Chapter Text
“What’s happening now?”
Toph frowned in concentration before replying to Sokka. “I think they’ve stopped fighting.”
“You think?”
“Look, they’re really far, okay? I can’t feel anything other than them not moving around.”
Aang bit his lip at that, worrying about the implications. “Can you feel their heartbeats?”
“No, just big movements, and even then it’s really fuzzy. I don’t usually sense this far away.”
Aang nodded, deciding to not voice out loud his worry that them not moving meant that one of them was badly injured or dead. He knew that he should trust Azula with her judgement, but it was very hard to do so when the guy who literally tried and technically succeeded in killing him had attacked her like a wild beast. He didn’t like thinking of people like that, but that was pretty much all he’d seen when Zuko had started attacking her.
They all turned to Hakoda as he cleared his throat. “I know that this is a very tense moment for everyone right now, but could you explain to me what just happened? In general?”
“It’s kind of a long story,” said Sokka. “As you know, it all started when Katara broke an iceberg because I was being sexist. There was a massive beam of light that-”
“I don’t think you need to go that far,” Aang countered.
“What? He asked!”
Katara cleared her throat. “Azula joined us, but then she let her murderous psycho of a brother come back here, even though he almost killed Aang.”
Hakoda nodded. “That I understood. But if she’s on your side, shouldn’t you want to help her fight against him?”
“Eh, they’ll figure it out,” Toph said while shrugging. “I mean, I’m pretty sure Azula knows what she’s doing… kinda.”
“I wouldn’t think that if I were you.” They all turned to the ex-prisoner, Chit Sang, who looked very much on edge. “You’re not dealing with the average military-trained firebender here.”
“Yeah, we know,” Katara sighed. “We’ve fought him before.”
“The fact that you’re still so nonchalant about him makes me think you haven’t heard much about him.”
Aang frowned. They had heard a few things about Zuko, like the fact that he was a prodigy and that a lot of people in different towns seemed to like him, but most of what they knew about him came from fighting him and what little Azula had told them.
“Like what?” Aang asked.
“Well, it’s mostly just rumours, but a lot of people say that he’s killed his fair share of soldiers and civilians under the Fire Lord’s orders, and not in the heat of battle. Some say he executes them quickly, others say that he hunts them for sport. There’s a bunch of people who swear that they know someone who works at the palace who had to clean up the mess he left after he tortured someone, which made them immediately quit and never want to talk about it again.”
Sokka gulped. “Well, how lovely.”
“Some say he’ll break you if you so much as look at him badly, and seeing how most people who have power act, I wouldn’t be surprised if it were true. Again, it’s mostly just rumours I’ve heard, but rumours usually come from somewhere.”
“So what you’re saying is that we should just book it as soon as Azula comes back?” asked Toph.
Chit Sang shrugged. “Don’t know if that’ll help much, to be honest. It’s like you just brought a wolf-fox into a sheep-hen enclosure.”
Aang had to do his best to not freak out outwardly, trying to find a small bright side to this. Sure, the monks had always told him to not base his views of people on stories that he couldn’t check, but like Chit Sang had said, those rumours had to come from somewhere.
“Well, we’ve run away from him before,” he said, trying to keep his voice as levelled as possible.
“Maybe you were lucky, or maybe he was playing nice. Who knows…”
Well, Aang could still remember that time he wasn’t so lucky. The pain in his entire body feeling like he’d been hit by the biggest boulder in existence still haunted his nightmares even if he couldn’t feel its pain anymore. To him, Zuko was terrifying, but those rumours somehow managed to make him even worse in Aang’s eyes.
He turned to look at the stairs Azula had taken, with Zuko chasing her like a bloodthirsty beast. If she didn’t come back soon, they would definitely be going down there.
“I heard stuff like that too.” They all turned to Suki, who seemed less fearful and more confused about her words. “It came from the Earth Kingdom, so there’s obviously some extra intention to make your enemies look bad, but the stories went the same way. Some say he feels nothing as he kills on command, others say he’s a maniac who’ll gladly rip you to pieces, and that if you’re captured by him you should just end yourself before he has the chance to do anything to you.”
Again, most of them looked back at those stairs, and Aang could feel their collective worry grow for Azula.
“But then again, I got captured by him,” she continued, catching their attention. Chit Sang stared at her in disbelief and she nodded. “Yeah. It wasn’t the most comfortable I’ve ever been, but it wasn’t that bad if you think about it. He definitely didn’t torture me or anything, at worst he threatened me. But he just seemed… well, normal, I guess. A little awkward and unaware of situations sometimes, but if you took away the blue fire and training, I’m pretty sure he’d just be a regular guy. Obviously, he’s dangerous. I mean, we all know that. But I don’t know if we should see him as a full-on monster outright, you know?”
“He literally attacked his sister just now,” Katara said with an unimpressed tone.
Suki shrugged. “You hit Sokka with water sometimes.”
“That’s a little different.”
