Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Zuko wakes in his bedroom, which is normal. He wakes in a bed that is too big, which is not normal. 

He is twenty-one years old. His official coronation is today. His friends are sleeping a few rooms over. His feet don’t reach the floor and his face is smooth and unblemished and he has two eyebrows. 

Zuko realises, in that instant, sudden way that makes him sick to his stomach, that something is very wrong. 

“It’s to the first burn,” says Uncle, fretting. 

Zuko tracks Uncle flitting through the chamber, fiddles absentmindedly with the clasp of the ceremonial cape flung over his bare shoulders. It’s not exactly annoying — if anything, it’s rather endearing — but it is, for this Zuko, quite unnecessary. This Zuko has fought around six Agni Kais, only three of which were official, and he’s quite confident in his bending. 

Uncle does not know that Zuko is this Zuko, however. He simply thinks Zuko is that Zuko. Thirteen-year-old Zuko, who was a decent firebender but not a great one, who was not yet a master, who often tripped over his own two feet when he was too focused on looking proficient. Uncle’s nerves can be excused. They’re expected, actually. 

But that Zuko is not here. That Zuko has vanished, or merged, or done whatever it is that minds of the same body do when there’s time travel involved. Who even knows, really.  

Zuko thinks he may have stuck himself neatly on the remains of himself, in Zuko’s brain. His inner fire still feels strong and experienced. He’s still capable of summoning a flame that flickers in the white-hot multicolour of dragonfire he’d mastered about two years after the end of the war. It’s just his body that is different. 

It’s a body not used to the tough, flexible training of an unconventional Fire Lord. It’s a body used to the rigorous daily training of a Prince of Fire who does not command fire as well as is expected of him—moving through stiff and traditional katas, sneaking around the rafters and the rest of the palace, wielding dual blades slightly too large for him. His build is muscular if lean and young, still a few years away from his first true growth spurt that will allow him to tower over Uncle and later reach the height of his father. 

He will be fine. 

“You can still apologise,” Uncle says, voice low and earnest. “You can still ask for forgiveness from the general. It would not be easy, but you can—”

“Do you have that little confidence in my bending, Uncle?” Zuko asks, vaguely amused. 

“Of course not!” Uncle exclaims. “But you must forgive an old man for worrying, Prince Zuko. General Bujing may be old, but he is experienced, and a Master at that. I simply cannot stand the thought of you getting hurt.” 

He hadn’t said so the last time they were in this exact position, at this exact point in time. Perhaps it’s because Zuko replied to Uncle’s worry with a gentler tone than annoyance and a kind of confidence that does not err on the wrong side of cocky. 

Zuko knows that Uncle has no true idea — only a suspicion, but an uncertain one — that Zuko won’t face General Bujing today. Nobody really did. Only General Bujing himself, and father. Only them. 

“I’ll be fine, Uncle,” he says firmly. “I promise.” 

It’s clear Uncle doesn’t believe him, but that’s okay. Zuko doesn’t break promises. 

It’s awful, because he expected it—knew it would happen. But Zuko feels his whole body freeze when he turns to face his father, the ceremonial cape still fluttering to the floor. 

Then he shakes himself loose, goes down on his knees, and projects the image of a terrified boy. His speech, however, won’t agree. 

“I beg your forgiveness,” he says, voice calm and loud, without even a hint of a fearful tremble. “I am sorry, father. I only had our nation’s best wishes at heart. I did not mean to insult you personally.”

Father exhales plumes of smoke, like a dragon. “Rise and fight, Prince Zuko.” 

“No,” he replies. “I doubt it would be a fair fight; you are the greatest firebender in the world, and I am far from that. I only wished to prevent meaningless death and grief for our subjects.”

“You will learn,” father hisses. “You will learn, and suffering will be your teacher.” 

Zuko looks up at his father’s shadowed form, spots the cruel and gleeful gleam in eyes that are mirrors to his own. Father’s hand reaches out as if to caress his face. 

Zuko smiles, braces himself on his forearms, and swings his legs out with a wave of fire. 

Father stumbles, nearly falls; and Zuko uses this body, weaker yet nimbler than the one he’s used to, to jump to his feet and dance around Ozai like an airbender. A teacher can, after all, learn from their pupil. 

The crowd gasps, oh’s and ah’s like the brainless koala-sheep they are under father’s reign of terror. A cheer goes up when Ozai regains his footing and twists around to face Zuko, bringing his fist out for a punch coated with orange flames, and Zuko swats the rush of heat away like a gnat. 

“Ohh,” he coos, and he’s certain his grin looks mad, “how violent, father.” 

Father’s eyes bulge out of his skull in outrage. He inhales deep and sharp, nostrils flaring, and brings on an attack of punches and kicks that Zuko manages to weave through smoothly. Father’s fire is hot and ferocious, but so is Azula’s, so is Zhao’s, so is Aang’s and Uncle’s. Zuko hasn’t burnt himself since his fight with Azula; fire doesn’t need to burn, not if he doesn’t want it to. 

The next attack is just as easily avoided as the one before. 

He dances over the arena’s rough, tiled terrain, avoids kick after kick and punch after punch without expelling any fire of his own. Father’s chest has finally started to heave just slightly, but he’s still rooted: tiring him out is the wrong tactic, even though he’s rarely seen father away from his throne. So Zuko begins to fight back, uncaring if his forms differ from the tight katas he’s supposed to know; he throws in the muscle power of the earth, the quick-footedness of the air, the give-and-take of the water. 

Uncle always says that studying the different forms of bending makes you a better bender. Uncle, as he is usually, is right in that respect. 

He can tell when father starts to get just slightly desperate, caught by surprise. Father has never been outside of the Fire Nation, other than his month-long search for the Avatar that paused indefinitely when grandfather called him back to marry. He can probably count the amount of earthbenders he’s fought on both hands; waterbenders, scarcely on one. 

Father blasts a roaring wave of almost white fire at Zuko, and it’s far too easy to take hold of the flames, swirl it around him, and pass it back like a comet. To follow that up with a whip aimed at the ankles, an arrow aimed at the eyes.

In any other Agni Kai, Zuko shall not hurt. In this one, he allows himself the sick, regretful pleasure. 

Sweat has puddled on his skin, the heat within the covered arena almost unbearable. His breath is laboured but even. His muscles ache but are warm. The fire within him burns steady, unflickering; his mind is calm and eerily focused on father’s every movement. There’s a spark of white-blue beginning in the right hand. 

Zuko jumps forward and sends a kick of flame to father’s chest, then another, and yet another, and father stumbles like Zhao did, lightning puttering out at his fingertips before it could truly start. A whip sends him to his knees, sudden and unexpected, and Zuko does not allow himself the joy of breaking a root lest it is rebuilt again. 

His hand hovers in front of father’s face, and he looks father in the eyes, and he twists his mouth up into a bitter smile that lasts less than a second. Pushes every last bit of hatred and anger and hurt that he’s felt towards Ozai since the day he’s been born in a flame that sparks blazing hot, burns orange and yellow and red, green and blue and pink. 

Dragonfire only harms when the intent is to harm. 

The scream that tears from father’s throat is not unlike the scream Zuko bellowed himself, back in another time, and perhaps it is the same: perhaps the betrayal is similar, perhaps the shock is mirrored, perhaps the pain of fire melting flesh is a copy. But perhaps it isn’t, and perhaps it is mere fury of being defeated by a child who was lucky to be born—his own child, who felt horrible guilt for harming an insect when father wished him capable of killing grown men. 

Father bears his weight on his forearms, and Zuko allows the flame to die. 

“Have you learnt, Fire Lord Ozai?” he asks, as father pants out panicked, squeaking breaths of horror. “Has suffering taught you anything?” 

Father says nothing, merely sputters a pained, agonised cough. Zuko grasps him by his top knot before he can truly fall and turns to the shocked-silent crowd. 

“To the first burn,” he tells them, “and that must be enough.” 

And he allows the Fire Lord to collapse at his feet, inclines his head in what can barely count as a bow, and leaves. 

The bath takes care of the sweat. Takes care of the burnt bits of skin and fat that still cling to his palm. Zuko scrubs his body until it’s raw, blushing red; he dunks his head under the hot water and stays there, staring up at the dark, vaulted ceiling of the washroom until his lungs run out of breath to use. 

The oil of honeysuckle and opium and cinnamon, sweet and sharp and earthy, does not wash the stench of scorched flesh out of his nose. 

“I can’t believe that was you.” 

Azula’s voice is still eleven, high and grating. Her fire is blue; she’s practising lightning, but it blows up in her face far more than it doesn’t. The number of successful lightning bolts count up to one. 

Zuko turns and lifts both his eyebrows, catching the annoyed glint in Azula’s eyes just before it disappears. Her gaze travels from the hair hanging past his shoulders to the neat top knot fastened with silk and the royal heir’s pin, before locking, flint-sharp and fiery, with Zuko’s own. She’s undoubtedly annoyed that Zuko’s ceased to wear the phoenix tail, as is standard for underage Fire Nation boys; but as Zuko won and Agni Kai against a master, he is now allowed to wear his hair as he wishes. Azula’s opinion does not matter one bit. 

“I didn’t know you had issues with your sight, Lala,” he says, after a moment of silence that drags on long enough for her blank expression to falter. “Perhaps the family physician can take a look. Best catch it before it gets truly bad.”

He’s on his way to Uncle’s rooms, where there’s undoubtedly tea and Pai Sho waiting. Uncle wasn’t there to catch him when Zuko left the arena, but he received the missive just this morning—after a sleepless night, because he was expecting to be killed for harming the Fire Lord. 

Azula sneers at him. “Don’t be ridiculous.” 

“I’m not,” he says, and he puts a hand over his chest. “Cross my heart, baby sister. If you truly had trouble seeing us—”

She steps forward menacingly, looking paler than she does in his memories of this time: almost like the girl on the Island of cherry blossoms up north, stuck in a monastery for healing. But her hair is still perfect and her eyes are still bright, not wild. She’s eleven, and her instability will emerge during puberty — an illness of the mind that is common in their family, so much so that it has been detailed extensively in the ancient records — so she’s still just Lala now. Mean, cruel, too-smart Lala, but Lala nevertheless. 

“Why did you burn father?” she asks. 

Zuko tilts his head. “It’s an Agni Kai. It’s to the first burn. I didn’t want to lose.” 

“No, I get that,” she snaps, and her leg shakes as if she wished to stomp it like the child she still is. “Why did you burn him like that?” 

“Because I didn’t want to lose.” 

“A first degree burn on his arm or shoulder would’ve sufficed,” says Azula, stepping towards him and grasping his wide sleeve in her small hands. “It would’ve been enough. But you burnt him over his eye, and you burnt him hard. Zuzu, the physicians say father may never regain sight in his eye!”

I did, Zuko thinks, sudden and sneering. Mine still gave me smudged images of the world, and I managed to work with it; if he can’t adapt, what kind of power does he have?

“You burnt him badly,” Azula continues, in that screechy tone she always refused to acknowledge. “Why? Tell me!”

Insistent and upset. She’s never sounded her age to Zuko, always so adult, but she’s eleven now. Truly, wholly—a child whose expectations weren’t met. He’s unsurprised to realise that Azula wanted him to burn. 

“Are you implying,” Zuko says quietly, “that you wished I showed father mercy, Azula?” 

She stills. Her mouth is tight, pressed into a thin line. Her eyes are wide. 

She looks like their mother. 

“He does not deserve mercy,” Zuko tells her. He laughs a bit. “He wished to burn me like that—didn’t you see how he went to cup my face? I won’t give a man mercy if he himself will not give it either, Azula. He’s an adult. I’m sure he can handle it.” 

“Did you want to kill him?” she asks, voice low. “Did you, Zuzu?” 

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he echoes her. “Killing father would just be dumb, Lala. No, I just gave him a lesson he won’t ever be able to forget.” 

He tugs himself loose and walks on in the direction of Uncle’s chambers.

Azula doesn’t follow him. 

“Quite the display of bending you did yesterday, nephew,” says Uncle. He takes a sip of his tea, staring carefully at Zuko’s face. 

“Thank you, Uncle,” he replies, pushing one of the tiles in a random direction. He’s never been good at Pai Sho. “I was afraid I wouldn’t be able to break his root.” 

“Were you, now?” Uncle hums, eyes flicking to the board. “Well, you managed eventually.” 

They’re quiet, then. There was a tone of… something in Uncle’s voice. Not quite disappointment, but something close to it. Grief, maybe. 

“I didn’t want to fight him, Uncle,” he murmurs, leaning forward. Uncle meets his gaze with a frown. “And I—when I decided to, I did want to burn him, but I didn’t like it. I just know he would’ve burnt me. Banished me, too. For not fighting back, and for losing.” He pauses, tilts his head, tightens his jaw. “Do you understand?” 

Uncle breathes in a slow breath through his nose, eyebrows still knitted together. He swallows, sighs. 

“My little brother is in the royal infirmary, recovering from a burn that will likely take half of his eyesight,” he says slowly, and he sets his teacup down. “But I… I understand it. I do believe that Ozai wishes he could have burnt our father like you burnt him. Azulon, too, would not have hesitated to burn and banish him had he spoken out of turn.” 

“Grandfather Azulon, may Agni hold him in eternal rest, ordered father to kill me as punishment for asking to take your throne,” Zuko says bluntly. “I’m not surprised.” 

Uncle’s frown deepens. “When did this happen?” 

“A day or two before grandfather died and mother disappeared,” he answers. “You were still in the Earth Kingdom. Grandfather said father ought to suffer the loss of a firstborn like you did, but he was dead before he could truly command it. Father was crowned Fire Lord a few days later, during the funeral.” 

“Do you think my brother wished to kill you?” Uncle asks sharply. 

Zuko looks Uncle in the eye. “Yes. I’m not stupid.” 

“I never said you were, Prince Zuko—”

“You didn’t,” Zuko says. “You didn’t even imply it. But it would be naive of me to think father would never hurt me, because he has already. Azula still thinks he’ll never hurt her because she’s not me. I think that’s quite stupid of her.” 

“Prince Zuko,” Uncle chides. It doesn’t sound like he means it; it doesn’t even sound like he caught the slight at all. 

“It’s true,” Zuko says anyway. “The moment I’m out of the way, all of his disappointment will fall on her. I’ve just burnt him so he knows not to challenge me. Uncle,” he says, and Uncle’s attention slides back to him, “if I’d held on a second or two longer, he would’ve died.”

Uncle’s face is unreadable. “Is that mercy, Prince Zuko?” 

“No, Uncle,” says Zuko. “It’s a promise.” 

Uncle nods slowly. Holds his gaze. Slides a tile across the board; White Lotus. 

“Your move,” he says. 

Zuko smiles. 

The ministers observe him as he walks through the palace. The servants observe him as he sits by the pond. They watch him with trepidation and fear. They freeze when he turns a corner, bow stiffly when he passes them. They stutter in stilted compliance when he requests grains to feed the turtleducks with. 

He’s never treated anyone with less than the respect they deserve. He is a child. Their fright discomforts him; their discomfort angers him. 

But he has his father’s face and burnt it. 

Zuko understands. 

Training with Masters has become laughably easy.

He breezes through the katas like he’s practiced them hundreds of times. And he has, in another lifetime: on his ship with Uncle, in the Western Air Temple and on Ember Island with Aang, and later in Caldera with whoever wished to train with him. His guards, Aang, or the orphaned and cast-out firebending children from the Earth Kingdom and the Water Tribes: he’d taught the katas and more to boot, was a Master in his own right. 

The fact that his teachers are shocked by his sudden progress is almost insulting, had he not been a somewhat shoddy firebender when he was young. 

“Zhao lacked restraint,” Aang once told him. “He had the power; he just couldn’t control it.” 

“Neither could I,” he’d replied. “But what I’ve learnt, what I know now, is that you do not control fire: you simply guide it, respect it, and it will work with you and for you. Fire is life, Aang, and you of all people should know you can’t control life.” 

The flames twirl around him with ease and grace, licking at his fingers, at his surroundings, but never catching because he doesn’t want it to. The movements are smooth and supple. He’ll never be as perfect and stiff as Azula, but that’s a good thing. His style is his own. 

“We should move on to the next set, I believe,” Master Shu says, after he’s picked his jaw off the floor. “I—erm, do you know them, Your Highness? Have you studied the forms?” 

“Of course I have, Master Shu,” Zuko replies easily. “I’ve studied all up to, and including, the Forms of Mastery.”

Master Shu somehow finds the gut to glower at him. “Then do them.” 

Zuko does so, moving from form to form. He’s studied the kata-sets extensively in time gone by and disappeared; and he’s done them too, which means his brain is able to stretch and curl his limbs just so without too much trouble. He’ll be sore of course, but it’s worth it. 

There’s nothing like showing off a little. 

“Very well,” Master Shu coughs, when Zuko has finished and takes a little bow. “Erm, yes. Yes, I suppose that we can work on the Mastery Set over the next week, and when you’ve managed those, we’ll move on to more creative forms of bending.” 

Zuko does not roll his eyes. He bows again instead, and at Master Shu’s nod, leaves for the benches to wipe his face and neck. 

Azula pops out from behind the bush and scowls when he doesn’t startle. 

“You’ve improved,” she says, suspicious in that way only little sisters can be. “You’ve improved a lot.” 

“Thank you, Azula,” he replies. “How kind of you to compliment me. I was unaware that the chicken-hogs had begun to fly, but I’m pleased to know they have.” 

“Don’t be dumb, Dum-Dum,” she snaps. Her arms cross in front of her armoured chest defensively. “I’m just saying it.” 

“And I’m surprised you don’t recognise sarcasm,” he says, and when she huffs, he does roll his eyes. “Honestly Azula, you act like it’s a big deal. I just got tired of being so behind all the time.” 

“You’ll always be behind,” she shoots back snippily. “I’ll always be the best.” 

Zuko sighs. “Yes, Azula,” he says honestly. “You will be.” 

He leaves her befuddled and, likely, very angry in her bush. 

“I’ve heard you’ve been progressing quickly in your training, Prince Zuko.” 

It’s not as much of a greeting as it’s a simple statement, but Zuko does offer his uncle a smile. 

“Yes, Uncle,” he says. “I practiced by myself without bending, but tried to feel my chi pulsing as I went through the various forms. It’s worked decently.” 

It worked in the Earth Kingdom, when he couldn’t bend for fear of being discovered. Without fire a firebender only has the sun and the warmth it offers; the slivers of life Agni gives the earth. He warmed himself and the air around him, or pulled the energy from the heat of bone-dry wastelands. He meditated in Ba Sing Se, breathing in tandem with the flickering fires of their neighbours and inside their own home. If freshly hung laundry dried quicker when he was outside, the Earth Kingdom residents blamed it on the breeze catapulted over the walls. 

“A fruitful endeavour, I see,” Uncle says, audibly pleased. “I’m glad to hear it.” 

“I’m glad to experience it,” Zuko replies. “It’s as if I’ve gotten past a block that made firebending difficult for me.” 

Uncle’s eyes twinkle behind his teacup. “Have you any theories, Prince Zuko?” 

“Increased confidence, perhaps,” he muses. “Less fear of failure, of getting left behind. I was my own worst enemy.” 

A change in philosophy. Experience. 

“The pressure of being the oldest with a prodigious younger sibling.” Uncle sighs, as though he’s ever been upstaged in bending by Ozai. “I am glad my dear Lu Ten never had any siblings.” 

“He was my brother in the ways that counted,” Zuko says. 

There’s a smile, sad and tight but altogether lovely. Uncle puts down his cup and rests his hands on his lap. 

“I suppose he was,” he says quietly. “You must know that your cousin adored you and Princess Azula.” 

“I adored him.” 

He’d idolised Lu Ten. Azula had idolised Lu Ten. Lu Ten was everything they were not: caring and kind, gentle and patient. Lu Ten made mother chuckle through her bouts of sadness and father laugh through his simmering envy. He was grandfather’s favourite, Uncle’s pride and joy. 

Zuko’s wondered before, wonders still, what kind of Fire Lord Lu Ten would have been. Would he have stopped the War, the bloodshed? Would he have been able to begin the talks of peace? Would he have sucked the war machine dry of funds, to strategically scatter gold around the world as reparations? 

Probably. Uncle and Zuko did—will, Agni willing. Lu Ten likely would have been no different. 

Uncle’s face looks gentle and fond. “Do you remember him teaching you a… form, that allows you to use fire as projectiles used to knock the breath out of an opponent?” 

“Yes.” He’d called it ‘The Baboon’, for some ridiculous reason. Something about throwing shit around. “It took me a while before I got the amount of force down.” 

“Because it is an earthbending move,” Uncle clarifies. “It requires a different kind of strength.” 

“Oh,” says Zuko. Of course. He knew some of Toph’s forms looked familiar. 

Uncle exhales an amused breath through his nose. “I’ve always told him, ‘Lu Ten, a truly powerful bender draws inspiration from the other elements’. He always called it ridiculous; but then he showed me that, and I knew he’d heeded my advice.” 

“It’s creativity,” Zuko murmurs. “Right?” 

“Yes,” Uncle says. “He was such a creative young man.” And then he pauses, catches Zuko’s gaze with his own. His eyes narrow in thought. “But then, so are you, Prince Zuko.” 

