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Chapter Text

When Zuko was nine, his cousin died. He had three friends other than his sister, and his cousin had been one of them. His father tried to seize the throne after Lu Ten's death. He succeeded. When Zuko was twelve, his father burned him in front of a crowd for being disrespectful and speaking out of turn. When Zuko was twelve, his father banished him for his disrespect and speaking out of turn.

The Wani had been on the water for two weeks. Two weeks since Zuko had the title of Prince and his honor stripped from him publicly. One week since he'd awoken from short coma to find himself on an old ship headed out of the Fire Nation. He vaguely remembered Mai coming to visit him as he stirred once after the duel, to say goodbye. But he hadn't been fully awake and he'd fallen back to unconscious seconds later.

It was a small crew aboard the ship, only about twenty people excluding Zuko. He could only remember the names of Yozu, the second youngest person aboard other than Zuko, a sixteen-year-old young man, and Jee, an old lieutenant who seemed to walk in at times to check how the young former prince was doing. Most of the crew seemed to care for each other, especially for Zuko, who had been pronounced captain by Fire Lord Ozai.

The Fire Lord had told the young boy that he could only return if he found the Avatar and delivered him to the Fire Nation. But Zuko wasn't stupid. He knew father was mocking him. The Avatar had been gone for nearly a hundred years, he wasn't about to reappear now. Father had just meant to give him something to do while he was banished, a stupid quest that would make him chase a nonexistent person. The Avatar cycle had ended with Roku and everyone knew it. Zuko wasn't stupid enough to become a dog chasing its own tail for the rest of his life.

Despite everything, he couldn't help but yearn for father's love, after all, the Fire Lord had done nothing wrong. It was all Zuko's fault. He'd spoken out of place, he'd snuck into that meeting, he'd disrespected father and all the man had done was teach him a lesson. But it stung that he hadn't even visited Zuko, all he'd done was left a letter informing of the conditions of his banishment. Zuko had burned the letter and cried himself to sleep that night.

Father didn't want him back. It didn't matter. He was still loyal to the Fire Nation. He would go to the Earth Kingdom and take it over himself, make father proud of him. Village by village, raid by raid, he would burn it to the ground. But first, he needed to visit the Air Temples, not to find the Avatar, but if there was a slight chance anyone had survived...a quick trip couldn't hurt him. He wanted to see the Air Temples' ancient military either way.

A rapid knock interrupted his thoughts.

"Come in." Zuko rasped.

It was Yozu and another crew member whom Zuko didn't know the name of. They both bowed. Zuko dipped shortly back. "Your maje- Uhm, Captain, we're approaching the edges of the Fire Nation and we're wondering where to go from there."

The way the crew member quickly corrected himself from saying your majesty hurt. Not as bad as the wound on his face he'd been getting treated, but it stung, a reminder of his stripped honor. He was no longer a prince, he was a traitor now. He blanked for a second. This was really happening. He was really being banished. He really couldn't return. He could feel tears well in his eyes, but he couldn't cry in front of his crew, he wouldn't allow himself to.

Hurriedly, he sniffled attempting to disguise it as a cough, rubbing the unshed tears from his eye. The other eye stung viciously, he probably would have been screaming if it weren't for the healing ointments and pain suppressors.

"Well, if we're to search for the Avatar," The young former prince managed to choke out, ignoring the way Yozu and and the crew member exchanged glances. "The Air Temples would be a good place to start. Uh, I'm sorry, what's your name? Not Yozu, uh...you."

He wasn't getting less awkward. Always stupid and stuttering and never knowing what to say. Father would have chastised him, told him to speak properly, but father wasn't here. Father didn't want him. Father was right not to want him, it was Zuko's fault either way. Zuko had been disrespected. He deserved the pain. He deserved this banishment. He deserved to be taught a lesson, and father was doing exactly that. Zuko couldn't exactly blame him.

The crew member dipped into another bow. It was customary in the Fire Nation to bow. The servants bowed to the royalty and nobility, the royalty and nobility bowed to each other, the workers bowed to each other, they bowed as a thank you, a hello, a goodbye, they bowed as a sign of respect, they bowed during mealtimes, they bowed when praying to Agni, they bowed as they started and finished meditating, they bowed during duels, they bowed a lot. There was rarely an interaction that didn't involve bowing.

"Saigo, your- it's Saigo, sir." The crew member said. "We'll inform the others to start heading for the Air Temples."

Zuko nodded respectfully, "Thank you, Saigo."

Saigo and Yozu headed off, Zuko pretended not to see the pitiful looks on their faces. They probably thought he was stupid or naïve to go after the avatar. They weren't wrong. Zuko wasn't going after the Avatar, he was more interested in the history of the Air Nomads. His tutors would always tell him about how the Fire Nation how fought valiantly against the Air Nomads' military technology.

His scar burned under its bandages. He needed a change probably, but he didn't want to admit he needed help. He didn't need any help. He was strong. He was going to be strong and prove father wrong. Father was almost never wrong, but he would be wrong about this. Zuko needed him to be wrong about this so he could go home.

Surely, if father saw his strength, he would be allowed back home. But there was no way to prove himself to father, but he would do it. After all, it had been Zuko's fault, Zuko deserved to be punished, that's what father had said and father was never wrong.