“Quiet!” They all turned to Toph, who was turned to the staircase. “They’re coming back.”
“And?” Sokka asked frantically.
“They’re both alive? What do you want me to say?”
“I don’t know, can’t you tell if they’re hurt?”
“Well, you’ll just have to tell me!”
“Everything alright here?”
They all turned to Azula and Zuko staring at them in confusion. Aang couldn’t help but notice how awful they both looked, especially with Azula’s singed clothes.
“Did you… talk?” asked Aang in the nicest way he could muster.
“Uh, yeah,” said Azula. “We talked about… well, what we meant to talk about. There were plenty of words used, far more words than fire, in fact.”
“What kind of words?” Sokka asked awkwardly while trying to keep Katara from opening her waterskin.
“Oh, you know…”
“Nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, prepositions, pronouns, interjections, conjunctions,” Zuko listed blankly. “That kind of stuff, along with a few similes and hyperboles, and badly used metaphors.” He turned to Azula to give her a pointed look.
She just crossed her arms and looked to the side. “Shut up,” she mumbled.
“So, you’re done talking now?” asked Katara.
Azula nodded. “Yes, for now at least.”
“Great,” Sokka said in fake joy. “Then we can now leave the jerk here and fly off to somewhere where he won’t find us again!”
“Actually… no?”
Katara frowned. “Are you saying you’re gonna join him?”
“Uh, no, I’m not. I was actually going to propose that he join us instead.”
Aang’s eyes widened at the same time as everyone else’s. “What?!”
“I know, I know. He was still our enemy a few hours ago, but I think we all know by now that people can change their minds.”
Sokka took a deep breath and brought her closer to the group and away from Zuko. “Azula, as your friends, we need you to understand how crazy that sounds.”
“And she is our friend,” Katara said loudly while glaring at Zuko, who was still standing in his spot like he was bored. She then turned back to Azula. “But you won’t be for long if you keep saying stuff like that.”
“Sorry to say this, Prickly, but this is probably one of the worst ideas I’ve ever heard, and I’ve heard a lot come out of Snoozles’ mouth.”
“Hey!”
“Look, during our talk, we both made it clear to each other that we wanted Ozai off the throne, which is exactly what you all want, right?”
“Yeah, and then he’ll just backstab us and take the throne for himself,” said Sokka.
“Well, no, he’s not on Ozai’s side and wants the war to end, so I don’t see why he would do this, it would be kind of counterproductive.”
“If he’s so against the war, why did he take Ba Sing Se?” Katara spat.
“Orders are orders, it’s kinda hard to go against them.”
“Is that really the best you can come up with?”
“Look, he would make a good ally, okay? I mean, we all know how strong he is, and the Fire Nation already likes him, so he would make a change of power easier to pass.”
“That would be great, except that we don’t know if he even is on our side,” said Toph.
Azula sighed. “Zuko, do you want to join our group?”
They all turned to Zuko, who was looking at Appa looking back at him. “Uh, sure, beats following that dickhead.”
“And do you want to help us end the war, as in getting to Fire Nation to stop its colonisation and also help rebuild the world?”
“Yeah, that sounds nice,” he said almost distractedly while watching Appa take a step towards him.
They all turned back to each other.
“Toph, verdict please?”
“Well, he’s not lying.”
“He also didn’t sound all that convinced,” said Suki.
“Well I wouldn’t be convinced in joining a group that wasn’t very nice to me.”
“We’ve got plenty of reasons to be mad at him,” Sokka deadpanned.
She sighed. “Aang, you’ve barely said anything. What do you think?”
They all turned to him, and he wanted the ground to swallow him up without him having to bend it. On the one hand, he could tell that Azula really wanted them to accept Zuko in their group, but on the other, his friends clearly didn’t want that, and he was more on their side even if he also wanted her to be happy.
“Azula, we can’t just let someone like that join us.”
“What do you mean, ‘someone like that’?”
“Well, we’ve heard… a lot of things about him.”
She waved her hand dismissively. “Plenty of rumours run around. I mean, have you heard what the Fire Nation says about you? Most of it isn’t true.”
“Yeah, but it’s his own people talking about him,” said Toph.
She sighed. “Look, things are complicated, okay? Whatever you’ve heard, it was probably greatly exaggerated, like most rumours are. I’m not asking you to be his friend or anything, I’m just asking that he stay with us. I don’t want him to go back to the palace, and neither does he. His time there wasn’t any easier than mine, it was just with different circumstances.”
Aang took in his friends’ unconvinced looks and shook his head. “I’m sorry, Azula, but he can’t stay. We can’t let someone that violent be around us, especially someone that none of us trust.”
“I trust him.”
He pointed at her singed clothes. “He attacked you.”
“He wasn’t trying to kill me,” she said frantically. “Look, if you want, we could handcuff him. There’s plenty of those in the airship, and Toph could fortify a pair even more.”
