s voice. “Their name is Kuzon.” He pauses a moment, and when he continues, his voice is a little sadder. “Or, well… was, I guess.” 

Sokka looks to him, then, just in time to see his shoulders move with a heavy sigh. “Wow, it’s … kind of sad to think about how long it’s been,” Aang admits. His voice brightens again, but it’s nowhere near as sunny as it had been before. “Kuzon’s family all lived pretty long, though. Maybe they’re still around!”

Sokka winces and swallows uneasily before he responds to that. “Not to put a damper on your mood, but I’m not sure if you should be hoping for that, buddy.” If this Kuzon is still around, the war means they’re certain to be an enemy. And… that they’re part of the Nation that supposedly wiped out Aang’s people. He isn’t even sure how to begin to try and address all that, though, at least not without sounding extremely insensitive.

“What about your other friends?” Katara cuts in with what’s probably forced cheer, when Aang hasn’t said anything for a few moments and Sokka hasn’t yet figured out how to approach things. “I mean… did you know the Avatar?”

Seeming grateful for the change in topic, Aang beams at her as he quickens his pace, hurrying ahead of them and calling his next words back over his shoulder excitedly. “Sure did! Avatar Gyatso and I were super close!” He seems eager to reach the temple now, his brief mood shift apparently forgotten. “He taught me everything I know—like how to bake fruit pies, and cakes, and how to fly kites, and…”

As Aang goes on and Katara moves forward a little to keep up with him, Sokka frowns and thinks back to the climbing spike left on the mountain. With the stone around it cracked like that, he figures it’s a safe bet that whoever left it there had done so because it had gotten stuck too deeply to remove without risking damage to the cliffside—but that isn’t really the question he needs answering, is it? If Aang doesn’t recognize it—if the airbenders never had any need for climbing tools at all—then someone else has definitely been up here, even though Aang has assured them no one could have been.

It’s troubling, to say the least. He’s heard the stories about the Air Nomads, of course—how they’d disappeared 100 years ago, thanks to the Fire Nation—but he isn’t entirely sure yet if this is related (probably, though). 

He might not be sure yet, but he is going to find out.

It’s not too much longer before they reach the end of their trek—Aang darts forward with a shout of “we made it!”, and Sokka can see some kind of odd structure below them on a ledge under the path. Before Katara can rush up to Aang’s side to hear him explain whatever it is, though, Sokka grabs her arm and pulls her quickly aside, taking advantage of Aang’s apparent distraction.

“Could you stick with Aang for a little while?” he asks, keeping his voice down to keep the kid in question from hearing. “ I think I need to do some poking around.”

Katara stares back with uncertain eyes, tilting her head and blinking at him. “Sokka, Aang went out of his way to bring us here even though we’re outsiders,” she says, voice firm in spite of its softness. “He wanted to show us his home. That … feels pretty important.”

“I know, but this is important, too.” Sokka shifts on his feet and glances up at Aang, who still seems distracted for the moment. “I won’t be long, promise. And I’ll stay close, I just need to do a little digging.” He’s not about to let himself get lost in an old, abandoned temple, so he doesn’t intend to go far. Just… far enough to look around a little without Aang noticing what he’s doing.

“Are you sure you’re not just sneaking off to find some food?” Katara asks, narrowing her eyes at him.

He can’t help raising his voice a little in response, throwing his arms up and huffing out a defensive “ no! ”

Katara’s suspicious expression eases a little at his quick and firm denial, but doesn’t let up completely. “You’ve been complaining about being hungry for hours now,” she points out, crossing her arms. “Sorry if I’m just a little skeptical when you want to go off on your own.”

“It’s not like that, trust me,” he tells her, although she isn’t wrong—he’s kind of starving, since Aang decided to use his seal jerky as fuel the other day. Thinking about the gnawing emptiness in his stomach, he looks away and can’t help but add: “Though I wouldn’t mind if I stumbled across something to eat along the way...” 

“There’s the Sokka I know,” Katara replies, sounding rather smug—though when he turns his attention back to her, she doesn’t seem to be doubting his intentions anymore, at least. He steals another glance forward at Aang, who is still ahead of them but is glancing back now curiously, likely wondering what the hold up is. 

“Okay,” Katara says. “I’ll stay with Aang. But you’d better not take all day.”

