Fic: Crossbones and Destiny, Avatar
Title: Crossbones and Destiny
Fandom: Avatar: the Last Airbender
Word Count: ~10,000
There had been no special event that had triggered the first licks of suspicion in his mind. This was all right with him, since his life was full of triggering events and he had yet to shape any part of himself on his own.
"Father is coming in a fortnight," she breathes, and it doesn't escape his notice that she can only say this with her back arched and her shoulders and heels pushing like she's trying to snap in half, and his teeth graze against the ribbon of flesh extending from her neck to her shoulder and her fingers (so strangely, unusually cold, for all they spark fireworks and banner the skies with blood) rake down the curves of his abdomen. "To... uhnn, to congratulate us."
It was almost to be expected; reluctance on both sides to mention Father; they threaded around it in conversations like they did furniture in a room.
He lifts her hips up, catching on the sheets and brushing them away impatiently, and slides down her body, planting open-mouthed kisses all in a row from the hollow of her throat to the bundle of nerves between her legs, and he knows without looking that her eyes have gone dark with lust behind their shut lids. "Have you told him about me?"
"No. Not yet."
And click goes the gears in his brain. His lips pause, arresting his urge to bite down hard enough on the soft flesh of her inner thigh to insure she'll walk with a twinge tomorrow, and the instant he stops, he knows she knows that he's stopped, and her muscles tense beneath his fingers. Suspicious. Mistrusting.
He pulls away, crouching low at the end of her bed, hands wrapped around his ankles. "You never were planning on telling him, were you?"
"Don't be silly," her lips say, but her body says otherwise, slinking towards him like a woman placating a man and not a lover meeting a lover (and never, never like a sister greeting a brother because they crossed that line a long time ago). She tilts her head up to meet his, lips brushing and then molding, and her body meshes with his somewhere in the middle and he pushes her back against the pillows. He makes sure to leave nothing behind, no incriminating mark or scent that she can use against him when Father arrives.
He is already paying for enough crimes that, officially, to whom it may concern, he never committed.
He will always remember the shame that will never go away (his uncle turning away, forehead high and chin tilted down) and the shame he can never escape (his sister, coming with his name buzzing in her mouth.)
***
She chases a stray rice ball across her plate, and he watches the light play across her silverware. He remembers their first week here, where the only thing she slipped up on was how she held her fork and spoon; pinched together like they did with the chopsticks at home. Then she'd shift them, and if he hadn't been watching her so closely he never would have noticed.
Eventually, she gets frustrated, burns the rice ball to a crisp, and gets another one from the platter.
"Are we going to do anything about the flooding in New Ozai?" Zuko asks, tucking his cold toes into the flesh of his inner knees and ignoring the steam wafting from the cup of tea on the corner of the table. If he looked at it, he would blow it up. He knows it.
"That falls under Lord Feng's jurisdiction," Azula flashes, like it's crossed her mind to worry about it but then she pushed it away.
"Does it really?" He resists the urge to say anything as she tried to cut the rice ball in half with a spoon and it scoots across her plate with a soft squelching noise. "And when was the last time he left the palace? Has he recently traveled to the outer towns? Is he really your best bet for an advisor?"
The rice ball bites the dust. "If there's something you want, big brother, all you have to do is ask," she simpers, but there is a sneer coiling on the edges of her mouth and he knows it.
"Nothing I want," he says idly, and he tucks his hands into his sleeves the way the people in the Earth Kingdom did because he knows it annoys her, and also because it keeps him from reaching for his tea on automatic. "I'm just concerned that the system that aided us is now hindering us. Besides, you said you needed me," and he will burn if those words, muttered to the ground in that cave more than two months before with half the world as their witness, hadn't made the hair rise on his arms and his stomach twist into knots. "And I really don't think you do."
Although she has yet to master a rice ball with silverware, she reaches across the table and grabs his tea, and her eyes flash with knowing when he doesn't protest.
"Isn't this what you wanted?" she inquires, sickly sweet, flipping her spoon over so she could stir with the handle. "Some big prize to show to Father so you could get your status back and not slink around the woods and the Lower Ring like a leper? Or were your needs more commonplace than that? Peace, love, security, some proof that you're not the belly-crawling scum everyone back home says you are?"
