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Chapter Text

Sokka was about to die from secondhand embarrassment when the feral child attacked.

To be fair, he hadn't known how the Duke had even found them or where he'd gotten a knife; all his previous interactions with the child had led Sokka to believe  that he was a fairly unremarkable six-year-old. Kind of like how Sokka had also assumed that he could never genuinely feel bad for the prince of the Fire Nation, and yet here he was, cringing at the human interaction disaster that followed "Hello, Zuko here" and continued up until Katara busted out the water-whip and nearly washed the firebender off the edge of the temple, which certain members of their party who had just shown up seemed to have taken as a universal attack indicator.

Which, okay, might be partially his fault since he'd used the aggressive negotiation tactic of saying, either you leave, or we attack, but that had been mostly a bluff. And his weapon of choice certainly wouldn't have been a six-year-old.

Zuko didn't take the attack as seriously as Katara's, sidestepping the unpracticed swipe at his knees with practiced ease, letting the child barrel past. Sokka's cry of alarm was echoed by rest of the onlookers; the firebender's eyes widened as he realized why.

The Duke was headed full speed for a nose dive off the edge of the temple.

Before anyone else had time to react, Zuko spun and dove after the helmeted child, managing to snag his shirt just before he went flying into oblivion.

Sokka let out a breath of relief, and then joined in the general rush that seemed to be Phase Two: Get Child Away From Evil Firebender. Who had just saved said child's life and was now holding him up by the back of the shirt at arm's length, as if not sure what to do with him and not eager to get stabbed with the blade the Duke was still swinging wildly.

"Duke!" Katara pushed in front of Sokka but ultimately got beaten to the scene of the crime by Aang and his airbending assist. "Get away from him!"

"It's the Duke," the Duke replied, "And I'm trying!"

"Would someone," asked the Fire Prince, with a rather constipated expression on his face, "Please call off this ... attack child."

Katara, of course, did not, which Sokka could support for the moment, and so naturally the Avatar stepped in.

"Zuko just saved your life, the Duke! We don't thank people who saved our lives by trying to stab them!"

"But he's Fire Nation!"

"Also, stop leaving your knives lying around," Katara hissed to Sokka as if somehow the whole thing was his fault. And not the Duke's. Or Zuko's, really, for showing up uninvited in the first place.

Sokka had lost track of Aang and the Duke's conversation thanks to his sister's baseless accusation, so he couldn't be sure but he thought he heard Zuko mutter something along the lines of racial profiling, much? while Aang was trying to explain the Air Nomad's no-one-is-inherently-evil philosophy to an armed child.

"But you all just said he was a bad guy!" the Duke protested.

"He's done bad things," Aang hedged. "But, uh, good things too! Like all people! Didn't he save your life just now? You almost flew off the cliff!"

"I almost flew?!" shrieked the Duke, overjoyed. "I knew if I tried enough I could fly just like you!" He wiggled harder.

Zuko pinched the bridge of his nose, hard, with the hand not stifling a non-airbender's attempt to fly. "Listen, the Duke. People can't fly."

"But Aang can fly, and so can Teo!"

"Yeah, well, I flew here in a balloon --"

"You what?!" Sokka squawked, drafting immediate plans on how to get his hands on said balloon.

"-- and the Avatar has a glider to help him fly around. What do you have to help keep you from hitting the bottom of the canyon?"

"Zuko, just put him down slowly --" Katara was trying to get the situation under control and looked to Sokka like she was half a second from encasing everyone in an icy time-out.

"Put me down and find out!" the Duke challenged.

"DON'T YOU DARE PUT HIM DOWN," Katara immediately rescinded her earlier statement.

Sokka watched as Zuko's annoyed-and-confused expression leveled up a notch to counter Katara's aggression, and then suddenly the world exploded into fire.

Did someone say assassin? That's right, Zuko did, and they'd all forgotten about it like morons until the aforementioned assassin (Katara was not going to call him Sparky Sparky Boom Man, no matter how catchy of a name it truly was) decided to pre-empt Katara's plan to encase everything in her vicinity in ice, only he was trying to do it with fire. And explosions. Lots of explosions.