Zuko quirks his brow. “Oh?”

“You used fire like an earthbender manipulates earth, during the Agni Kai.” Uncle hums. “You used it like water too; turned your father’s fire against him. And you moved… well, I believe no one has seen movement like that in over a century.” 

His heart thunders, loud and forceful, in the juncture between his jaw and neck. Zuko doesn’t dare break eye-contact. 

“Did I?” 

Uncle smiles again. “Did you?” 

Zuko holds Uncle’s gaze for just a moment longer before he breaks, twists his fingers. “Perhaps I did.” 

“You know what you’re doing.” 

It’s not a question. Zuko expels a shaky breath and picks up his own cup of tea, brings it to his lips. The sweet, floral jasmine floods his mouth and makes his eyes prick. 

Two working, unscarred eyes. The burn may as well still be there—but it’s not. He gave it to another.  

“Yes,” he says honestly. “Though I’m making it up as I go along.”

Uncle chuckles and refills his own cup. 

“We cannot predict the shape of the clouds of the next dawn, Prince Zuko,” he says. “But dawn itself? That, we are certain will come.”

Dawns come and go. 

Every night, sleep is restless. Zuko rises before Agni touches the horizon and lies down long after they have made way for Tui. He goes through the motions of the day and faces the distrust head-on. He takes breakfast with Azula and impresses his teachers, takes tea with Uncle and impresses his teachers once more. 

It is easy to live in the palace. It is uncomfortable. 

Zuko wishes for campfires and nights spent under the stars, in the comfort of those he’d lay down his life for. He wishes for bison fur on his clothing and a purring lemur on his chest. 

He wishes for his friends. They do not come. Dawn does. 

Father emerges from the infirmary two weeks after the Agni Kai. Three days after that, he calls Zuko in for an audience. 

Zuko is not nervous. The fluttering in his stomach is not nerves, not fear. It is excitement. 

The throne room has not changed. Father still sits behind a wall of flames, a little lower than usual, than grandfather had it. Zuko, on the few occasions Uncle was unavailable as regent, only allowed the flames to fly high at the sides: he enjoyed making direct eye-contact with the ministers. 

Father looks awful, drawn and pale. A bandage is wrapped tight around his head, covering his left eye. His hair is, curiously, untouched, implying he did not truly lose the Agni Kai. 

Zuko refrains from pointing out the slight. Zhao did not cut his hair either. 

“Father,” Zuko utters, bowing shallowly. The wall of fire flares. “You wished to see me?” 

“Prince Zuko,” father rasps. His voice sounds broken and torn, the way Zuko’s had been for months after his banishment. It sounds painful to speak. “My son.” 

Zuko waits, head tilted down. 

“Meet my gaze,” father murmurs, and when Zuko does, the hatred burning in father’s visible eye nearly causes him to stagger back. Nearly, because Zuko remains where he is, steady like a rock. 

Father’s mouth twists into something ugly. “You fought well in our Agni Kai.” 

“Thank you, father.” 

“Striking when one’s opponent least expects it is a decent strategy.” 

“Yes, father.” 

“But, do not see your ability to burn me as proof of your prowess,” father continues. Disdain drips from every syllable. “I’ve heard you’ve been improving swiftly in training, and for that I am… pleased. But this burn, it is a fluke.” 

“Of course, father,” says Zuko. 

“You understand me, don’t you? The only reason you burnt me is because I let you.” 

The only reason you’re alive is because I let you live, Zuko thinks. He does not say this. He says: “Of course, father.” 

“I am interested in why you decided on burning my face.” 

Zuko doesn’t blink. He simply stands, hands behind his back and legs straight and steady, like a soldier. 

“You are curious about the placement, or the severity, father?” 

“Both,” he barks. “Answer me, Prince Zuko.” 

“It is simple,” he says. “Your face was within reach, so I chose to burn you there; and to burn you lightly would be a mercy, and we do not offer mercy, father.” 

The wall of fire surrounding the throne trembles, grows, diminishes. 

“Leave my sight.” 

“Yes father,” Zuko says, and he smiles. “I do so hope you agree with my reasoning. After all, you were the one who taught me all I know.” 

As Zuko leaves the throne room, he feels the fire flare high; and he extinguishes it all with a quiet huff of breath. 

Father does not scream. He knows better.

The order comes within the next week. 

It is not banishment. Father would not dare to banish his Crown Prince. Not now, after a defeat witnessed by all of the Court. It would be seen as a weakness and a Fire Lord does not show weakness. 

But Zuko does need to get out of the way. 

“You’re a man now,” Azula says, when he shares his new task over their shared breakfast. She eyes his top knot again with barely veiled contempt. “Father must wish you to act like it.” 

Father, Zuko knows, can’t stand to look at his face while knowing his own is marked. Zuko is the living, breathing reminder of failure. He once had father’s face and doesn’t now; the wound likely aches. 

“He must,” Zuko agrees. 

“It’s for the best, anyway,” she adds. “You have to be sleeping horribly, knowing you’ve harmed the Fire Lord.” 

“To be sure,” he says. He hasn’t caught any assassins just yet. He’s sleeping with one eye open anyway. 

Azula lifts a piece of fried tofu to her mouth, eyes narrowed. “And you will come back.” 

Zuko tilts his head and allows his mouth to form the smile it’s been wanting to form since he heard the news. “Don’t tell me you’ll miss me, Lala.” 

“Don’t be ridiculous,” she snaps. Her chin tilts up, and she sniffs. “You simply ought to witness my superiority to you after a few months have passed.” 

Zuko smiles again and quietly takes a bite of his omelette. It will not be a few months, if he has anything to do with it. Princes are allowed to search for however long they want: they can only be ordered to return when the country is under great stress, or when they ought to marry. Zuko may be considered a man, but he is not yet of marriageable age. He’ll wait for Aang. 

A servant quietly enters the breakfast room and clears her throat. “His Highness, General Iroh, wishes to join you.” 

Azula’s nose wrinkles, but Zuko straightens and nods at the young woman. 

“Send him in, please.” 

The servant bows and vanishes through the door, then reemerges with Uncle. She waits until he’s taken a seat before bowing once more and leaving. 

“My dearest niece and nephew.” Uncle beams. “How kind of you to let your old uncle join you.” 

“Always, Uncle,” Zuko says warmly.

Azula doesn’t do much more than nod with a sour mouth, but Uncle laughs anyway. He helps himself to the tea first. 

“So, Princess Azula,” Uncle says, “how is your lightning coming along?” 

Azula straightens suddenly, resting her hands primly in her lap. “Is that breakfast talk?” 

“Perhaps for any family other than ours,” Uncle muses, taking a sip of his tea. “But we know better, do we not?” 

The first true smile of Azula’s day seems to pull at her lips. “I suppose. Well, it’s going… decently. I’ve managed one bolt thus far.” 

She doesn’t say the other attempts have resulted on her being blasted back. 

“Most impressive!” Uncle crows. “Ah, I remember when I first started… I was two years older than your brother. It kept blowing up in my face for the first couple of years; I did not have the mindset down pat yet.” 

“Fifteen?” Azula perks up. “But that is…”

“Far later than you, dear niece,” says Uncle. “I did not manage consistency until I reached the age of seventeen. My frustration with my lack of success certainly did not help. And your father… why, I recall he reached consistency shortly after his eighteenth birthday; I’d rarely seen him so excited.” 

“You were back from the front?” Zuko asks.

Uncle nods. “Yes. My father had granted me leave to attend Ozai’s birthday. We’ve never been particularly close — the age difference and my role in the army did not allow for us to truly communicate like the two of you do, you understand — but I wished to be there. And how wonderful it was,” he murmurs, “to properly express my pride for his success.” 

“Do you know who the youngest person was to successfully and consistently generate lightning, Uncle?” Azula asks eagerly. Her eyes are bright with the need to prove herself. “I am… curious.” 

“I’m sure you are, Princess Azula,” Uncle says, mouth twitching behind his beard. “It was your namesake. My father was fourteen when he mastered lightning. Fire Lord Sozin, may Agni hold him in eternal rest, did not manage until after he was of age… twenty-one, I believe.”

“That is… late, is it not?” 

“Only members of the Royal Family and some Avatars have managed to bend lightning,” Uncle informs them, calmly. “My grandfather was not a prodigy, but he was a hard worker. I assume being best friends with Avatar Roku would have emboldened him to train relentlessly. Both of you must know—a true master never stops learning.” 

Azula leans back, thoughtful yet brimming with excitement. “Of course,” she agrees. “I don’t plan on stopping, Uncle.” 

“Me neither,” Zuko says quietly. 

Uncle smiles at them both and takes a sip of his tea. 

“Have you heard of Zuzu’s new task, Uncle?” 

“Yes,” he replies drily. “Searching for the Avatar; the rite of passage for every prince. I’ve spent some months at sea myself.” 

“Just a few months?” Azula asks. 

Uncle’s eyebrows jump up. “Longer than your father.”

“Father had to marry,” Zuko cuts in. “Grandfather called him back, Azula.” 

“I know that,” she snaps. “I know that better than you. Was it truly only a few months, Uncle? Is that normal?” 

“Six months is, as far as I’m aware, common practice for princes, but there is no set time,” Uncle answers. “It is not as much as a search for the Avatar as it is a Grand Tour, though. An effort to become worldly, so to speak.” 

“Six months,” Azula repeats, brow furrowed. Then she meets Zuko’s gaze. “I will have mastered lightning when you come back,” she announces. “I’ll be the youngest ever to do so. You’ll never catch up.” 

“Of course, Azula,” Zuko says. “But your brother can dream, can’t he?”

As she turns her nose up, Zuko turns back to his food with a smile. Azula will have mastered lightning when he returns; it will not be in six months. 

Zuko listens, this time around. 

The servants know. They always know. And Zuko has been a servant, for a time: has learnt to be quiet, to listen, to gain information that way. The servants always know. They do not exist, not to those whose words matter. 

But a servant’s words matter as well. And a servant’s words, well… a servant’s words are how Zuko learns that Fire Lord Ozai — first of his name, Agni’s prime descendant, holder of the Dragon Throne — has learnt to be frightened. 

Of what, you ask?

Why, of fire itself. 

Zuko refuses the brand-new, Royal navy vessel father has oh-so-graciously offered him. 

“I don’t need a large ship,” he says, levelling a pointed look at the slack-jawed courtiers until they close their mouths. “I need one that is swift and nimble. A small crew is preferable; some experienced, some not. Perhaps ask my uncle if he has any suggestions.” 

“Your Highness,” the highest ranking one says, hesitant, “you wish to decline His Majesty’s gift?” 

“It is not a gift. It is a courtesy.” Zuko meets the courtier’s defiant, terrified gaze and softens his expression. “If he’d offered me less, it would be a slight—and a slight will be seen as a weakness. You understand, don’t you?” 

The trio of men nod. 

“Good,” he says. “Please do ask General Iroh for advice. He will be happy to give it.” 

They nod again, then bow, and take their leave after a carefully enunciated, “Of course, Your Highness”. The moment the courtiers are gone Zuko expels a breath to relieve the tension in his shoulders and rolls his neck. 

“You should’ve just accepted the ship, Dum-Dum.” 

“I see the art of sneaking hasn’t been lost on you,” he mutters, twisting to send his little sister a half-hearted glare. “They ought to put a bell on you.” 

“I’d kill them before they even managed to come close,” Azula announces. She deftly climbs down from the small alcove, nearly sending an ancient vase to the floor, and peers at him like he’s the key to the secrets of the universe. “Why did you refuse the gift?” 

“It’s not a gift,” Zuko stresses, sighing, “it’s a courtesy.” 

“Same difference.” 

“No,” he says. “No, it’s not. You of all people should know that.” 

Her smirk is as annoying as it is endearing. Being eleven is not helping her scare-factor one bit. “Just checking if you did.” 

Zuko feels his eyebrows jump up before he wrestles them into a frown, rolls his eyes. “Of course you were.” 

He walks off swiftly and Azula, as though she’s still six, scampers after him. His long legs are Agni-sent; she needs to jog lightly to keep up, and he can barely keep the smile from forming when she snags his sleeve and yanks to slow him down. 

“Zuzu!” 

“Lala.” 

“You really ought to accept the vessel,” she says, huffing in a manner almost uncouth. “With your luck, father will assign you some rotten, rusted thing that should have been sold for scraps decades ago.” 

“If it’s quick and seaworthy, I won’t mind a spot of rust.” 

“But the crew will be small too!” 

“That’s a good thing,” he says. “I don’t like people.” 

He continues walking, Azula tottering after him like a furious, feral wolf-cat on a lead. Eventually she yanks his sleeve again, aggressive, pulling him to a stop—she sneers at his blank expression. 

“You know you are supposed to come back, right?” 

“Obviously,” he retorts. She looks like she might bite him. “What brought this on, Azula?” 

Azula stares at him, nostrils flared and eyes like white-hot embers. Her mouth is tight and sour again. 

“You can’t die at sea,” she says. “It would be an embarrassment to the Royal Family. And I need you to wallow in the fact that you’ll never be better than me.” 

Zuko’s chest loosens and his face relaxes further. He breathes out through his nose. “Ah.”

“What, ‘Ah’?”  

“I will return,” he says. He pushes her shoulder gently. Her fingers uncurl from his sleeve. “I’ll fail at finding the Avatar, and I’ll return. I won’t die, Azula. I promise.” 

“You better not,” she snarls, and she pushes at his chest, snarling more when she can’t quite get him to move. “You’d just be another stain on our legacy otherwise.” 

He catches her shoulders. She stills, still dangerous, still poised for attack. 

“I’ll write to you,” he promises. “While I’m at sea. I’ll tell you extensively about my various and numerous failures, and you can write back about all your successes. It’ll be like I’m right next to you to ridicule.” 

“I don’t care.” Azula swivels around and stalks off. “I won’t even care that you’re gone. Good riddance, if you ask me. Father should’ve done it years earlier!”

Zuko watches her go and huffs out an amused breath. That’s his sister in a nutshell: every single word has layers. 

He just needs to pick at them to uncover the secrets. 

“I am coming with you.” 

Zuko doesn’t turn away from the chest he’s packing clothes and valuables into. He sent the servants assigned to do it for him away earlier; they will return to carry it onto the ship, but he preferred to pack his things himself. 

“Are you, Uncle?” 

“Yes,” says Uncle, and there’s a brief pause. “But you knew that already, didn’t you?” 

The precious silk of the night robe is heavy in his hands. It’s redder than blood. He places it atop a tunic, smoothes it out. Then he straightens back up and faces his uncle. 

“Whyever would you think that, Uncle?” 

Uncle’s eyes are twinkling. The rest of his face remains blank. “I had an inkling.”

“As is your speciality,” Zuko replies. He walks over to his wardrobe and rifles through the various sets of armour left. He won’t need much: both because there is no need for pomp and glamour, and because he’s due his first big growth spurt in just a few months. The majority of his clothes will no longer fit then. 

“Courtier Hao mentioned you wished for a small, swift vessel,” Uncle continues. “He told me you ordered him to ask me for advice on the crew.” 

“I trust your judgement.” 

“You would not be dissatisfied if I tell you the crew is largely made up out of old navy men and women, and a handful of severely inexperienced recruits?” 

“No,” says Zuko. “To reiterate, I trust your judgement.” 

“And you would not be unhappy when I tell you that the ship your father offered you in the Royal vessel’s place was due to be decommissioned in the next month?” 

“Is it swift?” 

Uncle hums in the affirmative. “It was built for speed.” 

“Then it shall do just fine.” He piles a variety of bladed weapons on top of his possessions. His Dao blades go in last; the chest closes easily. “You are certain you wish to join me, Uncle?” 

“Ah, Prince Zuko,” Uncle says, and he grasps Zuko’s shoulders, turns him around, smiles a smile of pure warmth. “I’d go to the ends of the earth with you, my boy.”

The ship is old and small, likely built years before Uncle’s birth, rusted and cranky from her years at sea. She’s quick and trustworthy. She holds Komodo-Rhinos and two Eel-Hounds; a crew of eighteen marines and two royals. Her name is Wanyi. 

She’s perfect. She’s his again. 

Caldera is an insignificant dot on the horizon. Zuko breathes, trails his gaze over familiar faces—the discomfort is still present on many, but it’ll wane soon. 

“Where to, Your Highness?” 

Lieutenant Jee’s serious, dark eyes look resigned. Oh, to serve under a spoilt Prince—what a job. He’ll complain about it the whole time. At length. There is no doubt about it 

Zuko’s missed the chronically annoyed fellow sorely. 

“The Western Air Temple first,” he says. “Perhaps we’ll find something previously missed. Who knows.” 

Jee nods and turns, calls out directions to Helmsman Ichiro. Seamen Keiji and Hina play Earth, Fire, Water, Air to push deck-sweeping duty off on one another. Junior Lieutenant Sana is already smuggling several young recruits down to the stables to coddle the animals. 

Zuko takes a seat at Uncle’s table to have some tea, feeling oddly settled. 

“It’s a beautiful day,” Uncle says, as he pours the jasmine. 

The sky is waterbender-blue, dotted with fluffed clouds. Agni shines down upon them and the sea is calm. Coal-smoke plumes from the chimney, like a dragon.

“Yes,” says Zuko. He accepts the cup, thanks Uncle with a nod and a smile. “It is.” 

Chapter Text

Jee’s not a big fan of royalty, really. 

General Iroh’s alright. Jee served under him during the siege on Ba Sing Se; he’s a good man. Honourable. Humble when it suits him, which is good enough for Jee. He likes tea and board games and women, and he’s a half-decent musician too. 

Yeah, General Iroh’s alright. But his boy Lu Ten was a cocky little shit with a fondness for practical jokes though, and his little brother, Fire Lord Ozai – first of his name, one of the many descendants of Agni, current holder of the Dragon Throne, and The Cowardly Usurper, blah blah blah – is a horrible waste of space and air with an undeserved ego the size of the Earth Kingdom. The Late Fire Lord Azulon, may Agni hold him in eternal rest, Jee assumes to have been equally as bad. 

And Prince Zuko… 

He looks like a spoilt brat. 

Jee observes his Crown Prince with narrowed eyes. He’s a little shorter than the General, and he’s dressed in finery, and his mouth has the same cocky tilt as the late Prince Lu Ten. He stands like a soldier despite not having seen a battlefield even once in his life. His eyes are the same sharp dragon-colour as his father’s, still round with youth. 

Arrogance spills off Prince Zuko in waves, from the solid positioning of his feet to his stiffly crossed arms. The top of the royal brat’s head ends a few fingers below Jee’s armpit and the dual swords strapped to his back are too big for him. He’s dressed in squeaky clean armour and his hair is shiny and healthy. 

“What’s the Dao even for,” Jee grumbles, as Prince Zuko greets each of the crew personally with a shallow incline of his head and a smarmy smile. “He’s a great firebender, isn’t he? Defeated his old man and everything—”

“Not a defeat,” Junior Lieutenant Sana whispers in Jee’s ear. “The Fire Lord let his son win out of the goodness of his heart.” 

Goodness shmoodness. Jee’s heard that the Fire Lord got half his face burnt off by a boy barely heavier than three mildly damp Komodo-Chickens – in other words, the illustrious Prince Zuko himself – and spent two royal, unconscious weeks in the royal infirmary. It’s an embarrassment to the Crown. He probably just needed the kid out of the way in the least treasonous way possible.

“Just because we know that doesn’t mean we ought to say it.” She pinches his side and ignores his growl. “Be nice, Jee. He’s a kid.” 

“He’s a spoilt brat who probably refuses to eat anything if his chopsticks aren’t made of gold.” Jee clenches his jaw, watching as Prince Zuko adjusts his top-knot. Vanity has no place on a navy vessel. “I bet he’s unable to even wipe his own arse—” 

“Jee,” Sana says in a low, chiding voice. 

“Sana,” he copies her, scowling. “He’s royalty. Just a little high-born milksop who got unofficially kicked out of his own home for embarrassing his daddy. And now we’re stuck with that fancy little turd.”

Sana rolls her eyes and mutters something about ‘at least we have a job’—which, to be fair, is the reason Jee accepted the position; that, and some undoubtedly misplaced loyalty towards General Iroh. It was either this or the factories in the Outer Islands, and Jee will choose drowning in the sea over drowning in his own blackened mucus, thank you very much. 

But that doesn’t mean Jee can’t complain about his new job. Continuously. At length. He’d rather serve under Captain Zhao than under royalty, and Captain Zhao has a tendency to throw people he doesn’t like the look of overboard.

“General Iroh assured us he’s a good boy, Jee,” says Sana. “Don’t be such a pessimist. You’ll give me bad skin.” 

Jee sends her a look. Sana smirks back, puts her hand beneath her chin and turns her face to show off her sun-weathered, wrinkled skin. 

“See? It’s starting and will get worse if you don’t fuckin’ can it. I can feel pimples coming up already.” 

“You’re exhausting,” he tells her. “Go bother the animals.” 

“Their reactions are far less entertaining than yours.” 

“Sana.” 

“Whatever.” She grins again and punches his bicep. “The Princeling will be a decent boss, Lieutenant. You’ll see.”

His Royal Brattishness orders Jee to order Helmsman Ichiro to set course for the Western Air Temple, because, and he quotes, “perhaps we’ll find something previously missed.” 

