Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

"To have a thought, there must be an object—
the field is empty, sloshed with gold, a hayfield thick
with sunshine. There must be an object so land
a man there, solid on his feet, on solid ground, in
a field fully flooded, enough light to see him clearly,

the light on his skin and bouncing off his skin.
He’s easy to desire since there’s not much to him,
vague and smeary in his ochers, in his umbers,
burning in the open field. Forget about his insides,
his plumbing and his furnaces, put a thing in his hand

and be done with it. No one wants to know what’s
in his head. It should be enough. To make something
beautiful should be enough. It isn’t. It should be."

- Richard Siken, Landscape with a Blur of Conquerors

“Show me the advanced set!” Zuko exclaims.

Iroh puts down his tea, gazing wistfully past the ship’s deck and to the glaciers of the South Pole. “I am tired, Prince Zuko.”

Zuko looks at his uncle with an eyebrow raised, tension filling his voice. “You just woke up, and it’s midday.”

Iroh shrugs and stays in place. “The South Pole has long nights this time of year. It is not a good place for firebenders to be.”

“Fine,” Zuko complains, stomping away from Iroh. He is walking around in chilly Fire Nation armor, but the red blush of heat climbing up his neck and face indicates that he is warmed up. Right before he turns the corner, he tears off his clothes until his forearms are bare. With his hair up in a phoenix tail and the anger evident in Zuko’s eyes, he would seem like a formidable opponent to most.

But Iroh knows better, and so does most of Zuko’s crew. Today marks the third year of his exile, and the Prince of the Fire Nation still has not found the Avatar. There is bitterness in his nephew’s heart, the kind that is preventing him from growing into his potential.

Iroh has spent the past three years conversing with members of the White Lotus, and also willing Zuko to understand that he is more honorable than Ozai could ever define.

He picks up his cup of tea again, blowing a layer of steam over its surface. When that happens, when his nephew will decide that his destiny is his alone to determine, Iroh will show him the advanced set. With the dedication Zuko has shown to basic forms in the past years, he will surely excel with the new ones.

When night falls upon them, barely hours after the sun initially climbed the sky, Iroh invites Zuko to play a game of Pai Sho. The prince fingers his pieces distractedly, his eyes constantly glancing out at the icy wasteland around them. With every shudder of the ship as it breaks against a glacier, he deflates.

Iroh doesn’t pick up the game after the sixth play, choosing instead to watch his nephew intently. Zuko doesn’t realize that they’ve reached a lull until Iroh lightly chuckles. “Pai Sho is not even that boring, nephew.”

Zuko raises one of his eyebrows—his only eyebrow—and looks at the board, haughtily disgusted. “It’s more important to make sure the Avatar isn’t hiding at the Southern Water Tribe.”

“There are only women and children at the Southern Water Tribe,” Iroh cajoles, “no men at all. And there are no benders either.” Ozai had ensured that. “Unless a miracle has passed in the last two years, there is no Avatar here. Let us leave these people in peace.”

Iroh makes a similar speech about every obscure lead Zuko chases about the Avatar, but he usually doesn’t listen. Today seems to be different, and Zuko seems resigned. He puts down another tile abruptly before leaving the game set-up without saying a word.

“Prince Zuko!” Iroh calls. “Where are you going?”

In the light of the ship’s lanterns, Iroh can see the large bag underneath Zuko’s good eye. “To change course,” he says plainly. “We will go back to the Southern Air Temple. And then around the Earth Kingdom.”

“Do you have a new lead?”

“No.”

Zuko’s face hardens before he fades into the night’s darkness and heads below deck.

After he tells the helmsman to reverse direction, Zuko goes back to his room. He eyes the pile of maps in its corner, even going as far as to pick up a scroll, but then lets the papyrus fall through his fingers. He is suddenly exhausted, though he hadn’t done anything besides his ordinary training today.

He settles onto the carpet on his floor, facing a dark window, and then decides to meditate. He closes his eyes and folds his knees together, trying to control his breathing using the method Uncle had taught him. He imagines his mother’s voice, telling him to breathe in and out, and then in again—the way she had comforted him when his anger had overwhelmed him and his firebending was still too weak to be its outlet.

That doesn’t work, either. He gets up again and then sits at his desk, meaning to take care of his hair. When he looks up in the mirror, he wants to recoil in disgust. He doesn’t like looking at himself and the scar that marks him, shaped like a comet—or a handprint—across his skin. It has taken away the structure of his face, left him a misshapen, hideous monster, an exiled prince. When he lifts his hand over it, he can almost picture what he would look like without it—maybe a handsome teenager, the Crown Prince.

His bare scalp and thick phoenix-tail might also be eyesores, but incomparable ones. Zuko ignores the hideous exile in his mirror and instead reaches for the hair-oil and brush in his drawer, taking it to his ponytail and smoothing through the tangles it has accumulated. It is full of snarls from his past day of violent katas and keeping vigil, staring at blinding white glaciers illuminated by the southern sun.

When he finishes, he decides to compromise on productivity and get ready for bed. The terrible feeling in his chest, as though his heart is a stone sitting within him, doesn’t go away as he extinguishes his lamp and lies down in silence.

Zuko gets up a minute later and turns to his side on his bed, letting his head fall into his hands. After a moment, he reaches for the drawer at his side.

A flame bursts into life at the tip of his index finger as his left hand reaches for the well-worn stack of paper that resides within the drawer. He breathes erratically as he lets his fire illuminate the first picture.

It is a small replica of the family he used to have before—before Ba Sing Se, before Lu Ten died and Uncle returned home, destroyed. Azula has a dark curl to her mouth and Ozai looks cold through the page, his gaze pure steel. Ursa has her hand on Zuko’s shoulder and a small smile on her lips. The painting doesn’t capture the wrinkles at the corner of her eyes or the texture of her skin, but Zuko can feel her ghost behind him.

When his gaze falls to his own childish smile, he feels disgusted again. The weak boy in the picture has an unmarred face and doesn’t know horror. He thinks he will grow up to be a Fire Nation general and bring honor to his people.

Zuko had once dreamed of commanding a ship and spreading the spirit of the Fire Nation across the seas of the world, and here he is. His uncle’s ward, traveling across the world to search for a lost cause in order to regain his honor. He’s pitiful.

He tosses the picture back on his table and then places his head in both his hands and chokes. Maybe he’s holding in tears, or maybe what’s stuck in his throat is a kind of anger. Something in him had broken today, when he’d sat and played Pai Sho with his uncle and seen his ship float across the glaciers of the South Pole. It had been in the reflection of the sun on the glaciers, and then the startling lights that roll across the sky every time the sun falls here. The first time Zuko had been to the south, two and a half years ago, he’d asked Uncle if they were a sign of the Avatar. Iroh had preached something poetic about the Spirit World, but Zuko’s spirit had still been left stranded.

The lights across the sky are meaningless, and they are still the closest Zuko has ever gotten to finding the Avatar. He has traced the coasts of the Earth Kingdom twice and been to every single Air Temple. He has meandered both the North and South Pole. The only place he has not been more than twice in the past three years has been the Fire Nation. He has not returned to his birthright since he was banished. He will not go back without his honor.

Zuko gets up and pounds his fists together, then lights one hand and grabs the picture again. He glares at Ozai, the harsh lines of his face and the ambition of a thousand Fire Lords visible on his face. For the first time, he allows himself to think that his father looks truly terrible, like the monster that is half Zuko’s own face in the mirror.

His father is terrible, and he had sent Zuko to all the corners of the world—for what reason? For no reason, Zuko knows now. Slowly, in the past few months, he has been losing momentum. He has kept up with his training, but he is barely enthusiastic to question the locals of every Earth Kingdom village he comes across on what they know of the Avatar. He has met them before, all of them, and asked the same question. The answer is always a variation of the same thing: either a resounding denial or a Spirit World myth.

His father does not want him back.

Zuko exhales deeply as his breath catches, trying to control the jolt of emotion that is thudding through him like lightning. It doesn’t work, because he isn’t strong enough yet. A spark flies from his left fist and lands on the painting, right above Ozai’s head.

Zuko should push the spark away or blow out the small fire that’s started on the only memory he has left of his family, but he doesn’t. The flame licks slowly across the paper, running lengthwise down across the left side of Ozai’s face, and then Azula’s. When it comes close to touching Ursa, he finally uses his breath to extinguish it.

He is left with a familiar scent of ash in his space and a portrait of his mother and himself. It is lopsided and the corners are burned-black, but it is just the two of them.

Maybe that was petulant and childish. How can you justify a duel with a child? Zuko thinks he might deserve a little bit of that immaturity. He has not been a child since he was thirteen and fought his father by getting on his knees.

He gets up to put the portrait back in his drawer and then lies down in bed again. Sleep comes easy, now.

They are at the Southern Air Temple a week later. Zuko started his journey at the Western Air Temple, and now he is going to end a part of it here.

He has not told Uncle, but he is no longer going to look for the Avatar. Not the way he was. Three years have taught him that his task is impossible. The Avatar is either isolated in hiding, a newborn in some invisible place, or the cycle has been broken. Regardless, Agni does not want Zuko to find him. Maybe Zuko will keep searching in his own way, but no longer to appease his father and regain his honor.

He can look to regain his honor in other ways. He is not sure exactly how yet, but he will. He will be a leader, a paragon of the values of Agni. He will earn his crown once again. Maybe he will have to go through his father to do that.

Hopefully he will not have to. The childish emotion in his heart is debating the value of going back to the Fire Nation and begging forgiveness, of learning all of Iroh’s skills and then impressing Ozai with his firebending prowess. But Zuko’s brain knows that is not going to work. The last time he had begged to his father he had ended up in an infirmary and then in exile. And he will simply never be as powerful as Azula.

He will have to find another way.

Zuko had climbed the winding stairs of the Southern Air Temple with youth in his step. His uncle had followed him, albeit at a much slower pace. He sits for almost half an hour before Iroh catches up to him, sitting in an alcove.

Iroh clambers over to the small bench Zuko is sitting on, and they stay together in silence for a while. It’s uncharacteristic—usually Zuko is all blustering firebending and strong words, but he’s changed. Iroh must sense it.

“Are you tired, Prince Zuko?” he asks. “Normally you are already searching for the Avatar.”

“I’ve searched everywhere here,” Zuko says plainly. Iroh looks confused.

“We only just arrived.”

Zuko groans. “I mean before. I’ve searched everywhere here. I know he isn’t here.”

“I see,” Iroh leans back. “So, what next?”

Zuko is still in place, but his back moves to be ramrod straight and he moves to briefly scratch his neck. It takes a moment before he admits it. “I don’t know.”

He’s confused often, but he rarely admits those weaknesses. But for once, he wants to bare his heart to the only person who has ever really been there for him. Zuko scratches his neck once more before turning to Iroh, who is looking at him with something like pride in his eyes.

“It’s so unfair,” Zuko chokes out after another moment under his uncle’s forgiving gaze. Then: “I want to go home.”

Uncle prefers to embrace, but at this moment he settles for holding Zuko’s forearm tentatively. Zuko hasn’t been fond of physical touch for a while. The last intimate touch he felt ruined him. “I am sorry, Prince Zuko.”

“What do I do, Uncle?”

Iroh looks at him carefully, like he’s judging the honesty in Zuko’s eyes.

“You learn the advanced set.”

Zuko’s eyebrow lowers. “What?”

Iroh lets go of his nephew’s arm and nods, sagely. “I will teach you the advanced set, now. You are ready. And after, we will go to Omashu.”

“Omashu?” Zuko questions. Despite his travels, he has never truly entered the legendary Earth Kingdom city. It’s far inland, and though he is exiled he is still the Fire Lord’s son. No Earth Kingdom citizens want anything to with him. To them, he is war and violence. “We won’t be welcome there.”

“I am old friends with King Bumi,” Iroh admits. “We keep up a correspondence.”

Zuko frowns. “You’re friends with an Earth Kingdom king? After . . .”

He doesn’t want to mention the siege of Ba Sing Se, but it’s in his eyes. Iroh looks downtrodden, and Zuko feels guilty for reminding his uncle of Lu Ten’s death. “I have grown since Ba Sing Se,” he says lowly. Before Zuko can interject again, he continues. “In Omashu, we can talk more about what to do next.”

Zuko is just confused. “I want to go home,” he repeats, like he’d said earlier. “I’m confused, Uncle.”

Iroh slowly gets up, and after a moment Zuko follows. They turn to look at each other, and Iroh almost raises a hand to Zuko’s face before dropping it again. Nobody has touched Zuko’s face in three years. “You will go home,” Iroh says. Then he looks right into Zuko’s eyes as he states a truth: “With or without the Avatar, you will go home.”

When Iroh said they would go to Omashu, Zuko had imagined they would travel there the week or month after their stop at the Southern Air Temple.

But now, Iroh insists that Zuko must be a master of both firebending and politics before they reach the inland city. He is taught the advanced set, and also the army tactics he would have gone back to school for had he stayed in the Caldera. Zuko is not Azula, so it takes him months before he has better control over the forms and katas Iroh teaches him. If he hadn’t been meticulously practicing his basics for three years prior on the ship, it would probably take him even more time to learn.

Even so, it takes a year for Zuko to improve his forms and finish his education. In this time, the ship rounds the Earth Kingdom once more. But now, the exiled Fire Prince isn’t searching for a missing, mysterious Avatar. Instead, he is learning.

They sail through riotous storms in the east that leave them almost stranded with supplies dwindling. When they are down to their last rations and Zuko wants to climb one of the mountains and ask the storm’s lightning to strike him, hurt him like his own father did, Iroh teaches him leadership. He portions out the rations and indulges the crew when they pull into a remote town, and then the tired men begin to look at him with newfound respect.

When given the choice to sail Chameleon Bay or go to the Eastern Air Temple, Zuko chooses adventure in the calm seas. Along the way, Iroh narrates old Earth Kingdom stories to him, and his perspective shifts. He had thought the Earth Kingdom was backwards and ridiculous, but he starts to grow a grudging respect for these hardy people that refuse to give up, even in the face of the Fire Nation’s endless siege. Maybe he could learn something himself, from their staunch belief in their own honor and culture.

The only crowded sea they cross is at the beginning of Full Moon Bay. The ship stays hidden as to not alarm the many Earth Kingdom refugees that are trickling towards a ferry waystation. Many are roughened, skinny, and ultimately sad. They carry their life’s belongings in sacks hefted behind their necks. They are women, children, and elders, and seem as though they are right about to fall over. The sight makes Zuko want to throw up. He does, in his own cabin, the night after he first sees the view.

The next morning, Iroh looks at his nephew sadly as he stands at the ship’s hull, tracking the migrating population with his eyes. “There are so many of them,” Zuko whispers. He has given up on wearing his armor all the time, and is now dressed in black garments fitting to the Earth Kingdom’s dry weather. With his hair growing in once again, he would look like any normal colony teenager if there wasn’t a comet-shaped scar across his face. “Even more than in the Caldera.”

He didn’t go out into the city much when he still lived in the palace, but Zuko remembers a few late nights he had snuck out of his window and wandered the streets around his home. He was never as good a bender as Azula and always lacking in his Fire Nation studies, but his mother and uncle had ensured he was skilled with his swords. While firebending requires quick and decisive feet, he learned stealth and secrecy with Master Piandao when he balanced dual blades.

At the time he had bled easily into the crowd, easily passing off as yet another abandoned child whose father had been lost at war, or had left his distraught family at home when he’d been recruited to the Earth Kingdom efforts. The people of the Caldera had not been as skinny or distraught as these Earth Kingdom citizens, but they had not been happy. The price of rice in the Fire Nation was always going up and boys were getting recruited to a faraway war effort at younger ages every year.

The people migrating to Ba Sing Se are the enemies of Zuko’s people—at least, they are supposed to be. But looking on at them, Zuko just feels deep sympathy and responsibility. It is his family’s war that has driven them out of their homes and to a last place of refuge, and there is a ball of guilt sinking to his stomach as he cannot face away from them.

