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Sitting on the ferry to Ba Sing Se, Zuko stared at his hands in silence. Only one turn of the sun before, his hands had been short, feathered wings, just long enough to help him balance, and occasionally useful for waving threateningly to make himself look bigger.
He hadn’t been emotionally attached to the wings. If anything, he had wanted them gone—had wanted the feathers to recede back to where they had come from, and his usual pale skin to return. He had wanted the fingers he had combed through turtleduck feathers, the palms that had sprouted his first flame, the hands his mother had held.
But now, on a boat with a boy who had cared for an ostrich horse enough to ask his human self to follow… Now, Zuko couldn’t help but long for feathers again. Being an animal had meant no expectations, and no consequences when he inevitably chose wrong.
Being an animal had been easy. Being human was anything but.
Sighing, Zuko leaned his head back against the wooden rail of the ferry behind him. All of the passengers had been given zabuton cushions for the journey, but that didn’t stop his knees from aching from the prolonged sitting or his right thigh from complaining about the dual stab wound and pulled muscle.
At least the pain served a purpose: It kept him awake, his good eye half-lidded for rest but still tracking all the strangers around him and Sokka.
Sokka, who hadn’t said a word since telling Zuko to follow him. Sokka, who was slumped at his right side, head buried in his own knees. Sokka, who had used Zuko the ostrich horse as a pillow, but had pointedly turned his body away from Zuko the human.
Zuko’s leg ached, but at least he knew the pain would get better. That was better than the ache in his heart.
A door closed by the bow of the ferry, and Zuko turned his eye to it, careful to keep his head still. A few men dressed in ferry uniforms walked across the deck, joking with each other while dodging sleeping passengers with ease. One of them held a steaming bowl, and Zuko’s stomach grumbled at the smell of cooked meat and rice. He hadn’t had a cooked meal since before he’d been turned into an ostrich horse.
Movement flickered on his left and Zuko turned quickly, half his focus on not calling fire to his hands and the other half taking in a tall, lanky figure with a single ear of wheat stuck between his lips. The wheat tilted upward as the other boy grinned and squatted on his heels just inches from Zuko.
Those inches were far too close for Zuko, who knew well the consequences of letting anyone into his own space. He shifted away from the stranger as best he could, only to bump into Sokka on his other side. Zuko stilled, and his good eye widened when the stranger took the opportunity to lean in closer.
“It’s not fair, is it?” the stranger asked, nodding after the ferrymen. “That men like that gorge themselves on food, while handsome boys like us starve.”
He grinned at Zuko again, clearly including him in the “handsome boys,” and Zuko stared back.
Then suddenly, Zuko was staring at Sokka’s back instead, the other boy having inserted himself between Zuko and the stranger.
“Back off, Jet,” Sokka snapped.
“Whoa, Sokka,” the not-stranger laughed, though his voice now sounded high and tight. “Didn’t see you there. What’re you doing here? Is Katara with you? I had this idea she might be interested in—”
“I said back off. If you think I won’t tell those ferrymen exactly what you did…”
Sokka trailed off, but it was purposeful and made the air between them pull taut with tension.
Footsteps echoed on the wood, and Zuko peered over Sokka’s shoulder to see the stranger, Jet, retreating back to join two figures waiting by the ferry’s aft.
Sokka waited until the three figures were reunited, and then he wheeled around, hands coming up to hold Zuko by the shoulders.
“Never trust Jet,” Sokka warned. “Don’t even talk to him. He doesn’t know how to say anything but lies.”
Zuko nodded. Clearly there was history between the two, and he thought he remembered a brief, angry mention of a “Jet” in one of Sokka’s stories. At the same time, though, his thoughts were still stuck on Jet’s “handsome boys” comment, but with only Sokka around to consult on the matter, he just said, “Right… I think he just wanted to hit on me, though?”
Sokka face-palmed, and his voice came out muffled when he said, “You get that that’s worse, right?”
Zuko would trust Sokka on that… but he thought Jet looked a little lonely, when Jet looked back at him and their gazes met over Sokka’s shoulder.
Once, Sokka had thought that babysitting Aang, Katara, Toph, and Momo all at the same time was the hardest thing he would ever have to do, besides killing the Fire Lord.
He was wrong.
The hardest thing was babysitting Zuko in Ba Sing Se with a curious Jet right behind them.
“We’re just going in the same direction,” Smellerbee said the second time Sokka whirled around to find Jet’s trio less than one Appa away. “I promise.”
