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Hakoda knew he had done the right thing, even if the sight of his children - his grown, strong, courageous children - flying off on a creature that shouldn’t even exist twisted a knife in his gut. They might be warriors now (Spirits, why did they have to be warriors now. He had failed to keep them safe, separate from the war. The knife plunged deeper.) but the feeling of their tiny infant bodies was imprinted so deeply, it was part of the very marrow of his being.
The shackles on his wrists chafed, breaking off his train of thought. The guards prowled and sneered on the small gondola, prodding at the other prisoners to goad them into action.
“You! Hey savage!” one jeered. “Not so strong now, are you?”
Hakoda’s smile was all teeth. “Do your worst, ashmaker. My children are safe and the Avatar will prevail. Then we’ll see who gets thrown into the boiling sea.”
“Big talk from some backwards-ass peasant from the end of the earth. The Boiling Rock will wear you down, just like it does everyone.”
The Warden was another predictable bully, strutting around like an ornamental peabird and half as useful.
“Get him out of my sight!”
It was probably stupid to trip him with his handcuffs, but Hakoda wasn’t giving up his pride. Not so soon. After all, if he had learned anything from his children, it was that nothing is truly impossible.
He had to hope.
---
Evening brought a surprising chill to the stifling prison. Hakoda leaned back against the wall of his cell, the cold metal seeping through his flimsy uniform. Spirits, he hated red.
He leapt to his feet at the rattle of the lock, immediately moving into a defensive stance. A slender guard slipped in and closed the door behind him.
“Thank goodness you’re okay!” the guard cried from his ill-fitting helmet.
“One step closer and you will see how okay I am!”
“No, Dad! It’s me!” The man removed his helmet and -
“Sokka? My son.” He didn’t even try to fight the tears running down his face as he pulled his boy into a fierce hug. “What are you doing here?”
“We’re breaking you out.”
Hakoda chuckled and ruffled his son’s hair. “Y’know, you should be more careful with that guard outfit on. I almost punched you in the gut.”
“Yeah, I ran into that problem earlier,” Sokka rubbed the back of his neck and blushed.
“Oh really?”
“It’s kind of a long story.”
“I’ll take your word for it. So what’s your plan? And who’s ‘we’? Tell me you didn’t bring the Avatar and your sister into this place.
“No! I’m not crazy, Dad. Katara doesn’t even know where I am. It’s me and Zuko. And Suki, my girlfriend, though she’s technically a prisoner too.”
“Zuko? The Fire Lord’s son? That Zuko??”
“Yeah. But actually, he’s on our side now. He’s surprisingly cool. Well, that’s not true. He’s the most dramatic weirdo I’ve ever met, including Aang, but trust me. He’s a good guy.”
Hakoda sighed. “If you say so.”
“I do. And believe me, I’m as surprised as you are. Now, Katara? She hated his guts until recently, but I kind of get it. After the whole thing with his sister and the catacombs and Jet dying…”
“What in the four nations did you kids do while I was gone?”
Sokka just waved it away. “There’s no time. We need to come up with a diversion, some way to bargain our way out.”
“There’s no prison in this world that can hold two Water Tribe geniuses,” Hakoda smiled and patted the boy on the shoulder.
“Then we better find two.”
“Hey now. You’re the smartest, most creative thinker I’ve ever met.”
“And I still failed and you still ended up hurt. Lots of people did.”
Hakoda sighed again. “Sometimes that’s part of being a leader, son.”
“Leadership sucks, then. But hey, at least now that we’re here, you can meet Suki! She’s amazing.”
He took the subject change with a wry grin. “I met some of the Oshinama Fighters before they brought me here, and they all talked about you.”
“They’re the Kyoshi Warriors, Dad. Suki’s their leader. She kicked my ass the first time we met.”
Hakoda chuckled. “Plans first. Then we can braid each other’s hair and talk about girls”.
----
“I’m under strict orders from the Warden to let the prisoners into the yard!” he heard Sokka shout. The other guards grumbled something unintelligible but the doors began to swing open, one by one. Hakoda fought a grin as he shuffled out into the yard. It didn’t take long for his son to sidle up next to him with another man, a massive firebender named Chit Sang.
“Don’t ask about him. Anyway, how do we start a prison riot?” Sokka asked, his voice low. Hakoda shrugged and then he shoved the man next to him.
“You, uh, you angered me! We should fight!”
The other man just blinked at him. “I’ve been working on my anger issues, friend. Let’s talk it out instead.”
Chit Sang grinned. “You want a riot?” He lumbered over and grabbed another inmate, holding the man over his head and throwing him into the assembled crowd. “RIOT!!”
