Chapter Text
Zuko stirred from a deep sleep.
His room was quiet, the dim remnants of a fire smoldering nearby, no sign of dawn in the windows. It was nearing fall, the days short, the mornings chilled.
It was even earlier this time.
Zuko got out of bed carefully, silently, not wishing to disturb the palace. His guards were wide awake outside, accustomed to the night shift. No one was particularly surprised to see him at this hour. It was an unfortunate reality. Sleeplessness.
He wandered the garden his uncle had built in the courtyard. It was new, tea saplings tucked into fresh soil, immaculate bricks running through them.
A peaceful place, tainted by his lingering paranoia. His head was fuzzy, unfocused. He touched the tea leaves, found them too soft, too smooth. Strange.
When he rounded the corner, one of the ornate benches was occupied.
His father sat there, waiting.
XxXxX
“Zuko.”
He opened his eyes again. In the real world this time. His dreams abruptly vanished, replaced by his bedroom, the light of dawn pouring through the windows, his girlfriend hovering over him.
She had been tapping his shoulder, “I’ve never seen you sleep in before.”
Mai was one of the only people his guards let through without invitation. Most were helpless to stop her and weary to give it a shot. She never gave the illusion of weakness, wearing a scowl, always armed.
“What time is it?” he groaned, dragging himself up.
“More bad dreams?”
He ignored the question. “How late am I?”
“Your meeting is in an hour.” Her expression barely changed, but Zuko could see she was annoyed. Mai always noticed when he was dodging topics, and she had been digging at that one for a while.
She often arrived at dawn and woke him from long nightmares.
While he dressed, he spared a detail, “It was the garden again.”
Mai was prepping a new bandage for his abdomen, where a lightning bolt had nearly put a hole through him. “Oh? Perhaps your uncle would build something else there if you told him.”
Zuko watched himself in the mirror, hated the starburst of scar tissue that had puckered around his wound. Sometimes he felt the ghost of it surging through his body, a lifelong reminder of his sister. Ozai had marked him on the outside, and Azula on the inside. He would never be free of them.
He said, “No.”
She shrugged, sighed, wrapped the new bandage around him.
“What?”
Mai said, “You know I’m not the superstitious type, but some dreams do have meaning.”
“You’ve been spending too much time with Uncle.”
“Have you told him?”
“I’m not going to,” Zuko said. “And neither are you. Let him have his garden, and some peace. He deserves it, after everything I’ve put him through.”
A war.
An endless quest to capture the Avatar.
So much heartbreak and betrayal.
Zuko had spat in the face of all the patience and love his uncle had given him. When he thought about it too much, he was almost overwhelmed by the shame. It was another life now, meant to be far away, but those wounds would take longer to heal than the physical ones.
Mai said nothing more of it, helping him into his last robe.
It was emblazoned with the emblem of his nation. Fire. He had changed the design somewhat, not wishing to wear the same royal robes as his father and grandfather. Zuko chose a paler red with a golden sash across the waist. His crown was the same, tucked into his carefully rolled hair.
Zuko was glad to find the palace open and sunny. It let him forget the man sitting in the garden. He needed all of his focus for his first meeting as the Fire Lord.
He led the way. Mai looped her arm through his, fearless when it came to showing how she felt for him these days. It was complicated in the past.
Zuko wanted to appear kind, just, worthy of his new title, but not weak, not easy to manipulate. His long conversations with his uncle – mostly Uncle talking, Zuko listening – helped him understand his new role in the world. He had a people again, after years in exile, and they were all looking to him to forge a world without war.
Nearly everyone born before the war was dead already, leaving multiple generations who had never known peace.
It would all be easier to figure out if his people weren’t responsible for it.
No.
Uncle kept trying to cement that idea in his head. It was not the Fire Nation, as a whole, as a people, who had caused so much suffering. He could not blame the masses for the actions of his ancestors, for the actions of soldiers and elites.
Zuko was in a precarious situation, trying to change his own views and the views of the world.
“Try to relax,” Mai was saying, as they approached the meeting room. It was the same place his father held war meetings, where he challenged Zuko to a duel and then stole half his face.
Zuko paused, “Do I not look relaxed?”
“You look angry.”
He tried to control his face. “I’m doing my best. How is this?”
She grimaced, “Now you look sick. Are you feeling okay?”
“I’m fine. How do I look normal?”
“Maybe start with getting some sleep,” she said, and when he frowned, she added, “Stop squinting, stand up straight.”
“I’m not squinting. This is how I always look. It’s just my face.”
“Okay. You don’t have to be so touchy.”
Zuko groaned.
She smiled, leaned in to kiss him, to straighten the front of his robe, “I’ve never seen you get stage fright before. It’s kinda cute.”