“They might be telling the truth, Sokka,” Zuko pointed out. “Besides, we can take them if we need to.”
“I—so—argh!” Sokka didn’t have the words for this frustration. He couldn’t tell Zuko that Jet following them was a problem because Jet was close enough he might hear, Zuko was a firebender in the middle of the most secure Earth Kingdom city in the world, and Jet would kill Zuko without hesitation if he saw even a hint of firebending.
But while Sokka worried about Jet, Zuko kept getting distracted by the most mundane things: A shop filled with artisanal carvings including pai sho sets, a dangerous-looking weapons shop with the coolest dual swords Sokka had ever seen, and an herbal shop where Sokka restocked his own medicine bag but had to point out Zuko had no money for tea, and also it was just hot water anyway, and if you agree with me why do you want tea?!
Jet, who was “not following them,” bought Zuko a tea bag.
Zuko thanked him.
Sokka was not mad, Zuko, or paranoid, but he was rightfully worried!
The next time they turned a corner and got swallowed by a large crowd of shoppers, Sokka grabbed Zuko’s arm and pulled till they were running, weaving around people and obstacles till he could finally look behind them and not see Jet’s absurdly tall head.
“Was that really necessary?!” Zuko gasped out, hands braced on his knees and bent over. Sokka’s hand had moved from his arm to his shoulder, and it rose and fell with each gasping breath Zuko took, bracing Sokka upright as he slowed his own breathing.
“You don’t know Jet like I do,” Sokka said. “Maybe he was following us, maybe he wasn’t. Either way, you don’t want him at your back.”
“So tell me,” Zuko demanded. He straightened, and Sokka’s hand fell off his shoulder. “Tell me what he did.”
So Sokka did. In the quiet of an alley, with the noise of shoppers nearby to cover them, both of their breaths shaky from the sprint, he told Zuko how an Earth Kingdom teenager fought back against the Fire Nation by trying to destroy an entire town of people, Earth and Fire alike.
Sokka told Zuko how he, Katara, and Aang stopped Jet. How they evacuated the town and saved the people, Earth and Fire alike.
Zuko listened. And when Sokka fell quiet, Zuko bowed his head and thanked him.
It was a strange experience for Sokka. The prince of the nation that sought to destroy his village and that had killed his mother, bowing as though Sokka had done him a service. It was a small bow—just the head, and Aang had given deeper bows to people who let him pet their hunting catdogs—but it was still deference.
“I didn’t do it for you,” Sokka told him crossly. “I didn’t do it for the Fire Nation. I did it because they were just townspeople.”
“I know,” Zuko said.
Perhaps even more strangely than the bowing was that Sokka thought Zuko did know. In the time between Zuko chasing Aang and Zuko being Sokka’s ostrich horse, the man had changed.
Sokka cleared his throat, then gestured down the alley.
“Shall we?”
The long run through Ba Sing Se’s streets had exacerbated the pain in Zuko’s thigh. He did his best to hide that fact from Sokka by staying a beat behind him—a feat made easier by the crowds. The frequent glances Sokka sent back at him didn’t linger long enough to catch the times Zuko’s gait hitched.
Sokka’s blue clothes were an easy beacon to follow through the crowds, and so Zuko let his gaze wander. He had spotted a few different shops earlier that seemed like places Uncle might frequent, but he had had zero luck actually finding him.
There was a good chance Uncle might not even be in Ba Sing Se; he could have stayed outside the city looking for Zuko, or he could still be making his way in. But Zuko would never forgive himself if he didn’t look.
Fruit stand, clothing store, cafe—but no Uncle.
Another clothing store, restaurant, alleyway—but still no Uncle.
The next building’s side was plastered with posters, and this one Zuko slowed at. Some were advertisements for new stores and activities within the city, but others were posters for loved ones who might not have made it to Ba Sing Se yet. Zuko smirked imagining his own poster.
Missing: My Dear Nephew. Responds to “Lee.” Reward: Flying Bison.
Flying bison? Zuko’s good eye widened.
On the board was a poster asking for clues about the Avatar’s missing flying bison, right next to another sign with an oddly well-drawn Sokka on it.
The Avatar—Aang—had lost his flying bison? How? The giant animal had been one of Zuko’s main ways of tracking him.
But more importantly: The Avatar was in Ba Sing Se.
