Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“I don’t want to be here. Everyone expects so much of me, Aang, and I just—I’m not good enough—”

“Hey, don’t say that. You’re the best firebender I’ve ever seen! Learning just takes time.”

“The elders, they’re disappointed. I can tell. I should be learning faster. I still haven’t managed to airbend anything yet. Maybe the Fire Sages were wrong.”

“We should go somewhere, just us. I can try teaching you some moves!”

“…Go somewhere?”

. . .

There was a boy in the iceberg. There was a boy, in an iceberg.

He’s dressed weird, and his clothes—orange?—are too thin. He’s groaning on the ice, having slipped down from where the iceberg had just cracked open at its top.

Sokka pokes the boy's strange, bald head with the back of his spear. Katara whacks the spear away (“Stop it!”), and the boy opens his eyes. Sokka watches as he and Katara gaze at each other, a moment that lasts too long for Sokka’s comfort, and then the boy gasps.

“Where—” he sits up very suddenly, forcing Katara to move back. “Where’s Zuko?”

And then he flies to his feet. Actually—actually flies, with a rush of warm air pushing out around him, like the things Sokka understands about how the world works don’t exist. Things like gravity.

The boy spins to face the iceberg again, and with a small, preparative crouch beforehand, he leaps to its top. It’s graceful. The boy from the glowing iceberg leaps ten feet into the air with grace. And ease. And nonchalance, like this is a perfectly normal thing to do. Sokka is beginning to feel queasy.

There’s a loud, animalistic roar from behind the wall of ice, and the boy slips down out of view. Katara grabs Sokka’s arm and drags him around the wall, where they see—

A lot of things. A lot of things that really don’t have any way of being properly processed in Sokka’s brain.

The thing that’s roaring looks like a pile of white fur with a face. And too many legs. And it’s… it’s bigger than any animal Sokka has ever seen.

And then there’s something red, deep red, looking almost like a long streak of blood in snow, and it’s massive too. Sokka refuses to give it the name that pops into his head as he stares.

The red thing is spiraled on the ice, wrapped half around the furry beast and half curled up around itself. Sokka can see it breathing, deep, heavy breaths. He swallows.

The boy leaps over it, into where it’s curled around itself, his attention elsewhere. As though this isn’t the most concerning thing to ever be seen. Sokka rubs his eyes as the boy cries, “Zuko!”

Katara is dragging Sokka again, this time closer. Closer to the beasts that were in an iceberg in the middle of the ocean. He can barely resist her—his body feels like it did years ago, that time he fell through the ice into the frigid waters below.

Shock.

The red thing isn’t actually curled around itself; it’s curled around another boy. One who’s older, maybe Sokka’s age, a real teenager—a teenager who’s still unconscious. He’s wearing orange, too. His chest is heaving, and he’s shivering. Shuddering, really. His whole body convulses with it as he folds into a fetal position, trying even in his unconscious state to make himself small and warm.

“Oh, no,” Katara breathes, and she lets Sokka go so she can climb over the red thing too, like the absolute imbecile that she is.

“Katara!” Sokka tries, but she ignores him to kneel next to the boy and the teenager. She lifts the teenager’s head into her lap and wraps her arms around his shoulders, trying to warm him.

“He’s not good in the cold,” the boy informs, and he puts his arms around the teenager’s middle.

If he’s not good in the cold, Sokka thinks, then why is he in the South Pole, in an iceberg, in clothes that probably couldn’t insulate against even a warm breeze?

“We have to get him back to our village,” Katara says. “Our healer will be able to help.”

“No way,” Sokka says. “Did you see that crazy bolt of light? They were probably trying to signal the Fire Navy!”

The giant fluffy monster stands up, then, making Katara freeze before she can retort back, and they all watch as it sneezes green snot across the ice in front of it.

“Appa!” the boy says, and the monster swings its head towards him. “We can go back to your village on him, it’ll be fastest. Though—”

“You’re not coming to our village!” Sokka says, but the boy is distracted as he reaches out an arm to touch the red thing.

Its next giant breath is more like a sigh, and then it’s lifting its head.

Yeah. Definitely a dragon, then. Sokka stumbles back a step, and the dragon turns its golden-eyed gaze right onto him.

It huffs, and steam flows from its nostrils, and even from his distance away, Sokka can feel the heat.

“Fire Nation spies!” Sokka exclaims, though his voice comes out shakier than he would’ve liked.

“They’re not spies, Sokka,” Katara finally bites, though she’s eyeing the dragon uncertainly. It’s curled all around her, still—she’s vulnerable. Sokka wants her away. “And even if they were—which I don’t believe—this guy needs help. We can’t just leave him here.”

“But—”

“Is that really the kind of person you are?” she interrupts, eyes flaring. The boy looks uneasily between the two of them. Katara’s arms tighten around the teenager’s shoulders. “The kind to leave someone unconscious in the ice to die?”

Sokka takes a rattling breath. After a beat, he grits his teeth. “Fine. But I’m telling you, this is a mistake.”

“We’re not going to hurt anyone, I promise,” the boy says with a resolute nod. “Come on, help me get Zuko onto Appa.”

They do. The dragon, meanwhile, watches with frankly concerning interest, stretching out its long body and its wings at the same time. The teenager—Zuko?—mumbles incoherently as they lift him into a saddle. As Sokka climbs carefully on board, he asks, “And what exactly is an Appa?”

The boy grins back at them, sitting atop the creature’s head with reigns in his hands. “Appa is my flying bison!”

Sokka blinks. “Sure. And this is Katara, my flying sister.”

The boy ignores the sarcasm. “Katara’s a pretty name! I’m Aang. What’s yours?”

Sokka slouches against the back wall of the saddle, arms crossed. “Sokka.”

Katara is at the front of the saddle, leaning over towards Aang. “The arrows on your head and hands,” she says, “you’re an airbender, aren’t you?”

“That’s right!” Aang turns to face front, and with a flick of the reigns, he says, “Yip yip!”

The bison groans again and heaves itself up before crashing into the ocean. It swims slowly onward. Drifts, more like.

The dragon, at Appa’s side, does something similar. It looks as though it tries to take flight, but its wings don’t move properly, and it ends up just belly flopping. Then it growls and swims, serpentine, at a leisurely pace beside them.

“Are we going to discuss the dragon? I feel like we should discuss the dragon,” Sokka says.

“That’s Druk,” Aang says. “He’s Zuko’s.”

“Great,” Sokka says, as though that answered any of his dozens of questions.

At the mention of Zuko, Katara goes back to where he’s turned into himself in the middle of the saddle. She lays down behind him, putting an arm securely around his shoulders again and holding him in place. Sokka’s seen this before—they do it to try to warm hypothermia victims.

“Gran Gran is going to kill us,” Sokka points out. Katara shoots him a glare over Zuko’s head, but doesn’t reply.

Sokka turns his attention over to Zuko, next, who is laying perpendicular to Sokka, facing right his way.

Disturbingly pale skin. Sharp features. It would be a nice face, Sokka thinks, if it weren’t for the horrific scar spanning from his left cheek up to his hairline. It’s wrinkled and mottled with pinks and reds, and his ear is melted to the side of his head. A burn, then.

Black hair, pulled into a high wolf-tail, except it’s longer than a wolf-tail—much longer. It’d maybe be down to his elbows, if it weren’t pulled up onto the near top of his head. A few strands of it waver with each of Katara’s breaths.

“Is he an airbender too?” Sokka finds himself asking. Unlike Aang, Zuko doesn’t have any tattoos.

Aang shifts in his straddle but doesn’t turn around this time. “He’s—uh—he’s in training, still.”

Katara gives Zuko a squeeze. “This is amazing. Aang, since you’re an airbender—do you have any idea what happened to the Avatar?”

Sokka scoffs. “This Avatar business again, I swear. He’s gone, Katara. They killed him and took out the Air Nomads so he couldn’t be reborn.”

“Sorry, Katara,” Aang says, slouching now. “I’m—I’m not sure.”

“Obviously they didn’t completely take out the Air Nomads, Sokka, we have two right here!”

“What do you mean, take out the Air Nomads?” Aang asks.

Katara frowns, turning her head slightly to try to see behind her to Aang. “The attacks? A hundred years ago? Oh—are there more of you?” Her pitch rises with excitement. “I knew the Fire Nation couldn’t have found all of you!”

Aang flips around on Appa’s head to face them, frowning. “I’ve never heard about an attack like that. And we keep an extensive history at the temple.”

Sokka frowns too. Beyond the obvious stuff, like giant bisons and airbenders and dragons, there’s something wrong here. It’s not adding up. Spies, a voice hisses in his mind. Liars and spies.

“…’s no attack,” a new voice says. It’s raspy and broken almost beyond recognition. Sokka looks down at Zuko. His eyes are still closed, and he’s still shivering uncontrollably, but he’s moving a little, pressing backwards into Katara.

“Snow attack?” Sokka raises an eyebrow.

“…was no attack,” Zuko says, only vaguely clearer. When he opens his eyes, the movement is slow, and he squints at the light. After a few purposeful blinks, he looks up at Sokka.

Who inhales sharply.

Gold. Startling, vicious, blinding gold.

What color had Aang’s eyes been? Sokka couldn’t remember.

“Katara,” he says, voice rising in urgency. “Get back.”

“What?”

“They’re Fire Nation, Katara. Get back. We need to go.”

Katara chuffs and doesn’t move. “They’re Air Nomads, Sokka. We’ve been over this. We literally saw Aang airbend.”

“He has gold eyes, Katara. He’s Fire Nation.”

Katara still doesn’t let go. In fact, she holds onto Zuko tighter. Aang is suspiciously quiet. Zuko shudders and burrows against Katara again as his eyes slip back shut. “…’s cold,” he mumbles.

“It’s alright,” Katara tells him.

“It is not alright!” Sokka cries.

“You’re right. It’s not alright right now.” Katara sends a fierce look at Sokka. “But it will be, when we get him to a healer in our village, like we said we would. Because we’re both good people. Right, Sokka?”

Sokka bites his tongue, exhales, then nods once. “Fine. But if this goes wrong, I’m telling Dad when he gets home that it was your fault.”

“It’s a good thing that it’s not going to go wrong, then, isn’t it?”

. . .

The village collectively loses its mind, screaming and hiding when they notice the bison and the dragon, but the healer quickly takes Zuko in when she sees Sokka and Katara carrying him.

Katara tells everyone as they go into the tent, “It’s alright! They won’t hurt us!”

Sokka wishes he could have that much optimism. Then again, no. Someone has to be the realist.

Aang and Katara sit as close to Zuko’s side as they can while the healer fusses over him. Sokka stands at the tent’s opening, ignoring the chill on the back of his legs that seeps through the flaps. His arms are crossed again.

“Ahnah,” Katara says to the healer, “is he going to be okay?”

“He’ll be exhausted for a while, even after we get his temperature back up, but yes, he should be fine. The cold didn’t manage to go too deep.” Ahnah looks up from her work. “Sokka, could you fetch the newcomers some proper clothes and coats?”

Aang chirps up. “Not me. I can regulate my body temperature with airbending. I feel fine!”

Ahnah nods slowly, then looks back at Sokka. “Very well. Just for the one boy then. He looks to be around your size.”

Sokka chews on his cheek, holding back a scathing response about Zuko clearly being Fire Nation, and leaves the tent.

When he returns, it’s with clothing several sizes too large. A small act of spite, which feels like a victory.

Zuko comes to about an hour later, and Ahnah and Katara help him into his new clothes and get him drinking some kind of warm sludge juice that Ahnah had mixed together. Katara glares briefly at Sokka when the neckline of Zuko’s new shirt keeps slipping off his shoulder.