"I don't think you know me very well," he tells her, and surprises himself with how composed he is. Sticks and stones may break his bones, but Azula always lies.
"I think I know you very well, all things considered," she snaps back, hot and quick, before tilting her teacup up to her lips, and the image would be almost demurely poetic if not for her nails, crooked like claws, digging into the dancing bear print of her cup. He thinks of her, the brat from his childhood who would make their tutors' chairs smoke and their shoes shrink and then point at him with wide, innocent eyes and trembling lip.
"Father's not coming, is he?"
She sets the cup down slowly, and it trembles in its saucer and suddenly, he doesn't see the brat and he doesn't see the supposed tyrant of the Earth Kingdom; he sees his sister, and he sees his sister crushed down into one, small tiny (but never fragile, never helpless) thing as she says, "No."
***
He doesn't try to sneak up on her, so he isn't surprised when she twists up into a sitting position as he kneels on the bed beside her, sheets indenting towards him. She looks tired, and he isn't sure who curls around whom, but in a few moments they're tucked up in each other and he feels old, like he doesn't want to move until his bones have dried and shriveled up here, with hers.
"Father hates both of us," she says, flat and dry as if she was commenting about the potato crisps from dinner. "I am as embarrassing to him as you are."
"Why? Did you make the mistake of caring about the fate of your peers?" he asks wryly.
"No. I made the mistake of not caring about a opportunity to further the Fire Nation," she replies. "One day, I'm the prodigal daughter of the greatest Fire Lord in a century, and the next, it's, 'Oh, go take care of the Avatar, Azula.'"
He stiffens. "Your original mission was to find the Avatar?"
A smirk flits across her lips. "That was my only mission. I just took over the Earth Kingdom because I could. You think Father would be proud of that, but the way he's acting, you think I ruined some grand scheme. And by acting, I mean by not doing anything at all."
"Your original mission was to find the Avatar?"
She shifts her head back on the pillow so she can focus on him, as if just now realizing how he might interpret that. "Of course not. It was to find you and Uncle and stop you from further slandering the Fire Nation's name. What a great job I did."
He pushes himself up onto his elbow and watches her face as her brows furrow with anger, and a year ago he would have immediately leapt on the opportunity to mock her, but now he thinks he understands and it scares him. He's been there, down that dead end and finding nothing but more reasons to hate his father and for his father to hate him. And it's really lonely.
Catching him staring at her, Azula's lips quirk again, and she reaches up, touching the tips of her nails to the puffy flesh of his scar, and then the pads of her fingers, and then her entire hand, cradling his cheek.
He kisses her then, slow and without expectation, and he isn't sure when they crossed this line. How does one describe it? How is it possible to identify the point where a sister stops being someone you have to put up with day after day and starts being someone you want to and are prepared to spend the rest of your life with? What does he lack that everyone else has that keeps them from making that leap, from merciless teasing to kissing in the alcove behind the War Council room with a bunch of dusty scrolls? What makes her kiss him back, to go from wary and ready to attack to needy and clutching?
It's just another question to add to the dozens he doesn't think will ever be answered. What happened to my mother? Why did Uncle vouch for me? Who will become the next Lord or Lady of the Fire Nation if Azula and I are truly banished? What makes my sister lie to me and use me and then trust me with her body and soul?
Later, when she's almost completely asleep, he leans over and whispers in her ear, "We could start our own country."
***
“You can’t be serious.”
Mai drawls the word can’t on forever, as if the more syllables she forced into it the more she could block it from her mind. The very subtle widening of her eyes is the only thing that clues them in to how little she was expecting that. Then she adds, “Is that even possible?” like, on principle, she hadn’t expected either of them to stop and consider if a thing could be done before they tried to do it.
Azula’s mouth gets tight around the corners and she gets an angry sideways look to her eyes, so Ty Lee says quickly, “I want to hear this! Just think, Mai; if they pull this off, we could be there for the birth of a fifth nation! Wouldn’t that just be the coolest thing ever?”
“I might have trouble containing my excitement,” Mai replies, like she can think of a dozen other things she would rather have happen.
The two of them are hanging upside down from a tree, and their identical dark orange robes wrapped up tight around them like cocoons make them look like batorangutans, and the image would have made Zuko laugh if this courtyard wasn’t so much like a different one from a different place and time where the four of them last gathered that he found himself unconsciously waiting for the bracing cry of a turtleduck.
