Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

i.

The cherry blossom petals are supposed to be of comfort, as well as the soft robes that the attendants give her and her uncle, but Azula has felt unsettled since she stepped foot off of the raft.

(Off of her ship, she ought to say, which while may have been the rustiest excuse of a ship that her father allowed her to leave with, it had still been hers and she finds it so fitting that Zhao somehow managed to wriggle his way in having the last laugh, assassination attempt aside.

She supposes that it’s somewhat even, though, when she allows herself to think about the night the moon was stained in shades of greys and reds, where he had stared at her outstretched hand with a fear that was quick to settle in resignation as he was dragged beneath murky waters by the ocean spirit—by the Avatar, a brat two years younger than her and with the evasiveness to match but held power far greater than she would imagine through the bleary years of staring down at tattered and worn scrolls.

As though taking her hand was equivalent to placing a plank of wood onto his pyre—as though it gave him the incentive to accept never returning from the depths.)

Azula didn’t let herself think of things that weren’t important, like the irrational spark of anger she felt from the sight of windswept petals or the seemingly ever rooted annoyance she felt from the coaxing from her uncle’s disarming tone—she couldn’t relax her shoulders for a massage as easily as he could, couldn’t stand being touched by a stranger’s hand.

(She managed whenever it came to training, but in her three years at sea, not once would she let her guard down for the crew aboard. Not for the Lieutenant, who often met her with a scrutinizing look, nor the chef, who remembered to keep her noodles separate from the broth and her cherries pitless.

Not for the helmsman, who didn’t hesitate to take her hand when he fell from the ladder in the middle of what she felt like was one of the worst storms in the history of…unforeseen storms, nor the nurse, who would never flinch from unraveling bandages and the sight underneath them.)

It was the anniversary, yes, but that wasn’t important. Not in the way her fuddyduddy uncle seems to think it is; sentimentality aside, she was focused on the fact that she wanted what she lost back. She wanted the Avatar, her honor, her throne. She wanted her father to not think she was worthless.

“I’m sure he doesn’t,” her uncle tries to acquiesce. “Why would he banish you if he didn’t care?”

Azula tries to count to ten; she reaches two and finds the anger burning her throat too fiercely, so she rises to her feet and storms off before she can burn the extra length off of his beard. She bites her tongue, too, when she can hear a distant, “Uh, that came out wrong, didn’t it?”

She unhappily pulls her hat down lower, gaze low on her feet and the trail of petals that she sweeps away with frustrated steps.

Zuko thinks very carefully about what he is expected to say before he steps out of the carriage and speaks to the line of soldiers that bow at him and await his attention upon his ship.

“My sister and uncle have disgraced the Fire Lord,” the prince tells them, “and have brought shame on all of us. You might have mixed feelings about attacking the Royal Family,” he takes in their glances, folds a hand over his chest, “I understand. But I assure you, if you hesitate,” he strikes his hand into his palm, “I will not hesitate to bring you down. Dismissed.”

All according to script.

The soldiers lift from their bows and they don’t hesitate in returning to their expected positions.

Perfect.

The prince seems satisfied, from the way he squeezes his hands together; he’s confident in what he was given. Soon enough, he’ll find his uncle and his sister; then, once he’s gotten them on the ship, the rest is smooth sailing.

The captain takes hurried steps towards him.

“My prince,” he sees something in his expression and averts his gaze, “I’m afraid the tides will not allow us to bring the ship into port by nightfall.”

The prince digs his nails into the side of his clasped fist.

…

The captain looks up and freezes. The prince smiles.

“I’m sorry, captain,” Zuko says slowly, “but I’m a little lost. Could you explain something to me?”

“Of course, your highness.”

The prince stares at him. “Who commands this ship?”

“…I’m afraid I don’t understand.”

“You said the tides would not allow us to bring the ship in.” Zuko blinks at him and waves a hand towards the choppy waters. “Do the tides command this ship?”

“…no, your highness.“

“Ah, I see!” Zuko laughs. Then, he tilts his head. “So if I were to have you thrown over these rails right here, would the tides think twice about smashing you against the rocky shore?”

The captain swallows thickly and tries to keep his voice even; he fails. “No, your highness.”

The prince hums softly and looks over to the waves that lick at the rocks, folding his hands behind his back. There was an odd glint in his eye, when his gaze passed over the captain once more; almost excited at the idea, the image, of pitching a person overboard and into the jagged stone that slept beneath the depths of the ocean. When he speaks again, it’s like taking a bite out of a fruit tart with a rotting tooth; the sweetness is sharp. “Perhaps you should worry less about the tides who have already decided to kill you and more about me, who’s still contemplating it.”

The captain bows his head. “I’ll pull us in.”

Then, he takes his leave. The prince stares at his retreating back, nails digging fiercely into the side of his hand until it burns. His smile steadily dissipates.

The student stands on his ship with his back straight and his palms together. His breaths are measured and his concentration is focused.

His instructors sit quietly on cushions, attentive and expressionless. Their tea sits by their hips, untouched.

The student’s arms shift in fluid arcs until the friction strikes and tears through the air with bright crackling; lightning traces through his fingertips and the bolt is fired into the sky.

“Almost perfect,” Lo notes.

“One hair out of place,” Li agrees.

The student shakily exhales. He stares at the loose strand hanging over his forehead and pushes it away. His fists curl tightly until his palms burn.

“Almost isn’t good enough,” he forces out, repeating the circular motion of his arms until another jagged strike of lightning is fired into the harmless clouds.

His training continues without further comment.

Somewhere, an old man wakes up from the nap he accidentally fell into, after the attentive massaging of his back and arthritic limbs. He sits up slowly, peering into the sky with a contemplative silence before he rises from his seat and sets out to search for his niece. Perhaps a nice walk through the beach would help clear her head.

Azula most certainly wasn’t going to bother with picking up any of the sea shells they come across, as her and her uncle trudge through the sandy shore; she didn’t care for the bag hung over his shoulder, and she didn’t reach to help pick up the ones he liked, but she waits when he slowly bends and does not hiss about what little use it was in collecting them when there was very little that they could carry until the both of them are inside and the shells are tumbling out of the bag onto the table and he’s marveling at the heap.

Uncle Iroh picks a shell from what he’s gathered, holding it up as though it were a little chickadee-finch; as though it were something precious. “Look at these magnificent shells,” he beams, using his other palm to scoop up a conch. “I’ll enjoy these keepsakes for years to come.”

“We don’t need anymore useless things,” Azula griped. “You forget, we have to carry everything ourselves now.”

(She’s too caught up in her exasperation, has grown too complacent to the weeks of solitude with the only person in the world who hasn’t abandoned her, to notice the silent figure sitting in the corner of the room until they have made themselves known with a calm welcome.)

“Hello, sister. Uncle.”

The two of them are immediately on guard. Naturally.

(His hair’s grown longer, she absently notes before her latent anger can sweep her away. At least, long enough to be put into a topknot. Otherwise, he doesn’t look any different.

Not a strand out of place.)

Azula knew there was a reason she hadn't stopped feeling unsettled.

“What are you doing here?” Her words are sharp. Testy. Like she’s been hungry for a fight and a steaming plate had been settled on the table beneath her nose. She pivots on her heel so that she could eye her brother properly, watching him lift a shell he probably picked up from the shore—she watches him peer down at its curved shell with the same blank disinterest he held many summers ago, when the dust hadn’t yet collected over the only portrait their parents sat through without an argument and she was tall enough to step through the waters without their mother fussing about a tide sweeping her away.

(“Aren’t they pretty, Azula?” Mother murmured and they pause their stroll in the sand to watch as she bends low to pick up a milky conch shell.

Azula, too young to properly pull her hair back into a tidy topknot—relying on her mother’s tending fingers to fix it for her—and properly pick who to trust, quietly shared a look with her silent brother before she peered down at the shells with a held breath soon released in a hushed, “Yeah,” before reaching out to the sunset-kissed cowrie that rested inches from her toes. “Lookit this one, mama.”

Zuko, old enough to run away from the nursemaid’s tending hands—relying on his own compulsive, corrective fingers to fiddle and fix every loose, stray strand—and win every race they’ve shared together, beats her to it. The cowrie shell is plucked up and held between his fingers, his neutral expression unchanging as he eyed the shell and pitched it out towards the sea.

“They’re useless, Zuzu,” he said evenly, as though he were one of the tutors patiently explaining the intricacies of war to her. He doesn’t seem deterred by her rapid, swelling tears. “Why bother picking them up? Most of them are broken, anyways.”

Mother’s soft grip on her hand disappears. It curls over Zuko’s wrist. The smile is gone from her face.

Azula is fighting to stay silent as she watches them draw further and further away from the shore, swallowing every shuddery sob and weak whimper that threatened to overtake her breath as she wiped her face and listened to the ocean crash behind her.

Mother returns alone.)

“In my country,” Zuko says scathingly, eyeing them from his seat as he turns the plain scallop over in his grip, “people exchange pleasantries before they ask questions.”

He rises from his chair, gaze flickering back towards the shell as he steps closer, closer, close enough to stiffen her shoulders further than they’ve been and enough to harden their uncle’s gaze.

“So soon to become coarse, don’t you think, Zuzu?”

The dormant anger in her bones seems to reignite (how hot did the flames have to be for grandfather to properly burn before he was nothing but ash and smoke?), Azula’s cheeks growing hot as her hands curled tight at her sides. Her voice is louder than she means for it to be, but she can’t bring herself to care when her focus was placed more on restraining herself from punching a plume of flames towards her brother’s face (how hot did the flames have to be for herself to properly burn before she was nothing but ruined wax?).

“Don’t call me that!”

General Iroh does not shift his weight between his feet, but his hands shift into his sleeves. He does not offer a cup of tea, does not give the courtesy of small talk or the same friendly deep-bellied chortles that Azula’s grown used to hearing—there is no smile on his face as he weighs his nephew’s presence with the same level of uncomfort she’s seen him hold in the sparse moments their rickety ship has waded too close to forbidden waters. “To what do we owe this honor?”

Zuko’s expression smooths over, but when Azula watches his gaze flicker from the cream ridged scallop shell between his fingers, she can note faint traces of irritation.

(Or, maybe, it was his usual despondency. Of the short list of Azula’s biggest difficulties, reading her brother was more or less on top of it.)

“Hmm…must be a family trait, for the both of you to be so quick to the point.” His hand closes over the shell. The scallop shatters beneath his grip, it’s pieces falling and scattering by his boots. Iroh’s face darkens, gaze growing sharper. “I’ve arrived with a message from home. Father’s changed his mind.”

Azula takes in a breath, her heart sharply plummeting to her stomach, maybe to the same floor that’s crumbling beneath her feet. She can’t manage to get her breath to properly leave her lungs, her “What?” lodged and lost in her throat as she stares dumbly at her brother.

Zuko, undeterred, continues. “Family is suddenly very important to him. He’s heard rumors of plans to overthrow him; treacherous plots. Family is the only one you can really trust.” He pauses briefly, gaze hardening as his expression, his voice, slackens—softens. “Father regrets your banishment. He wants you home.”

Silence stretches between them. Azula’s gaze flickers, drifting towards the window.

“Did you hear me?” Her gaze flickers back. “You should be thrilled. Ecstatic. Grateful.” His look is indecipherable. “I just gave you great news.”

Uncle speaks in her stead; rather than terse, he sounds disarming—

(For some reason, she doesn’t feel annoyed by it.)

“I’m sure your sister just needs a moment to-“

For a moment, the calm mask cracks; quick as an arrow, Zuko’s voice is clipped—gaze bordering on furious (or perhaps, wild, she wasn’t sure)—when he sharply interrupts him. “Don’t interrupt, Uncle!”

And then, it is reeled in as his gaze drifts back over to meet her observant one head on. For a moment, he allows the quiet to stretch between them, two mountain dragons boring their gaze into each other with the same intensity that the lava held when it rumbled beneath their talons.

Curious. Feverish. Searching.

(They find each other sharing looks, often.

Eleven and thirteen summers, her left cheek is shoved against the cold tile of the arena floor as her father’s flaming palm presses into the right side of her jaw, fingers curling harshly around the skin of her cheeks—the bridge of her nose—over the edges of her disrespectful mouth; before her vision is clouded by the pain and her screaming drowns out all of her thoughts, she focuses her bleary gaze on the stands ahead of her and watches her uncle turn away from the sight before him as her brother meets her gaze head on with an unreadable expression that soon cracks into an empty smile. She didn’t feel anything about it, then; couldn’t, when all she could focus on was the sound of crackling, the hissing, as her skin does what she hasn’t done in years and cries—she’ll think about it hours later in the hospital wing, when the nurses and doctors have done all they could do and left her behind in a cot with sweat soaked sheets wrinkled to the nines as he stands at her bedside with an unsmiling face and delivers Father’s decree in a hushed rasp; she also knows for certain that she’ll think about it days later, when she’s shivering in a cot on an old warship with bandages wrapped tight around her chin as she watches the wall blend into the ceiling and feels nothing but a burning, paralyzing rage that shakes her to her core when she thinks about the calm, detached grin plastered on her brother’s face. But, maybe if everything hadn’t hurt as badly as they did, she would have been able to turn her head away from the sight as easily as her uncle had been able to. Maybe then, she would have looked up and seen that even then, her father was no longer paying attention to her, his cold gaze boring into the stands with heavy judgment and measured calculation.

