Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Crown Prince Ozai’s corpse is on fire, and somehow it isn’t Azula’s fault.

Back up. Rewind.

How did this happen?

It all started the day Zuko was born.

Sadly, nothing actually happened for a long time after that, so technically it’s more apropos to say that it all started the day that Azula was born.

But really, it all started twenty years before the Last Airbender would normally be found… because Zuko was born four years early. And Azula was in a similar boat. And a few others as well.

“But how did you do it, Zuzu? How come I can’t do it no matter how much I try?” Azula stomps her foot, and Zuko smiles softly at her even as Mai and Ty Lee also look eager to know.

“It’s something that’s difficult to put into words, Lala.” Zuko patiently explains, sticking his hand in the water of the turtleduck pond and creating some steam. “See the steam? This is just water that’s heated up. Fire can do this easily, right? But Firebending can also control heat. Like this.” Sticking his hand in the slowly rising steam cloud, he removes the heat from it, splashing the top of his hand as it all turns back to water, falling back down into the pond.

“Rrrrgh… you make it look so easy! Why do the tutors say your Firebending is weak when you can do this already!?” Azula grouses, lighting up a hand with flame and punching the surface of the pond in frustration. “That doesn’t make any sense!”

Clicking his tongue, Zuko shakes his head as he gently takes her hand. “I’m ‘weak’ because I’m focusing on a lower heat. When you’re boiling water, do you put the fire as high as you can, or do you keep it at a low boil so you don’t burn the water? I can make fire as big as father’s, and perhaps uncle’s as well. I just don’t.”

“You can’t burn water, that’s dumb Zuzu,” Azula huffs, rolling her eyes and trying again, still blasting way too much heat into the water and creating bigger clouds of steam than she can really do anything with. That always was Azula’s problem- too much innate strength and heat, encouraged to become a raging flame instead of being tightly controlled and useful instead of overwhelmingly destructive.

“You can burn anything, Azula. You just need to know the right way to do it. Take oil for example. Oil can burn water.” Zuko hums, turning the giant steam cloud back into water by sucking away the heat, the cloud too big for him to just put his hand inside of it. The immediate splashback actually catches him, wetting his hair yet leaving Azula untouched. Wiping it out of his eyes, he shrugs. “You can burn air as well. It screams when you do that. It’s a very specific sound.”

“What, like a kettle?” Ty Lee interjects, cartwheeling up and doing an artsy handstand because she has nothing better to do. Mai walks up after, carelessly cleaning one of her knives despite the fact that visitors to the palace weren’t supposed to have weapons. “Kettles scream too, kinda? More of a whistling. Oh, your aura’s looking super clean today, Zuzu! Real pink, but watch out for those muddy bits!”

“Kind of.” Zuko nods his head, before holding out a hand with a small flame. “Watch this. See the flame?”

“Yeah yeah, it’s a candle flame, we learned how to do that aaaaages ago,” Azula groans, making just as small of a flame in kind, though hers still burns with heat and even seems to be turning blue at the tips.

Smiling, Zuko grins at his sister. “Then let me show you something new.” Focusing on the air around the flame, he carefully steps back to avoid hurting her, slowly forming a cone around the candle flame, which immediately doubles in size without any effort from him. “With a simple trick of allowing the air to increase the size of my flame, I expend less energy using it. But, if I do this little trick…” He lets his voice trail off, the sound of sputtering coming from his flame as it whisps at the air, drawing in more and more before suddenly hitting a blue color similar to a welding torch from his old life, an oddly haunting screaming sound escaping the flame in the small areas that the cone of oxygen doesn’t cover. Not as loud as it could be, not as big, and if Zuko had less control both of those would be problems, but this is a demonstration for Azula.

Strangely, she seems actually angry for some reason- clenching her sputtering fists as embers spill between her fingers, glaring at seemingly nothing, even trembling slightly as she grits her teeth.

“They lied to me, you aren’t weak at all!” Azula growls out once the noise dies down, grabbing Zuko’s wrist and staring at his hand as if it would reveal the secrets of blue fire. “Why is your fire blue!? They said only my fire would turn blue! They said I was the one blessed by Agni so why do you have blue fire too!?”

Letting Azula play with his hands, Zuko carefully leads her over to sit down by the tree, appreciating Ty Lee when the girl helps out by gently pulling Azula along with him. “You are blessed by Agni. I’m just cheating. If you put air in your fire, you get a higher purity material. But you have to have a specific mixture to get it right, and the air has to burn at the same time as the flame, not be used just as fuel.”

“Rrrgh… that doesn’t make sense. It’s still blue!” Azula protests, continuing to squeeze Zuko’s hands just so she has something to vent her frustration on. “It doesn’t make sense at all!”

“Lala, how about this. I’ll give you a little science lesson.” Zuko hums as Ty Lee and Mai both sit down in front of him for some reason, both of them equally looking curious. “There are all these little things around us called elements. They aren’t elements like how we use them, but they’re part of the elements themselves. We’ll start with a normal part of these elements. They’re all called Gasses. There’s also Noble Gasses, but those are different.”

“Why are they different?” Ty Lee asks, and Zuko frowns slightly.

“Well, they’re different because they do different things. Noble Gasses don’t actually react to fire, they need to have a current of electricity running through them. Controlled lightning run through wires made of copper.” Zuko quickly explains when Ty Lee looks confused. “Normal gasses are different. They make up a lot of things, and even things you don’t think would be gasses, are. Like water, technically. Water’s made of two different flammable gasses, and when they come together, they make a liquid that we call water.”

“That sounds fake,” Ty Lee grumbles, crossing her arms and tilting her head at Zuko curiously. “What do you mean water’s a gas? I guess when you evaporate it or boil it there’s steam but it’s not a gas. It’s water! And it doesn’t burn either!”

“Well let’s try an experiment,” Zuko hums, focusing for a moment and generating a light crackle of lightning in one hand, holding it there as he stands up, walks over to the pond, and scoops a bucket of it out. “What do you think will happen when I stick my hand in this bucket?”

“... You’re gonna break the bucket,” Azula rolls her eyes, staring intently at Zuko’s hand with narrowed eyes, as if silently promising herself to visit intense displeasure upon her fuckhead idiot tutors later. Zuko knows that’s exactly what she’s doing, because she does the same thing every month and has to get new tutors after the last set run screaming from the palace, usually on fire for being incompetent or just plain shit at teaching an overpowered eight year old how to wield complex Firebending. “And then I’m gonna tell mom that you broke the bucket she uses to feed the turtleducks.”

“I dunno, maybe it’ll just make steam?” Ty Lee suggests, tilting her head a little awkwardly. “How’re you doing that with your hand anyway? I thought Lightning was like… rare… and big. And loud.”

“Whatever,” Mai mumbles, still cleaning her knife of the suspiciously red stains covering the blade. Zuko, in the back corner of his mind, in a tiny part not focused on maintaining his lightning, privately wonders why Mai was stabbing paint jars.

“This will create a thing called Electrolysis. As far as anyone else would be concerned, it’s basically magic. But for me, this is science!” He excitedly smirks, placing one finger in the water on each side of the bucket and running a charge from one side to the other. “Watch.”

“... Nothing’s happening,” Ty Lee mumbles after a second, narrowing her eyes at Zuko in that sort of suspicious way that only confused children can make. “... Azula, are you sure Zuzu isn’t crazy from his weird seer visions that he only tells us about?”

“Don’t call Zuzu crazy! Only I get to call him crazy! And he’s not crazy, he’s just dumb,” Azula shoots back, shoving Ty Lee’s shoulder and pouting. “And something is happening, there’s bubbles in the bucket now.”

“Azula, be nice to Ty Lee.” Zuko stares at his sister for a moment, before grinning. “And Azula’s right. The bubbles are important. The water is breaking down into Hydrogen and Oxygen, and if you light the bubbles on fire-”

And because Azula is impatient, impulsive, mischievous, irritable, and has no idea about the properties of highly reactive chemical gasses… she immediately flings a pilot light into the air above the bucket-

WHUMPH!

-and promptly sends a giant cloud of fire straight into Zuko’s face. Fortunately, it’s not hot enough to really hurt him. Unfortunately, his poor eyebrows are now singed and the smell of burning hair has filled the courtyard.

“Ow. My poor eyebrows.” Zuko mumbles, chuckling even despite the explosive reaction. “What you just saw was a mix of hydrogen and oxygen gas. And when you burn them together, they combine back into water. Which is why there’s a bunch of steam everywhere now. Aaand a broken bucket. Azula.”

“You’re the one who told me to light it on fire!” Azula protests, immediately pinning the blame on him even as she scoots over and starts checking over him for injuries in that sort of kinda creepy way that she usually does, where she just stares at him really hard and reads the chi in the air somehow. He may have science, but she’s weirdly, scarily good at the whole chi manipulation part of Bending.

“I said if , Azula.” He hums, letting her move around his head as she checks him over for burns. “But, we did a successful experiment. We created Hydrogen and Oxygen gas. This means we’ve separated the Hydrogen and Oxygen atoms in the water to create gas, which is what those bubbles were. And an Atom is one of the building blocks of reality. Just about everything in the physical world should be made of them. I don’t know fully though, and spirit stuff probably doesn’t count.”

“... Why doesn’t the spirit stuff count?” Ty Lee asks, while Azula just silently watches him for a few moments longer before stepping back and returning to her previous position.

“Spirits are terrifying and you shouldn’t think too hard about them,” Zuko deadpans, putting on his best older brother voice. While also idly licking his thumb and rubbing his eyebrows to try and get rid of the smell of burning hair. “They don’t make any kind of sense as far as physical beings are concerned, and a lot of them are a lot meaner than the Fire Lord, or Father.”

It always makes him want to puke when he calls Ozai Father, but he doesn’t want Azula to be punished by copying him, so he’s always made the effort to be respectful to the waste of space.

“Your father is mean?” Ty Lee asks, before frowning and nodding her head. “Your dad is pretty mean.”

“Yep. Anyway, I’d teach you all more about science, but we don’t have the materials, and we’re not gonna have them for a while.” Zuko crosses his arms.

“Why not?” Azula asks, which would likely be a demand to anyone else, but he can see the small pout she’s hiding.

“None of it exists yet. Or, it does exist, but not in the way that it needs to be for me to teach you. Like, there’s a bunch of gasses that you can make out of coal, it’s just that we can’t make it yet. And before you ask why again ,” Zuko grins, quickly pre-empting both Ty Lee and Azula, ”it’s because we don’t have the technology. Or, the industry specifically, because we have everything that we’d need to do it, but nothing that lets us actually do it.”

Azula, pouting at him for interrupting her, quickly pushes him over. “You talk too much, Zuzu.”

Shifting his feet, Zuko dodges to the side of Azula’s strike, taking advantage of her extended arm to knock her off balance, avoiding the next gout of flames, held back a much as she can , by leaning low and going around it, striking her with a palm strike.

“No fire. Zuko.” The tutor says, and Zuko feels disgusted. This man doesn’t understand fighting .

Shifting back with his knees, he avoids Azula’s follow up attack, a sweep of fire going where his head was, before dropping to his back when she tries again, using his legs to knock her off of her feet before pushing himself up using a whuff of heated air, shifting the stupid training outfit with it as well, before hopping back when Azula explodes up with blue fire.

“ Zuko .”

Eye twitching, Zuko resolves to ignore the tutor, holding a hand forward and a fist by his head.

Azula takes his bait, rushing him with several gouts of flame that he redirects or disperses, using his hand to redirect the next by grabbing hers and pushing it up, catching her other hand when she tries to us it to strike him.

“ ZUKO!” The tutor finally shouts, and so Zuko does the only smart thing he can.

He shoves back Azula and uses his fire to cut through the wall around the idiot’s head. “WHAT!? DO YOU MIND!?”

The shocked expression on the idiot’s face does nothing for his anger, so, breathing heavily, he turns on his foot, walking out of the room by increasing the size of the hole he made, knowing that Azula will quickly catch up to him.

Which she does, jumping onto his back with a giggle that helps mollify him somewhat, shifting to give her a proper piggyback ride. “Well, that’s a first. Your temper’s never gotten so bad that you’ve gone off like that.”

“I don’t like incompetents telling me how to fight.” He nearly lets the acid burning in him escape through his voice, but it doesn’t thankfully.

“He wasn’t very good at teaching. Do you think he will tell father, or the Fire Lord?” She hums, and Zuko shakes his head in the negative.

“He’d simply prove that he was a failure of a teacher, unable to appropriately understand what I was doing outside of flashy fire moves that do nothing more than waste stamina. For everyone except you, I should say.” Zuko hums.

“Meaning?” Azula asks curiously, and it’s at times like this when he’s reminded that, for all that she’s able to keep up with him most of the time, Azula’s still young.

“Meaning he won’t tell. In fact, he’ll quit in the next hour, saying he is an inadequate teacher.” He says, bringing her to the quiet room. It’s not actually called the quiet room, and apparently belonged to their great great grandmother for when her hysteria, or whatever it was documented as, struck her greatly. It’s an excellent place to be calm in, since no one comes here outside of the servants.

“Still, that’s the angriest you’ve ever been. Maybe I could make him disappear?” She says, trying to look at him with her big ol’ eyes to try and get what she wants. Unfortunately, Zuko’s will is made of steel.

“Azula, I know you’re teasing. You’re still not allowed to kill anyone.” Zuko flatly says, placing her down on one of the larger pillows before laying down himself with a sigh. “Just like the last time you asked. And the time before that. And the time before that. And the thirty other times before that.”