Zuko whirled around, looking for blue clothes among the green, and found them easily. Stepping forward, he opened his mouth to call out—
And then he registered the long brown braid trailing down the blue-clothed back and the orange-and-yellow Air Nomad next to her, and the only thing that came out was a loud HONK.
Zuko stepped back, surprised at the noise, and his talons clacked on the cobbled street.
Zuko honked again, long and annoyed. Somehow, someway, he had turned back into an ostrich horse!
Last time, though, all it had taken was a kiss from Sokka to turn him back. The other boy had only been a little bit in front of him…
But when Zuko looked up the street, the only blue in sight was coming towards him, the Avatar and a barefooted girl at her side. Somehow, Zuko had found Sokka’s friends in the same instant that he lost Sokka himself.
“His heartbeat is really fast,” the barefooted girl—who must be Toph, of course an earthbender would go barefoot—said. How did she know that?
“And he’s bleeding,” Katara fretted. He was what? Zuko looked down to see that the stab wound had, in fact, broken open again with the body shift.
“Are you lost?” Aang cooed. Zuko stepped back and hissed. He would not be cooed at like—like—like a pet!
“Let’s get him out of the crowd,” Katara said. “I can heal him in the alley.”
Zuko prepared to run—if Sokka came looking for him, he needed to be in plain sight—but a single stomp from Toph had an earthen barrier rising in front of him. With two good legs or even the bad leg and a running start, Zuko could jump it, but he had neither. Instead, the barrier easily backed him into the alley.
Zuko tossed his head, snapped his beak, and clawed at the ground, but the trio avoided him and he made no move to actually hurt them. He wanted Sokka to like human Zuko, not hate him more, and what ostrich horse Zuko did was key to that goal.
Although Aang reaching for his head made Zuko wonder if Sokka liking him was really all that necessary.
If he wanted the kiss to turn him human again, it was. And it also happened to be something Zuko wanted.
Zuko hadn’t had something he wanted within reach in so long. And with no guarantee of ever finding Uncle again…
Zuko didn’t make it easy for Aang to grasp his head and hold it still, but he didn’t claw him to death either.
“There’s a good boy,” Aang soothed. His fingers scratched along Zuko’s unscarred cheek.
He was trying to distract him from the girl slowly approaching Zuko’s right leg, he realized belatedly, spotting Katara with palms outstretched before her.
“Watch his beak and legs,” Aang warned. Katara rolled her eyes.
“I know how injured animals act.” Her voice was acerbic when speaking to Aang, but dropped to a murmur when she turned her attention back to Zuko. “I’m just going to take a look, okay?”
Water flowed from her flask to her hands and started to glow. Zuko jerked back and honked, heart racing at a sight that had preceded defeat in battle many times before, but Aang had a surprisingly strong grip on his head and Toph had braced her shoulder against his left side. Between the two of them, they held him steady enough that Katara managed to grasp his injured right thigh with both hands.
The water was cold, was Zuko’s first thought, followed by the realization that normally water didn’t glow, even when directed by bending.
“He pulled his muscle,” Katara said, “and he was stabbed? How did that happen?”
“Clawed the wrong person?” Toph suggested. “Under all that fear, he’s pretty feisty.”
Zuko was not afraid! He jerked his head out of Aang's hands, turning to snap his beak at the girl, but she just laughed.
Then the water retreated, and Zuko turned his attention back to the waterbender.
“I accelerated the healing process for both injuries,” she announced, “but his chi is strangely depleted, so I’m not able to do much more than ease the strain and stop the bleeding.”
If Zuko had been human, he would have cursed. His transformation must have drawn on his chi.
As it was, he just honked again, and Aang laughed and patted his shoulder.
“It’s better than nothing, Katara! His owner will be happy.” Aang tilted his head to the side, and then, with an absent pat, added, “I wonder where he came from?”
Katara patted Zuko’s other shoulder and shrugged.
Toph suggested, “We should hang his poster next to Appa’s and Sokka’s.”
Zuko sighed. Considering Sokka had walked right past the posters last time and only seemed to have an eye out for Jet at the moment… Zuko wouldn’t bet on being human again any time soon.
One moment, Sokka had been walking through the Ba Sing Se market, one oddly quiet fire prince trailing behind him. The next, Sokka glanced back and found that at some point, he had lost said fire prince.
Sokka spun in one place and searched the crowd. In theory, finding Zuko again shouldn’t have been hard: He would be a red spot in a river of green.