Ten and twelve summers, they are staring at each other from across the training grounds, spines straight and eyes hard. They have not shared instructors in many summers, for he is already a few forms ahead of her and on the cusp of mastering the current one he’s been drilled through for the past fortnight, but it does not change their father’s tendency to assess their progress together rather than separately. They are not asked to review their katas, nor are either of them requested to demonstrate the meticulous forms that their instructors have been teaching them respectively. This is the third summer that they have been doing this, so it is routine for their instructors to silently sink to their knees when their father steps into the courtyard and bow their heads in submission as their lord shifts onto the cushion set out for him and surveys the area like it were a stage and he was waiting for the theater troupe to arrive—this is the third summer that they have been doing this, so it is routine for Azula and Zuko to place their hands together, backs bent with perfected ease, and wait for their father to settle in his seat and scrutinize the pair of them before deciding that they could begin with a cold, yet simple, “Begin.” Clockwork, they are lifted from their bow, slowly easing out of their pose with the poise of predators slowly lifting their heads from the water as they assess their other half with weighted judgment. Azula, as always, moves first—her form is textbook and her flames burn blue, but it will never be enough; Zuko, as always, strikes first—his form is fluid and his flames burn bright, but it is almost expected for him to eventually catch her wrist, meet her livid gaze with one of warning, before his grip slackens enough for her to pull away from the flames blooming in his bursting palm and into the sweeping motion his leg makes that breaks her root.

Nine and eleven summers, they are sitting at the dinner table with their bowls in front of them, silently steaming with their utensils unmoving as their father eats. Halfway in, he allows her brother to eat, watching him slowly lift his chopsticks at a careful angle and pick up his pieces of mackerel-salmon with a one-note conversation that has nothing to do with Zuko’s distaste for the fish or the way that it mixes with his noodles because his expression has been schooled into a neutral one since the moment dinner had started. It is only a few quarters into their meal that Father finally lets his conversation trail off into a dismissive order for her to eat, gaze heavy on her as she slowly picked up her chopsticks and looked down at her bowl with a measured breath; for a moment, her eyes flicker up and she meets Zuko’s silent stare—perhaps he knew how close her nose had been to crinkling, because his look shifted from inquisitive to cautionary—only for it to flicker back down to her meal so that she can carefully pinch thick ropes of noodles and keep her face blank as they rise, drip, from lukewarm broth.

Eight and ten summers, she is missing her Mother dreadfully and finds herself leaving her room to visit the pond that they used to sit beside; she finds herself stopping short by the pillars, however, at the sight of Zuko knelt beside the waters with his gaze weighing heavy on every ripple as the turtleducks wearily drew close. Just like their Mother, they offer him no comfort, no love, nothing; just like their Mother, when her brother reaches out to them, they wade away—they know what his hands are capable of. She doesn’t find herself surprised when he proves them right, his fists flaring bright blasts of flames towards the water until even the memory was destroyed—but as his eyes finally flicker over, registering her horrified and tearful look with what almost looked like familiarity, the watery sheen over his gaze diminishes and any trace of emotion left on his face is gone. “They’re useless, Zuzu,” he tells her firmly, as though trying to convince her speechless tears that there was no reason for their existence would make them disappear as easily his expression did, as their Mother had, as their cousin... “Why bother with making attachments? It does nothing but make you weak.” But they continue to fall and he is not Mother, who would hold her arms secure around her and gently redirect every tear with a gentle swipe of her thumb, nor is he Prince Lu Ten, who would never pry unless she spoke first and allowed her to ruin his shoulder as he rubbed soothing circles at her quivering back; Zuko’s gaze borders on something wild—or something monstrous, she could never be too sure—before it is firmly stamped out and smothered with the same blank dismission that passes over her father’s face when she dares open her mouth around him; like a turtlecrab, Zuko stalks out of the yard in silent irritation, and like a turtleduck, Azula silently cries until she’s simmering as she sits by the pond.)

Zuko takes a step closer. Then, another. He doesn’t stop until he’s by her side.

He doesn’t gawk at her scars. He isn’t smiling, either.

“I didn’t have to come all this way, you know,” he tells her quietly. “I am not a messenger. If you insist on avoiding pleasantries, could I at least hear a thank you?”

Azula’s fingers buzzed. Her face was buzzing, too.

“Father regrets.” Her voice sounds like a question, but it also sounds far away, so she doesn’t know what to think. She doesn’t know what, or how, to feel. “He…wants me back?”

She isn’t sure if the knot in her throat is holding back her laughter or her nausea.

Zuko is silent, allowing her to ruminate a little further on the matter and him to take in the full extent of her shock.

When he speaks again, it is distant, but it is respectful. “I can see you need some time to take this in.” Then, the distance lessens; his expression shifts, gaze patient instead of searching. The stiffness is gone from his frown and the flat note in his voice is removed, stricken, replaced with a tone that sounded odd, coming out of his mouth—he sounded considerate. “I’ll come to call on you tomorrow.”

His gaze briefly slides towards Uncle, then back to her; as if he were a mere afterthought.

“Good evening.”

And just as suddenly as he had appeared, Zuko was gone.

Azula doesn’t know when she begins; but at some point, when the shadows of the room have slightly shifted and the flickering of her heart has moved from her throat back into her chest, she draws her expression together and distracts her fluttering fingers by allowing her legs to take her where they saw fit—in front of the meager bag she had packed, a fortnight ago, ropes and strips of dried meat that certainly wouldn’t have lasted through a snowstorm, but she would have thought of something or figured it out; just like she’s thinking of shoving every belonging she has into this bag and leaving-

“Princess Azula.”

She starts, gaze flickering from the bag and towards her uncle.

“We’re going home,” she blurts out. She finishes stuffing a shirt into her bag. “After three long years, it’s unbelievable.”

His expression was strange, brows furrowed like he had a Pai Sho board in front of him and was taxed with a particularly difficult pattern that always perplexed Azula but, occasionally, would leave her uncle scratching his chin or exhaling deeply through his nose or letting out a nervous laugh and an offering of tea so that he could properly eye the board until his tiles spoke to him.

Only he wasn’t laughing, or offering tea. He was moving his gaze away, looking through the window thoughtfully.

(Looking away, ultimately.)

“It is unbelievable,” Iroh murmured. “I have never known my brother to regret anything.”

“Did you listen to Zuko? Father’s realized,” she crookedly folded a pair of pants and shoved it into her bag, irritation creeping into her tone, “how important family is to him. He cares about me.”

His gaze flickers back to her, expression flashing into something indecipherable as he holds out his arms in what she could only imagine was placation. “I care about you! And if Ozai wants you back, well, I think it may not be for the reasons you imagine.”

Azula turns away from him, closing the sack and holding it with a vice grip. “You don’t know how my father feels about me. You don’t know anything!”

“Azula,” her uncle takes a breath and a careful step forward, offering his palms, “I only meant that in our family, things are not always what they seem.”

She drags her bitter glare up, backing away from his sympathetic gesture with reproach and a sneer. “I think you are exactly what you seem! A lazy, mistrustful, shallow old man who’s always been jealous of his brother!”

She shoulders the strap of her bag and storms off, ignoring the saddened expression that had steadily unfolded in her uncle’s face.

Somewhere in the Earth Kingdom, a young boy has a dream that makes him toss and turn. He dreams of cold waters and icebergs that towered over a ship. He dreams of a scarred girl who stares at him as he watches himself glow and rise from the Southern seas in an ascending vortex that wraps around his waist. Only, the person on deck drags water along his heels and sweeps him onto the metal deck with an odd flow to their wrists. The scarred girl makes a striking motion with her fist, the same way she’s done in his dreams for the past couple of weeks, that tells the young boy it’s a dream right away but has him startling out of his sleep with a sudden inhale and a kangaroo-rabbit heart that tells him to warn his friend, “Sokka! Sokka, wake up.”

“Huh?”

“I don’t think we should be trying to bring on the Avatar State.”

Sokka rubs at an eye before he lifts his head further from his blankets. “You sure?”

Aang takes a breath before he nods. “Yes.”

Sokka looks at him carefully before he nonchalantly yawns and begins to turn over. “Okay.”

“…do you think the general will be mad?”

…

Sokka turns his gaze back over his shoulder and keeps his tone light. “What can he say? You’re the Avatar. Who knows better than you?”

He doesn’t go back to sleep until the twelve year old nods slightly and shuffles back over to his bed.

The boy with the arrow tattoos doesn’t go back to sleep, however. He lies back with his arms pillowing his head and doesn’t sit back up until the sun rises and the buzzing of his thoughts are sorted to a stop.

The sun rises and Azula can’t get her thoughts to stop their incessant buzzing, so she doesn’t waste time in gathering her things and beginning the trek down the stone staircase. There were many steps, after all, and the earlier she went, the better.

“Wait! Don’t leave without me!”

She stops, looking back up towards the flight she’s descended to find her uncle with his hand outstretched and his steps quick so that he can catch up.

“Uncle!” Unbidden, her lips curl into a smile, the strap of her bag sagging down her arm as she lowers it. “You’ve changed your mind.”

Her uncle smiles back.

“Family,” Iroh says, laying a hand on her shoulder, “sticks together, right?”

(Years ago, when everything was still intact and her father was a happier man, they sat in the grassy plains close by to the beach and watched the sun slowly set as he rested a hand on her shoulder. He was never one to fill silences like her mother, but he didn’t usually say things like “I’m proud of you” or “I love you” when a look or a gesture was enough to get a point across.

But Azula liked to think that those moments before meant just that; that he cared for her, too, and that she was worthy, that she was good enough.)

Azula nods firmly, adjusting her hold on her bag. “We’re finally going home.”

She continues down the steps. Further down the way, a ship stayed docked in the harbor.

The general’s smile slowly falls from his face as he stares at the ship with wariness.

Her brother is waiting for them when they make it to the ship. He is silent as he watches them draw close, expression blank as they walk along the wooden docks. Beside them, Royal Procession guards walk with measured steps and stiff expressions.

Her uncle quietly shifts his gaze, uneasily looking at the guards and not offering much of a greeting as they approach the ship.

He bows with her, though. He listens to the guards shuffle behind them, too.

“Sister!” Zuko greets. “Uncle! Welcome! I’m so delighted you decided to come.”

The general silently glances over at the guards.

The captain bows to the prince. “Are we ready to depart, Your Highness?”

“Set our course for home, captain,” Zuko says with a smile.

“Home,” Azula murmurs wistfully, lifting from her bow.

The captain begins to walk up the ramp, the banished princess and the traitor general following close behind. “You heard the prince! Raise the anchors! We’re taking the prisoners home!”

…

The captain takes in a breath and realizes his mistake far too late, looking towards the prince in shock; Azula and Iroh have stopped, their expression unfolding in surprise. Even Zuko is caught off guard, his smile absent.

Then, unbidden, something furious passes through his gaze. Or something wild.

The captain pales, staring back with wide eyes. “Your Highness, I…”

The buzzing stops. Azula takes in a shuddery breath. Iroh narrows his eyes when he hears a step out of place and suddenly begins attacking the guards closest to them, striking them with harsh shoves off of the ramp and blasts of fire towards the firmly rooted as Azula snarls and fiercely stomps up the ramp. She throws the captain off and shouts at her brother’s face. “You lied to me!”

Zuko blinks at her. Then, he smiles; it doesn’t reach his eyes.

“Don’t act so surprised,” he tells her. “It’s not like it’s the first time I’ve done it.”

He turns his back on her, walking away as though that was that, and Azula can only see red.

Two guards shoot fire at her.

She crosses her arms and shoves them outward, dragging the flames away with a growl as she fights her way onto the ship.

Somewhere else in the Earth Kingdom, a young girl listens to the sound of stones crashing and colliding into each other as she lies in bed.

“I wonder what crazy thing they’re trying to do now,” she murmurs, moving her gaze towards the flying lemur curled on the pillow across the room. He lifts his head at the sound of her voice but falls back into the doze he slipped into. Distantly, stone cracks and rumbles. “Maybe we should just make sure Aang’s okay.”

She pushes herself up from her bed, waiting until tiny paws settle comfortably upon her shoulder, and finds herself nearly taking two steps at time when making her way down the stairs, listening to the training with a growing alarm that makes her heart race.

She meets her brother at the bottom floor, his steps as harried as hers as he descended from the opposite staircase. It only makes her feel more alarmed.

“What’s going on?” She asks frantically.

“The general’s gone crazy!” Her brother says firmly, hand itching at his side and gaze flickering past her shoulder. “He’s trying to force Aang into the Avatar State!”

His hand suddenly reaches over his shoulder and his boomerang is thrown over her head. She takes that as her cue to run, her hand shooting to her hip to yank the cap out of the pouch that she kept close. The water is drawn out with a fluid sweep of her wrist and the head of a soldier’s spear is sliced off as the ostrich horse he’s mounted on slows to an anxious stop.

Azula shoots fistfuls of fire at the guards until they’re toppling overboard, leaping onto the deck of the ship and landing with a simmering glower.

Zuko doesn’t turn to face her. His hands remain folded behind his back, patient and unbothered, but there is an odd glint in his eye as the guards in the water try to shed their heaviest armor pieces and help the ones who don’t know how to swim.

There was shouting, coughing from those who swallowed too much water, and the crackling of flames.

The smile wasn’t empty.

Azula dug her nails into her palms and thin blades of blue flames unfurl from her closed fists, mimicking daggers. The brightness of her flames catch his eye, finally flickering over to reach her intense gaze.

…

The smile grows bigger.

General Iroh shoves a few more guards off of the walkway, attempting to catch his breath in between wrestling one years his junior so that he can shout at his niece.