---

Father was wrong. The Air Nomads had no military. There had been no fight, there had been no equal chance, there had been no killing in the name of justice. It had been a genocide. A massacre of the masses, cold-blooded murder. The bodies hadn't even been buried or dealt with. In the Fire Nation, they burnt their deceased, saving their ashes as to never let their memory die.

The young former prince stared in horror at the sight, grimacing as he felt something crack under his step. A small skull, no bigger than Zuko's hand, was under his skull. The boy shuddered, the skull was charred. It was so small too. It had probably belonged to a child younger than Zuko. The crew of The Wani gaped as they watched the leaves twirl beyond the scattered bones and bodies of the peaceful monks that had lived in these very temples.

Some of the older crew members’ faces hardened as their gazes flew past the hundreds of bones spread across the room.

It took all the power Zuko had in him not to cry. His tutors had lied, father had lied. Did anyone else know? Had mother known? Had Uncle known? Father and Grandfather surely must have known. For the first time in his life, Zuko started questioning if father was truly good.

---

"Rise and fight, Prince Zuko!"

"I won't fight you!"

"You will learn respect and suffering will be your teacher!"

---

Zuko woke gasping heavily, sweating and crying. His wound burned, searing pain, like his face was on fire again. He could hear screaming, his throat was raw, and it took the young boy several seconds to realize the screaming was his own. Tears blurred his vision. He couldn't see out of his wound, probably because it was bandaged. All his hearing from that side was muffled too. Hopefully it wouldn't be permanent.

Despite his reduced hearing, he could make out the muffled noises of knocking on the door. Zuko didn't have time to give them a response because they barged in without another second wasted. If he was back in the palace, nobody would be allowed to enter his chambers without permission except for the Fire Lord and Fire Lady, not even Azula, despite the fact that she did on numerous occasions. But he wasn't in the palace. He was on a ship in the middle of nowhere with a bunch of sailors.

It was the crew's healer, a veteran soldier and fisherman who'd taken up the art of healing after the trauma and death he'd witnessed in the war. Zuko didn't know his name either. With him, walked in Lieutenant Jee. Of all the people in the crew, Jee was one of the more reluctant ones towards the hunt of the Avatar. But Zuko hadn't told them yet that he'd already given up on the quest before it had began.

The healer was saying something, but Zuko couldn't hear him, everyone around him was underwater. All he could hear was the sound of the applause and cheers as his father pressed a flaming hand to his face. The healer gently pushed Zuko back into bed. The boy hadn't even realized he was standing until he was lying back down, staring at the mirror ahead of his bed. Slowly, his bandages were removed. Zuko was going to be sick.

His wound was certainly going to scar. Badly. He'd always known, but he'd denied at first. Now, seeing himself in the mirror unbandaged...there was no denying it.

It was red, angry, and bubbling, in the shape of a mutilated hand. His eye was damaged horrendously and then Zuko realized he could barely see out of it, even with the bandages removed. Thick layers of damaged skin wrinkled, still raw from it being a fresh wound. It stuck out like a sore thumb on his face, wrapping all the way to his ear. His ear was shriveled and molten onto his head. His eye was permanently squinting and the left side of his face didn't move. The nerves must have been severely damaged from the burn.

"It's infected." The healer said, dabbing an ointment onto it as Zuko sniffling, attempting to stop crying.

The last thing Zuko could remember was a searing pain and muffling voices of Lieutenant Jee and the healer, then the world dipped into a darkness.

It was like when he was first burned again. Dipping in and out of consciousness. Whenever he did, there was always someone by his side, whether it be the healer, Yozu, Jee, Saigo, or someone else. He learned the name of healer as a heated discussion happened around his limp body about what to do or where to go, Asiro. Of all the muffled words that slipped into one ear and fell out of the other, that one stuck.

He wasn't quite sure how long he'd been asleep, but when he awoke, he was feverish and everything burned. Asiro and Saigo were by his side, Saigo lending Asiro a hand as the elder man placed a wet rag on the boy's burning forehead. By nature, firebenders were hot. But Zuko could barely spark and he was hotter than normal.

"Mom..." Zuko whimpered. Asiro's soft touch from calloused hands reminded him of his mother.

When he'd been younger, his mother was always there whenever he was sick, holding his hand and checking his temperature. Once, Azula had thrown him into a pit of icy water when they were younger. Zuko had been freezing and got a fever a few days later. Mother had held him when it got terrible, making sure the healers were taking care of him. She'd spent several nights with him, reading him terrible scripts of the Ember Island Players and laughing with him about them.

Mother had never wanted to be Fire Lady. She'd wanted to be an actress. She loved plays. Every year, she'd drag Azula and Zuko to see the Ember Island Players, despite the fact that she complained they butchered Love Amongst the Dragons, and Ozai would come along too. They'd been a happy family back then. Zuko shared her passion and love for theatre, Azula not so much. She'd take Zuko out to the festivals and buy wooden masks and watch the skilled street performers with awe and longing in her eyes. If mom thought they were amazing, then they were amazing and Zuko could never disagree with his mother, he'd loved her too much for that.

When she'd left, Zuko had searched the palace day after day and night after night, eventually returning to his mother's chamber. He'd dug his nose in her old scripts, taken possession of her costumes and masks, buried himself in her interests until they became his too, and his heart was fueled with passionate love for the arts. Mother had always cared for him.