“What?” Sokka asks, feigning innocence.

Katara doesn’t reply, because she doesn’t need to. She knows her brother too well.

“Where are we?” Zuko asks when his sludge cup is empty and he's got a coat slung over his shoulders. He’s looking at Aang.

“Sokka and Katara’s village in the South Pole,” Aang replies.

“What are Sokkas and Kataras?”

“I’m Katara,” she says, then she points to Sokka. “And that’s my brother Sokka.”

Zuko hardly glances at them before looking back at Aang.

“They helped us,” Aang says. “You were gonna freeze, and they brought us here.”

Zuko once again looks between the siblings for barely half a second before looking down. “Thank you,” he says at his new boots.

“You don’t need to thank us. It was the right thing to do,” Katara says, and Sokka earns another sidelong glare.

Sokka steps forward. “As soon as you’re able, you both need to go. Take your dragon and your bison and go back to wherever you came from.”

Katara goes to reply, but Ahnah beats her to it. “A little hospitality, Sokka, wouldn’t be out of line, I think.” Then, to Aang and Zuko, “You can rest here as you need to until you’re ready to leave. We can offer supplies when you go, and shelter until you do.”

Aang gets to his feet, presses his fists together in front of his chest, and bows. “Thank you, Healer Ahnah. I promise we’ll be respectful guests and help out wherever we can.”

The next day, Aang is flying around, wrecking the walls and towers Sokka had built, throwing snow waves at the children, and penguin sledding with Katara.

A flare shoots out from where Sokka knows the old Fire Navy ship is half-capsized in the ice.

Respectful guests indeed.

Chapter Text

There are a lot of things happening, and they all start happening at once.

A loud bang outside, which sounds far away. Sokka, bursting into the tent to yell at Zuko about flares and signals and spies. Katara and Aang, a portion of the way through Sokka’s yelling, begin to shout outside. Ahnah, the healer, glaring with wide eyes down at Zuko, an accusation behind the furious gaze. Katara, bursting into the tent, grabbing Sokka and claiming there was an accident.

Zuko can barely stand. His bad ear is ringing from the excess noise. He can’t find the energy in him to work out what’s going on.

Sokka reaches from Zuko’s left where Zuko can’t make out the movement in time to pull away, and Sokka takes the front of Zuko’s coat into a threatening grip. He yanks Zuko from his cocoon of furs, and, as if to add even more insult to injury, Sokka then drags him out of the tent and throws him into the snow.

Even with his strange new clothes and fur-lined coat, he gasps as he’s hit by the cold. This cannot be good for his inner flame.

The ringing in his left ear gets louder, and there’s stinging pain there now, too.

“—traitors, and—Fire Navy—” Zuko can’t quite make out what Sokka is saying anymore. He pushes himself onto his knees and looks up, glad to see Aang sliding into the snow in front of him.

“Aang—” Zuko tries, and Aang helps him to his feet. “What’s happening?” His voice sounds miles away.

Aang takes his place on Zuko’s good side, helping to hold him up. “Katara and I accidentally set off a flare—I swear it was an accident!”

Zuko doesn’t know why a flare is causing such an uproar. But he does know that “it was an accident” is not a valid excuse to avoid punishment.

They get banished. Aang is far more surprised, far more hurt by the rejection, than Zuko is.

. . .

The village is still in sight, barely, when Aang tells Zuko they need to rest for a bit. That’s fair. They couldn’t get Zuko onto Appa by themselves, so Zuko’s been riding on Druk as the two animals trudge through the snow and ice. For the past few minutes, Zuko has barely been holding on. Druk has had to pause and push Zuko back upright with one of his wings three times now.

They settle into a small ice formation, Aang leaning against Appa’s side, and Zuko nestling into a ring Druk forms around him. Druk’s body is warm and firm, and Zuko finds himself sinking against the familiar comfort. Druk purrs. It’s a low rumbling sound, and Zuko works to time his breathing with it.

Aang looks at the village in the distance, and Zuko looks at Aang.

Aang is the first and only person Zuko has ever trusted. Time and time again, everyone else has let Zuko down. But Aang has been there for him since he was delivered to the Southern Air Temple to learn airbending, sticking by his side and encouraging him even when he didn’t deserve it, being Zuko’s friend. Until Aang, Zuko had never had a friend before.

Zuko doesn’t understand anything that’s happening, why they’re in the South Pole, why the flare was as damning as the village made it seem, but he knows that as long as Aang is here, he’ll be okay. He will be. Aang would never let him down.

“Zuko,” Aang says, and there’s an edge to his voice. “A ship. There’s a Fire Navy ship headed to the village.”

Zuko blinks and looks over. Sure enough, a huge, metal frigate is piercing through the ice, directly towards where they’d just been.

“Oh, no,” Aang says. “Zuko, we have to go back.”

“We’re banished, Aang.” He runs his fingers through his Phoenix tail, untangling it as well as he can without a comb.

“This is all my fault,” Aang tries again. “Katara didn’t even want to go in that old warship. I didn’t think the booby traps would still be active!”

Whatever any of that means. “If they wanted our help, they wouldn’t have banished us.”

“Sokka’s their only warrior, Zuko. Katara’s a waterbender, but she’s never had a master, so she doesn’t know how to fight. I won’t let them get hurt for my mistake.”

Aang jumps over Druk and grabs at Zuko to haul him to his feet. He’s getting manhandled a lot today.

“Who says they’ll get hurt? Maybe it’s a trade ship.”

Aang shakes his head. “I—I talked to Katara. She showed me proof. There’s a war going on. The Fire Nation… they’re… and it’s been going on for a hundred years.”

Zuko lets himself be wrangled onto Druk’s neck again, because he doesn’t really have another option. Even if he could fight, he’d never fight Aang. “That’s ridiculous. If a war had been happening for a hundred years, we’d know about it.”

Aang lets his hand rest on Zuko’s shoulder. His grey eyes are large and sad. “Zuko… that’s how long we’ve been in the iceberg. The war started after we froze there. Katara says—Katara says they started with the Air Temples.”

Zuko goes to argue, but stops himself when he sees the devastation and worry on Aang’s face. He’s not lying. While Katara might have been, Zuko trusts Aang.

He takes a deep breath and exhales with a warm whoosh. “Okay. If you think it’s what we should do, then I’m with you. We’ll help.”

. . .

Zuko hangs back on the outskirts of the village with Druk and Appa while Aang sails into the village atop an otter-penguin. It’s shameful, being relegated to the sidelines, but he has to admit there’s not much he can do when he’s still struggling to stand. He hasn’t even tried to firebend yet since the… iceberg, or whatever it was.

There’s a woman, down there, a girl, really, with daggers of flame in her fists as she stares down at a defeated Sokka. Even with the helmet on her head, Zuko can tell she’s young. Barely older than he is, probably, if even that.

Aang steers right into her with his otter-penguin, then quickly prepares for a fight. Zuko can’t hear what they’re saying from his distance away, but after a brief fire fight, Aang walks forward and willingly is taken prisoner. As he’s walked up the gang plank, Zuko slips off of Druk and half-slides, half-tumbles down the snowy hill.

“Aang, no!” he shouts, but he’s too late. The gang plank lifts, and he only has a second to meet Aang’s gaze as Aang looks over his shoulder before the gang plank shuts him in. A wall of metal between them that already feels like an entire decade spent apart.

“Druk!” Zuko calls, and his dragon slips down the hill, too, with far more grace than Zuko had managed. Zuko pulls himself onto Druk’s neck, gripping the tufts of fur atop his head. “We need to get Aang back.”

“Wait,” Katara says. “Zuko, wait—I’ll go with you.” She marches up to him, and Sokka follows a bit more tentatively behind her. Zuko isn’t so exhausted that he can’t manage a scowl. They’d betrayed him and Aang, abandoned them when Aang had trusted them. Aang might give his trust away easily, but Zuko doesn’t. He can’t. Not when he knows what he knows, not when he’s seen what he’s seen, not when he’s been through what he’s been through.

“Katara, I—” Sokka says, but Katara interrupts.

“You can’t stop me, Sokka. I’m going whether you like it or not. You heard what Aang said—he’s the Avatar!” She points in the direction of the ship, instead of at Zuko. Zuko blinks in confusion. She thinks...? “He’s our last hope of ending this war! And if you would rather stay here and train toddlers to fight, then so be it, but I for one—”

“Katara!” Sokka shouts. Zuko winces and clamps a hand over his ear. He has half a mind to leave right now. “I’m going with you.”

Katara is frozen for a second, and then she throws her arms around Sokka with a gush of “thank yous.”

“If you’re coming,” Zuko rasps, the frustration in his voice very evident, “then hurry up. We can’t waste time.” He’s not sure why Katara seems to think Aang is the Avatar, or why Aang apparently said that he’s the Avatar, but he can’t question it now. “You two take Appa, and let’s go.”

Some old woman comes up then, the siblings’ grandmother, he learns, and she urges them to wait while she gathers them some supplies. Distractions. More precious time being thrown away.

By the time Sokka and Katara are on top of Appa with a few bags and sleeping rolls alongside them, the ship is out of view. No matter; Zuko saw what direction it had gone, and its trail of smoke will be hard to miss from the air.

Druk flexes and flaps his wings, and his low growl tells Zuko what he needs to know.

Zuko turns to Sokka and Katara. “When you’re ready to fly, tell Appa ‘yip yip.’”

They don’t need to. Appa responds to Zuko immediately and pushes from the ground. Sokka shrieks at an unnatural volume and pitch as they start to fly. Appa must be as eager to find Aang as Zuko is.

“Let’s go, Druk,” Zuko whispers into his dragon’s fuzzy mane.

Druk hears just fine and heaves them into the air. The beat of his wings throws a sheen of light snow halfway across the village, but there’s nothing to do about that now. They take after Appa, catching up to him easily.

. . .

When they reach the ship, Aang is fighting with the Fire Nation girl atop the deck. Zuko is still hundreds of feet away and hundreds of feet in the air when a burst of the girl’s fire throws Aang overboard.

He doesn’t come back up.

Chapter Text

One second, Aang is drowning, and Katara is screaming his name by Sokka’s ear, and the next, Zuko is diving off of Druk. Fully throwing himself off of the dragon from his position way too high in the air, swanning towards the icy water to rescue his friend.

Now, Sokka doesn’t like Zuko. Sokka’s still pretty sure he’s Fire Nation, and the guy’s as suspicious as a fox-snake, what with his creepy scar and bitter eyes, and all. But all three of them—Sokka, Katara, Zuko—are here to rescue Aang, to rescue the Avatar. How bad can Zuko really be if he wants to rescue the Avatar from his own people?

So Sokka finds himself very concerned as he watches Zuko fall. He wants to grab Zuko by his shoulders and shake him, hard, screaming that he’s a stupid idiot.

A fall from that height will kill him. He’ll hit the water so hard he may as well have landed on solid ice.

Katara goes silent at Sokka’s ear, realizing this too.

But… the water below Zuko, as he falls, begins to swell, begins to twist and rise, reaching upwards and meeting Zuko over halfway. A mighty stream of cool blue, catching Zuko at its peak, letting him plunge more safely down. And then it pulls him under, sinking back into the sea, and the water goes back to normal, like that hadn’t just happened at all.

Magic.

“What—” Sokka manages to say, and a second or two later Katara starts screaming Aang and Zuko’s name in Sokka’s ear.

Did Aang save him from his place under the water? Reach out with his Avatar powers and soften Zuko’s landing?