“I’m pretty sure the only way to actually contain him would be in chains,” said Toph. “And even then, I wouldn’t trust it.”
Aang sighed. “Azula, we just can’t trust him to not change his mind about attacking us. We could drop him off somewhere when we leave, but that’s it.”
Azula stared at all of them, disappointment clear in her eyes, and frowned. “That’s your final word?”
He nodded. “Yes. I’m sorry, Azula.”
She sighed and nodded. “Me too. Good luck finding a new teacher then.”
His eyes grew wide as she turned to walk away. “Wait, what?”
She turned back to him. “I told him I wouldn’t abandon him again, which means that if he leaves, then I leave as well.”
“Azula, you can’t do that!”
“Why’s that?”
He stared at her in disbelief. “Y-you’re my teacher! You’re meant to be my teacher. And you’re our friend, you can’t just leave!”
“Sorry, but my main priority is Zuko. So if you don’t let him stay, then I won’t stay either.”
“Are you seriously choosing him over saving the world?” said Katara. “Don’t you see how selfish this is?”
“I already joined you!” Azula snapped. “I already left everything behind to help you, and it almost destroyed everything! I am not making that mistake again, and if it means leaving you, then so be it.”
“Azula, you can’t bargain with something like that,” Sokka exclaimed.
“I’m not bargaining anything, I’m just telling you the facts. Where Zuko goes, I go, which means that if he leaves, I leave.”
Aang couldn’t believe what she was saying. Like, he could understand, but at the same time this was Zuko they were talking about, someone who honestly tormented them more than she had, which was saying something.
As they all kept arguing, Aang turned to look at him, as if that would give him his answer. He was quite surprised to see that Appa was now standing right next to Zuko and giving him small nudges. In return, Zuko gave him small pats. They both seemed a bit hesitant in their actions, but Aang could tell that Appa’s nudges were getting friendlier and friendlier. At some point, Zuko started whispering things that Aang obviously couldn’t hear, but Appa seemed to appreciate his words and bumped his nose to Zuko’s face, to which the prince started scratching Appa’s chin.
Aang kept staring, growing more and more unsure of his resolve. Appa knew very well what Zuko had put them through, and yet he seemed to trust him enough to let him touch him. And Appa was a very good judge of character, so it definitely meant something.
“Azula? If we let him stay, you’ll still be my teacher, right?”
They all turned to him in shock, and Azula nodded. “I mean, it’s not like I want to leave. But I promised him that I would stay with him, and I’m not breaking any more promises I’ve made him. I’m lucky enough that he’s given me another chance to trust me.”
He could tell that Azula wouldn’t budge, and there was no way that he would be leaving a friend behind. And if Appa trusted Zuko enough, well…
“Well, maybe we could try?”
Katara gasped. “Aang, you can’t be serious!”
“I mean, Appa seems to like him.”
“Is Appa the only metric you use to make friends?” Sokka asked. “Because I’d like to remind you that the first thing he did to me was sneezing on me.”
“Well, if he’s telling the truth, and Appa likes him, maybe we can try letting him stay. Plus, we can’t afford to find me a new firebending teacher, and we definitely can’t just leave our friend behind.”
Obviously, they didn’t take that too well. The argument kept on going on and on, only this time Aang was also trying to help Azula through her case, which didn’t really help much to be honest. In the end, it was Hakoda who managed to bring an end to the discussion.
“We can keep him as a prisoner.”
“But what if he attacks us?”
“He won’t,” said Azula. “He promised, remember?”
After a few more words thrown in, they all agreed to try, though most of his friends said so with clear reluctance. As Suki went into the airship to get a pair of handcuffs, they all walked to Zuko, who was still slowly petting a sleepy Appa. The scene would have looked cute if it weren’t him standing in it.
“We’ve come to an agreement,” Azula told him.
He turned to them with a neutral expression. “And?”
Aang cleared his throat to make sure that his voice wouldn’t waver. “You’re allowed to stay, but only as a prisoner. You’ll be handcuffed and supervised at all times.”
“And at the slightest slip up, we get rid of you,” Katara added harshly. “Clear?”
Zuko simply nodded, showing no opinion to their announcements. “Crystal.”
As soon as Suki came back, they cuffed him, and Katara took the key with her. Zuko pulled at the chain holding the cuffs together a few times, then looked back to all of them.
“Now what?”
“Now, you go sit over there, and you stay there,” said Katara while pointing to a bench that was further away from their campsite, but still visible.
“Oh,” Toph added, “and no matter what, you stay in the area, got it? I wanna be able to sense you wherever you are.”
He just nodded and walked to the bench without a fuss. As soon as they saw him sit down, they all breathed out an exhausted sigh.
“Thank you,” said Azula. “You don’t know what that means to me. I promise you won’t regret it.”
Katara frowned at her. “Don’t thank us yet, you’re also on thin ice. Siding with our enemy isn’t what friends do.” With that, she walked to the campfire, probably to start making food.