"Poor kid." Saigo murmured. "He's younger than Yozu. He wants his mom. What kind of person would do that to their own child?"

Asiro shushed Saigo as Zuko stirred, gazing up at the men.

"How do you feel, Prince Zuko?" They were going to let him have something.

Even if he wasn't a member of royalty anymore by officiality, he was still their prince by their undying loyalty to him. Every member on the crew had grown to hate Ozai in the weeks of the boy's coma, the visit to the Air Temples, and the infection. They'd heard the boy's cries at night. His cries for his father to spare him, his cries for mercy, and his sobs longing for his mother. 

"I'm gonna be sick." Zuko rasped.

Asiro hurriedly placed a bucket under the boy, who kneeled down and started hurling the few meals he'd been force fed during the few moments of consciousness he'd experienced. Saigo rubbed the boy's back gently like a comforting sibling would as he threw up. Once he was all out of food, water, and bile to vomit, he started dry heaving into the bucket, panting heavily, tears streaming down his face again with the irritation his stomach, face, and throat were experiencing.

"I-I don't wanna hunt the Avatar." Zuko sobbed.

"We don't have to." Saigo assured him, breathing an internal sigh of relief. It would have been a hopeless to try and search for the Avatar and he was scared the prince would be fooled into being led on a wild goose chase by a parent who didn't care in the slightest about him.

"Okay." Zuko sniffled, smiling a little through his tears. "I'm scared."

"What're you scared of, Captain?" Asiro asked.

Zuko shrugged, his figure sinking as Saigo removed his hand from his back. "It hurts...i-is it that bad?"

Their expressions said it all. Zuko ate in the small mess hall on deck that day. He'd learnt the names of two other crew members, a fearsome woman named Saku and one of the chefs, a girl slightly older than Yozu named Akane.

---

When Zuko was twelve, he was banished from his home and sent to live on a ship with other defectors from the Fire Nation. If there was one thing the crew had in common, it was a hatred for the Fire Nation, the war, and its ways. 

Chapter Text

When Zuko was thirteen, he finally realized just how terrible his father was and had come to accept it. He burned with rage and grief and the desire to ignite everything and everyone who'd ever hurt him into a roaring flame, and his father was first in line.

---

A few weeks after he'd awoken from his coma, he'd demanded they go back to Air Temples and give the Air Nomads proper burials. But Zuko wasn't sure how it was done in the Air Temples.

In the Fire Nation, they cremated their deceased on funeral pyres, keeping their ashes someplace safe or turning them into something special so the person would never be lost or forgotten. They would always be there. Uncle Iroh's wife's ashes had been kept in a beautiful ornate locket that had belonged to her family. Uncle Iroh had carried it around with him everywhere. Lu Ten and Zuko's own mother had never gotten that. Lu Ten had died on Earth Kingdom territory and Zuko's mother had been banished or she'd left, never dead at all.

In the Earth Kingdom, they buried them, returned them to earth, deep underground, to the badgermoles, to Oma and Shu, sometimes they would place their deceased in mausoleums, wall vaults, anywhere closed off below the surface. Sometimes they would plant trees on top of their burial spots, other times they would place slabs of rock, engraving their accomplishments, their lives, and their names onto the stone. Sometimes they stones were decorated, they often leave trinkets, flowers, or especially precious rocks at the graves and anything left at a grave was said to be sacred. He supposed Lu Ten would have gotten a similar treatment. But in the war, they were buried by the masses, nobody had time to make a single grave for every soldier. Sometimes soldiers were returned to their families in coffins and the family would bury them themselves.

In the Water Tribes, they tended to sink the bodies of the deceased and send them off with something special to commemorate their return to La. He was sure there were other ways the Water Tribes dealt with the dead, but he didn't know them. And least of all did he know how the Air Nomads sent off those who had passed on.

So, he'd thrown their ashes to the wind and given them the best goodbye he could think of.

He'd regained his spark soon after his second visit to the Air Temples. Maybe Agni had favored or pitied him. Maybe he'd felt shame for allowing his chosen to hurt their children as such. Maybe Agni's blessing was the only reason he hadn't died that day. He wouldn't call himself spirit-touched in any way, but he certainly felt blessed by the generosity Agni showed to his children, despite how they had disappointed him through the decades, wreaking havoc to the other nations and burning all that stood in their path. They certainly didn't deserve it, but spiritual interventions were rarely allowed and even rarer to actually happen.

Whatever the matter, he'd been lying in the sick bay as Asiro rebandaged his infected wound when the man got too close to his face. Zuko didn't remember what had happened, but sparks flew. A chain on chi he hadn't realized was there before loosened, but didn't fall off. No matter how hard Zuko tried to push and tug at the chain, it wouldn't come loose. Zuko couldn't summon more than a few sparks.

Jee and Saku offered to help him practice. But he wasn't weak. He didn't need their help, he didn't anyone, he would do it all on his own, he could, he had to, because he wasn't weak and father was wrong. He'd been wrong about the Air Nomads and he'd be wrong about this too, Zuko wasn't weak and he didn't need anyone's help. Or so he told himself.