Ty Lee frowns at her, and then at Azula and Zuko. “Why do you want to split anyway? Wasn’t the Fire Lord going to come, or at least send someone?”
“Finder’s keepers,” Azula snaps, like she hadn’t expected them to oppose the idea at all and was now at a loss; if her two best friends didn’t take her seriously, then how were they going to make this grand shift in world history, making a country not bound by faith to an element? “Father’s ancestors have been trying to checkmate the Earth Kingdom for a hundred years without success, and I succeeded single-handedly-“ here, Zuko flinches, but his sister either doesn’t notice her mistake or ignores him “-and he’ll just take that away from me without even so much as a thank you. Well, he would, if he bothered to acknowledge my accomplishment at all.”
“How mature of you,” says Mai drolly, shifting position a little so that feeling returned to her legs. “Founding a whole new nation for the sole purpose of getting revenge on your father.”
“We can’t explain it,” Zuko breaks in, because Azula had brought two fingers up and he really did believe she could zap her own friend between the eyes. “We just had an idea and wanted your opinion, that’s all.”
Mai backpedals, “I’m just worried. It’s hard enough trying to run a city, and that’s already been established. You’re talking about making a whole new country. You’re still new here; the Dai Li’s loyalty is anything but certain, and you have a grand total of two loyal subjects; Ty Lee and myself. And with Azula being-“
She falters, because the princess is making a vicious ix-naying motion across the pale column of her throat, so Mai finishes lamely, “It’ll be hard on her.”
Zuko looks at Ty Lee and Ty Lee looks at Zuko, both of them immediately curious because the air has taken on the twangy scent of a secret, and Mai is getting down from the tree and straightening out her robes like it will take back her words and fix the entire thing. Then they both shrug; they’ve had their fill of secrets to take to the grave and have no wish for another one.
“I’ll be by your side no matter what you choose to do,” Ty Lee says to Azula, and he’s almost envious of the careless, easy way she throws promise and devotion at his sister’s feet.
Mai leaves then, brushing in between them and saying in a very soft voice, “I think the two of you could do it together,” and he looks at her in shock, but her eyes were staring straight ahead and her mouth was held in a straight line like she had never said a word and he wonders if he imagined it. It was a bit like a hummingcrow; you think you see it pecking at the ground, one pointy foot facing west and the other north, and the next second it was two stories up and thirty feet away and you’re so surprised at how quick it has moved that you wonder if you ever really saw it on the ground at all.
***
"So. Jet was right all along, wasn't he?" The scrawny thing with all the facepaint says somberly. "You two were firebenders."
They're sitting in a triangle on a bunch of barrels in the Lower Ring, her and Zuko and the third guy, the long skinny one with the hat, passing a tin of cookies from one to the other. It was, in retrospect, not the weirdest thing he'd ever done, but it was definitely up there. He wasn't even sure how he got here in the first place. The cookies weren't half bad, though.
"Man," continues the scrawny one. "Jet would absolutely flip if he were here. He'd never let anyone forget how he was right. Assuming he didn't get himself killed trying to kill you first. Although I guess he jumped a step ahead on that one."
"I'm sorry," Zuko says, because it seems appropriate.
"Yeah," Facepaint swings her legs, staring hard at the dirt caked in between her toes. Long and Skinny reaches over with the cookie tin and takes her hand. "We still miss him, and we probably always will. He was a good guy. He never really quite got it, though. He had the right idea, but something would always come along and distract him. He was just a guy, like the rest of us. We aren't gods or Avatars or princes or even benders, and even if we were, it wouldn't matter. We're still people who all breathe the same air and that in itself is the greatest miracle and nobody appreciates it. Breathing is nothing until you stop."
The cookie tin goes to him, and Zuko rummages around to see if there are any of the oatmeal ones with the giant sugar flakes left, but Facepaint grabs his attention when she says, "They talk about you, you know."
"Not surprising."
"Actually, it is. They talk about your sister the way you'd all expect them to, but you. Sure, you and your uncle are the Fire Lord's family, and through your blood you receive his crimes and they feel they can blame you for their uprooted lives, and they hate you, of course, but you were their teasmiths and fellow refugees first and foremost. You never harmed a living soul, you never once used your firebending against them. And they ... well, they trust you. They feel like they can come to you, and you would listen. You, in particular. Someone, somewhere started hoping and it spread."