“She’s right,” said Sokka. “I know why you did it, but she’s still right.” He walked off and picked up his bag, probably to change back into his clothes.
“I won’t mince words, Sizzles, I am not happy with this,” Toph said while kicking a pebble. “I trust you, but we’re still dealing with, you know, him.”
“I’ll make sure things go smoothly.”
She shrugged as she walked away. “Sure…”
Azula turned to Suki. “What do you think?”
“I don’t know, I barely know him.”
“You talked with him, though.”
“Yeah, and I got some really mixed signals from that talk.” She shrugged. “I’ll guess we’ll just see what happens.”
“Well, thanks anyway,” she said as Suki walked off to talk to Katara.
She then turned to Aang and smiled slightly. “Thanks for taking my side. I know out of everyone here, you have all the reasons to hate him, so it means a lot.”
He shrugged. “I didn’t do it for him. I just didn’t want you to leave.”
“I know…”
“Did you do that on purpose?”
“No. I just told it as it is.” She stared at the ground, as if feeling shameful. “I almost ruined everything because I left him, and I promised that I wouldn’t do that again. I said I’d make it up to him, and I can’t exactly do that if I abandon him again.”
“I just don’t really see what you like in him.”
“Well, you don’t usually act nice to your enemies. I mean, I know you do, but you’re an exception.” Her hand moved to the scars on one of her wrists. “We both suffered there. He had it rough differently than how I did, but turns out that having Ozai’s attention is never a good thing. You have every right to be mad at him, but just… Don’t mention him working for Ozai too much, he probably won’t take it well.”
Aang nodded slowly, feeling like there was a very long story behind her words while also knowing that she didn’t want to talk about it. That was fine.
“As long as he doesn’t hurt any of us, I think we can manage…”
She nodded and grabbed her bag, probably to change into her actual clothes instead of the clothes worn under guards’ armour.
Aang let out a very long sigh and looked to Zuko, who was still sitting on the bench with his back turned to the camp. To be honest, Aang really didn’t like Zuko, and if those rumours Chit Sang told them were even half true, then he liked him even less. But Monk Gyatso had told him that appearances could be deceiving, and first impressions didn’t always define a person (although Zuko had had plenty of impressions to give, all of them really bad), and Azula had turned out nice, so… Yeah, it didn’t really feel the same. While Azula had been determined in chasing him down, she’d never actually tried to kill him, let alone succeeded.
A shiver ran down his spine, the same that always appeared when he remembered the fact that he had in fact died under Ba Sing Se before Katara revived him. Did Zuko even feel any remorse for that? He hadn’t apologised or even mentioned it, which didn’t give Aang a lot of high hopes. Hopefully he just didn’t know how to apologise, which would be fair, but still.
He turned to Appa who was still lying on the ground sleepily, and patted his head.
“I really hope you know what you’re doing, because I’m relying on you for this one.”
Appa let out a low growl.
“No, I completely trust your judgement, it’s just a bit hard to see why you took his side.”
He let out another growl, and closed his eyes to go to sleep.
Aang sighed. “Yeah… I guess things could always be worse.”
---
Things were going surprisingly well, which he didn’t like. Sure, they weren’t great per say. He was cuffed and taken in as a prisoner, even though being a prisoner meant not wanting to be somewhere which wasn’t fully his case, his head was still buzzing and he felt like he was about to be sick, but he was still able to stay with Azula, so that was all that mattered.
He couldn’t help but smile at the fact that she’d fought for him. She would have even left her new friends for him. Despite wanting so badly to believe her when she said that she cared and that she wouldn’t abandon him again, he still had this small but ever-present fear that she hadn’t been truthful, that he didn’t really matter to her. But the fact that she had been so adamant about sticking with him managed to quell that fear, at least for now.
“You alright?”
He looked up to Azula as she sat next to him. “Yeah, just tired, you know?”
“Yeah, you definitely didn’t hold back back there,” she chuckled while rubbing her arm.
He bit his cheek. “Sorry about that…”
“It was a stupid thing to do, by the way. I mean, do you know how hard it is to convince people that you’re not a threat when you just attacked me?”
He winced at her tone, feeling her growing anger at him. He deserved it, he shouldn’t have fought her, but he’d just been so furious at her. Guess it was her turn to be angry at him.
“Sorry…”
“That’s all you say, ‘sorry’. You know, how about you actually act on it instead of throwing a pity party for yourself?” His eyes dropped to his hands as he felt his throat start to close up. “You’re always so difficult, you know that? Agni, it’s like you can’t be happy with just having Father’s affection! If you’re so worthless without him, why don’t you just go crawl back to the palace? It’s not like I need you to survive, you’re barely trustworthy as it is.”
His breath hitched at her words, the want to crying growing inside of him even though he had no tears left to shed. It hurt how right she was, how she could see how useless he truly was. But he didn’t want her to turn her back on him right after she’d promised not to leave again.