“I won’t!” Sokka tells her, and means it. He doesn’t mean to take long at all—especially now that he’s been reminded of his poor, empty stomach—but he still needs to satisfy his curiosity, if nothing else. So as the two of them move to join Aang again, he hangs back a little, casting his attention around them and doing his best to take note of anything that seems out of place (not that he would know, exactly, since he’s never been here, but—he’s going to do his best, at any rate).

—

As Aang shows Katara some kind of airbending sport that he calls airball, Sokka moves a small distance up the path—at least there are stairs, now, though his feet are still aching a little already—to an area of the temple where a weathered, snow-dusted statue sits. The face of the man depicted seems kind, but the statue isn’t really what Sokka is looking at—as he passes his gaze over it, he spots something odd tucked into a corner nearby, in the shadow of the temple’s railings and mostly covered with mountain snow.

As Sokka heads over and starts brushing the thing clean, he pauses briefly in his shock as he realizes what it is—a campfire, by the looks. Quickly, he uncovers it fully, noting that—though he isn’t entirely sure—it seems like it might be recent. The sticks that make up the bulk of the campfire are small (small enough to travel with, so perhaps brought from elsewhere? though he does think he saw some fruit trees around on their approach to the temple, so maybe these are from those), and the wood is barely rotted; Sokka would bet that this is from a few months ago, at the most. He presses his lips tightly together as he roots around, searching doubtfully for anything else of note—there! He finds a small, unevenly-shaped green rock with a jagged edge, and he recognizes it as (half of) a spark rock. (His tribe doesn’t use them as often, but sometimes they’re traded for and imported from the Earth Kingdom.) 

He’d been doubtful, but it looks like this fire hadn’t been started by a firebender, or else it’s been started by a firebender who is somehow averse enough to their own element to bother with starting fires the old-fashioned way—and Sokka highly doubts that’s the case. (Firebenders are, from what he knows, cruel and ruthless and terrifying, and any with a weakness like that surely won’t have lived for long.)

As he peers down at the old campfire, turning the spark rock piece around in his hands, he hears footsteps approaching and stows the rock away in his parka. He can bring it up later, when he knows more. For now, at least, he’s pretty certain that someone was here as recently as a few months ago—someone who isn’t Fire Nation, and probably isn’t an Air Nomad, either. Sokka just needs to figure out why. 

—

Aang continues to show them around the temple. Sokka doesn’t see a good time to bring up what he’s found; at some point, as they move through a long, open-air corridor that Aang tells them is the place he finally figured out his air scooter in (whatever that is), Sokka glances over and sees a few scattered fruit trees on an outcropping nearby. Getting to them is a bit precarious, but he manages, and as he reaches to pluck some of the fruits from the branches, he pauses, noticing something caught within some of them. It looks to be a scroll of some kind.

He reaches up to grab it (it’s pretty thoroughly stuck, but eventually he manages to pry it free) and then squints as he tries to parse it—there are no words present on the page, though he’s pretty certain that if there had been, he wouldn’t know how to read them. (He knows how to read Water Tribe script, and even the script that the Fire Nation and most of the Earth Kingdom uses, but he doesn’t think it’s likely that the Air Nomads wrote with either of those.) 

Instead, the scroll has quite a few illustrations on it; he thinks they’re probably instructions for bending forms, although that thought only puzzles his mind further. If he knows the Fire Nation, they would likely have burned any Air Nomad knowledge lying around if it was in an obvious enough place—and if this scroll ended up here thanks to the wind, caught in these branches outside, it can’t have been tucked away or hidden too well, can it? (Katara had pulled him aside earlier to mention having seen a Fire Nation soldier’s helmet near the airball field, so he knows it can’t be as simple as them having never come here at all, much as he wishes for Aang’s sake that that’s the case.)

Hmm. He’s still pretty hungry, so for now, he rolls up the scroll and tucks it away on his person, determined to grab some fruit before returning to the others. But things are certainly seeming curiouser and curiouser by the moment.

—

(“I thought you weren’t going to get distracted by food!” Katara hisses at him later.

“I’m not!” he replies, except the words are muffled almost entirely by the moon peach he’s currently eating. Katara rolls her eyes and doesn’t deign that with a response.)