Which Katara wouldn't think was just cause for the pint-sized former Freedom Fighter to be whooping and hollering like it was the spring thaw come early. And why had His Evil Princliness shoved the Duke at her, who could actually be useful in this fight, instead of, say, her useless brother standing over there gaping instead of running for cover like he ought to? Squinting through the bright after-image of the explosion as if he were trying to …

Oh. Katara didn't immediately shove the Duke onto her brother, because this was actually exactly the type of situation where a boomerang could be incredibly useful. She pulled the flailing child behind the nearest wall with her, which happened to be one that Toph had just bent up from the paving stones beneath them.

The idiot child still had a knife -- Katara really should have done a better background check on anyone who'd been previously associated with Jet -- and she had to freeze it and the Duke's hand into an ice block to prevent accidental stabbings.

Then there were more explosions and a great deal of air-whooshing, and the building they were in shook, hard, so that even Toph insisted they get behind more solid cover than the fountain they were huddled around. Katara shoved the Duke onto her this time, certain that the blind earthbender would have no qualms about putting the child in a rocky time-out if necessary, and went to join the fight.

... For someone who talked a lot about how no one could fly, Zuko did a pretty decent job of proving himself wrong. How had he even gotten up there so fast?

Katara wasn't sure what Zuko thought he would accomplish by adding more fire to the mix, but the assassin was falling for the moment, although she preferred to attribute that to Aang's tornadoes rather than any assistance from Zuko. The airbender landed next to her and Sokka just as a new blast headed their way. Katara barely had a moment to glance at Aang before they were pulling the fountain water over themselves as a shield.

Ugh. Enough of this already. Katara swirled the water around her as she called up a huge wave to launch an offensive. She reveled in the sensation of the water following her arm movements, and let out a battle cry as she stiffened her fingers, sending icicles speeding towards her target. Take that, Combustion Man!

… Stupid metal arm, that was cheating. The assassin looked pretty angry now though, especially when Aang followed up her attack with a tornado. There was some fire and shouting going on up there, too, what was Zuko up to now? Either way, it was an opportunity to fall back.

Behind the wall with the others, Katara found that Toph had indeed earthbent the squirming child into a shallow hole to keep him from running headlong into the fray.

The temple rocked with another explosion; whatever Zuko had been doing clearly hadn't worked. Unless his plan was to get them killed, in which case it was starting to succeed.

"He's going to blast this whole place right off the cliff side!" Toph yelled.

"I can't step out to waterbend at him without being blown up and I can't get a good enough angle on him from down here," Katara said, frustrated.

"I know how to get an angle on him!" Sokka exclaimed, lining up the shot with his boomerang, and seriously Katara had expected him to do that five explosions ago, what had taken him so long? For the Idea Guy he sometimes wasn't so bright.

Katara would, however, grudgingly admit that he had pretty good aim, and was definitely thankful when the explosions stopped.

Finally. Maybe one day her ears would stop ringing too.

"Wow!" The Duke's shriek shattered the silence, and Katara winced from both the proximity and pitch. "That was totally awesome!"

Katara rolled her eyes; she could sense Sokka puffing out his chest from where he'd stepped out to check for remains, even if she couldn't see him clearly through the smoke and dust that was still settling.

"Just a regular day in the life of a boomerang-slinging --"

"You're a hero!" The child wriggled free of his earthen pit-trap and bolted in the direction of her brother.

And ran right past Sokka towards a different form emerging from the dust.

Again, how had Zuko gotten down here so fast? At least he didn't sidestep this time, Katara thanked Tui for small favors, and the Duke collided with the firebender's leg.

Katara noted, with some confusion, that this was voluntary on the Duke's part, because the child appeared to have wrapped himself around said leg and was chattering up at him with words like fire and amazing and taking out bad guys and saving everyone and teach me.