“I don’t threaten to kill your tutors that much, do I?” Azula asks innocently, as if butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth and as if she wasn’t just itching for a chance to set someone’s pants on fire just to watch them dance.  

“You do.” He says without preamble, rolling over as she decides to hug him with a laugh. “In fact, those thirty four times are all from this year.”

“Whaaaaat? Nooooo, that can’t be right,” Azula protests, drawing out her words sarcastically as she sidles up against him, eyes wide and doe-y as though she were trying to charm her way out of being accused of threatening murder. If it wasn’t for the fact that he really did not care for the lives of the incompetents that were supposed to be “teaching” him… well. He might have been a little more worried. Maybe.

“You’re like a limpet snail.” He chuckles softly as she settles in under his neck and snuggles against him in a way that tells him she’s not letting go for a while, settling in and letting the anger flow from his body. “And if I started counting every time you did this, I’d lose count very quickly.”

“Well that’s not fair, Zuzu. If father did not hire sub par tutors, I would not need to threaten to remove them for their incompetence.” She’s probably smiling as if butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth in that silly prim and proper tone. “If we just learned under Uncle, this wouldn’t be a problem.”

“I thought you were still mad at him for killing some of the last dragons in the world?” Zuko asks curiously, not having revealed the survival of either Ran or Shaw to her. He trusts her, but Azula really loves Dragons.

“Oh, I am. That’s why we should learn from Uncle anyway,” Azula shrugs, continuing to cling to him like some kind of marsupial baby, clenching her fist in his shirt as she loses focus on him and focuses more on their uncle’s reputation. “Anyone capable of slaying a dragon must be at the pinnacle of the art, after all. The things we could learn from our dear Uncle would outstrip anything these worthless Caldera City tutors could teach us even if they used up their entire lifetime’s worth of knowledge!”

“Uh huh. I’m sure this has nothing to do with the fact that you want to strike Uncle Iroh down as revenge for killing the last dragons,” Zuko deadpans at Azula, rolling his eyes with a sort of indulgent chuckle.

“... Well, that too. To learn his techniques also means to learn his weaknesses, and then when we have learned everything he has to teach… he will rue the day he struck down the last dragons!” Azula cackles, still clinging onto him and almost igniting the air around her with her maddened, vicious laughter. For an ostensibly sane-ish eight year old, she is scarily good at doing an evil laugh.

Of course, he’s also good at disrupting said evil laughs, depositing a kiss on her forehead that entirely shuts her down in her tracks as she tries to wipe it away, unable to move her arms now that he has her trapped. “Stop! Let me go, you’re gross!” She practically screeches, but his arms are unbending! Her escape is impossible!

“Never! I am to you as The Boiling Rock is to the prisoners held there! There is no escape!” He dramatically says, before pulling out his secret weapon, getting her on the side and laughing at the immediate yelp she lets out as her attempts to escape double, squealing laughter now escaping her and causing Zuko’s smirk to widen. Azula hates the sounds she makes when she’s laughing like this.

“No! Nooooo! Stop it! Lemme gooooo! Murder! Sabotage! Betrayal!” Azula shrieks, flailing about and trying to escape Zuko’s clutches to no avail, absolutely unable to break out due to his size and strength and her own inability to focus long enough to use any of her bending techniques to end the ticklish hell she’s been subjected to.

Deciding to have leniency, he stops tickling her, letting go only to blink when she immediately hugs him tighter. “I thought you wanted me to let go?”

“Nuh uh! Not letting you go!” Azula immediately shakes her head, clinging to him like a lifeline and pouting up at him as she fists her hands in his shirt again. “You’re at my mercy now!”

Snorting, Zuko decides to go along with it, wrapping his hands back around her carefully. “ Sure , Azula. I, the one who is not ticklish, am now at your mercy. And not the other way around, with your very vulnerable ticklish spots.”

“See, now you get it!” Azula grins, and at that moment Ursa takes the opportunity to step into the room and interrupt their fun. 

“Children, where have you been? I’ve been looking for you for half an hour now- Zuko, why did your tutor flee from the palace just now? Azula, why aren’t you in your classes?” Ursa asks, chiding the both of them and standing tall and regal as if she’s already the Fire Lady instead of just the wife of the current spare heir.

“I was practicing the forms without using fire bending so that I could get them down properly, as well as redirecting Azula’s flames while doing so, and the Tutor kept interrupting my focus. So I decided to demonstrate my fire and cut a hole through the wall of the training room.” Zuko hums out, rolling over and carrying Azula with him to look at his mother in this life. “I came here so I would stop being angry, and Azula came with me.”

“I see. Well. I suppose that’s yet another tutor you two have driven from palace grounds…” Ursa deadpans, absolutely disapproving of their combined chaotic antics and general lack of respect for the tutors available in their fine city. “Ozai will not be happy about this, you understand? Zuko, Azula?”

“Hmph! If father would hire actual soldiers instead of namby pamby weaklings who haven’t punched anyone since their last schoolyard brawl, maybe we wouldn’t have to keep running them off when they inevitably prove incompetent!” Azula talks back, not letting go of Zuko as she sort of half scuttles around him like he’s a jungle gym so she can settle on his back again. “Even I knew what Zuzu was doing, and his forms were flawless!”

Letting out a sigh, Ursa shakes her head as she steps over to them, leaning down and sitting on one of the larger pillows in front of Zuko. “Children, just because you’re frustrated with the skill level of your tutors, does not mean you can just run them from the palace. Think about how that reflects on our family, on the royal family of the Fire Nation, that the children of Ozai are running any tutor out of this palace within a few short months at best. Either from frustration, or fear.”

“If they understood a practical application of fire bending that wasn’t just ‘big flame make big boom, big scary fire’ I wouldn’t be having this problem.” Zuko frowns at Ursa, ignoring the way Azula tries to get a rise out of him with practiced ease. “I don’t throw around pointless blasts because it’s wasteful.”

“ Zuko .” Ursa chastises him, and so Zuko lets out a sigh.

“I apologize for scaring off my tutor. Even if he was a disgrace to the art.”

“Good. Azula was brought here by you, so she can’t be punished either.” Ursa hums, before standing back up. “Come, let’s get you both washed up and in new clothes. Your Grandfather wishes to have a family dinner tonight, so Lu Ten and Iroh will also be there.”

“Yes mother.” The both of them say, Zuko pushing himself off and having to coax Azula off of his back before the both of them dutifully follow her.

Maybe Iroh will teach them. He won’t be sieging Ba Sing Se for a few years.

Chapter Text

Looking around the room he chose, the Quiet Room of course, Zuko nods his head as he looks at Ty Lee. Of course, Ty Lee isn’t taking this seriously.

“Y’know Zuko, when a boy takes a girl into a quiet room, generally there’s something going on there.” She teases him as he shuts the door with a click, before pulling her to a large pillow and sitting down beside it.

“I wanted to talk to you about something delicate.” He says, ignoring her teasing for the moment. This is more important than the social implications of a thirteen year old and an eleven year old wandering off to a quiet room together. The Quiet Room is just about the only place in the palace that guarantees any sort of real privacy… other than the hidden passageways that only he knows anything about, and those are few and far between because someone (Azula) keeps finding him inside the ones he thought were private.

Staring at him with a frown, Ty Lee tilts her head as she sits down. “What about? Normally you’re a lot more silly.”

Rubbing his face, he knows there’s no delicate way to say this. So he’s not going to. “You and your family have Air Nomad blood.”

Ty Lee blinks, tilting her head for a moment before letting out a loud laugh. “Ha! This is another joke isn’t it! I mean, it’s a little early in the season for pranking and all, but that’s a good one! Pffft, as if! Air Nomad blood? That’s impossible! My family’s been in the Fire Nation for generations!”

Her laughter trails off when his face doesn’t change, and Zuko slowly shakes his head at her. “Ty Lee. Your eyes are gray. You and your sisters all have an appreciation for Chi even if none of them know how to use it. You’re more flexible than literally anyone else in the Fire Nation, and you’re so light on your feet you can jump twice your height from a standing position. There is one name in your family tree that was marked out and replaced with the one your family calls your great great grandfather’s, a Fire Nation name known for being generic. Lee Fire.”

“Just because Fire’s a generic family name doesn’t mean it’s not a real name! It’s like Li! There’s a million Lis and a million more Lees! And that’s not going into how many Liys there are or Lies or-”

“And Lee has no known family members outside of your great great grandmother, his wife.” He points out, and Ty Lee snaps her mouth shut. “He appeared in the Fire Nation two years before the Air Nomad genocide, along with a man known for being friends with the Avatar, Kuzon. Both of them were wearing the same clothes, and saying dumb cultural phrases like ‘Flameo, Hotman’ to each other while laughing like idiots. He then married Kuzon’s sister not long after.”

“Ty Baa. And Great Great Grandfather took her name instead of her taking his.” Ty Lee quietly nods her head, frowning at the floor nervously. She grimaces, looking down at her hands as she clenches her fists, then looks up at him. “... What’s gonna happen to me? If… I’m not gonna become an Airbender, am I?”

“You could.” He says without preamble, nodding his head. “You might already be doing it and not know. You’ve had your chi sense since you were young, and Air Nomads were known for their spirituality. You’ve also been taught since we were young that Air Benders were terrifying, brutal monsters that had to be stopped before they could attack the rest of the world. This is a lie.”

Ty Lee lets out a gasp, blinking in surprise. “R-really? I mean, all the stories said they were peaceful, but then Fire Lord Sozin’s account said they were going to attack us, and kept their peaceful facade so we’d never expect it.”

Gently patting her shoulder, Zuko shakes his head. “No. Air is the most dangerous element. The Air is a powerful thing, with the only thing worse coming from Water. Spirit Bending. It can disrupt the body terribly. The Air Nomads were kind. Peaceful people. They didn’t have a government, an army, or even an actual fighting style. They just had their temples and their bisons and their pies and their art. Sometimes they barely had the clothes on their backs, spun from Furred Hermit Crab twine with careful precision to not hurt the crabs. They were a beautiful people, truth be told. Sozin was terrified of the Avatar, but some part of him also probably understands what would happen if the Air Nomads went to war. Terrible terrible things.” He goes quiet, picturing the sheer destruction that Air could do, that Zaheer did later in the future.

“... So… everything they teach us is wrong? But… that doesn’t make any sense… if… if the Air Nomads were peaceful… then why even start the war in the first place?” Ty Lee asks, clutching her head in confusion and drumming her fingers against her skull as she looks around almost wildly. Still, though, she can’t help but accept Zuko’s words- his chi aura is dashed through with the colors of Truth and Sincerity , and she knows that there’s only two options- either he’s deluded himself into thinking it’s true… or it’s actually true. And for all that she teases Zuko about being a dumb-dumb with Azula and Mai, she knows that Zuko is smart. Too smart. Some kind of weird seer and knower of things that shouldn’t be possible. If he says something is true… it usually is.

Blowing out a sigh, Zuko shrugs. “I don’t know, truthfully. A long time ago, Sozin wanted to expand the Fire Nation. Despite our strength, we were the smallest. The Earth Kingdom had so much space, surely establishing land there would be an easy thing. Sozin had his face spat on by the Earth King of Ba Sing Se, metaphorically, and Earth Queen Guo Xan didn’t actually mind over much as long as he wasn’t aggressive about it. Avatar Roku disagreed, made him supplicate. When he had the opportunity to leave Roku to die, Sozin took it. Started the war to stop the Air Nomads from producing the next Avatar. Took the fight everywhere else after that. Now Azulon does it, and after him, so do Uncle and Ozai. But, History is supposedly written by the victors as far as the Fire Nation is concerned, so we tar everyone with a brush that makes us look better. We bring culture and civilization to the Water Kingdom. We fight the hordes of barbarians from the Earth Kingdom. The Air Nomads? A bunch of devious monsters waiting for us to drop our guards.” He licks his lips after a moment, wetting them again as he observes Ty Lee take in his words with an unhappy, uncomfortable look on her face.

“... I know this is supposed to be a really serious thing but I kinda spaced out halfway through your explanation,” Ty Lee mumbles, looking away awkwardly and clearing her throat. “... Hey why does the air in here look… wobbly…?”

“Those are air currents. At least, I assume so. I can only see them when there’s heat.” Zuko explains, before shaking his head. “The short version is just, Fire Lord Sozin expanded, Avatar Roku didn’t like that, Sozin eventually left him to die during a volcanic eruption, wiped out the Air Nomads to get the next avatar, said they were planning an attack. You get all of that?”

“Uhhhh… yeah, think so! So… what happened to the Avatar anyway? You’re a weird seer vision guy, right? You know things,” Ty Lee hums, tapping her chin and blinking a little. She gasps a little, an absolutely stupid idea coming to her mind. “What if I’m the Avatar!?”

“... No he’s in the South Pole right now, presumably. But if you were the Avatar we’d need to smuggle you out of the country and preferably to the Northern Water Tribe before the Fire Lord or my own father decided to either lock you up or execute you,” Zuko answers somewhat seriously, trying not to be too morbid while also not shying away from the realities of what would happen. “It… wouldn’t be good for you.”

“... No I guess not. Being an Airbender’s probably bad for me too, huh?” Ty Lee mumbles, grumbling a little and crossing her arms. “Do you know anything about Airbending, then? I’ve been trying to learn chi blocking, but finding consistent teachers is haaaaaaard…”

Perking up, Zuko smiles, holding up his hand and making fire. “Okay, so you see the little cones that I make around my fire? Those cones are air that spins. Air loves to move , and it will swirl if you let it. Which is why the Airbender symbol is three swirls.”