And then, just when Sokka is losing hope that the two will resurface, a second funnel surges from the sea with Zuko holding Aang in his arms at its crest. Even from a distance, even watching from above, Sokka feels a strike of fear at its sheer size, its sheer power. The funnel twists and places Zuko and Aang on the deck of the ship, and Aang touches down and stumbles back as Zuko—

Lifts his arms, shifts between stances, and—he’s waterbending, Sokka realizes. Zuko, the possibly-Fire-Nation boy in Water Tribe colors—waterbends. The funnel spins and morphs into a circle of waves that he pushes outwards to throw the Fire Nation girl and the soldiers back. They all collapse against the ship’s rim.

As Appa touches down on deck, Sokka catches a glimpse of Zuko’s eyes, set completely aglow with white-blue light. Is he… is he possessed? Did Aang somehow possess him to get them to safety? But why would he…? And then those glowing eyes fall shut, and Zuko collapses to the ground.

“Did you see what he just did?” Katara all but shouts.

“What was that?” Sokka cries.

They leap down from Appa to where Aang is helping Zuko sit up. Zuko lost his coat at some point in the fray, and his too-large shirt has slipped off one of his shoulders, exposing an expanse of snow-white skin, cut only by sharp collarbones.

Druk lands on deck too, slinking up and nudging Zuko’s side with his massive, steaming snout.

“Hey Katara, hey Sokka,” Aang says as they approach. “Thanks for coming!”

Zuko groans and leans heavily into Aang as Aang gets him to his feet. Druk seems to be trying to help too.

“Aang,” Katara says, and her voice is wavering. “What just happened?”

“I’ll tell you in a bit,” Aang says to Sokka and Katara, “first, get Zuko onto Druk. I need to get my staff.”

Sokka is pushing Zuko back upright on Druk’s neck for the second time when Katara gasps. The soldiers and the girl are all getting back up, approaching the group with ferocious determination.

“Help Aang,” Sokka says, and he climbs up behind Zuko to grip his waist and hold him steady.

Katara does—she misses at first, trapping one of Druk’s feet in ice (“Oops—sorry Druk!”), but when she turns around and does the move again, she manages to similarly trap a cluster of soldiers. Druk is able to simply flex his claws to break free—the soldiers are not.

Aang, with a gust of wind from his newly collected staff, throws the girl and the remaining soldiers back again. He and Katara run and jump onto Appa, quickly becoming airborne.

“Uh, yip yip?” Sokka says to Druk, reaching to tug on the dragon’s mane. Druk just grunts and shakes his head like a wet bunnidog, a rocking motion that almost sends Sokka and Zuko falling back to the deck.

“Go, Druk,” Zuko mumbles, and then they’re in the air too.

On their way out, Aang has the foresight to use airbending to cause a mini avalanche. The ship, as it disappears from their view, is half-buried under snow. It’ll take them some time to dig it out—time for the four of them to get a comfortable distance away.

Sokka quickly decides he prefers flying on Appa. Druk’s mane and spine is fluffy, white fur just like Appa’s, but his sides where Sokka’s calves and ankles dig in are rock solid and a bit sharp with his scales. And he’s fast. He catches up to Appa in no time, then does an absolutely horrifying tight spin for what Sokka thinks is probably for no reason at all, before slowing his pace. And Sokka can feel every twist and curve as he worms and bobs through the air.

Why isn’t there a saddle?

Sokka might very well throw up.

. . .

The majority of Zuko’s weight is on Sokka’s chest. He fell asleep a while ago—an incredible feat, considering the wind and Druk’s ever-sickening movements. His head is tilted back on Sokka’s right shoulder, giving Sokka a very intimate view of the tarnished left side of his face, and his hair, now mostly slipped from its odd wolf-tail, is wet and trapped between them.

Sokka thinks he’s still asleep, but then he says, just loud enough to hear over the rushing wind, “Is Aang okay?”

“Yeah, buddy,” Sokka says uncertainly, “he’s right up there with Appa and Katara.”

“Wha?” Zuko asks, turning his head into Sokka’s neck. Sokka can only see the unscarred side of his face now, and his unmelted ear. Oh. One probably can’t hear very well from a melted ear. “Say that again.”

Sokka does, a little louder this time.

“Oh, good,” Zuko sighs, and his mouth is right on the side of Sokka’s neck. “Where’re we going?”

“Not sure. I tried asking a bit ago, but I couldn’t hear what they said over the wind, so we’re just following them. I know we’re not going back home, though.”

“Home,” Zuko whispers. The combination of his lips on Sokka’s skin and the breathiness sends a shiver down Sokka’s spine.

Zuko really does have a nice face. His cheekbones are high and defined, his eyebrow is arched and sharp, and his jawline—

Sokka clears his throat. “So… what happened back there?”

“I dunno. I jumped after Aang.”

“Yeah, that part I understood. Really stupid thing to do, by the way. If Aang hadn’t saved you—if that’s really what happened—uh, it was all very unclear.”

“Aang didn’t save me,” Zuko says, opening his eyes. Or at least one of them. Now Sokka finds himself wondering how well Zuko can see from his left eye. The eye Sokka can see, is that same brilliant gold. Sokka swallows.

“So then…?”

“I saved him.”

Sokka clears his throat again. Zuko’s lips shift a little on Sokka’s skin. “So… you’re the Avatar, then? Is that what that glowing thing was?”

Zuko hums. It makes a vibration against Sokka in a very disconcerting way. “Apparently.”

“After we kicked you and Aang out, but before that crazy Fire Nation chick got there, Katara said you and Aang were in the iceberg for, like, a hundred years.”

“Apparently,” Zuko says again.

“So I was right the whole time,” Sokka says. “You are Fire Nation. You’re the Avatar from before.”

Zuko lets out a huff of a laugh, and then—and then he takes a deep breath, and when he exhales the air is unnaturally warm as it cascades over Sokka’s neck.

“I’ll take that as a yes, then.” Sokka frowns. “Why did Aang lie?”

“I don’t know. I wasn’t there. Couldn’t hear. Couldn’t stop him.”

“Would you have?”

Zuko sighs. “Of course I would have.”

. . .

They stop for the night when they reach an island, an island unlike anything Sokka has ever seen. It’s… green. There are evergreen trees at the coast and foresting up sloping hills to a snowy mountain, and there are ferns and moss and just. So much green.

They lay out their bedrolls but don’t get in them yet, instead gathering firewood while Katara magic-waters them a large sword-salmon. Aang gives a little “hmph” and digs some nuts and dried seaweed from the bag Gran Gran had packed for them.

Sokka makes sure to sit on Zuko’s right side. “So can you just…” He looks at Zuko, who’s lounging beside him with his long, black hair freshly combed and hanging loose down his back, and who tilts his head and raises an eyebrow. Sokka throws his fist at the unlit campfire in what he hopes looks like a firebending move, with a small “pow” to add to the effect.

“What?” Zuko frowns.

“He means start the fire with firebending,” Katara says, dropping the sword-salmon unceremoniously into Sokka’s lap.

Sokka grunts, shooting her a very warranted glare. She gives him a fake, polite smile by way of response as she sits on his other side, opposite Zuko.

“Oh,” Zuko says, looking at their pile of sticks. “Sure.” He sits up a little and then flicks his wrist at the pile, but all that comes out from is hand is a puff of smoke.

“Well that was anticlimactic,” Sokka notes as Zuko stares at his hand like it’d personally offended him.

Katara is watching Zuko uncertainly. Sokka assumes Aang filled her in on the whole Avatar situation while they were riding on Appa. Hopefully that’s enough to soften her hatred for the Fire Nation.

Aang flutters into a criss-crossed sitting position between Katara and Zuko. “Don’t forget,” he says, voice raised—aware he’s on Zuko’s left—and leans towards the wood with a couple of flint stones, “you’re exhausted, and you’ve been sick from the cold. It’d make sense if your fire takes some time to get back to normal.” Aang has a little fire going shortly after.

Zuko pouts, actually pouts, and Sokka has no reason to find that expression as intriguing as he does. He has his head turned away from Sokka slightly so his good ear is more central to the whole group. Sokka has no reason to find that a bit endearing, either. “I hate this,” Zuko says. “Everything is awful. I’m awful at everything. Where are we going?”

“Love the positive attitude,” Sokka deadpans right as Aang says, “The Southern Air Temple!”

Zuko frowns, ignoring Sokka. “I don’t want to go back there.”

“It’s been a hundred years,” Aang tells him. “It’s bound to be different now. It’ll be fine.”

Katara shoots Sokka a look but says nothing.

“I suppose,” Zuko responds, still frowning.

Katara chimes in. “We’re just stopping through. Our real goal is the Northern Water Tribe, where you and I can learn waterbending. Aang says he can teach you to airbend along the way!”

The everlasting frown stays put. “If I haven’t even figured out airbending by now, I’ll never figure out waterbending. They say opposite elements are the hardest.”

“Well,” Katara says, “I’ll help you. We can learn together. But—” she tilts her head. “You already did waterbend. At the ship. It was the most incredible thing I’ve ever seen.”

Aang shakes his head. “That was the Avatar state. I’ve seen it once before when Zuko—um. I’ve seen it once before.”

Katara looks wary of Aang’s self-revision, but let’s it go. “Well, it was still amazing.”

Zuko just shrugs and stares at the fire, looking thoroughly dejected. “I don’t know how I did it. I don’t know any waterbending.”

Katara regards him a moment longer before turning to Sokka. “Carve the fish, please. I’m hungry.”

“Yeah, yeah, whatever.” He carries the sword-salmon a few paces away from the group, making sure to hide it behind a log to shield it from Aang’s view before he begins cutting at it with a dagger from his belt. Aang, apparently, is a vegetarian and pacifist.

“You shouldn’t eat fish either,” Aang says to Zuko, offering him some nuts and seaweed. “If you’re going to learn airbending, you need to respect all forms of life.”

Zuko scowls. “I’ve given up everything because I’m the Avatar. I’m not giving up fish and meat, too.”

“That’s the spirit,” Sokka calls, louder than he otherwise might have—for Zuko’s sake. Zuko looks over at him, appraising, and Sokka smiles. Zuko quickly turns back to look at Aang.

“Besides,” he says, “respect for all life is an Air Nomad thing. I kept your diet at the temple, but I’m not going to do it now. It’s not an airbending thing.”

Aang withdraws the nuts and seaweed. “Fine. Be a murderer, then.” He says it somewhat playfully, but Zuko still flinches.

“I’m not a murderer,” he says, quietly enough that Sokka almost doesn’t catch it.

Katara looks grim. “If you’re going to defeat Firelord Ozai and end this war, you might have to be.”

“Who in the name of the spirits is Firelord Ozai?” Zuko asks, aghast. Aang seems perplexed, too.

“Um, the Firelord?” Katara replies. “Who was the Firelord when you were… well, before the iceberg?”

“Sozin,” Zuko says, like it’s obvious.

Katara nods slowly. “So Ozai would be… Sozin’s grandson, I believe. Right Sokka?”

Sokka shrugs and starts running his fingers over his newly cut fillets, checking for stray bones. “Sozin, then Azulon, then Ozai. Yeah, grandson.”

“Azulon,” Zuko mutters, looking down. “So, Azulon started the war?”

“No,” Katara says, shaking her head. “Sozin did, during a comet. That’s why we call it Sozin’s Comet, actually.”

Zuko says something, then, but it’s too soft for Sokka to hear. Judging by the lack of response, Sokka figures it was too quiet for the others to hear, too. Then again, Aang reaches over and puts a hand on Zuko’s shoulder, giving it a gentle, comforting squeeze.