The yard exploded in chaos in mere seconds.
Zuko (the prince of the fucking Fire Nation) rushed through the crowd, panting as he grabbed Sokka’s shoulder. “That was fast, but we have trouble.”
“Oh good, you're here. Now all we have to do is get to the warden and escape on the gondola.”
Zuko nodded. “Right. How are we going to do that?”
Sokka looked anywhere except at his friend. “I'm… not sure.”
“What?! I thought you thought this through!” Zuko shouted loud enough to shake walls.
“You told me it’s okay not to think things through!”
“Look, it’s okay to not think things through sometimes, but this, this is kind of important!”
Chit Sang cut off their bickering. “Uhhhh…. Hey fellas, looks like your girlfriend’s taking care of it”
Hakoda’s jaw dropped as the girl - she really couldn’t be much older than Katara - nimbly leapt over the heads and shoulders of the other inmates, scaling the smooth metal wall with unbelievable ease. She swung by her slippered toes over the railing and took out the guards before he could even breathe. Sokka and Zuko took off, running up the gangplanks at full speed.
Chit Sang tipped his head towards them with a grin. “After you, Chief.”
Suki pinned the trapped warden against the wall. “We got the warden. Now let's get on the gondola!”
“That’s some girl,” Hakoda panted, fully out of breath. Sokka beamed from his side.
“Tell me about it.”
—
Hakoda had only lived forty-seven summers, and he knew he had a lot still to learn about the world, but he knew enough to be pretty certain that teenage girls couldn’t fly.
Apparently not. The one in red - Azula, the boys had said with more than a little bit of fear - blasted white-blue flames from her fists to propel her over the boiling lake, while the one in pink ran up the cables like they were feet instead of inches across, nimbly flipping onto the roof of the gondola.
“Fuck,” Zuko grumbled.
“Come on, man. You can take her now since you and Aang went on that field trip. You have your fancy new swirly firebending!” Sokka said, overbright.
“She’s a fucking prodigy, and she has Ty Lee. Do I need to remind you of what happened the last time you fought her?”
“Hey! I’m better now, too.”
Suki cut them off. “We don’t have time for this. Let’s go kill some crazy women.” With actually astonishing ease, the trio swung up onto the roof.
Every thud had his heart pounding in terror, even before the slimy asshole warden yelled, “Cut the line!”
Well shit.
Chit Sang made quick work, knocking the fucker over the head with one massive fist.
“That your kid?” he asked, gesturing up to the roof.
“Yeah.”
“How old?”
Hakoda sighed. “21 in berry season. He risked everything and I don’t know what I can do to help him now.”
“My bones don’t bend like those boys did. What are we going to do if they really do cut the line?”
“Die as warriors, I suppose.”
The gondola rocked ominously.
“And the kids?”
Guilt churned in his gut once more. “Honor their choices. We can’t haunt them with our shame.”
“Zuko!” he heard Sokka cry. The boy hung from the edge, dangling in front of a window. Chit Sang grunted and cupped his hands below each foot, hoisting up as Sokka pulled him back into battle.
He looked at Hakoda with a slight smile. “Maybe not today.”
They both turned at some commotion on the ground, even as the gondola lurched to a halt.
“What the Koh?”
The two Fire Nation girls jetted off, leaving them alive but stranded. Zuko, Sokka, and Suki slipped back inside.
“What’d you do to the warden?” Suki asked, poking his unconscious form with her foot.
“What we all wanted to do, little lady. Shut him the fuck up.”
Prince Zuko leaned against a window and narrowed his good eye. “Is that… Mai?”
Sokka and Suki bunched up on either side of him, peering at the landing. “Looks like Knife Girl to me.”
“I wish I’d known she was here. I have a special message for her,” Suki added savagely. Hakoda gulped.
A blade flashed and then -
“What? How are we moving again?”
The breeze shifted, carrying voices from below. “You miscalculated, Azula. I love Zuko more than I fear you.”
Teenagers should not be allowed this much power, he swears to Tui.
---
The airship (that his son helped design?!) sailed easily through the clouds with the help of Zuko’s firebending. Now that they were out of immediate danger, the boy seemed to retreat into himself, brooding into the flames away from the rest of them.
Hakoda slowly approached him. “Need any help?”
The kid nearly jumped out of his skin. “Never sneak up on a firebender. I could have hurt you.”
“I’d rank you as maybe the third most dangerous person on this flying contraption,” he said with an easy smile and a nod to where Suki and Sokka were curled into each other, fast asleep.
Zuko cocked his head, a bewildered expression on his face. Hakoda carefully moved his hands where they could see them and leaned against the railing. Silence stretched.