“... Huh. I always wondered about that,” Ty Lee mumbles, sort of spinning her finger in the air and watching the haze around her body move. “Huh… I think I can feel it… but it’s not doing anything… Isn’t there like, a chi thing you can do with this or something?”

“Your job isn’t to control the wind. That requires a hell of a lot more training than you’d reasonably have.” Zuko says, taking her hand carefully and guiding it along with the air currents he can’t really see. “Your job is to guide it. You make a funnel cone, what gets pushed out of it? Rhetorical question, air gets pushed out, because it has nowhere else to go. You remember my little bubble trick? It’s kind of like that.”

“... So what you’re telling me is I’m on baby training until I can start doing the cool stuff like you n’ Lala can do,” Ty Lee simplifies, taking his wordy explanation and condensing it down. “... You said spinning, right? Spinning’s a good trick.”

“Kinda, yeah.” He nods, leaning back against the pillow. “Air likes to move, and it’ll form funnels. That’s how tornadoes are made. Apparently the Air Nomads had thirty six techniques you had to learn for mastery, and the avatar created the thirty seventh with his air ball. You meanwhile, don’t need to learn all of them. Really, you don’t even need to learn most. You kinda need to shave your head to get their mastery tattoos too, and… I doubt you want to do that.”

“Not the hair!” Ty Lee yelps, clutching onto her braid protectively and flinching back with a shudder. “I can’t do that! Nuh uh! No way! That does it, I’m never mastering anything from those old dead guys, I like my hair too much! Only Ty Lao ever thought of shaving her head and Ty Lao is crazy!”

“Uh…?”

“Crazy as in she thinks shaving her head would be fun, not crazy like how Lala gets whenever she’s away from her precious Zuzu for more than ten minutes,” Ty Lee explains rather poorly, then blinks and looks to one of the side walls. “... Hey Zuzu?”

“I’m going to assume Azula’s just come in through one of the side passages?” He raises an eyebrow at Ty Lee, and she just nods at him. Not soon after, Azula tackles his back, barely avoiding knocking him into Ty Lee.

“Zuzu! Why are you locked in the Quiet Room!? I couldn’t find you anywhere and it took aaaaages to find you! Oh, hey Ty Lee,” Azula vaguely waves towards Ty Lee, who waves back just as awkwardly, before turning her attention back to Zuko as she glares down at him jealously. “Anyway, why are you locked in here with Ty Lee!?”

“Revelations about her family tree that she really needed to know,” Zuko explains vaguely, looking sort of over his shoulder at Azula as she basically clings to his back like a koalaotter. Just, with less hand holding at the moment. 

“Oh, right, she has Air Nomad blood. I always wondered about the gray eyes,” Azula hums, looking entirely unsurprised.

“Did everyone know but me!?” Ty Lee yelps, staring at Azula accusingly, as if she has no idea how the fuck Azula knows. Frankly, neither does Zuko.

“It was obvious? I mean, Lee Fire? Really? I get that there’s a million families named Fire and a billion versions of Lee but they could have added a little spice. Maybe a Kuzon or something. There’s only a couple hundred thousand Kuzons,” Azula nods to herself, rubbing her chin like some kind of strange detective. “I heard a joke that everyone named Kuzon in the military has to name themselves after their hometowns or something even more specific because there’s too many of them to tell them apart. I don’t know how they handle all of the Lees, though… at least Ty Lee has her family name to make her special.”

“Well clearly the Lee are all E-Lee-te soldiers.” Zuko snorts at the disappointed expression on Ty Lee’s face at his pun. Azula’s groan also makes him chuckle with a little smug enjoyment to it.

“ Moving on from Zuzu’s terrible sense of humor, truthfully it’s not a problem. Plenty of families in the Fire Nation have Air Nomad blood. If any of them are Airbenders, they stay silent about it. Are you an Airbender, Ty Lee?” Azula tilts her head at her friend, and while she looks nervous, Ty Lee’s face is firm as she slowly nods.

“... Well. Mai will be disappointed about being the only non-bender in our group,” Azula huffs, rolling her eyes and snuggling against Zuko’s back without a care in the world. “Unless she has some kind of ancestry none of us know about, and is secretly hiding, oh, I don’t know, fabulous Lavabending prowess beneath her dreary robes.”

“With how much she loves those knives of hers, you’d think she had like… Knife… uh… no, Metal bending or something,” Ty Lee snickers at her own joke, as if Metalbending was an actual thing. Azula giggles a little as well, both of them reveling in the idea of something that ridiculous becoming a thing.

Zuko, meanwhile, remains tellingly silent, and increasingly awkward to the point that Ty Lee starts noticing his chi aura discoloring, and Azula senses the heat pattern in his body changing as well.

Both of them stop, looking at each other in confusion.

“... Zuzu? You uh… mind telling us why your aura’s all… y’know…?” Ty Lee motions vaguely, wiggling her fingers at Zuko. “You’re kinda freakin’ me out here…”

“... Let’s just say that if you ever meet a girl named Toph Beifong… don’t wear anything metal within arms’ reach of her. It won’t end well,” Zuko grimaces, looking away. “She is to Earth Bending what Azula is to Fire Bending.”

“... That’s terrifying,” Ty Lee mumbles, shuddering a little.

“That sounds like a challenge,” Azula grins, literally heating up as her chi starts to light up in excitement.

“Lala, she’s only… What’s the year?” Zuko asks curiously.

“Ninety three on the new calendar.” Ty Lee helpfully says, and he nods in appreciation to her.

“Right. She’s five right now. Wait that ain't right .” He quietly frowns in thought. Zuko was meant to be born in eighty four AG, but he’s thirteen right now. Zuko’s Agni Kai should have been when he was thirteen, but the war meeting where Ozai suggested wiping out several fresh squads was after he’d become Fire Lord. “Hmm. Either the calendar's wrong, or we’re older than we were in my visions.”

“... Zuzu that’s not how visions work,” Azula deadpans dryly, flicking him upside the head. “That’s dumb.”

“How would you know, you don’t have visions.” Zuko grumbles at his sister, wiggling his fingers in front of her face. “You can see visions and not know how old you’re supposed to be. Like Uncle Iroh seeing a vision of him conquering Ba Sing Se. He’s gonna do it when he’s older, not now or in a year or three.”

“... Isn’t he already trying to conquer Ba Sing Se, though? Surely it won’t take him that much longer to break the walls,” Azula mumbles, rubbing her chin and thinking about their Uncle’s strategy. “Then again… they haven’t gotten in yet.”

“Well… All of his soldiers are reaching their breaking points. The siege is long, and even if they’re keeping food on the surface from coming in, Ba Sing Se’s getting food from other places under the ground. All it’ll take is one big thing happening and that’ll be the end of it.” Zuko frowns, thinking about how, within a year’s time, Lu Ten might be dead. He hopes not, but if it all happens the same, then there’s nothing he could really do to change that. Not like freeing the waterbenders.

He’s thankful that Grandfather was gullible about wanting to know why he wanted to see them, and didn’t notice the pilfered keys until three Waterbenders were free and Zuko was already gone. He also wasn’t stupid enough to release Hama first, no offense to her, and he made sure to go during the day. But, considering the whispers of terrifying ‘water creatures’, he’ll assume they got home.

“Mmm… wouldn’t the tunnels under Ba Sing Se lead directly into the city?” Azula murmurs quietly, puzzling out the problem in her mind and thinking about the tactics of seizing a walled city as strong and as secure in its own position as Ba Sing Se. “... if one could see the entrances to those tunnels…?”

“You’d need Earthbenders to lead you through safely. Otherwise you’d be trapped in a labyrinth underground, and die.” Zuko says without preamble, before humming. “Anyway, I’ve already told Ty Lee what I came here to tell her, so I’m done here. You wanna go take frost treats from the kitchens before they catch us?”

“Do I!?” Azula immediately perks up, gasping excitedly. “Let’s go, Zuzu! Ty Lee, back us up!”

“Aye aye, Princess!” Ty Lee immediately answers, jumping to her feet and saluting as she sort of bounces around in place childishly. “Whoa! The air feels kinda weird now, like, all tingly n’ stuff! Neat!”

Holding a finger up for quiet, Zuko looks around the locked room for a moment before walking to the door and unlocking it, then tip-toeing over to a specific secret passage, opening a crook in the wall and waving a hand in for Ty Lee to follow. “This way. And remember, don’t say that stuff out loud. Or at least, don’t shout it.”

“Right, right… Ooh, secret tunnel!” Ty Lee gasps, and Azula just narrows her eyes from where she’s on Zuko’s back.

“So how long have you been hiding this passage from me, Zuzu?” she hisses, clenching her fists against his shirt and whispering in his ear menacingly. 

“Not as long as I’ve been hiding the escape tunnel with all of my ready to run gear.” Zuko glibly answers, relying on refuge in audacity and knowing that both Ty Lee and Azula will think he’s talking about his ‘wild plan’ again. “The one I’m going to use to-”

“Live in the mountains so no one could ever find you, hopefully while learning from the dead spirits of the dragons so you don’t ever get bored. Yes, Zuzu, I remember your silly plan.” Azula thankfully takes the bait, rolling her eyes as Ty Lee giggles at him. “So mean, Zuzu, not telling me about a secret route to the kitchens. I could have been stealing frost treats for so long!”

“As opposed to just walking in and taking them.” Zuko chuckles at his sister, internally letting out a sigh of relief at the fact that neither of them took him seriously. He doesn’t want to complicate his eventual escape by either of them accidentally ratting him out.

“It’s not as fun that way!” Azula protests, shaking her head and bapping Zuko with her surprisingly dainty fist. “Ugh, you have no sense of drama , Zuzu. Truly, you’re lost in the ways of thievery and excitement.”

“I dunno, if that were true he wouldn’t have so many theater scrolls in his room,” Ty Lee mentions idly, the three of them sort of shimmying through the surprisingly clean secret passageway on their way to the kitchen. It probably helps that most of the cleaning Zuko needed to do when he first found the tunnel was just to burn out the dust and air out the smoke smell.

“Theater is fun.” Zuko hums with a smile, holding a hand up and using his foot to delicately crack open the wall. Looking around, he can’t see any cooks, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t there. “Besides, my sense of thievery and excitement are more focused on other things I could steal instead of frost treats. So many things.”

Carefully, almost as if it were made of fine china, he shimmies open the wall, letting out a quiet sigh of relief at the lack of cooks in the room currently. Dropping down slowly, he helps Azula down to make sure she muffles her steps, while Ty Lee doesn’t actually need help but wants to feel included anyway. The three of them carefully make their way over to the freezer, probably called something else, before Zuko opens it and fishes out a small innocuous box.

Of course, something nearly interrupts them as the kitchen door bangs, causing the three of them to jump in shock, and now Zuko has to quickly pull out the box and hand it off to Ty Lee, before closing the freezer and picking up Azula, carefully tap sprinting along with the acrobat as the three of them file back into the secret entrance, closing it quickly behind them before Zuko lets down Azula.

“That was too close.” He quietly says, breathing a bit hard at the fright in his chest as he rubs it.

“We almost got caught!” Azula cheers, grinning and leaning against Zuko without any sense of shame whatsoever. “That was great!”

“Y’know, it’s kinda cute how Lala always starts acting like me whenever we do this kinda thing,” Ty Lee hums, holding up the box they stole and settling against one of the walls of the tunnel as it widens out to hold all of them. “You two are usually so serious and moody.”

“Zuzu, serious? No way!” Azula shakes her head, and Zuko feels just the slightest bit offended. She’s not wrong , but he can be serious.

“Look, we can discuss this in my room. Or Azula’s room. Iunno, which would you two prefer to eat frost treats in?” Zuko asks, causing Azula to hum before she jumps back on his back.

“We’ll eat them in yours. Let’s go!” She nearly shouts, and Zuko can hear another thump from the kitchen, so he and Ty Lee quickly shimmy through the secret passage, Zuko grabbing the acrobatic girl’s arm to pull her along another pathway, leading to his room.

“Wow, there’s a lot of secret passages in the palace.” Ty Lee quietly says, and he can’t help but nod.

“Yeah, this whole place is like secret passages on secret passages. There’s a bunch of them, and only a few rooms aren’t connected. There’s actually a tunnel between my room and Azula’s for some reason.” Zuko says, not quite sure why that’d be the case. A prince and princess wouldn’t have had the money to commission the carpenters to build the path, so it was pre-built into it.

“That one’s my favorite,” Azula glibly points out as they make it to Zuko’s room, throwing herself onto his bed without a hint of shame now that she’s in her favorite place in the entire palace. 

“... It is? Really?” Ty Lee blinks slowly, speaking as if she’s somewhere between sarcastic and genuinely questioning, as if she has an idea of why Azula’s favorite secret passage would be the one leading from her room to Zuko’s, but wants to confirm it anyway. “I guess you two do cling to each other a lot…”

“Azula likes to come in here when she has night terrors. I told her stories so she’d fall back to sleep.” Zuko admits without mercy or hesitation, smiling at the pout on his sister’s face as she folds her arms.

“Just for that, I’m taking one of your frost treats.” She blows a raspberry at him, eagerly taking the box when Ty Lee holds it out. “Excellent. Good work, Ty lee.”