Zuko blinks. "Why?"
Facepaint shrugs again. "It's time for a change. The people, they came here to Ba Seng Se because they were on their last chance, and they were at their most desperate and they were so afraid of trying and failing that they just followed the rules and the lies fed to them, and look where it's gotten them. The city's in figurative ruins. It needs to change. And okay, so maybe you're just here to further the ambitions of your father and the Fire Nation's inane wish to take over the world, but something about your scar tells me you're not.
"The Avatar can't do it by himself, and unlike him, we don't have hundreds of lives to live. We've only got one."
***
They’re considerably easier to sneak up on than they should be, considering they’re supposed to be in deeper hiding than ever before. It only takes him a week to find them this time, as opposed to an entire winter last year.
They’re all laughing about something, as if the more frequently they crack jokes than the easier it will be to ignore the comet that can be seen clearly at night now.
Zuko leaps into the firelight, and the moment his feet hit the ground the earthbender’s spinning and the words “I need your help” have just barely left his lips before she slams her heel into the ground and the bones of her thighs and hips drag the earth up and he darts to the side just in time, but a boulder follows and his stomach hits the ground and then he’s up again, not of his own power because the wind’s blown him back into the cliff and all the breath leaves him.
He hits the ground and rolls, eyes flickering in their direction and then he has to duck because there’s a boomerang flying for his head and then again because a boomerang comes back, and he can firebend the water whip away but he doesn’t, he yells, “I’m not here to hurt you!” and it pauses, so close to his face he sees double.
“Prove it,” Katara sneers, and he lowers his arms as she raises hers.
“Anything,” he goes. “Anything I can do to prove it, I will.”
“How about you give us back the Earth Kingdom, slime?” the earthbender says in that voice like an earthquake, the one that always sounds like she’s saying, “on your knees!” like she can get away with it. She tilts her palms up and locks her elbows, and he feels rather than sees the dirt respond and so he reacts.
“You can have it.”
They freeze, all of them, and it would have been funny if it wasn’t so serious.
“What?” That’s the Avatar, and Zuko only knows it’s him by process of elimination. He looks so different; his torso is wrapped again and again and again in drab-colored Earth cloth and he remembers the gaping hole in his back and the lack of an exit wound and knows he’s got that lightning bouncing around inside of him, frying his blood and messing with his bending, and there’s a sheen of soot grey fuzz on his head that covers up the airbender’s arrow.
“You can have the Earth Kingdom,” Zuko repeats, calmly and slowly. “We’re giving it to you. Take your king and put him back on the throne, and get him a better advisor.”
The Avatar’s eyes narrow. “So we can just walk right into Ba Seng Se and you’ll walk out?”
“Well, no,” and all at once they raise their arms in preparation to attack and he says quickly, “Just hear me out, will you? Let me explain what my sister and I have planned, and then if you don’t like it you’re more than welcome to wreak all the magic havoc you want on me. Deal?”
There are a few moments of silence, and he can see all of them looking at one another out of the corners of their eyes, and then the Avatar lowers his staff to his side and the rest of them follow suit and realization strikes him hard and fast.
He understands now, how come it was so easy to find them and catch them by surprise.
Before… well, before a lot of things, they were bound by a mutual fear of the unknown and a secret agenda to beat each other at bending (except for the boomerang guy, who was obeying his father’s last wish to protect his little sister and Zuko could understand that).
And now, now they were forgetting to watch their backs, because they trusted each other so thoroughly and completely that they didn’t have to; there were three other people watching their backs for them. And, although it was a bit odd to think about it, he didn’t think any one of them would ever get married, because what are vows to love and cherish when they’ve sacrificed blood and life and sweat to keep each other safe, when they already love each other so much that they might as well be married, all four of them, and he should stop thinking. Now.
Because he’s already drawing parallels between them and him and Azula.
He shucks his sandals off and comes to sit by the fire, and when he pulls a map of the world out of the folds of his tunic they gather around him and he spreads it out into the dirt.