(He only ever shouts because he cares, or is disappointed, or scared. She knows it’s the first and the last tone.)

“Azula! Let’s go!”

He hurls the guard over the edge and evades another strike by stepping aside and pushing him.

Azula can’t think past the anger choking her. She charges at her brother with quick swipes, each strike of her arm averted with smooth, efficient dodging. The longer it goes, the further his grin unfurls; the more he avoids, the more she grows infuriated.

She moves to strike with her right but Zuko is unphased as he dipped his shoulder with the arch of her flames before he suddenly shoves her away.

“You know,” he blurts out, gaze fervid, “Father blames Uncle for the loss of the North Pole, but he considers you a miserable failure for not finding the Avatar!”

Azula tries to catch her breath, glaring at her brother because he had no idea what he was talking about, but she can’t find the words to say anything back.

“Why would he want you back home,” he laughs, tilting his head, “except to lock you up, where you can no longer embarrass him?”

She grips her fists at her sides until blue flames unfurl into precise daggers once more. Only, she runs and tries to kick burning blasts that he narrowly missed by jumping out of the way, rising to his feet to sidestep her frenzied charging. He seems to humor her for a moment before he finally unfolds a hand from his back to strike her across the face. There are scratches along her temple.

Azula jolts away from the hit and howls in rage, charging forward once more. They go back to fighting with ease, falling into step like they were training together, or worse, like it was one of their childish wrestling matches (a performance, like it was all some game to him). They take their sparring up the stairway until he manages to grab hold of her wrist.

…

They stare at each other silently, her anger replaced with alarm as bright white flames bloom and burst from his palm, his leg sweeping to break her root.

Azula lands harshly at the bottom of the stairwell. Her vision swims and she’s blinking in an attempt to clear it as her brother makes slow, measured breaths and sharply draws his fingers through the air in a circular motion until lightning begins to crackle.

The bolt is aimed for her, but a hand curls over Zuko’s right wrist and it’s redirected far off to strike an adjacent cliff.

The general twists his grip and kicks at an ankle, shoving the prince over the railing and watching him fall off of the ship.

Her uncle helps her to her feet.

The splashing grows more faint, the further they run away.

Somewhere else in the Earth Kingdom, an adult pushes a young boy to the absolute limit, his first friend in a hundred years being buried beneath the earth and her brother left screaming in terror.

Aang’s arrows burn a bright white and his gaze is intense as he strikes mindlessly at the general before he sees himself floating in a vortex of the earth. He doesn’t register glee or remedy, too lost in the overwhelming feeling of despair and power rushing through his limbs to focus on manic shouting and the sight of the earth opening up to spit his friend back out, or on the dust storm and damage he’s left behind on the base.

His spirit leaves his body. He blinks and finds himself on Roku’s dragon, fingers gently curling at his scales. Fang rumbles beneath his touch.

“It’s time you learned,” Roku tells him quietly as they pass through the clouds and ride by the mountains.

Fire Nation soldiers stalk through the village until there was enough fear to stoke the curiosity of the people who lived there.

The prince stands on one of the balconies. Two Royal Procession guards flank each side, hovering almost in protection.

He holds up a wanted poster of his sister and his uncle.

“Anyone who harbors these traitors will face the wrath of the Fire Lord!” the prince says firmly, face blank as he rests a hand on the railing. A pair of villagers twitch and try not to cower; they fail. His fingers curl until the wood breaks beneath his grip. “There will be no place left to hide!”

They don’t stop running until they reach a river far away from the village. They stop and fall to their knees, trying to catch their breath.

“I think we’re safe here,” her uncle says after a while.

Azula stares down at her hands. Her thoughts buzz and her wrist stings until she focuses on the weight in her pocket.

She pulls out a small dagger. She doesn’t say a word. Just leaves it in her lap.

She pulls her hair back, ties it with a ribbon. Her uncle doesn’t speak up, just watches in sobering silence before he closes his eyes. He folds his hands and adjusts his weight on his knees until he looks over to find her cutting her hair. She pauses for a moment, staring down at what she’s sliced off until she eventually passes the dagger over.

He follows suit. They watch their topknots float down the river.

They push themselves up to their feet, give themselves another moment by the riverbank to gather their thoughts, before they leave it all behind.

Chapter Text

ii.

Somewhere in the Earth Kingdom, a group of kids take respite beside a cliff. When they rose that morning, they went down to the lake that sat within the pit the cliff oversaw. A young boy weaves water between his palms and his friend’s flowing wrists, the eldest floating languidly through the water with a flying lemur sleeping soundly on his stomach.

They stop when they hear music, breaths held as a group of nomads in colorful clothes pass through the branches and stop their playing to grin and greet them with a friendly, “Hey, river people!”

They manage to find clothes that are…more suited for their surroundings.

This isn’t a bad thing, her uncle had explained. Just different.

And cemented.

Azula crinkles her nose at the shade of green plastered on her shirt when she unintentionally goes to sleep in front of the campfire whilst taking watch for their first night in the forest, and she can’t help but make the same expression when she rises with the sun that morning with her nose in the dirt and her face smearing along her sleeves.

Azula spends most of the morning looking for food, grumbling under her breath and running a frustrated hand through the short fuzz of hair that was beginning to sprout from her scalp.

“I didn’t find anything to eat,” she grouses when she returns empty handed and tries not to let the situation get the best of her. She fails. She begins to pace and shout at their surroundings, watching the birds flutter away from the branches as she trods angrily through the dirt and shakes her fluttering fists at the intolerable sky. She didn’t think she could hate the sun as much as she does now. “I can’t live like this, uncle. We weren’t meant to be fugitives! This is impossible!”

…

“Uncle,” her fists lower and she frowns at the sight of his curved back. Honestly. “What are you doing?”

Her uncle isn’t bothered by their new clothes. Or their new status. In fact, he knelt beside a flower. Azula stormed over to where he hunched over and watched as he mused aloud, “We’re looking at the rare white dragon bush. It’s leaves make a tea that is so delicious, it’s heartbreaking.”

…

“That, or it’s the white jade, which is poisonous-“

“We need food,” Azula says flatly. “Not tea. I’m going hunting. Go look for nuts or something else that won’t guarantee killing you.”

“Hmm…” His uncle rubs his chin and she finds that as her means to walk away before she gets too cross with him. “Delectable tea?”

And yet, she hears his contemplation when she kicks her way through the thicket of thorns in the bushes, setting her jaw and focusing intensely on the effort it would take for her to track a squirrelbat, or a flying boar if she was lucky enough—measuring it against the time it could possibly take for her uncle to brew the questionable plant and quickening her steps.

“…or deadly poison?”

Azula always told him that too much tea would kill him, when she was still on her ship; he didn’t seem to believe her, always took her shouting with a grain of rice, and she fiercely believed in it now as she did then.

Somewhere else in the Earth Kingdom, a group of singing nomads make a wreath for the young boy.

Right now, Lily admires the pattern of braiding in the young girl’s hair before she begins to gently frame her bundle of flowers into a caring path. Chong, after weaving flowers into the flying companion’s fur, smiles at his wife before he settles his lute in his arms to strum a tune that crept into his thoughts that morning when he woke up. Moku, in the midst of making a necklace of flowers for the eldest boy, catches sight of gray clouds and lies back on the ground to stare at the sky.

The eldest boy wanders in with a shoulderful of lemur, hair and fur respectively dried.

The younger boy greets his friend, beaming underneath the peonies settled upon his crown; “Hey, Sokka, you should hear some of these stories! These guys have been everywhere!”

Chong’s fingers trail to a stop. “Well not everywhere, Little Arrowhead. But where we haven’t been, we’ve heard about through stories and songs.”

The eldest tried not to groan, especially at the sight of the youngest excited at the prospect of seeing a giant nightcrawler or of his sister sitting comfortably beneath someone tending to her hair. He hasn’t seen someone do that since Mom; Gran-Gran used to, before her hands began to ache.

“On the way,” Moku adds dreamily, “there’s a waterfall that creates a never-ending rainbow!”

…

“I hate to be the wet blanket, here,” Sokka begins, raising his brows, “but since Katara is busy, I guess it’s up to me.”

His little sister scowls at him as Lily adjusts her braid.

“We need to get to Omashu. No sidetracks,” he crosses his arms, “no worms, and definitely no rainbows.”

Azula hisses as her pant leg tears through the bush, leaning low to lift the cloth that caught against a stubborn branch. She yanks it through and decides to worry about patching it up after she’s cleaned up their lunch.

Two, tiny mouseshrews hang from her hip; the effort it took to catch them shows on the scrapes of her chin. She rubs it and immediately regrets it, grimacing as she walks back into the clearing where they decided to set up camp at.

Her uncle looks like he hasn’t moved an inch, hunched over the dirt. “Azula,” he asks slowly, “remember that plant I thought might be tea?”

Azula stops her pacing, her hand lowering from her chin. “You didn’t…”

Her uncle takes a deep breath. Or he tries to, at least. It sounds labored and rattled.

“I did…” There are red patches across his swollen face and hands, when he turns around; she takes a sharp breath and tries not to shout, taking a step back. Instead, the panic is telling her pounding heart to steady her fear and frustration into something productive—at least something to fix this. “…and it wasn’t.”

Yet, even in his state, her uncle shows no fear; he sits back onto the dirt and says, “When the rash spreads to my throat, I will stop breathing.” He must have seen the look on her face, though, because he soon brightens, “But look what I found.” He holds out his arm, showing her a branch, “These are bacui berries, known to cure the poison of the white jade.”

…

“That, or maka’ole berries that cause blindness-“

Azula rips the branch from his grip. She hurls it into the bushes.

She takes a deep breath and tries to speak evenly; like her flames, her voice bursts out of her throat, “We can’t take any more chances with these plants! We need to get you some help.”

“But where are we going to go?” She closes her eyes and feels her racing heart plummet to her stomach as she listens to him scratch. “We’re enemies of the Earth Kingdom and fugitives from the Fire Nation.”

Azula’s hands curl tightly at her sides, slowly opening her eyes and lifting her bitter gaze from the dirt. She stares at the rash spread over her uncle’s leg and pushes her own urge to scratch the phantom itching that’s appeared on her neck as she watches him dig his nails at a particularly itchy patch.

“If the Earth Kingdom discovers us,” she muses, crossing her arms in thought, “they’ll have us killed.”

“But if the Fire Nation discovers us,” he helpfully reminds her, pushing himself up to his feet, “we’ll be turned over to Zuko.”

…

They look over at each other. They seem to reach the same conclusion.

She nods and falls into step. “Earth Kingdom it is.”

Somewhere else in the Earth Kingdom, a group of singing nomads guide a group of adolescents towards a cave of two huggers.

Lovers. Whatever.

Sokka wipes away sweat from his temple. He knows it’s from the lengthy trek to the tunnels the nomads had talked and sung about on their way through the ruinous temples, but he can’t help but think of the bursts of fire being shot at them when they had initially tried flying—they had dealt with the Fire Nation before, and he was certain that they would have been fine, but he was used to the universe telling him to settle for an air bison being afraid in a cramped hole underground over being cooked to death, or worse, taken away into confinement.

He glances at his sister, then to the youngest group member.

He shakes his head. At least they haven’t caught wind of their usual walking worries, like Azula, or worse, the Admiral. Captain. Lieutenant?

Still. Even so. “How far are we from the tunnel?”

“Actually,” the singer starts, his steps continuing languidly up the path as his fingers idly strum, “it’s not just one tunnel.

“The lovers,” he continues, steps drifting as he tries to remember the rest of the song for the seventh time that day, “didn’t want anyone to find out about their love…”

He stops momentarily, smiling at the thought- the image.

“So, they built a whole labyrinth!”

Sokka’s steps stagger to a halt, expression slackening in shock. “Labyrinth?”

“Oh,” Chong said casually, looking over his shoulder to his wife, “I’m sure we’ll figure it out.”

Lily helpfully chimes in; “All you need to do is trust in love.”

Oh, well, if it was that easy. Sokka takes a breath and begins to walk once more.

“…according to the curse.”

Sokka stops. The group continues to walk, as though the words weren’t said. When it was clear that it wasn’t really registering for them, he can’t help from repeating her—because as pragmatic and…suspicious he could be, he knows he’s not overreacting at the prospect of being cursed when they’re traveling with one of the most spiritually important people in this world.

(He thinks of a barren forest, and the spirit who guarded it. He thinks of their pain, palpable in their palms when they carried him and the villagers away, and of the soft velvet of their fur in the spirit world, when they bumped their snout against his thigh and sadly cooed stories of bamboo shoots that stretched to the clouds, of the plumes of fire that swallowed their breath with a swiftness that made it wonder if humans hated it that much.

He thinks of the way his fingers had carefully shifted and brushed against where he thought it’s forehead was, of the snowflakes stained with soot, and of the emptiness burned into his home; he thinks of stories of his mother by the fire, of her sendoff into the water, of the ceremony held in her name, of the sorrow that swept through his family—his—and tells them that he understands, but he promises—swears—there’s no hatred for the creature. Not from him. Not from his sister. Not from a hopeful kid who loved the world too much to ever want to hurt it on purpose.

The spirit lets them go, but not because of his words. And not because of his bladder, either.

Instead, as the world’s last chance quietly offers his tiny palm and uncurls it to show an acorn, Hei Bai stares at the tiny pit of hope left at its feet and feels its anger slowly ebb away into a silent understanding. It lets them go.)

Spirits, they could work with.

“…Curse?”