Ridiculous. Arrogant. The Air Temples have been combed out by numerous people – including royalty – and nothing has been found. The Avatar, if he even is an Air Nomad, would never hide in a place so obvious if he’s managed to elude the Fire Nation for a near-century. The sheer stupidity of the order proves to Jee that the Prince has no idea what he’s doing. 

And ordering Jee to order the rest of the crew around? Really? What, does he think himself too good for speaking directly to his men? 

“And women,” Sana coughs. 

“And women,” Jee acquiesces, grumbling. “You can’t tell me it isn’t real rude, though.” 

“He’s a boy,” Seaman Keiji says, with half a smile on his face. He cranes his neck to look at the boy-Prince, currently taking tea with the General. “He’s still getting used to having a whole ship under his command.” 

“But do you like him?” 

“Like and respect aren’t synonyms,” Keiji replies loftily. His smile widens, stretching the scar across his face almost grotesquely. “But he seems to respect us, so I’ll likely give him mine in due time. And to like him? Well, I usually don’t like teenagers, but he’s yet to throw a tantrum…” 

“The bar is on the floor, I see,” Petty-Officer Jiro cuts in, sauntering closer. “You talkin’ about Prince Zuko?” 

“Not as loudly as you are, Jiro,” Sana says. “But yes, we’re discussing him.” 

Jiro beams. “He’s adorable, isn’t he?” 

“Oh, absolutely,” Keiji replies. “Did you see him, greeting us all soldier-like? And he barely comes up to my elbow—”

“He looks so dapper!” Sana grins widely, her functional phoenix tail swinging as she sways. “And his cheeks are just like mochi. I never understood why my aunties kept pinching my cheeks when I was little, but I get it now…” 

“He’s a spoilt brat,” Jee snaps, glaring daggers at the lot of them. “A spoilt brat who’s our boss right now, which means we’re not going to discuss how cute he is or how mochi-like his cheeks are, and—”

“Your cuteness-aggression results in genuine aggression, doesn’t it, Lieutenant?” Sana says smugly. “It’s okay, we’re not judging you. Big strong men like you always have a hard time with emotions.”  

Jee will not be disrespected like this. He is their superior, third only to the Prince and the General, and they ought to offer him the regard he is due. Prince Zuko is not cute, and that is an order. 

He tells them this with an appropriate amount of cussing. 

“Of course, Lieutenant.” Seaman Hina pops up out of nowhere and pats the crook of his elbow. She’s holding a broom the same way one would hold a two-handed jian at rest. “Whatever you say.”

The gathered company sniggers. Jee orders the lot of them to shove a mop up their lazy arses and storms off in a huff.

In the week-long journey to the Air Temple, Prince Brat proves himself to be a diligently hard worker to the surprise of everyone on board. 

He feeds the animals and mucks out their stables. He helps Engineer Akito with the steam engine. He always scrubs the deck after his training, a training happens under the diligent tutelage of the General and should leave the brat exhausted and aching.

“My nephew likes to keep busy,” General Iroh tells Jee, as the young Prince dances his way through an advanced kata and Seaman Keiji stands at the ready with a bucket and a hard-bristle broom. “He has a hard time sitting still whilst others wait on him hand and foot.” 

Jee doesn’t want to believe it. A Crown Prince getting his hands dirty is unheard of, save for only the General next to him—and even on the battlefield, General Iroh rarely participated in the cleanup. But Prince Zuko finishes the kata with an extravagant roar of multicoloured fire, waits for his uncle’s satisfied nod, and hops off to Keiji with his hands already outstretched. 

“Well,” Jee says, tone scathing in spite of his wavering resolve, “I’ll wait a little longer if you don’t mind, General Iroh.” 

“Retired General,” says the General, but he’s smiling and doesn’t say anything else. 

The Prince is a stealthy little turd. 

He’s incredibly agile and strong enough to muffle his footfalls. He’s swift and he knows how to keep quiet. He nicks the sweet buns from Jee’s plate and is halfway across the mess before Jee realises. He sneaks up on people just blow a gust of hot air against their neck, scare the ever-living-shit out of his victim, and then stand there with a smug little grin as they recover from their near death. 

Crown Prince Zuko is a stealthy little turd, and he’s awful, and no, Sana, Jee won’t change his mind on that. 

“I’m sure he just wants us to play with him,” she says, horrifyingly amused. “We’re all so much older than him, after all.” 

Jee is a Lieutenant. Jee has thirty years of active fighting experience under his belt. Jee is almost fifty years old. Jee hasn’t participated in any form of play since he was fourteen and he’s technically a peasant, and surely the Prince of the Fire Nation has to be Adult much earlier than peasants. 

General Iroh and the Royal Brat eat with the rest of the crew in the mess hall. Prince Zuko is unwaveringly polite and says please and thank you, and the majority of the crew quietly coos about how pretty the Prince is, how cute and how kind, still tiny and bouncy and cheeky in that way children ought to be. 

But Prince Zuko is not a child, he’s a teenager and the Crown Prince at that. And Jee—

Well. He’s unsure what the warring, confusing emotions in his body are, whenever he looks at the Prince. He thinks that it’s largely annoyance, some defiance, the predictable outrage of why is a child giving me orders and why do I need to listen to them. He thinks the best way to describe the Prince is ‘thirteen-year-old boy’, by which he means that the Prince is a thirteen-year-old boy and thirteen-year-old boys are the most annoying people on this Spirits-forsaken ball of dirt; but Jee knows that doesn’t quite cut it. 

Jee remembers being a thirteen-year-old boy. Jee was once a thirteen-year-old boy, for an entire year. And he was a little shit, sure—stressed out his mother on the daily, so much that a good chunk of household funds was specifically set aside for her to send letters to his father at the front. The letters detailed all of the blood pressure-rising shit he got up to on a day-to-day basis, including but not limited to jumping off cliffs to impress girls, egging the local compound filled with dreadfully annoying soldiers, and stealing rice. 

He did shit most thirteen-year-old-boys get up to. Normal things. He rarely said please-and-thank-you, wrangled himself out of affection with all the fury of burgeoning puberty, and he jumped off cliffs and egged houses and nicked rice. And the only thing – the genuine only thing – that Prince Zuko does that is on par with Jee’s childhood shenanigans, are the death-defying stunts. 

To be fair to thirteen-year-old Jee, the cliffs he jumped off were small cliffs, and his fall was always cushioned by water. Prince Zuko, the fucking brat, does not look before he jumps. 

Of course, the Prince is kind, gentle, and caring. He writes to his little sister Princess Azula, firebending prodigy and alleged terror, because he promised her he’d write. He’s just so damn unfailingly polite to everybody on board. Jee catches him cooing at one of the Eel-Hounds about a day after they’ve left Caldera behind them, calls her a pretty girl, beautiful girl, yes you are, despite the common knowledge that Eel-Hounds have faces even a mother has difficulty loving. 

Jee knows that most thirteen-year-old boys are soft, deep down. He knows that the vast majority of thirteen-year-old boys are also quite stupid. And Prince Zuko is a thirteen-year-old-boy, and Jee knows what thirteen-year-old boys are like, and Prince Zuko therefore shouldn’t stress Jee out on a day-to-day basis. 

But Prince Zuko cleans his nails with his flint-sharp dual swords. But Prince Zuko regularly swims in the sea to practise his breath control. But Prince Zuko sticks his face in the engine when Engineer Akito thinks something is wrong with it, even when it’s on and very hot, and Prince Zuko scales the side of the ship to reach the navigation tower, neglecting to use any of the available ladders, and Prince Zuko jumps off the navigation tower when he wishes to get back down to the deck, using his firebending to slow down his descent. 

The General’s supply of calming herbal tea is in need of replenishment before the week is out. The General prefers jasmine. Jee wonders how the General’s blood pressure isn’t through the fucking roof, considering Prince Zuko is his nephew and Jee’s blood pressure reaches new heights every single day in spite of him not even being related to the awful kid. 

“I love him,” Jiro says in the mess one late evening. The bottles of hard liquor they’re sharing are becoming bottles without hard liquor very quickly. “I love him already.” 

“It’s barely been a week,” Hina points out, but just this afternoon she had to take a five-minute breather when the Prince decided to practise juggling with his Dao swords. 

“Still,” says Jiro, with feeling. He doesn’t say anything else. 

“He’s got zero sense of safety,” Ichiro grumbles. He takes a deep swallow from his cup, stares down at it, and reaches for the bottle for a refill. “I found him balancing on the railing the other day.” 

Jiro scoffs. “He’ll land softly, at least.” 

“No,” says Ichiro, “no, you don’t understand. My railing. The navigation tower’s railing. Balancin’ on it. Like it’s a tightrope.” 

“Oh.” 

They fall into quiet contemplation. Their few youngins – Ensigns Minato and Asami, Recruits Kazumi and Ohta – are in their early twenties, too old to understand Prince Zuko’s recklessness and too young to be truly stressed out by it, and therefore have neglected to join the rest of the crew in this drinking session. 

Jee reckons it must be nice, not having high blood pressure caused by a feral, thirteen-year-old Prince with a death wish. 

“I think,” Keiji says eventually, voice grumbling through a throat set alight by the spiced scotch, “that we’re all just so concerned ‘cause he’s so kind and adorable.”

There is muttered, intoxicated agreement. Jee sets his jaw and angrily lifts his head through the haze of liquor.

“He’s a brat.”

“Only you think that,” Sana retorts. She reaches out and flicks his nose, grinning crookedly when his exhale of sparks barely tickles her fingers. “You’re fond of him, though. Admit it.”

“I’m not,” he snarls. Any flush of warmth he feels whenever the Prince does something entirely stupid is mere annoyance. “He’s horrible.” 

“He’s cute,” Jiro says, like a small protest. “He hasn’t done anythin’ to disrespect us. He’s just… concerningly reckless.” 

Jee glares at his Petty-Officer, words to sharply retort with crawling slowly up his throat and sticking to his tongue. Said Petty-Officer stares back, one infuriatingly smug eyebrow raised. 

“He’s just reckless,” Jee manages to say eventually. “Not concerningly.” 

“You had to lean your forehead against the bridge and breathe for ten minutes the last time he swung himself off the navigation tower, Lieutenant Jee, sir.” 

“Not in concern,” he says tightly, “in mere fright ‘n annoyance. That’s all.” 

Jiro smirks. “Right, and I start my mornings by dancing the Flaming Chicken in my underclothes on the deck—”

“That is all, Jiro,” Jee snaps. 

Jiro continues to smirk smirkingly. Sana and Hina snigger drunkenly into their cups. Keiji has produced fire-flakes from some place or the other, and is sharing them with Ichiro—both are chewing obnoxiously loud. 

Jee, briefly resigning himself to not being taken seriously, steals a handful of fireflakes and chows down on them in a fit of rage. 

But the Prince is still a brat.

Land comes in the form of shouting and mild excitement. 

“Your Highness?” Jee asks, through gritted teeth. Prince Zuko’s dual swords have halted in a deadly movement, and the Prince himself is silent and still. “Where do you wish for us to moor?” 

The Prince blinks, loosens his shoulders, and sheaths his swords in one quick, smooth movement. 

“I believe the journey to the Temple is quite the climb,” he says, slowly. “Try to moor as close as possible to a traversable area; we should bring climbing gear. I do not want anyone to fall.”

Jee nods and forces himself to be bitter about the command to command. It takes more effort than it should.

Prince Zuko is an ignorant child. He is a child, and he is royalty, and so he must mean the slight, and he is a child—

The Western Air Temple is deserted, as expected. 

It’s also a mass grave. 

There are bones everywhere, skeletons of children and adults alike scattered by animals and wind: nuns and acolytes, driven into corners. In a few of the closed off rooms they manage to pen, hidden in the Temple’s depths, the skulls still have hair. The bones are held together by brittle, dried cartilage and tattered orange robes. It’s always an adult skeleton guarding a handful of smaller ones. 

I am so sorry, say the characters on the back of an opened scroll. They’re written in blood, bleached with age. The Fire Nation army keeps waiting for us to emerge. I do not want them to be burned alive. They are children. 

When the clouds in the canyon below part, Jee can see the shiny white remains of hundreds more. Thrown, or jumped willingly—it doesn’t matter. Emotion burrows itself in his throat and won’t leave. His heart beats steady yet slow deep inside his chest, pulsing cold blood to his extremities. 

Jee has spent the majority of his service in the Navy, barring the few years he served under General Iroh in the Earth Kingdom. And in the navy, you don’t see many dead bodies. The slaughter is always from a distance: burning projectiles sink ships, and sometimes the screaming is obscured by rolling waves and vicious wind. It is rarely up close, rarely personal. 

Jee has sent many to the grave that is the ocean floor, nearly emotionless as ships sank down under the waves. During the Siege it was easy to view the ferocious earthbenders of the Earth Kingdom army as inhuman—the cries of battle obscured the sizzle and squelch of flesh, and the adrenaline made his enemies no more than malicious spirits.

It is silent here, in the Western Air Temple. The empty eye sockets stare. 

If the experienced members of the crew are pale, then their young members are paler still; turning green, shaking, biting their lips until they bleed. Ensign Minato and Recruit Ohta throw up. Prince Zuko calls them all to him and stands there, thirteen winter solstices old, feet steady beneath him and hands clasped behind his back and shoulders straight. He looks drawn and grave.

“Let us give them their final rites,” he says, young voice wavering only slightly. There are bones behind him that his predecessors have never deemed worthy of a proper goodbye. The General has a hand on his shoulder. “They were human beings. We ought to treat them with respect.” 

“Yes, Your Highness,” says Jee. The words come out thick and hoarse. “Let us put them to rest.” 

Nobody moves until the Prince moves. It’s not out of disrespect, Jee knows: they’re all just frozen, shocked into stillness by the remains of a massacre in front of them. But their Crown Prince, thirteen years of age, is the first to shake himself loose in order to gather the bodies. He kneels, hesitating before his fingers brush a skull.

“If you can manage, try to find a scroll on Air Nomad funerals,” Prince Zuko announces thickly. “I know some details, as I’ve studied Air Nomad culture, but the information is incomplete. Fire Nation rites will be disrespectful.” 

Jee, armed with climbing rope and anchors, sets off to find the scrolls. He pretends very hard he isn’t trembling.

It takes them three days to prepare for the funerals. Three days of work, of searching and carrying, of reading and gathering. On the evening of the first day they return to the Wanyi, but that next morning Prince Zuko commands they take supplies – food, incense, parchment; clothes and bedrolls, bedsheets and emptied travel chests – back with them to the Temple, because the climb up and down is exhausting and inconvenient and he does not want anyone to fall. 

The entire crew acquiesces, because it is a sensible order and they like sensible orders. General Iroh then insists on taking tea and pastries, if not for them then for the souls still lingering in the Temple—left to roam forever. Prince Zuko agrees. 

So they stay, laying out their bedrolls just next to the entrance with a cooking set in the middle. It’s tiring and painful work: they spend daylight carrying human remains and gathering knowledge and trying not to gag when the thickness of the atrocity becomes too much. Their ancestors are guilty; to collapse will not do.

During the first evening meal spent in the Temple, Jee informs Prince Zuko and General Iroh that he found scrolls stating the Air Nomads generally preferred a sky burial, but that the Air Nomads of the Western Air Temple were more inclined to cremation. And it’s too late for a sky burial anyway, Jee tells them. There is nothing left for scavenging animals to clean up. 

“Cremation, then,” General Iroh says slowly. “Well, we know how to build pyres.”

He accepts the bowl of stew that their Cook, Take, hands him with a nod and a smile. No meat: Prince Zuko insisted on vegetarian meals whilst they stayed here, in spite of protests. The Prince wouldn’t budge, though. According to him, to prepare meat in the Air Temples is to desecrate them even further. We’ve done enough harm.

Take dutifully broke out their stores of tempeh and fresh edamame and lentils. Nobody is complaining.

“I found the appropriate scrolls just before being called back for dinner,” Jee says, accepting his own bowl. “I’ll look into the rites tomorrow.” 

“I’ll join you, if you allow me to,” says the Prince quietly. “Two sets of eyes look quicker than one.”

Jee accepts the offer with some trepidation. The next morning, Prince Zuko climbs up after him into one of the hanging store rooms, golden eyes wide with wonder as he takes in the small library.

His awe is enough for any hesitancy Jee felt on working with the royal brat to vanish. They set to work immediately, careful not to tear the ancient scrolls with priceless knowledge. It’s a miracle Sozin hadn’t had all of this burnt to ashes. 

The rest of the crew, including General Iroh, is busy preparing the other parts of the funeral: collecting bodies, assembling the pyres. The bones are numerous, and they know they cannot gather them all, so the scent of incense hangs heavy in the air and carries mumbled prayers and apologies. There is no joy in finding anything interesting, only solemn duty tainted with grief for people they have never known. 

That evening, Ensign Asami dares to step close to Prince Zuko, goes down to her knees, and presents him with a children’s doll. It is of a female Air Nomad, a Master, tattoos visible with painstakingly neat, light blue embroidery. Her dark hair is made of wool.

“It is one of the few salvageable things we’ve managed to find,” she says, and then she hesitates visibly. “Your Highness, Seamen Keiji and Hikaru and Recruit Kazumi and I believe that we should not burn these with the bodies.” 

Prince Zuko tilts his head and Asami carefully hands him the doll. He brings it closer to him and smooths his thumb over the faded fabric, mouth tight. 

“We took chests with us for a reason,” he says slowly. “Those chests will stay here, and we shall fill them with all that can be saved. Robes, necklaces, artefacts… and knowledge.” He pauses, swallows. “Those who can draw well, and those whose handwriting is neat and legible: you shall copy scrolls for us to keep. They originals ought to remain here.”

Everybody nods. Some start to whisper, discussing the additional tasks. Asami smiles a pained, relieved smile, then scoots over to her crewmates and answers questions on what else she’s found.

Prince Zuko plays, head bowed, with the doll’s fragile hand and leans against his uncle, ignoring the quiet ruckus. The atmosphere is not joyful, merely curious and quiet, lingering with strengthened respect. Their Crown Prince, their Captain, doles it out like it’s candy—to them, to souls, to the area. It’s so incredibly easy to give it back.

And he’s a boy. 

Jee, eyes carefully trained on the long-fingered pre-teen hands of his Prince, on the ancient doll cradled in work-roughened palms, feels himself waver. 

The chests they’ve brought, emptied of personal belongings, come from the crew and the two royals. They’re stamped with names and the Fire Nation insignia—the latter, Sana and Prince Zuko neatly scratch out with their knives. Asami, Keiji, Hikaru and Kazami carefully gather all material goods they’ve found and search for more — necklaces and robes, toys and stuffed animals, grooming brushes and cloaks made from shed air bison fur — and place them in the chests. Small icons of Avatar Yangchen, Kuruk, Kyoshi, Roku, made of whittled wood or cut out of glass, get wrapped up in clean rags and are hidden away with the other things. 

Ensign Minato and Helmsman Ichiro are on cultural scroll-copying duty, because their handwriting is the most legible out of all of the crew; Petty-Officer Jiro and Seaman Hina copy the bending scrolls, because they can draw. When the four are finished, they roll the ancient scrolls up with care and place them in a chest that too will be closed and locked away inside the temple, because the fragile wealth of knowledge may be destroyed otherwise. The copies are for the off-chance that it will anyway.

“They were pacifists,” Ichiro announces, when they take lunch. His fingers are covered in ink. “They did not have an army.” 

“Be careful what you say, Ichiro,” Keiji snaps. His cheeks are still blotchy; he found something he won’t talk about, but carried a child’s skeleton to the pyres, to be put at rest with their family. “That implication is dangerous.” 

“I’m not implying anything,” Ichiro replies harshly. “I’m just sharing what I’ve found.” 

Prince Zuko, Jee finds, doesn’t say anything. He just eats his fried rice with a distant look in his eyes. General Iroh’s arm is pressed to his. 

The gathering continues, though the pyres are done. Those with the worst handwriting and drawing skills help find material goods; the others help with reading scrolls, with copying them. They finish long after nightfall, exhausted, but they do not sleep. They eat, and tidy, and carry chests full of scrolls and dolls and robes and all that proves the Air Nomads were human, were there, were real into the depths of the Temple, locked behind doors to never be looted. 

When they are ready, when the Temple is tidied and its material stuff is safely stored away, when the Nomads’ remains have been gathered and placed on the pyres and wrapped in spare bedsheets because the Air Nomads wore red in mourning and the crew had nothing else to use—

When they are ready, their firebenders go down on one knee, thrust out their palms with bowed heads, and set the wood alight.

Prince Zuko and General Iroh murmur the rites in low tones, partially from memory and partially from the copies of the scrolls Jee found on Air Nomad funerals. Some parts are familiar, of returning to the source, but it is not Agni’s embrace that the Air Nomads believed in. It is not the earth the Air Nomads wished to be at rest in. It is not Tui’s pull or La’s push that the Air Nomads longed for. 

It was the wind. The air. The element of freedom, a part of nature that will always be even long after humans will have inevitably killed one another off. It brushes through his short hair, stokes the fire enough for it to engulf the sheets and the bones they hold. Jee believes in the Spirits but can’t pronounce the name of the one the Air Nomads prayed to. It curls foreign around his tongue, comes out harsh and stilted where he assumes it should sound smooth and song-like. He clumsily whispers the name of the mother — Chuī De Tā — and hopes it’s enough. And perhaps it is. 