—

Okay, he’ll admit it: he’s a little lost. He’d stepped away from Katara and Aang to look over one of the sides of the temple for what felt like just a moment (looking for what, he wasn’t sure—but considering he’d spotted that climbing spike before by just happening to look down the incline, he doesn’t want to accidentally miss an important clue somewhere) and then they’d been gone. 

So maybe he’d gotten a little distracted and lost in his own head—but only for a few short moments! Really, it’s their fault for not noticing his absence. Now the temple’s confusing corridors seem even more daunting without Aang there to guide him through them. Oops.

Sokka spots a nearby archway at the end of the corridor he’s currently in, opening up onto a balcony. Figuring he can get a good look around and get his bearings there, he makes his way out onto it and glances around—but unfortunately for him, Katara and Aang don’t seem to be around, at least not anywhere he can see.

Well, I might as well look around while I’m here, just in case, he reasons, crouching down to paw at some of the snow around the stone floor somewhat half-heartedly. He isn’t actually expecting to find anything at all; mostly, he just wants to put off admitting to himself that he’s really, definitely more than just a little lost.

He’s surprised by his luck when he does find something beneath some of the snow—a scattering of dark, shrivelled looking plants of some kind that it takes him a moment to recognize as tea leaves. They haven’t rotted away, so he doubts these can be from that long ago, especially if they’ve been used and dried back out, though he can’t actually be sure if that’s the case. 100 years of exposure to the elements would probably mean these leaves wouldn’t still be here, so he thinks he can probably attribute them to their mystery air temple visitor of less than a few months ago. 

He’d been wondering why someone would have come here at all, and … now he’s maybe got an inkling, even if it’s more than a little baffling to think about. Someone had climbed up the mountain to get to the air temple, had probably found and looked through some kind of secret bending scroll stash, made camp for at least one night, and also… apparently made and drank tea. Maybe they’d been meditating? He supposes he isn’t entirely sure how that works.

Before he can spend much longer puzzling over all of that, a scream cuts through the stillness around him—muffled by distance, but nonetheless clearly anguished and agonized in a way that makes Sokka’s heart stutter in his chest. It’s one of the worst things he’s ever heard, he thinks (reminds him of the scream he’d heard from his father, years ago, when they’d lost—well), and there’s an odd ringing in his ears as he jumps up and runs through the temple’s corridors, desperate to try and find the source of the shout before—before…

There’s more noises, now, and though he can’t tell quite what they are at first, he starts to make them out as he lets them guide him through the temple’s twists and turns, drawing closer on legs that shake so badly he’s worried his pace will falter soon. Someone is crying. They sound… they sound broken. His chest hurts, and he doesn’t think it’s just from all the running he’s doing.

Sokka dashes forward through a set of decaying curtains to reach the source of the noise at last, skidding to a stop as he takes in the scene around him.

The room is filled with skeletons. Most of them are clad in Fire Nation armor, but a few near the back of the room are dressed in monk’s robes, illuminated by a shaft of light that peeks in from the cracked ceiling. In the center of it all sits Aang, knees pulled up to his chest in a tight ball as he rocks, Katara holding him and softly shushing him through his sobs. Sokka can’t make out what she’s even saying to try and soothe him; Aang is crying so loudly that she’s drowned out by the sound of his distraught tears.

Sokka’s stomach drops. He freezes, there, for a long moment, watching as a crushing weight seems to fall upon his chest. Then, with a shaky exhale, he moves forward to join Katara in holding Aang as best he can.

—

It takes a while for Aang to calm down enough to speak to them at all, and a little longer for his words to make any sense. “They were here,” he manages to gasp out between his hiccuping sobs, quieter now. “The Fire Nation. They… they…” 

Sokka’s throat feels painfully tight as he swallows and clutches Aang tighter; he hears Katara crying audibly as well, even as his own sympathetic tears are silent. “It’ll be okay, Aang,” he tries, desperately trying to keep his voice from wavering too much as he speaks. He needs to be strong for Aang’s sake. “Katara and I, we’re here for you now. That’s not going to change anytime soon.”

“You aren’t alone,” Katara adds softly, when Sokka has fallen silent. “We’re not going anywhere, I promise.”