In practice, though, shoppers buffeted Sokka on all sides. He was a lone boulder in a fast-running river, and while the kinder people did their best to go around him, the angrier ones shoulder-checked him while cursing him out. Standing still was a trial, and going against the current impossible.
In the end, Sokka let himself be pushed to the end of the block, where he found an iron post with an unlit lantern on top and a nice, squat base. Sokka climbed on top and, with his new height advantage, peered back the way he came.
Still no fire prince.
For a second, Sokka contemplated whether or not Zuko had given him the slip—but only for a second. Then, the image of Zuko at the ferry boarding station forced itself to the front of his head alongside images of Zuko’s slight bow, Zuko in the tea shop, and Zuko laying in Sokka’s lap. All the moments when Zuko had looked all too human, when he had looked lost or afraid, only for his creased brow to ease at a single touch or word from Sokka, and all the moments when Zuko had looked happy just to be beside Sokka.
If Sokka knew one thing about the last few days, it was that he had seen Zuko at his most genuine.
No, Zuko hadn’t given Sokka the slip. It was worse than that: Sokka had lost him in a city that would happily bury him alive.
“Tui and La,” he sighed, and then added for good measure, “Oma and Shu, Agni.”
“It is a rare find,” someone remarked beside him, “when one hears the invocation of three nations’ gods from a single person.”
“Yeah, well I—” Sokka cut himself off with a yelp as he met the blazing gold eyes of the Dragon of the West.
“You seem to be alone, young Sokka,” Iroh said.
His wrinkled features, which Sokka had often thought to himself seemed rather kind for a Fire Nation prince, were now set in a determined expression that was reinforced by the large bags under his eyes.
“Where are your companions?”
“Where’s yours?” Sokka fired back. If Iroh didn’t know that he had been separated from his friends, Sokka wasn’t going to be the one to tell him. Zuko may have changed, but that was no guarantee that Iroh wouldn’t snatch Aang up and take him to Fire Lord Ozai himself.
At Sokka’s own words, though, Iroh frowned, and his feet shuffled.
It was only because Sokka had spent the last months being chased by a firebender that he noticed how the shuffling moved Iroh into a fighting stance—feet separated, knees bent ever so slightly, and hands flexing at his sides.
Sokka raised one eyebrow and looked pointedly around at the crowded market.
“Are you going to fight me here?” he asked.
Iroh inhaled, held still for a moment, and then exhaled. A flicker of flame appeared on the breath, but Sokka doubted anyone else had noticed. If Iroh started throwing flames around, the shoppers would notice, but otherwise everyone was too busy to pay attention to more than the obstacles between them and where they were headed.
“If I must,” Iroh said. “I have lost my dear nephew, you see, and like the platypus bear, I will forge into the wildest undercurrent if necessary.”
“Well that seems foolish,” Sokka said. Iroh exhaled more flame, but Sokka forged on. “There’s a rule that all Water Tribe members learn before they’re allowed onto the ice: If someone falls into the water, you don’t dive in after them unless there’s someone else there to fish you both out. Otherwise you both die, if not in the water, then on the ice after when you’re both too frozen to start a fire. Correct me if I’m wrong, but you’re alone. If you die, who rescues Zuko?”
Iroh sighed again, but there was no flame, and his stance relaxed back into what it once was. “Does my nephew need rescuing?”
Sokka hopped down from the lantern post and gestured to the market ahead of them.
“We’ll have to find out,” he said. “I lost him back there, so we’ll have to work our way back around again first.”
Sokka’s friends did, in fact, hang Zuko’s poster next to his and Appa’s. It turned out that they had made friends with someone who owned a printing press. That same someone was also an excellent painter, and in a few seconds she had inked out a depiction of Zuko as an ostrich horse.
His image had gray feathers instead of black, on account of the cost of ink, but his scar was on the right side—unlike some of his human self’s wanted posters—and if Sokka looked at the poster, Zuko imagined he would recognize Zuko’s ostrich horse self.
Zuko had an ostrich horse self and a human self, and at any other time, Zuko imagined that distinction might drive him in circles. As it was, he was too busy trying to both study these people Sokka cared so much for—who apparently cared so much for random animals that they hung his poster side by side with posters for their friend and spirit guide—and look out for Sokka himself.
From their chatting, Aang, Katara, and Toph had been finishing their circle of the Lower Ring when they ran into Zuko. After they visited their printing press friend, they hung posters in a few more spots, then headed through the Middle Ring and all the way to the Upper Ring.