Iroh is silent for another moment before carefully reaching out for his nephew’s shoulder. “They will be safe in Ba Sing Se.”

The words are well-meaning, but they twist the knife of remorse stuck in Zuko’s stomach. “Safe from us,” he says quietly, before turning to his uncle accusatorily. “Safe from you! They can go to Ba Sing Se now because you aren’t invading it. And does that really matter, if they are fleeing the Fire Nation too?”

Zuko slaps Iroh’s hand off his shoulder and glares more, but the old man does not even try to argue with him. Instead he looks at the people with remorse, and sighs sadly. “I do not agree with your father’s war, Prince Zuko.”

“Really?” Zuko roars, his voice raising in teen anger. “You spent years leading the Siege of Ba Sing Se! Don’t tell me you don’t agree with my father.” And really, that is the fundamental issue here, even beyond the endless lines of Earth Kingdom refugees. Like Zuko, they are victims of the Fire Nation and of Fire Lord Ozai. Iroh has stood by Zuko’s side with all the patience in the world, but he is no saint and he is no victim.

But now, his uncle looks at him mournfully and Zuko remembers another detail. “I have made many mistakes,” he says. “This endless siege led to my son’s death, and I left my post because I grew disenchanted with the goals of the Fire Nation. You know loss, my nephew,” Iroh faces the sea with his mouth drawn. “I have learned, and so have all these people. That is why I no longer believe in this war.”

Before Zuko can put words into his mouth again, Iroh has disappeared to his rooms, surprisingly spry for his age. The prince exile of the Fire Nation stares at the ferry waystation for a few more hours before disappearing into his rooms. He doesn’t come back until after his vessel is at the end of Full Moon Bay.

Then, while practicing his forms, his crew runs into a giant sea serpent at the Serpent’s Pass. Zuko knows Iroh will try to teach him a lesson here, but some part of him still resents his uncle for having a choice in all this.

His crew breaks out their war-grade military cannons and ask permission to shoot the creature. Zuko thinks of the tactics in his library of war-books and tells them to put their artillery away. They stock up on necessities at a nearby town before waiting for a storm to rise, and then crossing the pass. The serpent is preoccupied with raging waters and ignores the steel ship sailing through its domain. It isn’t what most of the dressed-up military men on his ship would have expected him to do, but in the next weeks they constantly laud Zuko’s decision.

With slaps on the back and hearty offers of flasks, Zuko is turning into a people’s leader, and also a man. The hole in his heart where his honor felt missing for so long is filled with something else he can’t name, and he decides to not get overconfident.

He keeps up his regimen, practicing all of Uncle’s sets painstakingly. He meditates until he can no longer sit upright. He reads his old Fire Nation Academy textbooks until he has memorized them enough to make up for his missed schooling, and then he takes up the Earth Kingdom history books that his uncle not-so-subtly leaves on his bed.

When he feels like indulging himself, he secretly devours his mother’s old romance stash, the novels and plays he took with him when he first left the palace three years ago. He hadn’t touched her things in ages, but the terrible centuries-old screenplays she loved put a smile on his face.

Near the top of the world, they have to decide whether to go to the Northern Water Tribe and then the Western Air Temple, or take a shorter route through the Earth Kingdom. Iroh was the one who had planned out this journey with the end goal of landing them in Omashu. Zuko isn’t sure what’s in Omashu, with its strange, old king and large crystals, but he’s started to dream about Omashu. Like finding the Avatar used to be, it is now the end of this quest he has launched himself on—though surely, Iroh likely thinks this journey is more important than his vague destination.

Iroh gives him silent notice to continue south. They briefly port at a Fire Nation resort that makes Zuko feel nostalgic for a life he could have lived. He was the Crown Prince after Lu Ten’s death, but for most of his formative years he was not in line for the throne. He would have spent his life as one of his cousin’s generals in the Earth Kingdom, maybe even in a place like this.

It’s tempting to stay in this slice of home and the people are almost welcoming. They know of his banishment but they do not think worse of him for it. His crew tells him the rumors after they embark on a spa trip for a day—Prince Zuko was banished for speaking up to the Fire Lord during a war meeting, they say. Maybe the prince does not want a war. It is at this village that Zuko starts to think that most people do not want war and do not think him dishonored for being burned by his father. Lieutenant Jee is a little too drunk when he lets it slip the night after they leave. The Fire Lord may have the might of Agni, he says to the crew assembled together, but even Agni never hurt his son.

The real test of this year of growth happens at the Pohuai Stronghold. Zuko might not be very welcomed at Fire Nation military fortresses, but former Dragon of the West and Crown Prince Iroh is. The two of them have tea with Colonel Shinu.

More than a social visit, Zuko feels like this is a test set by his uncle. Of course, Iroh would never actually punish Zuko, but he is waiting to see if Zuko is ready for something. What this is, Zuko is truly uncertain of. And he is impatient to find out, but anger goes nowhere with his uncle. So he reads over his etiquette books again and dreams of lessons with tutors before he finds himself sitting in Shinu’s austere tea room.

The man looks like every general Zuko has ever seen in his father’s war room, with a curling moustache and wrinkled visage. “Prince Zuko,” he bows. An extra honorific isn’t there, Crown Prince Zuko, but Zuko exhales the heat of his anger quietly.

The conversation starts terse and after introductions, is just between Iroh and Shinu. At least, at first. After the first half an hour of descriptions of the weather around the world, Iroh starts to include Zuko in the conversation again. Colonel Shinu uses this to introduce the intrusive questions he had probably not wanted to ask his erstwhile superior.

“Have you planned a trip back to the Fire Nation?”

“Not yet,” Zuko says, his voice clipped. He takes a sip of his tea and wants to throw it up. He thinks he will never complain about Uncle Iroh’s leaf water again.

“Ah, right,” Shinu relaxes back on his cushions. “You cannot go back until you have completed a task, correct? I heard those were the terms you were given by your father,” he shifts his eyes warily to Iroh. “To say, our respectable Fire Lord.”

Suddenly, Zuko understands what his test is all too clearly. Maybe he has been anticipating this moment in his head for months now, because the words slip through his lips all too easily. “I was meant to capture the Avatar,” he tells the Colonel, letting a hint of confidence sneak through him, a smirk on his lips. “An impractical task, as you would guess.”

He drinks from the cup of tea again, focusing on choking down the unseemly liquid rather than the confused look on Shinu’s face. The man seems taken unaware, his eyes flitting briefly to Iroh. “So you are not traveling to capture the Avatar, then, Prince Zuko?”

“No,” Zuko shrugs.

Shinu seems to be struggling to form words as his young, royal guest looks at him with a piercing gold scar. One of the eyes is covered in burned red scarring, and he knows its origins well. “What then?”

“I may not be in the Caldera, but I am still the Crown Prince. I’m taking care to be ready for my future responsibilities, and understanding the true scope of my nation,” Zuko says with more self-assurance than he really has. And then with a nod, the Fire Nation’s disgraced royal son abruptly rises. “I’m sure you understand, Colonel Shinu, as such a devout servant of our nation. Thank you for your hospitality. My uncle and I will be taking your leave now.”

He lets the door thud behind him and doesn’t think twice of the Yuyan archers he knows Shinu has hidden in the trees on his way back to his ship. The man is not stupid enough to kill a prince, even a disgraced one.

From then on, it should be smooth sailing south. When he trains that morning, his firebending is stronger than usual. Later, Iroh mentions that it is the day of Sozin’s Comet and also looks at the sky with relief.

One day the crew asks Zuko where the ship will stop next for major repairs. It will need to be grounded for weeks, and Zuko is hesitant to ask his uncle what that should be. He’s not ready for the tearful look of approval on Iroh’s face when he meets his uncle in his quarters the next morning.

“We will set sail for Omashu,” Iroh breathes into life again. Then he clasps Zuko’s shoulder with a smile. “I am proud of you, my son. I am proud of you for seeing your own worth.”

Suddenly Zuko is confused and he doesn’t know what to say. “What do you mean, Uncle? I don’t get it,” he’s kind of exasperated. “What really changed?”

He now knows his honor is worth more than finding the Avatar. That is meaningful. But then what is it worth?

He knows the answer in his heart, he thinks. It is the same answer he had started to think of when he burned his family portrait at the South Pole almost a year ago. Zuko is seventeen-years-old. He is almost an adult, by the standards of his homeland. He has not been home in four years and he wants to go home, but he cannot go home abiding by the criteria his father had set.

He will never go home according to the criteria his father had set. His father had given Zuko a lifelong scar and a lifelong banishment, and had promised his son would never sit on the Fire Nation throne. Perhaps it was kind for him to face only exile rather than death.

But Zuko knows his country and knows his people and now he knows this war. He has seen it across the Earth Kingdom and he disagrees with a lot of what he had been taught growing up. The Earth Kingdom and even the Water Tribes are not primitive peoples. There had been a living, breathing, society in the Air Temples that should not have ended. These cultures have value that is equal to the Fire Nation. His father is wrong to want to destroy it.

His father is wrong. And his father is terrible. That is the crux of this matter, Zuko is realizing. How do you justify a duel with a child? You don’t. And you don’t justify a war with the world at the price of your family and your people.

Zuko looks at his uncle in front of him, the uncle that calls him a son, and he makes a decision because he has reached an understanding. Because now he knows what his uncle has silently been attempting to tell him for years.

Iroh is watching Zuko like he can see the thoughts processing in his nephew’s mind. “You know,” he says. Then he admits the truth. “King Bumi is a protected contact of the White Lotus, Zuko. We are a group of masters who want to end the war, one way or the other. And you are one way to win this war,” Iroh says plainly. “Maybe even the most important tile.”

Iroh’s gold eyes host a silent question. Are you ready? Zuko knows that if he says he isn’t, they will probably cycle the world again. And then they will keep cycling the world for the rest of his life. He will never be able to go home because he will never find the dead man Avatar and he will always be a villain to the other side of the war. He knows what he has to do.

The question is about if he is ready to do it. Zuko reaches out for his uncle’s hand and squeezes it, ignoring how the sentimental gesture makes him shudder. He tries to look at Iroh earnestly and tell the truth. “Then I’m ready,” he says.

He leaves the cabin and tells the helmsman to set an immediate course for Omashu. And then he goes to the deck to practice his forms. Before they reach port, he will become a firebending master.  

Chapter Text

"As life replayed, we heard a voice proclaim
'Lay your weapons down
They're calling off the war
On account of losing track
Of what we're fighting for'"

- Sleeping at Last, Mars

Omashu is not what Zuko expects. He’s read about it in the books Iroh has given him, but he’s still not ready for the city’s odd delivery system and ingenious architecture. It’s organized chaos, exactly the opposite of the high-functioning Fire Nation towns he’d traveled around when he was younger.

But if the city is strange, King Bumi is stranger. Zuko and Iroh leave their crew at a port town before renting ostrich-horses and carefully making their way a gate surrounded by earthbenders. Zuko’s hood is tight around his face even in suffocating weather, hiding the scar that marks him as undisputedly Fire Nation. He’s worried their entire journey, afraid someone will notice him and the entire Earth Kingdom will attack him, and even more so when the guards at Omashu’s entrance ask for identification.

But his stress ends up being for naught when Iroh produces a Pai Sho tile from his pocket and the earthbender in charge immediately allows them to enter the city, directing them to the king’s residence.

“What did you show him?” Zuko asks as they tread towards King Bumi’s palace. At first, the rocks and chutes extending out haphazardly in all directions from him had been incredibly disorienting, but now he’s finding them fascinating. He imagines that the many architects and engineers of the Fire Palace would be amazed by the system. Once again, he scoffs at how he’d been raised to think, that the Earth Kingdom was so much lesser than the Fire Nation in any way. This kind of prowess can only be dreamed of in the Fire Nation.

Iroh shows Zuko the tile. It’s shaped like the ordinary ones from his Pai Sho set, but there is a flower carved into it, bright white. “This is the sign of the White Lotus, Prince Zuko.”

He recalls what his uncle had told him earlier. “The group of masters you’re a part of?”

“Yes,” Iroh confirms. “This is the signal we use to identify each other.”

They walk for another five minutes before Zuko asks another question. “When did you meet King Bumi?”

Iroh frowns, uncharacteristically. “I am sure you remember the time between my son’s death and my return to the palace.”

Zuko can. There had been two years between his mother’s disappearance and his uncle’s return to Caldera City. Iroh had abdicated the throne and could no longer challenge Ozai for it, so Ozai had accepted his brother’s excuse of grief for his absence. He was no threat.

“Yes.”

“In that time, I explored the world myself, and I learned of the White Lotus. I met King Bumi and several other masters who shared the goal I found myself pursuing,” a pause, and then Iroh states what that is. “They all seek an end to this violence.”

Zuko doesn’t ask for more details, because he knows what he will be told—that it will be all explained in front of King Bumi. So he stays quiet and looks at the dusty Earth Kingdom skies above him, keeping pace with his uncle. He is ready to get to the end of his journey. He thinks of how nice it is to finally have a tangible destination in mind.

It is Bumi himself who greets both of them at the entrance to the palace. His face, covered in wrinkles and saggy, dark spots, makes Zuko doubt how much help he will be. Uncle Iroh is old, but Bumi is at least twice his age.

This first impression is only further emphasized when the old King of Omashu leans forward to embrace Iroh, and then turns to Zuko with a skeptical expression. “So this is your nephew,” he speaks. “The Crown Prince of the Fire Nation.”

In Bumi’s mouth, the title doesn’t sound honorable or a sign of respect. It sounds like a threat, and Bumi does not look at all happy to see Zuko, not like he was to see Iroh. He is more so resigned, and suddenly Zuko feels deeply uncomfortable.

“King Bumi,” Zuko bows, not sure how else to respond.

“Well,” Iroh says, “wouldn’t you treat us to some tea?”

That is how Zuko ends up with his uncle and a barmy old king, sitting at a large dining table in a room eerily lit with strange Earth Kingdom minerals. He is excluded from their conversation, laced in riddles and old-man speak as it is, and all he really can think about is how this is not what he expected.

What did he expect? He’s uncertain of that as well. Maybe he had expected to be welcomed, or maybe that was just really wishful thinking on his part. It’s unlikely that there is any place in the world the disgraced son of the Fire Lord would be welcome in right now. Zuko knows that at heart, and that is why jealousy clouds his vision when he sees how easily his uncle trades rapport with the King of Omashu.

His uncle had been a general and led a years-long siege of the largest city in the Earth Kingdom, and he had almost broken down its walls. And during that siege thousands of people had died, Earth Kingdom citizens and Fire Nation soldiers alike. And yes, Iroh had suffered the death of his son, but so had thousands of mothers and fathers before he had lost Lu Ten.

All this, Zuko thinks, for his uncle to have found forgiveness from elemental masters all around the world because he had desired to repent for his actions. Why was it so easy for Iroh to find forgiveness and belonging?

Why is it so hard for him?

Zuko isn’t thirsty, but he takes small bites of the small Earth Kingdom pastries placed in front of him, listening detachedly at the discussion taking place to his side. In such a large room, conversation carries.

“Our friends up in the North are keeping their promise,” Bumi says. “Even the Southern Water Tribe has sent all of its remaining ships to the Eastern Earth Kingdom, around Chameleon Bay. Chief Hakoda has told me he might come stop by here when he returns to visit the people of the swamp.”

“Swampbenders?” Iroh is thoughtful. “An interesting addition, indeed.”

“I hope they will listen to Hakoda. Surely, Ozai would not be prepared for their waterbending techniques.” Then Bumi looks at Iroh and they laugh as if sharing a joke Zuko couldn’t dream to understand. “Or yours, my friend.”