“I’m sorry,” he said, his voice barely above a whisper. “I won’t-”
“You alright?”
His head whipped to her with such force that he felt his neck crack. Azula stared back at him in confusion, probably because of his lack of answer.
“Oh, uh… yeah…”
“Were you just talking?”
Zuko’s eyes moved slightly to where Azula had been, but he didn’t need to see the empty seat to know that she had never been there. The thought crossed him of telling her about his hallucinations, but the mere thought brought on images of her deciding that dealing with him would be too much, and her going back on her words. And he didn’t want to burden her, or make her think any less of him for losing it. She would see him for what he truly was, someone who was weak enough to break under his life’s pressures when he could have left just like she had and was just too stupid to realise it.
Instead, he shrugged. “Just thinking out loud.”
She hummed and nodded. “Yeah, I can relate to that.”
“Are you alright?”
She chuckled. “A bit bruised, but nothing I’ve never gotten before. Good thing you fought me while I was in that uniform, I would’ve been pretty mad if you’d ruined my actual clothes.” He rolled his eyes at that. “By the way, will you want to change at some point? Because that might be a bit hard with those.”
Zuko looked down at his cuffs, then his clothes. The only piece of armour he had left, not counting his boots, was his bracers, which he didn’t mind since that would make having cuffs on at all times a bit more bearable. “I think I’m good. Good thing I took the chest plate off, that would’ve sucked to wear.”
She snorted. “Oh definitely. By the way, I actually came here to tell you that supper is ready. I’m not telling you that you have to eat with them, but if you’re feeling up to is…”
“I, uh… Are they even okay with me eating with them?”
She feigned thinking it over. “Good question. They probably aren’t, but I don’t care. If you want to eat with them, go for it.”
He thought about it for a bit, then shrugged. “Sure, why not? It’s not like we can avoid each other forever.”
She chuckled and patted his back as he got up. “That’s the spirit!”
The group was, in fact, not very happy to see him.
Azula sat next to him, but nobody dared get close to him on his other side, which was fine by him since it was his left side and he was too tired to try to focus on what was happening over there. The waterbender in particular looked like she was trying to kill him with her mind while serving some soup into different bowls, and it took everything in Zuko to not glare back. He now had to act somewhat nice towards them, after all. She also glared at Azula as she gave her her bowl, but Zuko could tell that for all of her anger at his sister, she still considered her an ally even with the situation they were all in.
He made sure to thank the waterbender as she handed him his bowl, which only helped to deepen her frown.
The atmosphere was extremely tense, with some trying to start conversations with others and ultimately failing. Even the flying lemur looked uncomfortable as it sat next to the bison. He could feel their eyes on him as he slowly stirred his soup, feeling his appetite dwindling with every swirl. The prisoner that came back with them seemed particularly fidgety, and he was starting to regret sitting down with them all. It would be easier to find their weariness entertaining if his stomach wasn’t so adamant to stop him from eating.
The soup just seemed to smell wrong. A bit too bitter to be eaten so readily by everyone around him, including Azula, even though he knew very well how she unintentionally grimaced every time something too bitter touched her tongue. Maybe it was just his bowl? But then why would only his portion smell like this? Unless…
The problem with paranoid thoughts was that they never left your head once they arrived. And now, he found himself convinced that his bowl, and only his bowl had been poisoned. It would make sense, after all. Azula’s friends didn’t want him around, and since they couldn’t argue their way out, poisoning him would be a much easier way out.
What was left of his appetite vanished at his revelation.
“Why aren’t you eating?”
He shrugged at Azula’s question while swallowing the urge to throw up.
“Is my cooking too crude for his princely-ness?” the waterbender asked mockingly. He didn’t look up at her, but he could tell that she was frowning.
“She’s probably angry that you realised her plan.”
He swallowed as he heard Ursa’s voice from behind him, and made sure to stay still and not show that anything was wrong. It was fine, not showing any emotion was a regular occurrence for him.
“I wonder what she put in there…” she continued. “I’d say something deadly, it wouldn’t make sense to simply make you sick. Maybe some physalis alkekengi? No, that kind of plant doesn’t grow in this region.”
He breathed in deeply, trying to make her understand that she needed to stop talking. He didn’t need to entertain which way they’d decided to kill him.
“Maybe some arsenic, that would be pretty simple. Although I don’t see how she would procure some in the middle of nowhere without the proper tools…”
His focus turned back to his bowl as he felt Azula pull it away from his hands, giving him hers instead. She gave him a comforting smile, which didn’t help at all because of Ursa’s next sentence.
“Oh, I know! It has to be rosary seeds! If she eats any of that, she’ll be dead in a couple of days.”
Yes, that would make the most sense. Rosary peas were known to grow in this region, they were quite easy to acquire, and they tasted bitter. And now Azula was about to ingest some.
He slapped the bowl from her hands as she was about to eat some and watched as its contents were splattered on the floor. There, things were fine now.
“What the fuck?!”