The group passed easily from the Lower to the Middle Ring, but the Upper Ring was blocked by a guarded gate. There, Katara produced documents. The guards took several minutes studying each document—one for each person—before interrogating the group about where the ostrich horse came from and why they should allow a farm animal into the Upper Ring, land of ferrcats, paraparrots, and bears.
Katara told the facts, including a pointed, “It’s an ostrich horse, not a person,” that made Zuko give a honking sigh.
Aang wheedled that being the Avatar’s pet made it a prestigious farm animal, whined about people being limited in their pet choices, and attempted bribery with an air marble show.
Just when Zuko was tempted to break away and try to find Sokka on his own, where the Upper Ring guards wouldn’t stand between them, Toph gave a pointed cough and bribed the guards with a jingling pouch.
The group was allowed through the gates, including ostrich horse Zuko and with a “Toph!” from Katara.
In the past years of Zuko’s banishment, if anything had reminded him of Caldera and the Fire Palace, it was Uncle’s tea, the few times Cook had broken out the fire flake stash, and his father’s hand staring back at him from the mirror.
More recently, Zuko had been reminded of Caldera in the face of everything that the Earth Kingdom was not: Dirt houses collapsing with all the earthbender caretakers called away to war, not sturdy, fire-enforced clay; rice and vegetable meals reminiscent more of Zuko’s ship stretching the budget thin than of the gold-rich, seafood and fruit studded meals of his childhood; faces thin and aged and fearful, not plump and sated and arrogant.
The Lower and Middle Rings of Ba Sing Se had continued this trend, but in the Upper Ring, Zuko saw Caldera again. The buildings were well-maintained, the roads wide and uncrowded. Greens of every shade emanated from people and buildings alike, gauzy lime and rich forest and twinkling jade accentuated by gold and silver.
How could the rich of the Earth Kingdom live like this, Zuko wondered, while their poorer citizens starved?
And if this stark difference existed here, did the same exist between the Fire Palace and the island towns? Zuko had never gone anywhere within the Fire Nation that his parents didn’t wish him to go, and now, he wondered what he hadn’t seen.
Zuko plodded after Katara, Aang and Toph petting him on either side, and wished he could vent about this discovery to Sokka, who had seen a Fire-ruled Earth town and saved them all—who had seen an ostrich horse turn into a Fire prince and continued to walk at his side.
It took far longer than Sokka would have liked to get back to where he had lost Zuko, even with Iroh cutting a path through the crowds. The sun had started going down, and people wielding long, iron poles worked their way down the street lighting the lanterns. One by one they winked into existence, and one by one Sokka felt his heart stutter when they didn’t reveal Zuko.
Sokka peered into more nooks and crannies than he thought any city ought to have, the search made both easier and harder by Iroh’s help—easier, because of the second pair of eyes, and harder, because experience told Sokka to always keep one eye on what the Dragon of the West was up to.
Looking down an alley with cracks in the cobblestones where an earthbender had obviously had fun playing with dirt, Sokka found himself saying, “Zuko won’t go with you, by the way.”
“I’m sorry?” Iroh asked, even as the fire in his voice made it clear there was no apology. Sokka turned to look at him, well aware that he was poking a dragon, but uncaring when it meant that Zuko wouldn’t have to. He didn’t plan on finding Zuko only to lose him to the Fire Nation.
“Zuko’s changed,” Sokka said, staring Iroh right in the eyes. “He’s not after the Avatar anymore, so if that’s why you’re looking for him, you should leave now.”
Iroh broke the staredown first. Sokka mentally cataloged the moment on his resume.
“I am a poor uncle,” Iroh murmured, “if you believe I search for my nephew just to return him to my rat-scorpion of a brother.” Sokka shook his head, confused, but Iroh ignored him and continued, “I wish to see him safe, that is all. He has changed before, and I loved him still. If he has changed again, I will love him again.”
Sokka wasn’t sure that was true. But when he turned from the alley and spotted three strangely familiar wanted posters side-by-side, he didn’t have a choice but to trust the dragon.
“Hey, Iroh?” he called.
“Call me Mushi,” Iroh said.
“Yeah, okay,” Sokka said, because on a weirdness scale from “going fishing” to “the long-lost Avatar exploding out of an iceberg and flirting with his sister,” a sudden, unexplained name change barely registered. “Hey Mushi, there might be something I haven’t mentioned yet. And it involves your nephew being an ostrich horse.”