The sound pushes Zuko’s exasperation past its boiling point, and his tea as well. It bubbles and somehow his teacup shatters when he lifts it up to his mouth. Its shards aren’t particularly sharp, and he isn’t hurt, but he’s certainly got the attention of both older men. Iroh looks content as usual, but Bumi is judgmental.

Silence clouds the air, and Zuko shrugs as he puts down the intact handle of the teacup and looks at the dark stain on the green tablecloth in front of him. “Sorry,” he says.

“I’m sure it is no problem, Prince Zuko,” Iroh says after a moment, standing up. Zuko follows, but Iroh gestures for him to sit with a smile. “I will retire now, nephew. I would request you stay and have a conversation with King Bumi.”

“But Uncle—” he starts desperately, only for Iroh to turn to King Bumi, who bows his head, a gesture of respect.

“We will talk later, old friend. The guards will take you to your room. Please take your rest.”

And then Iroh is gone, the stone door to the dining room closing behind him with a loud sound that shakes the ground under Zuko’s feet. He is now alone with the Earthbender King of Omashu in a room filled with a lot of rocks and not enough oxygen for fire to really burn. He almost feels like he is suffocating right now.

Bumi changes seats to the left until he is seated across from Zuko and the fast-drying tea stain on his tablecloth. His green eyes bore into the Fire Prince and he lays his wizened palms on the table. “Crown Prince Zuko,” he says again in that same tone of voice, the one that sounds unhappy with this situation and almost mocking. “I will have to admit you were not what I expected from your uncle, or what I had hoped for.”

Zuko’s heart drops in his chest and he hides the shudder in his breath, readily meeting Bumi’s gaze with resilience. “King Bumi, I’m not sure what you mean. We’ve barely conversed.”

He is suddenly very aware of the rasp of his voice and the scar across of his face. Zuko isn’t often conscious of his scar because he is usually with his crew, who stopped thinking twice of it a while ago. But whenever he goes to new towns and sees new people, it is constantly at the forefront of his mind. He is clearly a firebender who has let another firebender get too close to him and he feels that makes him seem weak. But he can’t afford to seem weak right now, so he gathers all his courage and thinks that he is still a prince, that he wants to make his own destiny, that he wants to go home and Iroh is sure that listening to senile Bumi is the best way to do that. Zuko is jealous of his uncle but he trusts the old man wants him to go home.

Bumi earthbends a gem from the side of the wall and captures it in his hands, maybe a show of power that Zuko ignores. “You are not like your uncle, who wishes to repent for his actions. All of the White Lotus knows Iroh’s actions stem from a place of regret and understanding of the greater good. Do you share this understanding?”

It’s about the war. Zuko knows it is always about the war. “I’ve learned the war is wrong. I’ve seen its destruction in the Air Temples, in the Water Tribes, and all across the Earth Kingdom. I know what my father taught me for years about the Fire Nation was wrong.”

“And what was that?”

Zuko leans back, not forgoing eye contact. “That the Fire Nation is inherently better than any other nation, and that fire itself is a superior element. That the Air Nomads were archaic people who worshipped demons, and that the Water Tribes are wastelands full of people with no will to progress, that the Earth Kingdom’s people are worthless and earthbending is pointless. That this war has any purpose. It doesn’t. Should I go on?”

“No,” Bumi says. “It’s interesting, and you are correct. I trust that you have reason to want to end the war, Prince Zuko. My worry is that your inherent motivation is not pure. You have a lot to gain from winning a war against your father. And you are not like your uncle. What guarantee do you have you will not turn into another version of Fire Lord Ozai?”

Zuko tries his best to stay calm, willing the fire inside of him to stay settled as he speaks measuredly. “Everything I just told you,” he responds. “I know how my father thinks. He is fully convinced that Agni has given him a right to rule the world, and to impress our culture and our traditions amongst all the people of the world. He hasn’t seen what I have, and he doesn’t understand what I have.”

“Those are pretty words. You have not stepped back from a Siege of Ba Sing Se or fed army secrets to the White Lotus like your uncle has. How do we know you are different?”

Zuko feels cheated, by his uncle and by King Bumi. He didn’t sign up for an interrogation and he searches his mind for how to appease Bumi and pass this milestone.

“I can prove it,” he says. “If you showed me your people I could explain to them how the Fire Nation thinks and I know Ozai’s faults and his weaknesses.”

“So does Iroh.”

He tried to hard not to, but he’s losing patience. “I am not my uncle. I am not going to be my uncle for you.”

“What can you do for us?”

“Why did my uncle bring me here?” Zuko asks between his teeth. “He told me you all thought I could be crucial to a war effort. That I could do something, change something! You’ve had my uncle on your side for years and nothing has changed.”

Bumi peers at him intently, still eerily patient. “What do you expect the White Lotus wants from you, Prince Zuko?”

For a few, precious moments, Zuko’s thoughts wind around his head until he reaches a final conclusion. “You want me to be a figurehead. And I’ll do it.” I’ll do anything, anything to go back home.

“You will go against your father because you want his throne. That is the only reason,” Bumi tries to sum up.

Zuko sneers and points to the side of his face that is unrecognizable, that had been burned and mutilated by Fire Lord Ozai’s hand.

“I might not have a Siege of Ba Sing Se to repent for, but I have this that my own father gave me. Why would I want to emulate him?” Bumi opens his mouth, but Zuko keeps talking. “I have nothing to apologize for because I have done nothing wrong. I spoke up to my father, defending the slaughter of our own soldiers in Ba Sing Se, the first war meeting I ever stepped foot in. My uncle, who is on your side, sat through thousands of those meetings before he changed his mind years into a war that has killed thousands! I have never agreed with my father like my uncle has, and he can’t be your figurehead. I’m young and I have every reason to hate my father. Fire Nation citizens might even listen to me. You need me,” he speaks this realization into existence.

Bumi throws the crystal he’s been playing with back against the wall, propelled with the force of earthbending. The room shakes with that force and suddenly rocks are climbing up across the floor and lining the handles of the chair Zuko is sitting in. The crystals are not touching him but they have effectively sequestered him into his seat.

“Am I wrong?” he refuses to cower, eyes glaring back into Bumi’s. His uncle has often remarked on Zuko’s brashness and sometimes refusal to shut up. It didn’t treat him well, particularly when he spoke up in that war meeting. But Zuko thinks he would rather be angry and act on his feelings rather than be endlessly passive. He wants to go back to the Fire Nation and he thinks he could be a good Fire Lord. His uncle might be too good to thirst for power, but Zuko isn’t.

“You’re obvious about your intentions.”

“You can know what I want,” Zuko shrugs. “That doesn’t stop me from being what could change the war.”

“Your opinion of yourself is rather high, Prince Zuko. I would hope you could live up to those expectations.”

“I’ll do it,” Zuko hides his desperation. “Anything you want me to do, or say, I’ll do it. Make me a figurehead and I will do anything you want as long as you send me back home.”

“To a throne,” Bumi finishes his sentence.

Zuko laughs weakly and suddenly feels very, very seventeen, facing a man a hundred years his elder. “As a consolation prize. I can swear that I will never be my father. I know his cruelty like every other citizen of the world.”

“What about honor?” Bumi then questions. Zuko wonders how despite his own endless bluster and loud, brash claims, the earthbender who has barely moved still has the upper hand in this situation. Maybe Bumi doesn’t understand the lengths to which Zuko will go, because he has literally nothing to lose anymore.

“Honorable fathers don’t send their sons on hopeless quests for a dead Avatar. It was never a fair task or fair exile,” Zuko admits, “it took me a lot of travel to realize that.”

Bumi twists his fingers and the crystals surrounding Zuko collapse onto the floor and then fall back to the wall. He seems morose. “I was friends with the last Avatar,” he reminisces. “The airbender Aang.”

Zuko doesn’t know what to say, so he remains quiet and breathes out for the first time in minutes. Now that the mood has sobered, he realizes just how tense he had been. “Then I’m sorry for your loss.”

Bumi raises one of his white eyebrows. “They never found his body.”

Zuko shrugs. “There’s no trace of him anywhere on the planet. There’s no Avatar who can come save the day for the White Lotus.”

“No,” Bumi peers at the young firebender in front of him regretfully. “There is no Avatar. There is only you.”

The prince exile of the Fire Nation with a scarred face and nothing to lose but his own head. “I’ll go find my room.”

Something has changed by the next meal Zuko takes with Iroh and Bumi. His uncle looks at him with pride Zuko feels he should retract. Bumi looks at him with resigned acceptance that the hotheaded son of the Fire Lord is currently the world’s greatest hope.

Zuko is tired of being a disappointment, so he mostly tries to ignore Bumi’s expression to focus on his uncle. “You must tour the city of Omashu, nephew. It is beautiful, and how long has it been since you have been in a city this large?”

Too long. “I’m not sure that’s a great idea, Uncle.” He points to his face before choking down the flavorless, mild Earth Kingdom porridge in front of him. “I’m obviously Fire Nation.” And it’s not just the scar. From his straight, long black hair to his pale coloring, sharp features and golden eyes, Zuko looks every bit a firebender.

Bumi coughs to get their attention, and the sound is concerning. Zuko turns his head to the white-haired king and ruminates once again on how old the man is—the same age that the Avatar would now be, had he not disappeared a hundred years ago. But he is still a prolific bender—that much can be observed simply from the strength emanating from his creaky bones.

“I’m afraid that we should spend the day advising Prince Zuko, Iroh. Perhaps if we have time later tonight, you two could go into the city and look around.”

“Oh!” Iroh seems pleased with Zuko. “Your conversation yesterday must have been fruitful.”

“Yes,” Bumi gives them both a pained smile that shifts into a conniving curve of his old mouth. “And time is of the essence, if Prince Zuko is to go north in time to introduce himself to our allies.”

“Ah, he will go to the Northern Water Tribe,” Iroh nods. “Tell me, King Bumi. Do you intend to go to the wedding?”

“Wedding?” Zuko asks.

“Princess Yue and her betrothed are engaged to be married next month. It is a good time to show your good faith to the Northern Water Tribe. There is a chance Chief Hakoda of the Southern Water Tribe will also be there.”

Despite having been up to the North Pole many times, Zuko has never actually been to Agna Qel’a, its capital. The Northern Water Tribe’s answer to the Fire Nation aggression that destroyed the South Pole was isolationism. It is impossible to get in and out of its main fortress, and hard to find waterbenders in any other place.

Despite hating waterbenders as much as earth and airbenders, the Fire Lord had a grudging respect for the element that was opposite fire and somewhat closer to its equal—not in its combative use, but because it could be used to heal. In years past, waterbenders from the Southern Water Tribe had been captured and brought to the Caldera to serve as healers for the Fire Nation Royal Family, but the last one had died before Zuko was born. Ozai had lamented that there were no healers around for Ursa’s pressing, unlucky pregnancy with her firstborn.

“Will you be attending?” Iroh asks Bumi. He shakes his head.

“I was asked to come by Pakku, but I cannot leave my city without protection. Kuei, of course, cannot either. Aside from a few smaller kings in the north of the Earth Kingdom, there won’t be many foreign attendees.”

“But us,” Zuko says.

Bumi acquiesces. “I have sent a letter to Pakku this morning. Your ship will be allowed into the Northern Water Tribe. The struggle will be once you meet Chief Arnook and Princess Yue. You will have to convince them, wholeheartedly, that you side with them, against the Fire Nation.”

“Not against the Fire Nation,” Zuko responds reactionarily, raising from his seat. “Against Fire Lord Ozai.”

Iroh looks saddened. “Making such distinctions may not be worth it, in the North Pole.”

Zuko bites his tongue and sits, that bitterness against his uncle once again rising in his chest. “I thought the Northern Water Tribe was fairly neutral. The Fire Nation rarely planned to attack them.”

“Like the rest of the world, they know it is a matter of time before Ozai comes for them like he did for their sister tribe. Especially while the next in the Avatar cycle is a waterbender,” Iroh explains.

Bumi shifts the conversation. “You will have to show them that you can end the war, or they won’t make any alliance against the Fire Nation open. They have far too much to lose.”

“They won’t believe me.”

“You’re right,” Bumi says. “They won’t.”

Zuko glares at the old earthbender. “Thanks for the reassurance.”

“It’s not a commentary on you, Prince Zuko. It’s a simple fact. We have very little time for you to declare your intentions to the Earth Kingdom, and even less for word to travel to the northern regions. That is what we must do today.”

“Declare my intentions?”

“Spread the word of your intentions.”

“Propaganda,” Zuko rewords.

Bumi cracks his creaky old knuckles. “Whatever you call it. There are several visiting leaders from cities in the northeast today, for trade negotiations. You will have dinner with them and then you can go through the city.”

“Why—”

“Many of them have heard of the Fire Nation prince who was banished from his home and has sailed port to port for the past four years. They do not hate you, Prince Zuko. They feel sorry for you.”

Zuko thinks of what Jee had said to him drunk on the ship that one time, in that Fire Nation resort. He thinks that these common people pitying him is somehow worse than being feared. “I’ll make them respect me.”

Bumi leaves the table for an hour to do his duties as King of Omashu and Iroh sidles next to his nephew, looking earnestly at him. “You have spent the past year preparing for this,” he tells Zuko. “You will do well.”

Zuko hates feeling like there is a white lotus flower carved on his chest.

Zuko has figured out these low-level nobles relatively quickly. They are half as intimidating as the stone-faced generals he grew up learning to impress, and even if he has ground to make up in their opinion of him, he has realized it takes very little to make them think more of him.

All he has to do is talk a lot, loudly, and do his best to not trip over his words. He clutches the crystalline tables in front of him to make sure he does not reach for the back of his neck to scratch, and he clenches his fists to ensure he doesn’t stutter through polite conversation. Habits entrenched in him from a long thirteen years attending parties at home have prepared him for this.

It is all careful conversation about the weather as they start warming up to his presence, first announced by King Bumi as a special guest. His uncle is conspicuously absent. Zuko knows that he would not have been received so well by these guests if the Dragon of the West was by his side, but it feels strange to not have Iroh’s presence enveloping him. But Iroh has lead him to Omashu and to his destination, and he is going to take the reins of this next quest.

After that, they start talking about the war and about his quest. General Mohing leans across the table as they are seated for an early dinner. “So, Prince Zuko. How long has it been since you were in the Fire Nation?”

“Four years,” Zuko takes a sip of his wine. The taste isn’t great, but he’s learned to swallow quick with his crew. “I’m sure it is no secret why I left.”

“Yes,” Mohing says. “The Fire Lord banished you, did he not?”

Where there used to be shame in accepting those words, now Zuko realizes he can use them to his advantage. “Yes.”

“How cruel,” Lady Gye, who looks over some territory whose name Zuko has forgotten, has that terrible pity in her eyes. “Even to his own child.”

“He attacked me and left me with this scar,” Zuko doesn’t have to point to the mark of exile on his face. All chatter at the table falls silent and Zuko takes another sip of his wine and tries to smile conversationally, though he fears it comes out more as a grimace. “All because I spoke out at a war meeting.”

This is a new piece of lore in the puzzle these people know, the myth they have heard of the Fire Lord. “What did you say, Prince Zuko?” someone asks.

“I told my father that his war plans contained needless slaughter. Let’s just say, he didn’t take it well.”

After a moment, a line of small chuckles resounds across the room. It is Gye who asks the fundamental question that is really the reason they are all here. “So you don’t support the war, Prince Zuko?”

Before he can think about it, Zuko decides to just get this over with, to throw himself wholeheartedly into his new path to honor, to home. Perhaps for once, his brashness can come across as confidence. “I wish there was no war,” he tells the room. “I want the ceaseless violence to stop and the Fire Lord to draw back his attacks. The world must find peace.”

“You’re the Fire Lord’s son,” Colonel Soph says hardly.

Zuko bends to his left to look at her. “The Fire Lord brainwashed me into believing in this war, but he didn’t know that his banishment to me would really be a gift that would show me the beauty of the Earth Kingdom.”

He is convincing these people. He knows it. But Soph speaks again. “What are your intentions?”