On rare occasions, she and Sokka understood each other perfectly. They shared a look that said, as only siblings could: What in the name of all that is frozen was going on?

The only answer Katara could offer, for now, was that the Duke was clearly a hazard to his own safety.

Toph's feet were beginning to develop an appreciation for the theatre. The pyrotechnics, the drama, the characters … this unexpected confrontation had all the hallmarks of a summer festival hit. It was way better than those boring productions her parents used to drag her to, because apparently even the frailest of noble girls could still attend the theatre if it made the Bei Fongs look as if they were patrons of the arts instead of the money-grubbing boar-sharks they were.

"Hey, what about me? I did the boomerang thing," said the comic relief, only to be interrupted by the villain. Who Toph wasn't totally convinced was an actual villain, but they didn't exactly have anyone else around to fill in the role.

"Who is responsible for this child?" the Fire Prince demanded, sounding … stressed.

No one answered. This only served to stress out the firebender more. Zuko had probably come back down here to repeat his tragedy of a tragic soliloquy, and was now stuck dealing with someone else's kid.

"Where are your parents?" he asked, addressing the Duke this time. Toph sensed that the child was still wrapped tightly around his leg, and stifled a giggle.

"I don't know," answered the Duke, and it was muffled in a layer of pants.

"The Fire Nation probably killed his parents!" Katara volunteered, full of the righteous anger of the typical noble hero, but boy was that the wrong thing to say. The Duke was back to maximum volume now, and he was wailing.

"Give him here, Zuko," Katara ordered, but without the usual cutting edge she addressed the prince with.

Toph wasn't clear what happened next, but it sounded like Zuko was more than willing to comply with Katara's request, even though the Duke was doing his best to the contrary, and the wailing was really starting to grate on Toph's sensitive hearing.

Aang tried next, with his trademark optimism. "Hey, it's ok! The Fire Nation killed my parents too! Probably. I don't actually know who they are, but they're definitely dead! Anyway, you don't see me crying about it!"

Hidden under the sound of Sokka smacking his own forehead, Toph was the only one who heard Aang add most days under his breath.

Evidently Zuko had come to the conclusion that this would take a while, and he sunk cross-legged to the ground, which momentarily dislodged the leg-leech but it just re-positioned itself onto his lap. Toph sensed one of his arms leaving the ground and wrapping around the kid by reflex. "Why don’t you tell us what happened?" he addressed the tearful bundle in a surprisingly gentle tone.

The wailing paused, replaced by hiccupping speech. "Well I had a dad once. But then one day he sent me away and told me I'd have to find a new dad now, and not to trust moms because they leave and never come back --"

Judging from the skip in Zuko's heartbeat, this struck a nerve and he unconsciously tugged the child closer.

"-- so then I went into the forest and I found my new dad, that's Daddy Pipsqueak! And we lived in the trees, but then we went for a really really long walk and even lived on a ship for a few weeks! But then we went to attack the bad guys and he wouldn't let me stay with him, he just went with all the other daddies and then we walked a whole lot but not as much as before and I was really sad and tired and then we came here and I'm not tired anymore even though I'm still sad but I figured out that I have to find a new daddy again and I did, I found you!"

People told Toph that eyes were important. She imagined the Duke's now, they must be big and sparkly and full of little hearts or whatever made sighted people go all soft and melty in their faces and start cooing. Aang was definitely cooing, and Katara was having a hard time not joining in.

Zuko, on the other hand, felt like he was about to have a heart attack. Toph should have known that the Fire Lord's son of all people would have daddy issues up the wazoo. "I can't be your father," he said, only choking a little on the last word. "I'll just have to leave you behind too one day. And your friends don't even want me around."

"That's not how it works, I get to choose, not you!"

Evidently Zuko knew enough about children to not argue with that logic, and tried a different tactic. "Don't you want to go back to your friends?"

"No I want to be a hero like you and fight the bad guys, will you teach me?"

"You're going to start crying again if I say no, aren't you."