Gradually, Aang starts to unwind from the tight ball he’s curled himself up into, and Sokka pulls away somewhat, although he leaves one hand on the boy’s shoulder. “You were right, though,” Aang mumbles, still sniffling softly. “And if they made it here, they must have made it to the other temples.” Sokka squeezes his shoulder in what he hopes is a comforting enough gesture—a show of support, a reminder he’s there. 

“I’m so sorry,” Katara tells him quietly. “We—we know a little of what that’s like, but not… not like this. I can’t imagine how horrible this must be for you.” She sighs. “I’m just… really sorry.”

“Me, too,” Sokka offers with a sigh of his own. “Our village wasn’t always so small. The Fire Nation took most of our people away, too. But that’s why we’ve got to stick together—you and us. We can keep each other safe.”

Aang gives him a weak smile, for the briefest of moments before it falters again. Slowly, he drops his head and his gaze back to the floor. “I’m the last one,” he murmurs, voice breaking a little. “The last airbender.”

“No,” Sokka tells him firmly, raising his free hand to wipe the last of the tears off of his own face. “You’re not.” At the looks of confusion Aang and Katara are giving him, he reaches into the pocket he’d tucked the spark rock piece into to pull it out and show them. “I found this spark rock by a campfire earlier.” Katara tentatively grabs the stone from him, bringing it up to her face to turn it around and examine it; with his hand free again, Sokka retrieves the rolled up scroll now.

“And I found this airbending scroll—and some tea leaves, and a climbing spike... “ He trails off briefly, handing the scroll off to Aang, who unfurls it and blinks at it, tears slowing almost completely now. “Someone was here at this temple recently. Someone who was interested in studying airbending.”

Katara’s eyes are shining as he meets her gaze. “Do you think it could be the Avatar?” she asks, breathlessly.

“Maybe,” he says. He’d never believed in the Avatar like Katara had, never placed as much weight as she did on the idea of their eventual return to somehow save the world—but even he has to admit the deduction seems logical. “Or just an airbender—but yeah. Maybe the Avatar. Either way…” He crouches down to put both of his hands on Aang’s shoulders now; the boy has dropped the hand that’s holding the scroll to his knees, staring forward with a dazed look on his face. “You’re not the last one, Aang. There’s someone else like you out there somewhere, and—and whether they’re the Avatar or not, they clearly want to learn about this part of themself.”

“I… I could teach them,” Aang mumbles, still sounding dazed. “Not just airbending. I mean—I could teach them about our culture, about…” He trails off, seeming at a loss for words.

“That’s right,” Katara says, and when Sokka glances her way, he sees her smiling. “I don’t mind waiting a bit before the North Pole—and if we find the Avatar, and they haven’t learned waterbending yet, maybe they can come with us there, too.” Privately, Sokka still isn’t completely convinced this mystery airbender is the Avatar, but he doesn’t say that; whoever it is cared enough about this to scale a mountain for it, so he’s pretty sure, either way, that they aren’t getting Aang’s hopes up for nothing. 

A silence falls upon the three of them as Aang picks himself up and scrubs at his face, wordlessly leading them back through the temple and towards where Appa is waiting for them. As the three of them climb up onto the saddle, Sokka steals a glance at Aang, relieved to find he looks a lot better now than he had before; he’s still clearly sad (nothing can bring back all the people he’s lost, much as Sokka wishes that for him), but … he has hope, again, maybe.

“If we find the Avatar,” Katara breaks the silence, taking the airbending scroll from Aang as he offers it to her and tucking it away into one of their bags. “They might be able to end the war.” She sounds optimistic, and Sokka isn’t entirely sure he likes it; placing all of their hopes on someone they don’t even know yet isn’t exactly the best idea, as far as he’s concerned. But—she’s put it out there, and Aang looks so hopeful, and, well, he supposes it’d be rude of him to blizzard on their parade like that.

“Whatever happens, if we really want to find the Avatar, we’re going to need a plan,” Sokka says. He retrieves the map Gran Gran had sent with them from one of the bags, unfolding it before them as the other two move to either side of him, peering over his shoulders. “As it is, we don’t really have any leads. Checking the other air temples might be a good idea—you did say there were four, right, Aang?—” (“yeah,” Aang confirms, pointing out the other three on the map) “—but like I sort of figured, they seem pretty spaced out. And, anyway, just because they’ve been to one air temple somewhat recently, they probably won’t just happen to be at whatever other temple we decide to check. I think we need a stronger lead.”