Just as she goes to bite into one of the frost treats, Zuko snatches it from her hand, biting into it with a smug smile as he sits down beside her. “And just for that, I’ll take one of yours. So now we’re even.”

“Ugh- Zuzu! Give it back!” Azula immediately yelps, reaching out at him with a glare. “That’s mine!”

Ty Lee, off to the side, just giggles at the antics as Azula and Zuko begin almost wrestling for control of the frost treat that Zuko had stolen. It’s nice watching them play.

Chapter Text

“You got them early!?” Mai gasps, lunging at the scrolls in Zuko’s hands like a particularly feral cat- showing more emotion in two seconds than the entire week prior as she grabs the top scroll from the pile and holds it aloft. “These weren’t supposed to come out until the end of the month! How did you get your hands on the next printing of Tokaidochu Hizakurige already!?”

“Being in the royal family has a few perks.” Zoro hums, backing away slowly at the near feral excitement of Mai overtakes her. “Mom used to be in her town’s local theater troupe, and she knows a lot of publishers pretty well, so she gets advanced copies whenever she wants. Generally of whatever she wants, too.”

Trying to regain her composure, and failing, Mai’s giddy smile can’t be washed away by her usual attempt at looking dour. “That’s pretty cool. The only thing I get from my parents are silks. Gram was the one to get me my knives. Mother’s Gram. But Mother knows her way around a guandao, so it’s something we bond on.”

“Don’t let anyone else hear this, but mom knows her way around hammers better than a large amount of our weapons forces. Craft, wood, steel, cast iron pan. Give her one of them and she’s probably just as dangerous as Uncle.” He hums, sitting back on his bed and leaning against the wall. He can’t hear shuffling through the passage, so he’ll assume that Ty Lee is entertaining Azula. Or she’s doing something else with her time.

“That’s pretty hard to believe.” She hums, finally getting her face under control as she happily sits against his bed on the floor, reading over the scroll with an eager bent.

He can’t quite help but tilt his head at her. “Y’know you’re welcome to a soft chair right? Or you could just sit here?”

“No time to move, I have scrolls to read,” Mai immediately shoots back, poring over the scroll eagerly and gasping and oohing and aahing over the stunning illustration work and eloquent mix of comedy, narrative, poetry, and travel stories mixed together on the parchment scrolls. “Besides, Azula might actually try to murder me if she smells anything other than you or maybe Ty Lee on your sheets.”

Holding a hand up, Zuko pauses before slowly nodding his head. “That’s a fair point. She’d probably notice your perfume, even if it’s mild. She’s weirdly good at that.”

“She’s obsessive and I’m pretty sure she’d learn how to use knives better than me just so she could stab me to death for moving in on her territory,” Mai grumbles, somehow managing to concentrate on reading and talking at the same time while blazing through the length of the scroll at an almost feverish pace before rolling it back up, setting it gently to the side, and then picking up the next scroll in the package to do the same. “She’s only gotten clingier over time, I hope you realize that, Zuzu. That she’s even away for a few hours now is a damn miracle.”

“She’s… Okay, I can’t say she’s not that bad.” Zuko sheepishly scratches his head. “But Azula doesn’t… She doesn’t have anyone else. Mom doesn’t know how to approach her and sees too much of Ozai in her to really want to try, Uncle Iroh’s been away on siege for almost half a decade now and even when he’s back he sees too much of his past to understand that the reason she hates him is a childish anger at him killing the last dragons instead of anything Ozai told her, Ozai is worthless, and Grandfather… Is Grandfather. ” He clears his throat forcefully, before shaking his head and laying on his bed. “She’s going to stay clingy with the few positive interactions she has in her life. And if she’s not clingy with me, she’s clingy with you or Ty Lee.”

“At least she doesn’t get in my personal space,” Mai comments dryly, rolling her eyes so powerfully that Zuko can tell she’s doing so even though she’s still all but glued to the scrolls she basically stole out of his hands. “Still creepy that she sometimes watches me sleep, though. Why does she watch me sleep, again? She doesn’t watch you or Ty Lee.”

“It’s her way of making sure you’re safe. Nothing can hurt you if she kills it first.” He hums, quietly shifting in his bed to prop his head up with his arm. “Azula’s delicate. Emotions wise. If I cared about her any less, she’d probably be far less of a normal person at this point in time. She might even be gone. Mentally, I mean. Just a ball of spite and anger and pain lashing out at the world.”

“I don’t think I’d even want to be friends with her if she was like that… well, maybe. If she was cool enough otherwise,” Mai hums in agreement, finishing the second scroll and moving onto the third. Her voice flattens slightly at the thought of Azula being a worse person, as if she really, really didn’t want to imagine such things. “I can just see it now… the entire capital full of blue fire as far as the eye can see. Blue fire, ash, and lots of dead bodies.”

“She can fall over while lightning bending and still keep the charge without hurting herself. It’d be beyond catastrophic. Not least of which because what would set her off would likely be father giving her the title Fire Lord before making it worthless. Probably by calling himself Phoenix King or something stupid like that.” Zuko nods in agreement even knowing Mai won’t see it, picturing how the other Azula was. “It helps that mother’s still here. In the visions she wasn’t. She’d left, made a deal with the Mother of Faces. Azula and I had another little sister we didn’t learn about for years. Azula was stuck in an asylum for a while, and I was stuck as Fire Lord.”

“... Grim. What happened to me and Ty Lee in that vision?” Mai asks, finally turning and raising an eyebrow at Zuko. Her expression doesn’t change, but the heat pattern in her body shifts in a way that suggests she finds the idea of that vision somewhat disturbing. Or something. Reading someone’s heat pattern is more like reading a mood ring than the actual chi sensing that Ty Lee does, and Zuko finds himself more than a little jealous of that ability sometimes.

“Locked up in the Boiling Rock after helping me and a man from the Water Tribe escape with a bunch of people from the prison by betraying her. Broke her psyche. Then she had another breakdown during the prelude to her coronation. Saw mother in a mirror, cut her hair. Then she got crowned, Ozai went to burn the Earth Kingdom, and she was left behind to fight me.” He quietly says, frowning as the events stop being a show and start being real , and he sneers in anger. “It wasn’t pretty. But, after that, Ty Lee joined the Kyoshi Warriors officially, and you met a nice guy named… Kei Lo.” It took him a moment to remember the poor guy’s name, his sneer finally falling away. “You broke up with him after that for some reason.”

“... I can’t imagine falling in love with someone and then falling out of love… but I suppose my priorities in keeping a relationship are different from the average person, who seems to fall in love and then break up at least once every month,” Mai deadpans, rolling her eyes a little and murmuring the name Kei Lo to herself out of idle curiosity. “Never would have imagined myself with someone named Lo though… that’s a peasant’s family name. Can’t really tell anything about that name… there’s a million Lo’s. Probably at least a couple thousand Keis too. Isn’t that an orphan name?”

“A lot of stupid stuff happened.” Zuko waves a hand errantly, not really remembering the details too well. “Ozai became Fire Lord, had his bending stripped away, then got imprisoned. Your father joined with a bunch of like minded idiots to create the New Ozai Society or something, who wanted him back on the throne. He was an orphan looking for somewhere to belong, yeah, and joined their group despite not really caring who was in charge. They sent him to get you for one of their meetings in a flower shop, you knocked him out twice, got together with him, then dumped him in a flower shop. The same one you originally met in.”

“... All of that sounds incredibly unlikely, and also incredibly stupid,” Mai deadpans further, looking less and less happy about the words coming out of Zuko’s mouth. Not that she usually ever looks happy at all unless she’s in her room reading theater scrolls. “But I can see myself dumping someone in a flower shop, I suppose.”

“Very dramatic of you. A place of beauty, defiled by grief.” Zuko smirks down at her, chuckling at the thought. “You would do that. If you had to split off, you’d want it to be a dramatic affair, even if it was private.”

“Absolutely. It’s no fun if someone’s not suffering pathetically by the end of it all,” Mai hums, looking self satisfied as she turns away. She almost quirked a smile there, so she must really think the idea of dumping someone in a flower shop is hilarious. “Well, I suppose I won’t be looking for any Kei Lo at this point. I suspect that if the war continues, either you or Azula are going to murder your own father before he ever becomes Fire Lord. Well. Here’s hoping that doesn’t happen for a while.”

“Yeah. Here’s hoping.” Zuko quietly says with a frown. It’s ninety five AG. Lu Ten… will probably be dead within the next few months.

Will he need to fight for his right to live? Or will Ursa still poison Azulon? 

He hopes Lu Ten survives. He likes Lu Ten- moreso than he would have had he been born four years later, when he should have been born. Or, so he assumes. Things have changed, and the old memories don’t work to tell him how things should go as well as they should.

“I hope Iroh becomes Fire Lord. He’s surprisingly nice, for the most terrifying general in the army,” Mai continues, returning to reading silently after a few moments and offering up absolutely nothing else in terms of conversation.

“Uncle’s a spiritualist. Went to learn whatever he could from the old Sun Temple.” Zuko hums, laying back down on his bed and bringing up his knees. “He’s an effective leader, and cares about the men under his command. He’s effective, but never brutally so. If he became Fire Lord, I can see the Fire Nation becoming more in tune with nature, but also regressing somewhat. Not to say he’s a bad leader, but Uncle right now is very firmly the sort to want to keep to old traditions. It’d take a lot to knock him out of that, and he might not find himself for a while.”

Like a three year Zuko Adventure, he can’t help but muse. Rubbing his face where the other Zuko was scarred, he finds he doesn’t like that idea. Begging on his hands and knees for the forgiveness of an idiot using meat grinder tactics. Ozai… Ozai’s opinion of him is odd. Compared to the complete antipathy and hate that the other Ozai held, the one of this word still hates him, but also seems to be trying to understand how he could keep up with Azula.

He never got the ‘lucky to be born’ speech. Even without the blessing from Agni, manifesting any form of blue fire seemed to rescind that. But Ozai found other ways to try and tear him down. And yet, all Zuko could think of was how pathetic the man was, trying to destroy a child as a grown ass adult. Ozai hated him even more for that.

“If Ozai becomes Fire Lord, we’d push more aggressively. But we’d lose more of ourselves, to attrition, anger, infighting, and just plain hostility. He’d be an effective leader for the War Effort, but not the economy, environmental health, or emotional stability of the nation. Ozai would throw fresh troops into unwinnable situations because he couldn’t conceive of anything but total victory or death. He wouldn’t keep the old traditions alive, but only because he doesn’t care about them.”

“Shame. I quite like some of the old traditions. Feels better than everything else going on around the country right now,” Mai doesn’t really expand on what traditions she cares about, but Zuko’s going to guess she primarily cares about the Fire Nation’s previously rich and overwhelmingly artistic cultural tradition, which has since suffered to the point of being halfway lost during the course of the last hundred years of warfare. That, or the Fire Nation’s martial traditions, which were also thrown to the wayside in favor of overwhelming firepower in the form of either firebenders, infantry columns for nonbenders, or siege weaponry fielded en masse. Or, as is the case now, lots and lots and lots of tanks.

“Mm. Ember Island’s theaters are so much smaller than they used to be when we were kids. And apparently far smaller than they used to be when Azulon was a young man. He mentioned wanting to reinvest money into the plays at some point.” The unspoken ‘but he probably won’t’ was deafening to the both of them.

“Be nice if someone did something about that,” Mai suggests offhandedly, shooting a pointed glance in Zuko’s direction as if suggesting something absolutely treasonous and definitely illegal. “Be real nice.”

“I do not want to lead this circus, Mai.” Zuko flatly says, rolling over on his bed. “Let someone else kill themselves trying to fix everything. Or get killed trying to change the country by a bunch of dissatisfied people.”

“You honestly think Azula would give you permission to die?” Mai asks, raising a slim, dainty eyebrow at Zuko. Before he can respond, Azula pulls open the door hidden in his wall and steps out with a little huff.

“Oh I absolutely wouldn’t. Zuzu isn’t allowed to die until I do,” Azula states imperiously, then wiggles her fingers at Zuko. “But if you’re so disinterested in taking the throne, I’ll do it for you, big brother~”

Somehow, that set of two words absolutely did not sound sisterly in the slightest. It mostly just sounded menacing in ways that Zuko did not want to ponder and was not smart enough to know the implications of. Mai, however, just slowly sidles away from Zuko’s bed, hoping that she didn’t leave any traces of her perfume on the covers.

“You’re not allowed to die either.” Zuko squints at his sister, moving past the rest of that sentence quickly. “And if you were Fire Lord you’d have everyone but the Fire Sages running and screaming in a week.”

“Oh, you think so poorly of me, Zuzu.” Azula titters, immediately beelining over to his bed and kicking him half way off of it so she can wrap the covers around herself. “I’d have them running in two days at the worst. Two hours at best.”

“I can hope you’d restrain yourself for a week, Lala .” Zuko shoots back, giving up the fight to keep his bed and standing up instead. “So how long were you in there? I didn’t hear any movement, and Ty Lee normally bursts her way in if you vanish.”

“The entire time. I had to make sure you two weren’t doing anything indecent , after all.” Azula smirks up at him like a smug soggy croissant, messing up even more of his bed as she wraps all of the covers around herself. “Imagine my reaction when you’re just talking about silly theater novels and the state of the Fire Nation. I was so disappointed, Zuzu.”