But the fact was, he, even with half an hour of meditation and trying his hardest, could barely put out and put on candles on his own. He felt like he was six again, trying his hardest to make a spark when Azula had already been learning katas far beyond her age. He could feel his father's disgusted, disappointed glare burning into him, shame rising to his cheeks on every occasion he remembered it.

"Why can't you be more like your sister? Look at you and look at her. You're weak."

Zuko had refused their help, continuing to spend hours in his room alone, practicing on candles and old leaves that had somehow landed onboard. But the chain was stubborn and wouldn't let go.

---

"Captain, I'm going to teach how to man the ship, okay?" Saigo said one day, interrupting Zuko from his boredom, and dragging him up onto the deck. "Can you name the different parts, young captain?"

Zuko hadn't objected much to being dragged out from his isolation, not as much as he could have. He'd just groaned like the bored teenager he was and allowed the young man to take him outside. The crew milled about the ship. Saku was navigating, feeding instructions into the ear of a woman Zuko recognized but didn't know who was steering the ship from atop the cockpit. Yozu was fiddling with some rope, Asiro was probably inside somewhere.

"Uh, that's the mast." Zuko said, pointing towards what was indeed the mast.

"And those?" Yozu asked, popping up from seemingly nowhere, pointing at the sails.

"The sails." Zuko deadpanned.

"Amazing. That?"

"That's a canon. I'm not stupid, y'know."

"Okay, but can you steer?" Saku grunted, showing up from behind him as stoic as always.

Zuko yelped, "Can all of you teleport or something?!"

Saku chuckled a little despite the fact that her face remained robotic. Zuko was starting to wonder if the she had any muscles there at all.

And so, Zuko was introduced to Tei, who reminded him a little of Ty Lee. He learned how to sail that day and by the end of the week, he was truly the captain.

---

Zuko was stumbling again, Asiro behind him to help him regain balance. He failed to suppress a jump as Lieutenant Jee walked from his blind spot. The older man sighed patiently, walking in front of Zuko then doing a turn around him again. This time Zuko didn't jump as the Lieutenant jabbed him with a wooden stick. He didn't catch the stick either. The rest of the crew who weren't busy, who was just about everyone, watching patiently.

The young former prince's cheeks were probably burning from embarrassment, but the others were encouraging enough. Another spark flew as he dodged Jee this time. Saigo, Yozu, and Tei cheered, Asiro's lip quirked upwards. But it wasn't good enough. He felt like he was learning how to walk all over again. His accuracy and aim were terrible with only one functioning eye. Before the infection, he could only see muddled outlines of shapes and colors from his damaged eye and hear a buzzy static out of his ear, but after the infection, all use in his left eye and ear was gone. Completely.

He felt like a baby deer stumbling around. He would find himself with headaches because of the dizziness adjusting to it brought him, and find himself often bashing into things, or tipping to his side at random times, he would be walking and suddenly he would find himself on his face more often than once. So Lieutenant Jee had been helping him learn how to fight again, Asiro watching over them in case anyone got hurt and the others watched for entertainment. It was rather boring on the Wani.

"Did you know that your uncle took styles and forms from other bending types and integrated them into firebending? I could never do it, but maybe you could." Lieutenant Jee said. "He could flow fire like a waterbender and stand his ground like an earthbender."

Of course he would know all about the vanished Uncle Iroh. The two had fought together in the infamous failed siege of Ba Sing Se before Uncle's disappearance.

"The badgermoles are blind. They were the source of earthbenders." Asiro said.

The original benders of each element were common knowledge in the Fire Nation. It wasn't that they particularly cared for the history of the other nations for the right purposes, but rather they were rather large on the whole to know your enemy thing. The spirits of each element weren't as well known for those who had never left the mainland but any person with a decent education would be able to name them.

Each bending form had its own philosophies and styles. Firebending was a show of power and greatly valued honor, much like the nation from which it came, the Fire Nation. But the Fire Nation had no honor, as Zuko had come to realize.

"And?" Zuko clicked his tongue, somewhat impatiently.

"Try to learn from other sources, young Captain." Said Asiro with a small smile, tossing him a dark blindfold. He'd seen Tei use it as a bandana before. "Learn to fight blind so you can walk half blind. Wisdom and experience cannot be gathered from one source alone."

Reluctantly but with no complaint, Zuko slipped the bandana over his eyes, fumbling as he tied it into a blindfold, trying to contain his dizziness spell. Lieutenant Jee hit him without warning. Zuko stumbled back, rubbing his side gently. There was no warning the second time either, but he could hear the stick in the wind as it rushed towards him this time. He attempted to dodge, the stick grazed his ribs.

By the fifth prod, Zuko had comes to terms with the fact that by the time his training was over, he would be bruised in more than one place.

Then it happened. Like a soft tug on a heavy chain, he could feel...something loosen. Ever so slightly. Then he felt it. A spark, barely bigger than those caused when someone failed to light a match, but there nonetheless.

The crew broke into gasps and cheers, all over a tiny spark and Zuko couldn't help but think about how father...Ozai, would react. He'd likely call Zuko weak for only managing to summon such a tiny spark, whilst his crew, on the other hand, were making such a big deal over the barest of flickers. He knew which he preferred by far.