Sokka lugs over the sword-salmon fillets he’d cut from its carcass, and Katara gets to work cooking them over the fire with an old pan from their pack. It’s quiet, for a while, Aang looking worriedly at Zuko and Zuko looking solemnly back, like a whole conversation is happening between them without any words at all, and Katara is busy cooking, and Sokka is looking here and there pretending that he isn’t bored. Sokka’s not good at being bored, though, so he breaks the silence.

“Aang… why did you lie?”

Aang startles and looks affronted. “What? Lie about what?”

“You said you didn’t know what happened to the Avatar. And then you said you were the Avatar. Why?”

Aang takes a deep breath, and his eyes are on the now-sizzling fish fillets. He opens his mouth to reply, but Zuko intercepts.

“I’ve never wanted to be the Avatar. Honestly, if it weren’t for the… Avatar state thing… I would hardly believe I actually am. I still question it sometimes. They told me I am, and they sent me to the Southern Air Temple to learn airbending, but I can’t do it. I’m not good enough.” Sokka briefly wonders why Zuko hadn’t said that while they’d been on Druk, but then he thinks he may have been too wiped then to form so many words. He appears to be at least a little more alert now.

Aang sighs. “Zuko, stop. Learning takes time.” He says it in a way that suggests he’s said it before. Zuko looks away, and Aang looks up at Sokka over the fire. “I lied the first time because it wasn’t my truth to tell. I know that doesn’t make it okay, but… I didn’t know if Zuko wanted you to know that it’s him. And then I lied the second time, because I didn’t want Zuko to get hurt, and I didn’t want the village to get hurt, either. It was easier to have them take me in as their captive than risk them burning anyone else.”

Katara shakes her head. “You could’ve died, Aang. What if they’d killed you?”

“It turned out okay, though, didn’t it?” Aang grins.

“I imagine they want the Avatar captured alive,” Zuko says, still looking down. “It would’ve been the same… before.”

Sokka frowns. “But they said they killed you. A hundred years ago. Clearly they didn’t, but that’s what they said happened. Why wouldn’t they do it again?”

Zuko shakes his head. “They probably decided they could kill me because I wouldn’t reincarnate. But if Aang were the Avatar and they killed him… he’d just be reborn as Water Tribe. So they can’t do it.”

“That doesn’t make sense,” Aang says. “Why wouldn’t you have just reincarnated as an Air Nomad if you died?”

“Because… of what they did to the Air Nomads. They thought they could break the cycle,” Katara guesses with the confidence of it being the truth.

It makes sense, Sokka thinks. As much sense as reincarnation stuff can, at least. Kill all of the Air Nomads, so there’s none for the Avatar to be born into, and then kill the current Fire Nation Avatar, so the line dies. It makes sense, but that doesn’t make it any less horrible.

“How did you survive?” Sokka asks them both.

Zuko is silent. Aang peers at him, but after a length of time he seems to realize Zuko isn’t going to answer. “Zuko and I left. We left, because, um… well, we left. And then…” Aang’s brow furrows, like it’s taking effort to remember. “And then there was a storm, I think? And we got lost. And then I woke up with you guys.”

Zuko adds, quietly, “We were drowning. We were going to drown. I—I got scared. And then, yeah. Waking up with you two.”

Sokka processes this. Katara also seems to be processing this. “A hundred years,” she mutters to herself.

“A hundred years,” Zuko chokes in return.

Chapter Text

Zuko doesn’t sleep that night. He tries, spirits, he tries. But he’s struggling to stop his mind from racing through scenarios that can never come to pass. Each scenario takes place a hundred years ago, and each one ends with him dead, by his father’s command. His lying, backstabbing father’s command.

Break the cycle. Kill my son.

In the brief moments he manages to escape these thoughts, he’s plunged into his worst memories. His mother’s hand raising above him, bound to come back down. His father’s voice as he cradles Zuko’s cheek, his hand becoming steadily warmer. His little brother, laughing while Zuko lays in a sick bed as his body fails to fight infection.

His family. One hundred years. All long dead.

Is it grief he feels? This strange, cloying thing in his throat? What of his peers, of the people he met in his travels? Are they all dead now, too? Does he miss them?

The answer lies simple and plain in his heart. Honest and true.

No.

He’s glad they’re dead. Every single one of them. It feels as though he’s being given a blank slate—finally, a real second chance. The only person he’s ever cared about is right at his side.

When the moon is over halfway through the sky, Zuko gives up and throws off the fur that had been covering him. He stumbles over to Druk, relieved when his legs mostly manage to hold him up, and puts his hand on the bulb of his snout.

“You’re here too,” Zuko whispers, and one of Druk’s yellow eyes slides open. It fixes on Zuko with an intensity he’s never seen anywhere else. “You’re here too,” he says again. This is all he has left. Druk, and Appa, and Aang. No possessions, no crown, no family. He tilts and rests his head against Druk. Druk’s skin is hard and scaled, but it’s warm, and it’s familiar. Druk makes a low crooning sound, and Zuko sighs.

“I thought dragons were extinct.”

Zuko snaps upright and spins around, his back pressing against Druk. Druk sits up a little, at first, taking in the scene, then huffs and settles back down.

It’s just Sokka. Sokka, who’d had Zuko banished. But also Sokka, who helped him get Aang back. It’s not enough.

“Extinct? No,” Zuko says. And then he realizes: he has no way of knowing. Druk is here, of course, but what of the others?

Sokka steps closer until he’s about an arms-length away. Zuko leans back farther over Druk’s snout. “Well, clearly,” Sokka says, waving at Druk’s long form.

Zuko swallows. “What do you want?”

Sokka frowns at first, his brow furrowed, like he can’t quite make sense of the question. Then he says, “I couldn’t really sleep. First time away from home, you know.”

“I didn’t,” Zuko says. “Know, I mean.”

Sokka shrugs. “I’ll get used to it, I guess. How’d you get a dragon?”

Zuko looks over his shoulder. Druk’s eye is closed once more, and he’s snuffling a bit in his sleep. “The Fire Sages gave him to me. My brother and I both got one, just like our father.”

“Impressive,” Sokka says, and he crosses his arms. “He’s… very big. Too big, almost, you could say.”

Zuko cocks his head. “He’s an adolescent. They gave him to me as a baby when I was five, to grow alongside me. He’s barely even half the size he’ll be as an adult.”

Sokka just stares. “Oh. Well, that’s… something. Not too big, then, I guess.”

“No.”

Zuko watches as Sokka walks around to a spot where Druk’s pale belly is exposed, watches as Sokka runs a hand over the scales there. They’re smaller and thinner than the scales on the top, and they feel much softer. Zuko would know; he’s curled up against Druk’s belly many times, and given him lots of scratches there. Sokka continues to stroke those soft, pale scales, and Zuko continues to watch as Sokka smiles. A gentle thing. Pleased, almost.

“He’s beautiful,” Sokka says eventually.

“He’s dangerous,” Zuko counters.

Sokka rolls his eyes. “He’s done nothing but fly around and be overly protective of you. I’m starting to think dragons aren’t what our stories made them out to be.”

Zuko shakes his head. “I guess he likes you. And Katara. If he didn’t, you would know.”

“Sure, sure,” Sokka says, arms raised in defeat. “But if he were really that dangerous, he could’ve helped us fight on the ship.”

“From what I understand, Aang and Katara had it handled.”

“So he’s a lazy dragon,” Sokka says with half a grin.

Zuko considers this. “I don’t think I ever tried to imply that he’s particularly… driven.”

When Sokka laughs, Zuko’s shoulders fall. He’d been tensing them, without realizing. He takes a half-step away from Druk, still keeping his hand on his snout, but no longer cowering against him. Druk sighs, and Zuko does the same.

“It must be a lot,” Sokka says, and he steps back from Druk’s belly and towards Zuko. “Just… dealing with being here. A hundred years—so much has changed.”

“Yeah,” Zuko says, and he works to keep his voice from breaking. “It… I don’t really mind, actually. I mean… obviously I haven’t really seen the extent of the change yet, but…” he cuts himself off. Some things are better left unshared. “Aang is probably more broken up about it. If you want to comfort someone, comfort him.”

“I’ll keep that in mind, but I bet he’ll be okay. Even after he sees the temple… he’ll be okay. Kid’s a ball of sunshine. Unlike you,” Sokka says, and he’s smiling again. He reaches to put a hand on Zuko’s shoulder, but Zuko ducks away. The smile falls.

A terse silence also falls. Sokka, watching Zuko with uncertainty in his eyes. Zuko, watching Sokka with distrust. Druk, no longer lightly snoring. Druk can pick up on Zuko’s discomfort even in his sleep; such is their bond.

“Sorry,” Sokka eventually says. “I should, uh… I should try to get some rest.”

Zuko nods. “Yeah. Good luck, and all that.”

“Sure, sure.”

And then Sokka is gone, and Zuko still can’t stop thinking.

In the end, he gathers some more firewood and relights their small fire with the flint stones, and then he settles down next to it with his hands cupped just so in his lap. Deep breath in, deep breath out. He reaches with his mind towards the fire, trying to draw it inward. He tries not to think about how pathetic it is that he, the apparent Avatar, the once master firebender, can no longer produce his own flame. He reminds himself of what Aang said—that it’ll come back. He’s exhausted, and he was sick. It’ll come back.

It takes a while, but eventually he finds the flame rising and falling in time with his breath. He focuses on the heat of it, and way it flickers and flexes, and he meditates until the sun has risen over the nearby mountain.

Then he uses Sokka’s spear to catch them breakfast, a koi-chub this time, and starts heating it over the fire. The others wake with the smell of food. Aang makes a face and digs through the pack again for the nuts and seaweed. Sokka scrambles into the trees at an alarming speed to relieve himself. Katara settles next to Zuko, on his left side, which is quite disagreeable. He ignores her unwanted presence and keeps his focus on the fish. For a moment he thinks he hears something like humming, but he decides it’s his ear acting up again.

After a minute or so, Aang plops down across from them. “He can’t hear you,” he tells Katara.

Zuko turns to flick Katara a glare. She looks irate, but upon Aang’s words soaking in, she softens. Not humming, then—she’d been trying to speak to him. Probably in a low voice. She looks at Zuko, her eyes darting over the ruined side of his face, and then she moves around to his other side.

“Sorry,” she says. Zuko stares at Aang, watching him pick between the various nuts. “I was just wondering… how long were you at the Southern Air Temple?”

“Aang can tell you that.” He’s not in the mood to talk. He glares down at the slices of fish as they cook. He’s not sure how to tell when they’re done.

Katara looks at Aang. Aang shrugs. “I think it was… maybe two or three months?”

“Oh,” Katara says. “I hope it doesn’t take me that long to get better at waterbending.”

Zuko finds this to be an incredibly insensitive thing to say. His hands shake as he snaps, “Of course it won’t take you that long. It’s not supposed to take that long.”

“Zuko,” Aang starts, but Zuko cuts him off. He’s heard enough from Aang on this subject.

“No, you know what?” He throws the pan with the fish down into the fire. Sparks flare out from underneath, and Aang and Katara flinch. “Make your own breakfast. I’m going for a walk.”

. . .

Zuko is… lost. He’d stomped into the trees, then continued to stomp up and up until he reached a rocky cliff-face where he couldn’t stomp anymore. After sulking around there for a while, disillusioned with himself for running away up a hill on his unsteady legs, and turning his and Katara’s words over and over again in his head, he let out a sigh. Perhaps he’d overreacted. Perhaps Katara hadn’t meant it the way he’d interpreted it. Or perhaps she still hadn’t realized yet what a sensitive subject Zuko being a slow learner is. With that, he’d begun his trek back down, taking what he at first thought was the same path, but quickly became apparent was not the same path.