“Yes, because clearly me feeding Mai’s theater novel addiction meant we were about to be making like rabbit monkeys.” Zuko rolls his eyes, ignoring the slightly offended ‘hey’ that Mai lets out. “As has always been the case with the many, many women that I clearly bring back to my room every night. Really, Lala, find another thing to make up in your head.”

“Hmph. Well, if you must compare yourself to a rabbit monkey, I should hope that you find someplace to run your little dalliances that isn’t your bed. After all, it’s my bed,” Azula huffs, vaguely waving her hands about for emphasis and dramatic flair while kicking off her shoes, flumping back down onto Zuko’s pillows with a mischievous smirk. “And we all know what happens to people who mess with my things.”

“... You yell death threats until I snuggle you and make you calm down and fall asleep?” Zuko asks, blinking a few times as he tilts his head, completely taking the wind out of Azula’s sails with a single sentence.

“W-well… Um…” Azula slowly sinks most of her head into the blankets, glowering at him as the tips of her ears burn red. “That’s besides the point, Zuko!”

Mai lets out a huff of amusement, and Zuko decides to take pity on his sister, rolling her up like a burrito. “Fine, fine. Since you’re going to steal all of my covers, you get to be the blanket burrito. You’re so childish despite constantly claiming to be the more mature one of us.” He hums, before walking over and closing the secret path into his room. “And next time, close the entrance before someone walks in and discovers it.”

“Hmph!” Azula wriggles around in her burrito roll, completely trapped and unable to move beyond glaring at Zuko in silent command to get his butt over there and hold her. “Hmph!”

Of course, he’s nothing if he’s not indulgent, and hugging Azula has made her less violent over all, so he doesn’t have a problem picking her up like a slightly heavier bed roll and holding her while laying on his bed. “The things I do to soothe your ego, Lala. How terrible you are.”

As if he had any other expectations, instead of being chastised, Azula looks very smug despite being wrapped up in a blanket burrito roll. Snug as a bug in a rug. Smug as one too.

“Hmm… You could soothe my ego more, Zuzu~” Azula sing-songs, snuggling against Zuko as she wiggles around a little. “You could give me a foot rub or a back massage and fetch me all my favorite snacks from the kitchens~”

“Don’t push your luck.” Zuko immediately shoots her down with a grin as Mai lets out a quiet sigh.

“Zuko? Can I just take these home?”

Looking up at Mai, Zuko nods his head at her. “Normal rules, don’t damage them, keep them in a cool but dry area, stuff like that.”

“Mhmm. I’ll keep these safe.” Mai nods at him, packing up all of the scrolls and making her way out through the secret exit for some reason.

“Probably didn’t want to lock the door behind herself.” Zuko mumbles.

“Who knows for sure~? Perhaps she’s simply retrieving Ty Lee from my room before she leaves,” Azula hums, continuing to basically wriggle herself against him like a particularly large and blanket textured worm, grinning in smug self satisfaction as she sort of wedges herself up in a position that allows her to have almost her entire body folded into his lap. And also jam her bony-ass hip right into his gut. Or at least, it would be if it weren’t for the layers of blanket between them.

They sit there in relative silence for a few more moments, Azula luxuriating in having Zuko at her mercy and Zuko mostly just sitting there while using Azula as an oversized plushie. After a few more minutes though…

“We brought snaaaaacks~!” Ty Lee sings, pushing open the secret passage and holding up a truly impressively sized bag of flaming fire flakes as she comes in with Mai again. She effortlessly hops onto Zuko’s bed, joining the awkward pile that Azula and Zuko have made and idly feeding a few flakes to Azula. Mai, meanwhile, takes her place on the periphery of the group and chews on a skewer of roasted quail.

“I can see that. Are you going to clean up after yourself?” Zuko raises an eyebrow at Ty Lee, picking himself up and sitting beside Azula’s blanket burrito to look slightly more put together then he normally is. “Where’d you even get that many fire flakes?”

“Stole ‘em from the kitchens!” Ty Lee grins, wiggling the bag slightly and stuffing some fire flakes into her mouth with a careless grin. “They always get ‘em just right! Azula always burns them a little too much, y’know?”

“Shush,” Mai also answers Zuko, pulling a hunk of quail meat off of the skewer and stuffing it into Zuko’s mouth to occupy him for the moment, somehow withdrawing more skewers from her sleeves without any sign of discomfort or mess. Zuko often finds himself wondering what the hell is going on with Mai’s sleeves that she can just do that, but he mostly chalks it up to whatever weird ninja training she’s somehow managed to do. “Snacks first.”

“I do not burn them too much! I burn them exactly as much as Zuzu likes,” Azula protests, huffing and grumbling as she receives another mouthful of fireflakes, chewing and crunching on the rice chips while shooting a petulant glare at Ty Lee. “Hmph!”

“The rice is always just a bit too crispy.” Zuko comments, smiling at Azula even as she goes from petulantly glaring at Ty Lee to glaring at him instead. “What? You do . They always have that too charred aftertaste.”

“Wh- you lied to me! You said you liked it when I burned them!” Azula pouts, slamming her head against his shoulder petulantly and grumbling as she wriggles in her blanket burrito. “Traitor! Liar! Ignoramus! Fool with terrible taste!”

“I do like them burned. I just don’t like the charred aftertaste sticking around on my tongue for three hours. You make them burnt but sticky. Or, not sticky, but that kind of stick you only get from something that’s burned but not burned burned. I feel like I’ve moved away from the point I was making.” Zuko squints at nothing with a frown, trying to remember what he was saying.

“That is a pretty bad taste…” Ty Lee hums, continuing to pass around the bag of fire flakes and huffing as she licks her fingers clean of the vivid red spice powder clinging to them without any comment. “Mmm… Hey, do you guys ever wonder what food in other nations is like? I’ve never been. Probably pretty boring, right?”

“Hmm. Less spicy. Air Nomad food was apparently a lot of sweets for a bunch of monks. They had these weird spiral ripple cakes.” Zuko gestures with his hands, remembering the food that Monk Gyatso and Aang launched at a couple of other nomads. “Probably because they ate very little, if any, meat. So they made up for it with a large amount of nuts and other protein rich food. Probably got sick of the taste and learnt to spruce it up with sugars. Water Tribe foods are probably oily and tough, a lot of dried fish and seal and whatever else they catch in their nets. Not sure what else they’d make, being honest, but there are tubers that live in the arctic circle. Like snow yams. Probably a lot of fish, seal meat, penguin meat, anything else they can get their hands on. Southern Water Tribe’s got less luck there, but they still have penguin seals, fluff crabs, polar dogs if they ate them… Maybe they trade with the Kyoshi Islands for what they need as well.”

“Huh… that explains a few things… how do you know so much about other nations anyway? I never learned anything like that,” Ty Lee hums, scratching her cheek and tilting her head at Zuko. 

“That’s because you never pay attention in your own lessons,” Mai snarks, idly feeding Zuko another quail skewer since he’s busy making sure that Azula doesn’t start wriggling around and doing a horrifying caterpillar impression. Mostly just by holding her, really. “How many times have you asked us some inane question that you should have learned years ago?”

“Didn’t you once ask what color the nation’s flag was?” Azula mumbles, sending a suspicious look in Ty Lee’s direction.

“I forgot! And my parents don’t exactly hang the flag around the manor! We’re loyal, but we don’t need to show it in every single room!”

“Ty Lee, you said the flag was green. If you’d said orange or yellow, that’d be one thing, but you said green . And then you made it worse by saying ‘kinda a lime green, y’know’.” Zuko gestures at her with one of his free hands, chopping it decisively since everyone decided it was pick on Ty Lee time. “What part of fire is green if there’s no copper?”

“I dunno! I thought it was green! Green’s a really nice, happy color, y’know?” Ty Lee tries to defend herself, but only manages to dig herself further into that hole as she waves her hands around frantically. “And it’s not like I usually look at any flags, they just blend into the background for me cuz they’re everywhere and it’s so boring! There’s just too much black and red around the capital, y’know? Even the gold gets washed out and turns orange. Bleh.”

“This must be remedied. Zuzu? Unroll me!” Azula demands, trying to look dignified while wrapped up in a blanket, and Zuko pops a fist against his cheek as he grins down at her.

“Now why would I want to do that, my darling sister? It’d be much funnier trying to see you remedy the gaps in Ty Lee’s knowledge while wrapped up like this.” He snickers at the thought, the smugness in his grin increasing at the angry pout she fires at him.

“You’re a traitor and I’ll see you dead for this indignity,” Azula hisses, wriggling about like a worm and doing her best to escape the inescapable blanket burrito without ripping his blanket or burning it. “You’ll die a cold and undignified death for this, Zuzu!”

“Please don’t let her out, I think she’s going to kill me,” Ty Lee very poorly pretends to be scared, chewing on another handful of fire flakes before stuffing another handful into Azula’s mouth to mollify her rage. It’s almost funny, the way Azula immediately dips down to eat out of Ty Lee’s hand as if she’s a trained komodo rhino, delicately grazing on the spicy flakes and even making some undignified snuffling noises as she all but inhales the favored snack of the entire nation.

“Truly, she’ll viciously maul you.” Zuko solemnly nods his head as Azula continues to eat out of Ty Lee’s hand. “The most dangerous of all creatures in the world.”

“I hear they call her princess.” Mai joins in with a monotone, causing Zuko and Ty Lee to immediately give up in her honor. They can’t beat her, not with how hard they’re laughing. The immediate glare Azula gives them, while still not stopping with how she’s eating the fire flakes, just adds to the hilarity.

They continue laughing at Azula’s expense for a few more moments, which Azula takes in surprisingly good grace given that she hasn’t bitten Ty Lee’s fingers off yet, before Ty Lee finishes feeding Azula, shakes off her hand (and gets crumbs all over the place, which Zuko knows the palace servants are just going to love cleaning up), and then tilts her head as she thinks about the color green again.

“Oh, right! The Earth Kingdom is green! Silly me, how could I forget?” Ty Lee snickers a little, knocking on her own noggin as if to make fun of how ditzy she is. “Hey, speaking of! Zuzu, you never said what Earth Kingdom food is like!”

“Uhhh…” Trailing off, Zuko decides the only good thing he can use is a distraction. “Azula, you have crumbs in your hair.”

“WHAT!?” Azula yelps, shaking her head frantically and actually spewing a few enraged blue embers from her mouth as she sits up and wriggles. “TY LEE YOU TREASONOUS LITTLE WENCH GET OVER HERE SO I CAN GNAW YOUR FACE OFF AND BURN WHAT’S LEFT! HOW DARE YOU GET CRUMBS IN MY HAIR!”

Ty Lee’s immediate yelp of “WAIT NO, THERE’S NO CRUMBS” causes Zuko to let out a quiet sigh of relief, laying back on his bed and ignoring the way Mai is staring at him. He got out of that expertly. Even Azula tipping back and landing on his stomach doesn’t damp the relief in his chest as both Mai and Ty Lee take the excuse to scoot out, waving as they do.

They lay there in comfortable silence for a few moments, saying nothing and staring at the ceiling and just enjoying not having anything to do… and a servant throws open the door without even knocking, harried and rushed as if being chased by angry spirits.

“PRINCE ZUKO, COME QUICKLY! THERE’S URGENT NEWS!” he shouts, almost tripping over himself as he sketches out a hurried bow. “General Iroh returns with grave news! Your cousin- he’s- he’s dead!”

Chapter Text

The funeral is… quiet. Not many people in attendance, unlike the absolute carnival that Fire Lord Azulon had made of his public wake and memorial service. But the actual funeral? Where Lu Ten’s body will get turned into so much ash and then thrown to the winds to settle his spirit where it may find its way home? It’s much smaller. Much more personal. Much more… unsatisfying because it isn’t even his body that is going to be burned. It’s scraps of bloodied fabric, an effigy in his name. A painted portrait, some of his effects from his deployment. A crowned hairpiece. A soldier’s helmet. It isn’t often that one sees metal items get taken to a Fire Nation man’s grave, but at a high enough temperature even metal burns into nothing more than ash in the wind.

“All told… I was hoping nothing like this would happen with how different it was to what I saw.” Zuko quietly notes, watching Iroh as he channels his grief so unlike the man he remembered, who was openly emotional without a care. No one has approached him. Even Azulon just stared at his son before taking his place at the head of the procession.

Truthfully, Zuko can’t wait until the man’s dead. If Ozai doesn’t do it, he just might. Rubbing his face, he slams his hands down on his legs forcefully, pushing up to his feet and walking over to Iroh, gently placing a hand on his shoulder. “I’m sorry, uncle.”

“Thank you, young Zuko.” Iroh’s voice is raw with unshed grief, but his smile is strong despite that. “He died well, protecting the rest of his men. I could not ask for a more honorable son. I just wish he was still here.” The jovial man looks down, and Zuko has to nod at that.

“We gather here to honor Lu Ten as he was in his life.” The Fire Sage asked to watch over the funeral finally says, ignoring the odd looks that both Azulon and Ozai are shooting at several different people, Zuko included. “Whether through strength, strife, love, or sorrow, Lu Ten has touched all of our lives in some shape or form. When he was presented to me as a child, I knew he would be strong. I wish that strength had carried him through his final day. Under the watch of Agni, one of his children’s children have passed, and so we gift the soul back to him, whole and ready to begin again.”

The Fire Sage nods to the torch bearers, and soon three large torches are lit in front of a sconce that remains unlit. “I call now for those who knew Lu Ten in life to assist him in his final journey. To light this great sconce so he may return to Agni once more. Prince Iroh, and any who wish to help him, please step forth.”