“I was invited here by King Bumi himself,” Zuko points to the man who is silently sitting at the table’s head and has been observing him the entire night rather than saying a single word. Even now, he doesn’t speak. He is also eerily still. If it wasn’t for the occasional blinking of his eyes, Zuko would think he has managed to kill the King of Omashu within barely a day of meeting him.

“I’m here because I believe that this war needs to end. I am the Fire Lord’s son and like him, I have the blood of Agni. But unlike him, I believe in a world of equality. I will take back my throne and I will be the change the Earth Kingdom needs too. When the Fire Nation comes, backed by Fire Lord Ozai, I will stand with you against him.”

He has entranced the people in this room, he knows it. So he keeps going and clutches the table underneath him so he doesn’t stutter and mess up the moment.

“I am the real chance you have at ending this war because the people of the Fire Nation will listen to me. They will respect my heritage, and many of them are also not happy with this war. To them, it is the blood of fathers and sons on my father’s hands. But they can’t argue because of the Fire Lord’s right to the throne. They will not back the Earth Kingdom because of the legends they have heard of your people that are untrue. But the Fire Nation teaches the importance of loyalty and honor and bloodlines.”

Soph is quiet and after a moment of silence the room starts tittering up in excitement, before Bumi claps his hands and suddenly speaks. “Prince Zuko,” he nods.

Zuko bows his head in respect. Then Bumi asks him for an unusual request. “Will you light the sconces?”

The room is illuminated by mostly artificial light, but now evening is falling upon them and the sun is setting—Zuko can feel it keenly in his bones. He notices the metal lamps around the room, and he tilts his head at Bumi before readily agreeing.

“Please stay down,” he asks the people in the room. Then he summons the power of his breath and exhales as he turns, sending fire to the dozen sconces in the room. Within a second, they all light, and it is illuminated with orange and red fire.

“Thank you, Crown Prince Zuko,” Bumi says. Then he turns to the rest of the room. “Let us eat.”

Zuko sits down with his heart racing. When he turns he sees that the resigned expression on Bumi’s face has turned into one of mature understanding. He has not won over these people today, but he has started something. And he has said good-bye to one way of going home and proved himself wholeheartedly to this one cause. He will never again be welcomed by his father and sister into his childhood home.

He decides not to ruminate on that thought so that it doesn’t hurt.

He forgoes his hood this night as he walks through the streets of Omashu. Zuko is sure word of his visitation in Omashu has spread, if not through the dinner guests then through the talkative servants and guards of Bumi’s palace.

His dao swords are thrust over his back and he is wearing Earth Kingdom green. Maybe he should have asked his uncle to come with him, but it’s too late now. As he approaches a market square that is bustling even into the night, the stares start.

Couples walking together move closer together, and mothers hold their children to them. Wide berth is made for the well-dressed firebender who is walking the streets of Omashu and yet nobody approaches him at all.

Zuko decides to stop at a stall where an old woman is selling fruit, selecting a mango that seems fairly ripe. She is quiet as the rest of her customers leave when he comes close, and speaks the price of the fruit warily. Zuko hands it over and barely hears her say something before he leaves. “Yes?” he asks.

“You are Prince Zuko of the Fire Nation,” the old woman says louder. She is between Iroh and Bumi’s age and wizened, but seemingly not very afraid. “They came earlier and said you were in the palace.”

“Yes,” he says simply. She says nothing else, so he remembers his manners and leaves. “Thank you.”

The people of Omashu are not as rude as those of the port cities Zuko has visited, maybe because the war has not touched them in the walls of this city. Bumi runs a tight ship, and though initially being in many of Ozai’s war plans, Omashu was always considered secondary to Ba Sing Se and not a military priority once Iroh had failed to capture the capital city.

After the quick words he trades with the old woman, he is mostly left to himself. He is lucky that nobody approaches him to either ask questions or attacks him, and he stays out so late that it starts to ache his bones. He’s a firebender so he usually sleeps right after the sun falls and it is getting late. But it feels nice to walk through a place so like the Caldera and so different.

Maybe there is a chance now that he can live that life once again, where he walks the street of his own city rather than a foreign one. Maybe he will truly have to fight his father to do that. That makes him shiver. Zuko is a firebending master now, but he is surely not ready to fight Ozai.

He’s blustered a lot to Bumi and even Iroh about his mental prowess, but most of that is lies. He can tell whoever that he is ready to fight the Fire Lord but he is not. He is angry but he’s not ready and he has no raw talent for that kind of violence.

As he makes his way back to Omashu’s palace and falls onto the comfortable bed Bumi has given him, he wonders what he has just decided to embark on and what this means for him. There is a stone sinking in his chest that holds a likely truth he has not yet really let himself think; that this new journey he has embarked on may result in his own death.

Well, he lets himself think. I will die or I will go home. At least I will have purpose.

Chapter Text

“War is treachery and hatred, the muddling of incompetent generals, the torture and killing and sickness and tiredness, until at last it is over and nothing has changed except for new weariness and new hatreds.”

- John Steinback, The Moon is Down

Zuko and Iroh return to their crew to sail north after they stay another week in Omashu. Zuko spent most of that time abiding to Bumi and Iroh’s wishes to make undoubtedly clear that he’ll take a stand against his father in the war against the Fire Nation, so he’s grateful to be back with the people who have accompanied him for years.

Of course, they have questions too. Lieutenant Jee declares himself and mentions that he has heard rumors. Zuko is confused how to feel about how fast his words in Omashu have traveled here, but he knows he owes these people the truth. He sits down with them above deck before they leave port and tells them what he is now going to do.

He starts by mentioning that he is grateful that they have come so far on this journey with him. To sail with an exiled prince is not a station of much honor, though many in his crew were already a few reports disgraced when Iroh convinced them to traverse the world with him. Even so, very few have left him during his exile. He values their loyalty, a strong value of the Fire Nation.

Then he is as straightforward as he can be about what comes next. “I’ve accepted that there’s no chance I’m going to find the Avatar. Many of you must have noticed that,” the crew nods in silent agreement. “But the Fire Nation is my nation and my birthright and I still need to go back home. So I have to find a way to do that, even without the Avatar,” he sums up plainly.

Like Zuko had mentioned to the initial nobles in Omashu, he’s an essential player in ending the war because only he can truly take over the throne. Iroh had relinquished his claim to royalty after Lu Ten’s death, and Azula is firmly in his father’s pocket. Zuko has been so disgraced by his father that any Earth Kingdom citizen can understand that their sympathies are not the same, but he also has the lineage of Agni that Fire Nation citizens demand in a ruler. They would not accept any less than a member of the Royal Family on the Fire Nation throne, and there is no chance of winning this if Zuko cannot switch the loyalties of the people of the Fire Nation.

All in all, he thinks there is a chance he can do that. The people of the Fire Nation are also hurt by war. But first he needs to test this with his crew. He says: “I’ve decided to join efforts to stop the Fire Nation invasion of the Earth Kingdom, to stop the war in its entirety.”

A strong hush falls over them, all military men and women who have never known anything but war. In that one second, Zuko fears that he has made a mistake, and almost starts to reach for the blades at his back, turning to his uncle.

He stops when after a minute, none of them have made any move to attack him. They don’t look happy, exactly. But they also don’t seem angry.

Jee seems forlorn and he stares at his young prince, burning him with eye contact. Zuko matches that energy as he faces the man who has been at his side for the past four years. They both say nothing at all until Jee straightens his back, and then falls to his knees.

The rest of the crew doesn’t follow, two dozen of them still standing nervously behind the display. Zuko addresses Jee. “If you want to leave, I won’t stop you.”

It doesn’t escape Zuko’s notice that nobody has yet looked to Iroh, like they used to do for years when he was searching for the Avatar. They would let Zuko’s orders go in through one ear and out the other and only take the word of the Dragon of the West as gospel. No matter what will happen with his crew, Zuko knows in the past year he has truly gained their respect, the kind that is earned and not given because of the blood in his veins. That is one victory. That gives him peace as he waits for Jee to answer him with far more patience than he had at the South Pole a year ago.

“I will follow you, Prince Zuko,” Jee looks down in deference. “I’m loyal to the Fire Nation, but I know you are too.”

That breaks the cloud of silence the rest of the crew is stuck in and suddenly they explode into conversation, some looking fearfully at their prince. Zuko waits for them to quiet down, holding a hand down to lift Jee up. He doesn’t look at his uncle behind him, but he can imagine the old man has a smile on his face.

He then repeats what he’d told Jee earlier. “If you want to leave,” he tells the rest of the crew, “I won’t stop you.” It’s maybe a weak moment of his, to let go of people who have been with him for four years, who have seen him firebend and understand some of the inner workings of his mind. If they join his new enemy, he might be screwed. But the alternative is hurting them and he can’t bear the thought of killing his old crew, no matter how sentimental that thought might be.

Several people in his crew do step to the side. The way they glare at Zuko’s feet makes it clear how they feel, though none speak up to directly defy him. When the small group of deserters amasses, Zuko nods to them with the dignity they deserve and squashes down the emotion in his chest, the feeling of betrayal. He no longer has the scope to feel any sort of attachment, not if he wants to even entertain the thought of contesting his father and Azula in the Fire Nation.

“Get your things and leave my ship,” he says somewhat harshly, Lieutenant Jee and his uncle next to him. Then he nods to the singular helmsman that has decided to stay with him. “We set sail to the North Pole at dusk.”

Agna Qel’a is gorgeous, Zuko thinks. He has never been close enough to the Northern Water Tribe main city to be able to appreciate its glory. He could probably melt its palace in a day, but he can still appreciate its elaborate, icy construction.

Never did he think he would visit the Northern Water Tribe as a welcomed guest. Back when his grandfather was Fire Lord and he had been raised to be a general and not a leader, maybe if not the Earth Kingdom, the North Pole would have been his likely station when the Fire Nation took over the world. He hadn’t cared much about it at the time. War had been a distant concept until the moment he realized he would never see his cousin again.

Welcomed guest, though, might still be a bit of an over-exaggeration. He had breathed out a sigh of relief when the sentries at the Northern Water Tribe’s gates hadn’t simply waterbent his ship away, grateful that Bumi’s letter had likely reached the White Lotus contact at the North Pole—a man Iroh tells him is named Pakku. But they had still surrounded the military grade Fire Nation ship in their bending-propelled boats as the Fire Nation royalty approached port.

The man awaiting them, surrounded by ranks of blue-clothed warriors, had held himself with a haughty weight on his shoulders that Zuko understood well. The disgraced Fire Nation prince had bowed deeply to Chief Arnook of the Northern Water Tribe before stepping up and shaking the man’s hand, looking intently into his bright eyes.

After brief, chilled introductions by his uncle and Master Pakku, Zuko was asked by the chief to accompany him back to his palace, alone. Leaving Iroh and his crew behind, Zuko held his head high as he walked next to Chief Arnook in the snow, trying to hide the shivers he felt down his spine knowing he was flanked by over a dozen water tribe soldiers. He had his dao hidden in the folds of his gray winter coat, but his firebending was already weakened in the frozen climate.

Now, he tries to keep his inner fire burning as he makes his way to the palace gates. Chief Arnook seems unbothered by his presence, but Zuko knows small signs of discomfort. Even underneath his many layers of clothing, he can tell there is tension in the man’s shoulders. Frankly, he cannot blame him. This isolationist nation has stayed safe for decades by refusing to let anyone in, and just now they have decided to take in the son of their worst enemy. It is a big marker that indicates just how bad the war has gotten. Zuko spent his travels here studying the water tribes intently and he knows they’re proud people.

“Your land is beautiful,” he says to the chief, almost regretting opening his mouth. The cold has entered his body and he cannot hide the chill that makes him shiver. He definitely would be worthless in a fight right now, but nobody needs to know that. Damn, does he hate this weather. He misses the tropical heat and moist nature of the Fire Nation.

He tries to discretely breathe warmth into his bones, small huffs of steam bursting out of his nose as Arnook responds. “Thank you, Prince Zuko.”

Zuko tries again. “How go the wedding preparations?”

“Well,” Arnook says succinctly. He side-eyes Zuko before jumping right to the chase. “I expect a show of goodwill while you are here, Prince Zuko,” he says brutally. “You will be guarded around the clock. There are orders to attack on sight throughout the capital if you show any aggression, or firebend.”

“I’m your ally, Chief Arnook.”

“That you are,” the man speaks as they stop at the front steps of the palace. “I have trusted the words of King Bumi and Master Pakku to allow you to enter the fortress, but you are a boy. The Fire Lord’s son, no less. You will earn my respect as an ally.”

Something in the chief’s tone reminds him of his own father. Arnook is surely not as cruel or truly comparable to Ozai, but he is a world leader who looks down on those not in his shoes. Zuko ignores the ice in his veins that has started to sink in as they’ve been standing outside the palace gates. He bows his head. “I understand, Chief Arnook. I can only hope to prove myself worthy of your trust and for you to see my intentions are honorable.”

When he looks up, he notices the chief analyzing his scar with a troubled look. Then he nods briefly before turning around back into the tundra, leaving Zuko to be led into the palace by a half dozen waterbenders who look like they would like to kill him.

Dinner that night is with Chief Arnook and his wife Selina, Master Pakku, Uncle Iroh, and Princess Yue and her betrothed. Hahn is the first boy his age Zuko has met in a while, and he knows he should make an effort to get along with the future chief of the Northern Water Tribe, but the boy is grating on his nerves.

Princess Yue, on the other hand, is warm despite the clear distrust and disgust that flits across her face when she sees him. She greets him in customary water tribe fashion and he bows deeply to her. Her hair is bleach-white—Uncle had told him she was blessed by the spirits when she was younger, and her countenance is calming. He never believed in the nonsense Ty Lee spouted about auras when they were young, but he imagines she would say Yue’s is something special.

Zuko is no stranger to religion and the Spirit World. Whether or not it’s true, it’s written into legend that the blood of the god Agni runs through his own veins, and the existence of the Avatar itself means there is something powerful at play managing the balance of the world. He spent his youth watching plays with his mother and reading fiction for fun, and maybe that’s why he’s unusually inclined to believe that Yue is truly blessed by the spirits. The thought gives him peace, the idea of there being some greater being in the universe that is dictating his options, a force greater than his own father’s might.

The smile he sends her across the dining table, then, is genuine. When she sees it, she lowers an eyebrow, looking at him intently before returning to her plate when her mother taps her shoulder. The water tribe cuisine is far too salty for Zuko’s tastebuds, but it’s well-flavored and he eats it gratefully. He’d lost his cook back in the Earth Kingdom and the crew has been eating overcooked noodles and undercooked meat since.

Zuko has strategically tried to stay mostly silent during this dinner, careful about not sending this royal family a bad impression about his own aggressiveness. He knows that if he wants them to trust his intentions are genuine, he needs to defer to them.  

“How did you like your time in Omashu, Prince Zuko?” Pakku asks when the conversation lulls after Arnook asks Hahn about the details of the wedding ceremony.

“It was a great city,” Zuko replies. “Have you ever been?” he looks pointedly towards Princess Yue, who blushes into her plate.

“I have never left the North Pole,” she says quietly, and Zuko immediately regrets his line of questioning when Hahn looks at him pointedly after the fact.

He ends up blustering to save face, speaking in a run-on sentence his tutors back home would have greatly chastised him for. “The way King Bumi has used earthbending to construct such a complicated and productive way to transport people and goods is incredible. It’s very similar in a way to how waterbending must have been used to create this palace. It’s fantastic.”

“So, is the Fire Nation Palace made of flames?” Hahn asks. Momentarily, Zuko doesn’t know what to say, and in that time the future chief completes his thought. “I regret that it isn’t. That would make defending ourselves a hell of a lot easier, if you kept the destruction to yourselves.”

“Hahn!” Chief Arnook admonishes, and the boy leans back in his chair, glaring at Zuko. “Prince Zuko is our guest.”