They would need a lot more than acorns to dig them out of a cave in—knock on wood.

Sokka would knock his head against the tree for good measure, but he wasn’t superstitious. And the others continued ahead. So, like most wise men, ignored in the face of imminent danger, he keeps his grumbling to himself and falls into step.

They eventually find the cave, and Chong remembers how the rest of the song goes.

…

If Aang thinks they can make it on love—because Katara always believes that it’ll be cemented out of hope—then all Sokka can do is make sure they don’t get crushed by a rock, or worse, caught by the Fire Nation.

They get caved in anyway.

Sokka does what he knows best; he starts to make a map.

Somewhere along the edges of the western Earth Kingdom, in a village that holds a small hospital that allowed walk-in visits, Azula contemplated making a map. This isn’t the first time she’s held the urge and it won’t be the last.

(This isn’t the first time she’s been in a small hospital.)

Instead, she remains silent on the bench behind the girl who tended to her uncle’s rashes. All it took was one look for the doctor to murmur at the girl and in the smooth motion of one hand kindly coaxing them over to a vacant cot with a wave, the other steadily holding onto a jar that she retrieves from a shelf and a cloth that she dampens. When she is certain no one is looking, Azula quietly clasps the mouseshrews from her hip and throws them out of the window with burning cheeks.

The girl gives her a small smile as she wrings the cloth in her hands; Azula dips her chin and doesn’t lift her gaze up from the floors.

“You two must not be from around here,” the girl begins, turning towards the sound of Iroh’s scratching hands to flick them away from his irritated rash. “We know better than to touch the white jade,” her head lifts, and Azula knows the girl is giving her uncle a look—whether with exasperation or inquisition, Azula could never gleam anything from amusement other than a vein of cruelty or suspicion—because she follows with a distantly pleasant but mindful, “much less make into a tea and drink it.”

Iroh can only offer a sheepish, “Whoops!”

“So, where are you traveling from?”

Azula anxiously shifts and rises from her seat, pushing away the fluttering of her hands as she curls them at her sides and watches the girl dip her uncle’s swollen hand into the damp washcloth. “Yes,” she says, without thinking, “we’re travelers.”

The girl glances over to her. She offers another small smile. Azula doesn’t know how to read it. “Do you have names?”

“Names?” Azula frowned, crossing her arms. “Of course we have names.”

She chews on her tongue as she watches the girl’s gaze shift between her wrist and towards the sound of her uncle’s scratching. She takes the time it takes for the girl to swat at her uncle’s hand to come up with names.

“I’m, uh…Lien and this is my Uncle, uh…Jian.”

Her uncle gives her a look over the girl’s shoulder. Azula would shrug haplessly, if the girl wasn’t giving her that kind smile again, but he was already barreling forward with the tone of voice he usually puts when he’s teasing. “Yes, my niece was named after her mother, so we just call her-“

“Nicknames are for children,” Azula cuts in irritably, before he can get any funny ideas. He grins at her, and when the girl turns to look, Azula abandons the pantomimed motion of choking her uncle’s rashy neck by shoving her hands behind her back.

“Jian and Lien, huh. My name is Song. You two look like you could use a good meal.” Her hand absently lifts up to swat at stubborn knuckles when they reach to scratch. “Why don’t you stay for dinner?”

Azula looks away. She watches the doctor drift from her patient in the other room, crossing back with a roll of bandages. The patient hisses, even with the salve cushioning contact. “Sorry, but we need to be moving on.”

“…That’s too bad.” Song picks up the jar, taking the time to twist the lid back on until hearing a soft click. She glances up, her smile unwavering in its open naivety (kindness, a tiny voice Azula thought she had long squashed supplied; or innocence, even the tiniest remnants of herself could never be sure). “My mom always makes too much roast duck.”

Over Song’s shoulder, Azula meets her uncle’s excited gaze.

“Where do you live exactly?”

Somewhere deep within the dark tunnels carved by forbidden lovers past, a group of travelers reach another dead end. The makeshift leader, a teenaged skeptic, stares down at his map. He tilts it one way, then the other, then back aways, before he brings the map closer to peer.

“Sokka,” his sister says, helpfully, “this is the tenth dead end you’ve led us to.”

“This doesn’t make sense,” he muttered. “We already came through this way.”

“We don’t need a map,” the lutenist tells them. Sokka ignores him, stalking past him in thought. “We just need love. The little guy knows it.”

The little guy in question rubs the back of his bald head.

“Yeah,” he says, “but I wouldn’t mind a map also.”

“There’s something strange here.” Like moths in the night, they linger to the light as Sokka frowns down at his map. “There’s only one explanation.”

To the sight of faint irises and the encroaching darkness, Sokka looks up from parchment.

“The tunnels are changing.”

They all startle to a distant rumble, surprise sweeping them off of their feet as the tunnels begin to tremble.

Azula keeps her hands from trembling by curling them close and together in her lap, pushing away the wave of hunger that’s gripped her stomach since the failed siege.

Thick plumes of smoke rise from the platter of roast duck that Song’s mother sets down, golden and tender when she takes a seat and slices with patient guidance. Azula wonders if the smooth motion blends and becomes easier with every scapeled wound, then briefly thinks of a girl tossing knives in the air and catching them without fear–even with every sharp nicked graze and grab.

“My daughter tells me you’re refugees,” Chu Hua murmurs and shares a meaningful look with Song. “We were once refugees ourselves.”

“When I was a little girl,” Song begins softly, “the Fire Nation raided our farming village. All the men were taken away.” She folds her hands over each other and tucks them beneath the table. “That was the last time I saw my father.”

Azula carefully unlatches her fingers from each other, taking hold of her chopsticks. “I haven’t seen my father in many years.”

“Oh,” Song mumbled, her note of woe (or pity, the tiny voice hisses before Azula could stop it) was enough to lift Azula’s gaze from her untouched bowl, “is he fighting in the war?”

Azula tries not to grimace, but she can’t keep herself from hesitating. She listens to her uncle’s hollow slurping and stares into Song’s sympathetic gaze until she loses her appetite.

“Yeah,” she muttered, moving her gaze back down to her plate of roast duck before she set her chopsticks back down.

As laid back as he had been before, Chong couldn’t find the same silver lining with the walls of the cave closing in on them.

“The tunnels,” he crooned hysterically, “they’re a-changing. It must be the curse! I knew we shouldn’t have come down here!”

Sokka chewed on his cheek. “Right,” he hummed dryly, “if only we listened to you-“

His sister raises her hand; he quiets immediately.

“Everyone be quiet,” she says. “Listen.”

Momo picks anxiously at his shoulder, and when a low snarl creeps in from the dark, he flees. Sokka raises his torch towards the sound.

…

Batting wildly, a wolfbat gives a shrill shriek. Naturally, everyone scrambles.

“It’s a giant flying thing with teeth!” Chong cried.

“No!” Moku scuttled away from the wolfbat as she landed. “It’s a wolfbat!”

The wolfbat flapped her wings and lifted herself from the ground, crying when Sokka waves the torch in her direction. The movement is swift enough to startle her away, but it is also enough for loose sparks to bounce and land on Appa’s fur.

Appa bellows in pain as he backs away from the light, nervously trodding through what little room there was. The cave trembles and the ceiling collapses where Sokka and the nomads once stood, the youngest’s quick burst of bent air in their direction being the only veil of protection for their pittering hearts.

When the dust has settled and they’ve gathered their bearings, Sokka’s heart sinks at the sight. He feels sick as he listens to muffled voices through the gaps of dirt and stone, despair setting in as he scrambles to dig. He wasn’t dying with a tapeworm in his ears.

“Yeah, it’s no use,” Chong drawled. “We’re separated. But at least you have us!”

Riding the tidal wave of hopelessness, Sokka gives a horrified cry for whichever spirit peering into the joke that was his life. The answer they give him is a pile of debris, crumbling over his head.

Half-full of roast duck and memories, Azula quietly sits on Song’s front porch.

She listens to the cicada crickets croon as the door behind her softly slides open and clicks shut. She doesn’t move her gaze from the stables, even as Song quietly lowers herself to sit beside her.

“Can I join you?” Azula doesn’t answer, assuming her lack of protest would have been enough; instead, she blinks at her until she continues. “I know what you’ve been through. We’ve all been through it.”

Azula doesn’t have to ask what she means; she watches her gaze drift along the burnt edges of her mouth.

“The Fire Nation has hurt you,” Song quietly murmured, lifting her hand to graze, and knowing she doesn’t know half of it, Azula can only loosely clasp at her wrist to stop her.

She pushes her hand away.

“…it’s okay.” Song shifts in her seat. Azula mutely watches her gaze shift between compassion and an old pain as she slowly rolls up the hem of her pant leg and speaks in a voice so small that Azula can’t take it as anything other than sorrowful. “They’ve hurt me, too.”

Red ribbons around melded flesh, like hands that couldn’t let go; Azula can only gape at her in a quiet shock that gives way to guilt as they see each other and reach an understanding.

Somewhere inside a cursed cave, a horrible tapeworm danced in Sokka’s ears.

The acoustics made it worse.

“Oh, don’t let the cave-in get you down!” Sokka twitched as the strumming of the lute grew closer, aggravation crawling up his neck as he watched the grown man sway past him to his own beat. He still wasn’t sure how to feel about being chaperoned by musical folk when his father was fighting the reality of war somewhere, but any wondering over where he could be is immediately trampled by Chong’s warbling. “Don’t let the falling rocks turn your smile into a frown!”

Sokka glowers at his back. Moku nudges him when he passes, patting his drum, and he gives him a quiet smile.

“When the tunnels are darkest,” Chong trilled, turning on his heel to beam at him, “that’s when you need a clown- hey!”

Sokka grimaces, watching fingers deftly pluck with the light they had left on their candle.

“Don’t let the cave-in get you down, Sokka!”

Sokka scowls at him and pushes down the urge to ask for a different song.

Somewhere else inside a cursed cave, a pair of sort-of teenagers wandered through dimly lit pathways.

“Aang,” Katara said optimistically, “look!”

A door! “We found the exit!” Aang runs up to it.

It doesn’t give. Even when Katara grows closer to the stone door and tries to help. It isn’t until they hear Appa’s low chuffing and digging that they glance at each other with matching expressions of mute alarm. They clamor out of the way in time for Appa to push at the stone door until it loosened and fell to its side. It isn’t until they step inside through dusty certainty, his hands dutifully plucking at any crumbled pebble he could find wedged in fur, that he registers the dismay in Katara’s gaze.

“…This isn’t the exit.”

Aang walks over until he is beside her. They watch the torch light swim over the walls. “No. It’s a tomb.”

Appa quietly grunts behind them.

“It must be the two lovers,” Aang murmurs, his gaze far away into their flame, “from the legend; that’s who’s buried here.”

“These pictures,” Katara tells him, drawing his gaze back towards the wall as she gently lifts the torch to unearth the panels beneath the shadows, “tell their story.”

(The prince stares blankly at the entrance of a caved-in cave, his palm holding a brightly burst flame. When a soldier relays their report as to why they thought it would be a good idea for them to decide their fate, the prince slowly moves his gaze over, watching the commander fumble over reasons regarding tactile diversions of catapults and cautionary tales.

“You believe the direct connection to the spirit world and master of all four elements is subject to perish because of,” the prince stops. He considers the song again. “…a mountain and a monument for vengeful martyrs?”

The soldiers glance at each other uneasily. They say nothing. The moon ominously hangs over their heads.

The prince smiles benignly. It doesn’t seem to comfort them, with the shadows of his face and the nothing in his eyes. He turns back towards the cave.

“Love kills them in the end,” he says. “What a beautiful story.”)

Momo roosts atop of Sokka’s head, peering down at hastily squiggled ink as his human glares at the sheet of paper. He sighs under his breath and lowers the map.

“Oh, great!” Moku drawled at a pile of rubble despairingly. “Your plans have led us to another dead end!”

“At least I’m thinking of ideas and trying to get us out of here, Moku,” Sokka snapped.

“Whoa, whoa,” Chong said, raising his hands, “wait a minute. We’re thinking of ideas? Because I’ve had an idea for, like, an hour now.”

Sokka would rather wrestle a rabid polar bear dog than spend another minute in this cave.

“Yes!” he cried angrily, throwing his arms out with feeling. “We’re all thinking of ideas!”

“Well,” Chong said, “then, listen to this: If love is the key out of here, then all we need to do is play a love song!”

He begins to play with robust emotion, and Momo watched on as Sokka listened with growing distress.

Aang quietly fiddles with his fingers. “How are we going to find our way out of these tunnels?”

Katara stares at the devotional painting of the two lovers. “I have a crazy idea.”

“What? I’m saying I would rather kiss you than die—that’s a compliment.”

“Well, I’m not sure which I’d rather do!”

The torch is sharply passed on and a hurt soul storms away.

(Shu thought she was beautiful. Oma thought he was an idiot. They’re both laughing beyond this world.)

(Ozai thought she was beautiful. Ursa thought he was a monster. They’re both creatures of generational curses and power. Even when she storms away and forgets about them all, she prays for the unfortunate ones who shared his blood.)

The clueless one miserably rubbed at his face with a free hand. “What is wrong with me?”

Sokka’s forehead hurts.

Dozens of moths hover in the night air as they see them off.

“Thank you for the duck,” Iroh says as Azula dips her head. “It was excellent.”

“You’re welcome,” Chu Hua said, smiling at the two of them. “It brings me pleasure to see someone eat my cooking with such…gusto.”