They are exhausted. They do not sleep. Agni chases Tui out of the sky of dark silk and burns it red, orange, yellow, light blue, rising and rising and rising—and they sit vigil, only moving to light new incense. Jee’s knees burn and his stomach aches, but he remains. They all do. 

They stay until the bones have turned to ash, until Agni has sunk below the horizon again and Tui has taken their place. Until a gust of wind, sudden and almost unnatural, sends the black and grey powder that was once bodies down into the valley below, yanking at any and all loose clothing. Sana’s phoenix tail beats in the wind like a flag. 

The stone floor of the square is clean. No blackened stain baked into the earth, no evidence of the cremation; it’s as if the goodbye was a long time ago already, as if it was a long time coming. 

Prince Zuko bows low, forehead pressed to the ground, murmuring prayers. They all follow suit, so tired, so exhausted. The stone is rough against Jee’s forehead, the warmth of the pyres lingering deep within, and the wind is a soothing press against his back.  

Later, when they’ve finally eaten and quelled the hunger, ceased to fast—later, when their cooking fire has gone down to embers and the crew has crawled into their bedrolls, curled up—later, when everybody is sleeping, Jee is still awake and the Prince is as well. 

He is thirteen. He is an ignorant, kind, curious and remarkably wise boy. He is a child with a death wish and a kind of compassion that not even Fire Lord Ozai managed to beat out of him. He carries bones with the reverence one uses for baby animals, careful and gentle, and he demands righteously to respect victims of a genocide that happened nearly a century ago. 

Jee whispers, harsher than he intended, that the awful kid ought to close his eyes and sleep. Take care of yourself for once, he doesn’t say.

Prince Zuko smiles weakly. And he listens. 

The journey back to the Wanyi is quiet. So is their cast off: the commands aren’t shouted, only said. A handful of the crew vanishes into their cabins and reappears in white.

“Makes you wonder, doesn’t it,” Prince Zuko murmurs from somewhere around Jee’s elbow. 

Jee glances down and finds the Prince looking contemplative, tired. The cocky tilt of his mouth is gone. Jee recalls the gentleness with which the Prince carried the bones, recalls the solemnity in his expression and his movements; something appropriate for so much death but not made, not faked, simply genuine.

“About what, Your Highness?” he asks. 

Prince Zuko looks at him, that dragon-yellow colour of his eyes, of royalty, smouldering with a purpose Jee can’t pinpoint just yet. 

“Whether everything else we’ve been taught is also a lie.”

Jee exhales sparks. The warmth in his chest remains. The sky is clear and the breeze is stiff, cold, fresh. 

“Yes,” he says honestly. “It does make one wonder, my Prince.”

Chapter Text

It’s easy, travelling by boat. Zuko can’t remember it ever being so easy. 

The Wanyi is familiar. More familiar than the Palace. It is good. His crew is fond of him, fonder than they had been when he was a shouting, furious, wounded, terrified boy who couldn’t understand why his father burnt him banished him threw him away—and though he is glad he gets along with them in this time, he doesn’t know how to feel about the disparity. 

Uncle, at least, is largely the same. Uncle is consistent. Uncle loves him, has always loved him, even when Zuko was a confused, spoilt, horrible teenager who hated himself more than he hated his destiny. Uncle is a warm, dependable presence at his side, a kind teacher watching him bend, a jolly man of silliness when the atrocities of War get a bit too heavy. 

Zuko misses his friends. But he’s not too lonely.   

The Northern Air Temple, as packed as it is with Earth Kingdom refugees, is nearly emptied in its entirety of Air Nomad remains. 

Remains meaning bones, yes, bodies—but also scrolls and clothing and dolls, air bison brushes and prayer necklaces. They’re invited inside after promising on their honour that they’ve come in peace, and then the refugees’ leader, Sai — “I’d rather be called the Mechanist; everybody does!” — guides them through what was once a temple but is not now. 

There are pulsing pipes sticking out from ancient and sacred murals like open fractures, walls and ceilings coated in a sludge of coal smoke. The refugees observe them behind dirty metal constructions and ancient, intricately carved pillars, sneering. The children look frightened.

Any attempt at communication with someone other than the Mechanist goes ignored. Junior-Lieutenant Sana waves once, and Zuko does too, but a particularly angry-looking woman pulls her child behind her before she can wave back. Resigned but understanding, Zuko, Uncle, and the crew who accompanied them up the mountain range keep to themselves. It’s easier to peel information out of the Mechanist anyway. 

He weaves them their background story: it’s disjointed, and sometimes he gets distracted and stops mid-sentence to do a lot of gestures at some piping, but eventually Zuko can piece it together. There was a flood in their town, and many people, including the Mechanist’s wife, lost their lives—and the Fire Nation already pushed so many people into becoming refugees that they had to look elsewhere for shelter. The Temple is high and dry and safe. It’s perfect. 

Helmsman Ichiro and Engineer Akito are mighty interested in the Mechanist’s inventions, gushing quietly about the ingenuity and neat metalwork. It relaxes their guide, magics a small smile onto his face, and he talks about how he can weld without fire—pressure and a locking system keep the pipes together, and if necessary he’ll use friction-induced heat to attach two ends. He won’t stop chattering either, because he’s made a Temple built for airbenders work for non-benders and a handful of earthbenders and he’s very proud of that achievement. 

“Oh, it’s quite clever if me, if I may say so myself,” he murmurs, to his enraptured audience of two. “It’s all steam! Hot air is lighter than cold air, and it’s cold here—we’re even able to fly using gliders inspired by the remains of gliders we’ve found.”

Back during Zuko’s first go — a time he, curiously, does not remember all that much of — he’d been twitchy whilst visiting the Northern Air Temple. He’d been twitchy whilst visiting the Western and Southern Temples as well, considering how much these carcasses of culture prove that the Fire Nation is the aggressor in the War. And yes, The Northern Air Temple had no visible bodies and does not now either, but the Northern felt like—

Well, the refugees were here then as well, and Zuko’s quite certain there are no acutely discernible differences. 

It felt sacrilegious. It still does. It feels sacrilegious to view mechanical advancement tearing through a place of worship and to then say nothing. And Zuko could not, and still cannot, say anything, because it’s not his place. 

Aang accepted the change in another time, because the Temple would be empty without the refugees and the refugees need a home and that’s what the Air Nomads were all about: they shared food and shelter and happiness, song and dance. Zuko can’t say this is dishonourable because he’s not an Air Nomad, because he’s not a refugee, because he knows that the casual destruction of the home of people who ought to be remembered is not done maliciously. 

But he stares at a mural of Avatar Yangchen. A pipe is drilled through her eye, another through her shoulder. The chalk paint has begun to fade. 

“What about the bodies?” he asks, turning away from the desecration with a stiff back. He didn’t ask that last time. He simply assumed. 

“The bodies?” The Mechanist asks, patchy eyebrows quirked curiously. 

“Of the Air Nomads,” Zuko clarifies. “I’m assuming you must have found bones.” 

“Oh,” says the Mechanist, and then he shakes his head. “No, we didn’t find any bodies. We always figured that… well. We assumed the Nomads had time to flee.”

“To flee,” says Zuko slowly, “and pack?” 

“Yes, exactly.” The Mechanist nods and taps his wooden fingers against his jaw. “There were no toys left, except unfinished ones—like a few of the gliders we found. And some clothing was left in the laundry area, but nothing else.” 

“Scrolls?” he asks. “What about scrolls?” 

“The library was nothing more than ashes,” the Mechanist answers. 

Of course it was. Zuko nods in lieu of a spoken answer and turns back to the drilled-through mural. 

“Are you thankful for this place, Sir?” 

“I’m sorry?” 

“Are you thankful,” Zuko says, “that you have a roof over your head?” 

Jee hisses through his teeth from his place behind him. Ichiro and Akito shift in place, looking slightly ashamed. Uncle and the others do not say a word. 

“Of course I am,” says the Mechanist, audibly confused. “We… my people and I are so thankful.”

Zuko nods again. 

“I think it’s wonderful that you’ve managed to adapt the Temple into a home traversable by people who cannot bend,” Zuko says. “I think it’s good that you’ve made the Temple a home again, that you’ve given it back the purpose it was constructed for.”

“I’m glad to hear it,” the Mechanist says quietly. 

“And I know,” Zuko continues, “that you likely will not take what I will say to heart—because I am the great-grandchild of the man who ordered this Temple to be burnt out. But, please—” he gestures at the mural, “—perhaps it would be kind and respectful to those who built this home if you respected this home as well.”

The Mechanist looks at the mural of the Avatar, frowning, and Zuko can see the exact moment when it clicks. The man’s eyes widen, and his nostrils flare as he inhales, and then his gaze lowers and stares at nothing as he thinks. 

“Of course,” he murmurs. 

“The Air Nomads may not be here anymore, but they did exist.” It’s easier, saying this, now that he knows Aang. It’s easier to put his discomfort into words. Aang will accept that refugees have made the Temple into their home, but it is still an Air Temple, and it should be respected. “This is as much as a monument to them and their culture as it is a home for you and your people. Whether the inhabitants got away, or their bodies were cleaned up before you came—they were driven out by violence and technological advancements. Remember them.” 

“Yes,” says the Mechanist, after a moment of silence. “Yes, that makes—I understand. I…” 

“Perhaps you can drill through the empty places of the murals instead,” Uncle interrupts, smiling genially. “Keep everything clean. And we have information on Air Nomad philosophies and customs. I do believe it would be nice to share those… over a cup of tea?” 

“And please do talk about steam engine care,” Akito jumps in, to Ichiro’s nodding. “I’m always looking for energy-efficient options! Our Prince said it—the way you’ve managed to adapt the place for people who cannot bend air is brilliant.”

The Mechanist smiles another small, hesitantly bright smile. 

“Tea,” he says, “and food. Forgive us if it’s mainly vegetable-based protein; the grounds are rather inconvenient for keeping cattle and poultry.”

Aren’t they? 

“Why did you scold them, Prince Zuko?” 

They’re back on the Wanyi, having politely declined to stay the night in an attempt to not overstay their welcome. The Mechanist looked relieved anyway, which is just as well. 

“They are well-meaning,” he replies, “but ignorant.” 

Uncle does not appear disappointed, nor does he look proud or pleased. There’s a careful neutrality in his face that, in all of Zuko’s years of being around Uncle nearly every day, Zuko still is unable to decipher. 

It’s a look, Zuko thinks, that is usually paired with Zuko’s Big Decisions of Destiny. A ‘what do you think you’re doing’-question that is not actually asked, simply implied to be asked through bushy eyebrows and a mouth hidden by a beard. Often, in the different time, this look was followed by a sigh and a glimmer of disappointment upon explanation; sometimes it was a proud or fond smile. And always, always, it incited a gut reaction of defensiveness that made Zuko huff and straighten. 

Zuko is twenty-one and thirteen. Zuko huffs, and he straightens. 

“I genuinely am happy for them that they’ve found a place to stay,” he explains, “but I feel it was disrespectful to the Nomads — who left unwillingly — to start breaking the damn thing apart. I just reminded the Mechanist that the reason he and his people are in the Temple and able to make changes is because its previous inhabitants have been murdered.” 

Uncle still looks unreadable. “You were speaking in defence of… the Air Nomads.” 

“Obviously,” says Zuko, only a little bit irate. He turns back to his wardrobe and starts removing bits and pieces of his stiff armour. “Their memory deserves to be respected. Not drilled through because of convenience.” 

Uncle is dreadfully quiet. Zuko continues to undress until he reaches his grey, long-sleeved under tunic, after which he tugs the heir’s pin out of his top knot and loosens his hair. He rummages through the drawers in search of clean clothing. 

He’s not in the wrong here. Perhaps he was too harsh, but he’s not in the wrong. The Uncle of his original time would understand—would have encouraged such beliefs, even. Probably. It’s the type of direction that he would’ve tried to steer Zuko into during the banishment. The refugees belong in the Northern Air Temple; they should respect the lingering souls of the previous inhabitants. 

“I’m not apologising for it, by the way,” Zuko says, pulling an evening robe out of the drawers and draping it over his arm. “I was firm, but I was also polite. And the Mechanist understood—”

Warm arms catch him in a fierce embrace. Zuko is tucked against Uncle, cheek to cheek, because they’re nearly the same height still; and he feels himself melt, muscles once tight with anxiety relaxing with every slow expansion of Uncle’s chest. Zuko rests some of his weight against him, exhales shakily through his nose, and briefly closes his eyes. 

“I am so, so proud of you, Prince Zuko,” Uncle says thickly. “Your kindness and compassion… they have not been smothered under your father’s violence, have they?” 

“Father—” his voice cracks, and Zuko swallows with difficulty. “Father has enough violence and cruelty for a legion of soldiers. For the whole country.” 

“But not enough compassion for even himself,” Uncle whispers. “Not enough kindness to consider others as human. Not enough of either to be a leader the world needs.”

His arms tighten briefly before he pulls away, hands on Zuko’s shoulders to look him in the eye. Uncle’s own are shiny, and his mouth quirks into a wry smile. 

“I am glad,” he says, “that you are our future, Prince Zuko.” 

The crew doesn’t speak of Zuko’s gentle outburst to the leader of the refugees. Not in front of Zuko, anyway—though perhaps they discuss it in the mess when Zuko has retired to bed, or perhaps they whisper about it in their cabins. 

But they don’t speak of it by day. They continue to watch him carefully, keep their bows deep, and hold onto the respect that royalty requires. During Zuko’s banishment, his crew would have slowly started to cut corners at this point; they do not now. 

He must be doing something right. Uncle gleams with pride. 

On their meandering journey down the Earth Kingdom coast, shortly before they pass Chameleon Bay, Zuko miscalculates his landing after his usual somersault off the navigation tower and hurts his ankle. 

This should not be a big issue — especially considering Zuko neither felt nor heard anything snap — but it appears the crew treats it as such. He doesn’t do much more than hiss and grab at his foot before he is surrounded by concerned veterans; they crowd him like clucking mother Komodo-hens. 

It is dreadfully annoying yet, simultaneously, very endearing. Zuko would’ve cooed had he not wanted them to leave him alone. 

“Your Highness!” somehow, Ensign Minato’s voice comes out the clearest in the rumbling thunder of panicked voices. “Your Highness, are you alright?” 

“Yes,” says Zuko, because he is. Sort of. It hurts like a bitch, though. “I’m alright.” 

Jee spits sparks and some choice words. Or, Zuko assumes it’s Jee—the sparks rise up from behind Jiro’s massive stature, and only Jee would cuss at him. “I call bullshit.” 

Zuko peers at the approximate space his Lieutenant is occupying and wrinkles his nose. “Are you saying I’m lying? I, your Crown Prince, am lying?” 

“Yes,” Jee answers shortly, bodily pushing Jiro and Keiji out of the way to reach him. “You’re a bitchass little liar, Your Highness.” 

“It’s just a sprained ankle!” Zuko swats irritably at Jee’s outstretched arms. “I’m fine.” 

Jee makes a tutting noise and evades Zuko’s swats deftly, pushes his arms under Zuko’s knees and below his shoulder blades. He is then lifted as though he weighs little more than a sack of sour potatoes.

Zuko flails in general protest, spitting out some sparks himself.  

“Stop it,” Jee hisses, tone promising chains and poppy milk if Zuko does not comply. Zuko goes limp. “Thank you.” 

It is probably one of the most embarrassing things that has ever happened to him. This is impressive, because Zuko has gone through many, many embarrassing moments in his life: he’s practised speeches in front of Badger-Frogs and got caught, he’s been slammed into a wall by a twelve-year-old pacifist monk, and he’s ascertained he would win a fight against Katara at the North Pole during a blizzard, when the night was dark and the moon was full. 

Being carried by his Lieutenant like some simpering maiden is quite high up the list. Especially because his crew follows them like confused, anxious polar bear pups. 

“Can you not?” Zuko snaps, peeking past Jee’s bicep to glare at the lot of them. “Don’t you have things to do? Fires to start? Gossip to share? Hinges to oil?” 

As if they’re all limbs of one body, they halt. 

“Right, Your Highness,” Sana says, after a beat. There is a smile pulling at her mouth that she valiantly tries to get under control under Zuko’s glare. “Of course. Run along, you fuckin’ slackers.” 

The crew scatters nervously. Jee grumbles curses under his breath and hikes Zuko a little higher, squeezes through the narrow door opening with a scowl. 

“I knew this would happen,” he tells Zuko, in a tone of voice that Chief Hakoda has used on Zuko before. It is a dad-voice. Zuko, Crown Prince of the Fire Nation, is being dad-ed by his grumpy Lieutenant. “It went far too well for far too long.” 

“I could’ve pushed through,” Zuko replies, not pouting. “It’s only a sprained ankle—”

Jee offers him a withering glare. Zuko falls silent and slumps against Jee’s armoured shoulder, remains that way until Jee comes to a standstill in front of their healer’s treatment cabin and knocks by way of kicking against the steel. The door creaks and hisses as it’s opened just a fraction—a weathered face appears in the sliver of space. 

“Yes?” 

“The Prince has hurt his ankle,” Jee grunts, pushing the door open with his leg and easily making his way inside with Zuko limply swinging in his arms. “You should probably take a look at it.” 

“Oh,” is the terse reply, “I should, should I?” 

The Wanyi’s medic, Lee, is one of Uncle’s old friends and reminds Zuko strongly of both Pakku and Jeong-Jeong at the same time. Though he’s a bit of a hermit — he takes tea and plays Pai Sho with Uncle, but only in Uncle’s cabins, and he generally prefers to be left alone — he does have the air of someone who’s good with people. Medic Lee is the type of man to command respect and speak through thinly veiled insults; he’s honest and hardworking, on the older side, hair silver and face marred with age and stress. 

He’s also incredibly sarcastic and stubborn. 

“Our Prince is hurt,” Jee says, bristling. “You are our medic. Take a look at his fucking ankle.” 

The two men cross gazes—unstoppable force meets immovable object. And Zuko remains in Jee’s arms, feeling really quite silly, because he’s thirteen and he’s twenty-one and he’s being carried like an irate child. 

Then again, at least Jee didn’t rest him on his shoulder like the sack of sour potatoes that he is apparently the weight of. Small mercies. 

“Just look at it,” Jee grits out. 

Medic Lee’s brown eyes briefly glance at Zuko’s unhurt ankle. 

“There.” He crosses his arms and purses his thin mouth. “I looked at it.” 

Zuko tries and fails to muffle a laugh with a cough. In hindsight, Medic Lee is quite similar to Jee as well. It’s just that Jee’s a sailor and Medic Lee’s a field medic turned royal medic who deems himself above implementing a variety of curses in one’s linguistic arsenal. 

“That’s the wrong fucking ankle,” Jee snaps. Then he sighs and exhales sparks again. “Just… make sure it isn’t broken. And maybe give him an ointment for the swelling, or whatever it is you do.” 

“I’ll decide what I do,” Medic Lee barks, but he gestures at the little raised cot in the medical cabin. “Deposit His Highness there.” 

Perhaps Zuko should protest at being ‘deposited’ like some sort of cargo — or sack of sour potatoes — but he doesn’t, because after Jee gently sets him down on the rock-hard mattress, he pats Zuko on the head. Like a pet. Or a child. 

He’s too tongue-tied to bark an objection at the general state of things. Jee, like he’s done nothing out of the ordinary, moves to stand vigil next to the cot. 

Medic Lee shoots him a look. 

“So I know for certain,” says Jee, “that you’ll treat his ankle.” 

“I’m a healer,” Medic Lee points out, tone nasal and dry. “I’ll decide whether His Highness’ royal ankle needs to be treated.” 

“My ankle does not need to be treated,” Zuko says. He is ignored. 

Jee juts out his chin. “Still,” he says. 

The standoff goes on for about ten seconds before Medic Lee, with a derisive snort, reaches out to unbind Zuko’s shin armour and discard it behind him.

“Whatever makes you happy, Lieutenant Jee.” 

The retort sounds an awful lot like ‘I’m never happy’, which would’ve made Zuko choke on his tongue—had he heard it, because Medic Lee takes that moment to tug off Zuko’s boot. 

The ankle protests. Loudly, in that way sprained ankles are wont to do. Zuko grunts, bites down on his cheeks hard enough to draw blood, and tries not to throttle the healer as he pokes at the rapidly swelling joint. Then his foot is taken hold of by two old, cold, calloused hands and twisted in this and that direction. 

Zuko fists the cot so hard that its fabric begins to smoke. 

“Does it hurt, Your Highness?” Jee asks lightly, placing himself on Zuko’s ‘must throttle someday’-list.  “Spirits, I do wonder how that came about—”

“Wiggle your toes,” Medic Lee orders. 

Zuko does so. Politely. Calmly. 

“Ankle doesn’t appear to be broken,” Medic Lee murmurs. He squeezes the top and bottom of Zuko’s foot. “Does that hurt?” 

“No,” Zuko says, through gritted teeth. 

“Foot isn’t broken either,” is the conclusion. “It’s just a sprained ankle.” 