---

It took the banished Prince Zuko nearly a month to hit and dodge Jee. He'd started using the slight firebending abilities he had to detect the warmth of Jee's body so he knew when the man would strike so he could parry, dodge, block, or hit back. It was like how the badgermoles learnt to feel their surroundings with earthbending despite being blind. When he wasn't training, he was working tirelessly on the ship in an attempt to get familiar with his crewmates and his ship. He could walk without stumbling now and every part of him was grateful for Asiro suggesting the technique.

They all seemed to admire him even though there was barely anything to admire about Zuko. He wasn't quite sure what they all saw in him. But no matter, he'd decided he would like those who liked him and attempted to start more conversation with the others. They often tried their best to include him, it made Zuko feel...warm.

In his element. Warmth. Maybe that's what had started the spark.

Eventually, by the second month, he could fight the Lieutenant on a somewhat equal level. He'd always been better at hand-to-hand combat and fighting with weaponry. What he lacked in firebending, he compensated for in his skill for styles of fighting without flame. Slowly by slowly, the chain in his chest tore freer and more so, until he could actually hold a candlelight in his palm.

As Lieutenant Jee worked on him with dry combat and Saigo helped him to learn how to navigate the waves and the ships and the life of a sailor, Saku had started helping him unlock his firebending abilities better.

By their fifth lesson, Zuko was fully convinced that she had no working muscles in her face other than the ones that allowed her to talk. She always looked stoic and serious, sometimes the corners of her lips would lift barely, slightly twitching and Zuko assumed that was like crying tears of joy for her. It probably was. He'd learnt everyone's names. As it turned out, they had eighteen people on board.

Day after day, the ship navigated the edges of the water, somewhere in between the Fire Nation borders and the Air Nomad Temples, but soon their supply was dwindling and that's when a genius idea struck Zuko. Of course, any genius idea that struck a young boy who barely a teenager yet and had been given too much power was not a genius idea at all, but rather probably something incredibly stupid, despite that, nobody objected when he suggested they loot the travelling pirate ships.

So they started. They built wires with hooks and anchors to use as zipwires to get aboard the other ships and sometimes the older men and women on the ship would grumble about how stupid of an idea it was, but when it came to it and they were finally eating something that wasn't fish for the first time in weeks, nobody was complaining. So it became a habit. Word travelled fast around the waters and when the smaller Fire Navy ships started coming in, the ones with only twelve crewmates or so, one at a time, the crew of the Wani took them down, looting them too.

Taking Lieutenant Jee's advice, Zuko announced they would be moving from these waters and travelling the rest of the world, should the Fire Nation find them here. So they did. It finally settled upon Zuko that he was no longer part of the Fire Nation and so, the phoenix tail fell. For the better, probably.

After months on the water, the Wani finally reached the Earth Kingdom.

The town they had landed on was a small unnamed colony in terrible living conditions. Most of the men endured backbreaking labor to provide for their starving families on the streets, mining coal day in and day out for the Fire Nation. They would always transport it onto a big ship that would move every Monday to the Fire Nation and return on Wednesdays. Surely father wouldn't know about how these people were being treated, a small voice in his brain murmured. But Zuko knew better. That voice was lying.

Father likely full well knew and Zuko was willing to bet all his coin that this wasn't the only town like this.

The fruits in their markets were rotten and spoiling, the water thick with dirt, but the children of the town drank it. What choice did they have? None.

Zuko needed to change that. He had to.

So, that night, he informed the crew of his plan.

Chapter Text

Mai was not there the day of Zuko's Agni Kai.

---

Mai was not there the day of Zuko's Agni Kai, but she knew what had happened. It was impossible to be in palace at any point and not know. She'd even visited Zuko once.

Mai was not there the day of Zuko's Agni Kai, but her parents had been. She often remembered how her father and mother had come back, their expressions grave. They'd refused to tell her what had happened at first. No way Zuko had lost against that old general. She remembered how they'd sat her down and put several new rules in place whenever she hung out with Azula. They'd become sterner with her, trying to often restrict her from visiting the palace, but whatever Azula wanted, Azula got and Azula wanted Mai as her friend.

She'd asked Azula about what happened, but Azula would change the subject. She often overheard the servants, guards, and workers muttering rumors under their breaths. Did you hear about the Agni Kai? I heard Prince Zuko is getting banished. I heard he didn't even fight. I heard he'd been left to die in the arena. Every rumor made her blood boil because some spoke of Zuko as though he were some helpless frightened little child in a death cage and others spoke of him as if he'd been some dishonorable pathetic coward.

He was neither. Zuko was brave and polite and emotional and empathetic and he would have never gotten to his knees and begged for mercy in front of someone like an old general and she was secretly more his best friend than she was Azula's but neither of them would have ever said it aloud. Azula would have killed them both. It didn't make sense, none of it made sense.

Did you hear? The Fire Lord was actually the one to fight Prince Zuko. All the nobles are talking about it.

And suddenly everything made sense.

And suddenly she felt sick to the stomach every time she went to over to Azula's. Every time they walked past royal chambers or the Fire Lord's courtroom or his war council meeting rooms. And suddenly she hated everyone because how could anyone let Zuko get hurt? How could a father be so cruel? And suddenly, she understood all her parents' new rules and followed them without question.