Iroh gives a hearty chuckle, contently patting his stomach. “Much practice.”

Azula turns to leave. Her uncle lightly taps her elbow.

“Now, where are your manners?” He urged. “You need to thank these nice people.”

Azula tries not to grimace. She turns back to give a proper bow. “Thank you.”

“I know you don’t think there’s hope left in the world,” Song tells her, “but there is hope. The Avatar has returned.”

…

Azula forced her fists to uncurl at her sides and her expression to smooth out. It still doesn’t remove the pain from her stare when she straightens up and replies with a frigid, “I know.”

She turns away from her before she can see her finish her goodbyes. She walks until she can hear her uncle’s steps behind her, and when she stops in front of the meager stable of ostrich horses, he stops, too. He doesn’t say anything when she slips into the shed, but when the ostrich horse she picked shuffles back out into the yard with reins in her hands, he looks like he swallowed a flower whole.

“What are you doing?” he asked her. “These people just showed you great kindness.”

Azula frowns at him. Implicitly, she tightens her grip on worn leather. “These people have no idea who we are. Now, quit mistaking their pity for compassion. Are you coming?”

Iroh frowns at her. Then, he bows his head.

Azula makes the mistake of turning to look before they leave. She thinks about it when they find somewhere to sleep outside of town, staring into the uncomfortably damp edges of the cave ceiling with an odd twist in her chest as she thinks about the sliding of a screen door shutting over the hopeless expression of a girl burned before.

(She wondered if she had once looked like that. She tries to sleep with a burning pit in her throat.)

Even for the last hope of the world, their hopelessness was palpable enough to slow Appa’s pace to a shuffle behind them.

Aang watched the torch dwindle. “We’re going to run out of light any second now, aren’t we?”

“I think so…”

“Then,” Aang didn’t know what to do—he wished he was frozen at an older age, that he never ran away to begin with, “what are we going to do?”

Katara quietly looked at him. At least she wasn’t mad at him anymore, but he didn’t like seeing her sad, either. “What can we do?”

After a moment’s breath, she silently walks over and takes his hand. Aang can’t help but silently smile at her.

Something shifts. Their hearts, the torch, the walls around them. Aang doesn’t realize how close he is to her until the voice in his head that is his tells him to do what he’s shyly thought about doing for a while. Katara stared back at him and, thinking of Oma and what she thought of before they disappeared, she squeezed his hand. The light dwindled to nothing.

The cave slowly comes to life, thousands of crystals lining the walls as though lungs and nails had etched them in.

Deep in the cave, something growls. Sokka watched with a small gnawing pit in his stomach as he lifted the dying torch and shook away the family of wolf bats that threw themselves towards their ducked heads. They fly past him.

“Hey!” Chong cheered. “You saved us, Sokka!”

“No,” Sokka said frantically, “they were trying to get away from something!”

“From what?”

The cave shakes. A wall crumbles. Suddenly, two badgermoles scuttled from their tunnel to sniff at their surprised feet. Sokka doesn’t realize he’s run himself into a corner until the earth carved in front of him with an anxiety that is conjured in every heavy swipe of their claw. He backs away with his hands palming the dirt, his wolfheart near beating out of his chest as he thought of his sister and his family and the last hope until it stops with his fingers scraping at the strings of a fallen lute. A note plays.

The badgermoles stop. They chuff at him inquisitively until they grow quiet as he slowly pushes himself back up to his feet. The neck of the lute is held onto carefully.

He starts to play a tune. He doesn’t know what he’s doing, but he’s scrambling for words as they draw closer and closer.

“Hey,” Chong said sunnily, “those things are music lovers!”

“Bagermoles,” Sokka sang nervously, “coming towards me.” He casted a frantic glance towards the traveling nomads. “Come on guys, help me out–”

The nomads, whether they notice or not, grin at him with welcome as they draw close and join him.

“The big, bad badgermoles,” Chong bellowed, patting Sokka’s shoulders in encouragement as he strummed away, “who earthbend the tunnels, hate the wolfbats, but love the sounds!”

He lets the beat of the drum settle his own.

Aang held onto Katara’s hand, even after he got past the nervousness of his hand being a little too sweaty. She doesn’t say anything, though, as they make their way down the cavern.

“They’re made of some kind of crystal,” Aang says, peering up into the glowing ceiling. “They must only light up in the dark.”

“That’s how the two lovers found each other,” Katara says, gently tracing her free hand up towards the crystals. “They just put out their lights and followed the crystals.” Suddenly, she brightens, pointing towards the end of their path. “That must be the way out!”

They hug. Aang thanks the fact that he’s able to live another moment with this warmth. Katara squeezes, wracked with a heavy relief, before she pulls away.

“So,” Aang says, “uh…”

“Let’s go!”

Katara runs towards their exit. Aang stares after her, words caught on his tongue, before he shook his head, settled, with a smile. He and Appa follow close.

Aang pressed his hand against his brow to shade his eyes against the light of the sun. Appa rumbled and rolled into the open dirt appreciatively, relieved to be out of the cramped darkness. Katara peers out into the trees, then, to the sky. No trails of smoke in sight.

“What about Sokka?”

They look at each other with matching frantic expressions before the ground rumbles beneath their feet. When they look towards the sound, they see a pair of large sweeping creatures that carved through stone and cared little for the debris. Katara and Aang cover their faces from the scattering pieces of rubble, lifting away their hands to see who they were delivering; Sokka shields his gaze from the sun before he sees them, waving from the top of a badgermole’s back as Momo flutters around his shoulders.

“Sokka!” Katara moved closer to the creature, watching her brother dismount and approach.

“How did you guys get out?” Sokka asks her.

“Just like the legend said,” Aang spoke up, gaze dipping to his thumbs as he smiled sheepishly, “we let love lead the way.”

“Really?” Sokka looked at him. “We let huge, ferocious beasts lead our way.”

He turns to the badgermoles and he waves as they slowly shift back toward the cave. Walls of rock seal them away from further sight.

Momo chitters, recounting every detail he could remember from his shrouded trek through the cave. Appa roars and rumbles in response, relieved to see his tiny friend safe.

Katara and Sokka hug each other tight, enough to squish the breath out of their lungs. When Katara pulls away, her gaze falls upward. “Why is your forehead all red?”

“…Nobody react to what I’m about to tell you: I think,” Chong says slowly, leaning away from Aang’s embrace and gently holding his palms over his ears with a conspicuous raise of his brows, “this kid might be the Avatar!”

Sokka smacks his forehead hard enough to spread the red patch that had just started to settle. Chong looks over at him. His spirit of inquiry and loose flow remained intact even as he moved his hands to pull away.

Aang glances over to the other nomads.

“So, are you guys going to come to Omashu with us?”

“Nope,” Moku says with a smile.

“Okay,” Aang returns the smile. “Thanks for everything, Moku.”

The nomads began to make their way down the dirt trail that leads into the trees. Moku trails to a stop in front of Sokka, moving his hands to place the finished necklace of flowers on his shoulders.

“Sokka,” Chong says, “I hope you learned a little something about not letting the plans get in the way of the journey.” Then, he hugs him.

Sokka clears his throat. Then, he pats his shoulder. He speaks gruffly as his cheeks grow warm from the sun. “Just play your songs.”

“Hey!” Chong pulls away, adjusting the neck of his instrument as he strums a single, muted chord. “Good plan!” He begins to play his lute as he strolls away to catch up with his family.

It’s a good enough tune that, even after Appa has gently pushed himself off the ground and carried them away from there, traveled across the quiet mountains.

The dagger listened. He turns the words over in his head, and when he makes it to the fallen city, he pushes them out.

“Even if you’re lost, you can’t lose the love because it’s in your heart.”

They reach Omashu with no sidetracks, worms, or rainbows.

Sokka would prefer either of those over the dark scarlet flag and shrouded smoke that is forever imprinted in his memory.

Chapter Text

iii.

Aang stares at the blue sky before his gaze travels towards the thick plumes of smoke that were carried with the winds of a captured Omashu. He wondered if Bumi was okay. He anxiously wrung his hands around his staff.

“I can’t believe it,” he says. “I know the war has spread far, but,” he glances towards the flag and can feel the wind carrying it, too; Katara and Sokka look at each other before they grimly look back to the world’s last hope—when Aang turns back towards them, he sounds just as shocked and lost as he first had been when they first came across the remains of the Southern Air Temple, “Omashu always seemed…untouchable.”

“Up until now, it was.” Sokka crossed his arms. “Now Ba Sing Se is the only great Earth Kingdom stronghold left.”

“This is horrible,” Katara said quietly, moving closer to the cliff side to where Aang stood, “but we have to move on.”

“No,” Aang said, because he was twelve, “I’m going in to find Bumi.”

“Aang, stop,” Sokka said, because the world’s last hope was acting like a kid. “We don’t even know if Bumi’s still…”

Sokka stops. Aang turns to him.

“What?” Aang asks, fuming. “If he’s still what?”

Sokka sounded diffident. “A-Around.”

Katara sounded amiable. “I know you had your heart set on Bumi, but there are other people who can teach you earthbending.”

Aang’s anger ebbed away. “This isn’t about finding a teacher,” he said quietly. “This is about finding my friend.”

The sewage treatment of Omashu had seen better days, it seemed.

Though Sokka was unsure of what the tiny creatures were exactly, they were helpful in preventing them from being accosted by the guardsmen and the curfew imposed. He supposed that even if he didn’t know how they came about, they still came in handy. He had a strange inkling that it wouldn’t be the last time they would need them.

“Thank you, sewer friends.”

Yeah, thanks! Now, Sokka had time to get that taste out of his mouth…

The student sits in the shaded palanquin settled upon the ship’s deck. He stoically looks down at his soldiers, who remain flanked and bowed low, and watches his instructors as they sit on the cushions beside him with leaden steps.

“When tracking your sister and uncle,” Li mused, “traveling with the Royal Procession may no longer be an option.”

“May no longer be wise,” Lo quietly adds.

“If you hope,” Li and Lo continue, “to keep the element of surprise.”

(They, wisely, do not comment on their diminishing troops. The ones who remain still don’t feel comfortable sailing with an…eccentric commander.

Of course, eccentric hadn’t been the term used, when the twins had questioned their waterlogged soldiers. But, with a careful and knowing glance to each other, they knew better than to report.)

The student sits very still. “You’re right. The Royal Procession is dead weight.”

The prince breathes deeply, keeping his hands folded. “If I want to catch my prey, I must be agile, nimble. I need a small, elite team.”

Then, almost absently, the dagger spoke to the dark clouds. “It’s time to visit some old allies.”

(They were never really his friends, after all; weapons don’t need them. They were more like his sister’s.)

Zuko isn’t sure what he is going to say to convince Ty Lee to join him, but by the time he’s slipped out of the crowded harbor, armed with two guards he’s chosen under the guise of protection, his smile faint, and word of a traveling circus tucked into the back of his head, he has already made a few plans for what to do if she decides not to.

And as…tentative as he had always been regarding Mai, he was also certain that, in the same manner he did, she knew her role in her family and the expectation it carried; similarly, their fathers sought to stay in power and their mothers committed to the lives they created, for better and worse. This meant staying servile and silent, regardless of how they felt.

(Zuko wasn’t sure what he felt, in the end, expressionless and unspeaking in the crawling dusk of the forest. The further he stepped, flanked by his guards but alone at the end of it all, the less it felt like a game, or a play. He thinks of the song he heard in the mountains; he found its contents silly, because how could an emotion as fleeting as love possibly be so profound as to guide a lost soul through a world that has never been seen to have sense in its cruelty, yet it still plays in his mind like an endless loop. But if his father were here to watch his thoughts temporarily trickle across his face, even in the shadows of the night, he would find whatever was distracting him to be silly or, at worse, insignificant. So, even though he wasn’t here to convince him to, he casts his uncertainty aside out of his muted fear of the unknown.)

To settle the stray, unnecessary thoughts, after they stopped at a small inn that was hesitant to accept their patronage from the way the owner’s eye contact ventured no further than their armor but relenting all the same to the payment that allowed them to escape the torrential downpour in silence, Zuko inwardly recounted a story he knows well in his heart. It was almost rooted.

Long ago, a man rehearsed his lines for a play. Only, he is startled from behind by a masked woman, causing him to drop himself and the mask. She laughs at him, and when he lightly complains, she teases her poor, cowardly boyfriend. But when she tells him of the role she’s earned, she has already helped him up from the floor, and he couldn’t help but swell with love as he asked her to recite a few lines with him, and then, for her hand. Even after kicking him in the stomach and pushing dirt in his face at the tender age of six summers. Even after the countless apologies, he still loved her. Hadn’t ever stopped. How could she not accept the proposal? She loved him, too. Her first love.

If she had known they would have been separated from each other that night, taken from her home with a proposal she couldn’t refuse, she would have taken his hand and ran for as long as they could. Like the last of the dragons who scrambled up the mountains for cover. Or the nomads.

…

What did love leave for them?

Nothing. Hope, forgiveness, love…it left them nothing. How stupid was that? Believing in something that leaves you nothing but pain. How useless.

Zuko breathed, silent, and he forced a smile to himself as he slept, alone and unguarded. Nothing. He felt absolutely nothing.

Momo peers at the twilight of Omashu on Sokka’s shoulders as they hide behind a row of metal bars that were set aside from unfinished construction.

“Let’s find Bumi and get out of here,” Katara murmurs.

Sokka watches the guards on patrol pass them by and breathes slowly. “Where would they be keeping him?”