Mushi appeared at his side. “I have never heard my nephew described as an ostrich horse, but I suppose it is an apt—” Mushi caught sight of Zuko’s poster, his eyes glaring out of black feathers and a familiar scar, and trailed off. “Ah. Well. Hm. You were saying, young Sokka?”
“When we traveled to Ba Sing Se together, Zuko wasn’t exactly… human most of the time.”
“I see,” Mushi sighed. “He angered a spirit, didn’t he?”
Sokka blinked. “Yes. How’d you know?”
“My nephew has many talents,” Mushi extolled. “Angering spirits is one of the more unfortunate ones.”
Sokka wasn’t going to ask. He wasn’t going to ask. He wasn’t—
“Any embarrassing stories?” he asked, starting to walk towards the gate to the Middle Ring and, beyond it, the Upper Ring.
“Oh, many,” Mushi said gleefully. “Once, while we were anchored just east of Chin, my nephew went ashore to hunt and ran into a spirit born of the Oma-Goosefly Trap—”
Aang and his friends had been given an opulent house in the Upper Ring, complete with a grassy courtyard. It was far more than an ostrich horse was usually given, and Zuko attacked the fruit trees, sweet-smelling flowers, and crunchiest grass patches with all of his hungry, pent-up emotions.
Under the eaves of the house, Aang, Katara, and Toph settled into a picnic of their own. Aang plucked the higher fruits that Zuko couldn’t reach with tiny, swirling pockets of air, while Toph and her toes conducted dirt table waiters ferrying food out from inside. Katara left half of the fruit as it was, but juiced the other half with deft twists of her fingers, waterbending streams of juice into cups.
Even as the trio worked with ease, though, Zuko could sense a strange undercurrent. Aang tossed fruit as though expecting someone else to catch them, only to have to dart out air currents to grab them before they hit the ground. Katara laid out blankets and plates as though unused to it, getting tangled in the blankets and muttering to herself as she switched plates around. Toph called out the first half of jokes, but silence always answered her first before Aang or Katara would chime in a beat later.
The group’s entire flow had been changed by Sokka’s absence.
Zuko swallowed a last bite of pearsimmon, then cocked his head at a loud thumping noise from inside.
He let out a loud honk at the same time Toph shifted her feet and announced, “There’s someone at the door.”
Aang bounded toward the house, only for Katara to reach out with a water whip, snag him around the waist, and pull him back.
“We don’t know who it is!” she hissed.
“It’s probably Hei-Hei’s owner,” Aang countered. “They probably saw our posters!”
Hei-Hei? Zuko glared at his black wing feathers. They covered all of his body except his scar, so it made sense to be named after them, but… Hei-Hei?
Zuko didn’t know if anything drove home the Avatar being a twelve-year-old so much as the boy doing the equivalent of naming a spotted dogcat “Spot.”
There was a possibility that Aang was right about who was at the door, but if he was wrong and it was someone here to attack the Avatar, they were about to get a face-full of ostrich horse instead.
Katara took a deep breath and braced herself. “I’ll go. You stay here, okay?”
She didn’t wait for an answer before entering the house. Aang started after her, but Toph caught him with one hand tangled in his shirt. Her toes dug deep into the dirt, ear cocked after Katara, but she had enough attention on Aang to mutter, “You gotta be more careful, Twinkle Toes.”
Aang opened his mouth, but whatever he was about to say was cut off by a loud, wordless cry.
Zuko honked angrily and charged forward, uncaring of the fact that ostrich horses didn’t belong in houses—it was the fastest route to the front door, and therefore the one he was taking.
What was he thinking, letting Katara separate from the others and open the door to strangers? He knew well how many enemies the Avatar had after him, and just because they were in Ba Sing Se didn’t mean they were safe!
Aang and Toph’s footsteps thudded behind him and their voices called for Katara, but Zuko’s ostrich horse form had far longer legs and he reached the entryway first.
The first thing he saw was Katara, crumpled on the ground, with someone looming over her.
The second thing he saw, next to Katara’s braid, was that familiar, tempting wolf tail.
“Sokka!” Aang cried.
Sokka and Katara looked up, identical smiles on their faces—and then Sokka squawked and reached up to swat at Zuko.
“Not the hair, buddy!”
Zuko snorted. It wasn’t his fault his ostrich horse instincts insisted on chewing Sokka’s hair.