Then Azula mentioned Zuko was going to be banished and Mai felt her blood boil and Ty Lee frowned, but she kept her cool. Zuko was still in the palace. She asked Azula to go see him one last time. She shivered internally as she saw him on the bed, a small servant's bed in the med-bay, bloody, messy bandages and ointments wrapped around his head. His hair was buzzed short all except for his phoenix plume.

She held his hand, praying to Agni he'd wake up. She'd never been particularly religious to the spirits, she knew they existed, of course and she honored Agni, but she wasn't one of Agni's children. What reason did she have to pray for a Spirit who didn't love her? Not that she was bitter about not being a firebender or anything. Her mother wasn't a firebender either. A soft whining whimper escaped Zuko's lips and then he was limp again. A blessing from Agni. For the first time in years, she smiled.

If she cried a little that night as she remembered Zuko in bed and the rumors she'd heard, nobody had to know.

A week later, Zuko was gone, still unconscious. They'd carried him off and the kinder sailors who'd heard what happened to the prince had gone with him.

Nobody said it, but as the rumors grew, the people's love for the banished prince grew.

Ty Lee would pretend nothing had happened because Azula was pretending nothing had happened, but she'd hear Ty Lee sob to herself sometimes. Maybe it wasn't all about Zuko, Ty Lee was a bit of a crybaby, but it was easier to pretend other people cared. Then one day Ty Lee announced she was dropping out of school and joining a circus. She would spend days showing them cooler versions to tricks she already knew.

It'd been a few months since Zuko's banishment and with every passing day, Mai felt her life becoming more and more unbearable. She was so sick of Ty Lee being a happy-go-lucky girl and Azula's determination to avoid and ignore all mentions of Zuko. There was no way his banishment hadn't hurt them too.

She missed watching him get irritated as Azula kicked the turtleducks he was petting and shouting at her to leave him alone, she missed sitting under the trees of the palace gardens and reading poetry and theatre together, she missed how awkwardly hilarious he could be and how flustered he would get at the slightest comment, she missed how as children he would play with them as children and helped his mother braid flowers into their hair. Ty Lee liked doing it herself and he didn't want to do Azula, so he always insisted on doing her. She missed how sometimes they would go and run from Azula and hide in the nooks and crannies of the palace and the gardens. She missed how he'd listen to her poetry when nobody else would.

She missed him.

Then one day, Mai met a woman Yuki and a plan was formed.

Yuki was a petite but athletic woman who taught Mai how to hold a bow. She'd never shown Mai her face, but the girl knew why. Yuki was a Yuyan Archer. An elite Fire Nation archer and she'd seen Mai's skill with the blade.

They worked together, knives and arrows, bows and darts, deadly sharp objects, on range and dynamic and how to aim and the most fatal parts to hit and how to defeat benders without being one. Fighting benders was a thing Ty Lee was far better than her at. She knew how to chi block and bend and contort to avoid deadly attacks and that was a skill Mai would never have, so she worked harder.

As Azula and Ty Lee cartwheeled across the fields and showed off dry katas, she sharpened her blades and perfected her aim. Then one day Ty Lee disappeared.

She'd left with her circus. Azula had ranted and raged, but Mai couldn't blame her. Who'd want to spend all day with Azula, who threw lightening at you and forced you to be her target practice? Ty Lee was better off and Mai promised herself she'd leave too. Six months since Zuko's banishment.

Yuki took off her mask. Her eyes were lined with red tattooed patterns of the Yuyan clan. 

She smiled at Mai, offering her a place amongst them. Her mother and father cried as she watched from the back of a cart, for once a bitter smile on her face rather the neutral expression of always. All a step further away from Azula and closer to Zuko.

The Yuyan Clan were the best people she'd ever met, Mai decided. She'd shaved the sides of her head, holding her head high and she never missed. They lived in the trees and sang of myths and legends and completed rituals at night and in the days they hunted and fought and travelled. Then it'd been a year since Zuko left and the people of the Fire Nation still spoke of him. Nobody would ever forget. They wouldn't let themselves.

The loyalists and the rebels each had their own reasons to never forget, whether that be tales they told their children of why the Fire Lord was to be respected or why the Fire Lord was cruel, they each had their own reasons to remember Prince Zuko and none concerned the prince himself, only the Fire Lord's terrible actions. The Yuyan Clan, despite their acceptance and respect to her and her skills, were loyal to the Fire Lord and she knew what she wished to do might get her branded as a traitor, to both her nation, her parents, and her new pseudo family.

Mai knew that joining a clan of fighters would meant she had to battle. She was thirteen and ready for it. The archers were given a vague job and a ship to get to mainland. She discovered during her first battle that the Yuyan Clan did occasionally miss. Rarely but occasionally. She was excused for the dagger in the tree and given a tattoo to celebrate the victory. Two small patterns, right under eyes and near her cheekbones.

Tattoos didn't hurt as bad as people claimed they did, not when she was high on adrenaline and relief that she didn't get her face sliced and diced.

The clan stuck to a forest near the colonies and occasionally they'd go out into a village or another.

There were always rumors. New rumors now. They didn't speak of Zuko anymore, they told of firebenders who fought Fire Nation. They told of a child captain. They told of a ship of good pirates. They told of a child dressed in black and a too big theatre mask who fought with swords. Rumors floated and weaved themselves in between ears and taverns and whispering tongues like sacred tales.

Seemingly unrelated rumors, that actually were related.