“Who’s the second?” the boy finally murmured.
He grinned. “My money’s on Sokka. I might be biased, of course.”
“You wouldn’t say that you’re more dangerous? You’re definitely the strongest.”
Hakoda studied Zuko for a moment, a stone sinking in his gut. His scarred side was angled away, his posture tense as a board. Fury mingled with dread.
“No, son,” he said gently. “I’d never hurt any of you.”
Zuko hunched his shoulders and tossed another flame into the boiler. “Have you - have you ever had to leave someone and then find that they’re different when you come back?”
“Of course,” he answered immediately. “It’s happening right in front of you. When I left to fight, Sokka and Katara were only a handful of summers old. Now, well. I’d say you know them better than I do. Did this happen to you?”
He nodded. “The girl at the prison. Mai. She was my girlfriend before. We don’t understand each other at all now, though. I don’t know why she saved me.”
“Do you love her?”
Zuko looked up, startled. “No,” he said slowly. “I… I care for someone else. I have for a while now.”
Hakoda raised his eyebrows at that information. He extended his hand to give a reassuring pat. Zuko flinched, so he let his arm drop.
“Let me know if you need anything, okay?”
“I’ve got it, Chief Hakoda. We’re almost home anyway.”
Home was a strange word for the Prince to use. There was something he was missing here. He shrugged. The truth always found its way to light.
---
When Katara launched into his arms, something settled deep in his soul. He was far from the Poles, far from his mother and people, but with both of his kids here and safe, he was home.
It took almost no time for the Avatar to try to pry his daughter away, but the little blind girl and the boy with the mustache redirected him masterfully. “Your Earthbending sucks, Twinkletoes. Let Sugar Queen hang out with Pops while Stache and I beat you into shape.”
“Toph, for the last time, my name is Haru.”
“Yeah, and hers is Katara and his is Aang. So what? Come on boys. Let me show you some real bending!”
Chit Sang chuckled and lumbered after them with some murmured excuse about keeping them from killing each other.
Sokka regaled anyone who would listen with his barely exaggerated version of Suki’s skills, so Hakoda shifted his focus to Katara - who was not at all focused on him. While she rested against his side like she hadn’t since she was eight, and made all the right noises at all the right times at her brother’s story, her eyes were locked on the Fire Prince, half-hidden in the shadows.
Huh.
Zuko made a quick gesture with his hand and Katara inhaled sharply, shaking her head so minutely he wouldn’t have noticed if he wasn’t so fascinated by whatever was going on here.
Aang burst back into the chamber, breaking the moment and interrupting Sokka’s tale. “Katara! I learned a new move!”
Hakoda and Chit Sang exchanged a glance over the kids’ heads as Katara pasted on an encouraging smile and Zuko melted into the temple.
“That’s great, Aang. You can show me later, but I want to spend some time with my dad right now.”
He cocked his head, bewildered. “But I thought my training was more important! You said at the play -”
She cut him off with a hand. “Aang. Go back to Toph, please. You can train without me watching.”
Aang started to protest when the boy with the mustache appeared. “We were not done! Get your ass back here. You can’t go and show off to your imaginary girlfriend every time you don’t suck. Come on.”
Their argument echoed unintelligibly down the hall.
Hakoda bumped his hip against Katara’s. “You okay?”
She startled. “Hmmm? Oh yeah! Why wouldn’t I be?”
He nodded his head towards the door.
“That’s - it’s -” She scrambled to her feet before he could ask anything else. “Time to go make dinner! Someone has to feed this crowd!”
—
“So, what’s the story with my daughter and the Avatar?” Hakoda asked the next day, leaning against a stone fountain while the strange blind girl (Toph, that’s her name) made and destroyed little statues of earth.
“Twinkletoes is delusional and Sugar Queen is too nice. That’s not the question you really want to ask anyway, Pops.” Toph moved her foot slightly, raising a spiral pillar from the ground.
“How would you know, oh Tiny Wise One?”
She cackled at the nickname. “You want to know what the deal is with Sparky.”
“Sparky?”
“You know, Zuko.”
Hakoda sighed. “I will admit that, while I’m grateful that he helped us escape, especially at such high risk to himself, I am… curious.”
“You Water Tribe types can’t keep your noses out of everyone’s business. It’s a whole damn problem.”
He barked out a laugh. “You try living in the South. We rely on each other for survival in a way that many of the other nations don’t.”
“No thanks. I like my feet on nice, solid rock, not snow and ice.”
“You were saying about the Fire Prince?”