“Somewhere he can’t earthbend,” Aang whispers. “Somewhere made of metal.”

They slowly shift from behind the bars and ease their way onwards.

Somewhere across the Earth Kingdom, the world’s greatest earth bender thinks of the roaring of the crowd as she digs her bare feet into her mother’s garden and morosely sighs. Not for the last time, she wished she were somewhere else. Maybe if she were a flying boar. She combs her fingers across her temples until her fringe is released from her headband. Before she goes to bed, her mother tucks her hair back into place and kisses her forehead. She tries not to grimace, clinging to the scent of her perfumes before it is gone. She sits up and presses her feet against the floor, waiting until the hallway was completely empty before she slowly approached her window.

Although the night was arguably nice, and the guards were meant to provide a distant sense of security for her mother, Mai couldn’t help but feel that she was trapezing toward a shoe waiting to fall. Not for the last time in her life, she wished she were somewhere, or someone, else.

She exhaled forcibly enough to lift her fringe from her furrowed brows. Her hair falls back into place.

She doesn’t care particularly about how meditative their walk was meant to be—Mai’s gotten a good look of the city of New Ozai when she grew bored of watching the furniture be carried around at her mother’s call, and she wasn’t impressed. She eyed the city’s new centerpiece, the chained cage for the old king of Omashu, who giggled and snorted to himself in the quietness of the night. Similarly, in her mother’s arms, Tom-Tom softly burbled. Behind them, their guards say nothing.

“There really is no fathoming the depths of my hatred for this place,” Mai sighed.

“Mai,” Michi muttered, “your father was appointed governor. We’re like royalty here. Be happy and enjoy it.”

A nerve under Mai’s eye spasms. She doesn’t say anything. Instead, as they approached the end of the chute that was intended to serve as the city’s mailing system, Mai caught sight of the shade of orange along the stone beneath the torches and felt a rippling disgust beneath her throat.

“I thought my life was boring in the Fire Nation,” Mai eventually manages in a dull tone, feeling as spiteful as she was hurt with her mother, “but this place is unbearably bleak. Nothing ever happens.”

The top of the mail chute gives a low rumble in response before her mother can chastise her for her attitude. They look up at the sound of rocks shattering and crumbling into pieces as a gust of wind suddenly passes through.

Mai tracks the movement of the boy with her eyes, squinting at his frantic expression and his raised staff before she slowly rubs her fingers inside her sleeves.

“The resistance,” her mother cried, which was enough permission for Mai to smile to herself and shoot small arrows that bury into the midst of construction rubble where the boy once stood. She watches him, and what appears to be his friends, scurry from the guards like ant-termites. She ponders on if this was the very same sight that an old friend of hers enjoyed partaking in and, not for the last time, wonders if he received much thrill from it after so many times of achieving the effect.

When they disappear into the earth, after she gives chase, she finds her answer with a deep sigh. Probably not, with how boring it grew and how silly it felt to overextend herself to come up with nothing. She stares at where her targets once stood, her arrows embedded in little rows, before she gives up, leaving them behind and returning to her parents before they could voice their judgment.

Admiring the blades of grass beneath the tips of her index fingers, Ty Lee takes in the last semblance of peace in the world she built for herself before she is taken from it.

She moves her gaze when the edges of her aura darken, catching sight of her upside down guest with a smile.

“Zuko!”

Ty Lee flips upright and spins into the same graceful bow she’s practiced since they were children before she straightens and pulls him into a tight hug. It’s easier to lie, this way. “It’s so good to see you!”

The familiar shades of his aura doesn’t shift, even after he slowly returns her embrace and pulls away.

“I hope I’m not interrupting…whatever it is you were doing,” he says modestly.

Ty Lee, who hadn’t felt interrupted, continues with her routine of stretching before a performance. She vaults herself back into her original spot and rests on her stomach, angling one leg over her head and the other towards the sky.

Zuko, whose expression hadn’t shifted from its detached politeness, looked around. Behind him, his guards are unintroduced and unmoving. The longer he stood there, the line between curiosity and surveillance blurred. He watches the people around them, including the three platypus bear trainers, who patiently push at a platypus bear until he groans with annoyance and effort. When he lifts, an egg sits in the nest he built.

Zuko’s expression twitches, briefly, before he moves his gaze back towards Ty Lee. Ty Lee’s smile, taken by the scene, remains unphased.

“I have a proposition for you,” he says.

She finally looks away, towards him.

“I’m hunting a traitor.” He smiles, feigned serenity. “You remember my old fuddy-duddy uncle, don’t you?”

Ty Lee rests both of her feet on her head. “Oh, yeah. He was so funny.”

“...I would be honored if you would join me on my mission.”

“Oh…” Her smile faltered imperceptibly. “I…uh…would love to.”

Zuko relaxes as she smoothly pushes herself up to stand with grace.

“But the truth is,” Ty Lee admitted with a genuine beam, “I’m really happy here. I mean, my aura has never been pinker!”

Zuko lifts his hand. She stops.

“I’ll take your word for it,” he assures her, calmly folding his hands behind his back. He smiles again. “After all, I wouldn’t want you to give up the life you love just to please me.”

He watches her relax slowly. She tries to hide the relief in her expression by bowing.

“Thank you, Zuko,” she says. Then, she turns away to resume her stretching. Were she in control, the conversation would have ended there. She chances a glance at her reflection and sees him in the periphery. She ignores him, and the tension, in the hopes that he’ll leave. It works. Almost.

“Of course, before I leave,” he says, his tone light and his eyes dead, “I’m going to catch your show.”

Ty Lee breaks her stance with a gasp. She attempts to recover, lifting her limbs to stretch once more as she calls over her shoulder and waits for his reflection to disappear to properly gather herself. “Uh…yeah…sure…uh…of course…”

Beneath Omashu, its citizens quietly gathered underground. The resistance guides the small group, breathless from the chase, through a tunnel that leads to a large cave, three deposed guards quietly relaying what has happened since the Avatar had last visited their city.

“So, is King Bumi with you guys?” Aang asked hopefully. Yung’s expression twitched, his fist balling up at his side.

“Of course not!” he spat. “The day of the invasion, we readied ourselves for battle. We were prepared to defend our city…to fight for our lives and for our freedom. But before we even had a chance, King Bumi surrendered.”

Aang, disconcerted, stares helplessly at Yung. Katara, concerned, gives Aang a look.

“The day of the invasion,” Yung continued, his tone sobering and his gaze shifting past them as the memory of fireballs adorning the sky like fireworks above their place upon the city walls returned to him, “I asked King Bumi what he wanted to do. He looked me in the eye and said…”

Yung paused, almost as if unsure if it would be appropriate to imitate his deposed king, before he sighed and gave his best impression.

“I’m going to do…nothing!”

The silence that passes between their group is enough to fill the spaces where Bumi’s boisterous snort would fit.

“...It doesn’t matter now,” Yung tells them, after taking in their looks of dismay. He follows where Aang’s gaze sadly lowers, attempting to fill him with the only hope that he had to drive them. “Fighting the Fire Nation is the only path to freedom. And freedom is worth dying for.”

He remedies the possibility with a grim, but determined smile. Aang morosely leans against his staff, cowed at the idea of violence resorting to death. He still had dreams of the North Pole. He carefully raised his eyes, meeting Yung’s awaiting gaze. “Actually, there’s another path to freedom. You could leave Omashu. You’re directing all your energy to fight the Fire Nation…” He pauses, looking at the Earth Kingdom soldiers that have quietly gathered with a knot in his throat; the same knot that settled when he was looked to for answers. “But you’re outnumbered. You can’t win. Now’s the time to retreat, so you can live to fight another day.”

“You don’t understand. They’ve taken our home,” Yung says, emphatically gesturing with his hands, “and we have to fight them at any cost!”

“I don’t know, Yung,” Yuu, a resistant fighter, quietly said; Yung reels around at them in surprise, “living to fight another day is startin’ to sound pretty good to me.”

Quang, emboldened by his comrade, steps forward and points at himself as he addresses Yung decisively, “Yeah, I’m with the kid!”

Yung looks at his soldiers and past them to all of the people who fled underground with them. They whisper to themselves, the sound blanketing the sewer tunnels, and he knew then of the limits to his stubbornness. After a moment, he looks back towards the Avatar.

“Fine,” he relents. “But there’s thousands of citizens that need to leave. How’re we going to get them all out?”

Sokka, who had been silently planning since they’ve been swallowed by the earth and plummeted back into the sewers of Omashu, rests a hand over his chin in thought. When his plan is freshly cooked and plated in the working cogs of his mind, he points at Yung with an exclaimed, “Suckers!”

Katara, who was used to the casted line of wisdom that her brother took his time to reel in, raised a brow and stared at her brother. Aang blinked. Momo chirps and tilts his head at him. The soldiers weren’t faring any better, from their brief exchanged looks of flabbergast.

Sokka blinks back, the numbers running through his head as he offers a broad, pleased smile. “You’re all about to come down with a nasty case of pentapox.”

Sokka inspects their handiwork, showing where on the head of the pentapi to rub to release its suctioned tendrils, before he addresses the inhabitants of Omashu.

“The marks make ya look sick, but you gotta act sick too. Ya gotta sell it!”

As if on cue, an elderly man, Chu, hobbles by, a laborious slope against his cane as he holds onto his back and moans in pain.

Moved, Sokka grabs the closest civilian beside him, Nuo, and points at the old man. “Now that’s what I’m talkin’ about.”

Chu relaxes, turning around with a sheepish smile. He taps his wooden leg with his cane. “Years of practice.”

“Okay, everyone!” Sokka ordered with the excitement of a fresh recruit leading them into battle. “Into sick formation.”

They begin their shuffled trek toward the gates of Omashu. Katara lingers at the tail end, glancing beside her to find Aang wandering from the crowd. She follows him.

“Aang, what are you doing?” She holds her palms together. “Aren’t you coming with us?”

He turns around to look at her. “No. I’m not leaving until I find Bumi.”

Momo jumps onto Aang’s shoulder, his paws tugging at his lips. Aang gently grabs the scruff of his neck and sets him down on the ground.

“Sorry, Momo,” he says, even as his hands tense around his staff the same way he does when he is going to leave, “I’ll feed you later.”

Aang propels himself into the air, the gust of wind blowing through Katara’s hair as she watches him jump from one rooftop to another.

Two guards from the Fire Nation, Asahi and Hikaru, were posted outside of the gates of New Ozai with spears. Occasionally, when they thought no one was looking, they passed the time through brief, stilted conversation about the weather and how it beat the heat back home. But right now, they were silent and attentive as they watched a group of people shuffle towards them. Asahi blinked as one of them weakly fell and disappeared into the crowd. A young lad painfully held his face with a moan before reaching out to a panicked Hikaru.

“Plague!” Hikaru yelped, backing away and dropping his spear. “Plague!”

The guards clamor into the citadel as the alarmed ringing of the gong alerts the rest of the city.

Ukano, the new governor of New Ozai, watched anxiously from the balcony of the house the Fire Lord had allowed his family to stay in. It was a blessing in that it gave him a good view of the city, but with the crowd of people gathering around the gates, he grew concerned about the report that he would have to send, if the clamoring grew to be a problem too big for his head to be saved.

Beside him, his wife, Michi, keeps her worried hands closed tight behind her as his daughter, Mai, takes a handful of fire flakes from the bowl he’s requested to soothe her morose sighing. Mai chews silently as a guard stiffly remains posted for him to question at his leisure.

“What is going on down there?” Ukano asked.

“I saw some kids yesterday who were sick with pentapox,” the guard managed, having thought nothing of it until the caterwauling of his crew followed his heels. “It must have spread!”

“Pentapox!” Ukano pensively stroked and tugged his beard. He was not a man of medicine, but it certainly sounded real enough to consider questioning. “Hmm…I’m pretty sure I’ve heard of that.”

“Oh,” his wife murmured fretfully, no doubt thinking of their youngest, Tom-Tom, “this is terrible.”

“What should we do?” The guard carefully asked, knowing of what clueless leaders resorted to when they had the faintest idea of managing a city and that they would be sent to clean up their messes anyway.

“Drive them out of the city,” Ukano gestured over the balcony and towards the gates of New Ozai, “...but don’t touch them! We have to rid the city of this disease!”

The guard bows, slackening in relief, before he leaves to follow the new governor’s orders.

Mai, expression unchanging, lifts the bowl and offers it to him. “Fire flakes, Dad?”

Michi, overtaken by the stress of an uncontrollable pathogen somehow reaching them, gasped another protestation. “How awful!”

Ukano holds his wife close, furthest from knowing how to solve their problems but wanting to comfort her all the same, as his daughter lowered the bowl and his son, Tom-Tom, unbeknownst to them, wandered away with a short but determined totter towards the open door.

“Flopsie!”

The chains around the goat-gorilla’s neck yank him back before he can reach his flying friend. Flopsie gives up before he can hurt himself, sadly lying back down and watching as Aang lowered himself beside his chains and froze them with a swift wave of his wrist.

He breaks the chain with his staff. Flopsie thanks him by licking his face and hugging him until his weight made him flop towards the ground with him.

“Come on, Flopsie,” Aang climbed out from under him and draped himself over his back like Flopsie was a flying bison. Flopsie rested his chin against the ground, relieved the tension around his fur was gone. “You gotta help me find Bumi. Yip yip!”

Flopsie snorted a breath of air through his nose, but he did not move.

“Oh…I guess that doesn’t work with you.” Aang lifted his head. “Let’s go!”