Because unless there was a new theatre nerd who was an expert swordsman in town, those rumors had to be of Zuko.

All one step closer to finding him. 

Chapter Text

When Zuko was thirteen, he donned his mother's old theatre mask to hide his face to protect another person for the second time.

---

It had been nearly over half a year with the ship when Zuko's thirteenth birthday passed around. In celebration of the occasion, Tei had suggested the crew return to the Earth Kingdom after weeks of sailing since their first battle with Fire Nation soldiers. Zuko had grabbed his dual swords, slinging them over his back, tucking the theatre mask into a bag Saigo carried to haul meat and tea back aboard just in case, and no objections were made towards Tei's suggestion.

They had become fairly known around small Earth Kingdom islands, the Wani, the mythical ship full of firebenders that attacked Fire Nation ships. The crew had found themselves at a small Earth Kingdom tavern where they watched earthbenders wrestle each other in brutal, if not extremely entertaining fights. The sort of words that were passed around were not ones for a sheltered Fire Nation thirteen-year-old boy's ears, but they were all sailors and nobody but Yozu seemed to particularly care what kind of curses Zuko did or didn't hear.

The crew's music night had transported from the ship to the tavern, and somehow that made it even worse, as they drunkenly sang sea shanties about labor and pretty girls and folk tales of sailing adventures. Zuko sourly vowed to pierce his other ear if he had to listen to their awful singing for the rest of the night.

At some point, he found himself, Yozu, and Saigo wandering away from the others, skipping into town for a late night birthday present for Zuko.

"Alright, Cap, what do you wanna get?" Saigo asked, the drink obvious in the way his letters softly and slightly blended together, patting Zuko on the back, ignoring the way the younger boy flinched as he was touched.

Zuko shrugged, "I dunno. Do you think I could get a turtleduck?"

"Here? No." Yozu murmured. He wasn't old enough to drink either and was surprisingly compliant when it came to that particular law. "You sure like turtleducks though. How about...you like plays, right? Think we could find a script of some kind?"

"Perform it too?" Saigo grinned.

"Ugh, no, you'd butcher whatever it is worse than the Ember Island players butcher Love Amongst the Dragons." Zuko pulled a face.

Yozu chuckled quietly, walking ahead of the other two with a slight bounce to his step as his eyes took in the sights surrounding them. It was dark now, but few people still milled about, shops alit with oil lamps hung over their doors, houses fairly far off but visible in the distance as a series of tiny orange dots, likely lanterns. The shops displayed all sorts of stuff, old pottery, posters, books, scrolls, stored food, but most were beginning to shut down at this hour.

"You better pick something fast before everything closes." Yozu noted as they began approaching the last few shops along the street.

"Fine, we can get a theatre scroll," Zuko said. He turned on Saigo, glaring. "But you are absolutely not allowed to perform it. Captain's orders."

"Aye, aye, your highness." Saigo bowed.

Zuko rolled his eyes with a scoff. Drunk Saigo was funnier than sober Saigo.

Yozu nodded, "Alright then." He turned back, beginning to head towards the scroll shop as Zuko and Saigo lingered behind.

All at once, Yozu suddenly seemed to notice how empty and dark the street was. Ashmaker. The word was a whisper in his ear suddenly. Yozu wasn't even a firebender, if whoever it was had called him a slur, they could have at least checked their facts first to call him the right one. Still, his blood ran cold as the voices of Saigo and Zuko disappeared behind him.

There was a hand on his shoulder. It was rough and large and painfully squeezed his shoulder and before Yozu could react, he'd been slammed against the wall of an alley. He could taste coppery blood in his mouth, his muscles stiffened. He had no weapons on him, nothing to protect himself, and whoever this was, they were certainly larger and stronger than him. He managed to peer up despite the nausea of the sudden ache in his back and ribs, to be met with dark beady eyes of an Earth Kingdom man.

He thought Yozu was an ashmaker. Great. It was no wonder he looked at him with such disgusted bitterness. Maybe one of the crew had performed firebending and the man had spotted him with them and chosen to pick on the young, weak non-bender. Yozu hated being defenseless. The man slammed his fist against the boy's ribs. Yozu let out a choking cry, pain throbbing through his surely bruised ribcage.

"Where are they?" The man snarled.

"H-Huh?" Yozu blinked.

May Agni damn the rest of the crew for being so drunk and reckless as to perform firebending in the spirits' damned Earth Kingdom. Agni, he needed to leave. He let out a small prayer to his favored Spirit and cursing the rest of the crew, he attempted to duck and dodge.

Yozu landed against the wall, wondering blankly as colorful spots dotted his vision where Zuko and Saigo could have gone.

"The ashmakers. You were with them, weren't you?" The man snarled.

"N-No."

The man muttered a word in what must have been the language of Oma and Shu. "Don't lie to me, ashmaker! I saw your little friend! The woman!"

"It-It's just a party trick." Yozu lied through his teeth, trying to make himself as small as possible.

"The Fire Nation is coming to our island, I have no intention of letting my son become a soldier, so you tell me where and when or I'll-"

"I'm not Fire Nation- I'm not a firebender!" Yozu winced as a fist slammed into his shoulder.

There was a figure in the darkness behind the man, only illuminated by the shine of its swords. The man froze as a sharp tip met his neck, lightly grazing the skin, only very slightly, but just enough to draw the slightest of blood.