Iroh walks on ahead, leaving Zuko standing there on his own. Turning to Azula, he sees if she wants to help, only to get a negative shake of her head and a conflicted look. Okay then. Stepping forward, he supposes it’s just him and Uncle for this.

“Young Zuko, you do not need to help. I am more than enough for this.” Iroh gently says, but Zuko just smiles at him.

“I know a few tricks for melting metal. It’ll take less time.” Taking a breath, he holds up one hand at the torch, waiting for the Fire Sage.

The Fire Sage stares at the gathering, no one else stepping forward, even a few members of Lu Ten’s platoon that were allowed to be here, before nodding his head. “Very well. You may begin, Prince Iroh, and Young Zuko.”

Breathing out as Iroh immediately begins an even heat, Zuko nods before once more heating a cone of oxygen around his hand, the immediate funnel forming without difficulty. Making a few small holes, he brings in the hard part. Burning the flames with oxygen at the exact same time. The wafting scream that his fire lets out brings an ethereal hum to the quiet room, and if he were able to see it he’d notice that a lot of people jumped in shock as his flames bled orange to form blue, the metal slagging quickly. He’s not really sure if it can burn to ash, but he’ll give it his damn best try.

If Iroh is surprised he doesn’t say anything, instead doing something with his fire to cause several different colors to bloom, similar to Ran and Shaw’s flames becoming a corona of color around the other Zuko and Aang. Truthfully, Zuko’s eyes are starting to burn from the intensity and heat, but he doesn’t look away. He watches Lu Ten’s helmet melt to nothing as the rest of the slag finally snaps apart, breaking away to release everything underneath it, bringing out the smell of burning hair and wood as both the effigy and Lu Ten’s hair knot are finally burnt.

The smell burns, and a part of him feels something watching and studying them. He’d think he was crazy, but Iroh has apparently noticed it as well, and so has the Fire Sage.

Odd.

A few moments more, he nods his head and begins to lower the flames coming from his hand, anything left in the pot not able to burn away in the time they have. Calmly letting the flame in his hand fall away, he stands up straight and lets out a breath, centering himself as Iroh also cuts his own out, letting the colors linger a few moments more before he copies Zuko.

“Thank you, Young Zuko. Thank you.” Iroh smiles wetly, and all he can do is nod his head.

Truthfully speaking his throat’s really dry, so he’d just sound like a weird dehydrated plant person. Or something. So he doesn’t trust his voice right now.

Still, beyond that haunting display of screaming fire and spiritual colors and the attention of what was probably Agni itself… The rest of the funeral goes by in a blur. Maybe Zuko’s sustained flame gave him tinnitus and flash blindness, but he truthfully doesn’t remember what the last rites were at all- he knows the basics, that the Fire Sage said Lu Ten’s last prayers and set his will to be executed (as little of it there probably was), and that Iroh was the one to fling the burnt pyre to the winds to send Lu Ten home, but beyond that… it’s a blur of emotion and loss, of the realization that his cousin is truly dead , never to return home, never to grace the halls with his presence, never to sneak him and Azula sweets from other parts of the world or to smile his big stupid grin or pretend to be dignified in front of the pretty court ladies even when giving him and Lala piggyback rides. 

Lu Ten is dead, gone, lost. Perhaps to the spirit world, perhaps just gone, but his loss is already suffusing the halls as they file out of the ritual funeral chamber at the peak of the palace and descend into the main wings below. Zuko can’t help but think about how there will be one more portrait in the halls of those that came before, one less portrait in the halls of those still living. He can’t help but think about how Lu Ten’s room in the palace will likely be folded away and put into storage, all of his reusable effects hidden away as if they’d ever be reused, his personal effects likely to be burned in the days to come, so that he might have his favorite cups and souvenirs and trophies in the fire fields with Agni. 

Just one more empty room in this already grand and empty building. It feels like a chill wind blowing through, bringing with it a sort of bleak and dreary feeling- like moving through molasses, as if time is both slow and fast in all of the worst ways. The sun doesn’t feel quite as warming anymore, knowing that Lu Ten is dead and gone, the only thing left of him likely to be his memories and the mark he left on the people around him. They didn’t even have his body, so who’s to say that the man would even be able to find his way to the ancestor’s shrine? To find his way back to the shrine of his home. He can’t help but think of how unfair it is, that they couldn’t even retrieve his corpse when most soldiers still made it back home in one way or another. As heroes, as failures, as wounded, as body bags, as boxed ashes. And yet… Lu Ten isn’t home.

Lu Ten might be stuck somewhere out there, forever chained to a battlefield because no one in the Earth Kingdom would do Fire Nation burial rites. Might be stuck there forever, lost and trying to find his way home.

He hopes that, if Lu Ten was in the Earth Kingdom, the fire they lit with his effigy was bright enough that it could call him home anyway. He hopes that Agni’s presence during the funeral meant something good could come of a tragedy that still doesn’t feel real. He can only hope that the hurt heals in time, that the memory of Lu Ten’s smiling face stops bringing pain now that he is so uncomfortably, painfully aware that he is never coming home again.

Pausing, Zuko turns to a nearby support pillar, studying it and nodding before slamming his head into it , the pain suddenly bringing him back to himself forcefully as he lets out a pained grunt. Letting out a breath as he rubs his forehead, he slowly nods before turning back to everyone still milling around the little area they’d gathered for food, some of them looking at him incredulously, others nodding their heads at him in understanding.

Of course, one of the ones that doesn’t understand is Azula, who walks up to him with a confused frown on her face as she grabs his hand and pulls down his head to look at the mark. “Zuzu! Are you insane? Why did you do that!?” She hisses at him quietly looking over his forehead in concerned anger.

“Well, uh… I couldn’t really-”

“ I don’t care about that! Don’t do it again! ” She hisses at him again, before taking him by the arm and pulling him away from that pillar. “ Clearly, since you can’t be trusted to not hurt yourself, I’ll need to stay with you. ”

Heedless of the fact that the both of them are causing a slight commotion, Azula drags him away from the wake and the food therein and the probably very important speeches and prayers that the Fire Sages are going through in order to consecrate the food they eat and send the memories and leftovers to Lu Ten or whatever, leading him off to a secluded area so she can whirl around on him and point an accusing finger in his face. “You’re such an idiotic bonehead, Zuzu! Did that whole experience really mess you up that badly or are you just looking for an excuse to fall behind me in your studies again!?”

“I only fell behind you in politics, and that’s because I have no interest in them.” Zuko immediately defends himself, before shaking his head. “You might not have felt it. But whatever me and Iroh were doing, it brought… something out. It might have been Agni himself. After that, I just… I couldn’t think. I wasn’t conscious of us moving, or even talking. I barely had enough cognizance to slam my head against that pillar, and if I hadn’t done it quick enough I might not have gotten it back even then.”

“So you had some kind of crazy spirit vision and your first thought was to split your head open on a pillar!?” Azula doesn’t yell, but it’s a near thing and she almost looks like she’s about to slap him upside the head for his stupidity. “What do you mean Agni was there!?”

“I didn’t hit myself that hard.” He rolls his eyes at her. “I said something that might have been Agni. My way of making blue fire mixed with Iroh’s spiritual flames, and something took notice. Saw what we were doing. Paid attention.” He quietly hums, before dropping himself down to sit on the floor, leaning against a wall. “I guess mixed with whatever I was feeling just made it so that I couldn’t really feel after that.”

“You do realize that sounds absolutely ridiculous, right?” Azula asks skeptically. She never did put much stock into spirits or spiritualism beyond what everyone knew was important, and keeping up appearances during important religious holidays. Still, though, she seems at least a little freaked out. “Honestly, Zuzu. I’m less inclined to believe that it was some spirit putting a spell on you and just your own naive emotions clouding your ability to think properly. Now, come come. There’s food to be had. Perhaps a hug later will lift your spirits.”

Huffing out a laugh, Zuko shakes his head as she pulls him to his feet, gently taking her hand. “Spirits are real things, Azula. They can be annoying, friendly, or awful. But they still exist. I try to ignore their existence. Besides, I wouldn’t get so caught up in my own head I couldn’t think straight without something affecting me. You know me.” The both of them walk in step, and he can tell that Azula’s rolling her eyes at him, but still smiling.

“Hmm… true enough. You think in circles more than enough for two people already, let alone an entire army. It’d be endearing if you weren’t so endlessly frustrating. Now, do as you’re told and eat your fill. I believe the grief is setting in and I shant shed a tear for Lu Ten while Father is around. You know how much he abhors any sign of weakness,” Azula hums, strutting imperiously as she takes him by the arm and fixes on a perfectly placid, utterly benign face of moderate but polite and regal mourning that does nothing to conceal how the heat pattern in her body is burning with an emotion that Zuko can’t identify because he’s never seen it on her before.

Despite her lack of reaction, it seems like Azula really did care for Lu Ten, what with him being one of the only other sources of positive interaction she had in the world. Familywise, at least.

“ If he tries anything we might have a second funeral .” Zuko quietly says as he takes a plate and picks a small area to sit. “Besides. I can just say that the fumes from the pyre were messing with my head and no one could rightfully say anything.” He adds, looking over at Uncle for a moment. “I think uncle will do something similar, after today.”

“Perhaps, though I assume his will be private, wonderfully destructive, and be so much more full of grief,” Azula nods, as though she hasn’t a care in the world. To anyone else, they’d think she was utterly unaffected. Zuko can hear the slight tremor in her words though. She is affected. Maybe not as much as he was in the immediate aftermath of burning Lu Ten’s effigy, maybe not as much as Uncle Iroh is and will be… but she lost a friend and a cousin, same as him.

And even he’s only barely coping considering how much he had hoped beyond hope that Lu Ten would somehow survive. 

Grunting, he takes a bite of roast duck and wraps an arm around Azula’s shoulders, giving her a quick side hug before letting his hand drop. “Probably. At the end of the day, uncle is the dragon of the west, even if he’s dealing with his grief right now. They’ll probably blame the failure on him, and not the fact that all of the troops were wired, dying, and about to break even before Lu Ten passed.”

“Truly, the war is lost if even school children can see the failures in the tactics the military uses,” Azula states bitterly, glaring off at some of the other higher ranking military officials that were only present for the wake itself. They don’t seem to notice her sheer hatred for their general existence, though, given that Azula is surprisingly subtle when she isn’t handling things around Zuko.

“And yet, if you point it out to them, they get angry at you.” He idly says, raising his cup in a salute as Lu Ten’s empty ash pot gets brought to the center of the room. “All of them are stupid, and liable to kill this country. Even if we won at this point, it wouldn’t matter. Too big to fall, too big to stop . Too much money invested in weapons and not enough in food, culture… Everything else that we actually need right now.” Zuko’s voice is bitter, but quiet. It wouldn’t do for Father Dearest to overhear him.

“War is stupid. I much prefer the simplicity and elegance of a quiet assassination or two. Much fewer deaths, much greater reward with enough coin pressed into the right hands,” Azula hums, keeping her voice at that same quiet level as she sets down her empty plate and swirls a wine glass in her hand- pointedly not drinking, but holding it for appearance’s sake, at least. It’s her cousin’s funeral, even younger teens weren’t going to be scolded for drinking to Lu Ten’s safe travels.

“Paying for land might have been a better idea instead. But Sozin wouldn’t have wanted to hear that. Even if back in the day the Earth Kings were giving away land because they only cared about Omashu and Ba Sing Se. Before Guo Xun and Jialun. Maybe if Roku had pointed it out…” Zuko trails off quietly, studying Azulon’s face as it twists in rage. “Ozai has said something stupid. Infuriatingly stupid.”

“Mm… I know that look on Grandfather’s face. Zuzu, I think someone’s planning our execution,” Azula deadpans, narrowing her eyes at Azulon and Ozai. “That, or Father’s. I do hope it’s Father’s execution, he would make such a pathetic victim.”

“The only thing you could say would be that he wouldn’t beg at the end. But he’d be terrified and lashing around until the last second.” He quietly says, in grim humor, before pushing himself up and placing his plate down. “I think it’s time to vanish. If Azulon is as he normally is, it’ll likely only be one of us. And we both know Ozai would offer me up in a heartbeat over you.”

Stepping back from the table as Azula follows him, Zuko quietly slips into one of the secret passages, this one thankfully a pull door that opens from the right, so it isn’t noticeable for Azulon or Ozai outside of the movement. The both of them slip in, and he’s careful to make sure it doesn’t slam, even straining himself to lift the entire section just so that it doesn’t groan, whinge, or squeak at all. It’s only when it shuts that he lets out that breath, losing the energy in his upper body and almost flopping over. “Whoever decided that half of the secret doors should be easy to open but near impossible to close should be flogged in the rain.”

“If we ever find them in the spirit world, I’ll make sure to use the extra thorny one just for you, Zuzu,” Azula snarks, settling down next to Zuko with a little sigh of relief and pressing up against him for comfort. “Perhaps we’ll need to pay Grandfather a visit tonight. Let him know exactly why he’s making a terrible mistake? Well, that, or father, but I suppose it would be a little too suspicious for an otherwise healthy adult to die of the same causes as a bitter old man who hasn’t had a clear thought in forty years.”