He can’t even find the coastline. How can he not find the coastline? It’s literally supposed to be right down this stupid hill. He ends up falling more times than he can count, cutting up his hands on stones and sharp sticks. There isn’t much blood, but what is there makes pink streaks over his palms and fingers as it gets smudged over his skin.

He shouldn’t be surprised. He can’t bend, he can’t have a single conversation without fucking it up somehow, he’s completely winded from the impromptu hike, he didn’t sleep last night—of course he can’t navigate properly enough to even make it down a hill. He’s miserable, and useless, and maybe this “second chance” isn’t going to work out after all. A second chance is only worth it if you change your ways, if you improve yourself. Two things Zuko has never been particularly skilled at.

He collapses against a tree and considers crying. Aang once told him that crying can be cathartic. Zuko can’t remember the last time he cried. He knows he didn’t cry when Father—when he—no. He knows he didn’t cry when he was thirteen. Maybe it was when he was seven, and his mother struck him for the first time. Maybe it was when Azulon, aged five, told him he’d deserved it.

Zuko falls asleep. He dreams of flying on Druk through a storm, screaming Aang’s name, screaming more as he and Druk plunge into freezing waters.

He only wakes up when he’s suddenly surrounded by hot steam that smells like katsura leaves—a pleasing, burnt sugar scent. “Druk,” he mumbles, resting his forearm over Druk’s snout and putting his head down on it.

“I bet he could sniff you out from thousands of miles away,” Sokka says, and Zuko snaps his head up to glare at him. He’s on Druk’s neck. Zuko hadn’t even noticed him there.

Sokka’s grinning; Zuko isn’t.

“Come on, on the dragon,” Sokka says, nodding to behind him. “Aang wants to leave for the temple pronto. He says we should get there a little after noon.”

Zuko hisses with distaste, still not wanting to return to the temple, but gets up anyhow. Druk helps.

“I want to be in front,” Zuko says when he’s at Druk’s side, glaring at Sokka’s legs.

“Nope. Boys who run away and have to be tracked down don’t get a say in where they sit.”

“He’s my dragon.”

Sokka’s grin widens. “But he likes me. You said so yourself. Give it a few days and I’ll be his new favorite.”

Zuko bares his teeth in what he hopes is a very menacing glower, but Sokka just laughs. Zuko doesn’t deflate, exactly, but he does concede. He sits rigidly behind Sokka, very displeased when the shape of Druk’s spine keeps causing him to slide forward right into the other boy.

“Come on now,” Sokka says. “Safety first. Arms around me.”

“Absolutely not,” Zuko retorts quickly, then adds, “Druk, back to camp. Go fast.”

Sokka squeals when Druk takes off sprinting. Zuko braces himself with his palms on Druk’s sides. Druk weaves through the trees, wings tucked in tight at his sides, snapping sticks and rotting logs as he goes. Sokka gets smacked in the face with more than one low-hanging twig.

“If you’d let me sit in front,” Zuko grits into Sokka’s ear, “you wouldn’t be having this problem.”

A second later, Sokka ducks, and Zuko gets hit with a branch, and, unprepared and without any support behind him, he goes flying off Druk’s back.

Druk is quick to spin around, ducking through a couple trees as he goes and chirping apologetically, and Zuko trips back onto his feet. “You motherf—”

“Language, language,” Sokka chides, hopping down from Druk to apparently help Zuko. Zuko doesn’t need help, though, and he makes that very clear as he shoves Sokka away. Sokka just ends up standing somewhat awkwardly behind him as Zuko climbs back onto Druk. His right cheek stings, but he figures the damage isn’t too serious. The branch wasn’t very big; it was just unexpected.

Sokka ends up seated behind Zuko for the rest of the trip. Zuko has Druk take it slower, this time, a careful trot.

Zuko lets himself be a little bit smug.

Until, that is, they get back to camp. Sokka slides off of Druk, but Zuko stays on and steers him over to where Katara is finishing packing up a bedroll. Zuko peers down at her, and she looks up. He takes a little solace in his position with the high ground. “I’m sorry,” he says. “I overreacted, and I shouldn’t have shouted or left. You didn’t deserve that.”

Katara nods once, curt. “I’m sorry too. I wasn’t thinking when I said what I did. I didn’t mean to disrespect you.”

Zuko nods back, then clambers down from Druk to help with the last of the packing and to make sure the campfire is completely put out.

. . .

Aang was right—they make it to the Southern Air Temple right around when the sun is highest in the sky. Zuko’s heart throbs as it comes into view, and then it throbs even more as they draw nearer.

Sokka is behind him. He’d insisted on riding with Zuko “in case you decide to nap or try to leap to your death again.” And then, “I’ll even let you ride in front!”

They didn’t talk much, on the ride over. Sokka seemed to have realized early on that he wasn’t going to get anything out of Zuko that wasn’t monosyllabic. Zuko didn’t fall asleep again, though there were a few moments where they were drifting through damp clouds that he got close. Sokka has no way of knowing that, though.

Zuko rolls his eyes when Sokka gasps and points to the temple, making some kind of excited and indisputably whiny sound as he kicks his legs around and keeps pointing. As though Zuko should be just as excited, as though Zuko hasn’t seen the temple a hundred times before.

“It’s so tall!” Sokka laughs. “How is it so tall?”

“Because it’s made of stone, not snow,” Zuko bites, and Sokka ignores his tone and laughs again.

When they land, Zuko takes in its barren nature. Last time he’d been here, the temple had always been a flurry of life and laughter: children playing games, older monks strolling by as they discussed philosophy, bisons spiraling overhead and lemurs scuttling around hunting for scraps of food like turkey-pigeons. Or stealing food directly from plates like geyser-gulls. But now… Zuko peers around, face frozen with as much calm as he can muster. The dust. The silence. It’s… unnatural. He swallows hard.

Aang doesn’t seem to be taking any of that in. He’s bouncing around, yelling about all of the things he wants Katara and Sokka to see, pointing at the stone carvings on the walls and at the statues and explaining them too-quickly, grinning ear-to-ear. Zuko jumps off of Druk and goes to stand at Aang’s side.

At some point while they’re here, Aang is going to start to notice. It’s going to settle into his bones, and he’s not going to know how to handle it. Zuko needs to be there for him when it happens.

The things Sokka and Katara had been implying are true, Zuko knows. The Fire Nation harnessed the power of a comet to decimate the Air Nomads in their entirety, to kill him. If he and Aang hadn’t left that night…

He wonders how long it takes for a twelve-year-old to come to terms with the fact that they’ve lost everything but two animals, a staff, and a friend. Are those things enough for Aang? His whole culture has been reduced to dust, and probably skeletons. Zuko lets himself hold out some hope that somewhere out there in the world, other Air Nomads escaped too. But then again, hoping has never much paid off, in Zuko’s experience.

He’s hoped, believed, even, that his father would keep his word. His word that he was sorry for what he’d done to Zuko’s face. His word that “spreading the Fire Nation’s prosperity and wealth” would indeed upset the balance of the world. And when Zuko had been announced as the Avatar, his father’s promise rang even truer. But he was just biding his time, apparently. To do this. Zuko looks at a fountain that hasn’t held water in a century. Break the cycle. Kill my son.

No, hope has never much paid off.

Aang takes them to a large, strange door. Zuko had never been allowed inside, before. The elders had told him he wasn’t ready. He repeats this to Aang as Aang takes his stance to open it.

“No one’s here to say you aren’t ready now,” Aang says with a smile. “Let’s check it out!”

With a powerful whoosh of air from Aang, the mechanisms in the door begin to twist and unlock with a low humming sound.

Inside, there are hundreds of statues. On the floor, on the walls, spiraling up and up higher than Zuko can make them out. The group splits off to examine different ones. Zuko feels a pull to one in particular.

It’s larger than the others. The woman is… massive. She has a headpiece and two fans crossed over her torso. Her expression is fierce and terrifying.

He knows who it is. From his lessons as a child, but also from something else. As though they’ve met before.

Katara comes up on Zuko’s right. “She looks incredible,” she says, eyes wide.

“This is Avatar Kyoshi, the Avatar before me. They say she lived for over two hundred years. She may as well have been a Great Spirit, for how legendary she was.”

“How does that work? Living that long—is that an Avatar thing?”

“I don’t believe so. I think it was something else.” Zuko gives Katara a side-long glance. “My father thought she’d never die. He thought we’d never have another Fire Nation Avatar—that the cycle would be stuck forever, with her policing the world on her own terms.”

“But she did,” Katara says slowly. “How?”

Zuko sighs and steps away from the statue. “I don’t know. Not sure if anyone does.”

“Maybe you can ask her someday,” Aang says, hopping up to them. “The elders mentioned you might be able to talk to your past lives.”

“Yeah,” Zuko says. “I’ll just… figure out how to do that, then.”

Katara puts her hand on his arm, and he whacks it off with a glare. “We should go,” he says. “I don’t think there’s anything for us here.”

When they’re back outside, Aang suggests they pause for a little airbending training. “It’s as good a spot as any,” he says, and he has Zuko sit down with him to meditate.

Aang tells him, “So you want to focus on the lack of boundaries between you and—”

Zuko opens his eyes as Aang cuts himself off.

Meditation is cancelled as Aang and Sokka go running after a lemur.

. . .

“He’s a master, but he’s also twelve, Zuko. He’ll get around to teaching you eventually. For now, let’s just… let him have this.”

. . .

Zuko isn’t at Aang’s side when the realization finally hits. He’s failed.

When he finally catches up and takes in the scene, he pulls Aang from Sokka’s arms and drags him from the room. But not before glancing over the dozens of skeletons strewn around Monk Gyatso’s.

Zuko can read the story there like he’d seen it himself. Gyatso, Aang’s master. Gyatso, wanting to save his people. Gyatso, choosing to withdraw from his sacred pacifism. Gyatso, draining the room of its air, and suffocating himself alongside the soldiers.

Zuko pushes down his smile at Gyatso’s final act of heroics as he holds Aang tighter. Lets him cry, lets him scream, lets him slam his fists into Zuko’s chest and shout about how it’s Zuko’s fault this happened. That if they hadn’t have left when they did, they could have helped.

Zuko lets him do it, and he tries not to take it to heart. He trusts that Aang doesn’t actually mean it. And he has to believe that it’s not actually true.

When they part from the Southern Air Temple, it’s with an additional member. Aang names the flying lemur Momo. After flying alongside them for awhile, Momo settles on Druk’s mane and wraps his arms over Zuko’s thigh to hang on so he can rest. Zuko strokes the lemur’s soft head and furry spine, allowing a slight smile. Sokka’s grip tightens around his waist. “He likes you,” Sokka whispers into his ear. Zuko ignores him.

Chapter Text

Broken twigs. Footprints in mud. Fallen leaves, squished flatter than they should be.

(Uncle is easy to track.)

“What in Agni’s Blaze are you doing,” Sozana hisses. It’s hardly a question. “Get out. We’re trying to leave.”

Uncle is basking in a steaming spring. Blissful, drowsy, uncaring. “I am resting my muscles, Princess. It’s good for the body and the soul. I’d ask you to join me, but I’m afraid I’m in a very particular state of undress.”

Sozana bares her teeth to keep from gagging. “Uncle. The Avatar and his—his minions have bested us twice, now. I won’t let it happen again. We need to leave. We should have left yesterday.”

“Now, now,” Uncle says. “The crew needs a break just as I do. You could use one as well, you know.”

“No,” she says. Smoke begins to rise from her fists. “I don’t know. I won’t rest until we have the Avatar.”