Toph plopped on the ground and started picking her toes. “He’s not much of a prince anymore, really. I know he got banished when he was a kid and sent on a wild goose chase to find Aang before we even knew there was an Aang. Then there was the whole thing in Ba Sing Se where he pissed Sugar Queen way the hell off, but then Gramps got hit with Crazy Pants’ lightning. So he came and joined us and has been teaching Twinkletoes to firebend, even though it makes him a traitor to pretty much everything he’s ever known. Pretty badass, if you ask me.”
“Who’s Gramps? And what happened in Ba Sing Se?”
She shrugged. “You’ll have to ask her. I was with Snoozles.”
“I’m going to need a translator to keep up with all your nicknames.”
“You’ll get used to it, Pops. I’m gonna go bug Wheels and The Duke.”
Hakoda laughed as she sauntered off, whistling a tune off-key. A cool breeze rustled his hair, carrying the sound of low voices. He perked up when he realized one of them was Katara’s.
“.... you could have been killed.”
“Was I supposed to just let him go alone?”
“No! Yes! I don’t know what you want me to say, Zuko. You both are so fucking stupid sometimes!”
Hakoda silently moved around the courtyard, hoping to get a glimpse of the pair. They were tucked into a small alcove, standing barely inches apart. His heart clenched at the tears running down his daughter’s face.
“Hey. We made it back, okay?” Zuko ran his hand down Katara’s arm, linking their fingers together.
“This time, and that was mostly thanks to Suki. What would you have done if she wasn’t there? Or if Dad wasn’t there?”
He watched the boy blush and rub the back of his neck. “I was thinking more about you, and trying to save you the heartache of losing your brother to a half-cocked plan.”
“Zuko…”
“Listen. You… you have a good family, I think. I don’t exactly have much reference except my uncle, but your dad? He might be like him.” Zuko grasped both of her hands. “Good families are rare. Yours needs to be safe.”
Katara wrapped him in a fierce hug before rising to her toes, kissing him deeply. “Thank you.”
The prince stepped back and pressed his lips to her forehead. “You have to know by now that I would do anything for you.”
“I know. I can’t lose you, though. Not after everything. Please be more careful with yourself.”
She pulled him into another heady kiss that made Hakoda look away, overwhelmed with the emotions they were sharing.
“I have to go. Dinner doesn’t make itself, you know,” she said.
“I’ll come and help as soon as I finish rounding up the kids.”
They kissed once more, sweet and lazy, before she hurried off. Zuko leaned against the stone and sighed.
“I know you’re there, Chief Hakoda. And I imagine you have some questions.”
Hakoda stepped fully into view. “You know, when I imagined reuniting with my children during all the years at sea, I never in a million years thought I would find the Avatar and the Prince of the Fire Nation fighting for my daughter’s affection.”
“We’re not - she doesn’t -” Zuko blushed crimson as he tripped over his words.
“Calm down, son. I’m not angry. Just curious.”
The boy took a deep breath and sunk down on his heels. “Katara doesn’t like Aang that way, and he’s not taking it very well. That’s not really my story to tell, though.”
“Alright. I can accept that. What is your story, then?” Hakoda mimicked his stance, settling into a crouch that reminded him immediately that he was not as young as he once was anymore.
“I… Chief Hakoda, you know I was not a good person. I made a lot of mistakes, and one of them nearly got my uncle, the only real family I have, killed. He would have died without Katara. She is so good and powerful and amazing, and I really don’t know what she sees in me, but she clearly sees something because we kissed in the cave and then I was an idiot but then she forgave me again after we had to pretend to be Aang’s parents and she was going to heal my scar but she didn’t, which is good because that’s how she was able to help Uncle and -”
Hakoda raised a hand. “Breathe, Zuko.”
He did, a few times, before meeting Hakoda’s eyes. “Sir, I swear on a Prince’s Honor that I will never do anything to hurt your daughter again. I am trying every single day to be the man she deserves, to make up for all the wrong I did before.”
“I believe you, son.”
His relief was palpable. “Thank you. That means… well. It means a lot.”
Hakoda finally gave up on his knees and settled back onto his butt. “Now then, that doesn’t mean I won’t give you some trouble now and then.”
Zuko grinned, sharp and lightning fast. “I wouldn’t expect anything else from a person who raised Sokka.” He rose gracefully to his feet and extended a hand. “I promised I would round up the kids for dinner. Would you… “
“I’d love to help, Zuko. Lead the way.”
No, in all his years at sea, he never thought he would see the world they live in, but for the first time, as he watched the Prince of the Fire Nation lift the Avatar by the back of his tunic, his son and the Kyoshi Warrior laugh along, and his daughter bicker with the greatest earthbender of all time (and don’t you forget it, Pops!) he felt something he thought was lost.
Hope.