Oh right, people were still around them. He couldn’t hear Ursa anymore, but he would have almost preferred her to half of the group shouting at him. Azula was also shouting back, but he couldn’t hear anything they were saying. It felt like he was underwater. The way his chest constricted aided in that feeling. He needed to leave. He needed to be alone. He just needed a bit of quiet, but he wouldn’t get it by staying here.
He shoved Azula’s bowl back in her hands and got up, walking away as quickly as he could. He couldn’t tell if he was being followed or not, but their shouting was receding, and that was all he wanted. What he didn’t want was the whispers to start up again. He could feel something crawl on the back of his neck, and tried to swat it off before remembering that he was still injured there. His breathing picked up as he stopped himself from yelling in pain, hearing those buzzing whispers become louder and louder.
He managed to find a far off bench and sat on it, covering his ears as things kept getting louder and louder. He couldn’t discern any of their words, but he knew what they all said. They always said the same thing.
“Shut up!”
There was one blissful second of silence before the noise crashed back down, now louder than before. It felt as if something had struck him in the head, booming and echoing inside of his skull. He felt as if the pressure would be enough to make his bones crack.
Oh Spirits, he was going to crack.
His whole skeletal system was about to fracture.
His mind was about to shatter in a thousand pieces and he would never be able to get up again.
“Look at you.”
His insides seized up as he heard that voice, that voice that constantly dictated his life, that was always there to tell him how weak he really was.
He gingerly looked up and was met with his father’s disgust.
“I didn’t raise you to be such a pathetic coward.”
His chest was breaking under the pressure of his rapid heartbeat.
“You think you can simply turn away from me?”
Every inch of his body trembled at his presence.
“You think you can betray me like this? It seems you really are stupid enough to forget such a basic fact. I own you, Zuko. Without me, you won’t survive out there. You are nothing without me.”
He threw his face in his hands and closed his eyes, focusing on his breath to calm himself down. There was no one around him. He was alone. Father wasn’t here, and neither was Ursa. No one was here, so he was fine. Father didn’t even know that he had defected, right? How could he possibly know? He couldn’t know. He was just being paranoid, like with everything else, because it seemed like paranoia was the only thing left in his life.
His mouth tasted like ash.
He wanted to disappear.
His heart was still trying to escape, filling his ears and strangling him with its efforts. He couldn’t breathe anymore with how fast it was going, his lungs were going to collapse for sure and there was nothing he could-
“You don’t like salty food?”
…
What?
Zuko turned to his right to see the nine-year-old Earth Kingdom kid sitting next to him with a plate of vegetables and bread. The kid looked at him questioningly, clearly waiting for his answer while trying to keep his oversized helmet upright, but Zuko couldn’t answer him because his brain was trying to process what that question even was for.
“W… what? Why?”
“Well, Katara’s food’s nice, but it’s sometimes a bit too salty.”
“Oh… uh…”
It was maddening how his brain couldn’t come up with a response.
“Since you ran away, I’m pretty sure you don’t like salty food. Wanna share some of mine?”
Oh… that was… nice? Yeah… yeah…
What the fuck was happening again?
“Okay?”
“Cool!”
The kid ate some random piece of vegetable and ate it on some bread, which made Zuko feel pretty sure that none of it was poisoned. Kids usually didn’t try to poison people. Usually.
The kid plopped the plate between the two of them on the bench, and Zuko started eating small bits of spinach and squash. His appetite seemed to slowly return, although it definitely wasn’t as ravenous as the kid’s, whose name he still didn’t know. He should probably ask at some point.
“You’re Azula’s brother, right?” Zuko nodded. “She talked about you a bit.”
“Oh… What did she say?”
“Well, she said she liked you a lot, but that she wouldn’t not fight you if she had to. Although she did seem reti… ret… retici… uh…”
“Reticent?”
“Yeah! Reta…”
“Re-ti-cent.”
“Reti… Reticent!” He grinned and ate a piece of taro root. “Yeah, she looked reticent to do that.”
Well, that was nice to know.
“Also, I’m sorry your dad sucks so much. Like, a lot.”
Zuko swallowed and nodded. “Thanks…”
“What’s your name again? I didn’t get it before.”
“Zuko. You?”
“I’m The Duke!”
“Duke?” What a strange name.
“No, The Duke.”
What an even stranger name. Oh well, he could roll with this.
“So where are you from, The Duke?”
He gave him a bright smile. “I used to live in a massive tree village in a forest! It’s close to a town called Gaipan, which was a fun place to be in until the Fire Nation came along. They tried to get rid of us, but we kept fighting them back!”
“We?”
“The Freedom Fighters! We all lived together in the trees. They were really tall, you couldn’t see anyone through the leaves either. It got really pretty when it was cold, everything was orange! I had a bunch of friends too, it was so cool!”
“And why are you here now?”