“I told you—”

Medic Lee walks over to one of his many drawers and pulls bandages out of one, a weird sack out of another, and a little ceramic jar out of the third. Then he walks back, opens the jar, and starts slathering a very pale cream all over Zuko’s ankle. 

“Ash-puma balm,” he says, “to keep down the swelling and to prevent locking the joint. Then,” he unravels the bandage and wraps it tight around the ankle, “stiff bandages for support and stability, and to keep down the swelling. Lastly,” he plops the weird sack on Zuko’s chest, “a cool compress, to also keep down the swelling. Try to prevent too much use of the affected foot before it’s healed, lest you wish for chronic pain or increased risk of injury, or even arthritis. The recovery time before you can even attempt to walk normally will be two weeks.” 

“Two—”

“Heavy exercise,” Medic Lee continues, thin-lipped, “will be at least four. Start stretching gently at the one-week mark, by simply rolling your foot carefully and moving it side to side without moving your leg. At week two you’ll start putting weight on it. Keep up the exercises for as long as possible, even after healing, because the chance you’ll sprain it again will be very high if you don’t warm up.” 

Zuko gapes at the medic as Jee crows triumphantly about stubborn thirteen-year-old boy-princes and their general stupidity and how he knew it’s a serious injury. Medic Lee stares back at Zuko, eyebrows raised as if daring him to protest. 

“How am I supposed to get around?” Zuko’s never rested longer than a handful of days after an injury. Even after Azula’s lightning burnt him from the inside out, Zuko was up and at it after four days in spite of the pain and lingering shakiness, and also Katara’s furious protests. “Am I just supposed to order Jee to carry me everywhere?” 

Jee snorts derisively, as though he’s in any way okay with that prospect. “Would be harder for you to get into trouble that way.” 

“I’ll request Engineer Akito to fashion a crutch for you out of metal, Your Highness,” Medic Lee says. “But that will take at least a day.” 

Zuko casts his eyes skywards. 

“And,” Medic Lee continues, sounding almost gleeful, “getting me to talk to Engineer Akito will also take a while.”

“I can’t fucking believe this.” 

Jee smugly pats Zuko on the head again. “That’ll be a few days of sitting still, Your Highness. I can barely wait.”

One of the perks of being rather… stuck in one place with a bandaged foot is that he is now entirely unable to procrastinate on things that warrant him sitting still. 

His correspondence is one of the more prudent of his tasks, especially as it is the one he tends to put off. Azula can become quite violent if she believes she’s being ignored, something that never bodes well for any living or material things in the palace; and preventing deaths and damage from the comfort of taking tea with Uncle isn’t horrible, so Zuko doesn’t really mind his injury and orders all that much. 

Even if it means he needs to pee quite frequently, which is a hassle in general with a foot he needs to keep his weight off of and a crutch made of very heavy steel. 

“You can piss over the side of the ship if you’re in a pinch, Your Highness,” Keiji says helpfully, when Zuko mentions this issue in the Seaman’s hearing range. “When I’m on duty and I really need to go, that’s what I—”

Lieutenant Jee walks up behind him and looms. 

“—absolutely never do, even when my bladder is set to explode,” Keiji finishes solemnly, lying through his teeth. “Obviously. But you could, my Prince. If you’d want to.” 

Zuko thanks him for his advice, trying not to smile. Keiji nods, briefly twists his hands into the formal flame, and skedaddles before he can get yelled at with much smoke and sparks. 

Jee almost looks disappointed that there’s no need to raise his voice. Comical in any other circumstance: in this one, it means he sets his eyes on another thing.

“Do you need me to carry you again, Sir?” 

“No thank you, Lieutenant,” Zuko answers. Before Akito finished the crutch, Jee — or Petty-Officer Jiro, if Jee was unavailable — did carry him basically everywhere, including to the loo. Zuko managed to convince him to switch to piggy back after the first two hours of the not-bridal carry, but it was still incredibly annoying. “I need to learn how to get around by myself.” 

“It really is no issue, Sir,” says Jee. “And I’m certain Jiro won’t mind slinging you over his shoulder either—”

“I am not,” Zuko says sternly, ignoring Uncle’s sniggers, “a sack of sour-potatoes, Lieutenant.” 

Jee’s mouth twitches. “Of course you aren’t, Your Highness.”

“Hm.” Zuko sniffs and looks away.

“You weigh less, I believe,” Jee adds. “I’d probably put you at half of a sack. Maybe a quarter.” 

“Lieutenant.” 

“Yes, Your Highness?” He sounds cheeky. Lieutenant Jee, the Grump of the Wanyi, should not sound cheeky. “I am always at your service.” 

The glare Zuko sends him is one of his fiercest—one that once made Ministers cower as Katara and Sokka grinned maniacally from over his shoulders, safe and protected by Zuko’s status of technically being the Fire Lord despite not yet being of age. But Jee knows Zuko, and Zuko is a downed turtleduckling, and all that Jee does is raise his eyebrows whilst oozing unaffectedness. 

Zuko wilts. 

“Just… get back to work.” Zuko flaps his hands limply, scowling. “Go… yell at people. Loom. Be intimidating. Scold Sana for sneaking the animals sugar cubes again. I dunno—”

“Of course, Your Highness.” Jee does an exaggerated bow. “Anything for you, Your Highness.” 

Uncle hides his face in his collar, shoulders shaking. 

The fiery breath singes his nose hair. “Skedaddle, Lieutenant.” 

“Skedaddling right now, Your Highness.” Before he turns to walk off and frighten Hina into mopping the deck, Jee’s mouth stretches into an unsettlingly smug smile. “I am but a call away, Your Highness. If you ever need to pee, that is.”

Jee does skedaddle before Zuko can spit flame in his general direction. Zuko watches him go, squinting, and turns back to his letter to Azula with a pinched mouth. 

“I do believe you’ve charmed the crew, nephew,” Uncle muses, once he’s recovered from his silent laughing fit. His eyes twinkle from over the rim of his teacup. 

“I am very charming,” Zuko retorts. He’s not, not really, but perhaps he’s endearing. Pretty, Sana called him. Mochi-cheeks. “And anyway, the crew already liked me. Lieutenant Jee’s acceptance is a recent development.” 

“You give him high blood pressure,” Uncle informs him. 

Zuko raises one eyebrow. If Zuko gives Jee high blood pressure, Jee shouldn’t ever meet Aang, or Katara, or Sokka, or — Agni forbid — Toph. Children who stop wars generally raise the blood pressure of the seasoned adult soldiers around them. 

“Comes with the territory,” he says eventually, swirling his calligraphy brush through the wet ink. “He’ll get used to it.” 

Uncle laughs. 

To Princess Azula—

The brush glides across the paper in perfect strokes, but hesitates in his hand. 

—Dearest sister— 

He doesn’t actually know what to write. They’ve never really talked as much as Zuko assumes normal siblings do. Prior to the change, before his banishment—all they said were barbs and shallow utterances meant to project an image of fragile comradery. They didn’t like each other, even if they acted like they did. Azula always lies. 

—I have, rather idiotically, injured myself during my agility training—

Azula would talk to him, though. Even if her speech was stilted and her words were mean. Even when he yelled at her to just go away and leave him alone. Even when she’d burn him. They still reached out to one another. 

—I can already hear you berating me for miscalculating and landing incorrectly, because surely you wouldn’t ever make such a mistake—

She stopped talking, after their battle. After the War. All her conversation was caught in her head, her thoughts, and whatever the ghost of him told her would make her so incandescently furious that she never said a word during all his visits. 

—and as such, I am giving you the opportunity to do so through our correspondence—

It will not happen again. 

High blood pressure or not, Jee doesn’t complain when Zuko stumbles off the ship with his crutch after they board in a small harbour town. It’s been two weeks since the injury, but Zuko — to his complete and utter fury — still can’t walk unassisted for a good amount of time, lest pain starts shooting up from his ankle all the way up to his fucking nose. 

“Serves you right,” Jee said just a few sunrises ago, as Zuko limped back to his cabin to fetch his crutch halfway through the day. “Jumping off towers and such—bloody mental.”

The state of his ankle is the reason that Zuko acquiesced to using his crutch after docking. If he’s going to walk around the town shopping, he’ll need the support; leaning on one of his crewmembers simply won’t do. 

Said town, Milukku, has been built on the south-west coast of Shiitake Island, a fat mushroom-shaped slab of volcanic rock the size of the city of Ba Sing Se. About a week’s journey by steamboat away from Chameleon Bay and a three-week journey from the Fire Nation, Shiitake Island is in that sweet spot of ‘should be part of the Earth Kingdom, but isn’t really’ and ‘could be a Fire Nation colony, but isn’t at all’; its people are independent and have been mixed for centuries. If its bending children do not bend fire, they bend molten earth. 

Milukku itself is a thriving town of diversity and reasonable equality that even the oldest Fire Nation colonies can only dream of having. No specific bending is superior: all that matters is money and goods. It’s not ideal, Zuko thinks, but it’s better than most areas in the world. 

As the majority of the crew flounces off in search of supplies — coal, obviously, but also food and soap — Zuko initially stays near the Wanyi, flanked by Jee and Sana. Uncle, as he is Uncle, takes Medic Lee by the arm and goes to drag him off to the nearest pub. 

“I am just aching for a good game of Pai Sho,” he says innocently, when Zuko’s eyebrows do much movement in his direction. “And Medic Lee is as well. Aren’t you, Lee?” 

Medic Lee looks about as enthusiastic as a plate of noodles is at the prospect of being eaten. “Right. Aching for it. Yes.” 

Uncle laughs as though Medic Lee just said something hilarious. “There’s nothing like some varied competition. Do watch your purse, Prince Zuko! I shall join you shopping later.” 

“We are restocking,” Zuko calls out, but Uncle waves him off. 

He watches as Uncle and Medic Lee vanish through the wooden door, wondering how on earth the White Lotus has remained a secret society for so long if their members are so obvious. But Sana and Jee don’t appear to have noticed a thing, so perhaps the ignorance and the act of being Odd and Weird does more than enough to curb suspicion. The sigh he sighs comes from deep inside his chest. 

“Well, I suppose I should get something for Azula,” he murmurs. It’s her birthday in a few weeks—not that she’s ever given him anything, but whatever. “Is there anything else?”

“The others have already got that down, Your Highness,” Jee grunts. “No need to worry your royal little head over that.” 

“My royal little head—”

“Perhaps we can also shop for instruments,” Sana interjects. She smiles kindly and pats Zuko’s shoulder. “Your uncle mentioned you play the tsungi horn?” 

Tsungi horn shmungi shorn. It’s not for him; they want to start music night and do some illegal dances and consume all of their spiced brandy. Zuko leans on his crutch and pinches the bridge of his nose with his free hand. 

“I’ve dabbled,” he says. “I’m not as good as Uncle—”

“I want a pipa,” Jee says gruffly. “I know how to play the pipa. There better fucking be pipas at the market.” 

He trots off with something that can almost be called a skip in his step, as excited as Jee possibly can be. Zuko watches him go with a slack mouth. 

“I do believe Keiji is quite a good flutist,” Sana says, like this turn of events is normal to her. “And Akito—he’s fantastic at percussion. Asami’s from a family of professional musicians. I’ve personally got a dab hand at the erhu, but my singing voice ain’t that bad either…”

“I—” Zuko sighs again, shaking his head to rid himself of the surprise. The crew always enjoyed music night and he might even participate this time. It could be fun. Probably. “We’ll buy some instruments. Whatever. Might improve morale.” 

Sana beams at him and seems to suppress the urge to squeeze his shoulders or ruffle his hair. Instead, she folds her hands into the flame and bows at the waist. 

“A brilliant idea, Your Highness,” she says. “Perhaps purchasing some Earth Kingdom instruments as well won’t be amiss; I believe it would be a fun challenge to figure out how to play them.” 

“Music is music,” Zuko agrees tiredly, and together they venture out to the market. 

It’s a lively thing, the market. Sailors, travellers, and townspeople alike stroll and barter, laughter being interspersed with harsh tones of arguing. The stalls shelter the goods from the sun and sea wind by a myriad of brightly coloured fabrics, some new and some so threadbare slivers of light make the bits and bobs shine golden. A nearby food vendor announces she’s got the freshest noodles on this side of the capital and that her dumplings are six for the cost of four; her competitor sears his sateh on a coal-powered grill and wafts the smell of cooked meat all over the market with the help of a kipas. A little further away, a group of foul-mouthed sailors complain to a smiling cloth merchant about something or the other.

The wide arrange of things for purchase is impressive. It’s not just food and clothing, but also pottery, woodwork and smithery in a variety of quality and sizes. There are stalls selling useful everyday items and stalls selling only decorations, there are stalls selling services and stalls selling finery, and there are stalls that seem to exist with the express purpose of conning people out of their coins. 

It’s busy and loud and will likely give him a mighty headache if he stays here for longer than an hour. Sokka would be in his element. 

“I think I see a djembe, for Akito,” Sana murmurs from his left. “But we could also buy a regular drum if it’s cheaper…”

Zuko is about to tell her that there’s no need to worry about money because he’s still the Crown Prince, which means that this entire venture is funded by Ozai and there’s no need to limit purchases—when something bright and oddly familiar catches his eye. 

The stall itself appears to be for metalwork alone, set up in front of a smithy with a sizable shop. It sells not only weapons and tools, but also decorations and jewellery; basic pots and pans made of a shiny bronze, ornate knives made of a reflective silver, expertly forged earrings made of a rich gold. Zuko lingers, staring wide eyed at the object that made him stop in the first place: a thin, white-gold dagger on velvet, glinting in the slivers of sun that manage to sneak through the gaps between the protective fabrics covering the stalls. 

It’s a pin, technically, for securing a sash. Common in both the Earth Kingdom and the Fire Nation. It also being a dagger isn’t particularly rare in both nations either, especially if it’s been made for a woman. But the decoration on the top—

“Your Highness?” 

Zuko jerks, blinking at his Junior-Lieutenant. “Yes?” 

“Something dangerous and sharp caught your eye, didn’t it?” Sana is smiling indulgently, again looking like she’s resisting the urge to fondly squeeze his shoulders. “Honestly, My Prince, your fondness for knives…” 

“We all have our vices,” he retorts. “Ichiro has sake, my uncle has tea, Jee has his grumpiness… you spoil animals—”

“They’re being so good in the stables, and deserve to be spoiled from time to time,” she replies, as if ‘time to time’ doesn’t mean ‘all the time’ in her world. “And it wasn’t an insult, you know. No need to be so testy.” 

“I’m not,” he says petulantly. He turns back to the pin, frowning. “It just looks familiar, is all.” 

“Familiar…?” Sana steps closer until she hovers just behind him, looking over his shoulder at the object. “Oh.” 

“Yes, oh.” 

“Lovely object, isn’t it?” 

One of the smiths has inched towards them with a large smile on her face. Her teeth are a bit yellow, even with the soot caked on her cheeks—the rolled stick of tobacco behind her ear suggests why that is. 

“Yes,” Zuko answers carefully. His free hand drifts a bit closer to the pin. “It’s beautifully made.” 

“Oh, absolutely,” says the smith. “We didn’t make it, sadly—it’s been sold to us, in exchange for a bag of coins and a decent cooking pot. Wanted to throw in a knife too, but the lady said she already had one.” 

“A Fire Nation lady?” Sana asks. She gestures at the pin. “The design doesn’t look very Earth Kingdom to me.” 

The smith shrugs. “Fire Nation, Earth Kingdom—we’re all mixed here, so she didn’t stand out enough for me to remember. I mean, my wife’s a firebender but she ain’t Fire Nation.”

“The decorative back of the pin is shaped like a flaming phoenix,” Zuko says. 

Another shrug. “Then she was Fire Nation. Who cares? It’s pretty, yeah?” 

Sana murmurs in agreement, but Zuko refrains from replying. His eyes won’t stray from the pin for too long; something about it itches at him, like he knows the pin. A memory that refuses to be remembered. 

“How much?” he asks. 

“Present for a special someone, boy?” the smith asks, grinning widely. “Aren’t you a bit young for big declarations of romance?” 

“It’s for my little sister,” he corrects. It can be Azula’s present. “She likes to stab things.” 

“Inanimate,” Sana snorts, “or living?” 

Zuko does not deign that with a reaction. It’s a valid question, even if it’s brought scathingly. 

“What’s a bit of violence for kids,” the smith scoffs. “But since that thing’s white gold, it’ll be seventy gold coins.” 

Sana gapes. “That’s six months’ worth of my wages.” 

“I’m a reseller,” is the reply. “Gotta make a profit somehow.” 

“You just said you got it in exchange for a cooking pot and a small bag of coins!” 

“I never said it was a small—”

“Deal,” Zuko interjects, ignoring the way Sana instantly huffs and puffs with muttered ‘Prince Zuko’s. It’s not like his father will miss the expense—or be surprised by frivolous princely purchases. He takes out his coin purse and weighs it in his hand. “Have you got a bag to deposit the money into?” 

They reach the Eastern Air Temple three weeks after the market trip, a time that Zuko suspects to be quicker because of their lightened purses. 

Though, that diminished amount of gold could be compensated in weight by the amount of stuff that has been carried onto the ship. Apart from the supplies they came for, instruments, alcohol, and decorative bits and bobs now populate the Wanyi as well. Jee especially seems ecstatic with his brand-new pipa, and Sana and Ichiro — who usually have a drink with Jee every evening — have told Zuko that Jee keeps staring longingly at his instrument without touching it. Why he hasn’t just strummed a funny little jingle yet, Zuko doesn’t know. 

Regardless, they dock the Wanyi in an old, abandoned harbour attached to an abandoned Air Acolyte village. They’re in luck that the dock itself is made of stone; Zuko doesn’t even want to think of letting his entire crew march over one hundred-year-old, untreated, water-logged wood. 

“Are you sure we should make the climb up, Sir?” Jiro asks hesitantly. They turned their back on the village a few minutes ago, and all that’s left is the treacherous mountain path up to the Temple’s grounds. “I’m not sure how safe this path is…”

He also spares a glance at Zuko’s ankle, bandaged tightly beneath his boot and shin armour. Zuko doesn’t need to use the crutch anymore, and has been able to do some basic firebending and sword fighting steps without any trouble this past week; he’ll be fine. 

“You’re free to return to the ship, Jiro,” Zuko answers. “All of you who do not want to climb with me can. I’d like it if you did join me, though.” 

If anything, he thinks, a certain guru would find it a blast. 

Some of his crew shrugs and bows, saying they’ll return to the Wanyi to keep the remaining soldiers and the animals company. And Zuko, as he is kind and nice and all of that nonsense, tells them that in that case—they should let the Komodo-Rhinos and Eel-Hounds enjoy a bit of fresh air. Sana, who’d previously stood right behind him, zooms off before he can even finish his sentence. 

“No hard feelings!” he calls after her, through the quiet guffaws of his crew. “But don’t spoil them too much!” 

It is shortly after that that they set off climbing the path, sticking to the rock walls and pacing onward. They’re not with many — there’s Jee and Jiro, Hina and Keiji, Minato and Asami, Kazami and Ohta, and of course there’s Uncle — and half of them stayed behind, but that doesn’t matter. Zuko knows the Temple will be clean, will be inhabited by one person who took his time in putting things away and putting people to rest, and there’s no need for additional manpower. 

Birdsong diminishes the higher they climb. The air thins, and breathing grows more laboured. When they’re halfway, Uncle calls for a moment of rest; and Zuko, whose drive is not the all-encompassing need to go that it used to be, acquiesces. 

“Do you truly think there will be hints of the Avatar there, Your Highness?” Asami asks. She’s glued herself against the rock-face, very bravely avoiding the treacherous, crumbling edge of the path. She’s a tad pale. “Is the climb, erm, worth it?” 

Ohta and Minato hiss in tandem and turn red. 

“Maybe,” Zuko says, smiling, “maybe not. If anything, the view will be worth it.” 

“Wiser words have never been spoken, nephew,” Uncle calls. “The journey is half the beauty of travel, and one’s destination the other!” 

Zuko grins, and Jiro clumsily pats his shoulder. They continue the climb shortly after, shuffling up the ancient path with care. Years of neglect have covered it in bush and vine, sand and mountain rubble leaving the steps precarious and unsteady. Hina slips once, clamping herself to Jee with a low squeal; whatever rock she kicked away from her in her struggle careens over the edge and falls down into the clouded valley below. 

The moment Zuko spots gnarled, low hanging tree branches curling in their way, he knows they’re mere metres away. He hastens his steps, ducks under the branch, and half-crawls up to the base of the complex. 

It’s breathtaking and clean. 

Zuko inhales the thin, chilly air until his lungs ache and lets it go slowly, pushing his aching legs to approach the empty square. The nuns of the Eastern Temple preferred openness, similar to the monks of the South: the flattened mountaintops are scattered with few buildings, all connected with stone bridges to make traversing the Temple easier. 

A crumbling statue of an Air Nomad stands in the centre of the square, hands poised in open prayer. And there, in the shadowed outbuildings at the edge, is a flash of white fur. 

The flash of excitement diminishes quickly, because he knows the lemur hiding here isn’t Momo—Momo came from the Southern Temple. But some of the glee remains, because a flying lemur here means that there are still flying lemurs around, and possibly air bison as well. Perhaps on undiscovered islands to the east. 