"That's right!" The Duke must be cute, Toph decided. Cute kids could get away with blackmail like this. She should know.

Since this made it impossible for Zuko to vent his frustrations on the Duke, he started to take them out on the rest of them. "Okay, first of all, how could any of you think it was a good idea to bring a child into a literal war zone? And then separate him from his caretaker?"

"It's not like we had a choice," Sokka was protesting, although in Toph's opinion it wasn't that strong of a defense.

"Yes you did! Most of you are also below the age of conscription, one of you could have stayed behind with him," Zuko pointed out.

"Yeah, you would've liked that wouldn't you," added Katara, spitefully.

"What's that supposed to mean?" Toph could feel the affront through Zuko's posture. "But yes, I would have liked that, because then there'd be one less war orphan in my lap, and what were you planning on doing with him anyway? You're fugitives, you can't drag him along with you."

"We didn't exactly plan on losing!" Aang exclaimed.

"Sounds about right!" Zuko was shouting now, finally living up to his Prince Jerkbender nickname. About time, Toph thought, and settled back to enjoy the show. "You haven't figured out by now that, unlike me, my father and sister have the resources of an entire military-industrial complex behind them!"

"Well you're one to talk!" Katara fired back. "Was your entire plan to chase us down in a war balloon and try to convince us you've had a change of heart? Because nice try but we still don't want you to be Aang's firebending teacher!"

"I never claimed to be good at plans! Unlike you." Even Toph could feel that pointed look at Sokka.

"Yeah, well, what are you going to do now?" Sokka challenged.

"I don't know, but if the Avatar really won't have me as a teacher I'll have to find someone else because the Fire Lord is going to destroy the world if you don't stop him." By the end of his sentence, Zuko wasn't shouting anymore.

"Huh, so you're for real about that?" Sokka sounded surprised, but not in a bad way. "Maybe we should rethink this, you guys."

Toph couldn't stand by anymore. "That's what I've been telling you!" And she did not appreciate the fact that a man had to repeat what she'd already said for it to get heard.

"Hey guys, keep the yelling down, the Duke's asleep," Aang interrupted. Toph could imagine their guilty expressions, clearly they hadn't sensed how the child's breathing and heartbeat had evened out at the start of the shouting match.

"I think the yelling is soothing him," Katara sounded worried about that for multiple reasons. She sighed, clearly tired of dealing with the whole situation. "Just get out of here, Zuko."

"It's a turtleduck on the lap!" Aang cried, in a complete non sequitur, which, Toph had to say, was a terrible way to end a scene.

"You know, the turtleduck on the lap rule!" Aang elaborated. Why was Zuko suddenly so red, Aang knew that the Fire Nation loved red but it couldn't be healthy for them to have the blood rushing to their faces so much like that, it seemed like a lot to sacrifice in the name of fashion. "It's when, well, someone has a turtleduck on their lap! So they can't get up or do chores or go anywhere or do anything until the turtleduck leaves! The turtleduck gets real sad otherwise, you see."

"Are you saying that we have to keep Zuko," Sokka said, overly slowly and clearly, "Because he has a turtleduck-child sleeping on his lap."

"Yes? At least for now? Besides, the Duke said that he gets to choose, so we should respect that even if he did choose Zuko." Air was about freedom, after all, even if that also meant freedom to make bad choices.

Sokka seemed to have quickly co-opted the pinch-the-nose trick of Zuko's into use. "See, that's what I'm worried about. Both because, as you pointed out, it's Zuko, and also because we don't know a whole lot about the Duke besides a few days on a ship and the trip here, and he was always with Pipsqueak before, and I'm beginning to think he's got really bad self-preservation instincts."

"All the more reason he needs someone to take care of him!" Toph contributed. Aang was sure that she was just in this for the laughs, but even though it seemed funny, it wasn't, because the Duke was only separated from his real adopted daddy because they'd all put their lives on the line to give Aang chance to stop the Fire Lord and he'd failed them all in the end.