“The Earth Kingdom is by far the largest continent in existence, and when divided, it falls pretty evenly into three parts. Here, you have the southern half,” and he draws his finger around the chunk of land in the south and the three islands that accompany it. “And it has the largest concentration of citizens, by far, and it’s also the most heavily infiltrated by the Fire Nation. Then you have the northwestern chunk, which is just a boat’s ride away from two of the Air Temples, the North Pole, and the Fire Nation. Lastly, you have Ba Seng Se. Azula and I plan to cut it in half.”
This is met with an immediate explosion of “no way!” from the gathered ensemble, and he waits until they fall silent before he draws a dividing line between the two northern halves and the southern half.
“This will be the new Earth Kingdom. Roughly, it’ll be the same size as all the other nations. Your best bet for a capital will probably be New Ozai - er, Omashu,” he corrects himself when their eyes flash fire. He pulls another scroll from inside his tunic and extends it to them. The Avatar takes it and looks at it, and his eyes go wide. “Show that to any Fire Nation general, admiral, regent, and whatever they call those people who supervise the mines, and they’ll have no choice but to move out and head on home, by order of Fire Lord Ozai, acting through Fire Princess Azula. Basically, that’s your key to the kingdom. Please don’t lose it. Azula practically had to write it in her blood.”
“What about the rest of the Earth Kingdom?” demands Toph impatiently, because pieces of paper are no interest to her.
“That belongs to Azula and I.”
“As what?” she says dryly. “The new Fire Nation?”
“No,” he answers, so flatly that surprise flits over all their faces, and the next second, realization hits Katara’s eyes and he turns his head away so she can’t see his scar and he can’t see her pity.
“Ozai has no idea you’re doing this, does he?” she goes, very quietly.
“No,” he repeats, just as softly.
“But if it’s not the new Fire Nation,” puts in the boomerang guy, who’s thinking along the same lines as Toph. “Then what is it?”
“Neutral territory. A nation with no affiliation to any kind of bender.” Four sets of eyebrows go up. “Think about it. Ba Seng Se is already home to almost all of the world’s refugees, and as I’ve already stated, this northwest part is half a day’s boat ride to any of the major temples. It’ll be a place where any bender can have any bender as a neighbor and there will be no special treatment for any one of them.
“They’ll even have the advantage of natural elements. The northern half of the Earth Kingdom has some of the world’s major waterways, and it’s cold enough in the winter that the waterbenders will feel right at home. For earth and sandbenders, there’s a major desert surrounding Ba Seng Se, and earthbenders are right at home anyway. Airbenders… er, well,” he shoots the Avatar a sheepish look. “We aren’t exactly sure what you need, but we’re sure we can make something work. It’s the firebenders who are lacking the most, but we can exist pretty much anywhere so long as there’s sunlight.”
He swallows against his dry throat and watches them think.
“You do realize that by helping us do this, by giving us an Earth Kingdom, you’re giving us an advantage in the war?” the Avatar asks.
“We’ll give you whatever you need,” Zuko replies, and lets them take that where they will.
“What about your uncle?” Toph says sharply, hands clenching into fists on her knees. “Are we ever going to see him again?”
Zuko starts, because he’s almost forgotten about Iroh entirely, and he doesn’t think he could have, but here he is. “Of course,” he rasps. “The instant I get back, I’ll let him go.”
There’s a pause, and then the Avatar blows himself to his feet and extends his hand, his face drawn all serious, and Admiral Zhao flashes briefly across Zuko’s mind, drawing his hand to his chest and dying instead of failing, and he doesn’t think he’s ever shaken a hand more firmly than he did the Avatar’s in that moment.
“Do you have a name picked out?” the airbender asks almost conversationally as he reseats himself next to Katara, and if he hadn’t been watching them Zuko would have missed the way she laced her fingers with his and gave them a proud squeeze.
“A name?” he echoes. “For what?”
“For your new country,” Toph elaborates with a giant, “Duh!”
“Well, no. Not really. I mean, what can we name it? We’ve got the Air Nomads, the Fire Nation, the Water Tribes, the Earth Kingdom, and the one that doesn’t belong. We’ll have to decide sometime, I suppose, but maybe we’ll wait until my children grow up, so they can name it without having known what it was like before,” and he lets them all picture him as a father and after they all shudder simultaneously, he continues, “Assuming I have children and assuming they inherit. They might not. Again, that part we haven’t really thought through. My sister’s still in that stage where she’s convinced that she’s going to live forever.”