“Princess, the cheetah-mule who sprints cannot carry any load.”

Sozana flicks her phoenix tail from her shoulder. “I don’t have time for this. Be at the ship in fifteen minutes or we’re leaving without you.”

She storms back into the trees. Uncle should know it’s only half an empty threat.

Ever since her Agni Kai with Commander Zhao, Sozana’s frustration has only grown. Now that the rest of the Fire Nation knows of her discovery—and it was her discovery—she feels a timer hanging over her head. It’s only a matter of time before Father allows more fleets to go out hunting. She has to capture the Avatar, and she has to do it soon.

The Avatar, who is not the airbender as she’d been led to believe. The Avatar, who is a firebender, who is Prince Zuko (is it former, now?). The Avatar, who is apparently her great uncle, back from the dead and still as youthful as ever.

As a matter of fact, they seem to be about the same age.

(“I’ve never met him,” Uncle had said. “I was born a decade after he… disappeared. But they say he was very honorable.”

“They say he was a coward,” Sozana countered. “They say he plotted against Firelord Sozin, and then again against his own brother when he was told he couldn’t be heir to the throne anymore.”

“Yes, they do say that too.”)

And then there was Kyoshi Island. Another complete train wreck. The Avatar’s firebending had been weak enough to barely flare, barely burn, but the stupid airbender, the dragon, and the clown-faced prats with the fans had all been formidable.

(The clown-faced prats’ leather-plated dresses, sashed tight across their waists, moved easily through their attacks. The women were strong and alarming—no doubt the legendary Kyoshi Warriors. Sozana remembers reading about them when she was a child; eyes wide and filled with awe as she took in the sketches of beautiful women who each could scale a tower and slit someone’s throat before anyone even noticed she had disappeared. Sozana has been trying not to think of the way it felt to see them in real life, of the profound and impressive way they fought. She didn’t actually mean to burn their village as she had. But losses are losses, and certain things will always be lost in war.)

As she climbs aboard her junky ship, scowling at its dented frame, she grips at the Water Tribe necklace in her pocket. She’d been too late to catch the Avatar on the prison ship, but now she has a leg-up. A plan.

(Uncle always says she doesn’t think things through. Uncle knows nothing about her, nothing at all.)

She goes to her chambers, if they can even be called that. It’s a cramped room, barely big enough for a mattress, a desk, and a place to meditate. She hasn’t even pushed the mattress back in place since the airbender flattened her with it. (No time.)

She grabs a mirror from the desk and checks her hair. She could do with a fresh shave—it’s starting to get a bit long on the sides.

She lets down her hair, combing through it twice before pinning it back up in a loose knot to keep it out of the way.

By the time she finishes shaving the sides and the back of her head, she has three fresh nicks on her fingers and one behind her ear from the razor. She glares at her reflection and slams the mirror down.

Back on deck, there’s no sign of Uncle. She checks his chambers and the kitchen to be sure. It’s been at least twenty minutes.

She takes a deep breath in one of the ship’s hallways. She wants to shout and kick and burn things.

. . .

It’s been almost a half hour by the time she gets back to the spring. When she sees the obvious evidence of capture, she rips at her hair so hard it comes undone again. She scours the scene and sees—

Broken leaves. Footprints in mud. Fallen leaves, squished flatter than they should be.

(At least Uncle is easy to track.)

. . .

She finds his sandal. It smells rotten. She throws it into the trees.

She didn’t need the sandal to know she’s going the right way. The gesture seems almost like an insult to her tracking abilities.

. . .

The Avatar’s bison and dragon fly over her, heading in the opposite direction.

Foolish Uncle. Letting himself be captured. Forcing her to take even more time away from her mission. She should leave him to be imprisoned. If he’s polite, maybe they won’t harm him. But even then—maybe he deserves to be harmed. Locked away in a cell. After all, he laid siege to Ba Sing Se for six hundred days, killing countless soldiers from both sides, and only stopped because his own son died. The man has no respect for life outside of what affects his own.

If anywhere within him still lies the once great Dragon of the West, he’ll manage to take care of himself.

(She almost keeps going along the path to find and rescue him, no doubt out of some warped sense of family loyalty. But only almost. Finding the Avatar is far more important than any individual’s safety.)

Chapter Text

“Aang, maybe try something else.”

“Something else?”

Sokka nods towards Zuko, who’s grouchily trying to meditate per Aang’s instruction, but keeps his eyes on Aang. “Well, you said this is what the other monks tried to teach him, and it’s what you’ve been trying to do every time since then, too. If it hasn’t worked yet, why would it work now?”

Aang frowns. “But it’s how I first learned, too. I don’t know where else to start.”

Sokka blinks at Zuko. Zuko’s eyes are focused right at him, still grouchy, but obviously considering. He looks down when Sokka meets his eye. “Zuko,” Sokka says, “when you started to learn firebending, how did you start?”

Zuko laces his fingers together in his lap, and he gets a little more considering and a little less grouchy. Progress. Eventually, he says, “I think it was the burning leaf.”

“Burning leaf?”

“Your instructor ignites the center of a leaf, just enough to start it burning. You have to exercise breath control as you connect to the flame to slow the burn as much as you can, preventing it from burning the rest of the leaf as well as preventing the fire from going out.”

Sokka nods, then shrugs at Aang. “So use a leaf. Have him make it wind-wiggle or something. It’s a more practical approach than just telling him to ‘feel your skin turn into the breeze’ or whatever you’ve been spouting. He’s Fire Nation, not an Air Nomad. All that wishy-washy stuff probably doesn’t land the same way it did for you when you learned.”

“That’s…” Zuko starts, “actually pretty smart.”

Sokka grins at him. Zuko’s eyes quickly find Aang again.

He does that a lot, Sokka has noticed. He’s always searching for Aang, watching him with an almost protective gleam in his eye. He never looks at Sokka or Katara for more than a few seconds. Sokka’s not sure what to make of it, but he puts in a bit of effort to not be mildly offended.

Aang finds and passes Zuko a leaf and, after regarding the soft but definitely-present breeze, instructs Zuko to hold it by the stem and attempt to make it not quiver from the wind. He continues to say things like—“Feel the air not as something that’s around you, but something that’s a part of you” and “When you try to still the leaf, don’t only think of the air near the leaf. Think of all of the air in the world!”—but having a tangible thing to hold and direct his attention to seems to give Zuko a second wind.

Sokka snorts. “Zuko, looks like you’ve got a second wind, eh? Eh?” He grins, then grins even wider when Zuko shoots him a scowl.

“Shut up I’m concentrating,” Zuko says in one quick breath. When he looks back down to the leaf, his brow is furrowed and his eyes are severe. A few seconds later, the leaf bursts into flame. Zuko drops it with a shriek, then quickly puts it out. He looks up at Aang apologetically. “I assume that was not correct.”

“Not quite,” Aang smiles, “but it was cool!”

Katara plops down beside Sokka to take a break from brushing Appa. Sokka says to Zuko, “I personally liked the part where you screamed like a little girl.”

Katara elbows him in the ribs. “Screamed like you, you mean. Don’t think I didn’t notice when we flew on Appa the first time.”

“That was a very manly cry of alarm. One could call it a battle cry of alarm, even.”

Aang ventures to gather another leaf, but after finding one, glances at Zuko and decides to pick up a handful’s worth. “Just in case,” he says, dropping the pile in front of Zuko. Aang tilts his head as he sits again. “Try closing your eyes this time instead of looking at the leaf. Feel the wind instead of looking for it. Then use meditation to reach out and calm it.”

Zuko hums, taking a leaf into his lap and closing his eyes.

He stays like that for a long time. The leaf never stops quivering, but it doesn’t light on fire, either. The rest of the group stays quiet, even Momo, who sits in the leaf pile and watches Zuko’s leaf with huge eyes.

Sokka sighs.

They’re in a clearing in a wooded area of the Earth Kingdom, and there’s a small river somewhere nearby that Sokka can just barely hear the rushing of. The sun is reaching the middle of the sky, and it’s warm but not hot. The sun’s rays are met sweetly by the breeze Zuko hasn’t yet managed to still.

It’s been an interesting past few weeks, to say the least.

After parting from the Southern Air Temple, they’d veered East to Kyoshi Island, where Aang wanted to ride some kind of giant fish. Katara voiced a slight complaint about that, saying they should continue on to the North Pole, but Zuko quickly and viciously cut her off. She conceded, realizing Zuko wanted Aang to do something fun and positive after the gloom of the temple.

Sokka has consistently been riding on Druk, now, much to Zuko’s chagrin. But the boy’s a wreck, with ever-darkening shadows under his eyes and his telltale scowl which only seems to be growing deeper. Sokka’s still a bit concerned Zuko will just fall right off of Druk at some point, so he keeps his arms securely around the slightly smaller boy’s midsection. He also doesn’t want Zuko kept alone for so long—whether Zuko would admit it or not (he wouldn’t), he needs company. Everyone needs company. And Zuko is sixteen—the company of a twelve-year-old hardly counts. Age appropriate company, Sokka thinks. Sokka needs that, too. It’s been a very long time since he’s had that. He’ll get used to Druk’s hellish weaving through the air if it means he can keep having that.

At Kyoshi Island, Zuko flopped in the sand of the beach with a groan, like he hated it there, while Aang rode his big fish and got chased by some kind of sea serpent. Momo squatted on Zuko’s chest and poked at his nose. Zuko allowed it.

The Kyoshi Warriors took them captive, but only for a short while, and then Aang was having the time of his life while Katara and Zuko moped around looking at Kyoshi artifacts. Sokka trained with the warriors (after a bit of a rough start), and then the crazy Fire Nation chick arrived.

Sokka was able to see her properly this time, without her helmet on. She was young, but nightmarish. Her angry expression is the only one Sokka has seen that could surpass Zuko’s. Her hair was shaved at the sides and pulled up into a high wolf-tail, like Zuko’s often is, and the severity of the cut only served to make her look more grave.

She set the village aflame in her fury.

With several strokes of luck however, and a lot of talent, they managed to escape and get the fires put out. Zuko had panted in front of Sokka on Druk, leaning back into his chest again. Sokka wondered if Zuko was even aware that he was doing it. “What in the name of the spirits,” he said. “She’s insane.”

“Looks to be, yup,” Sokka nodded, though Zuko couldn’t see it.

“Reminds me of Azulon.”

“The old Firelord?”

Zuko’s responding nod was jerky and uncomfortable. Sokka went to reply, but Druk suddenly swooped to fly on Appa’s other side, for whatever reason, and the drop in Sokka’s gut distracted him enough to forget.

Then Katara had gotten herself captured on a prison ship to save a bunch of earthbenders. It was completely idiotic but so unabashedly Katara, hopeful and caring Katara, and Sokka couldn’t bring himself to be upset with her. Zuko was surprisingly eager to help, though in the end he wasn’t able to do all that much apart from fight back a few of the more pathetic firebenders on the ship. He’s been getting his firebending back slowly, more slowly than he seemed to have expected, and it’s a sensitive subject. Most things with Zuko are a sensitive subject.

Sokka is mulling over who in their group is going to be the biggest disaster magnet, when the wind picks up, blowing hard enough that the tree leaves above them all shuffle together with a pleasing sound. Sokka turns his head to look over at Zuko just in time to see the leaf slip from between his fingers and blow away. Zuko doesn’t respond—just continues meditating. Sokka frowns. Zuko looks more relaxed and at peace in this moment than he’s probably ever seen him. Even on the rare occasions he’s caught Zuko sleeping, his face had still been scrunched in displeasure. But now, the gap between his eyebrow and his scar is smooth, unstrained skin, and his lips aren’t tugging downwards, instead parted slightly to let deep exhales escape.