"If one of you could just take him from me --" the lap in question started, only to be shushed by Sokka's free hand.

"Nope, he's staying right there because this is too entertaining to pass up. So, Aang. Avatar Aang. What do you, and your hundreds of past lives full of wisdom, recommend we do about this situation?"

Aang honestly couldn't speak for his past lives because they so rarely spoke to him, but there was only one right thing to do. "The Duke said he was sad, we have to at least wait until he's not sad anymore! If he changes his mind then, that's up to him, but he's made it pretty clear that he wants Zuko to take care of him."

Zuko was muttering something about how is this my life, while Katara was scrutinizing him like she could deduce his childcare credentials from the tension in his jaw.

"Sokka's going to keep an eye on both of them," she decided, and Aang felt relieved because Katara really did know best about these things, she knew how taking care of people worked and would make sure that no one got hurt.

Sokka, however, was spluttering. "What?! Katara! Why me? Why not -- Haru?"

"Because I don't trust Zuko but I do trust you to hit him as hard as possible with your boomerang if he sets so much as a foot out of line or harms a hair on that child's head."

"I'm not going to hurt anyone," Zuko protested, but Katara had already swept out of the building, which Aang could tell from Sokka's slump said he's your problem now, brother.

Aang had a bad feeling about this. But he had a good feeling about this, too, because the Duke really did need someone to take care of him and a part of Aang did want to give Zuko a chance to be friends. Aang had a good-bad feeling about this, which actually described a lot of things that had happened recently.

"So, here you go, home sweet home, I guess, you know, for now," Sokka was rambling, as Zuko was beginning to learn was his habit, but at least he was doing it quietly enough that the sleeping child parked on Zuko's back wasn't in danger of awakening. "Lunch, soon? Uhhh ... welcome aboard? Yeah."

The room was old but still functional, the mattress free of dust as Zuko laid the Duke down, trying not to disturb him. Should he stay until the child woke up? Probably, Zuko wouldn't think he'd react well to waking up in a strange place if the earlier stabbing attempts were any indication.

"Can I ask you something?" Zuko blurted quickly as the other teen turned to leave. Sokka was visibly reluctant to turn back, but Zuko had to know. "What just happened?"

The Water Tribe warrior flashed his trademark smirk, but there was no real mirth behind it. He was probably just as preoccupied trying to take in this whirlwind turn of events as Zuko was. "You got adopted by a feral child. Congratulations, you're a father now? And because my sister doesn't trust you and apparently hates me as well, I'm the co-parent."

"That's --" Zuko often had trouble finding the right words, but in this situation he actually felt that his vocabulary was too limited to cover what he wanted to express.

"Yeah," Sokka agreed with a sigh, and then plopped down unceremoniously at the foot of the bed. "We should probably figure out how this is going to work."

Zuko tried to hide his trepidation as he glanced at the sleeping child. "How long do you think he's going to sleep?" Sure, he looked harmless now, but he'd demonstrated earlier that he was anything but. Zuko thought he preferred him like this.

"I don't know, I barely know the kid." Sokka was being super helpful. "He was a package deal with big Daddy Pipsqueak but after the invasion the grown-ups surrendered and sent the Duke along with us to get away. I do know that he mostly grew up with a bunch of other kids in the forest. Probably."

That would go a long way towards explaining why the Duke did not appear to be house-trained. Zuko sighed, wondered if he should apologize for his indirect role in the invasion's defeat, and decided against it. He had enough to bear already without assuming responsibility for the actions of his father and sister.

"Look, I just want to stop the Fire Lord and keep everybody alive," Sokka said. "Including this kid, who I am beginning to realize may or may not be completely wild."

Zuko allowed himself a small smile. "That's something we have in common." Suddenly exhausted, he sat down at the head of the bed to wait. The silence that descended felt almost comfortable, and Zuko wondered if he'd somehow, after so many attempts, finally done the right thing.

Until the Water Tribe warrior broke the silence. "Okay, this is really, really weird."