Flopsie bolted from his prison at a speed fast enough to make Aang gasp in exhilaration and surprise.

Somewhere on the other side of New Ozai, Momo soared over the city until he found a balcony nice enough to rest his paws on. He peers into a window and, past the clutter of clothing and toys, he catches sight of a bowl filled with berries.

Momo can’t help himself; he drools and climbs through the window to float through the chamber and rest atop of a table as he stuffed his face and spat out seeds. Some land behind dressing panels, the remaining land beside the table as his tail languidly sways.

In the middle of raising a paw for another bite, Momo is yanked down to the floor with a surprised chirp.

Attempting to pull away from tiny giggling hands, the flying lemur jumps off of the table with a toddler following him out of the window. Momo watches him make grabby hands and backs away, leaping onto the railing of the balcony and taking flight before he could grab hold of his tail again.

Tom-Tom tumbles off the railing and giggles as he slides off of a roof, landing in a box of berries that was being delivered through one of the city’s many mail chutes. Before he could try a bite, the funny animal returns, happily eating more until Tom-Tom emerged from the bottom of the box with a playful growl, grabbing hold of Momo’s tail with a stubby fist and biting his tail with a gummy smile.

Momo jumps into the air, flapping his wings in an attempt to get away. With the box moving down the hill, the air beneath him made him buoyant, but with the weight on his tail pulling his body, it wasn't long before they start to descend.

Tom-Tom lightly dragged his feet against the ground as Momo crash landed, rolling atop of him and pinning the lemur until he squirmed and shrieked with effort.

A taller, shuffling crowd of moaning people made their way through the street, distracting Tom-Tom long enough for him to let go. Momo escapes into the crowd and Tom-Tom follows as they staggered out of the gates of the city.

Zuko allowed himself to enjoy the show before he ruined it. He stares silently from a high box seat as the performers dressed as two dragons dance around the circus master, Shuzumu. As they pull away from the main ring, Shuzumu addresses the crowd.

“We’re deeply honored to have the Fire Lord’s son at our humble circus.”

The prince says nothing, watching with fixed attention and more than aware of the stiff energy between the two guards posted at his side.

“Uh…” Shuzumu adjusts his weight between his feet, “Tell us if there is anything we can do to make the show more enjoyable.”

The prince, who found moments of bleak humor in watching his subjects squirm with the uncomfort of knowing that there was no angle of opportunity for escaping judgment, doesn’t move from the edge of his seat. “I will.”

The circus master clears his throat and steps out from the main ring as a net is pulled and suspended in the air beneath a tightrope. The animal handlers and performers on the ground watch in silence as an acrobat balances herself atop the rope with a measured ease. Ty Lee slowly makes her way across her path without shaking. Amidst her colorful clothing, rather than the excited grin she adorned through her usual performances, she moved with a small smile and balanced herself on one hand in muted concentration.

The prince rests his temple against his knuckles in contemplation. The circus master watches with awe.

“Incredible,” the prince allows himself to comment. He couldn’t deny, after all, the skill it must take for his sister’s friend to balance her body weight with no fear or mistakes. It wasn’t as though he could do it himself. He was curious, though. “Do you think she’ll fall?”

Shuzumu, who held great pride in his performers and the standards he held them to, sounded almost like he was holding back a laugh as he answered. “Of course not.”

The prince ate up his mirth for himself. “Then wouldn’t it make it more interesting if you removed the net?”

Shuzumu falls quiet. He looks back towards him and, when he finds his imploring smile and cold gaze, knows then that he is being given an order. However, instead of caving immediately, he clamors, looking towards the ground with his hands carefully closing behind him.

“Uh…” The circus master tries to swallow past the dryness of his throat, knowing that he couldn’t deny a royal family member but pulled between his own morality and their collective mortality. “...The thing is…the performers…”

The prince was losing his patience. He feigned a sigh, lifting his head so that he could glance at the show once more. “You’re right, you’re right. That’s been done.”

He watches the circus master slowly relax, smiling apologetically. The prince comes up with an idea and grins in return. “I know. Set the net on fire.”

Shuzumu slackens in fear. He bows his head. “Of course, my prince.”

The circus master lowers himself from the box seat and slowly marches towards the stage. His palms shake as he blasts a stream of fire up against the net, backing away worriedly as they watch the material become rapidly engulfed in flames.

Ty Lee, slightly panicking but knowing that she couldn’t fall, continued to move across the tightrope. Her small smile has ebbed away into a wide-eyed look of concern as sweat crawls down her face.

Shuzumu grits his teeth and balls his fists together as he holds his breath and prays for her safe descent.

The prince, whether none the wiser or more aware than he was letting on, was ecstatic all the same as he expressed his excitement. “Brilliant, just brilliant!” He looks down at Shuzumu and slides his hand off of his face. “Ooh, what kind of dangerous animals do you have?”

The circus master, anxious and appreciative of the subject change, looks up at their guest. He seemed eager for the act to end. Did he really think that the buzzard-falcon would come all this way just to settle for a half-baked performance in the middle of a bounty and leave without taking what he came here for? Or without playing with his food first, whether his prey were live or carrion?

“Well, our circus boasts the most exotic assortment-“

“Release them all!”

The blended look of surprise and horror unfolding on Shuzumu’s face was almost as entertaining as the sounds of chaos that follow, a perfect view for their star acrobat, who worriedly balances on her palm above it all with sweat dripping hundreds of feet below over the howling animals, and the buzzard-falcon, who finally settled back in his seat and watched everything fall into the order of this world.

In the mountains, the night was lit with campfires as the people of Omashu huddled around the thrumming warmth of the flames and rested their feet from their long trek.

Aang and Flopsie walk into camp, downtrodden, as Katara and Sokka get up from their seats to greet them.

“We looked everywhere,” Aang said quietly. “No Bumi.”

Katara opens her arms and Aang accepts the empathetic gesture as she hugs him. Flopsie moaned sadly, earning Sokka’s sympathy as he hugged the goat-gorilla’s face.

Yung interrupts their moment of embrace as he approaches them, looking distinctly like he was saddled with a scenario that he had never run into before.

“We’ve got a problem,” he says seriously. “We just did a head count.”

“Oh no,” Katara worriedly turns to Yung. “Did someone get left behind?”

“No,” Yung said, now looking uncomfortable, “we have an extra.”

As if to underline his point, he pointed to the side when he was met with their confused and curious looks. Katara is the first to look before the rest turn to follow.

Momo, with a new friend in the shape of a toddler dangling from his neck, staggered forward as Tom-Tom clamped down tighter.

The group of children and Yung, speechless, stare at the pair with expressions that ranged between amused and puzzled.

In the quiet evening of the New Ozai governor’s house, his wife sobs on the balcony.

Her daughter, Mai, wordlessly reaches into her robe and procures a handkerchief. She passes the handkerchief to Michi with an unreadable expression, seeming more removed from the sounds of her public grief than sympathetic as her father stares out into the city with his hands on the railing and his gaze deep in contemplation.

Two guards, uncertain of how to feel about the governor’s family and their collective behavior, remain silent and attentive for an order.

“So,” Ukano eventually says, balling his hand into a fist, “the resistance has kidnapped my son. Everything is so clever, so tricky. Just like their King Bumi.”

One of the guards glances at his colleague, who stares back at him with an urgency to speak. He steps forward.

“What do you want to do, sir?”

The governor grows silent, pensively relaxing his fist as his gaze wanders over the city and back toward the guards.

Ty Lee quietly sets down the bouquet of black roses on her desk. She sits down after a moment and takes in her reflection as Zuko, guardless, silently takes in her dressing room before averting his gaze back to her expression in the mirror.

“What an exquisite performance,” he tells her with a smile. He sounds like he means it. “I can’t wait to see how you’ll top yourself tomorrow.”

Ty Lee meets his gaze through the mirror and matches his expression. “I’m sorry, Zuko, but unfortunately, there won’t be a show tomorrow.”

“Really?”

Ty Lee reaches into her hair and pulls out her tiara, hanging it up. “The universe has given me strong hints that it’s time for a career change.”

She rises from her seat, turning to face him properly.

“I want to join you on your mission.”

Zuko, satisfied, smiled genuinely.

(It was clear; some people had the choice, but he wouldn’t let her have it. If he had no choice in the matter, then he wasn’t going to be left alone.)

In the valley of Omashu, Tom-Tom almost catches Momo at the campsite. Three resistance fighters, a group of the world’s last hope, and Flopsie watch from their seats around the campfire as the lemur leaps out of the way of the toddler tumbling after him.

Landing next to Sokka’s club, Tom-Tom picks it up and attempts to teethe on it right away. Sokka, who thought he was finished with babysitting, snatches the weapon from the child’s grasp before he could lose what little teeth he had.

“No!” Sokka scolds him, tactless. “Bad Fire Nation baby!”

Tom-Tom, who rarely receives a scolding, starts to cry.

Katara looks from Tom-Tom to Sokka before she lightly pops her brother’s cheek. At his annoyed look, she wordlessly sets her hands on her hips and gives a pointed look to the still crying child.

Sokka sighs, his tone is still exasperated. “Oh…alright.”

He gives his club back to Tom-Tom, who immediately ceases his crying and begins to play with the club once more. Katara hugs the baby, cooing. “Oh, you’re so cute.”

She kisses him on the cheek, earning another annoyed look from her brother who concedes himself by lying on his side with his head resting in his hand.

Yung, who has been quiet since he discovered the boy, speaks up from his seat across the fire.

“Sure,” he says, “he’s cute now, but when he’s older, he’ll join the Fire Nation Army.”

He briefly pauses to take in Katara contentedly playing with the baby, his gaze shifting between her brother, who observes under an exasperated but watchful eye, and the sentimentality of it all. Then, he thinks of what he’s seen and what he’s done.

“You won’t think he’s so cute, then,” he continues. “He’ll be a killer.”

Katara picks up Tom-Tom, showing him to Yung.

“Does that look like the face of a killer to you?”

The general stares at the baby flatly, unmoved. His expression only breaks at the sight above them. “A messenger hawk!”

The hawk shrieks and lands on a rock close to the campsite. When Aang carefully approaches the animal, he notices the canister on its back and the insignia of the flame printed on it. He thinks of petting the bird, but takes in its stiff neck and its stare when it slowly cranes its head to look at him.

Aang removes the scroll and reads its contents, sharing the information as he moves through the message.

“It’s from the Fire Nation governor,” he says. He paces around the campfire. “He thinks we kidnapped his son. So…he wants to make a trade. His son,” his eyes widen as he continues to read in surprise, “…for King Bumi.”

At dawn, the sun rises and slowly washes the mountains surrounding Omashu with light.

Aang holds Tom-Tom in his arms and stares at the city in contemplation. After a moment, he walks down from the small hill he perched himself on and toward Katara and Sokka, who waited beside Appa.

“You realize we’re probably walking right into a trap,” Sokka says with pragmatic kindness.

“I don’t think so,” Aang replied with his usual brand of optimism. “I’m sure the governor wants his son back as much as we want Bumi back.”

Aang looks down at the baby, holding him close to his chest so as not to wake him and smiling at the sight. “It’s a new day. I have a good feeling about this.”

Mid-morning, inside the city of New Ozai, a royal palanquin is carried up the steps toward the governor’s home. The rays of the sun are bright enough to see the prince’s silhouette through the veils.

At the base of the second flight, the governor’s daughter waits, alone, for the arrival of the palanquin. She watches as the prince gets out, a familiar face falling into step with him as Ty Lee and Zuko walk over to her. They halt in front of her.

Mai puts her hands together and she bows slightly in front of Zuko.

“Please tell me you’re here to kill me,” she says. Then, aside from her mostly empty expression, the edges of her lips tug into a small smile and she looks up at him. The both of them begin to laugh.

Zuko rests his hands on her shoulders. “It’s great to see you, Mai.”

Ty Lee suddenly rushes over, giving Mai a big hug. Mai, surprised by the gesture and at seeing her friend there, steels her expression and uncomfortably pats her back a little with her left hand.

“I thought you ran off and joined the circus,” she muttered, pulling away to look at her properly. “You said it was your calling.”

Ty Lee lets her go, her smile unmoving. “Well, Zuko called louder.”

“I have a mission,” he says simply, before Mai could question it, placing his hands on each of their shoulders, “and I need you both.”

“Count me in,” Mai says without hesitation. She looks at her surroundings with a faint look of irritation. “Anything to get me out of this place.”

Above New Ozai, a gust of wind blows through a large red flag with a black flame insignia. Flanked by two Fire Nation guards, Zuko sat on a throne and stared down at the governor and his wife, Mai and Ty Lee quietly kneeling behind them.

“I apologize,” Ukano says, squatting down on a pillow. “You’ve come to Omashu at a difficult time. At noon, we’re making a trade with the resistance to get Tom-Tom back.”

The prince pretends not to notice the new governor’s failure to address the city’s new title for now. Instead, he feigns a polite smile of concern. “Yes, I’m so sorry to hear about your son, but really,” he crosses his legs and clasps his hands in his lap, “what did you expect by just letting all the citizens leave?”

Ukano doesn’t say anything. Zuko stands up from the throne. His tone is severe when he addresses the governor this time around, his hands emphasizing his words. “My father has trusted you with this city and you’re making a mess of things!”

Michi and Ukano prostrate themselves before him.

“Forgive me, my prince,” the governor rasps, his gaze frozen low as the prince walks between the four bowing bodies in front of him. After a moment of looking down at the governor, he turned away from them with his hands curling into fists behind his back.