“By Agni’s hand—”

Zuko turns to see Uncle and the crew standing at the edge of the square, gaping unashamedly. It’s understandable: the entire Temple is a sprawling, magnificent feat of architecture, pale stone meticulously carved into organic shapes and teeteringly high towers that hold up safely through the mere thickness of rock and the pull of the earth itself. He can’t even think of suppressing the bright smile that pulls at his mouth. 

“The Air Nomads were known for their beautiful architecture,” he says loudly, spreading his arms. “Quite deserved, isn’t it?” 

“Oh,” says Uncle, walking up to Zuko with a spring in his step. “Oh, imagine seeing it in its hey-day! It must’ve been… well…” 

“This would’ve been the entrance for travellers who weren’t Air Nomads, I believe,” Zuko says. “If you look over there and down, I think you can still see the remnants of the Air Bison stables… and over there, their fruit and vegetable gardens. I’m not sure where their bedrooms are… I know the Air Nomads slept communally, but I remember reading that the nuns of the Eastern Temple slept alone; their acolytes didn’t. And—”

“Right, kid,” Jee interrupts. “Not to halt you in your information dump, but I don’t suppose there would be any scrolls in the receiving square, yeah?” 

To his horror, Zuko feels himself flush. “Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. Erm—let’s just go up, I guess.” 

He ignores the sniggering and marches in the direction of one of the bridges. It still looks sturdy, clean; yes, Zuko thinks, Pathik lives here. 

“It’s very tidy,” Asami remarks, when they’ve reached another flattened mountaintop. They’ve gotten a bit closer to the main complex. “No… you know. Overgrowth. Or bodies. But there’s also no signs that a community lives here, like in the Northern Temple.” 

“Not all the Nomads who lived in the Eastern and Northern Temples were airbenders,” Zuko says. He looks up a tree full of ripening moon-peaches, squinting. “There also were Nomads of only the spiritual kind, who came from all over. I believe all of the Temples,” he gestures around him, “were constructed with the help of earthbending Nomads and some Air Nomad avatars.” 

“Sir,” says Hina, “are you saying that some spiritual nomads survived and cleaned up? But the Western Air Temple—”

“—Is secluded and difficult to reach without an Air Bison. The Southern Temple is the same—I expect that that Temple will be in a similar state as the Western one. North and East are far more accessible.” 

“Oh,” Hina says, and there’s a brief pause before she adds, a bit shakily, “I’m glad.” 

They climb on, passing spots that must’ve been used for meditation and lemur-grooming, then what Zuko suspects to have been a kitchen—the massive, copper bowl under a crumbling awning has oxidised and is rotting away, but there is still ash beneath it. 

They’re nearly at the main building. Zuko’s ankle has gone hot and achy. His crew whispers behind him, likely pointing out the entrancing and magnificent sights around them with an appropriate amount of awe. And when they finally, finally reach the largest mountain top, an intimidating feat of human ingenuity, he hops to the middle of the square, stares up at the Temple, and flops on his arse. 

It’s a testament to the altitude and the harshness of the climb that Uncle and the crew follow suit, all collapsing onto the rough stone with relieved sighs. Jee, who’s elected to sit near Zuko, clips his waterskin off his belt and does much gesturing at Zuko to do the same. 

“Worrywart,” Zuko grumbles, already unscrewing his own waterskin. The first mouthful flooding his mouth makes him realise how parched he is; he drinks greedily, wipes his mouth when he’s done, and hands the skin to Uncle. “I have to say, I’m pleasantly surprised.” 

“By our lack of complaints, Sir?” Jiro calls out, sending Hina and Keiji into a round of muffled sniggering. 

“Yes,” he replies, and Uncle grunts out an admonishing, “Prince Zuko…”

“He’s right, though, General Iroh,” Jee says, casually clipping his waterskin back onto his belt. “If anything, I’m almost proud these lazy sons of bitches—”

“Lieutenant Jee!” 

“What?” Jee asks, gesturing at the crewmen. “It’s true! I can barely get ‘em to swipe the deck on a good day, let alone put them through drills without extensive complaining and whining.” 

“Well,” says Uncle slowly, after a moment, “when you put it that way…”

There is complaining and whining about offence. 

“Regardless,” Zuko interrupts, “I’m also surprised about the Temple.” 

“Because of the lack of bodies, Sir?” 

“And the lack of wilderness,” he says. “The low bushes at the edges there—they should’ve spread everywhere already, without people to tend to them for a century. The old stables are still visible too.” 

There is silence, contemplative and tired. The breeze is chilly and the sun is warm. It smells like rock and vegetation here, like nature—the chilly kind, the kind Zuko remembers smelling in the Temples he’s visited that first time ‘round. Back then, it’d been nothing more than a reminder that he wasn’t home, that he was banished and sent on a fool’s errand, hurting and shouting and absolutely terrified. 

“Do you think…” Asami starts, quiet at first but then gathering her nerve, “do you think that someone lives here, Your Highness?” 

Zuko breathes in deep, squinting at a sky that’s waterbender blue. It smells like freedom, now. 

“Only one way to find out.”

Prince Zuko,

Courtesy to your admirable conduct during our Agni Kai on the second day after the sixth waning moon, Year of the Boar-Ox, the 41st Division shall not take part in General Bujin’s plan. Another strategy shall be implemented.

Please be reminded you are welcome to return home at any time, though I do expect you, as my honourable Prince of Fire, to be successful in this task.

May Agni guide you and light your path. 

Regards, 

His Esteemed Majesty Fire Lord Ozai, First of his Name

Agni’s Prime Descendant, Holder of the Dragon Throne

—Your Father

The hawk, somehow, made it up the mountain like it knew where to go. 

It’s a magnificent, intelligent, well-trained creature—and why wouldn’t it be, with that crest burned into its harness? The royal hawkery only has the best of the best’s bests, its birds noble and clever. The hawk landed on Zuko’s shoulder, ensured its claws did not puncture the thick leather of his upper body’s guards, and pecked irritably at his ear when he first just stared at it in surprise. Azula’s hawks like to scratch him, but this one seems to have some begrudging respect.

However, the letter it carried to him is more surprising than the hawk’s apparent kindness. Because the letter — a thick, high-quality paper, glossy wax, and scentless ink — is not what Zuko expected. It’s not what Zuko ever could’ve expected.

Father wrote it himself. 

With his own fingers smoothly guiding the calligraphy brush, his own hand holding down the curling paper. And he once wrote things himself: he wrote missives to Zuko and Azula during their years at respective boarding schools, prior to becoming the Heirs; love letters to mother, long gone performative and unfeeling. He wrote pages upon pages of thoughts in the journals he burnt to ashes every second moon cycle. He wrote orders to the army branches he was in charge of, back when grandfather was still alive and father was no more than a prince. 

But shortly after his ascension to Fire Lord, this practice stopped. It is apparently beneath a war-mongering Fire Lord to write things personally. It is the duty of the second and third sons of average nobility who still need to work to feed themselves, to surround themselves with the opulence they grew up with. 

As his crew putters about the Temple, as Uncle regales the youngest of the sailors with tales of childhood, Zuko experiences something that he hasn’t experienced in a few weeks. A sinking feeling, one that he felt during the War as his direction changed, one that he felt after the War as his ceremonial robes hung heavy from his body, one that he felt when he woke up small and unscarred in his childhood bedroom, all alone.

Writing his correspondence with his own hand — however demeaning, however hateful — makes father decidedly, unsettlingly, undoubtedly human. Human. And Zuko doesn’t—

Well.

He doesn’t know how to feel about it. Doesn’t, initially, want to think of father as human rather than a monster in a human suit. The handwritten missive-letter reminds him of the painting Katara managed to find on Ember Island, in another life—the happy toddler, grinning with two baby teeth peeking out of his gums, a small tuft of black hair on his head and chubby fists digging up sand. 

“Baby Zuko,” she’d said, beaming and red-cheeked and unknowingly wrong. “Isn’t he cute?” 

Zuko realises, with wisdom acquired through being too old for his body in both his lives, that father’s humanity perhaps never left him but his kindness did: squashed before it had the time to take root in his limbs and nerves by a mother who left this plane too early and a father who expressed his grief through fury and cruelty and a brother who mindlessly charged through enemy territory like a machine. Thinks that perhaps it could’ve been different, father could’ve been different, if he’d been properly taken care of like a child should. 

It’s however pointless to mull on what ifs, and father is just a man. A human is a human is a human, good or evil, cruel or kind. Zuko has seen father as a towering, powerful shadow only capable of harming, as a weak man simmering with malice and unable to wield fire, and as a dad who rested his hand on his son’s shoulder and squeezed. 

The moment mother disappeared, and perhaps before, perhaps mother’s disappearance had nothing to do with it—from that point on Zuko hadn’t been treated the way a child should, and neither had Azula. Too old and too young, half a nod for a job well done. Like father had been raised, probably; an adult not yet worthy of being respected like one, fostering festering envy and hunger for unmatched power. 

But Zuko turned out fine, eventually. But Zuko had and has Uncle, had Katara and Aang and Sokka and Toph. 

But father is human. 

Ozai the Usurper, First of his Name. The failing Fire Lord, defeated by the Avatar after six years of rule—defeated by the one he hadn’t believed in, the son he’d marked a failure, the enemies he’d disregarded as weak. Ozai, the Fire Lord, the one frightened of flames near his face, sitting down and personally writing a letter to the son who could have taken his life but didn’t. Personally writing a weak attempt at intimidation to the thirteen-year-old child who cupped his cheek and smiled as he melted it. Personally writing ‘you won, this time’, and ‘don’t think there will be a next’ between the lines of stiff, informative formality, instead of ordering his army of scribes to brush on the ink whilst he dictated. 

Ozai, his father, whose image has just been further solidified as that of a person rather than of a looming, untouchable threat. 

Zuko rolls the scroll back up. Squeezes it. Digs the nail of his thumb into the wax, hisses when he accidentally melts it. He scratches the chittering hawk beneath its chin, lets it preen his hair, and watches Keiji and Ohta emerge from the Temple with excited shouts. Tries, very hard, to twist his mouth into a smile.  

He doesn’t know what he’s smiling for. And his fingers spark multicolour. 

Guru Pathik is a tall, spindly, brown-skinned man with a curly beard and kind eyes, who pops out of  a room with a smile and a wave and scares the living dragon-shit out of Jiro—causing him to nearly get burnt to a crisp by a variety of terrified firebenders.

Zuko hasn’t actually ever met Pathik before. He never visited the Eastern Air Temple in his prior life — Uncle put his foot down and said ‘no’, refusing to budge no matter how much Zuko ranted and whined and was a general brat — so they’d actually avoided him. 

Aang had divulged some information on Pathik when he finally realised he had to work on his Avatar State-problems, about a year after the War and about a week after a somewhat catastrophic, mutual, but altogether friendly breakup with Katara. He’d told Zuko that the Guru was a bit of an odd duck only to people who weren’t Air Nomads, but ultimately just a very good man. Great sense of humour, big fan of onion-banana juice, shocking amount of knowledge on the body and chi-paths and chakras and the like. 

Zuko thinks, as he watches Guru Pathik jovially explain to anyone who is willing to listen that spiritual enlightenment really isn’t all that it’s cracked up to be, that his Aang of the past was right. 

He’s kind, is the thing. There’s no judgement on his face as Jee soundly refuses to get his “fuckin’ arse shark, or whatever the fuck” unblocked; he says that most people cannot manage to live free of guilt, and that it’s perfectly understandable. Very few people managed to unblock all their chakras because a lot of the blocks are mere human nature. A soldier, he says, often carries a burden so large that it would take a lifetime for them to relieve themselves of it. 

Jee tells him it sounds like a whole lot of Sagely rubbish. 

“In your ears,” says Pathik, grinning so wide his eyes are nearly closed. “Let’s put it this way: an Ostrich-Horse does not fly, but it is still a bird, is it not?”

It is to the surprise of exactly no-one that he and Uncle take to one another like fish to water. Uncle takes out his tea set — of course he’s taken that thing with him — and starts to talk to Pathik about tea. Fire Nation tea, and Earth Kingdom tea, and Water Tribe medicinal brews and also about the alleged beauty for the tastebuds that was Air Nomad moon-blossom tea. And Pathik, somehow, as though he has watched it be prepared hundreds of times by a nun’s trained hands, begins to describe the process of cultivation and drying and brewing. 

“How fascinating,” Uncle breathes, wide-eyed and damn near vibrating with excitement. “Have you ever tasted it?”

“Hmm,” Pathik’s eyes flutter closed, mouth puckering. “Yes, I have. Earthy, with a mild sweetness reminiscent of the fruit. It calms the mind, it does. Lightens you.” 

“Oh, Agni knows I need that,” says Uncle, gesturing at his sizable retirement belly, and the two men burst out in laughter. 

“There’s two of them,” Jiro whispers, sidling up to Zuko with an impressive amount of stealth. 

Zuko hums in agreement, mouth pulling into an amused little smile. 

There’s a brief pause before Jiro speaks again. “You reckon the Guru knows how to play a raunchy little tune, Your Highness?” 

Zuko slowly turns to face him. Jiro, in spite of being so tall that Zuko would still easily fit twice in him, shrinks. 

“Just askin’,” he mutters. 

“The Air Nomads liked music,” Zuko says stiffly. He looks around at his crew and tries to spot suspicious shapes in their packs. “I’m sure he’ll be halfway decent at an instrument, Jiro.” 

Jiro’s face lights up with a massive grin, very suddenly, and he claps Zuko on the shoulder. Zuko feels his knees buckle. 

“We’ll have to invite him to music night then,” he says, as if music night is already an established fact and recurring activity. “Not that we took any instruments with us, but you know—we can get them soon, and invite some of our musically inclined to come back up, and we’ll have a fun little party. Blow some life back into this place!” 

It’s not a horrible idea, if Zuko’s being honest. It sounds like something the Air Nomads would’ve enjoyed, depending on how serious the nuns here were. But the Air Nomads were known for their great sense of humour, Uncle said, so perhaps—

“That would be lovely,” Pathik calls out, a ceramic cup of steaming leaf juice cradled carefully in his large, bony hands. “I’m quite good at the veena, actually!” 

Jee perks up from where he’s been glooming and looming in his usual Jee way across the square. 

“String instruments do that to him,” Jiro tells Zuko. “He’s a big fan of strumming.”

“Tsungi horn for me,” Uncle says loudly. “But I’m not half-bad at the pipa either! And neither is our Lieutenant, for that matter.” 

Pathik turns and waves. Jee nods stiffly, shifting in place, and then says loudly: “Taught myself, not great!”

“He’s being too humble,” says Uncle. “There’s talent in that boy. I had teachers, you know. A whole slew of stuffy classically trained ones. Of course, my father fired most of them—” 

“Your Lieutenant had a handful too, I’m sure,” Pathik muses. “One learns by example. Though for him it was probably more watching and listening than genuine guidance.” 

“And hard work,” Uncle says, nodding. “That’s the foundation of a true master.” 

“Know your element,” Pathik says gravely. “And to know, one must first dig deep—lest the shallows dry up, and you are left with none.”

Huh, Zuko thinks, that’s sounds a bit like—

“Say, Pathik,” Uncle muses, nudging his new best friend. “What do you think of Pai Sho?” 

Pathik, without blinking, answers with: “Ah, I favour the old ways.” 

Uncle’s eyes light up like little gems. “It seems we’ve come to an agreement.” 

And—oh. Oh, you can’t be fucking serious—

“You are thirteen, Prince,” Pathik murmurs, before they settle down for the night. They will go down in the morning. “Thirteen, but you are not.”

It jolts, the statement—almost hurts. Zuko takes hold of his heart and stomach and forces them into submission, shoves the anxiety and shock deep down, then just looks at the Guru. 

“There is wisdom in you that suggests a life twice lived,” Pathik tells him. He reaches out, presses the tips of his fingers against Zuko’s chest, then Adam’s apple, then forehead. “Grief, lies, illusion. Open, but muddled. They’ve been closed before. You could have opened them on your own, but you are too young and from a Nation that no longer practises this philosophy.”

“I had help,” Zuko croaks eventually.

“Oh, I don’t doubt it.” Guru Pathik nods, then splays his fingers. “We all need help. We all need guidance. Usually, it comes in the form of flesh and blood. But sometimes, the wind gives us a push in the right direction—or the sun, or tides, or the dust that you kick up with your feet.”

Zuko’s mouth is dry. He can’t stop staring, and his hands shake, and when Pathik spots it his face visibly softens.

“Suspicions are all I have, young Prince. But I do know: see it as a gift, not as a courtesy.” He smiles again, winks, and taps his temple. “I will be waiting; I’m quite good at that, you know.”

Chapter Text

The fire flickers in time with their breaths, and Jee’s fingertips skate over strings that cut right through skin with his paused experience, without the callouses he’d built up over the years. 

The company has grown during the day. Their Prince’s acquiescence to a music night urged some to travel back down the mountain and fetch several other crew members; all who wished to join an evening of illegal song and dance, all who wished to lug instruments thousands of metres up into the sky. They lit a fire as dusk fell, ate a vegetarian curry with fluffy rice, and took out the instruments the moment the dishes had been washed. 

“You lead first,” Pathik said earlier, resting his veena on his lap. “Then I will.” 

Fire Nation music is, per tradition, rhythmic and steady, filled with dissonant tones that are – if Jee recalls correctly – meant to ‘strike fear into the hearts of enemies’, but then Akito starts up a quick, rolling beat, and Jee joins in, and so do the Guru and the General. Keiji blows air into his flute and Asami begins to sing, gentle and lilting. 

And it doesn’t sound dangerous. It sounds fun. 

Jiro and Ichiro perform a quickstep, their height difference comical with Ichiro in the lead; Sana, who made the decision to come up the mountain, pulls the giggling Prince into a senseless dance of twirls and dips and jumps. The Prince’s cheeks are red with exertion and laughter and when Sana twirls him so hard his feet lift from the ground, he expels an exuberant whoop that belies his age. 

Jee thought yesterday, when the air was thin and the path steep, that he’d never climb up a mountain again in his life—orders be damned. But he can’t do that, he thinks. Not when Prince Zuko has proven himself to be a reasonable leader. Not when he appears to care so much for them, for the people around him, polite and kind and firm in equal measures. 

It is to the complete and utter horror of his past self that Jee has realised he actually rather likes and respects his royal brat. And he thinks, quite fondly, that he’d probably swim through the arctic if the Prince needed him to. 

Judging by the gleaming faces around him, he is not alone in that sentiment. 

Jee rouses before the sun has risen over the mountain range, before Taka has even climbed out of his bedroll to start breakfast, when the morning is still dark blue and painfully chilly and uncomfortably damp. 

The majority of the crew is still sleeping, faces slack and most buried up to their necks in blankets. Jee blinks through the heaviness of his eyelids, reaches up to rub crusts away, and turns. 

The bedrolls of the royals are empty. 

Meditation, likely. Jee yawns and sits up, crawling out of his bedroll before stretching. He inhales and exhales harshly, spits out sparks, and waits for that inner flame to warm his extremities. Then he walks off to find a place to sit and meditate. 

He finds a good spot in a courtyard surrounded by crumbling statues and teetering trees thinned through elevation. The Prince and the General are already there, as is the Guru. They’re not meditating, not exactly—Prince Zuko is talking, leaning in as he gestures with one hand, whilst the Guru and the General listen with grave faces. Expressions that would be inappropriate when discussing a dream; Jee suspects the Prince may be seeking advice of sorts.

“—I’m unsure what to do,” Prince Zuko says. “I could—well, perhaps it is time, but it may not be time yet. Is the trust sufficient, or not? And how—how did he know? Who has contacted him, or servants? Can I trust everybody to remain… so I’ll still be able to see…”

He cuts himself off, obviously frustrated. Suddenly aware that he’s eavesdropping, Jee quiets his breathing and shifts, as lightly and silently as possible, behind a statue of an avatar. He’s not sure why he remains. 

“Loyalty is odd,” Pathik murmurs. “It is first and foremost to oneself, then who one considers family. But since the disaster… it’s been so long…” 

“My experience with the people is limited to the palace as much as yours is, nephew,” General Iroh says, “even in—well, I was commonly separated from the masses throughout my life.” 

“I know.” Prince Zuko sighs sharply, and a quick peek tells Jee that he’s buried his head in his hands. “It’s… do I tell all? Do I withhold some information for the time being?” 

“The mightiest tree grows, too, from seed,” says Pathik. 

“One leaf makes barely one swallow of tea, but none make nothing but hot water,” says the General. 

A pause. Then:

“You made that one up on the fly,” Prince Zuko grumbles accusingly. 

“Well, yes,” General Iroh says, likely waving it away all loftily, “but it gets the point across.” 

“It was really weak, Uncle.” Some silence, then a groan. “Yes, just like a cup of tea made from one leaf—”

“You should polish it up a bit,” says Pathik, audibly amused. “It’ll be a hit with the club.” 

“I have no clue which club you are talking about, old fellow,” the General proclaims, “but I somehow do feel inclined to agree!” 

“This is horrible,” says the Prince. “You both are horrible. I’m going to go stretch.” 