His excitement started to whither. “Apparently our leader, Jet, wasn’t the greatest. Pipsqueak didn’t explain much to me, but I got that him and some other Freedom Fighters exploded something, which turned out to be a bad thing to do. So the whole group despan… disbanded, and me and Pipsqueak went off to check out a bunch of ports. Then we bumped into Sokka while he was counting some crates in a port, and we asked if we could come along. We stuck around on some Fire Nation boat, and then we moved to some Water Tribe boats, and then we came along to fight during the eclipse.”
“You… you fought during the eclipse?” If that was the case, he was going to hit someone very hard.
Thankfully, The Duke pouted and shook his head. “I had to stay in the back. They said I was too small to fight. But Pipsqueak got to fight, ‘cause he’s big and all that.” His face saddened. “I hope he’s alright…”
“Where is he?”
“He got captured by the Fire Nation when we lost…”
“Oh…” He wanted to say that his friend was probably fine, but Zuko knew how Fire Nation prison systems worked, and he didn’t want to give The Duke any false hopes.
Actually, if the kid had had such a bad time with the Fire Nation, why was he sitting next to him right now?
“Why are you here?”
He gave him a confused look. “I just told you?”
“No, I mean, why are you sitting here? I mean, the food’s nice and all, but wouldn’t you rather be with people you know?”
He cringed. “Well… Things were starting to get a little loud over there. They kept shouting a lot, and I’m pretty sure that Azula’s about to fight Katara. Plus, I thought you could use some company!”
Zuko shot a quick glance to the camp’s direction, and elected to forget about that. Hopefully he was still within the earthbender’s sensing distance.
“But didn’t you see how the others reacted to me being here? I mean, they weren’t exactly happy.”
“Well, they reacted the same way with Azula, and she’s alright. And if she thinks you’re alright, and they accepted that you stay here, then you should be alright too, right?”
His eyes dropped to his shackles, then back to The Duke as he took another piece of squash. “Right… Do you even know who I am?”
“You’re Azula’s brother.”
“And do you know who she is?”
“Yeah, she’d the princess, ‘cause her dad’s the Fire Lord.”
“Which makes me…?”
“The… Oh, that’s why they don’t like you!”
“Yup.”
“I don’t know, you seem nice.”
“What gave you that idea?”
He shrugged. “You said ‘thank you’ when Katara gave you soup.”
He blinked. “That’s a very low bar for niceness.”
“You didn’t attack us either.”
It took everything within Zuko to not cringe at that, especially since he had attacked members of the group at least twice today, three times if you counted his ‘talk’ with Sokka. “Sure, let’s go with that.”
“Plus, you’re handcuffed, so you can’t do much anyway.”
A bold statement, and definitely wrong. Not that Zuko was about to rectify it.
“Sure. What do you do around here, anyway?”
“Run around the temple. I keep finding new rooms with Haru and Teo, it’s really cool! We keep finding these awesome wall paintings, and there’s this whole garden area, but with crystals lighting up the place! Plus, there’s a lot of cool rocks to find.”
“You like rocks?”
“Yeah, you?”
He nodded, because who didn’t like cool rocks? “Sure.”
The Duke gasped and jumped to his feet. “You should come see my collection! I’ve found so many cool rocks! I keep them all in a bag so Toph doesn’t bend them.”
“I don’t think a bag would stop her.”
He shrugged. “Probably not… So do you wanna see them?”
“Uh… sure, why not?”
“Awesome!” he exclaimed as they both got up. “I’ve got one that looks like it glitters, and one that’s really smooth, and even one that has a bunch of cool lumps around it!”
“You don’t need to make me want to see them more, kid, I’m already coming.”
“I’m not a kid!
“How old are you?”
“I’m almost ten,” he said as they started walking towards the camp.
“And when’s that happening?”
“… Next year…”
“Then I stand completely correct.”
---
Teo wasn’t usually one to get scared, especially by people he called friends. But he would be lying if he said he wasn’t starting to worry about Katara and Azula’s shouting matches. Plural. Every time things seemed to calm down, one of them would very quickly combust again and look seconds away from murdering the other, which wasn’t great.
Naturally, he understood why Katara was so mad. The Fire Prince had basically insulted her cooking and walked off like an asshole even though they’d accepted him in staying here, which wasn’t a great thing to do. The only reason she hadn’t followed him was because Azula had started arguing with her, and Toph still had him in her sensing area.
Like everyone else sitting around the fire, he tuned most of the shouting out, trying to eat as fast as possible so as to leave this extremely awkward situation. The Duke, smart kid that he was, had just left and ran off somewhere, but the rest of them couldn’t really do that.
In the end, Sokka and Katara’s dad was the one to get between them to calm them down, although that didn’t stop them from glaring at each other. It only took about a minute before someone else noticed The Duke’s absence.
“Oh, he went to sit with Zuko,” Toph said nonchalantly.
“I’m sorry, what?!” Sokka exclaimed.
“Don’t worry, I can still fell them. Speaking of which, here they are!”