"Get away from him." A voice from the opening of the alley said. "Or may the Spirits have mercy upon you, because I shall not."

Saigo. He'd have recognized that voice anywhere in a million years

Yozu could have collapsed in relief. Another look at the sword was all the man needed before he darted away, through the opening, past the figure in the dark and past Yozu and then past Saigo, back onto the illuminated streets where surely he was safe. The figure in the dark stepped into light, revealing to be rather short, and removed its adorned blue theatre mask to reveal the smirking boyish face of Prince Zuko.

"Nobody touches my crew and gets away with it." Zuko grinned, clasping Yozu's hand with his own covered one, pulling the older boy to his feet.

Zuko pulled the mask back onto his face, vanishing into the darkness, the glint in his swords gone as they were tucked back into their sheaths.

"Come on, we got the theatre scroll and some food that isn't fish. Let's go." Saigo grinned, throwing an arm over Yozu's bruised shoulder. "We'll get Asiro to fix you up all nice. Zuko will meet us back on the ship."

---

The banished Prince Zuko could not pinpoint an exact point of time when he had become known as the Blue Spirit, enemy of the Fire Nation. The Blue Spirit was almost everything the boy could not be. Subtle, cunning, a name that provoked fear in the right minds when spoken. He was sure the crew knew, how could they not, when he had returned from missions as the Spirit to collapse in Asiro's medical bay and await his treatment, how could they not, when he had rescued Yozu using the mantle, how could they not, when Lieutenant Jee had handed the mask back to him after another attempt at freeing a newer colony from the Fire Nation's iron grip.

There were rumors that travelled from land to sea, rumors of the Yuyan archers approaching the Earth Kingdom for an unknown mission, rumors as such that drove icy daggers through the blood of the Earth Kingdom citizens, filling them with dread and anticipation and fear. These rumors were always nothing but a new mission for the crew of the Wani.

Sometimes, Zuko thought of Mai and Ty Lee whenever he thought of the archers. Whenever he thought of them, he thought of his sister. The three of them were like a pack of archers themselves. Mai, deadly precision with her knives, Azula, terrifyingly accurate with her beams of stark blue flame, Ty Lee, with her unerring sense to where others' chi and her limbs should belong.

He missed them. He missed Mai's poetry, he missed his mother's turtleducks, he missed Ty Lee's antics, he missed his Uncle's wisdom, he missed his cousin's sense of humor, sometimes he even missed his sister and father, the sense of familiarity that came to them. Sure, they didn't have the others' same predictability, but there was a familiarity to them that the ocean did not hold. Zuko missed them and he missed his old life.

Despite this, he did not think of it fondly. He would have grown to hurt people, like his forefathers had, he would have grown to become and cruel like his sister and unsparing like his father. No, he was glad he was here. He was glad he could at least try to fix the crimes of his father and his father before him, of course, the damage was done and he could never undo it, but at least he could try, and that was more than the rest of his family had ever done. And perhaps, he could make Agni proud to have chosen him.

The Yuyan Archers had won their first battle. Mai's birthday had passed recently, meaning Zuko would be fourteen soon. They had always bragged to Azula and Ty Lee that for two months every year, they were the same age. On Yozu's seventeenth birthday, the crew had agreed to honor his wishes and not drink, they had however, allowed Yozu to get a tattoo. Saku had taken out her needle and ink kit, and given the boy a tattoo, one of an ancient sun symbol, the symbol of Agni's sigil.

At some point within the near year and a half he'd spent aboard the Wani, Zuko's hair had grown back. He'd stopped bothering to keep it short, not that there was any point with his royal plume now gone. Hair was a symbol in the Fire Nation. Zuko didn't need the type of honor the Fire Nation gave him, he'd forged his own sense of honor. Most in the Fire Nation kept their hair in a topknot, it was their symbol of honor.

On the Wani, however, Tei wore hers in a loose tail, Saigo had his cut short, Yozu didn't have it as short as Saigo, who had an almost Earth Kingdom-looking military cut, but it was still too short to keep tied, as did Saku. It seemed only the older members of the ship cared greatly about their hair, and Zuko had spotted some of them cutting it after the crew's announced betrayal to the Fire Nation, much like he had.

He'd let it grow back, unlike most of them. He had his honor. What he did was honorable, it must have been, if it hadn't, then surely Agni wouldn't have allowed him his spark back.

As Zuko awaited anxiously the fight with the Yuyan Archers, he practiced further with his bending and sword-fighting skills. He could fight acceptably completely blind now, able to detect and collect warmth from his surroundings. Sometimes he wondered whether he'd still be scarred if he'd been brave enough, able enough, to use such waterbending and earthbending techniques as redirecting and drawing heat with his father when the man had held a lit palm to his face.

Not that it mattered now. His father was horrible, Zuko was sure of it. He knew it, he did know it, but sometimes he wasn't all that sure if he believed it.

He would make things right. Agni hadn't given him a second for nothing. He'd go out there and defeat the Archers. Maybe, and if it was naive of him to think it, he didn't care, but maybe he could even recruit one or two.

---

Mai had not been expecting to fight Zuko. He looked unrecognizable and she was sure, with her mask and all donned, he didn't recognize her.

This would be a bit of a problem.