“Ah, yes, do!” Pathik calls out through the General’s guffaws. “Those most flexible are the hardiest! Stiffness leads to shattering! Rot forms in that what is left alone!” 

The Prince’s footsteps are light but quick, and Jee scrambles to look like he stumbled upon the trio only just now and by pure chance. When he ultimately steps into the Prince’s line of sight the arched brows are more than enough for Jee to deflate. 

Thankfully, the Prince doesn’t mention a thing: he simply nods in greeting as Jee sinks into a stiff bow, then clasps his hands behind his back. 

“Good morning,” he says. 

“Good morning, Your Highness,” Jee replies, very casual and not at all like he’s been caught eavesdropping. “Finished meditating already?” 

“Yes,” the Prince says. “I’ll be practising some katas soon.” He pauses, mouth pursing. “Perhaps you could help me?” 

“Help you?” Jee inquires. 

“Help me, yes. Katas are often better when done together.” 

Jee blinks. Clears his throat, straightens. “I—yes, of course. I may be a touch out of practice, but—”

“Good,” says Prince Zuko. “And don’t worry, I’m only thirteen. I’m sure you can keep up.” 

“Thirteen already, my Prince,” Jee replies, bowing once more. 

The Prince’s nose is wrinkled in amusement when he straightens back up, mouth twisted into a funny little smile. Like he knows something Jee doesn’t. 

“I haven’t even had my growth spurt yet,” he says. 

“Only a matter of time,” says Jee courteously, because Prince Zuko’s sleeves are already looking a touch short. “Now come on, we ought to seek a good spot—unless you already have one in mind, of course.”

“I do,” the Prince replies, and he sets off. There’s a bit of a skip to his step, youthful and very un-Princely. “It’s just over there…”

Jee follows, feeling oddly light and hiding a smile in the stiff, upturned collar of his chest guard.

Cast-off emerges in the afternoon, when they’ve all awoken and eaten and ventured down to the dock, where the komodo-rhinos are being led back onto the ship and the eel-hounds are being coaxed out of the water. The sky is bright and Water Tribe-blue; the breeze is the kind of chilly that makes Jee’s lungs tingle. 

Pathik, who was invited to join them on the grounds of his music skills but refused to on the grounds of being vehemently against the current dealings of the Fire Nation Empire, waves them off with a grin and an insistence to come visit again.

“In a few years,” he adds, as he piles copies of ancient scrolls in the Prince’s arms, “and in larger company, child—or different.” 

“Child,” the Prince echoes, perfect little nose wrinkling. But then he smiles. “Of course.” 

Pathik nods, and the tips of his fingers tap the Prince’s chest, throat, and forehead in that order. “An easy promise, if you know.” 

Jee doesn’t know what his Prince is supposed to know, but the kid’s face goes briefly grave and uncomfortably adult with eyes befitting a retired soldier. He, too, nods, and then swiftly skedaddles up the gangplank to deposit the scrolls in what Jee assumes to be his quarters. 

“Shame he won’t come with,” Jiro bemoans from Jee’s left, and it doesn’t sound like he really means it. Only a little bit. “He’s a fantastic musician.” 

“Better than you,” Jee snips, smirking when Jiro pounds his shoulder. “I’m sure we’ll find others, Jiro. Besides, you heard the Prince; we’ll return someday.” 

“With less climbing, I hope,” Ichiro grumbles. “Why are the dragons extinct again? Prince Zuko should have one, and perhaps fly us next time…” 

“Fire Lord Azulon,” says Jee, and not a word more. The history of dragon hunting gets taught in increasing detail every single school year. Fifteen out of the fifty questions of Jee’s final exams several decades ago were about dragon hunting, and the dragons weren’t even extinct yet. 

“A dragon’s purpose should not be ferrying lazy crewmen to and fro!” Sana’s voice rings out from somewhere on the deck. 

“I’m not lazy!” Ichiro shrieks back, flailing. “I simply spend many hours standing or sitting, as is in my job description, and I also climb enough ladders daily to last me a lifetime!” and as Jiro starts snickering, he adds, “shut it!” 

Jee shakes his head and looks over the crowd of crewmen, gathering everything they’d scattered about the shore during their day off. Further along, nearest to the edge of the crumbling dock, the Guru is handing the General a knapsack undoubtedly filled with tea leaves and blossoms; their cook, Take, is clutching scrolls of recipes and sacks of Air Island-only ingredients close to his chest, grinning maniacally. 

It’s been a good visit. A necessary one. The crew is tired from the climb and descent, but well-rested and pleased by music night, by the food, by the joy of the animals. Yet again has a visit to an abandoned temple fostered a kind of contemplation that encourages nuance. States the reality of war as plainly as it can. A tomb, a remembrance. 

They were born and bred for war. All of them. None know a time of peace. The temple proves that it had been, once; proves that it no longer is. Scrolls upon scrolls of different philosophies than the one’s they’ve been raised with have been gifted and will be read through. Music and dance brought cultures together. 

Before he descends into unproductive thoughtfulness and unbecomingly emotional philosophising, Jee hurries onto the gangplank and into the darkness, checks the pens and their cargo, then pops by the engine room and tells Akito they’ll be ready to set out soon. Proceeds to climb up until he’s reached the deck; breathes in, gnaws on his lip, exhales some sparks. 

The sea is calm as far as the eye reaches. And Jee allows himself to wonder where they’ll go next. 

If the rest of the crew is to be believed, nothing in the atmosphere has changed—except that, perhaps, it is lighter, easier to breathe through. None cut corners, but none are scared to cut corners either. The sheer empathy the Prince is capable of fosters a comfort that Jee has never once experienced on a warship.

But then, this isn’t a warship, is it? The Wanyi is a floating bucket of rust sailing with the sole purpose of finding the Avatar, of teaching their Crown Prince worldly things. There is no true pressure. Prince Zuko will not find the Avatar, and everybody knows it, and nobody cares about it either. 

Jee knows, however, and can read that there is a line of tension strung in the air. Where the others are ignorant of it, Jee’s job is positioned too close to the royals for him not to notice the glances, the nods, the looks between the Prince and his uncle. 

“Would you say all crewmembers are trustworthy, Lieutenant?” 

Jee pauses in his stretch. Prince Zuko, who had been mirroring him, does not; goes further until his upper thigh is mere inches from the deck. 

“In what way, my Prince?” he asks. 

“That they are under my command only,” the Prince clarifies. “Not also my father’s.” 

Jee does not speak immediately, does not say ‘yes, of course’ as is his knee-jerk response. Because, are they? They likely are, but Ensign Asami’s mother works in the palace; but Seaman Keiji’s little brother is part of the royal guard; but Recruits Kazumi and Ohta are still, as of now, entranced by Fire Nation imperialism rather than disillusioned with all the death and rot. 

“I’d say yes,” he says slowly, thoughtfully, “but I cannot be sure they won’t… talk, Your Highness. Things that can filter down—or up, if you will.”

Prince Zuko’s little face furrows in thought and consideration. He nods. 

“Thank you for your honesty, Lieutenant,” he says, and then he adds, “it’s always been my favourite thing about you.” 

That says so much and so little. Jee is nevertheless flattered, and bows. 

“Onto the katas then?” 

“Yes.” The Prince smiles at him, cheeks squishing into mochi. Jee kind of wants to ruffle the kid’s neat hair and then kind of wants to slap himself for being so sappy. “Let’s do it.”

A perk of being the highest-ranking marine on the ship, disregarding present royalty, is that Jee does not have to muck out the stables. 

He does do it though. Prince Zuko dragged him along, down into the hull, claiming that it was good for morale or some dragon-shit like that. That it would help if the higher-ups proved they weren’t too good for doing all the dirty work. 

Fuck if it is. It’s disgusting, first of all, and that’s the only thing anyone needs to know. 

The General is seated a little way off to the side, reading a letter by gaslight and taking sips of tea. He’ll call out encouragement sometimes, which makes the Prince laugh and Jee scowl, but he stays out of the way like he’s incapable of shovelling shit away. Ridiculous. Jee’s seen the General bend; the guy’s strong enough to wrestle one of the animals. 

“Could we use it for fuel?”

Jee glances over to where the Prince is standing. He’s emptying a wheelbarrow full of manure onto the large pile next to the leftmost stable, which naval vessels usually throw into the ocean or sell to farmers for reasonable prices. The expression on his face presents itself in a slight frown, a pursed mouth; thoughtful. 

Then Jee’s brain registers what Prince Zuko just said, and Jee spits, through the cloth around his mouth and nose to stave off the stench: 

“Why the fuck—”

“It can be a good source of energy if we need to spare our coal supply,” the Prince says, like he hasn’t got the funds to stock up on coal wherever he goes. “For the off-chance that we can’t purchase any, I mean.” 

The General makes a funny noise that’s between a thoughtful hum and a derisive scoff. “Why do you think we’d ever be unable to purchase coal, nephew?” 

“Well,” says Prince Zuko, “you know,” and he trails off, wiping his forehead with his sleeve. His cheeks flushed with exertion; he abandoned his armour half of a candle ago, claiming it’s too stuffy in the hull. 

He’s not wrong. Jee shucked his own armour too, down to the regular cloth and wrappings he wears underneath the leather and metal. It’s gone uncomfortably damp with sweat. 

“I don’t trust my father, is all,” the Prince continues. “If he could diminish my coffers to slight me, he would. He only needs the smallest reason.”

If Jee wasn’t loyal to Prince Zuko and General Iroh, that sentence alone would be a reason. But he is loyal, so he locks it away to never emerge. 

“My brother is unable to touch mine, Prince Zuko,” the General informs him in a soothing rumble. He folds the letter back up and arches his bushy brows. “There’d be outrage if he did and I shared the news.” 

“You’d get killed, Uncle,” says the Prince. He walks back to the unfinished stables and sets the wheelbarrow down. “He’d pay someone to poison your teacakes.”

“Ah, well.” The General takes a sip of tea, all casual, like a potential assassination is normal subject matter for him. “Even the highest tree can be felled by the axe. It would take only one skilled assassin for him to die as well—or one teenage boy, of course.”

He glances at his nephew. Just glances. Jee watches, face kept as impassive and uninterested as possible, as the Prince flushes further.

“What I mean is that he could take away everything,” is the snippy answer. The Prince shoulders into the stable, muck fork in hand, and scratches one of the komodo-rhinos behind the ears. “He’d probably let Captain Zhao take command of the Wanyi and leave us stranded in the Earth Kingdom.” 

Oh. Oh, Spirits.

“I’d rather die than serve under Zhao,” Jee blurts, as honest as fire burns. A few months ago, he’d have chosen Zhao over Prince Zuko; today, the mere thought of answering to that guy may give him hives. “Perhaps jump into the sea before he can throw me overboard for perceived slights and assumed insubordination.” 

The General snorts. “Who wouldn’t?” 

“I’ve heard he doesn’t even give credit to his crew for victories,” Jee says. “He climbs up the ranks, but the ones serving under him don’t.” 

“Father likes him,” Prince Zuko remarks, patting the beast on her neck. “But I suppose that’s not a compliment to his personality, if we’re being frank.” 

The General snickers into his tea and Jee feels himself grin, upturning a forkful of manure in his own wheelbarrow. Yes, that’s true. 

“Regardless,” the Prince continues, “father would give Zhao command of this ship if I do anything to displease him.” He purses his mouth, head tilting. “And if he can catch me.” 

“You speak as though you will do something to displease him,” says General Iroh, audibly amused. “Will you?” 

“My mere existence displeases him, Uncle,” the Prince says. “And he does love to be proven right.” 

And then he smiles, sharp white teeth in a face shiny with sweat and dirty with dust, like it’s funny. Like it’s amusing to him that his father will always be disappointed in him—wishes to ban him from comfort and happiness, searches feverishly for any excuse to do so. 

The handle of the muck fork feels hot under Jee’s palms and he breathes in, out, forces his inner flame to simmer down. He’s not angry. He’s a little bit furious. 

Jee’s father still loved him unconditionally when Jee would inevitably disappoint him. Why can’t a royal do the same?

“So he does,” the General acquiesces, calm as ever. Jee can’t tell if it’s for his nephew’s benefit or his own. “So he does.” 

Prince Zuko turns back to his self-appointed task of shovelling shit, carefully shouldering the komodo-rhino out of the way when he needs her to move. He doesn’t look unhappy, or uncomfortable; he’s surprisingly loose-limbed, disregarding the exertion of work. Even his brow is relaxed. 

“For what it’s worth,” Jee hears himself say, “if this ship ever falls under the command of Captain Zhao, we’d commit mutiny, throw him into the ocean, and drag the two of you back on board, Your Highnesses.” 

Not a word of it is a lie. He doesn’t think it’d take any convincing for the rest of the crew to join him either.

The General beams. “Thank you, Lieutenant Jee.” 

“It’s true,” he says earnestly. “We’d much rather—that is to say, I am glad I joined you on this journey.” 

“Even when I inevitably twist my ankle?” the Prince asks lightly. 

“Even then,” says Jee. “Especially then.” 

When the Prince smiles again, shy and pleased, the warmth in Jee’s chest does not come from his own fire at all.

The knowledge that the Fire Lord is a piece-of-shit father isn’t necessarily surprising – the Agni Kai rather confirmed that for him already – but the feeling of responsibility Jee has around the Prince remains as such.

It’s ridiculous—the Prince has General Iroh, it seems. He does not need other people worrying about him. But Jee does, indeed, worry about him, does occupy himself with the Prince’s well-being and happiness, and does suffer through millions of little heart attacks when the Prince, now that his ankle has fully healed, begins to do his death-defying stunts again.

In the weeks leading up to their arrival at the Southern Air Territories, the relatively innocent, if advanced, katas Prince Zuko practises together with Jee slowly morph into full-blown battles of stealth. He’ll run up walls and send a kick of fire at the victim of the day, twisting in the air like a puma-cat and landing on his toes as he smoothly shifts into the next attack form. He’ll drop out of the air like a spider-koala in front of any person appearing not to be too busy with tasks, yelling something about sparring, and somehow always succeeds in convincing his target to participate in a small practice match.

It’s not until Ensign Minato accidentally burns off his own (admittedly wispy and unimpressive) moustache that Jee puts his foot down. Prince Zuko seems more amused than chastised by his scolding – “Surprise matches are not the way any respectable firebender trains, Your Highness, we’re not bloody Zhao and his miserable underlings!” – but seems to acquiesce to Jee’s demands, especially when General Iroh ends up agreeing.

This does not signal the end of the mischief, of course. Prince Zuko is still a thirteen-year-old boy, and thirteen-year-old boys attract mischief and shenanigans like honey attracts scorpion-bees—and if they do not attract it, they create it, much like the scorpion-bees again.

It starts with the pranks of stealth, similar to his game a few months back: he steals pastries and makes people startle, though this time he demands others join in on the fun. They do, and Jee now finds his tea made with salt water more often than not. 

Then it’s the other things, like the knife-juggling competitions during dinner (Jiro ended up cutting himself) and the balancing acts (Recruit Ohta fell in the ocean and had to be fished out). Or even worse: the heat-resistance challenges that Akito indulges Prince Zuko in, because those can only be held in the engine room. Healer Lee grumbles extensively about emptying out his burn cream supply. 

It’s stressful to keep his stress low, at this point. Jee allows the rabble only because it makes the crew and Prince Zuko laugh, and they don’t laugh enough; it’s all innocent enjoyment, good for fostering camaraderie. What’s the worst that could happen?

Then he walks into the mess one evening, long after Prince Zuko’s usual bedtime, and he thinks—that’s it. That’s the worst that can happen. 

Because there is alcohol. On the table. Between Seaman Hina and Helmsman Ichiro and Prince Zuko. A bottle of sake. 

Sake.

Prince Zuko is bringing a choko to his mouth, grinning at some undoubtedly horrible and childish joke Hina is telling him. His pale, royal, teenage cheeks are slightly flushed.

Prince Zuko. Is taking a sip from a choko. Filled with sake. 

Prince Zuko is a boy. 

Jee waltzes over in an instant. If the General doesn’t kill him for letting Prince Zuko drink alcohol at the age of thirteen, then Jee will likely jump overboard himself. His blood-pressure has skyrocketed to tremendous heights, worse than the time the Prince put a scorpion-spider on Jee’s pillow. 

“Prince Zuko!” 

The Prince blinks at him innocently, the cursed sake-filled cup still cradled in his hand. “Yes, Lieutenant?” 

Jee inhales deeply. “No,” he says. 

“No, what, Lieutenant?” Prince Zuko tilts back his head and shoots the sake unflinchingly. “Please clarify.”

“You—” Jee starts, spluttering, and he snatches the bottle of sake off the table. “Alcohol… you…? Thirteen…!” 

“Almost fourteen, actually,” Prince Zuko points out.

“Almost fourteen…!” Jee will have heart attacks. Many heart attacks. He will crumple into a useless husk of a man with high blood-pressure and a thousand heart attacks. Thirteen-year-old boys should not drink alcohol. They should not act coy about being caught drinking alcohol. Because they should not be drinking alcohol. And the Prince does not turn fourteen for a few months yet. “Your Highness—”

“Do you not want me to have any sake, Lieutenant?” 

“Thirteen!” Jee repeats, sparks flying from his mouth like spittle. “Thirteen!” 

The brat is smiling at him. Seaman Hina is resting her head on the table, shoulders shaking, and Helmsman Ichiro is red with silent laughter. 

“Lieutenant?” 

Jee gets himself together, clutches the bottle close to his chest, points. “No.” 

“No?” asks the Prince. 

“No,” Jee confirms. “Absolutely not.” He swivels around and marches off, ignoring the peals of laughter behind him. “Almost fourteen my fucking arse…”

General Iroh is in Jee’s quarters. In the doorway. His hands are hidden by his sleeves; he’s smiling, chin tilted ever-so-slightly down.

“I wish to thank you,” he says.

“For what?” Jee asks.

“My nephew… is difficult to corral,” the General muses. His head tilts. “But you do so anyway. And you manage.”

Jee stares at his superior and thinks that he wants to say that it’s fine. That it’s his job. That it’s what he signed up for, what he gets paid for. The Prince is a boy with a father who hates him and he’s happy now, and sometimes he’s too exuberant and sometimes he doesn’t think things through, and Jee is an old soldier tasked with keeping the kid safe.

But he doesn’t say that. He just says, “I do it gladly,” and he means it too. Then he remembers himself and fashions his hands into the flame of respect, bowing.

The General  waves his hand through the air, rather limply. Sighs through a tight smile, brows drawn together, and takes a step closer.

“A child will seek warmth by setting himself on fire,” he says. “An adult… will burn it down. I myself have always been to absent; my father, too unreachable. And my brother keeps the flame away from his children just to spite them for existing. And my nephew—he’ll be fine despite it. I know he will be. Because of you. What you let him do and what you prevent him from doing. So I’ll say this again: thank you, Lieutenant.”

He leaves with another nod, whistling as he walks down the hall. And Jee is left sitting on his cot and feeling like the breath just got punched out of him. 

Jee has known for a while he’d do anything for the Prince.

He’d jump in lava for the kid. Swim through the polar seas. He genuinely would. As long as the command makes sense, or if it protects the boy, Jee will do anything the Prince asks of him. 

But—

“If we climb a mountain,” Jee wheezes, flat on his back, “one more time—”

His feet ache. His calves ache. His thighs ache and his back aches and his lungs hurt, they really do, and his shoulders are still stinging from the weight of the pack and his waist feels rubbed raw from the rope around it, and everything just aches and hurts and is generally awful. 

“It was not that bad,” says the Prince, audibly amused and only a little bit winded. “Just a light workout.” 

“A light—”

When Prince Zuko announced yesterday that they’d be visiting the Southern Air Temple, Jee had high hopes for a comfortable hike up. Without too much luggage, much like last time. A precarious and terrifying path, yes, but all together a good hike; nothing bad, nothing extreme. 

“I’ve heard it’s quite the climb,” the Prince said. “But I do really wish to visit it.” 

‘Quite the climb’ is, well, quite an understatement. The crew fastened themselves to one another with ropes so none would plummet to their deaths if the rock below their feet crumbled, and they had to pause frequently to catch their breaths in the thin air. At the end of the summer the place is as dry as a bone, even this far south; the water they’d taken with was nearly gone when they still had a couple hundred metres to go. 

The temple is beautiful of course, all towering towers and domed roofs, sprawling nature and endless, breathtaking sights. The tree branches are heavy with thick, juicy peaches and the paving is, if neglected, still traversable. 

But it’s so high up. 

This time, the Prince had made the decision that the vast majority of the crew would come with. If the temple was cleaned up like the Northern and Western have been, then that’s just as well; “But,” he said, “I read that the climb is too difficult to do more than twice in one day, and possibly even more than once. If we need to stay longer, I’d rather we just take supplies.”

So up they went, packed and ready, hauling pounds upon pounds of supplies up with them. Jee doesn’t yet know if the struggle was worth it. He’s still recovering. 

Of course, he’d be stupid to think that the sole purpose of this visit is to find clues to the Avatar’s whereabouts. The other temples — save for maybe the Western one, but even that is now doubtful — they’d visited to give corpses a proper burial and protect artefacts left to the mercy of the elements, even if it was a moot point for the Northern and Eastern one. 

Prince Zuko does not care about finding the Avatar. He cares about preserving memory and giving respect. 

