Chapter Text
The guards do not throw Zuko into the cell gently. His shoulders hit the back wall hard, and his head cracks against the cold stone. The Water Tribe peasants are thrown in after him. The boy yelps and loses his footing when the guards shove him, crashing to the ground, while the girl stumbles back several steps and then trips over him. They land in a tangle, already bickering. The guards roll the door shut after them with an ominous, heavy clang.
Just Zuko’s luck, really.
He lunges forward, straining to see through the bars of his prison. He yanks desperately at the cuffs that hold his hands behind his back—they’re freezing where they touch him, made of heavy metal, and the chill bites ruthlessly into his skin. “Hey!” he shouts after the guards. “Hey, wait! Come back here, you can’t do this!”
“Uh, actually, I think they can and they did,” the Water Tribe boy—who appears to have finally disentangled himself from his sibling—says. “Pretty easily, too.”
“And somehow I don’t think shouting at them is going to get them to let us out,” the girl agrees.
“Well if you have any better ideas I’d love to hear them,” Zuko spits. He knows they’re both clever, although it pains him to admit it—but how else would they have managed to evade him for so long?
The boy pushes himself to his feet, tugging ruefully at the cuffs that hold his hands behind his back. He glances briefly around the cell, taking stock of their surroundings with sharp blue eyes. “I don’t guess you guys can bend in cuffs, can you?”
In response, Zuko sweeps a foot at him. A blaze of bright flame follows in its wake, and the boy shrieks and jumps out of the way. A split second later the girl is in Zuko’s face, her teeth bared and eyes blazing. Zuko has the sense enough to take a step back.
“Don’t you dare do that,” the girl hisses. “Don’t you dare. If you hurt him, you won’t leave this cell alive.”
“Big threats from a little girl,” Zuko says, his lip curling into a snarl of his own. “What are you gonna do? Scold me to death?”
“You’re a piece of work, you know that?” the girl demands. “We’ve done nothing to you, absolutely nothing, and at every single opportunity you still manage to be the most hotheaded, stubborn, awful prick of a human being I've ever met! What is your problem? We—”
“Hey, guys, can we maybe hash this out later? The solstice isn’t exactly a marathon event, and I have a feeling we’ve only got until it ends to get out of here,” the boy interrupts, stepping forward. “And listen, I know we all hate each other, but it seems like we’ve got the same goal here. None of us get what we want as long as we’re in this cell, so let’s work together to get out, and then we can go back to tearing each others’ lives apart.”
The girl pulls back to her brother’s side, a scowl on her face. “Fine,” she says. “but if he tries anything else, I’ll rip the water out of his organs.”
Can she—can she do that?
“Sounds fair to me,” the boy says nonchalantly. Zuko is significantly more concerned now. “So, like, if you can still firebend, can you heat this metal up enough to make it malleable? Maybe we can push the bars open and squeeze through.”
“I can only sustain a fire with my hands, and I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but right now they’re a little stuck. I could try to melt the cuffs off, but I’d fry my wrists doing it, and I’m not quite that desperate yet.” Zuko wrinkles his nose. He might get that desperate eventually. Might. It would be better than facing his father after this. “Try again.”
“Just turn around and grab the bars that way,” the boy says, twirling his finger in the air.
Zuko frowns, but that...could work. He turns around, pressing his back to the bars and wrapping his fingers around two of them. He takes a deep breath, then begins to heat his palms. The metal is slow to warm, and within seconds Zuko knows this plan isn’t feasible. He pulls his hands away. “No,” he says. “This is iron. It’ll take too long to heat.”
“How long?” the girl demands.
“An hour, at least. If it was stone I could do it, or maybe even steel, but not this.” If he was Azula he could do it, because her flame burns hotter than anyone else’s—but he’s hardly as good as Azula, now, is he?
The boy begins to pace. “Katara, can you bend?”
“Not with my feet, no.”
“Well, we have to figure out something,” Zuko says. The idea of what happens if they don’t nearly makes him ill.
“Working on it,” the boy says.
“Well work faster!”
“Don’t yell at him,” the girl snaps. Agni, she turns ticking him off into an artform. “If you think you can do any better, do it! but I don’t hear you spouting off any ideas. Besides, what do you care? It doesn’t matter if you get taken to the Firelord.”
Zuko recoils. “What? Of course it does!”
“No, no, she’s right.” The boy looks skeptically at Zuko. “Why are you even in here? You’re the Firelord’s kid. Sure, maybe he’ll be disappointed that you lost the Avatar, but it’s not like he’ll kill you—which is, you know, exactly what he’ll do to us if we don’t get out of here. Maybe you don’t even want to break out. Maybe you’re just here to distract us until the solstice is over and your men can grab Aang. That seems like just the thing a dastardly firebender would do.”
Zuko stares blankly at him. There is so much wrong with that statement. Do they really not understand what Zuko has risked today? The ignorance of peasants never ceases to astound him. “Are you kidding me?” he says. “I'm banished! If the Firelord finds out I've been in Fire Nation waters, he’ll be furious. He’ll kill me!”
The boy hesitates, clearly confused, but the girl scoffs and says, “Look, I’m so sorry you’re going to be in trouble with your dad, but he’s not going to literally kill you, whereas literally killing us is his whole goal.”