“Honestly,” Sokka sighed. His hand patted Zuko’s neck, and Zuko leant into it with a soft warble.
Knowing he’d be human again soon didn’t drain all of his tension away, but it drained it a fair bit.
Maybe that was why he stiffened so much when a voice declared, “Get away from him! That ostrich horse is a firebender!”
Sokka’s hand froze on Zuko’s neck, and both their heads turned to the door.
Jet stood in the entryway, two swords in hand. One of them was pointed at Zuko.
The other was against Uncle’s throat.
A million thoughts ran through Zuko’s head at once, from how Uncle and Sokka ended up together to how Jet knew his real identity, but Sokka voiced the most important one for him:
“Put the swords down, Jet.”
Jet grinned, the ear of wheat twitching upwards between his lips, but his words were barbed when he replied, “Not a chance, Fire Nation sympathizer.”
“Fire Nation what?” Katara asked. She stood up and poised her hands by her water flask. “Yes, my brother, the Avatar’s friend, has been selling secrets this entire time.”
Katara rolled her eyes in the way only little sisters could.
Jet’s grin disappeared. “I didn’t say he was selling secrets,” he snapped. “I said he was a sympathizer. A traitor. Someone who’s made Fire Nation friends, like Prince Iroh, Dragon of the West! Didn’t change your name fast enough, old man.”
His sword dug deeper into Uncle’s throat, and Uncle reached up and pinched the tip between two of his fingers.
“You were eavesdropping in the alley,” Sokka said, eyes narrowed in realization.
Jet scoffed. “Hardly. I saw you on the lamp post, and I saw him confront you. I saw him breathe fire, and I thought you needed rescuing. Instead, the next thing I heard was the two of you conspiring to rescue Ozai’s spawn! Him!”
Jet brandished the sword pointed at Zuko, and Sokka’s hand tensed where it still rested on his mane. Katara frowned, her cool eyes analyzing Zuko’s scarred ostrich horse face.
But Aang laughed, soft snorts and giggles that he did his best to quiet. “You think—you think Ozai had an ostrich horse for a kid?”
“Yes, I—wait, what? No! No, that ostrich horse is—Ah—Aaagh!” Jet screamed the high-pitched, pained scream of someone who was burning, his voice tapering off as he bit his lip and dropped both his swords. He stepped back from the group, cradling one hand where a bright red imprint of a leather grip had burned into his palm.
Uncle bent down calmly and retrieved the swords, either not feeling or unconcerned by the heat radiating off of the one that had been pressed to his throat—the one he had used just two fingers to heat while everyone else was distracted.
Jet glared at them all, but with his swords gone and no hostage, no one even needed to say anything. Jet sulked away on his own.
Zuko had no doubt he would be back, probably with his two friends and whoever else he could convince that the Fire Nation prince had snuck into the city as an ostrich horse, but that would be a worry for later. For now, he turned and pressed his head into Sokka’s shoulder, giving a long, low honk.
Sokka hugged Zuko’s head to his body, happy to have the heavy, comforting weight of his loyal ostrich horse resting against him again—even if that loyal ostrich horse was also a royal jerkbender.
“Do you think you can firebend as an ostrich horse?” he wondered aloud.
Zuko’s beak lunged for his wolf tail, and Sokka danced away with a laugh.
“Okay, okay! Just—just wait a minute, buddy, alright?” He pressed a palm to the top of Zuko’s beak, holding the ostrich horse at arm’s length, and turned back to Katara, Aang, and Toph.
His sister’s glare was frigid.
“Jet wasn’t lying, was he?” she asked.
“No, he wasn’t,” Toph agreed. Her arms were crossed over her chest, biceps flexed in a clear threat.
The two girls stood on either side of Aang, who had refused to be pushed behind them. Instead, he turned wide kittenpuppy eyes on Sokka and waited for an explanation.
Sokka hesitated, then said: “Just don’t kill him, okay?”
He turned and pressed a single, lingering kiss to Zuko’s forehead. Under his lips, feathers changed to skin, but whether he was an ostrich horse or a human, Zuko was warm and familiar.
Sokka had grown used to being at his side.
Zuko broke away first. He stepped back, then hissed in pain, and Sokka surged forward, ducking his shoulder under Zuko’s arm and wrapping his own arm around Zuko’s waist.
“You tore your wound open again, didn’t you?” he demanded.
Zuko glared at him. “It’s not my fault! It tears when I shift forms!”