Aang scratches his bald head. “Zuko, you lost your leaf.”

Zuko still doesn’t respond. Aang and Sokka share a look.

“Did he fall asleep?” Katara asks.

“That’d be pretty impressive,” Sokka replies. “Was that gust of wind from him?”

Aang shakes his head. “No, it felt like a natural gust.” He leans forward and blows in Zuko’s face. “Hey, you need a new leaf.”

Sokka’s brow furrows. “Aang, nudge him. Or shake him or something.”

Aang touches Zuko’s shoulder and gives him a small shake. Still no response.

“Um,” Katara says, clearly beginning to grasp the potential seriousness here. “We could dump water on him?”

“He’d kill us,” Sokka says.

Aang shakes him a little harder. “Zuko!” he yells into Zuko’s good ear. “Hey, buddy, wake up!”

“He’s still breathing, right?” Katara’s eyes are wide and alarmed.

Aang puts the back of his hand close to Zuko’s nose and mouth. “Yeah, he’s breathing normally.”

They’re continuing to discuss possible solutions to this problem they don’t understand when a voice cuts through from within the trees.

“Well, funny meeting you here.”

It’s already familiar to Sokka. Low, lilting, and feminine, but with a scary handle on projection. Her voice rings loud and clear even from a distance.

Sokka leaps to his feet and yanks his boomerang from its holster, backing up to try to shield Zuko from her view. “You,” he says.

The crazy Fire Nation chick stalks towards them.

“And you,” she says, taking a bending stance.

“Who even are you?” Sokka asks, trying to buy himself time to figure out how to deal with the very defenseless Avatar behind him.

“I am Sozana, daughter of Ursa and Firelord Ozai, princess of the Fire Nation and heir to the throne.”

“Spirits have mercy,” Sokka says, and he sheathes his boomerang again. He shoots a meaningful glance at Aang and Katara before scooping Zuko into his arms and taking off.

He hears the rush of flames and winds behind him, but they’re little compared to the roaring in his ears and the crackle of the forest floor beneath his pounding feet. He has to get Zuko away, hide with him someplace. Hopefully Aang, Katara, and their beasts will be plenty to fight off a lone princess. Princess, of all things. Of course. The Fire Nation Royal Family is a horror show, so of course they’d send the Avatar a personal ghost to be haunted by. Sokka wonders how in the world she even found them again.

Sokka trips down a small ledge that had been concealed by ferns and grumbles as he feels the beginnings of pain strike up his ankle. He’d dropped Zuko in the fall, and Zuko had simply flopped onto the ground, still completely out of it. Sokka hisses and looks around, eyes falling on the ledge again, at the small space below its overhang that’s shrouded in shadows and fronted by more ferns.

He clambers up and drags Zuko inside, limping a bit on his ankle as it burns under his weight, then settles beside him. The space under the overhang is small enough that Sokka can’t spread his legs or move in either direction without bumping into the dirt wall or Zuko, so he just folds them in front of himself before making sure Zuko’s legs are tucked in too.

Unless the Princess has some kind of tracking animal, they shouldn’t be found here. He just hopes Aang and Katara make it away from her okay.

Zuko’s body is warm against his side, and his head is lolled against the dirt and rocks to his left. His hair is falling loose from its tie, dusty in some places from their fall and with a few leaves sticking out here and there, too. Sokka runs his hands through his own hair and pulls out a twig. They’ll need a bath, later, for sure.

Zuko’s eyes snap open. Sokka may not have noticed it at first, in the corner of his eye, if it weren’t for the glow. The same white-blue as they’d been on the Princess’s ship.

“Zuko?” Sokka whispers, giving him a small nudge with his shoulder.

No response. At least the glowy eyes implies this is an Avatar thing and not a health-crisis thing. He can only hope that Zuko comes to sooner rather than later. He’d rather not have to keep carrying him around.

It’s maybe five minutes later when Zuko jolts, his eyes darkening and returning to gold as he blinks and gets his bearings.

“What—” he glances around, quickly noticing Sokka pressed beside him. “Where are we?” He’s more alert than Sokka has seen him, something like panic dancing behind his concerned expression. He goes to scoot from their crevice but Sokka throws out an arm to hold him back.

“The crazy Fire Nation chick showed up, turns out she’s a princess; you were, like, paralyzed, so I just ran with you and hid. Didn’t want to give her the chance to capture you when you couldn’t even try to fight.” He keeps his voice low, hoping Zuko will catch on and do the same.

“I was—I went somewhere. I met Avatar Kyoshi’s animal guide, a sabertooth-moose-lion. It wants me to go to Kyoshi’s shrine on the solstice. I think she has something to show me, or tell me.”

“You… met Kyoshi’s animal guide?”

Zuko nods, fervent. “The solstice is tomorrow. We have to go.”

Sokka’s nod is slower. “It’s been long enough, now, I think. Aang and Katara have probably escaped. The Princess might still be around, though.”

Zuko lights a flame in his hand. It’s red-orange, and far more vibrant and steady than what he’d been producing prior. Heat radiates from it in waves. When he smiles, it’s cutting and unfriendly. “I think I might be able to handle her this time.”

After Zuko closes his fist to douse the flame, they crawl out from under the overhang. It’s a bit of an awkward shuffle, but they quickly brush themselves off and straighten to look around the trees. It’s very still, and the usual forest-sounds like birds or insects chirping are absent.

Sokka steps up to Zuko and starts picking the leaves from his hair. Zuko flinches back at first, but when Sokka offers him an unsteady smile and shows him one of the leaves, he lets Sokka continue. Sokka’s fingers move quickly, and he barely has the time to reflect on how soft Zuko’s hair is. When he’s done, he looks at Zuko to see Zuko already watching him. As per usual, though, Zuko quickly averts his gaze, this time with a light dusting of pink on his cheeks.

“Here,” Zuko says, whispers almost, and he tugs a torn bit of leaf from Sokka’s hair, too.

Sokka can’t bring himself to look away. Zuko looks gentle and vulnerable like this, as though his weird sabertooth-moose-lion meditation has lingering after-effects. Sokka finds himself wanting to know what Zuko’s scar feels like beneath the pads of his fingers.

“We should…” Zuko says, motioning around them. His voice is distinctly uncomfortable.

“Go, right,” Sokka fills in, rolling his shoulders to pop them and nodding to himself. “Keep an eye out for the crazy princess.”

They creep back the way they came, and after a short walk Zuko points to their right. “It’s Druk,” he murmurs, then whisper-shouts, “Druk, over here!”

The dragon quickly worms its way through the trees and bumps its snout against Zuko in greeting. Momo is sitting on one of his horns, chattering down at Zuko. Momo’s preference for Zuko has been a point of playful tension between Zuko and Aang, but Sokka just thinks it’s sweet.

“Where are Aang and Katara, Druk?” Zuko asks. The dragon lets out a low rumble in response and shakes out his head, causing Momo to squawk and leap onto Zuko’s shoulder. “Can you take us to them?” Zuko asks.

Druk lowers down to let Sokka and Zuko onto his neck easier. Sokka’s ankle still stings from his fall earlier, and Zuko has to manhandle him a little to get him positioned behind him. When they’re settled, Zuko pulls Momo from his shoulder and into his lap, then says, “Take us to them, Druk.”

Druk slinks through the woods back towards their camp, and since Sokka’s arms are already around Zuko, he pets at Momo as they go. “I hope they’re okay,” Sokka says quietly.

“They will be. They have to be,” Zuko replies, sounding more like he’s trying to convince himself than Sokka.

The camp is scorched, and their belongings are strewn all over. Aang is there, though, gathering their things and throwing them onto Appa’s saddle. When he notices them, he exhales in relief. “Sokka, Zuko! Thank goodness you’re okay.”

Sokka nods and drops down from Druk, wincing a little when he lands too heavily on his bad ankle. “Where’s Katara?”

Aang’s face screws up with worry. “Sozana took her. I tried to stop it, but she set Appa on fire and I had to put it out—”

Zuko startles, and Sokka follows his worried gaze to Appa. The fur is singed along his backside and tail, but it doesn’t look like it went beyond that. “Is he okay?” Zuko asks, gripping Druk’s mane. Druk saunters over and sniffs at the blackened fur.

“Yeah,” Aang says, “I put it out before it could actually burn him. But we need to go quick if we’re gonna catch up to Katara. I don’t know where Sozana came from or what she’ll do to her.” He looks like he’s about to cry.

Sokka takes out his boomerang. “Which way did they go?”

Aang points to where the princess had initially come out of the trees.

After quickly throwing the rest of their stuff into Appa’s saddle, Aang takes his place on the bison’s head, while Sokka crawls back up onto Druk. “Let’s go,” he says.


They do. Appa flies just over the trees while Druk advances through them. Part of the way in, Sokka squeezes Zuko’s hips without thinking. “If something happens to her—”

“It won’t,” Zuko says, and the furious edge to his voice is enough to make Sokka believe him.

What the princess could want with Katara, Sokka has no idea. But he thinks he might have an answer to his earlier question of who the biggest disaster magnet of their group will be. With the princess on their trail specifically looking for him, and with the possibility of even more Fire Nation nut-jobs eventually trying to seek him out, it has got to be Zuko.

The boy’s lucky he has Avatar-based plot armor, but even more lucky for the fresh group of friends here to back him up. Sokka smiles at the thought and is glad that Zuko can’t see it.

Chapter Text

Druk and Appa lead them to Katara and the princess with ease. Druk slinks up to a rocky beach along a small river where the princess is guiding a hand-cuffed Katara into a little boat. Just as Zuko spots them, Katara does a clever duck and spin that sends an—admittedly clumsy, but still rather large—splash of water onto the unsuspecting princess, who lets out an unseemly roar of rage.

Katara uses this time to sprint onto shore, still cuffed, and she spots Zuko and Sokka with wide eyes and then a grateful smile.

Sokka leaps off of Druk with his boomerang already raised, and Zuko follows a close step behind. Sokka is still limping slightly—Zuko hopes he’s wise enough to stick to ranged attacks and not attempt to engage in hand-to-hand combat.

Appa touches down nearby and Aang springs to action as well, just as the princess lunges and sends a pillar of flame surging towards Sokka. Zuko throws Sokka to the side and cuts the fire down the center. It burns out around him.

“Don’t you want your necklace, little girl?” the princess calls to Katara, who pauses before spinning on her heel.

“Does it look like we’re trying to run?” Katara says back, rooting her stance. Aang does the same beside her.

“Operation retrieve necklace, got it,” Sokka says, still trying to right his balance after Zuko had shoved him. Zuko winces at how Sokka’s now keeping all of his weight off his injured ankle.

“I’d have given it to you willingly and without hurting your friends if you’d just given me the Avatar,” the princess snarls, and her next attack is aimed at Katara.

Aang bats it away easily with a twirl of his staff.

“The Avatar is my friend,” Katara declares.

Zuko uses the princess’s moment of distraction to dart forward into a slide, slipping quickly on the loose stones, and then he shifts his weight onto his hands. In less than a second he’s kicking out his legs and whirling them low across the ground, a burst of flame flowing out towards the princess’s feet.

It’s a move he’d learned when he’d studied non-bending close combat in his childhood and early teenage years, meant to break your opponent’s stance and send them sprawling. His father had held a lot of disdain for him learning what was considered a foot-soldier’s form, but he’d been able to incorporate a lot of the moves into his firebending, giving him a unique edge of unpredictability in battle.

It works. The princess stumbles back from the fire at her feet and ends up crashing backwards into the shallow trickle of water. Zuko leaps up and stands over her, putting one foot to her chest and igniting his hands with daggers.