“Like what?” Katara asks, a little dubiously.

“Well,” Sokka says, and then pauses briefly, feeling a little insensitive for bringing up someone Aang’s lost so soon after he’s calmed down. But— “You knew the Avatar before, Aang. Where do you think we should look?”

“Um, maybe we could try looking for clues at places that were spiritually significant to their past lives?” he suggests, smiling and shrugging a little as he does. 

When Sokka squints skeptically at that idea, Katara elbows him rather rudely in the gut. “Do you have any better ideas?” she asks him, arching a brow in his direction.

“Right,” he sighs. “It’s as good an idea as any, I guess. Why don’t we split up, then? We have a better chance of tracking the Avatar down if we spread out to look for clues, even if it’s just for a day or two.”

“Sounds alright to me,” Aang says.

“I don’t have a problem with that,” Katara agrees, and then she leans closer to point out something on the map. “Kyoshi was a past Avatar, right? What about Kyoshi Island?” The enthusiasm in her voice tells Sokka that she’s probably hoping to see the place herself; he remembers how moved she had seemed after one of the women in their village had told a particularly exciting story about Kyoshi once, even if he can’t remember the contents of the tale itself.

“You took the obvious one,” Sokka huffs. “There’s not exactly anywhere else on the map that screams ‘Avatar’ just from the name alone.” He looks to Aang again, wondering if he has any further ideas to share. Thankfully, it seems he does, because he looks thoughtful, tapping his chin with one hand as he blinks down at the map.

“Well, Avatar Gyatso used to spend a lot of time on Makapu Island,” he offers. “We used to fly kites there after Yangchen’s Festival every year—and sometimes other days, too.” He turns to Katara then, gaze almost pleading. “You wouldn’t happen to have any money I could borrow in those bags of yours, would you? Avatar Yangchen—that’s who the festival was for. And we used to hold it just across from Makapu Island, on Cranefish Coast.” Somewhere in there, Sokka thinks he’s missed a connecting detail; he isn’t sure how the request for money relates at all to the information Aang has provided them.

“If Water Tribe coins work, then sure,” Katara tells him, looking about as confused as Sokka feels.

“Okay, thanks!” Aang chirps. (Sokka feels a surge of warmth in his chest to see the airbender so animated again—and who knew he’d gotten so attached so quickly?) “I’ll need to buy a few things, but I could celebrate Yangchen’s Festival while I’m looking for leads! Normally the High Monk decides when it’s going to be held, but I guess it’s up to me this year.” 

“That leaves Makapu Island to me, then, since I think Katara wants to see Kyoshi Island,” Sokka says, folding the map back up. “I can ask around in the village and see if anyone knows anything. Easy enough.” 

“It’s settled, then!” Aang’s smile is bright as he moves past Sokka towards the reins. “We can go back to camp for the night and get started bright and early tomorrow!”

“Great!” Katara says warmly. 

Sokka briefly considers asking Aang to swing them back around the temple towards the fruit trees, but then thinks better of it; the temple might be full of good memories for the kid, but they’ve also probably been soured by what’s happened, and he doesn’t want to force him to stay there any longer than he wants to. The place they’d made camp before isn’t entirely without food, if he takes some time to forage. Even if not, he can live until he visits Makapu Village tomorrow, if need be (and neither Katara nor Aang have complained of hunger yet, so they’re probably fine—if not, there’s still a few extra fruits from his earlier scavenging tucked away in his bag).

Maybe he doesn’t believe in the Avatar as much as Katara or Aang seem to, but Sokka is, at the very least, happy they’ve found something to lift their spirits. And who knows—maybe he’ll find a good lead at the village tomorrow. At any rate, he’s looking forward to what he can find out, asking around; it’s been a while since he’s talked to anyone but the familiar faces in his own tiny village, and it’ll be nice to carry on reasonable conversation with someone who isn’t a child or his grandmother or Katara for a change.

For a moment, Sokka allows himself to think like his sister, to imagine that maybe they really can stop the war if they find the Avatar. And yeah, the thought’s pretty unlikely, but—he thinks he can see why Katara has placed so much faith in the idea.

If the war ends, their dad can come home. He can’t blame Katara for hoping for that, not really.

(He can’t blame himself for hoping for that, either.)