“This is the second time today?! Katara—!”
His sister shook her head. “I can’t do anything,” she said. “I already used what little energy he had earlier, and shifting like that is probably what exhausted his chi in the first place.”
Aang bounced over and peered up at Zuko. “How did you shift anyway? Can you do other animals? Can you—?”
“No,” Zuko said. “It was a spirit curse, and I thought it had broken. I—” he hesitated, then continued, “I don’t know what caused it to happen again.”
Sokka narrowed his eyes. He’d bet all the gold-dusted urns in this room—and there were a lot—that Zuko knew exactly what caused him to change shape again. The man was definitely hiding something, but not in a bad way. If anything, Zuko seemed embarrassed, his eyes catching Sokka’s momentarily and then flitting away again.
They landed on Iroh, and Zuko’s entire body sagged where Sokka was supporting him.
“Uncle,” Zuko said. His mouth quirked up at the sides, not quite in a smile but definitely happier than before. “You made it.”
“Indeed I did,” Iroh agreed. “We can talk later, though. You should have your wound seen to. Can I rely on you, young Sokka?”
His wrinkled eyes bore into Sokka’s. Unlike his nephew’s, whose eyes were a blazing, clear gold, Iroh’s were a burnished red-brown. They reminded Sokka of the blood that the Dragon of the West had spilled, and he had no doubt that if harm came to Zuko, Iroh wouldn’t hesitate to spill more.
“You can,” Sokka said.
He tightened his arm around Zuko’s waist and turned them towards the back door, but stopped for a moment facing Katara, Aang, and Toph.
“I’ll explain everything,” he promised. “But for now… we can trust them.”
At the least, they could trust Zuko, and he could trust that Iroh wouldn’t do anything without his nephew at his side.
Zuko’s bleeding thigh was his highest priority, though.
Together, they walked outside. Zuko’s weight was warm and heavy against his side, different from when he was an ostrich horse, but similar all the same.
They had the same heart.
There was a blanket laid out on the porch with a semblance of dinner, and Sokka lowered Zuko down. Zuko’s pants were wet with blood, but it was easy enough to take his skinning knife from its sheath and cut away the lower pant leg.
The sun was setting, but it was still high enough in the sky that Sokka had enough light to thread a needle.
“This will hurt,” he warned, and then began to stitch. Zuko’s breath hitched the first time the needle pierced his leg, but steadied into a tempo Sokka was familiar with from Aang’s meditating.
“Why do you know this?” Zuko asked.
Sokka laughed. “Why do I know how to stitch wounds while traveling with a twelve-year-old with a bounty on his head?”
“Your sister can heal in an instant.”
“She’s not always around,” Sokka countered. “Besides, what kind of big brother would I be if I forced all the responsibility on her?”
“We have very different little sisters.” Zuko’s voice was serious, but when Sokka glanced up at him, his eyes were fond. “Azula steals my responsibilities every chance she gets. Even—”
Zuko cut himself off. His eyes fell to meet Sokka’s, then glanced away again. He stared in the direction of Ba Sing Se’s gates.
“Even hunting the Avatar,” Zuko finished.
At first, Sokka didn’t get it. Many people had hunted Aang, but none of them had screamed Zuko’s little sister.
Then he remembered the girls he and Zuko had faced, ironically far, far away from Aang.
“Blue fire girl?” he asked, incredulous, and Zuko snorted.
“She would love that that’s what you remember,” Zuko said. “She was so proud when her fire first turned blue…”
That wasn’t all Sokka remembered. Zuko had still been an ostrich horse when they faced her, and he had frozen stiff before snapping out of it and tearing off like Sozin himself was on his tail—or, apparently, like his little sister had just thrown flames at his face. He could have sided with Azula, but instead, he helped Sokka run.
Sokka tied off the stitches, then wrapped the wound in fresh bandages. For a moment, he stared at his finished work—then he caught Zuko’s hand in his and stared into his eyes.
“You helped me against her,” he said. “Thank you.”
Zuko’s face flushed red, but he didn’t pull away. Instead, his fingers tightened around Sokka’s.
“I made my choice,” Zuko said. “And I’ll stand by it.”
Caught in Zuko’s grip, held still by his serious eyes, Sokka could feel his own face burning, but he forced his mouth to move and replied, “I know you will. And if you need help, I’ll be right here.”
If the day had shown them anything, it was that they were better together than apart.