“Let’s search the temple and reconvene when you’ve found something,” the Prince announces, and he does need to clarify what that ‘something’ is, for they all know. “As soon as you can stand without keeling over, of course.” 

Jee produces an agreeable groan and sits up, muscles shaking in exhaustion. Some of the younger crewmembers are already stumbling off, stretching and rolling their shoulders; they’ve left their own packs in a pile. 

“Am I on library duty again?” he asks. 

The infernal brat gives him a funny smile. “If you want to be, Lieutenant.” 

He does, provided it does not include too much climbing. He does climb to his feet though, gritting his teeth, and walks forward. Kicks Jiro in the arm and says, “Go find us a place to sleep and cook.” 

Jiro just groans pathetically, like the slacker he is. Jee snorts and staggers off, walking swiftly to keep his balance. 

The Southern Air Temple is a sprawling structure of inter-connected buildings, with pathways that seem to have been built with non-airbenders in mind. It’s nice, inasmuch as his tired muscles appreciate it, and it actually only takes a few sets of stairs for him to find the library: in the main building, hidden behind crumbling wood structures that must’ve been closets once upon a time, shoved haphazardly but neatly in rows to never be found. 

Jee’s heart stutters. 

The wood crumbles into rotten, devoured dust the moment he begins to shove it out the way. He flinches at the onslaught, blames the sudden burn in his eyes on the cloud. Beats at the short wooden door until the lock splinters and it opens with an unnerving creak. 

It’s whole, still; unburnt, bathed in stripes of yellow sunlight spilling through slatted, stone windows. There are scrolls upon scrolls neatly stacked in bookcases reaching easily for the sweeping start of the impossibly high, vaulted ceiling. There are dark wooden desks and stone brushes with what he assumes to be bison hair, rolls of paper and inkpads open and still closed. 

And there are bodies. 

Because as Jee gazes upon the centre of the room, a child’s skull stares back at him. 

Multiple. Nine in total, when he counts: nine bodies, huddled together in foetal positions. Their robes are tattered but still orange and yellow and brown. Upon closer, horrifying inspection, he spots that at least seven of the skulls still have their baby teeth embedded firmly above and below their adult teeth. For two of the bodies, their entire set is made up out of milk teeth. 

There’s no sign of fire. No remnants of century-old congealed blood, dark stains soaked into sandstone. Just nine children’s corpses, hidden away. To stay safe. And if it would never be safe, to die. 

Which they did. 

Died terrified, he thinks, vaguely registering he’s begun to tremble. These children died terrified and alone and little, so little, so small. And they did not burn to death. They did not bleed out. 

I am so sorry, said the characters on the back of a scroll in the Western Air Temple, written in blood, hidden in a closed-off room with only bones for company. One adult; several children. The Fire Nation army keeps waiting for us to emerge. 

I do not want them to be burnt alive. 

They suffocated. 

They are children.

The oldest skull can’t be older than thirteen. Not at that size. He can see… imagine, if that little boy was laid out flat, he would not be much bigger than Prince Zuko. 

Children .

They suffocated. Jee realises, jaw tensing, that the oldest must have had to—had to pull the air—just to not be—

Jee closes his blurring eyes. Squats down. Presses his palms into his sockets until it aches.

Gags upon the horror he expected to encounter. 

It’s just as horrific as the Western Air Temple. 

They build pyres. Gather the bodies. Solemn, silent, agonising work—even more so after the tidiness of the other two temples, where these victims had been put to rest. But here, they lie in clusters or alone, so alone, sprawled over steps and steps of distance, torn apart by time and wind and scavengers, and perhaps by soldiers. 

Jee has never felt more disillusioned with his own country. 

There’re the toys again, and pieces of art, and scrolls of lost knowledge. They save all of it, put it in chests and boxes to lock behind doors that cannot be opened by anyone but an airbender. And the corpses…

Endless. They’re endless. The General chokes when he sees the contents of the library and has to take quite a few breaths to collect himself before he can even attempt to help Jee carry the children to their final resting place. Jiro snotters over scorched robes and blackened bones before he manages to gather them with his clumsy, too-big hands, whispering apologies and prayers. Sana and Hina are stone-faced when they return with several victims cradled in the sheet between them, but Hina’s lips are bitten bloody and Sana’s eyes are distant and her movements automatic. 

Asami and Minato, Kazami and Ohta—they’re so young still, but they do not throw up again. They work quietly and respectfully and if one of them needs to take a moment, nobody blames it on their youth, because nobody doesn’t take moments. 

Stomaching dinner is an impossible task, but they all choke it down anyway. Sleeping seems out of the question, but they crawl into their bedrolls anyway. And Jee lies awake until deep in the night, incapable of resting, eyes closed but ears alert. 

The rustle of blankets and silent footsteps is what makes him decide he’s done trying. 

He finds the Prince in a small, half-collapsed outbuilding overtaken by vines, a little way north. Here there are Fire Nation bodies: imperial firebenders, judging by the ragged armour and half-rotten leather, the shape and size of the helmets. They lie in a half-circle, piled atop one another. At least a dozen died a murderer’s death here, and it takes everything in Jee not to spit on the skeletal remains for their betrayal to the balance of the world. For their active participation in something so horrific, so atrocious, unspeakably monstrous it cannot be anything but human inhumanity. 

Prince Zuko is kneeling in front of one airbender skeleton, on a section of stone flooring free of debris. The corpse is wearing a yellow robe and wooden, beaded necklace with a pendant bearing the insignia of Air. Its grimace would have looked tired and resigned had skulls been capable of emotion. 

“The Air Nomads were pacifists,” Prince Zuko murmurs, without even looking Jee’s way. “But they were protectors as well.” 

A protector indeed. A last stand, it looks like. Jee presses his mouth together and curls his hands into fists, stomach contracting into a nauseating tightness. 

“At least he took out a bunch of those bastards with him,” he manages. He does not think of how he might’ve been one of those bastards, had he been born at that time. Thinks he would’ve rather drowned himself instead. “Must have been some bender.” 

“A master of the highest calibre,” the Prince says, “and an Elder of this temple. He’s wearing a threngwa, see?” 

Ah. “The necklace.”

“Yes. They are—were worn by the Elders of the monasteries and nunneries. Prayer beads, for mantras.” A pause. “Gifted upon reaching Elder status.”

A flood of information, brought solemnly rather than gushingly like it’d been brought in the Eastern temple. It cannot be brought differently with what’s in front of them, gazing at them accusingly with empty eye sockets. 

“Let me guess,” Jee says, “you read about it.” 

The Prince’s head dips. “You could say that.” 

They fall silent. The wind whistles through the gaps in the ceiling. Jee walks forward and sinks to his knees, bows his head, grimaces at the cold seeping through his knee-guards and into his bones.

Then Prince Zuko starts to whisper. Prayers—of respect, of guidance, of grief. It’s lilting yet staggers haltingly across the Prince’s tongue, a dialect long forgotten, spoken fluently only by those who are now nothing but dust and calcium. 

For a moment, Jee wonders, why now? Why not later, when the pyres have been built and this corpse, too, has been put to rest? But then he remembers—the details hidden within the funeral scrolls have faded in the months since he’d read them, but they’re clear enough. 

This monk killed more than in mere self-defence. This man, this master, he died a warrior’s death; sits vigil, forever on guard long after his last breath has been expelled. And he cannot be moved from his spot by someone who isn’t an Air Nomad. Cannot be cremated by those who do not belong. 

A grave of a fighter, surrounded by his victims—the very aggressors who pushed this man to desperation and fury. 

So, Jee joins in. 

He cannot properly pronounce the words, familiar yet foreign as they are. He trips over the syllables again. But the prayers are repetitive: loop back to the start, reiterate certain lines, spoken in a cadence not unlike a song. It’s beautiful in its bitterness. It lasts for hours upon hours. 

Jee remains seated, though his body hurts. He stays seated until the prayers are finished. Until dawn has broken, and then after. Eventually, the Prince bows down until his forehead touches the stone and Jee follows suit. 

I am sorry, he thinks. I am sorry. I am so sorry.

When they stand, Prince Zuko is swaying on his feet. Teetering, exhausted, red-eyed. He looks every bit his age. 

Jee’s arm moves before he can think better of it, but when he thinks better of it he thinks this is not something he should refrain from doing. So his hand lands on Prince Zuko’s shoulder, squeezes; then tugs, gently, until the boy goes willingly. Until he sags against him like a doll with its strings cut.

He is a child too. And Jee’s—so damn proud, he realises through gritted teeth. Agni strike him if he lies, he’s so proud. 

“You’re a good kid,” Jee whispers gruffly, thinking of how he would not have been capable of this at thirteen. “You really are. You’re doing well.” 

Prince Zuko nods into Jee’s shoulder, and lets himself be led back and away. 

It takes three days to gather bones, copy scrolls, and find artefacts and icons and more fucking toys, abandoned and scorched. Each hour it gets harder not to cry—because none of them get to cry. Not here. 

The pyres burn easily. The prayer and vigil are exhausting and painful and every single member of the crew grits their teeth against their tiredness and aching bodies—because they don’t get to complain in a place where their ancestors and countrymen had massacred so many innocents, pursued them until they’d become like cattle driven to jump off cliffs. And when it is finished, when the ashes scatter through gusts of sudden wind and not a scorch mark remains, they stay for one more day to punt Fire Nation helmets down into the valley below. Ichiro caves to his urges and spits on a firebender’s Agni-bleached skull. 

“Wish it was Sozin,” he mutters, scowling. “Is that treasonous to say?” 

Is it? Is it treasonous? Is it truly treasonous if they all remain quiet, put it behind lock and key, and silently agree?

The General clasps Ichiro’s shoulder. And he does not say a thing. 

The sole bright spot is that the Prince, who’d been so silent the entire time, so grave and pale and quiet, wakes the half-slumbering with a delighted giggle on their last morning in the temple. 

Jee drags his crusty eyes open and twists onto his other side to look. Does a double take. Sits up. 

“What the hell is that?” 

“A flying lemur,” Prince Zuko replies. The winged rat-thing on his lap is purring and chattering, rubbing itself all against the Prince’s princely palms. “One of the last of his kind.” 

It’s got massive, pointed, white ears and bulbous green eyes, Jee notes with some degree of hysterics. Its face is a brown-toned grey; its limbs, the dorsal stripe trailing over its spine, and a large part of its smooth tail is the same colour. Its wings extend from its front arms like those of a bat. 

The creature looks quite terrifying, frankly speaking. Rather nightmarish. 

Nobody except Jiro, who’s gone quite pale, seems to agree with that perfectly sane sentiment. 

The General coos and extends a hand, letting the thing sniff at his fingers before it allows him to scratch it under its hairy chin. Ichiro and Sana aww in tandem. 

“How fascinating,” says the General. “What a wonderful little fellow.” 

“I thought I saw a glimpse of one in the Western Temple.” The Prince pats the thing on its little head and smiles brightly when it lowers its ears, eyes closing. “And I saw an odd tail earlier too, but was… too preoccupied to investigate. Maybe he noticed we weren’t being horrible to the temple and decided to investigate himself.” 

“He’s beautiful,” Asami murmurs. “Maybe he wants to join us?” 

“Do you?” Prince Zuko asks. “Would you like to come with us for now?” 

Like it is considering the offer, the lemur blinks up at the Prince with its big eyes and tilts its little head unnervingly. And then – and Jiro has to suppress a shiver there, which Jee relates to – it climbs up and settles around Prince Zuko’s neck like a living scarf. 

“That looks like an agreement,” Sana whispers, and she squeals in Ichiro’s shoulder. “Oh, I love animals…”

They are aware. Everybody present is more than aware of Sana’s habit of doting on even the most dangerous of creatures. Jee doesn’t doubt she’d scratch a moose-lion between its dangerous antlers and love on its toe pads, which she would deem ‘beans’. Because all of Sana’s impressive amount of positive rationality goes out the window the moment she sees a creature to spoil. 

“I’ll call him Momo,” the Prince decides, and ‘Momo’ chitters in what everybody decides is agreement but Jee thinks rather sounds like normal dumb animal noise. “Sounds good, Momo, doesn’t it?” 

The crew gathers around the Prince and his new pet like this is something to be happy about. Jee pulls a face and leans towards Jiro, who also has been keeping his distance. As Jiro is a normal person. 

“I can’t believe this,” he mutters. 

“I think I’m allergic,” Jiro agrees. He sneezes exaggeratedly, which means he isn’t allergic really, but Jee isn’t going to call him out on it. Not when the guy’s in his corner on this. 

“What, to happiness?” Sana shoots over her shoulder. “To joy? To adorable tiny little lemurs with the most beautiful wings in the entire world? Yes, you are so handsome, little guy. Does Momo want a peach?”

“Oh, come on.” Jee watches on as all the marines join in on the cooing, the General included. “It’s a just flying monkey.”

“What’s next?” Jiro says, sniffling through an unblocked nose, “a dragon?”

“Don’t give him any ideas.” 

And the Prince just laughs, light and carefree, grinning as the creature bumps its little head against his cheek. 

And—well. It’s not like Jee’s got any power to say no. Nor can he scrounge up the energy to do so. 

The Fire Nation insignia is a blight against the summer sky, a dot of poisoned blood and dirt flying from the highest point. 

Jee stands, dressed in white, among his men. The General called them over mere minutes ago, had them gather and stand at attention. It’s the afternoon after they returned from the temple, and the sky is clear and the weather is good, and all hands on deck is unnecessary because the Wanyi will continue sailing onwards without so much of a stutter—old reliable block of scrap metal that she is. So the entire grew stands, shuffling only slightly in confusion, as the General clears his throat and gestures for the Prince to step forward. 

He does, still slightly shorter than the General, still shorter than most men on board. Thirteen winter solstices old and he’s standing like a soldier. His shoulders are straight and his hands are clasped behind his back, and his chin is tilted slightly upwards: not arrogance, as Jee may have interpreted it at the beginning of their journey, but mere nervousness. The lemur is draped over his shoulders like some banner of protection, but it only accentuates how young he actually is. 

“As you all may know,” the Prince starts, “some months ago, I fought my father in an Agni Kai. And I won.” 

Jee allows himself to nod. Agreeable and speculative muttering rises up like hissing bushfires. 

“I fought because of a perceived insult,” the Prince continues. “I fought because I spoke out against cruelty when it wasn’t my place to speak. I fought because General Bujing wished to sacrifice the 41st Division to the enemy, to sacrifice new recruits for experienced troops to place an ambush, to allow the slaughter of young, bright citizens for no more than a handful of enemy deaths—”

Something in Jee’s chest seizes all of a sudden, breath shallow and sharp, because back in his day—back in Azulon’s time, may Agni hold him in eternal rest, they could not afford the deaths of new recruits. They would not have risked it. They would not have stood for it, back then, but—

“I won,” says Prince Zuko, and he begins to smile all bright and pleased and a bit sad, “and a letter from my father informed me three weeks ago that the 41st Division shall not be used as cannon fodder. The strategy as a whole shall, in fact, not be equipped at all in the near future.” 

Blood thuds in Jee’s ears, behind his eyes, in his tongue and throat and further down. His fingers feel swollen. 

“It is a courtesy,” the Prince says. “It is not a gift. It is only an acknowledgement to me and my victory alone. Do not see it as a kindness; our Lord, our highest Generals, they do not care for us, for you, for your lives. Had I lost,” he says, voice loud and carrying, even as it wavers, “the 41st Division would have been slaughtered. The Divisions of recruits after would have been slaughtered. And I know my father would have sent me lists of every casualty just to punish me further for my misconduct. 

“This War will end in nothing but blood and rot. This War will end the world as we know it. My father will rule over corpses and ashes, if only to prove,” he spits, “if only to claim, that he alone is Agni’s Chosen—as though our Great Spirit is only good for destruction. My father is wrong.”

Briefly, momentarily, the air pauses like the eye of the storm, crashing waves and whistling wind sounding distant. 

“I will not ask you to desert; I cannot ask you that,” The Prince says. “I will not. Not ever. All I wish is for you to think and remember. Remember the 41st Division; remember the Temples and its corpses; remember the burn on my father’s face. Remember your fallen friends and ancestors, remember your pain. And remember,” he adds, “that our enemies are as human as we are.”

His voice halts then, as if it’s caught in his throat and twisted in his tongue. And it’s okay, because not one person shifts uncomfortably; because the General is smiling; because the Prince is thirteen winter solstices old and he stands like a soldier and a speaks like a leader.

Jee remembers urging himself to believe the shrieks and screaming of earthbenders were the sounds of malicious spirits. He remembers listening to the groan of ships going under, the death knell, the gurgling wails of drowning sailors obscured by the violence of the sea. He thinks that perhaps, inhumanity is born from a willingness to believe others are inhuman. 

Agni damn it all, Jee is old. He’s old and he’s tired, and sometimes his joints protest when he moves without warming up, and the Prince is so young—and maybe naive too, and overly hopeful, and sick to his stomach at the thought of death and senseless violence. 

But Prince Zuko did not grow ill when faced with the remains of the genocide, only solemn and respectful. Prince Zuko defeated his father in an Agni Kai, damn the propaganda. 

Prince Zuko has eyes too old for his face. Prince Zuko is a boy Jee wishes to protect with his life, but who’ll jump in front of Jee instead. 

Jee takes a breath, closes his eyes, and tilts his face towards the sky. The little flame in his chest flickers, grows and tempers itself with the power of the sun. 

Remember the corpses. Remember the deaths. Remember the pain, the senselessness, the atrocity. 

He takes another breath, and he drops down to his knees in the most respectful bow he’s ever learnt. No less than half a second later muffled thuds tell him that the others have decided to do the exact same thing.

Jee gathers the entire crew in the mess that night, save for the royals, and stands atop one of the tables to project the appropriate amount of authority. His hands are clasped behind his back and he glares at the lot of them, mouth thin and pinched, eyebrows drawn together in a frown. 

Sana looks incredibly unimpressed, but she’s never impressed by him, curse her. The others look unsure and vaguely chastised and that’s what matters. 

As the curious murmuring swiftly dies down under Jee’s look and sheer power of authority, he straightens further; inhales deep. 

“After today, I expect all of you to know what to do.” 

All the breaths in the room hold, synchronised. 

“We follow,” he says. “We follow, we guard, and we keep silent. Do not tell your families of the injustice he prevented just yet. Do not tell them of what he spoke of, what he implied. Not until we are ready. Not until our Prince is ready. 

“If it had been anyone else,” he says, and he inhales again, “if our leader had been anyone else, I am unsure if I would have stood in line. But I am older than most of you gathered here. I am tired. I am disillusioned. I want this war to end.”

Agreement rises, quiet and muttered. Jee cannot spot disagreeing or unhappy faces. Everybody is staring or nodding.

“Treason is not what our Prince asked of us, nor will I ask you to do so. Desertion is not what he asked of us, and I won’t command you to do so. Changing your mind,” he says, “about nationalism, about our country, about the goal we have been born and bred to reach—he only asked you to consider it all, so I will ask it too. I want you to know that I am old, and I changed my mind. I learnt. And I agree with our Prince.”

Sana, Jiro, Hina and Keiji, Ichiro and Akito… they’re smiling. The oldest of the crew and they’re smiling. Even that old goat, Healer Lee, has his mouth twisted into something appreciative—and he hasn’t even seen the corpses. 

Jee clears his throat, feeling oddly flustered. “If any of you endanger him, let information slip, be it purposeful or accidental—you will experience the appropriate consequences. If you harm him in the name of our country, you will experience the appropriate consequences. From me—” 

“And from me,” Sana announces. She turns to face them all, hands in her side; Jiro joins her with his arms crossed. “You will face us. You hear?” 

“This is—” Jee clears his throat, not emotional at all, “—this is not up for debate. If you burn yourself you’ll sit on the blisters. Is that clear?” 

Once more, there is muttered agreement. 

“I said, is that clear?” 

The crew, as one, calls out, “Yes, Lieutenant”, and Jee nods. Relishes in the relief coursing through his veins. Lets himself smile, for once.

Feels hopeful for the future, for the first time since he was conscripted at sixteen. 

“Where to next, Your Highness?” 

Standing at the Prince’s side, half a step behind, has become comfortable. More so now that his trust feels full and unwavering. Jee thinks he may stand at the Prince’s shoulder for the rest of his life and be satisfied. 

“I don’t know,” the Prince admits. “The South Pole? Kyoshi Island? Do we moor in the Earth Kingdom, or somewhere else?” 

Jee shifts, glances at out at the ocean. The water is nearly the same colour as the sky. Another clear day. They’ve been lucky lately. 

“I believe it would be smooth sailing to anywhere, Your Highness.”

“Why don’t you decide, Lieutenant,” says the Prince. He turns and grins cheekily, chin resting on Momo’s little head, face framed by the lemur’s ears. “I trust you to make a good decision.” 

Yes, Jee thinks, satisfied, my choice is sound, and he bows his head in respect. 

When he straightens he squints up to the navigation tower. Smoke bellows from the chimney in a dark, swirling plume, like that of a dragon. Ichiro has taken the Fire Nation flag down to half-mast. 

And the sea is calm as far as the sun reaches, silence beyond even the horizon. 

“I’ll make it a good surprise, my Prince.”