“It wouldn’t be hard. I could probably just make his heart explode, no exit wound on the foot or nothing.” He holds up a hand, sparking it with electricity for a moment before letting it fade. “Still, if the option is just offering one of us up, I’ll do that. If we’re allowed to fight someone to decide, I’ll challenge Ozai. Simple. Two birds, cause with one of his sons dead, Azulon will likely pass along not long after.” Grimly smiling at the thought of what he’s wanted to do for years, Zuko shakes his head after he remembers where he is. “Still, don’t copy me, Azula. Murder is bad.”

“He says, after going over murder options,” Azula deadpans flatly. “Oh me oh my, what a wonderful example you’re setting for your darling younger sister. Truly, mother would be so proud of us right now…”

“Look, I can be forgiven for forgetting that I’m not supposed to act on those impulses when my actual life is on the line!” He gestures with his hands for emphasis, before settling back and smiling at Azula as she flops over his legs to stare up at him. “What? It was an accident brought on by high stress.”

“Mmm… perhaps. Perhaps. I suppose mother wouldn’t care to know what we plan and plot in these secret halls, mm?” Azula hums, nuzzling up against Zuko like a particularly large and clingy cat, still carrying that air of menace that tells him she’s absolutely planning on making their Father and Grandfather’s deaths look like accidents. Somehow. He also has absolute faith that she could make it look like an accident, no matter how improbable it’d actually be.

“Honestly? You’d be shocked. Ozai of all people doesn’t have a subtle bone in his body outside of his talent for manipulation. Most of the subterfuge we’ve inherited is from her teaching us them disguised as games.” He says, finally revealing a secret that he knows Azula never figured out. He knows because Azula would’ve giddily told him the second she found out, expecting him not to know. Idly brushing her head, he pauses before taking out the hair piece he was told to wear constantly, throwing it at the ground before going back to what he was doing. “Useless thing. Don’t understand why we’re made to wear them.”

“Tradition, mostly,” Azula hums, watching him take off that hated hair piece with a vague smirk on her face. She seems almost happy that he’s no longer wearing it, likely because just the act of putting his hair up for some official thing or wearing it up for tradition at all makes him feel vaguely stressed out and annoyed, and him having his hair down means that she’s basically free to act as she pleases without stuffy tradition or expectations of propriety or dignity. Or, in plain language, it means she gets to drape herself all over him like she’s a particularly lazy cat. Kind of like how she’s already doing, but with even less dignity.

Humming, he smiles at her, before staring at the wall and frowning. “I’m planning a way out of here for if I need it. I’ve stored twenty gold ingots and fifty gold ban.” He lays it out entirely, running his fingers through her hair and taking out her hair piece after a moment’s thought. “Would you come with me, if I left? Even if it meant that there was no one to lead the Fire Nation?”

She blinks up at him in surprise, and even bits of shock, and he wonders just how he sounds right now. The fact that she immediately pulls herself up to look him in the eyes, and he can see that same spark of madness that’s always lingered even as much as he tried to help come back to the fore. “If you try to leave without me the palace will burn and I’ll come to you regardless. Agni will decide if I burn you as well for trying to leave me.”

Letting out a quiet sigh of relief, he pulls her into a hug, nodding quietly. “I wouldn’t leave you here even if I could. You’d die. Not physically, but the way the other Azula did. The one from my visions. If this whole thing happens, if Azulon orders me killed and someone tries to follow through, I’ll wait in here. But I won’t wait all night. I don’t want to stick around for when they have the sages make the rounds. Their chi sense is nearly as good as yours just through sheer training.” He almost buries his face into her shoulder, the energy leaving his body even as his core heats up in joy. As much as he jokes and worries about how dependent Azula is on him, he’s just as bad. Or, maybe not just as bad, but close. Definitely close.

Her arms practically lock around him like a vice as she wiggles her way further into his arms, nodding her head forcefully as she practically buries her face in his shoulder as well. “Good. I don’t want you to leave me, even if we become fugitives. Especially then. I won’t let you.”

“I won’t.” he states plainly, almost monotone if it weren’t for the promise of violence there. He’d burn his way out if necessary, but Ozai wouldn’t be allowed to live if he had to leave. Couldn’t be. Otherwise he’d find some way to try and twist Azula.

It won’t happen. He’ll make damn sure . May any spirit mark his soul.

Chapter Text

Staring at his father as the both of them stand in an outdoor Agni Kai arena, Zuko’s face could be carved from stone with how little he cared.

Azulon, compared to how things happened previously, ordered Ozai to kill Zuko if he wanted the throne so badly. Perhaps not in those words, but said all the same.

It doesn’t matter, the relic will be dead by the end of the night.

“You could simply surrender, Zuko. I don’t think anyone would fault you.” Ozai smirks, as if he’s said some grand insult. As if his words matter.

But, as it’s apparently a time honored tradition, Zuko will return fire. “You’re that afraid of a fight? No wonder you couldn’t fight Iroh for the throne.”

The immediate drop of Ozai’s face in shock gives way to fury as the man that’s supposedly his father sneers at him. “Impudent brat. I was going to make this quick.”

“I doubt that.” Is his only return shot as he shifts into a specific stance he’s only shown two people before. Now only one, as Lu Ten is dead. A boxer’s stance. Lowering his body and spreading his stance, Zuko doesn’t smirk, or grin, or any number of things he could have done.

One of them is leaving this arena. It’s going to be him. Any alternative is unacceptable.

“You disrespect the Agni Kai by not using the proper stance? What a pity.” Ozai’s smirk returns, as if he understands what’s about to happen.

“This Agni Kai will be to the death.” Azulon’s voice is grim, as if he didn’t order this. As if he didn’t make this a spectacle for the city to see. As if no one noticed all the people watching from the rooftops. As if he cared . “Do you understand?”

“Perfectly.” Ozai’s grin becomes a sneer, but Zuko meets his gaze head on.

“Yes.” There is no respect here. None for Ozai. None for Azulon. Not even for the art of the Agni Kai itself. He’d have to be fighting an opponent with honor for that to matter.

“Begin!” Azulon shouts, and Ozai immediately tries to throw a fireball at him, Zuko simply cutting through it with a cutter flame, using the cover afforded to him to approach closer, ducking as Ozai finally sees him and throws another, watching it fly over his head as he brings his arm under the man’s guard, slamming a fist into his solar plexus and smirking as he bends over, before twisting around and slamming his hand into the back of Ozai’s head, driving him into the floor.

Stepping back and retaking his stance, Zuko watches as Ozai pulls himself to his feet, fury now returning to his face as his nose bleeds. “Honorless brat !”

“Like you’d know what honor was.” Zuko calmly fires back, before shifting to the side as Ozai fires another blast at him. “You wouldn’t know what honor was if it beat you to death. You immediately jumped on Lu Ten’s death to try and become Fire Lord. If that hadn’t worked, if you didn’t have this opportunity, you would’ve forced Mother to locate a poison you could use to kill Azulon.” He uses a flame at the tip of his index and middle fingers to cut through the next ball of flame lobbed at him, letting it disperse around him before he pulls at the lingering embers, slamming them into Ozai’s sides. “You don’t deserve any kind of respect, let alone someone to honor you in a fight.”

Ozai grunts as the flames hit him, pushing them off with an application of firebending that just wastes more energy. He doesn’t say anything, shooting out another gout that Zuko once more redirects, this time just taking the flame out of the air and launching it at him as if they were waterbending rather than firebending. He remembers the motions enough for that at least.

Twist, shift, bend, pull, strike . Launching a whip of fire at Ozai, Zuko smirks when the man loses his stance, swaying forward as he shifts down, striking the man’s foot and sweeping him before lashing out with his own stomp, missing Ozai by a hair and having to move to not be hit with the follow up flames the man fires. Yet his smirk doesn’t move as he studies Ozai, as the man looks at him, really sees him, and understands.

“Every time they said I was a failure, you listened. That’s kind of sad.” Zuko shakes his head, shifting his stance into what he can remember of Toph’s, slamming his foot into the earth and sending up a wave of flame at his opponent, using the provided cover to sprint ahead with it, jumping through it and driving a punch into Ozai’s face, pointedly not using his bending to hit him again, driving the man to the ground once more. “I can’t believe you were that gullible.”

“BE SILENT!” Ozai roars, firing a much more focused gout of flame at him that Zuko actually has to expend a bit of effort to cut through, splitting it into five parts as he holds a hand forward, watching Ozai through the haze of heat. And barely noticing the man bringing up his other hand to strike lower, having to actually move out of stance to avoid that blow and putting himself in a worse position. “YOU ARE A FAILURE!”

“I’m sure you heard that a lot growing up. Azulon doesn’t strike me as the patient father. Or maybe it was grandmother?” He can’t help but snipe, shifting around to consistently dodge even as Ozai looks more and more furious he can’t hit him. 

The furious sound Ozai lets out ceases to be called language as he throws out flame without rhyme or reason, Zuko actually having to exert himself to catch the ones aimed at him. Idly thinking, he’s thankful he doesn’t need to worry about the people around him. Other firebenders have that job.

Twisting around another gout, he does his best to remember Aang’s movements, sliding around his stance before bringing up both hands in a way he’d seen a hundred times at least, drawing the heat around him into another funnel and launching his flames at Ozai, the compressed blast driving him back and even leaving lingering burns on the loose section of his clothes.

Staying on the offensive, he closes the distance between them aggressively, using his forearm to redirect one of Ozai’s blows before lashing out with a flame dagger, bringing a cut diagonally up his chest before his opponent lashes out, suddenly catching him in the chest and driving him back by creating a more explosive flame compared to the previous. Catching himself before he falls, he looks at his chest with a frown, the skin red and raw, but not blistered. Acceptable.

Sucking in another breath, he goes over his thoughts. Earth, water, air, and he’s already using fire. His name may not be Aang, but when he wins, he’ll have beaten Ozai with teachings from all four elements. There’s a bit of irony to that thought that almost makes him smile.

Almost. He’s still more focused on killing Ozai than anything else. Another breath. Time to stop playing with his food.

Feeling the heat ripple through his body, intellectually Zuko understands he shouldn’t do this. That increasing his body heat is a bad idea even if the short term boosts are worth it. That thought dies a swift death when he buries his elbow in Ozai’s nose, shattering the already damaged bone and driving the man to the floor. The underlying theory was fascinating to learn, even if it was a stolen Airbender scroll. One of the original thirty techniques that was slowly fazed out when it wasn’t needed anymore, replaced by the thirty six.

Expanding his air intake. For a firebender, that means he needs to draw it in himself. Which means he needs to create the heat . Exhaling, he feels the colder air leave his body, before mingling with the heated air around him as it forms a haze. Cracking his knuckles as Ozai stands back up, he re-engages, bringing his hand up in a heavy uppercut that pops his opponent upward for a moment, before lashing out with a haymaker that knocks him to the side, easy prey for the follow up cross strike.

He’s surprised when Ozai catches his next strike, even if the force knocks him back, raising an eyebrow curiously as the man starts to chuckle . “You really were hiding everything.”

Disengaging, and having to rapidly cool his body by allowing the heated air to escape, Zuko almost stumbles back as the change in internal temperature makes itself known to him. “If the tutors you hired were good at their jobs, they’d have noticed I’d practice a form until I was certain I’d be able to do it before bending.”

“Pity. All these years you really were worth something.” Ozai tuts, wiping the blood from his face almost carelessly. “Still, stealing an Airbender’s technique and adapting it to Firebending… You’d definitely be called a master even if not for your way of making blue fire. Such a shame to kill that talent.”

Narrowing his eyes at Ozai, Zuko can tell that something isn’t right. Ozai was barely verbal before, unable to speak and all around furious. What’s changed? “You’re that confident now?”

“Oh yes. After all, I have a little secret of my own.” Ozai smirks as the sound of electricity fills the clearing, and Zuko shifts his stance again. Watching Ozai pull his hand back, he’s only going to have a second to react.

Ozai clearly aimed for the center of his chest as he slams to the side, barely managing to avoid it and having very little time to push himself up before Ozai tries again, taking a stance designed around redirection and banking on Ozai not knowing the difference between a positive and negative charge.

Holding both of his hands out and ignoring the tightness in his chest, Zuko is surprised when Ozai’s lightning is attracted to the negative charge, impacting his arm all the way down to his stomach and leg, but not hitting his heart or lungs, grunting in pain as it safely discharges in the ground, but visibly straightening himself as he lets the charges dissipate.

Retaking his stance, the shocked look on Ozai’s face will be one he’ll savor for the rest of his life, even causing him to smirk. “Well? Your secret didn’t seem to work, Ozai.”

“You’re flagging, boy … all these years of holding yourself back and you can’t take a single hit… pathetic,” Ozai sneers, charging up yet more lightning as he begins to work up what he thinks is the final blow of the match- surprised to see Zuko still alive from being struck by lightning, but still ready to try and kill him with it while he’s in pain and having trouble moving. “Now DIE!”

As the next lightning strike barrels toward him, he’s surprised at just how slow it is. He can barely move for some reason, even though he knows he’s still got at least five minutes left in his body before he falls… Oh.

Bringing a hand up, Zuko focuses, reaching deep into himself and pulling any remainder of Ozai’s last strike from where it was grounded, feeling the electrical power in his body that was always there, had always been there, surge to the surface and demand to be used.

The charge time from his perspective is agonizing, taking so so long before he finally sees his hand enter his peripheral vision, sparking with electricity and being launched from his palm compared to the usual fingertips, yet not having the same branching issue that Ozai’s lightning did, the electrical attacks surging into each other and exploding violently, pushing him back into the wall behind him and knocking him out from that adrenaline nightmare just as swiftly as it does a similar thing to Ozai, the man letting out a loud whuff of air being driven out of his lungs, unable to make a proper grunt, scream, or even a sound really.