Zuko glanced around, made sure they were alone, “I want to make the right impression.”
“They know who you are already, Zuko.”
“They think they know.”
“You’ll be great, because you are great.” She kissed him again, stepped back. “I’ll be around, when you’re done impressing everyone.”
Zuko took a deep breath, wished, for a moment, that he could take her with him. Would that be uncouth? His mother was never invited to discussions with his father, and the other leaders probably left their spouses at home – and he and Mai were not even married. She was the closest person to real family he had left, apart from his uncle Iroh.
He stepped into the meeting room alone.
Aang was still just a bald boy with an arrow tattooed on his head. He looked just as he had the day that Zuko was inaugurated as Fire Lord, when they stood together and announced that a new era had dawned. But there was something older about him, wiser, shaped by the trials of war. He had aged years in just a few short months, grown taller, his face broader, his eyes darker. He had been making decisions no kid his age should ever face.
His personality remained as bubbly as ever.
He sprang up and rushed Zuko, embracing him, a gust of air sweeping the banisters to the side. Aang was the last of his kind, the last airbender, the last of the people the Fire Nation had tried to exterminate, and yet he was the friendliest, sweetest person Zuko had ever met.
Zuko smiled, returned the embrace.
“It’s been too long,” Aang said.
“It’s been a week.”
Katara waved from her comfy spot across the room, smiling, seated amongst her people in the pale blue robes of the Water Tribe. “I keep telling him that, but time moves faster in his head.”
Zuko smiled at her, too, forgetting his dreams, his restlessness, at seeing the people who had helped him find the good in himself. He took a seat at the head of the table, with Aang on his right. It was customary, since they were meeting in his palace.
Earth King Kuei was next to Aang, holding himself dignified and straight-backed. He had a pinched, angled face, a thin body, a sour expression. Zuko had to remind himself that leaders did not have to be physically powerful – because Kuei would stand no chance against anyone else in the room if a fight broke out. The Earth Kingdom had suffered for decades and Kuei had only very recently become anything more than a figurehead. His absence and stupidity during the war were noted by the other nations, and so he was grasping for validation. His trust would be the hardest to gain, the hardest to keep.
The others would be easier.
Hakoda was the Chief of the Southern Water Tribe – and the father of Katara and her brother, Sokka. He sat with his daughter, lacking hostility despite the near extinction of his people – and the murder of his wife – at the hands of the Fire Nation. His opinion of Zuko was influenced by his rescue from a Fire Nation prison, and the relationship Zuko had built with his children. He found trust through them.
His parallel, the Chief of the Northern Water Tribe, sat across from Hakoda at the table. Arnook. He had lost his daughter to the war very recently, and deep, sad lines ate into his face. It seemed he had also laid his grievances in the past, preferring to focus on the future.
It was a gathering of people who had been through much hardship, strife, and so they were all beginning on equal footing, with the same dream of peace.
Aang was the first to speak, a big smile on his face. “I’m happy that everyone could come.”
Kuei cut in, though it was clear that Aang had been about to go on. “I would like to bring up the first discussion. There are Fire Nation colonies occupying Earth Kingdom land, and countless refugees in Ba Sing Se.”
Zuko had been prepared for this. His advisors warned him that this would be the most significant problem of his new position. He had prepared his response already.
Aang seemed unbothered by the interruption, taking it with grace, as always. “Yes, there are. I’ve been thinking about the colonies. I want to hear what you think first, Lord Zuko.”
Zuko eased his temper, instinctually defiant to the way the Earth King looked at him. He wanted these people to see him as something more than a hotheaded boy – a leader, capable of grace and composure. He said, “I want to bring the Fire Nation citizens back home and disband the colonies.”
Kuei looked surprised, perhaps expecting a fight.
“Understand, though,” Zuko said, “We need time to make this happen. We need to have a place for them to go and allocate resources to getting them back to the Fire Nation.”
Now the need for authority came out of the Earth King. He curled his lip, “I believe that, with the war over, the colonies should be disbanded immediately. Why should the refugees in Ba Sing Se suffer even a day longer?”
“So you would make refugees of my people, instead?”
“It seems deserved, after so long occupying the homes of my people.”
Zuko had trouble containing his tone. It slipped into aggression. “I’ll take the time I need to bring them home safely. Most of the colonists were sent there after the towns-”
“After my people were slaughtered?” Kuei cut in. “And your people lived in their homes with their spirits with no remorse.”
Zuko was prepared to say something he might regret.