Zuko is not, in fact, sure that his father won’t literally kill him. (It may even be a merciful punishment compared to some.) “Look, I know your tribe is a simple society,” he says tersely, “but even you should understand that committing treason against your ruler isn’t something to be taken lightly. By sailing into Fire Nation waters today, I may as well have spat in the Firelord’s face, and I doubt he’ll be so merciful as to let me off with a mere banishment this time.”
“...your dad banished you from the whole Fire Nation?” the boy asks, his brow furrowing. “But you’re the crown prince.”
“Not anymore,” Zuko says bitterly.
“Dude.” The boy looks at him, openly baffled. “That’s fucked.”
“He has my sister; he doesn’t need two heirs. It was only because of his great mercy that my life was spared after our Agni Kai. He should have killed me then.” Zuko takes a deep, shaky breath. “He won’t be so merciful a second time.”
They’re both looking at him, now, confusion clear in their eyes. What don’t they get? He explained it all as succinctly at he could! What is he going to do if they don’t believe him? They’ll leave him here, he knows it. Agni, they’ll probably leave him here anyway. What do they care if Father kills him? It would make their lives easier.
“Agni Kai?” the girl asks quietly. She’s studying him far too intently now.
“A duel between firebenders. For—for honor.” Zuko curls his hands into fists behind his back, looking away from them. “I lost mine.”
“Your father dueled you?” the boy demands. He looks aghast, but of course he doesn’t know what Zuko did to deserve it.
“He would have, but I refused to fight, and I brought great shame upon our family by doing so. Tradition demanded that he kill me, but I was fortunate enough that he let me go with only a scar. Now I've disobeyed him and tarnished that mercy.” A miserable shiver chases its way down Zuko’s spine. When he speaks again, his voice is much quieter. “He’s going to be very mad.”
“What,” the girl says, very slowly, “the fuck.”
“Uh, ditto. That’s seriously messed up, man. Your face, he—he did that to you?”
Zuko nods sharply.
“Spirits,” the boy whispers. Then, louder and more vehemently, “Spirits! What kind of man does that to his own son? Or to anyone? That’s so messed up!”
“It was my fault,” Zuko says, his voice cold but his face burning. He hates this story, and yet he knows full well that he deserves the shame of telling it. “I forced his hand. The Firelord would never hurt anyone who didn’t deserve it. He’s a kind and just ruler and he—”
“Dude, no way was this your fault,” the boy says, already shaking his head.
“You don’t even know what i did!”
“Then tell us,” the girl says, “but I really don’t think it’s going to matter.”
“I was graciously invited to one of the Firelord’s war councils,” Zuko says, his throat tight, “and I spoke up against one of his top generals. I had no right to say the things I did. It was disrespectful to the general, and to my father. As a child, I should have been quiet and listened so that I could learn instead of arrogantly assuming I knew better. Father had every right to punish me in the way he thought best. A prince cannot be allowed to behave in such a manner; it brings shame to the whole of the nation.”
They’re both looking at him, their matched blue eyes wide in horror. “Your dad,” the boy starts, then swallows hard. “Your dad dueled you, burned half of your face off, and then banished you because you spoke when you shouldn’t have?”
Guilt festers and bubbles like black tar in Zuko’s chest. “I didn’t just speak. I questioned and insulted one of his highest-ranking generals—but the man was planning a massacre! He shouldn’t have—” Zuko clamps his mouth shut, his teeth clicking together, and swallows thickly. “I mean. I found the tactic he proposed very startling, but it wasn’t my place to question such things. I’m sure he had his reasons.”
“Tui and La what the absolute fuck,” the boy whispers.
The girl trades a look with her brother, then looks back to Zuko and says, “Okay. We’re getting you out of here.”
“Yeah, there is absolutely no way we’re letting you get shipped back to the Firelord after this,” the boy agrees.
Zuko’s brow furrows. Mission...accomplished, he thinks? “Uh, thanks? But we still don’t know how we’re going to—”
The floor shudders violently beneath them, pitching and heaving, and Zuko stumbles back into the wall. The boy yelps and topples over gracelessly again, and the girl catches herself against the cell bars. Guards stream down the hallway outside, shouting to each other in alarm. Shit.
“The solstice must be over,” the girl says. “We have to get to Aang.”
“I think Aang’s getting to us,” the boy says, picking himself up. A crack splits the ceiling above them, and several displaced chunks of stone scatter across the ground. Dust plumes into the air. “I don’t know about you guys, but that looks like Avatar work to me.”
But Zuko hasn’t relied on anyone else for a long, long time, and he’s not about to start now. He kicks one of the smallest stone pieces into the air and turns to catch it in his hands. He quickly heats it in his palms—stone melts faster than metal, and before long it’s scorching against his flesh. He pushes it into shape, pointed and thin, before dropping it and letting it cool against the floor.
“What are you doing?” the girl asks. The boy hovers over her shoulder, watching with fascination.
“Getting us out of here,” Zuko says. “Does either one of you know how to pick locks?”
As it turns out, neither of them do. Big surprise. As soon as the stone has cooled, Zuko kicks it back into his hands and motions for the girl to turn around. Picking locks tends to be easier when he can see what he’s doing and he’s not pressed back-to-back with a stranger he’s pretty sure hates him—but he manages. The girl’s cuffs clatter to the ground, and she immediately yanks the water from the flask at her hip and goes to work cutting through the cell bars while Zuko uncuffs her brother.
“What about you?” the boy asks when he’s free, rubbing his chafed wrists.
“I’ll figure it out later.” Zuko glances up as the ceiling creaks ominously. “But right now this place is coming down.”