Zuko can’t hide the second of glaring eye contact he makes with smirking Hahn before he moves his gaze away, not wanting to be accused of feeding into this animosity. “No, it’s perfectly alright, Chief Arnook,” he says. “The Fire Nation Palace is made of mostly stone and metal,” he says plainly, “except for the throne room, of course.”

Zuko takes a moment to look around the dining room and see that everyone is paying attention to him. His uncle seems more alert than usual, as though he’s fearful he’ll have to step in if the guards stationed behind the chief decide to make a popsicle of his nephew.

“The Fire Nation throne is separated from those who enter the throne room with a wall of fire. The strength of a Fire Lord is supposedly determined by how high he can keep that wall, all the time,” Zuko pauses. The room is almost deadly silent. “He takes visitors in that room too, most often ministers. Sometimes nobles who have requests, sometimes peasant squabbles. And when he loses his temper with the people of his nation, sometimes the wall of fire jumps out at them and burns them,” he shrugs. “It doesn’t happen often, but more than you’d expect. It turns out a fear of fire is a useful tool to keep your citizens supporting your war.”

Hahn opens his mouth and turns to the guards at the room’s back, as though he’s about to order them to attack the Fire Nation prince, but Arnook holds out a hand in retaliation to the movement. Zuko only has eyes for the otherworldly Princess Yue, who glances at him with a look of horror and also empathy. He thinks he can bring her into his corner.

Pakku leans forward and speaks, no longer keeping up the farce of casual conversation, and Zuko is reminded of the many dinners he was forced to attend with Bumi in Omashu. He figures this is his life now, convincing people he will stand against his country. But he wants to make clear that it’s Ozai that’s the problem, not the Fire Nation itself. He might not be able to say it as proud as he’d like, but he still loves his own culture and the incomparable beauty of the Caldera. “After you take rest tonight, why don’t you join me to train tomorrow morning, Prince Zuko?”

Zuko’s face betrays his confusion. “I’m a firebender.”

Pakku and Iroh chuckle in tune. “I think you’ll find that waterbending and firebending are not so different as one would think.”

Zuko disagrees with Pakku. The waterbenders who spar across the icy training arena next to the palace bend nothing like him. Where firebending is about grounding, waterbending is about fluidity. Zuko has learned strict forms and movements in his katas, but these benders constantly change their style. They’re unpredictable, and that makes them very formidable opponents.

He will admit that it’s interesting to observe such a different bending style—he’s never really stopped to think of the artistic movement in earthbending, has only ever trained with firebenders and nonbenders.

The waterbenders shift the snow as a whole, raising and then flattening their very landscape. Zuko and Iroh arrived just moments ago to see them, and now they stand to the side. Zuko is surprised to see several men Pakku’s age step away from the swath of practitioners to greet his uncle.

“Good to see you, Prince Iroh,” one says, and the rest echo similar sentiments. Iroh laughs amongst them, acting familiar. When he realizes Zuko has stepped away, he beckons a hand out towards his nephew.

“You all must meet my nephew, Prince Zuko.”

Zuko awkwardly responds to the summons and makes his way into the circle of men, not knowing quite what to say. “Hello.”

They do acknowledge him, though they’re seeming mostly indifferent to his presence. It’s refreshing, and very surprising, how they lack hostility.

“So, I’ve heard you’ve been up to great travels,” another man says, and Iroh jumps to discussing several ports they’d seen in the Earth Kingdom in depth. Zuko stands quietly as his uncle regales the water tribe warriors with his tales of wonder about the world.

Eventually, Pakku gestures for them all to practice once more, and the warriors step away from the firebenders. “How do you know them?” Zuko asks.

“From when I came here before, with the White Lotus. Pakku took me under his wing and I did learn a lot about waterbending styles,” Iroh pauses as the waterbenders spray snow from their hands, their feet stable in the snow. “See, that’s the Spraying Viper.”

Zuko’s eyes widen as he does, in fact, notice the similarities between the firebending move and the new set of forms he’s observing. “What did you learn from them?”

Iroh smiles at his nephew. “All in good time. Why don’t you go join them?”

“Chief Arnook said I couldn’t bend here,” Zuko shrugs.

Iroh lays a hand on his shoulder. “Nobody here will tell.”

Though unsure if he’ll melt the ice with his steps, Zuko slowly treks his way towards Pakku, who gestures for him to stand to the side of the front row of waterbenders. He looks to his side and sees the man to his side grow water-like tentacles on his arms that surround him as some kind of protective barrier.

The movement requires his feet to be light as air, and Zuko struggles with it. The first tentacle-like flames that erupt from his hands are short and blow out quickly in the windy cold of the north. But he grits his teeth and tries again. And fails again.

Luckily, nobody sees to be paying much attention to him, so he does his best to keep up with the waterbenders around him, sliding down the snow as he tries to firebend, and then drying himself off with clouds of smoke. Zuko feels uncomfortable and wet and wants to sit inside the palace again, but he looks to the side to see his uncle’s smile and Pakku’s narrowed look of approval and keeps going.

Yue and Hahn’s wedding is set for the third week Zuko and Iroh are in the North Pole. Zuko assumes that they’ll leave after the affair happens, though he doesn’t know for where. Iroh seems to be two steps ahead of his nephew at all times, so he will probably have something figured out. Having an unclear goal rankles on Zuko a little bit, but he knows it’s best to trust his uncle for now. Iroh hasn’t yet led him astray.

Preparations for the wedding aren’t unlike those in the Fire Nation. Zuko had been to his fair share of noble weddings in the Fire Nation before his exile, though never a royal one. Lu Ten’s was set to be in the year after his untimely demise, a thought which resounds in the hollow void in Zuko’s chest. It’s elaborate and fanciful, and the docks are full of ships with rare Earth Kingdom imports, gifts from small kings, jewelry and flowers. The Northern Water Tribe is worldly in the face of a wedding that seems to symbolize hope and opens the world to change.

Zuko adopts a routine in these few weeks. He usually spends his mornings meditating and his afternoons exploring the water tribe and sometimes spending time with his uncle and a few of Chief Arnook’s advisors, growing familiar with the way the tribe is run. He looks over scrolls in the heated palace library, acquainting himself with water tribe script and the foundations of waterbending. Sometimes he takes dinner with the chief and his family, sometimes his uncle.

He’s run into Princess Yue outside of formal meals often enough. The princess enjoys going out into her city, guarded in boats riding through the canals of Agna Qel’a and often walking across the city’s bridges and through its streets. The first time they meet alone is in the garden of the palace itself, an insulated greenhouse flooded with healthy green foliage. Zuko likes walking through it, the carefully controlled humidity in the air reminding him of Shu Jing, and the gardens of Master Piandao’s palace he’d loved when his mother had sent him to the island to learn how to fight with swords.

She’s pressing the petals of a moonflower through her fingers when Zuko walks into the greenroom behind her. “Hi,” he says, somewhat surprised to see her.

Yue turns in shock as well, but composes her features into a gracious smile easily. “Hello, Prince Zuko. I didn’t know you came here often.”

He tells the truth, lightly touching the leaves of a towering plant. “It reminds me of my home. The Fire Nation’s weather is much more temperate than that of the North Pole’s.”

“You mean to say it’s always this humid?” Yue twitches her nose. Zuko laughs.

“It’s humid often, and it rains there too, rather than snows. It’s very different.”

“It sounds like you miss it,” she says.

Zuko takes a seat on the stone bench near garden’s entrance. “It’s easy to miss home.”

“For that, you’d have to leave it. I have to admit I’m somewhat jealous of you, for having the chance to have seen so much of the world.”

“I’m lucky in that way,” Zuko can admit. “Travelling opened me up to a lot of new perspectives and I’ve seen a lot of the world, but it’s been long now. I miss the Fire Nation.”

“How long has it been since you’ve left?” Yue asks.

“More than four years,” he says wistfully, and clarifies, “since my banishment.”

“I’m sorry,” Zuko looks up to see that Yue has, in fact, stepped close to him, a look of true apology on her face.

“Don’t be,” he says. “It’s not your fault, and it’s led me on a new path, an important one.”

Yue bites her lip as though she’s contemplating something before she sits on the bench next to Zuko, just a bit apart from him. “I hope you know that my father is grateful for that,” she tells him, “and I think he’s grown to have some faith in you. He knows it’s a hard decision to make, to turn your back on your own home.”

Then she reaches for his hand—a gesture that makes Zuko want to shudder, because he doesn’t like that touch. It’s been such a long time since he’s felt it, and no matter how calming it’s supposed to be it always reminds him of that Agni Kai, his father’s hand on his face, the terror in his veins. He hides his small shift from the princess because he wants her to feel comfortable with him, he needs her to trust him. There’s something else in her eyes too, but he’s not ready to accept that, not now, so he convinces himself that Yue is a spirit and loosely holds her hand with his like it’s religion.

“I appreciate that,” he looks into her deep blue eyes and pats her hand before releasing it, ignoring the flash of hurt in her eyes. “I’m afraid your future husband may not share that sentiment, though.”

The fire in Yue that hides at the dinner table is apparent now. “He’s young,” she shrugs. “Eventually he’ll understand the world is split into more than blacks and whites, than us against the Fire Nation.” She peers at him like she’s looking through him. “I’m sure you thought that at one time, that it was simply the Fire Nation against the rest of the world. It’s easy to be idealistic when we’re growing and that’s all we know.”

“I can see where he’s coming from,” Zuko admits. “I can’t avoid that the Fire Nation is the aggressor in this situation, I can acknowledge it. A lot of it stems from the Fire Lord himself, not the people. War is just good for leaders and manufacturers for the military. Hahn doesn’t care about understanding that perspective, it seems. Just attacking me with words whenever I’m in the same room as him.”

“My father is who you need to like you, not my betrothed.”

“Now. But eventually Hahn is going to lead your nation, and he has a post with your military. I need trust,” Zuko thinks of the openness in Yue’s eyes and reaches for her hand once more, pressing his fingers to her palm. He’s lucky that this bench is facing away from the clear, icy walls of the insulated garden. He really doesn’t need anyone to see this. “Do you think you could speak to him, for me?”

She looks at their hands, her gaze wide. “He doesn’t listen to me much,” she scoffs.

Zuko nods in understanding. “It’s very different in the Fire Nation. Women are trained in the military, benders and nonbenders alike. The firstborn to the throne claims it, sometimes even the strongest. Nobody cares much for gender.”

Yue seems shocked. “You mean women fight?” she asks for clarification.

“I find it odd they don’t here.”

“Really,” she lowers her eyes, troubled. “I’m not a bender, and I was a weak child. That’s why the spirits blessed me,” she brings up another hand to touch her hair, in its startling whiteness.

“That’s incredible,” Zuko says honestly. “I have a sister, a bit younger than us. They said Agni blessed her when she was born, too, because my mother gave birth to her at the sun’s peak at the summer solstice. Her fire, when she bends, is blue.”

“Oh,” Yue seems surprised. “She’s allowed to bend, in combat?”

Zuko laughs, hiding the pang in his chest at the thought of Azula. He’s sure his sister doesn’t miss him, likely is glad he’s gone, but there’s some room in his heart for her. “She’s the most talented bender I’ve ever met. She’s—” he’s almost about to emphasize how much more powerful Azula is than him, but he stops himself. He needs Yue to think he can truly best his sister and his father, no matter if he can. “Yes, she has a fiery spirit. I think anyone who tried to take away her ability to fight would end up with at least their eyebrows seared off.”

A fierce look overtakes Yue’s face and she slips her hand from Zuko’s once more, stepping up. “I’ll talk to Hahn,” she says.

Zuko rises and bows in front of her. “Thank you, Princess Yue.”

There’s a small blush on her cheeks. “Please, call me Yue.”

“Then call me Zuko.”

They run into each other in the gardens a few more times before the wedding, and Zuko tries to stay familiar with Yue but still keep his distance from the chief’s daughter. He think he knows what the look in her eyes is, and he’s not interested in pursuing anything like it with her. He can admit to himself that the princess is pretty and compelling, but he’s here for her wedding and doesn’t need to create any more trouble.

It’s been a long time since he’s thought of girls—he hasn’t had the chance, really, in years. He’s prioritized a lot of different things in the past few years and women come last on that list. There was Mai, of course, before he was banished, but his betrothal contract with her is definitely voided. He wouldn’t be surprised if she’s been married off to some noble already.

Zuko doesn’t know what Yue tells Hahn, but the future chief is less cool to him at the next dinner with the royal family the firebenders are invited to. It’s five days before the wedding, and Arnook brings up that they might have unexpected guests. “I received a letter from Chief Hakoda yesterday, saying that he will arrive soon.”

Hakoda . . . Zuko racks his mind and realizes Arnook must be speaking of the chief of his sister tribe, like Bumi had discussed. He’s gone close to the Southern Water Tribe many times and there have never been male warriors there, simply women, elders, and children.

“Hakoda,” Pakku says, his grey brows stressed. “I thought you hadn’t heard from him in quite some time. Did he mention what he’s been up to?”

“I haven’t,” Arnook makes clear. “I sent him a wedding invitation a few months ago, and the reply seems to have come late, but he and a few dozen of his warriors will be in attendance.”

“I’m sure we can find room to accommodate them,” his wife says.

“You are not familiar with Chief Hakoda,” Iroh tells Zuko later that night, as they retire to their rooms. Water tribe dinners are far later than Zuko, who usually rises and sets with the sun, is used to, so he likes to head to bed immediately after he eats.

“He’s never been at the Southern Water Tribe while we have.”

“I had heard that he’s spent time in the west Earth Kingdom, against Fire Nation forces to that side of Ba Sing Se. It is surprising we haven’t run into him directly, at some point in our travels . . . though I’m sure we have come close.” Iroh pauses outside his room. “Perhaps . . .you should be kind to him, Prince Zuko.”

“Of course, Uncle,” Zuko lowers his head in respect before going to his own room.

Chief Hakoda of the Southern Water Tribe is not at all like Zuko thought he would be. He’s boisterous and sometimes loud where Chief Arnook is more proper, and he gets along well with Uncle Iroh.

He finds himself having tea with his uncle, Hakoda, and the man’s right hand, a stout man named Bato, the day before the wedding. Zuko stays mostly silent as the men converse about tea blends, of all things.

Like Arnook, Hakoda had seemed wary at first of the firebenders in the North Pole, but after hearing a summary of their travels so far and Iroh’s declaration that they were allies of the water tribes, he had quickly warmed up to them. Despite this, Zuko can tell that he’ll be kind so long and Zuko and Iroh avoid bending their element. Hakoda had visibly rebuked when Iroh had lit the teapot with firebending, fear in his eyes, and Iroh had quickly extinguished the flames.

The conversation shifts to wedding traditions, and Zuko casually listens to the men’s conversation while sipping his tea. He still thinks it’s just hot leaf juice, but it’s hot, and the warmth sliding down his throat feels nice. The chill of the palace’s eternal winter is starting to feel familiar to him, but it’s still not comfortable.

“The last wedding at home was Tulaq’s,” Hakoda mentions, confirming with Bato. “Of course, that was before . . .” his eyes fall downcast, like he’s living in a memory, before he speaks again, “we all left, when we were raided . . .”

“I’m sorry,” Zuko blurts out, though he hadn’t contributed much to this conversation so far. He wonders if he’s going to spend his life forever apologizing for the crimes of his forefathers. He wonders if maybe that’s what he deserves, for having their blood running through his veins. A strong feeling of guilt floods his stomach and he puts his tea down.

Hakoda doesn’t acknowledge the apology. Zuko doesn’t blame him. “My son Sokka would be coming up next, if there was anyone he could even be interested in. The only girl his age in the tribe is my daughter.”

“Ah, are your children still in the south?” Iroh asks.