Dropping to his feet shakily, Zuko doesn’t sway as he walks, but only out of sheer focus as he determinedly walks back into the arena, his hands still sparking as he stares down at Ozai’s prone form. Breathing heavily, he brings his body through the motions of Lightning’s unique bending style, drawing in more charge and holding it even as Ozai slips after attempting to get to his feet, unable to push himself up.

Holding the charge in his fingers, Zuko waits. Despite the energy coursing through him, it doesn’t hurt. Doesn’t feel uncomfortable either. He waits for Ozai to stand up so that he can see his death coming.

The fireball is expected, and he’s able to shift out of the way of it. The fact that Ozai runs at him is the surprising part, but he doesn’t lose control of the energy, surging forward just as Ozai is within striking range, the man rearing back a flame filled punch that immediately peters out as the lightning is driven through his body.

One step. Two steps. Three steps back. Ozai falls. Falls to the ground even as his body catches fire, an ugly blue nothing like his sister's flames, as the smell of sizzling pork and burnt hair fills the area.

Holding a hand up to signal his victory, Zuko turns to Azulon, using everything in his power for his movements to remain smooth despite the shaking attempting to overtake his frame. Sees the shock in his Grandfather’s face. The grief. The anger. But Azulon stands, and chops his hand down. “Winner of the Agni Kai. Prince Zuko.”

Nodding his head, Zuko turns. One step. Two steps… He doesn’t make the third, the last thing he sees being Azula vaulting the viewing platform before the ground sees him .

Azula doesn’t often get angry. Annoyed, sure. Explosive, absolutely. Grudging, definitely. Murderous, all the time. But anger is a burning spark, a cloying seed that takes over her mind and brings her to the precipice of losing all that care and consideration and control that she’s worked into herself over the years. That Zuko helped work into the core of her being.

That control is being tested now, and her nails dig into stone as easily as a knife through flesh as she hears the gasps, the whispers, the shouts, the rumbling sounds of a thousand insignificant faces in the crowd. Ministers, generals, soldiers, noblemen, advisors, councilors, merchants, rich men and weak men alike.

She hears them express disbelief, shock. That any boy would be able to face and strike down his father in an Agni Kai- not just because of skill or strength, but by going against the very nature of the filial piety that the Fire Nation expects of all its countrymen and citizens. A son cannot strike his father. A father disciplines his son. 

A son has struck his father. A father has been murdered by his son.

No one expected Zuko to win, all of the men and women of the palace- all of the inconsequential weaklings and old men alike all thinking the same that Ozai did- that he was weak, untrained, kept skipping his lessons to play pretend with his sister. A boy with no dignity or princely bearing, who held himself like a thief in his own home, who played with swords instead of the grand dignity and noble tradition of Firebending. Was more focused on silly thoughts only he knew rather than training his birthright.

Azula has to brace herself, clenching her fists against stone as her chi roils inside of her and crumbles the weak building material beneath her Agni-blessed strength. Idiots, the lot of them. That any of the whispering sycophants and blustering yes-men suggested killing Zuko for winning his honor in the Agni Kai made her want to challenge them all one by one, rip their heads from their shoulders and cast their corpses aflame so that they might provide a funeral pyre for her dear father’s already burning corpse to be dumped upon instead.

But she can’t. Zuzu said no murder, and so she will play along for now. Zuzu said not to challenge anyone, and so she will play along for now. Zuzu said to not lash out and do anything rash, and so she will play along for now.

It’s difficult, though, and only Uncle Iroh’s gentle hand on her shoulders makes her focus at all. It’s difficult, pulling herself back even as her rage causes the torches around her to flicker blue with her presence, but she manages to focus long enough to give her uncle the briefest of awkward, limp nods and a pat on the back before she turns and runs. Not to retreat from the things spewing their idiocy about her brother and her father’s fate, but to find her brother instead. Zuzu is hurt, exhausted, and unconscious. Someone might take a blade to him if she’s not there to kill them first. So she runs, lighting torches blue as she passes, out of the arena stands and into the halls below, towards the infirmary. Even if no one comes to see him, he’ll at least appreciate seeing her when he wakes.

Halting her steps in front of the door, she’s about to open them when the head physician steps out before freezing when she stares at him. He is meant to be healing Zuko. “I was not aware you had already finished. I would have thought it would take several hours to put him in a stable and well healed state.”

“P-princess! I was not expecting you!” The toad of a man tries to be cheerful through his terror, stepping back from her almost instinctively. “W-well, your brother, the prince, was not as damaged as expected! He was primarily exhausted, you see.”

“He took a lightning strike and ground it through his body after taking several large scale firebending strikes. You should not be finished yet.” It is not a question. She refuses to question what she already knows. “You have not healed Zuko to the best of your abilities.”

“I-I, er… there’s nothing to be done, princess! Healing fire only does so much to promote chi flow and loosen the body, and ointments are all that can be applied to lightning scars like this!” the toad of a man continues, whimpering pathetically as if she can’t see that he has not applied nearly half the ointment he should have, as if she can’t see that he simply grabbed whatever bottles were available to haphazardly splash upon her beloved brother’s arms and torso.

She could push him. She knows this. There are enough people within earshot that could hear him angrily confess if he was pushed in the right way. Clenching her fist, she moves from the doorway, glowering at him as he skittishly steps past her before sprinting after a few moments. Coward .

Shaking her head, she has more important priorities. Walking into the infirmary properly, she can actually study the marks left on Zuko’s body as she closes the door, studying each individual line along his arms and seeing where he condensed all of it. The lack of the angry red on his sides or legs is the most amazing part, that he perfectly controlled it once it got to his shoulders without even creating an exit wound at the bottom of his feet. Sitting beside him, she gently brushes his face, smiling softly. “Perfectly controlled, as always. None of them saw it coming. None saw your skill to be adequate. They expected your death, but you’ll always find a way forward. You have no choice. You promised to never leave me.”

Taking hold of the salves left half opened beside him, Azula clicks her tongue in disappointment at just how much is left in each of the jars. No matter. She can apply them herself. Sitting on his waist, she nods her head as she takes the lightning salves, she gently applies it down his arms, trailing each individual branch of lightning slowly even as she carefully smears it into his skin, smiling as it takes on a more healthy tone compared to the angry red it was. Now, for the burn cream.

Rubbing it into the center of his chest carefully, she can’t help herself as she deliberately goes slow. Studying the burn. His chest. Her face heats up slightly from the closeness, but she pushes down the urge to snuggle and get close for now- Her Zuzu is injured, and he needs medical attention first. Ointments, salves, a few bandages. Nothing major, but she’ll need to be near him for his chi to recover faster. That’s what all the medical literature says, at least. Close bonds with others cause chi to recover faster, ergo if she lays on top of him and circulates her chi, it will make him wake up faster. That it gives her an excuse to cling to him and pretend that the outside world doesn’t exist when all it does is make her overwhelmingly angry and fill her head with too many noises is only a bonus.

She almost smiles, doing her work. Her Zuzu was perfect out there. Not a hair out of place. Perhaps his perfection would have been better in more controlled training circumstances, but fights- real fights, fights to the death- are messy. Angry. Uncontrolled. That Zuko has come away with minor injuries that he could sleep off within a few days and that their tyrant of a father has been reduced to ashes on a funeral pyre means that he has been as perfect as he needed to be. She can’t help but admire Zuzu for that, and yet also feel jealous that she wasn’t the one to do it instead.

She takes extra care of his hands- the most important part of the body for any bender, and gently massages ointment and salves into them to lessen the scars, reduce the irritation and inflammation, promote healing so that he retains full motion and function with no hiccups in the chi flow there. It isn’t quite hand holding, but there will be time for that later. When they’re alone, and when things aren’t so chaotic.

With Ozai dead, it will be time to finally escape. “Soon, Zuzu. Soon .”

Waiting in the passage for Azula, Zuko paces as he has his pack ready and collected, the weight barely noticeable on his shoulders. “She’s late.”

Jumping when one of the secret paths slams open, this one to the quiet room, Zuko turns with his flame daggers ready only to extinguish them as he sees Azula’s panting face before she lets out a giddy laugh, slamming it shut behind her. “Apologies for my lateness, Zuzu. I was just… cleaning up .” Her voice starts sarcastic before shifting to menacing, but they don’t have time to unpack all of that.

“Whatever you did, you can tell me after we’re gone. Here’s your pack. I’ve gotten as many greens, browns, and yellows as I possibly can. We’re going to the Earth Kingdom on a barge, so you’ll need to keep your head down and do everything I tell you to.” He keeps his voice firm but not controlling, knowing how Azula would buck under domineering teachers aggressively as he passes her the escape bag they made for her use. “I’ll teach you about the different currencies and which ones to use where soon.”

“Very well, Zuzu. Which escape are we using?” She tilts her head curiously, and he waves a hand, idly picking a few mushroom spores that he knows grow well with heat enough to make something edible in a few short hours.

“We’ll be taking this one. It goes low, and it’ll be wet part way. Keep your breathing and don’t inhale too much water vapor.” He carefully warns her, shifting a post out of place and opening another hidden stairwell. The entire palace really is stairways on stairways at this point.

They skulk through it, because really there’s no other way to describe it, but if Zuko cranes his ears he can hear the siren of the main city ring out. Whatever Azula did, it was big . But, that’s not important. What is important is that their barge is waiting, and the captain only agreed to stay for a few hours.

Landing heavily, he grunts when Azula actually impacts his back, falling to a knee before pushing himself back up and running. The both of them pause as they come to the tunnel intersection, and Zuko nods his head as he grabs a nearby tarp, pulling it off and smirking at the cart he stashed. “There we go. Get in, Azula.”

“If we die, I’m haunting you forever,” Azula mumbles quietly, staring at the cart and the downward slope beyond with more than a little trepidation. “... Zuzu, I can’t say I’ve been scared of many things in my life… but this is a straight line downwards, right?”

“Yeah, comes straight out at an upward tilt down the bottom so we’d bleed enough momentum that the brake wouldn’t snap either.” Zuko nods his head, dropping the pack inside of it with a grin. Freedom. Real Freedom. And he knows that Teizhan won’t stiff him just because it’d be more trouble than it was worth. “Why?”

“... Good. Then we don’t have to worry about slamming into a corner,” Azula huffs, climbing into the cart and still grimacing a little at the alarm going off in the distance. “Truly, I should have learned poisons from Mother when I had the chance. And here I thought they wouldn’t have bothered checking on that old fossil for hours… ”

“Wouldn’t have been the worst idea. I’ll teach you how to use a weapon when we get to the Earth Kingdom.” Zuko smiles at the idea as he jumps into the cart, causing it to tip forward and go off practically on its own.

He has to keep an eye out of course, and hold up the torch so there aren’t any surprises, but about ten minutes later, the both of them crest out, Zuko wrenching the brake up and bringing the cart to a stop just in front of Teizhan’s startled face.

“Woah! I didn’t actually expect you to be here, if I’m being honest.” The smuggler dully notes, but thankfully is still quick on the uptake, snapping a finger and bringing some of his boys around to take the cart as Zuko and Azula jump out. “But, deal’s a deal. You’ve proven this shortcut goes all the way up to Caldera City, and you’ve paid me, so I’ll get the both of you to the Earth Kingdom. We’ll need to be quick though, city’s getting loud.” He trails off, staring up at the Caldera.

Zuko follows his gaze after a moment, before shaking his head and throwing off the worthless headpiece again, letting it slam to the ground. Before any pirate gets the bright idea to take it, he quickly makes a point. “You sell that anywhere near a Fire Nation town, you’ll likely be reported at best. Sell it in the Earth Kingdom if you really want to.”

“Will do, will do.” Teizhan quietly hums, picking it up after a moment and studying it, before depositing it in his pocket. “Now, let’s get you and the little lady inside. We’ve got a small window now. You picked names?”

“Li Min, Li Cheng,” Zuko states flatly, as if he’s said those names a million times, motioning first at Azula, then at himself. 

“Good choice. There’s a million Lees… Lis. Whatever. No one cares, it’s all Lee anyway, given or family name,” Taizhan snorts, nodding and turning away as Azula and Zuko- or Min and Cheng for now- clamber onto the boat with as much stealth and grace as they can currently manage.

“These smugglers are a lot nicer than I was expecting.” Azula hums, and Zuko shrugs. Thankfully, Taizhan actually followed them along.

“Course. We’re smugglers. Politeness is the aim of the game. Just cause we’re criminals doesn’t mean we don’t got manners.” He happily hums, showing them to an actually furnished sleeping quarter. “Only got the one bed though.”

“That’s fine.” Azula answers, waving a hand at him. “Thank you very much.”

“Course, course. Why do people always wonder why’in the hell we got manners for? Can’t talk to the harbormaster without good manners, he’d throw us out.” Taizhan quietly grumbles as he walks off, and before long the ship has set sail.

“Well… Next stop, Earth Kingdom. If we’ve got time, maybe I’ll be able to show you around Weed City, the greatest of the Earth Kingdom capitals.” Zuko chuckles, feeling one of Azula’s effects bounce off his head before she pulls out a divider curtain.

“ I am going to get changed. You can just… Lay there and look handsome, or something.” Azula negligently waves a hand, and so Zuko shrugs.

Still… Freedom. Real freedom.

He’s excited to see what that means, good or bad.