Aang finally spoke, his voice soft and thoughtful. “I agree that the colonies need to be disbanded, and I agree with Lord Zuko that it will take time to do it. I understand that your people have suffered,” he looked at Kuei, “But doing the same thing to the Fire Nation citizens would accomplish nothing. We want peace, so we have to right the wrongs of the past, not retaliate for things that happened during the war.”
It was almost eerie, the way that Aang took control of the escalating conversation. His presence was strong, but peaceful, a mark of his upbringing as a monk. He made sense, left no room for objection, but there was no need for validation or power in him.
Kuei sat back, like a boy being scolded.
Zuko simply nodded.
“Good,” Aang said. “I know that these kinds of things will take time, but the colonies will be disbanded, and the refuges will return to their homes. We all want the same thing.”
Once it was clear that both Kuei and Zuko had nothing more to say, Aang said, “Okay, who else wants to say something?”
Arnook spoke up, addressing Aang respectfully, “I’m sending resources to rebuild the Southern Water Tribe. We almost lost them entirely to the war.”
Hakoda nodded to Arnook, said, “Our people will recover. We have suffered greatly for many years, but the spirit of our people lives on through our traditions, and waterbenders such as my daughter, Katara.”
Katara was beaming. When they met, she was the sole surviving waterbender in the south.
It was a peaceful meeting, after the talk of colonies.
Once he got his way, Kuei was more pleasant. He seemed to have great respect for Aang, and the three of them laid out a timeline for the removal of the colonies over the next few months, starting with the most recent occupations. A few more details were discussed about cleaning up the machinery the war left behind, about establishing meeting times, places. Hakoda and Arnook departed first, eager to begin rebuilding the relationship between their tribes, and Kuei lingered.
“I’ve received hundreds of letters,” Zuko said to the Earth King. “People in the colonies are eager to come back to the Fire Nation. Many of them were sent there under orders because their spouses were soldiers.”
Kuei nodded gravely, “Yes, I’m sorry for what I said earlier. Avatar Aang was right. We have the same goal.”
When the meeting disbanded, Aang and Katara lingered. Aang had no specific pledges to follow through on at the moment, though they were bound for the North Pole to guard supplies being sent south. Katara wanted to personally see to the reconstruction of her shattered homeland.
“How is your stomach?” Aang wondered, pausing to admire a tapestry, “Is this new?”
“Yes. We have a vault below the palace. Father preferred bare walls – or seeing his own face everywhere. I wanted to return to how it was before the war.”
“I’ve never seen this story before.”
Zuko had memorized the story on the tapestry by now, enchanted by it the moment he found it. “A lot of our history was neglected. I’ll have it taught in schools again. When I was young, everything we learned was about war, how the Fire Nation was superior, how we were saving the world.”
Katara strolled up behind them, having stopped more often to look at artwork, “You’ve come a long way, Zuko.”
“You didn’t answer me,” Aang said. “How is your stomach?”
He was worried. It was natural for him.
Katara was the reason he was injured. He dove to protect her from his sister, took a lightning bolt to the gut, holding the energy inside. It ricocheted within him, searing his muscles, causing the kind of pain that made him wish it had killed him.
Zuko put his hand reflexively to his abdomen, said, “Better, thanks to you, Katara.”
“I figured I owed you,” she said, smiling.
Aang was thrilled to see the courtyard being renovated.
Every brick had been uprooted, new soil laid down, the banners removed. A few workers were laying a curving path of stones nearby.
“Uncle wants to grow his own tea here,” Zuko explained.
“Is this where you fought Azula?” Aang said.
Zuko nodded. “It used to be a garden, a long time ago. After my mother… My father had it torn down and turned into a sparring ground. Uncle told me their mother grew tea here.”
“Sometimes I forget how long your family has lived here.”
I don’t.
Zuko had been down in the depths of the palace, storing the things his father had displayed, curating the artifacts of his people. He wanted to make the palace into something representative of their long history, their past accomplishments, the culture that had shaped them into what they were before the war, and what they were now.
His family stretched back into the ages, on and on.
“So, I guess we’ll see you around,” Aang said as they came upon the front doors. “Katara and I are helping get supplies to the Southern Water Tribe for now. When you’re ready to start relocating the colonies, we’ll help with that, too.”
“I’m departing for Makapu in the morning,” Zuko said. “I want to visit as many colonies as I can to discuss the future with them.”
“It really is a whole new world,” Aang said, a touch of reverence in his voice, in his wide eyes.
It almost seemed impossible, to be standing there with him.
Katara hugged Zuko, holding on tightly. She said, “Let me know if you need me to heal you again.”
“I will. Thank you.”
When they were gone, and the caravans had left, and the palace courtyard was quiet again, Zuko finally breathed easily. He had made the right choices today, and the others seemed to all have the same goals in mind. Peace. He had to keep the peace.