They all turned to see The Duke practically dragging the fire prince towards his side of the camp, with the fire prince holding a plate and looking vaguely interested with what was happening.
“The Duke, what are you doing?” asked Hakoda.
“I’m gonna show Zuko my rock collection!”
Aang gulped. “Uh… I don’t think he wants to see it.”
Zuko shook his head as he watched The Duke open his special rock bag. “Oh no, I want to.”
The next few minutes were weird. They all basically shot glances every couple of seconds to supervise the two, while said two just looked at rocks. The Duke kept excitedly telling Zuko about how he’d found them and what he imaged happened to them to look like that, all the while Zuko listened intently like this was the most interesting thing he’d ever heard.
“That one I found near the cliff side. It looks like a fang, so I think it belonged to a rock monster.”
“Actually, that’s a fossil.”
The Duke gasped. “Really?”
“Yeah, it’s probably a seashell, or maybe a squid. If you look underneath, you can see a lighter colour, which might be the actual animal in there.”
“That’s so cool! Guys! I found a fossil!”
Teo smiled and gave him a thumbs up while trying to not show his nervousness. “Cool!”
“The whole ravine used to be submerged at some point a very long time ago, so that’s probably how it got there,” Zuko explained.
“I’m gonna keep it forever!”
You know, if you put aside the fact that The Duke was talking to a dangerous firebender who had already killed Aang once apparently, the scene would have actually been pretty cute. Momo even got closer to them at some point and gave them some pebbles, which The Duke seemed to like. By the time they’d decided to go to bed, the kid looked completely exhausted, but in a good way.
“Goodnight, Zuko!” he waved as Zuko and Azula walked further off from the camp to sleep, which was probably for the best. Toph even went as far as to bend rocks around the prince’s waist just in case. “We can go exploring tomorrow!”
Haru frowned as he tried to get the kid to settle down. “No you’re not.”
“What? Why?”
“Shh, people are trying to sleep,” Teo whispered.
“Why?” The Duke repeated more quietly.
“He’s dangerous.”
“I think he’s nice.”
Haru seemed to choke on air at that. “Didn’t you listen to what the others said?”
“Yeah, but I don’t think he’s that mean.”
Haru sighed. “He’s the Fire Nation’s prince.”
“Azula’s the Fire Nation’s princess.”
“That’s different.”
“Why?”
“She didn’t do bad things like he did.”
The Duke stayed silent for a bit. “Jet also did some bad stuff, that doesn’t mean he’s evil.”
He’d told them a bit about Jet, although it was mostly through the lens of a kid who looked up to an older brother figure. But Teo could also remember Pipsqueak telling him about how the Freedom Fighters had disbanded, because Jet had taken things too far. This probably wasn’t the solid argument The Duke thought it was.
But then again, it wasn’t like Zuko had hurt him. If you’d just looked at his interactions with the kid, you would’ve never guessed all the rumours and horror stories that surrounded him. And The Duke was pretty weary of the Fire Nation, like anyone else, so it was surprising that the kid had taken such a liking to the prince of the people who had decimated his home. Who knew, maybe he was right in liking that guy.
“I wanna hang out with him again.”
Well, Teo definitely didn’t trust him enough for that.
“No, definitely not.”
“But-”
“Go to sleep, we can talk about this tomorrow.”
Blessedly, he just grumbled and finally lay down between Teo and Haru. “Fine.”
---
“You probably shouldn’t have done that. The plate throwing, I mean.”
Zuko winced. “Sorry.”
Azula sighed and rolled on her side to be able to hug him, which was a bit complicated wince he was stuck on his back and couldn’t move his arms all that much. “Don’t worry, it’s just…” She shifted a bit, resisting the urge to scratch her scars. “They’re not gonna poison you, you know?”
He stayed silent for a bit, which made her start to think that he did in fact think they would do that.
“Zuko, they may not like you, but they’re not the type of people who poison their enemies.”
“I think I’d make a good exception to that rule.”
“You won’t.”
Silence.
“I’m sorry.”
She frowned. “What for?”
“I dunno, I just… I’m sorry.”
She held him a little tighter. “Well, I can’t forgive you if I don’t know what I’m supposed to be mad about.”
“You shouldn’t be forgiving me.”
“For what?”
He sighed and squeezed one of her arms. “Everything.”
“Well, that’s a l-”
“I’m too much.”
Azula stared at his blank face, looking on the edge of either crying or throwing up. It made her stomach churn. And here she’d thought that things were going well, especially with The Duke taking a liking to him and no other incident happening. He’d even smiled during their interaction, even if it was a very small smile, nothing that looked extremely joyful.
She shifted around and managed to hold him closer, not knowing what else to do.
“You’re not too much.”
His silence made it clear to her that he didn’t believe this, even though she was being completely truthful.
“It’ll be fine,” she told him.
He just hummed and patted her arm before they slowly fell asleep, completely knackered by today’s events.
---
Extra drawings, for funsies!