Hakoda smiles softly. “I left when they were very young, far too young to join the fight. Sokka is of age to join the warriors now, but I’ll admit I prefer him staying relatively safe at the tribe. I’ve lost far too many young men who are idealistic about war.”

Zuko ignores the stabbing pain in his chest, thinking about how good of a father Hakoda must be, to protect his son from war rather than take it to his face. The conversation goes on and Zuko only zones back into it when the tea has gone cold and the watertribesmen say they’re going to retire. The wedding is tomorrow.

Yue looks very pretty indeed as she and Hahn stand before the tribe elders. There are seemingly thousands of people in attendance for the ceremony, the people of Agna Qel’a along with some nobles from the upper part of the Earth Kingdom and the warriors of the South. There is decidedly no red in the audience, as the only firebenders in attendance have chosen to dress in gray robes as they observe the happenings.

Zuko is sure Yue can’t see him from the middle of the crowd, but he lets the perpetual stress in his face fade to a soft smile as she drinks the wine that announces her and Hahn as wife and husband. Then the area before them clears and a dozen women wearing spirit-masks start to dance before the newlyweds, telling a story with the careful movements of their hands. To the sides, men are strumming on drums. It’s nothing like the quiet and proper wedding ceremonies Zuko was raised attending. There is joy in the air amidst the people of the tribe, and he notices that the odd looks he’s started to get used to receiving have also diminished in quantity.

Uncle had mentioned that weddings are about hope, and now Zuko understands what he means. There are so many people here, and they’re celebrating how their way of life continues, even with a hundred years of war just across the ocean.

The dancers stop and are replaced with some of the waterbenders Zuko is used to training with—he knows their names now, there is Nurak and Sirik and Tuka—bending up tons of snow as they carefully craft images with their bending. Zuko can make out a circle for the moon and waves he thinks represents the water spirit. The elders are chanting in a language of old Zuko doesn’t understand.

It’s a lovely ceremony, and he can’t help if he’s a bit wistful as he sees its proceedings commence. If he was still in the Fire Nation, his wedding probably would be sooner rather than later. Maybe he would have been sent off to war like his cousin and Mai would have had to wait, or perhaps he would have stayed at home and had the ceremony before he left. He would have slid a comb into her hair and vowed to protect her like the dragons for the rest of their days. He doesn’t know if he loved Mai, because he was young when he left her, so young—but he regrets that he never got to explore if he could have.

He thinks of his father and mother, then, of how his mother had disappeared in the middle of the night and his father had not seemed to care, of how he doesn’t think they loved each other much. It’s true that Ozai had been obsessed with Ursa for years, but he had never really loved her. She had been his princess and the perfect nobleman’s daughter, an ideal eventual Fire Lady for him, but maybe never his love. Zuko doesn’t know if his father has ever been capable of love.

When the ceremony ends, he turns to his uncle. “What next?”

“I suppose we go back to the palace,” Iroh says. “Dinner will be a feast. I do love stewed seaprunes.”

Zuko can’t hide the roll of his eyes. “I mean now that the wedding is over. Are we staying here?”

“Do you want to?” Iroh asks genuinely. For a moment, Zuko has to ponder the question. It’s been a long while since he’s felt like he’s had real choice in his destination.

“No,” he ends up saying. It’s too cold here, and with the wedding’s anticipation over, he’s sure life at the North Pole will go back to its status quo. He’s now more familiar with waterbending styles—though no expert—and Chief Arnook doesn’t hate him. He’s loathe to admit it to himself, but the thought of seeing Yue and Hahn married doesn’t sit well with him either. He thinks she deserves better, this girl who is like a spirit.

“I’ve spoken to Chief Hakoda,” his uncle says. “He is alright with us accompanying him back to Chameleon Bay. We can regroup further there, if that is alright with you, Prince Zuko.”

“Whatever you think is best, Uncle,” Zuko bows his head.

Iroh pounds his nephew’s back as they make their way back to the palace. “We will leave with Chief Hakoda the day after tomorrow, at midday.”

Chapter Text

'“But don't they say that all is fair in love and war? I heard that somewhere."
"'They?' Who are 'they?'"
"I don't know. Just people."
"That's what the victorious claim, not the defeated; the powerful, not the powerless.
'All is fair.' 'The end justifies the means.' Is that what you believe?”'

- John Connolly, The Infernals

The question comes up after they have all set sail.

Zuko still resides with his crew, but sometimes walks a plank to spend a few hours with Hakoda and meet his water tribesmen. They are far more boisterous than his people have ever been, casually laughing with each other and patting their chief on his shoulders. Zuko is in the middle of seventeen, a year past the age Southern Water Tribe boys are considered warriors, and he’s welcomed as such.

They are watching the stars right after dusk and sharing cups of disgustingly strong arctic wine when Hakoda turns to Zuko, eyes memorably bright and shining like beacons of hope against the dull Earth Kingdom shores at his back. “What do you want?” he asks, and not in the way Bumi asked, like an interrogation, but like a request to talk.

What do I want, Zuko thinks. He wants to light the fire that will start the end of all of this. He wants a home that is not on the ocean and he wants to be loved and he wants to be trusted. He wants to breathe in the air of the Caldera and he wants to feel a mother’s touch and reverse a father’s wrath.

There is a lot of rage and yearning caught up in this part of his mind. What do I want? I want to find a world where I never would have ended up here. I want to replay this, I want to find the Avatar, I want to be that kind of power, the kind that can drive men mad and spur on young boys until they lose their minds. I want home and I want love.

To Hakoda he says: “I want another glass.”

So he drinks and he lets his mind taper off a little more, lets go in a way he shouldn’t. His lips are tight when he drinks, but he doesn’t know if he truly cares if the words caught in his mouth leak out.

At Chameleon Bay, with the single ship Hakoda had left there, the newcomers are greeted with surprises, two of the sort that ram their heads into the chief’s chest when the ships dock.

Zuko keeps his back straight and expression neutral as he watches them, the two children he has heard a lot about. But in Hakoda’s stories, they were budding adolescents. Sokka and Katara are his age, fully grown and with the cut of innocence slowly glancing off their cheekbones.

With a tilt of his head, Zuko considers that they might be like him, and also nothing like him, nothing he could ever be at all. After they untangle themselves from their father, they reach out to the other tribesmen, and there’s communal rejoice like all the warriors are a family.

Zuko can count on one hand the times the Fire Nation Palace had ever been filled with the sounds of raw laughter, though he can recall the thunder of Azula’s mildly maniacal sniggering soundly. He wonders if his sister’s voice has changed in the past four or so years. But it doesn’t do to dwell on something like that, a question he doesn’t want to even know the answer to.  

After the meeting ends, he steps into the light a bit, just enough for the falling sun to glance off the glossy skin of his scar. He’s dressed in grey, his new favored color of choice, but his pale skin and scar all betray him as a stranger. Zuko is well prepared for the horrified look on the siblings’ face as they take him in, and he can intuit what they are thinking. Hakoda had told him the Fire Nation had come for his wife, who had been their last waterbender.

Aside from the emotional intricacies and empathy he felt for Hakoda after hearing the fact, Zuko had thought—and still thinks—it was distinctly stupid to send out an entire Fire Nation squadron to take care there were no waterbenders at all in the Southern Water Tribe while the Northern was still untouchable. He revels in the secret way he’s allowed to even imagine such a thing, that his grandfather Azulon could do any wrong.

Actually, Zuko wonders why it hadn’t even occurred to him to inquire over a hidden Avatar while he was with Chief Arnook. Perhaps mentioning his damned witch-hunt wouldn’t have been the smartest thing to discuss with the tribe’s leader anyway, but the thought hadn’t even briefly flitted over his mind.

Hakoda introduces them almost shakily, like his mind’s entire balance has been thrown off-balance by a reunion with his children. When he’d mentioned them at all to Zuko and Iroh in the past few weeks, he’d spoken of Sokka and Katara dreamily, like they were just kind relics of the past and not living, breathing, like he had already mourned them. It was rather depressing.

Both water tribe siblings look at Zuko uneasily, but he’s used to that by now. Sokka resembles his father, his cheekbones growing to be sharp, hair pulled into a small wolf-tail and also long at the sides. Katara must look like her mother, with her features soft but harsh, the strength visible in them emphasized by the almost cruel expression she wears. He can already tell she’s going to be the one he’ll have to try to win over. She might not fall quite as easily to well-placed hands and quiet smiles as Princess Yue did, and she might not care for breaking bread and hearing of his swords like her brother almost certainly will.

Yes, Zuko knows Katara is going to be his challenge.

When Sokka holds out a shaking hand to the fire prince, one that Zuko clutches with unfounded assurance, and Katara steps back, Zuko does not say anything, or do anything, or seem affronted. He bows to her, like he learned to treat noble women in court, and then steps away, back to his boat.

His suspicions turned out correct enough. Not even hours later, Zuko is making quick and interesting conversation with easygoing Sokka. It’s nice to talk to someone his age besides Hahn, especially since all Iroh and Bumi and Pakku have been drilling into him for ages is the importance of impressing elders who believe they deserve respect.

But Zuko doesn’t have to be a rambling apologist to Sokka, or make his mark as a powerful prince. He’s just a seventeen-year-old boy, eating dried jerky with a new friend.

He doesn’t remember the last time he made a friend. He might be kind of bad at it.

“So we stopped by a ton of Earth Kingdom towns on the way here. You know, I’m a big plan guy, so I found this old map my Gran-Gran had and I planned the trip, because we got a letter from Dad saying he was here, and Katara really wanted to get here as fast as possible, but I figured, like what’s a few more stops?”

Zuko nods amusedly.

“And she got into it after a bit, and it was wild, because we met so many cool people who actually wanted to know about us. Like, I guess people kind of forgot the Southern Water Tribe was a thing. And I suppose they don’t see people from the tribes really often. Hey, man, I think we even heard about you! Back in Yishi Village, I think, but I thought it was a rumor, because it was crazy man, wild. Like people were acting like you were the Avatar, like you’re going to save the world, or whatever,” he stops to take a breath, and Zuko laughs nervously.

“That’s ironic, considering I spent so long searching for the Avatar.”

“It’s a whole part of the conspiracy, you know,” then Sokka lets his volume drop, like he’s trying to conceal a secret from the flurry of warriors that are all around them, and can probably hang onto his every word if they so desire. “People said that the airbender Avatar must have died and then there was a waterbender Avatar and an earthbender Avatar, for, like, eighty years, and then you were sent to discover the Avatar, but that you are the Avatar.”

Zuko can suddenly feel his heartbeat in his throat. “What?” he asks, sure he’s misheard Sokka.

“They’re calling you the Avatar,” Sokka says again, easily. Then he leans in close to the fire prince, his voice actually close to a whisper. “Are you?”

In that moment Zuko truly feels overwhelmed, and he’s glad he is sitting down because he might have fainted had he been standing. “I’m not the Avatar,” he grits out, “and I don’t know why anyone would say that. I can firebend and nothing else. The Avatar was either killed in the Avatar State during Sozin’s Comet or is still in hiding, but they certainly aren’t me.”

Sokka shrugs and sits back against the hull of the ship, cramming a piece of jerky into his mouth. “Good on you, dude. You sound really convinced,” he says, like he’s impressed.

Zuko can feel red rushing to his cheeks, anger and something else, insidious; a twisted kind of fear, maybe. “Sokka,” he finds himself unintentionally deepening his voice, drawing out all the masculinity in him the water tribes value, “I’m not the Avatar. I’m an exiled prince who wants to go back home and end the war, that’s all.”

“You want to end the war,” Sokka hears. “And something has changed, every village we crossed knew it. I guess I don’t really know what they’re normally like, but there was excitement in the air. You gave them hope, Prince Zuko,” he reaches over and claps his new friend on the back.

“That doesn’t make me the Avatar,” Zuko responds, almost petulantly.

Sokka laughs around his next bite of jerky, but then his tone falls serious. “I think everyone, always, has put too much faith on the Avatar to balance the world. It’s a nice idea, I guess, one people in the past have always believed in, but us?” he pauses, his gaze flitting to his father and Zuko’s uncle, conversing across the deck. “What they’re doing wasn’t working, and it’s good that they saw it, but it’s our turn.”

Zuko narrows his eyes. “What do you mean?” he asks.

“To end everything, for everyone to come home, we have to try something new,” Sokkas eyes spark at the thought, and within them Zuko can see some of the inherent talent he remembers from Azula, genius bordering on maniacal.

Suddenly what Sokka means is resounding through Zuko’s mind, and he thinks that he might truly understand something here, with this deceptively intelligent water tribe boy who seems to share some of his exhaustion with their elders. “Something new?” he edges.

“What you’re doing,” Sokka’s eyes light up further. “Bringing hope to the people of the Earth Kingdom, stirring unrest, the works.”

Maybe Zuko’s armor is too light, but he shrugs that aside. “My uncle and King Bumi, the rest of the White Lotus, they’ve recommended I do those things,” his singular eyebrow lowers.

The water tribe boy’s expression shifts. “The White Lotus?” he asks.

Before Zuko can respond and try to take back the words that escaped out of his mouth as he’d gotten carried away in conversation, Chief Hakoda is in front of both the boys, taking them in with a neutral expression on his face.

“Where’s your sister?” he asks Sokka.

“I last saw her leaving the kitchen,” his son responds, and as they fall into a more detailed discussion of Katara’s whereabouts, Zuko fades away, crossing the deck to his own ship.

His initial perception of Sokka had been a miscalculation, he’s realized. He needs to do more than just win the boy over. And he needs to have a better grasp over his own mouth, he thinks in anger, biting down on his lower lip until he tastes blood.

When Iroh requested a boat to leave the Fire Nation with, all of four years ago, after his nephew’s exile, he had received a rusting, decade-old vessel. He had left the captain’s quarters to his young nephew, who was more accustomed to the relative comfort of a palace than he himself was.

His own room is austere, with few personal belongings aside from a framed portrait of his wife and son. He had once thought to put up a picture of Zuko as well, but the prince hadn’t sat to have one done after his exile, and it would have been a cruel reminder for Zuko to see his unmarred face on his uncle’s shrine to the dead. He does not need to think his uncle already mourns the boy he once was. It is still far too soon for that.

On Iroh’s desk, there sits a box with a well-maintained lock—here he keeps the letters he exchanges with other members of the White Lotus. They are written in detailed code so they cannot be compromised, and they are likely some of Iroh’s most currently prized possessions. 

Iroh slides a key out from under his most beloved teapot and opens the box, drawing out the latest letter. It is from an undercover earthbender in the middle Earth Kingdom, Master Ein.

All is going to plan… but even some Fire Nation soldiers have come through and they have not seemed surprised… if it is military protocol than Ozai must have heard… but they did not seem intent on discovering Prince Zuko, like they do not see him as a real threat… one of the healers I know, she had said they laughed at the very notion, that they heard of how he was burned… said he was weak… no prince…

The letter beneath, from a professor in Ba Sing Se, echoes slightly similar sentiments, as does the next from Jeong Jeong, in harsher tones. What were you thinking, the firebending master has written, I am not aware how this has been going in the Earth Kingdom, but the narrative here is simple… nobody will see Zuko as a threat… there must be more to this plan, Prince Iroh! I hope there is more to this plan… the Earth Kingdom might eat words, but the Fire Nation wants fire and they require action… make the boy the weapon you promised…

Sighing, Iroh closes the box, locking it before sitting cross-legged on his bed. His bones are creaky and he is aging, but he feels a strong need to meditate. To make good on what he had promised to the White Lotus all of four years ago will require more than he has made his nephew even start to give so far, and he fears.

He is terrified of his brother in more ways than one. Because of that, he knows he is now treading a thin line with his nephew. He has heard Zuko’s speeches, he knows what the boy believes, he knows he will do anything to go home. He cannot switch sides in this war to lose another son in a loose grasp for victory. 

Zuko never seemed to have much of his father's lineage in him, but Iroh cannot take risks with the fate of the world. Sometimes he imagines it would all be easier if he did not love the boy so much.