“You stay here,” the prince tells him, almost kindly. He tries not to laugh as the governor and his wife remain bowed low, schooling his expression as Mai and Ty Lee slowly rise behind them. “Mai will handle the hostage trade so you don’t have a chance to mess it up.”

Beneath the smoking city of what used to be Omashu, the prince moves his gaze along the construction sites within view.

“And there’s no more ‘Omashu’,” he says harshly. “I’m renaming it in honor of my father, the city of New Ozai.”

A large statue of the fire lord stands, still in its scaffolds.

Standing on a large wooden platform, Aang, Katara, and Sokka look serious as three people approach them. The girl who tracked them earlier, the governor’s daughter, leads the procession: a girl dressed in pink and a boy in armor.

Behind them, a crane lowers a metal cage. With only his head uncovered, King Bumi stands contained, chuckling.

“Hi, everybody!”

Aang smiles at his friend, relieved that he was being delivered safely. The cage touches the wood behind the governor’s daughter and her friends.

“You brought my brother?” She asks him.

“He’s here,” Aang replies. “We’re ready to trade.”

Before Sokka can adjust his hold on Tom-Tom, the boy in the armor quietly speaks up to the governor’s daughter. “I’m sorry, but a thought just occurred to me. Do you mind?”

King Bumi silently follows the conversation with his eyes.

Mai, after a moment, turns to her friend. “Of course not, Prince Zuko.”

“We’re trading a two year old for a king.” The prince looks up at Bumi, meeting his gaze. “A powerful, earthbending king?”

King Bumi nods. “Mhm!”

“It just doesn’t seem like a fair trade,” the prince continued, tilting his head toward Mai, acid gold meeting stormy gray, “does it?”

Mai ponders over it. She looks past him at her brother, who yawns and rests his head on Sokka’s shoulder. She briefly searches for indignation, but in reality, she finds herself more relieved with her friend’s lack of attention than with the abandonment of her own concerns—had he any interest, she knew that he would just switch targets. She doesn’t find the idea of him bargaining her brother’s life in front of her parents as entertaining as she did bargaining the king’s in front of some young resistance fighters. Maybe this would scare them out of fighting battles adults set them up for, if their capture didn’t. She eyes the plain hat on the twelve year old’s head before she carefully crushes his dreams.

“You’re right,” Mai drones. The prince silently smiles as she steps forward. “The deal’s off.”

She looks at the guards and raises her hand, the cage mimicking its movement as the chains grow taught and suspend the king once more.

Rather than panicking, Bumi seemed amused. He chuckles and snorts as his cage is lifted. “Whoa! See you all later!”

Aang watches him go, his hope flickering. “Bumi!”

He sprints forward before he can think about it, his glider poised and his speed amplified by his airbending.

The boy in the armor tries to stop him, blocking his path with a ferocious cascade of bright flames. Aang avoids the brunt of the blast with a leap high into the air. The boy watches with wide eyes, astonished by the breathtaking height that the twelve year old was able to reach.

Aang grazes the scaffolding around the statue of the Fire Lord and pushes himself off, opening his glider as he falls through the air and nearly loses his hat. He holds onto it with his teeth as the wind blows over his exposed arrow tattoo and he locks eyes with the teen.

“The Avatar!”

Aang grimaces and swirls up towards Bumi’s metal coffin. The boy in the armor reels in his shock and allows it to settle in a sort of satisfaction as he briefly changes the trajectory of his plans with a pleased smile.

“My lucky day.”

Katara and Sokka watch with a blend of fascination and horror as the boy in the armor runs towards a pulley and blasts a handful of flame at the rope holding it affixed, taking hold without a flinch as he is rapidly pulled up toward the top of the construction scaffolding.

Aang lands on top of Bumi’s cage.

“Aang,” Bumi sounds surprised, “is that you? Where did you come from?”

“Hang on!” Aang tries not to panic or think about having left his friends alone below. “We’re going to get you out of here!”

He takes a deep breath and exhales a cold breeze on that chain lifting Bumi's cage. The chain link slowly freezes.

Below, Mai and Ty Lee assess the siblings before they attack them; Mai holds her stiletto knives between her knuckles and Katara puts her guard up as Ty Lee flips underneath the wood platform and makes her way towards Sokka.

“We've got to get the baby out of here!” Katara says urgently.

Sokka exhales into the bison whistle before he glances at his sister with a grin. “Way ahead of you!”

Tom-Tom reaches for the whistle and begins to play with a pleased burble.

Katara and Sokka break into a run. Before they can reach the edge of the large wooden platform, a fist punches through one of the holes in the floor, hitting Sokka’s foot and causing him to crumble over. He slides towards the edge, clutching the infant in his arms with the worst in mind written over his face, before they stopped just in time.

Katara, watching Ty Lee push herself through another hole with enough momentum to jump and make her way towards her brother, bends water from her pouch and notices a breath of movement from behind her.

Mai throws four knives, aiming for her face. Katara quickly whips the water around the loose planks at her feet, lifting up and embedding each blade into the wood. In a smooth, sweeping motion, she throws the planks back at Mai and catches hold of Ty Lee’s ankle before she can reach her brother.

Sokka pulls himself to his feet, adjusting his hold on Tom-Tom as he heads for the ladder leading to the scaffolding and descends with a slide.

Aang continues to freeze the chain. Bumi quietly watches for a moment longer before he speaks.

“Aang, stop your blowing for a minute.”

Aang leans away from the successfully frozen chain link with a relieved smile. At the top of the scaffolding, there is a loud explosion.

Chucking himself into the air, the boy in the armor kicks a plume of white flames towards Aang. Aang, startled by his arrival and attack, deflects with a powerful gale of his own.

“Now,” King Bumi spoke carefully over the dueling children, “hold on just a-”

The frozen chain is suddenly broken by Aang striking it with his staff. As they free fall, the king of Omashu yelps. Aang turns the cage over, aiming headfirst for a mail chute as he bends air into a sphere to cushion the fall. They both quickly slide down.

The buzzard-falcon, watching from his perch atop the scaffolding, frowned at the mail chutes before he sprinted towards the mirroring path, balancing on a carrier box as he chased down the Avatar and the deposed king.

Aang laughs as he steadies himself on his friend’s metal coffin. “It's just like old times, isn't it, Bumi?”

Bumi stares up at him seriously. “Aang,” he tries to speak over the wind, “I need to talk to you!”

“It's good to see you, too!” Aang returned cheerfully. His smile only breaks when his ears catch the approaching wind of the chute beside him, his hands spinning his staff above his head as he turns and bats away each swift shot of fire from the boy in the armor.

A fork ahead merges their paths; as Bumi's cage skids down the mail chute, the box follows suit behind them. Aang conducts a flurry of wind towards the boy in the armor, who parts it with his hands clasped forward and returns the motion with several bursts of flames. Aang ducks and rows frantically with his staff, accelerating beneath wooden arches and cutting them through with a slice of air.

The arches collapse on the track, a cloud of debris and dust swallowing the boy whole. When the cart emerges, there is no one. Aang sighs in relief.

The boy in the armor crawls out with a smile. Aang screams as he flattens himself on his stomach to avoid another stream of fire.

Mai dodges the other girl's water whips as she kicks out one of the knives from the launcher she attached to her leg that morning. The waterbender, like before, defends herself easily as she begins to draw up a wall of ice. Mai sprints forward.

Katara captures her right arm with a stream of water, freezing it. Mai, shocked, tries to break the ice and fails.

Ty Lee climbs up onto the platform, vaulting herself behind Katara and quickly striking her arms with firm jabs. Katara, surprised by the attack and the sudden lack of control of the water, drops the stream onto the wood. She tries to lift it again, but the water moves very little.

Mai's lips twitch at the irony. “How are you going to fight without your bending?”

Using the other girl's silent horror to her advantage, Mai pulls the sai from her robe and prepares to take aim.

A boomerang clips at her hands before she can throw them, knocking the sai from her grip. Mai and Ty Lee whip around to see a giant, flying bison soaring their way with the waterbender’s brother and Tom-Tom steering.

Sokka catches his boomerang and answers Mai’s question with a grin. “I seem to manage!”

Appa lands between Katara and the two girls, his tail slamming hard enough to push them off of the scaffolding with a heavy burst of air.

Katara and Sokka soar down over the chutes of Omashu from the top of Appa’s head. Katara surveys before she points to her left.

“There's Aang!”

Sokka follows with his gaze. “We can catch him!”

Appa makes a low sound and diverts his path towards Aang.

Aang spins his staff between his palms and over his wrists, blocking every flare the boy in the armor throws at him. They skid down the mail chute with a growing urgency that lightens at the sight of Appa arriving beside him.

“Hang on, Bumi!” Aang warns the king. “Our ride’s here!”

The boy in the armor throws a burst of flames that Appa sharply avoids. When the bison drifts back closer to Aang, he hits the side of the mail chute to lift Bumi’s cage, Katara and Sokka reaching for it to take hold.

They cannot reach it. They watch in horror as Aang and Bumi sink, the king screaming. As Aang attempts to twist the coffin's position with his feet, their plummeting through the air is interrupted by a chute, crashing through it and landing on another. They slide down with a familiar cart in pursuit behind them.

The boy in the armor moves his palms apart, flames whirling into a disk with concentrated precision as he aims it down the chute. The disk tracks its target quickly.

Bumi cranes his head up and, at the sight of the flame hurling towards them, he grits his teeth together until they creak.

In the middle of the chute, the earth pulls itself up into a jagged strike. The flames dissipate and, with his path suddenly blocked, the boy in the armor jumps from the carrier box and slides to a stop as the wood splinters into pieces.

Zuko watches the Avatar and the king escape, his heart racing and his disappointment shifting across his cold expression. If he wasn't focused on how he would have to send word to the Fire Lord of how the Avatar was spotted but not captured, he would obsess over the energy and time he wasted in the chase.

He will just have to do better next time.

The metal coffin eases toward the end of the mail chute. Bumi quietly takes in Aang’s stunned expression.

“You could earthbend? All along?”

“Well,” the king sheepishly admits, “they didn't cover my face.”

Bumi pulls up the earth with a strained grunt, propping the coffin to a stop as Aang lands in front of it with a slow descent and looks up at his friend in frustration.

“I don't understand. Why didn't you free yourself? Why did you surrender when Omashu was invaded? What's the matter with you, Bumi?”

Bumi quietly took in his words before he took a deep breath and explained slowly, but without condescension. “Listen to me, Aang,” he said calmly. “There are options in fighting, called jing. It's a choice of how you direct your energy.”

“I know!” Annoyed, Aang can only think of the lessons the monks drilled through his head before he earned his arrows. He lifted two fingers for emphasis. “There’s positive jing when you're attacking, and negative jing when you're retreating.”

Bumi smiled. “...and neutral jing when you do nothing!”

Aang looks over his newly lifted finger in shock. “There are three jings?”

“Well,” Bumi weighed, thinking of his own tutors patiently explaining as much as they could to an easily distracted boy-king, “technically, there are eighty-five, but let's just focus on the third. Neutral jing is the key to earthbending. It involves listening and waiting for the right moment to strike.”

Aang felt his temper wane with the blowing of the wind. “That’s why you surrendered, isn't it?”

“Yes,” Bumi answered, his expression even and his eyes complicated, “and it's why I can't leave now.”

Aang quietly turned away to hide the mixture of disappointment and sadness flickering across his face. “I guess I need to find someone else to teach me earthbending.”

Bumi quietly summons a bit of sympathy for him through his tone. “Your teacher will be someone who has mastered neutral jing. You need to find someone who waits and listens before striking.”

Aang quietly looks over at Momo as the lemur descends and perches on his shoulder. Immediately, his expression lightens up, his hand reaching to scratch behind his ear. “Hey, Momo!”

“Momo's mastered a few jings himself!” Bumi greets cheerily.

Momo gives Bumi a short screech in response.

“Goodbye, Aang,” Bumi smiles at him, his eyes watery from the sun. “I'll see you when the time is right.”

And because Bumi hates sad goodbyes, he laughs and snorts as he props his coffin against the mail chute behind him, pushing it back and ascending up to the top as Aang and Momo watch him, left behind.

Outside of the city of New Ozai, a palanquin is carried away by stoic guards as Mai and Ty Lee keep pace.

“So,” Mai said quietly, “we're tracking down your sister and uncle?”

Ty Lee turns to her, her eyes light and her dimples pronounced as she teases her. “It'll be interesting to see Azula again, won't it, Mai?”

Mai had enough practice to look away before Ty Lee could catch her expression, but the memory of an apple doused was enough to etch a small smile.

“It’s not just Azula and Iroh anymore,” Zuko answers humorlessly. He hasn't spoken since they left the city behind; his hands curled tight and folded over his lap in thought as he stared blankly into the silk of his palanquin's curtains. “We have a third target now.”

Under the soft glow of the moon, Aang slowly looks over the gutter of the new governor of Omashu's roof. On the balcony, the governor holds his arms around his wife as they morosely gaze into the city streets.

Aang silently eases his legs over the edge of the roof and floats down with Tom-Tom in his hands, scooped underneath his armpits as he is carefully set down onto his feet. Tom-Tom babbles at the sight of his parents and takes slow steps towards them, smiling when they turn around and gasp.

“Tom-Tom!” Michi picks him up and Ukano hugs them close, their eyes watery with joy and relief.

Aang sits in the shadows of the roof. He watches the family a little longer, heart moved by the homecoming, and leaves them behind with a soft breeze and a pleased smile.