“The necklace, if you would,” he says.

She glares up at him, eyes alight with spite. Her voice is low and quiet as she says, “I see you’ve regained your strength. I’m not just going to give you the necklace. You’ll have to take it from me, Uncle.”

Zuko’s face screws up with distaste as he realizes what she’s saying. Of course—she’s a Fire Nation princess. Would that make her Ozai’s daughter, then? Spirits, that’s strange. He responds just as lowly as she had, saying, “So be it, Niece.” He hopes he’s able to inject the same amount of disdain into his words, even at their hushed volume.

He crouches down, putting more weight over her, and holds one of his flaming daggers near her face while his other hand, no longer on fire, digs through her pockets. She cringes away from the heat and spits up at him, but it doesn’t land. The glob of saliva ends up near his foot on her armored chest.

He finds what he thinks is a key, and presses it into his palm as he keeps searching. “That wasn’t very befitting of a princess,” he says, and there it is—his fingers close around a loop of ribbon. He pulls it and the key from her pocket in a tight fist, glancing briefly at the necklace where it hangs down.

He shouldn’t have looked away. The princess has a ball of fire in one of her hands and she grasps his wrist with it and hangs on.

There’s an amount of time where Zuko’s inner flame will suppress the burning, but as Zuko has previously learned, that amount of time does not last long. He attempts to wrangle himself free, but then the princess’s other hand is similarly gripping his ankle.

He cries out as the pain sets in and knees her with his free leg in what turns out to be her groin. She lets out a hearty oomf and her grips loosen. As Zuko shoves himself back and away, Katara appears on his right and crashes another small wave onto the princess. She shrieks in fury again, but the group has enough time to saddle onto their animals and take off.

As they fly away, Zuko can hear the princess’s continued, desperate screams.

. . .

They land a couple miles away to move Zuko and Sokka from Druk onto Appa, where, after Zuko uses the key he’d grabbed to unchain Katara, and after she’s put her necklace back on, she and Sokka begin tending to Zuko’s fresh burns. Sokka is working at Zuko’s ankle where the burn is a less severe, following along with what Katara does. Zuko just grimaces and bites his tongue.

“They might be second degree,” Katara says, her face scrunched in thought, “but I don’t really know how to tell, or what that would mean for treatment.”

Zuko shrugs. “They’re really not that bad.”

Sokka scoffs and rolls his eyes. Meanwhile, Aang gets Appa back into the air, and Druk follows diligently.

Katara says, “This one might scar.”

“Oh, no,” Zuko deadpans, looking up at the sky, “not an easily-concealable scar. How will I cope?”

Sokka cocks his head. “Hey, that was almost a joke. Did everyone hear that? Zuko almost made a joke.”

“Please note that it was at your sister’s expense,” Zuko grunts.

“Duly,” Sokka nods, then smiles.

Zuko looks over to Aang on Appa’s head. “Back to Kyoshi Island, Aang. Need to be there by tomorrow.”

Aang quickly changes his course. “What’s on Kyoshi?”

“Apparently,” Sokka butts in, “Kyoshi herself.”

Zuko hisses as Katara rubs some kind of salve on a particularly singed spot, then explains what he’d already told Sokka about the sabertooth-moose-lion and the solstice. He adds a few additional details this time, though. “I think I was… maybe in the Spirit World? I was kind of blue, and I was standing right next to myself, but none of you could see or hear me. And then the moose-lion showed up, and I climbed onto it and we… went through a weird tunnel? To Kyoshi Island. Then I had a vision at the shrine. Kyoshi was there, and it was the solstice, and there was a big ball of fire in the sky.”

“So Aang gave you a leaf and it imbued you with creepy spirit powers. Got it,” Sokka says.

“That’s incredible!” Aang hops around to face them properly. “I didn’t know Kyoshi had a sabertooth-moose-lion.”

“Is that really the detail to focus on, here?” Katara chides, beginning to bandage Zuko’s arm. Sokka follows suit on his ankle. Zuko grimaces again. The burns are beginning to do that thing where they seem to be heating up in waves, progressively stinging more and more like he’s getting burned all over again. He wishes Katara would splash more cold water on them.

“It also looked like you got your firebending back!” Aang says.

Zuko nods. “Feels like it, yeah.”

“How will you talk to Kyoshi? Meditate again?”

“No idea. Maybe. Probably. I’ll figure it out when we get there.” Zuko sighs as Katara finishes her wrapping.

She looks down at Sokka’s work and sighs too. “Move,” she says. “That’s too loose, and it’s messy. I’ll need to redo it.”

“Hey,” Sokka says. “I think I was doing a great job.”

“Uh-huh. I’ll take a look at your ankle after I’m done with this one, but I’m not sure what to do exactly except ice it.”

When Katara peels back Sokka’s attempt at bandaging, Zuko can’t hold back his groan. It feels like his skin is being peeled off with it.

“Sorry, sorry.” Katara bites her lip. “I’m almost done, I promise.”

After a few minutes, she sits back and peers at Zuko. “All finished,” she declares, and her fingers trail along the necklace at her throat. Zuko avoids her gaze by inspecting his new bandages. A second or two later, there are arms around him, gentle but firm. He gasps and squirms, but Katara only squeezes him tighter. “Thank you for getting my necklace back,” she whispers at his ear. Zuko falls slack. She releases him a moment later, but the sensation of her touch lingers, and Zuko can only stare at her careful hands as she starts to inspect Sokka’s swelling ankle. He remembers, then, what she’d said to the princess—The Avatar is my friend. Is that true? Are they friends?

Maybe some day, Zuko thinks. But not now. Friendship requires trust. And Katara and Sokka have already betrayed him and Aang once. He hasn’t seen enough yet to trust that they won’t do it again.

And, he doesn’t know all that much about having friends, but he feels like there are certain things he needs to disclose before friendship becomes an option. It’s silly, perhaps, but he remembers the time he told Aang about what he’d gone through in the palace, and he remembers Aang’s response, and he remembers that night as the moment when he and Aang truly began forging their bond. No, he may not know much of friendship, but he believes it’s only fair that friends should know the chapters of life that preluded their meeting. After all, Sokka and Katara have told Zuko of the raids on the Southern Water Tribe, of their mother’s death, of their father’s departure. The chapters that led them to being alone on a canoe, to finding the iceberg, to meeting Zuko and Aang. Can he trust them with his own?

He can’t think of any reason not to; there doesn’t seem to be any way for them to use such honesty for their own gain. The worst that could happen would be them pitying him. Aang hadn’t pitied him—he’d reassured him. You did the right thing. It was wrong that you were punished for doing the right thing. Would Sokka and Katara do something similar?

He shivers from the breeze, and his fingers skim across his upper arm where Katara had reached as she’d embraced him.

“Oh, sure,” Sokka says, drawing Zuko from his thoughts. “She gets to hug you, but when I have to hold onto you for purely practical safety purposes on Druk, you basically bite and spit at me.”

Zuko glares and turns to lean against the edge of the saddle, watching Druk as he twists through the clouds. “You don’t just hold,” Zuko tells Sokka. “You cling.”

. . .

The warriors and villagers of Kyoshi are hesitant but friendly when the group arrives the next day. Zuko supposes that’s fair, considering what happened last time they were here. Katara explains the situation to them, and a warrior named Suki takes them to the shrine.

It’s a small building with a plated roof held up by pillars, settled on a circular formation of cobbled stones. Zuko finds it peaceful, with a similar air as the courtyard in the palace with the turtle-duck pond. The sun is almost setting as he sits centered facing the back wall, hands cupped in front of him as usual. The rest of the group stays on the circle of stones outside where Suki had asked them to wait quietly, but they’re not particularly quiet. Zuko can hear them whispering.

He almost says something to get them to shut up, but then he feels a warm glow in his chest, as though his inner flame is surging outwards. His mouth falls open slightly as he exhales, and then he’s surrounded by white.

It’s a mountain peak, really, but there are so many bright clouds surrounding them that Zuko’s eyes take a long moment to adjust. As he blinks, a figure comes into view.

Looming, wide-shouldered, and fierce, she strides towards him with unparalleled grace.

“Avatar Zuko,” Kyoshi says. Her voice is deep and bold. “I’m grateful you received my message.”

Zuko nods and bows in the traditional Fire Nation style, with the sign of the flame. “Avatar Kyoshi. Thank you for… sending for me.” He clears his throat. He very suddenly comprehends why Kyoshi was so feared in her time. Her presence alone is intimidating, even beyond her height. He’s never been very skilled at dealing with authority figures, and just from meeting her he already thinks Kyoshi may be the most authoritative person he’s ever met.

Kyoshi regards him with a steady gaze. “I sent for you to divulge vital information. Come summer’s end, Sozin’s Comet will return, and Firelord Ozai will end this war once and for all.”

“What?” Zuko startles. “How?”

“I cannot say,” Kyoshi says, bowing her head. “But if you do not master all of the elements and kill Ozai before then, not even the Avatar will be able to restore balance to the world.”

“Kill—” Zuko shakes his head. “I’m not a murderer, Avatar Kyoshi—I—”

She cuts him off. “As the Avatar it is your job to do what must be done to restore balance.”

“But—”

“Wouldn’t you like to save those that you care for?”

Zuko pauses, blinks, and swallows. Thinks of Aang and of Druk. Thinks of how Aang already cares so much for Katara, and of how Katara cares so much for Sokka. “I—yes. Of course.”

“Then why do you question me?” she asks, giving a slow, unyielding wave of her hand in his direction.

Zuko folds his arms across his chest as he looks away, a bit embarrassed. He hopes the heat in his cheeks doesn’t show on his skin. After a moment, he quietly asks, “Did you kill people, Avatar Kyoshi?”

“I did what must be done.”

“How many times?”

“I kept balance for two hundred and fourteen years, Avatar Zuko.”

The air shifts around them in a soft caress of wind. Zuko’s eyes burn up at her. He asks again, almost reverently this time, “How many times?”

“I did not keep track.”

They gaze at each other, and Kyoshi’s eyes soften slightly as she watches the understanding unfold across Zuko’s face. When he nods, it’s resolute and determined. “I’ll do it,” he says. “I’ll do whatever I need to do. To keep people safe.”

Something swells inside him. Honor, he thinks, for being a reincarnation of Avatar Kyoshi. He looks at her and sees brilliance, strength, resilience. He burns with the desire to stand like she does: taller than life, unerringly confident, almost holy in her power.

They continue to stare at each other, expressions shifting as the mood does. The turn of her lips is slight but pleased. Zuko’s next breath is shaky with pride. Kyoshi says, “You may find difficulty mastering all of the elements as quickly as you need to, Avatar Zuko. I have already witnessed your struggle with air.”

He looks away again. “I don’t know what I’m doing wrong. I don’t think I can do it.”

“You have done it before, Avatar Zuko. You can do it again.” She pauses in thought, then continues. “I find that sometimes working alone can be a great aid for learning. Come at the elements from your own angle first. Then supplement with your masters’ teachings.”

“My own angle,” Zuko repeats, mostly to himself. He had always found his time in solitary training and studies the most rewarding as a child. It’s certainly worth giving a shot now.

She nods. “If you find yourself requiring additional guidance, Avatar Zuko, I and our predecessors are here for you. Simply reach out, and we will come forth.”

“Reach out?”

“I trust you will find your way,” she says. She then stares out over the mountainside, eyes narrow. “The sun has almost set in your world. We must part ways for now.”

“I—thank you, Avatar Kyoshi. I promise I’ll do everything I can.”

She smiles again, just as small as before. “I know you will.”