Iroh ruminates on this thought for an hour before rising. He can feel the sun setting in his veins, and he’s looking forward to dinner. Perhaps he will start Zuko with the lightning in the morning, after they reconvene with the water tribesmen tonight. He adores the way they cook fish.

As dusk falls, Zuko and Iroh leave to dine on the shore with Hakoda’s people while the rest of their crew deigns to eat in the ship’s small mess.

Dinner with the water tribesmen usually isn’t awkward, but today Zuko has found himself sitting next to an unusual guest. Amidst a sea of men and warriors, the perpetually frowning daughter of Chief Hakoda commands attention to herself. And Zuko is no exception to this magnetic pull.

His conversation with Sokka has thoroughly intrigued him, the boy much more intelligent than he seemed at first glance. So now, Zuko wonders what Katara might be hiding behind her haughty and exhausted veneer. This exploration would be easier if she was less reticent to conversation.

The meal is split between water tribe and Fire Nation cuisine, eaten on several low-tables. As Iroh and Hakoda laugh with Sokka, Zuko tries his best to smile at Katara. “Have you tried the fish?” he asks, gesturing to the cod on her plate that is red with Fire Nation spice.

She looks up at him briefly, then pushes the portion onto her brother’s plate. Sokka doesn’t seem to notice—if he does, he certainly doesn’t care, scarfing up the cod, and then immediately reaching for the glass of water in front of him. “Spicy,” he breathes heavily.

Iroh laughs lightly. “We do like heat, in the Fire Nation.” Hakoda joins him, and they start discussing the difference in flavor in Northern and Southern Water Tribe cuisine, while Sokka briefly leaves the table after hoarsely asking for yak’s milk.  

Katara turns to Zuko. “I’m not a big fan of spice,” are her first words to him. And with that, she picks at the remaining vegetables on her plate. She hasn’t said much, but Zuko can tell from her body language that she’s avoiding him.

He won’t let her go that easily. “What are you a fan of, Katara?”

After a moment, she’s more honest with him, looking up at him with more hostility and anger in her blue eyes. “I don’t care much to speak with you, Prince Zuko. I can tell you that.”

Long, curly, brown hair, lighter than his, frames Katara’s face, blue beads strung through the loops of the sections falling to the front of her face. Her features seem as though they’re contorted to seem cruel, but Zuko can still realize her objective beauty. She’s striking, looking like she wants to kill him.

His mind wanders back to Yue, the first night in the Northern Water Tribe, and thinks that Katara carries herself very much like a princess. But he was also right, initially; there is no way she is going to be as easy to win over as her northern counterpart.

Though a few hours prior he’d found that thought a simple nuisance, now he thinks he hadn’t considered how easy Katara was on the eyes. It’s only fate, and a bit of fun, if her personality is more equivalent to his.

“How unfortunate,” he says to her dismissal. “I would love to speak to you.”

Rolling her eyes, Katara goes back to picking at her vegetables. Sokka returns to the table, a cup of putrid-smelling milk under his nose. Zuko returns to cutting into the delicious fish, ignoring the rancid aroma, reaching for a cloth to hide the small smirk on his face. “Chief Hakoda,” he speaks across the table, “how are you feeling? It must feel amazing, to be reunited with your children.”

“I have missed them a lot,” Hakoda says. He reaches one hand out to clasp Sokka’s shoulder, and the other across the table to Katara. Zuko notices as she stays still at her father’s touch, looking away until he draws back. “It has been far too long since I’ve been able to go home, after all. Having my children visit is a gift from Tui and La.”

“Visit?” Sokka speaks up first, but Katara looks up in vitriol soon after.

“What?”

The lines on Hakoda’s face look pronounced, and he shifts in his seat. “You two can’t stay here, of course… it’s far too dangerous.” Maybe Zuko is misreading something, but he thinks he sees Hakoda side-eye his daughter as well.

Katara crosses her arms and sits back. “We’re of age, Dad, and we wanted to come here. We can’t help at home—”

“You can keep the tribe safe!”

“The Fire Nation has no intention of coming back for the rest of us,” she says shakily, standing up. “Not after Mom. And you know it! You just want to keep us away from you.”

“I want to keep you away from the war.”

“You had no intention of coming back home,” Katara replies, her raised voice hushing the rest of the small makeshift dining tent, the few dozen warriors that have congregated looking nervously on as their chief’s daughter speaks. “So we had to come here, to help, to do anything! And we’re both of age now,” she repeats, “it’s law, we should be helping you fight.”

Hakoda’s eyebrows draw together and he stands up too, until he’s facing his daughter. He makes an imposing figure. Zuko’s eyes briefly widen, and he moves himself to the left to avoid Katara’s violent hand-gestures.

“Maybe Sokka can,” he treads carefully, “but Katara, you…”

“What?” she snaps. “Sokka and I’ve been training, considering he had nobody else to practice with. I can’t stay home and do nothing, not anymore, I want this to stop. I need Mom’s sacrifice to mean something,” she’s begging her father with her eyes now. Zuko wonders what meaning lies underneath her words and beneath the tears running down her face.

“Katara,” Hakoda says, both as a warning and a concession. “Can’t we talk about this later? Not here,” he demands.

Zuko exchanges a quick glance with his uncle, who looks curious but not unsettled. Katara’s hair-loopies have fallen further in front of her face and her curls are frizzy, wet with moisture. After a moment of staring down the intense look on her father’s face, she falls back into her seat. In a moment, the sound of low conversation in the room begins once again, and Zuko moves closer to the table, reaching for his fish.

At Katara’s side, he can see the tear-tracks on her face and the tension in her hand as she shakingly outstretches her hand for a glass of water. Her expression is downcast, like she’s avoiding looking at her father across from her, and now she is turned away from her brother rather than Zuko himself.

He debates the merit of trying to say something kind to her, eventually deciding against it. He’s never been the best at comforting anyone, and he knows he would be useless now, not even aware of the true nature of Katara and Hakoda’s quarrel.

The rest of the dinner is quiet, with Katara politely and formally asking Hakoda to leave early. She glances at Sokka as if to ask if her brother will stand in solidarity with her, but he looks apologetically at her and then back to his full plate. Katara rolls her eyes and then walks back to one of the docked water tribe ships.

Sokka is still eating and Iroh has stolen away Hakoda for a game of Pai Sho in the latter’s tent when Zuko leaves for his own ship. He really does intend to go to bed, as he’s tired from rising early and going through a ruthless series of forms, but he notices a lone figure pacing one of the water tribe ships and lets his curiosity get the better of him. He shouldn’t, he knows. There’s no room for human flaws in the image he needs to create of himself—an almost Avatar-like display, like Sokka had said earlier.

Only the thought of the pretty, haughty water tribe girl’s tears and the hidden message in her eyes has Zuko briskly pacing towards the ship. He silently makes his way up a ladder to the ship’s deck, then jumps right in front of Katara.

“What are you doing here?” she asks sharply, her voice strong though there are even more water tracks running across her face, briefly illuminated by the lantern on top of the deck.

The moon is barely in the sky tonight, but the stars are visible. There are an unbelievable amount of them littered across the night sky, like in the South Pole, more than Zuko had ever seen combined in the polluted sky of the Caldera.

Zuko tries his luck. “I wanted to check in on you.”

“I told you, Prince Zuko. You’re the last person in the world I’d ever want to speak to.” Her eyes narrow. “Something tells me you understand that.”

“What do you mean?”

“What are you playing at?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” he hisses.

“Of course you do, Prince—"

“Please, call me Zuko.”

“I’d prefer not to,” Katara bites, turning away from him and continuing her pacing. She’s shed the heavy furs she wore at dinner somewhere on the ship, now clothed in a long-sleeved blue tunic and trousers. Zuko stands still, stunned for a moment.

“You’re going to ignore me?” he asks, rushing to fall in step behind her. The deck of the ship is slim but long, a dozen yards across.

“I didn’t ask for you to come here, Prince Zuko,” Katara says, and something in her tone allows Zuko to understand she’s not just angry about him joining her on the boat.

“You don’t need to call me that,” he says again, some harshness bleeding into his voice.

Katara turns around then, tears shining in her eyes. She steps closer to him until they are barely a breath apart, but doesn’t give Zuko the time to consider the closeness. “I do,” she demands. “You’re the prince of the nation that took my mother away from me, and I will be damned if I act like you’re anything other than that—that kind of monster—”

Zuko’s mouth hangs open for an unfortunate moment before he regains his bearings, his mind torn slightly into disarray at her proximity. “I’m sorry,” he says.

Katara steps away from him before pointing an accusatory finger right into his chest. “Sorry doesn’t cut it,” she rages. “My mother—”

“I’m sorry, I understand,” Zuko says quickly, before she can get in a word edgewise. “That’s something we have in common.”

She frowns, taken aback. “What?”

Zuko rushes to elaborate, emotion rising in his own chest until he feels like choking. He tries to hide it but he’s unsure if he does. The self-hatred at this lack of control will come back from him later, in the middle of the night or during his morning meditation, he knows. “The nation I’m a prince of—a disgraced and exiled prince—it took my mother away from me, too.”

He hopes that the terrible sob clearly stuck in his throat makes her feel pity for him, not disgust. Zuko hates feeling this weak, especially in front of a pretty girl who already doesn’t seem to think much of him. He can only pray to Agni that he can use this downfall as some kind of machination, that it can earn her trust.

Katara takes a minute to look away from him before her tear-ravaged eyes find his, excavating the honesty in his soul, their bright blue ruining him. She seems to find what she wants there, because she stands very still for a moment and then says, “I’m sorry.”

Zuko nods and stays in the moment. “I know what happened to your mother. Your father told me. I’m sorry,” he repeats once more.

Katara’s expression is indecipherable. “What happened to your mother?”

“My grandfather told my father to kill me, when he tried to usurp the throne. My mother protected me by killing my grandfather, and then she was gone, nowhere to be found. It was an easy conclusion to draw,” he shrugs like that admission means nothing, when it really means everything.

“That’s terrible,” Katara seems shocked. “Your own father…”

Zuko thinks about the game he had set out to win, when he first saw this girl. He is going to win it, he thinks. Just maybe not in the way he thought. “He also publicly burnt off half my face,” he says drily. “He was barely a father, and he is my enemy as much as he is yours. What happened to your mother was so wrong,” he makes clear, and he knows that to be truth, “and I might never be able to apologize enough,” also truth, “but you must believe me, I am trying to make things better. I am.” Another truth.

He breaks her right then, he knows. The tension in Katara’s shoulders, visible even through her tunic, fades away. “I misjudged you, Zuko. It was wrong of me to blame you for what they did. You’re a victim of the Fire Nation too,” she says quietly.

“Thank you for understanding,” he replies. They stand in silence for a moment, and he struggles with what to say next. Ironically, he thinks of a scene from one of his mother’s romance plays, still stashed under his bed. “Are you alright? I did want to check in with you, after dinner. I hated seeing you so distressed.”

Then he winces at his own completely and utterly terrible effort to be suave, in any way.  

“I’m fine,” Katara says stiffly, her tone brooking no room for a contest to the statement. “Thank you.”

“Of course,” he bows his head. Zuko is about to gather the courage to ask her another question, inquire into something else, but when he looks up Katara has turned away from him and is looking at the dull moon, touching something on her neck.

He squints his eyes and can make out a blue pendant and a navy ribbon, a necklace tied around her throat, previously hidden by her heavy clothes. He thinks back to his study of the water tribes, sure that that is a betrothal necklace. He recalls Yue wearing one, but he thought it was only a Northern Water Tribe tradition.

Maybe the necklace wasn’t made for Katara, he finds himself thinking, before wondering why he’s even considering such things. With a quick and quiet farewell, Zuko leaves the water tribe girl on the ship’s deck, and climbs down the ladder, heading for his own bed. He has a lot to punish himself for, and even more to dream up.

Chapter Text

"If I have learned anything in this long life of mine, it is this: in love we find out who we want to be; in war we find out who we are."

- Kristin Hannah, The Nightingale

“I can do it,” Zuko says.

Iroh looks at his nephew, knees unbalanced and chaos in his eyes, and frowns. “We can try again later,” he says. Zuko needs to make lightning, or Iroh will have once again failed the world. But he’s not going to progress at all in his state, harried by the katas he has done once, twice, thrice, all to no avail.

Zuko doesn’t respond to that, just falls into form once again and tries to summon electricity in the air, channel it through his fingers. It doesn’t work, and Iroh hadn’t expected it would, but Zuko has always been hardworking to a fault, barely able to give up on lost causes to his own detriment. He wonders if there was a world in which Zuko never stopped searching for the Avatar, clinging on to shreds of legend to keep himself sane while the world kept falling apart around him.

Zuko had been successful at redirecting the lightning almost immediately, though its creation has eluded him. “Give me more,” he begs his uncle. “If I try redirecting again, I’ll understand—I’ll be able to create it.”

Iroh doesn’t think that logic will work. “Not in your state, Prince Zuko.”

“What state?” Zuko complains, and then a spark alights in his eyes, and for a moment Iroh is twenty again, begging Ozai to be better than what Azulon asked of him.  “I couldn’t win in battle against a koala-sheep right now. How am I supposed to face Father or even Azula if I can’t bend lightning? Make me redirect it again. Please, Uncle.”

“You’re exhausted. It is time to rest, and then later we can try again… maybe in a different climate, or a higher altitude, when we leave tomorrow…”

“Nobody is going to wait for me to be well-rested or on top of a mountain to fight! You know that more than anyone. You were a general.”

Iroh is slightly bothered by the reminder, and Zuko notices. “War doesn’t wait for anyone, and nobody will care for my well-being—I’m not close to as accomplished as a bender as you, or even Lu Ten, and even you couldn’t take Ba Sing Se. That means I have to get there, to be that much better, or who knows what will happen. If you had fought back at the end instead of fallen back… a lot might have been different.”

Maybe Zuko doesn’t mean to invigorate Iroh’s grief so much, but he somehow touches a chord that makes Iroh feel those damning emotions once again. His carefully-crafted patience wears thin for the first time in a while, in front of his nephew. “Fine. One more chance, to redirect the lightning. And then you will rest, Zuko, or you will not be able to get up tomorrow morning,” Iroh admonishes.

Zuko falls back into form, prepared to take the strike once again. Lightning-bending is fueled through directed anger and pain, a dark feeling that clouds up one’s soul. Iroh’s has recently been fueled by the impossible task he must accomplish for the sake of the world, but now his grief at his son’s loss also bleeds through to his fingers and the electricity in the air.

The blast that powers towards Prince Zuko is stronger than he was prepared for in his already weakened state. Zuko manages to redirect the majority of the lightning before his foot glances off the ground, and he loses his focus.

The strand of electricity hits his right side, luckily opposite to his heart. It’s not the entirety of the lightning, just a small bolt of aftershock, but it burns through his training gear until he falls to the ground.

Iroh is overwhelmed with shame and guilt as he runs and kneels next to his ailing nephew, calling for a healer. Zuko’s bleary, half-lidded eyes aren’t those of a weapon or a warrior—just a child.

When Zuko opens his eyes, he thinks he sees light—something blue and beautiful, enough for him to believe he’s in the Spirit World. The pain at his side has ebbed, so non-existent he must be dead. He briefly laments that all it took was a training exercise before filling his mind with thoughts of his mother. He wonders if he’ll meet her soon.

And then there is a rearing pain on his right side and the world above fades from a bright light to the orange of the ship’s infirmary, a place he’s no stranger to. Zuko closes his eyes and regrets that death has not come to claim him yet, before the fire in his stomach flares again, angry at his failure and demanding he not be such a disappointment.

“He’s awake,” a disembodied voice speaks, something soft and feminine and so like Ursa that Zuko cannot help but hope she stands above him. But the dream collapses when he hears his uncle, voice hoarse.

“We are grateful for your gift, Miss Katara,” the old man says. Zuko struggles to crack open his eyes, but can make out a bleary blue water tribe dress. The ship’s healer had left them before the North Pole, and one of the other soldiers on deck has been acting as a makeshift one since. He is not here, leaving Zuko alone with his uncle and the pretty girl from last night.

What happened, Zuko would ask, but he knows exactly what happened, can feel himself lose touch with the ground under his feet, can feel the lightning in his veins. It had been electrifying in that moment, exhilarating as it had torn him apart, burned through his skin and muscle. Now it pains, but nothing he’s not used to after the scar on his face. “Will it scar,” he chokes out.

His vision stabilizes, and Katara is clearer, her eyebrows furrowed in concentration and the ship’s healing kit laid out next to her. She presses cool fingers to his forehead, and frowns. “You’re still warm,” she says. “It will scar, but not much, not…”

She doesn’t point to the deep scar tissue around his eye, and she doesn’t need to. Zuko has long since stopped focusing on the pain and is now instead taking in the worry written on her face, the softness in her fingers. He’s thinking about the angry girl on the ship’s deck last night, how innocently she’d looked at him when he’d mentioned his mother, how the shield in her eyes had dissipated.

Zuko’s closest female relationship has been with Azula, who had a sharper tongue than he could ever compete with, a firebending prodigy that he had loved in a most destructive way, because she would always be his sister. He’s also spent time with the stoic and suppressed Mai, beautiful but like a metal statue. But Katara reminds him a bit of Ty Lee, who would always fawn over his sister like she wasn’t afraid of getting burned. He liked Ty Lee, who was a lot like him when he was seven and didn’t know much of the world. He hasn’t seen her in over four years, but he hopes she now has life and love she deserves.

Now he has a lot to think about.

“Firebenders run hot, I wouldn’t worry.”

“In that case, I would recommend more than a few weeks of careful observation… I’ve never seen anything like this,” Katara says. “It’s not as bad as a regular burn, on the surface… but the internal damage is much worse. I’ve fixed a bit, but I’m not sure… he should still take time.”

Zuko attempts to shift up, but lithe hands quickly push him down. “I don’t have a week,” he mutters. “We need to move on, I need to keep training.” He searches out his uncle’s eyes, begging Iroh to understand.

“A week,” Katara repeats.

Iroh steps into Zuko’s vision, and he almost looks a bit scared. “I’ve never seen anything quite like this, Prince Zuko. You must stay under Miss Katara’s observation.”

“Are you a healer?” Zuko asks, wondering why it hadn’t been mentioned before.

“Of a sort,” Katara shrugs. “I was the best in the South Pole, but there wasn’t much competition.”

He pushes down the guilt in his stomach. “Where are we meant to go next, Uncle?”

“Where do you want to go?”

“Oh—Agni,” he moans when he shifts, pressure shifting onto his burned chest, “just tell me what you want me to do, where you want me to go!”

“You should know, Prince Zuko.”

Now he’s kind of embarrassed that Uncle has made him act like this in front of the water tribe girl, who has stepped away from him with her hands crossed over her chest and an intrigued look in her eyes. “Where can we be, by the time I’ve recovered?”

Iroh is contemplative, a hand on his chin. Zuko thinks he might even glance over towards Katara, for a moment, before he turns to his nephew. “We will keep working on lightning,” he announces. “We will go to The Foggy Swamp.”

“Wait,” Katara says, “he was just burned by lightning.”

“Yes,” Iroh says, looking at her with his mouth downturned. “Unfortunately, it is a skill he must learn, and he must learn to be much more grounded. This is why we will go to the swamp, you see—they are waterbenders.”

Katara audibly inhales, and Zuko wants to hear what she’s about to say. When he shifts to sit more upright, he accidentally presses down on his chest, and then his head is filled with pain so sharp his vision goes white until it is gone.

“I can get up,” Zuko grits through his teeth. Katara glares at him.

“I told you a week, Prince Zuko.”

“Please, call me Zuko,” he smiles, in a way he hopes is charming, that masks the pain he’s feeling. But he needs to get up, needs to stretch his muscles, needs to discuss the next route with his crew. He’s always been readily involved in the route of his vessel, and he likes navigating, knowing where he is on the ocean—it makes him feel anchored, tethered to his boat, in control of one part of his life. “Please, Katara. I have a job to do.”

“So do I,” she says. “It’s ensuring you don’t fall flat on your face when you stand up, and end up back in this bed with an infection.”

Her tone is commanding, and she’s opinionated and strong in this role, telling him what to do. Zuko resolves on finding a different way out of this predicament—she has to leave him with someone else, sometime. “Do you have any idea when we’ll finally set sail?”

“Prince Iroh mentioned that you must wait until your condition is more stable—you cannot risk an infection while far from land, away from experienced healers.”

“What,” Zuko complains. He has raised his back a bit, enough for him to be eye-level with the shorter Katara as she sits to his right, constantly glancing at the bandage she regularly changes over his bare chest. She’s clinical in her assessments, tracing the red sprawl of the lightning burn, not resting her gaze anywhere else. He almost wishes she would.

“You should take the time to rest,” she says softly, “it’s such an unfamiliar burn, I don’t even know if it’s healing properly.”

“I can rest while we set sail.”

“Why does it matter so much to you?” Katara asks.

“I—I--,” he stutters for a moment, “I can’t stand by idly, while I know I could…” while I know I could try to get back home. “While the war lives on.”

Katara is quiet for a moment, like she’s thinking. There’s something unusual in her voice when she speaks next, like exasperation, a tired anger. “The war has been going on for over a hundred-years,” she says, almost viciously. “It can wait for your highness to be well enough.”

When Zuko looks into Katara’s eyes, he sees nothing he can say to her. When she turns away from him after a moment, he doesn’t do the same—just stares and contemplates in the odd silence.

“You’re an experienced healer,” he says after half an hour has passed, and she has catalogued the medical instruments in the ship’s kit more than three times. “Come with us, to the swamp.”

Katara doesn’t look away from the sharp knife that she is analyzing between her fingers, meant to cut through skin with precision. She looks dangerous with it in her hands, and exciting. Her expression is dead. “My dad wants me here.”

Zuko can think of a lot of things his own father had wanted of him, but he has been a disappointment since his birth in the midst of winter. “What do you want?”

Her eyes are large, unblinking, a mystery like the Spirit World. “I don’t know,” she says, sounding lost, like a girl who has never really had to contemplate that question before.

“Come to the swamp,” Zuko says, “with me.”

She analyzes him again for a minute, very still. She is at his bedside, and Zuko is no stranger to that. He’s a firebender, he spent his youth sitting with doctors next to him in the Royal Palace and the rest constantly ailing in this very bed in his ship’s infirmary. But she is not like any old doctor or war-hardened medic he’s ever had watching over him before.

“My dad won’t let me go. Maybe Sokka,” she frowns, “but not me.”

Zuko doesn’t want to sound desperate, so he watches her get up and leave without saying much else. He sits up further in the bed, and is contemplating trying to entangle himself from the sheets when one of his soldiers comes in and takes up Katara’s vigil. Shaso is old now, far past the age to retire, but Zuko doesn’t think he has anywhere else to go.

Shaso looks disapprovingly at Zuko, like he is a little boy who has misbehaved and burned himself with a lamp. “No,” he says.

“I wasn’t going to—” Zuko refuses to stammer, knowing there is no point to the lie. He rambles. “Could you call my helmsman? I want to set course for the Foggy Swamp by nightfall tomorrow. I don’t think I will be able to meet Chief Hakoda before I go, so please make sure to send my regards. And ask him for his son. I will write a letter later detailing more for him, of course. And—”

Shaso shushes him, and a moment later Zuko is laying down again, staring at the metal ceiling again, restless and angry at nobody but himself. He shouldn’t have let himself get hurt, and he should know what to do, and he hates feeling like this, a child and an adult with the weight of the world on his shoulders all at once.

When he wakes up the next time, his vision is clearer, but the water tribe face in front of him isn’t as pretty.

“How you doing, buddy?” Sokka asks.

Zuko ignores the pain in rolling his shoulders and sits up, Shaso or Katara nowhere to be found. “I’m fine.” He gets to the point. “I’m leaving for the Foggy Swamp tomorrow. You and your sister should come with me.”

Sokka looks like he’s about to protest. “My dad—”

Zuko huffs and holds back his glare. Maybe this is how you act when you have a trusting, mutual relationship with your father, even if they haven’t seen Hakoda for longer than he’s avoided Ozai. “So what?” Then he decides to pull a card out of Azula’s trick book. “You said you’re old enough to be a warrior? You can be one on my ship, you can prove you’re not a boy any more.”

This is the right thing to say, he realizes, as Sokka’s eyes narrow. He wonders if Hakoda did have a conversation with his children after their argumentative dinner, thinks that the chieftain certainly did not say the right thing, whatever he told them.

The door opens before Sokka can respond, and Iroh walks in. He has his eyebrows raised at his nephew as he nods to acknowledge Sokka’s presence. “I’ve heard you would like to leave this evening. Miss Katara has said this is unwise.”

“If I don’t have a healer,” Zuko says. “But I will have one.”

Iroh looks to Zuko and then to Sokka, his gaze searching. Then he shrugs and suddenly looks like he is utterly exhausted. “I am friends with your father,” he tells Sokka. “I believe we will be leaving in six hours, if you would have your sister check in on my nephew before then.”

Sokka swallows, his blue eyes wide, right before he nods. There is a motivation in his eyes that Zuko knows too well, and he reflects, not for the first time, on how much he has always wanted a friend.

They are in the middle of the ocean when Zuko wakes once more—he can feel the slight rockiness of the sea underneath him, the undulation of the waves tangible in the infirmary. He’s been in and out of sleep for days, his life like a fever dream, but now his head is finally clear. The past few days are hazy—talking to Katara, Sokka, his uncle. But he is still sure of what he’d asked—to leave Chameleon Bay en route to the Foggy Swamp. For Katara and Sokka to come with him.

He’d taken a gamble, but he wouldn’t be surprised if they were on this ship right now. Azula’s tactics always work, forcing people into thinking they have something to prove. He had been subject to her manipulation more than once before he was exiled, when they were both so young, and he would hate to know what she is like now, almost five years older than the terror he left her as.

His door opens and he catches a glimpse of beads in brown hair before he carefully fakes sleep again, muffling his self-satisfied smirk into his sheets. A minute later, Katara speaks drily. “I know you’re awake.”

Zuko sits up, his muscles far less sore, and frowns. “How?”

She shrugs. “Call it healer’s intuition. I need to change your bandages.”

Her voice is clipped, and Zuko raises his arms to give her easier access to his chest.  “How far are we from Chameleon Bay?” he says, holding in the hiss that wants to arise in his throat as she rips bandages off his wound.

Her voice is tight, like she’s not sure if she’s regretting her decision yet. “Half a day or so. It’s morning.”

So Katara doesn’t want to talk. “It feels better,” he says.

“It looks better—it’s healing remarkably faster than most burns I’ve seen.”

“I must be somewhat fireproof. Firebenders burn like everyone else but I remember studying that they’re far less susceptible to it, unless the effort is concentrated…”

“You’ve studied burns,” Katara asks.

He could say the truth, that of course he had after what happened to his face—in his own shame, he’d researched how to heal such deep burns for years, wishing for his skin to be unmarred again. But that was back again when he had hated being the banished prince, when fear and despair had propelled him across the globe time and time again, searching for a dead man. It’s not that he doesn’t think of it now—it is more that there are more pressing matters in his mind, and the scar is no longer a mark of dishonor, but a memory of the father he needs to defeat. Another quest that sometimes feels as hopeless, but at least will end, one day. “A little, in school.”

“I didn’t go to school.”

“How did you learn how to heal?” the question feels stupid and thick as it’s leaving his mouth.

“My Gran-Gran. I’ve always had a talent for it,” she shifts uncomfortably. “Is it… is it really true there are waterbenders at the Foggy Swamp?”

Zuko fights the urge to raise his singular eyebrow in curiosity. “From what I’ve read, yes. Why?”

Katara cannot look into his eyes, her confidence seemingly gone. “I… was just wondering if they could be related to my tribe, since they’re close.”

“Yes, they did migrate from the Southern Water Tribe… it was centuries ago. I’m sure the culture is different now, though more like the south than the north.” Zuko likes talking about what he knows, likes acting like he’s knowledgeable. He was always an above average student even when he struggled in bending practice, good at history and literature. He has always loved a good story and there are a lot of those in the history books.  

“Oh. That’s interesting.”

“Yeah,” he says, because yes, it is. Katara meets his eyes as she ties up his bandages, her hands glancing across his chest before she pulls them back, leans into her chair at his bedside.

“What do you know about the Southern Water Tribe?” she offers like a challenge.

Zuko takes it up, because he can. He read a lot about the Southern Water Tribe last year, can now compare it in his own mind to the north. He talks about coming-of-age traditions and the former economy of the south, what he knows about the war between the water tribes a thousand years ago, even their relationship to the Fire Nation. He mentions salt-farming, and oil drilling, and Tui and La and spirituality. By the end of his rant Katara looks slightly impressed and also angry, in the way he’s starting to understand.

“Your necklace,” he says at some point, breaking the rapt eye-contact between them to drop down to her collarbone. “It’s from the Northern Water Tribe, not the south.”

“How do you know?”

Zuko dares to reach out a hand, like he’s about to touch the necklace, but his fingers drop limp to his side before he makes contact. Katara is blushing and she’s looking away from him. She is not like Azula or even like the other girls Zuko has known growing up, but he thinks he likes her, though he’s not sure how. It’s been a long time since someone has listened to him, has wanted to.

“It’s a betrothal necklace, like a contract. Princess Yue had one—but the tradition isn’t the same, in the south. Women don’t wear betrothal necklaces like that, with a pendant…” he gestures to the blue beads in her hair. “They take out the beads in their hair… but that too, if they want. The southern tradition offers more choice to the women.”

“It’s my Gran-Gran’s. She ran from the Northern Water Tribe when she was betrothed, against her will. That’s terrible… everyone should have a choice.”

Zuko winces. “Yes,” they should. “I’m glad you chose to join me till the Foggy Swamp.”

“I’m a healer,” she says. “I couldn’t let you set sail without making sure you were being watched over.”

“You don’t need a reason,” Zuko tells her, and holds out a shaking hand when Katara opens her mouth. “I meant you don’t need to justify coming on the ship, or coming to your father. There’s no requirement for it to be about healing or watching your older brother or listening to your father. You should do what you want.”

He feels almost satisfied as he says that, sees her mouth open, slightly aghast. But Katara’s eyes narrow, and a smirk catches across her face. “And when was the last time you did what you want, Prince Zuko?”

“I asked you to call me Zuko.”

“I asked you a question,” she fires back.

Truly, Zuko doesn’t know how to answer that. “I’m choosing to try to end this,” he says, “the conflict.”

Katara doesn’t look happy about that response. In fact, it seems to trouble her, her eyebrows raising.

“What?” Zuko says, after a heartbeat.

“That’s not a choice,” she says. “It’s a duty.”

Zuko could argue, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t think he’s ever really had a choice, not really, not with the family he was born into, not with the potential in his veins, not with the power he has been handed by chance.

He swallows. “When will I be alright, to train again?”

The moment is over. Katara knows it too. She breathes out, and her face clears up, tension leaving her features. She leans back in the chair and stretches her hands over his bandages, closing her eyes. He doesn’t know what she’s doing, but he thinks she looks beautiful like this.

“We’ll see,” she says, finally pushing on his chest so he’s laying down again. “The less you move, the shorter you’ll have to wait.”

Zuko turns his face towards the door as she leaves, watching her go. She turns back to look at him once she’s in the hallway, and he wants to say something—anything—but doesn’t know what.

“You’re not what I expected,” Katara says, quietly, and before she turns around and leaves Zuko thinks he might see tears at the corners of her eyes.