An idea strikes the Avatar like a fork of lightning and he jabs his finger up into the air, exclaiming loudly, “Hey! If its neutral territory, you could call it the Third Jin!”
A few heartbeats of silence later, Toph says, “No,” so flatly and resolutely that the Avatar goes, “Oh, okay” in this really small kind of voice that really doesn’t suit him at all, and Sokka titters at him and that isn’t a strange sound at all, oh no.
Then they all start laughing, including Zuko, and go on longer and harder than was decent, until it gets to the point where they all know they aren’t laughing at the joke anymore, but more laughing for the sake of laughing with each other, and the way that it makes all their muscles all taut and hard like fighting does.
Like nothing can ever hurt them, and that’s a better security than even bending could be.
***
No matter how hard he tries, his uncle won't meet his eyes, and for that, Zuko isn't sure whether he's angry or grateful.
"It's a bit dusty, but it's good to see that it hasn't been ransacked," the old man goes nonchalantly, swiping a finger over one of the tables and holding it up to show the amount of grey that collected. "Hopefully it won't be too hard for business to pick up again. Although I do believe I shall need a new assistant before I can open shop," and here he puts his hands to his belly and laughs, even though there's hardly a drop of humor in what he says.
"I hope you'll be happy here," Zuko tells him, and Uncle pauses, tilting his head in his direction like all the false sincerity his nephew drips is weighing it down.
"You know I will," he says quietly. "It is you I'm concerned about."
Zuko chuckles. "Me? I think I'll be happy just about anywhere, so long as I'm not wearing a frilly apron and serving tea to old soldiers and pretty girls." A heartbeat of silence follows this, and he grows serious when Uncle refuses to take the offer of a joke, to pretend to be offended so that they can fall into their usual routine, to go back to the way things were before he betrayed him and the Avatar because isn't that why he got Uncle out of jail and took him back to this place?
"Yes, I suppose you will be," Uncle sits on one of the cushions, crossing his legs on automatic and gesturing for his nephew to do the same. "You rule this country now, anyway. That's your occupation. But more importantly, I think, you're a brother. That's your duty, first and foremost."
Suspicion licks at the edges of Zuko's thoughts. "What do you mean?"
Uncle looks troubled, as if he hadn't been expecting that he would have to explain it. "Is there anyone at the palace bothering Azula?"
"What do you mean?" Same words, different question.
"Hmm. Maybe that is the problem with growing older. I grow more prudish and the ways of the youth seem all the more uncouth. But she is so young, is she not? So very young," his hands fiddle in his lap, clenching and unclenching so the flesh grew flushed around his knuckles in the same way Azula started blushing at the base of her neck and it went down from there, like he has something to hide, or like he wants there to be a teacup there most desperately. Starting to feel a bit antsy himself, Zuko gets up and goes to make some.
"You're worried she's not old enough to run a country?" he asks, removing a kettle from one of the hooks above the kitchen sink and filling it up. He sets a fire in the stove with a snap of his fingers and goes to hunt down the tea.
"No, nothing like that. Definitely not. She is frighteningly capable in that regard. It's just that..." he pushes his fingers together awkwardly.
How can he not find any tea in a teashop? He closes the cabinet door labeled "tea" and goes fishing in some of the bins by the back door, but all they hold are the relics of whoever lived here before they moved in for all of three days, it seemed like. He scowls and straightens up, "Uncle, what exactly did you mean when you said 'is anyone bothering Azula'?"
"Backroom. I put them there before we left for the palace and locked it. My own foresight amazes me sometimes." As if he senses the hostility that flares in his direction, he adds quickly, "But never mind that. Azula came to visit me while you had me locked up in that most uncomfortable cell. She wanted to talk to me about poisons. Said a teasmith should know more than the common herbalist. Not quite sure I understand her logic..."
"So she wants to poison someone. She's known how to do that since she was five."
Uncle bows his head, and says heavily, like each word is a stone being removed from his heart, "She wanted to know if there was anything that could kill a child but not the mother that was carrying it."
Click, go the gears in Zuko's head, and he grabs onto the edge of the nearest table as the world around him shifts on its axis. What with Azula being … it’ll be hard on her, and his nose is assailed with the stench of a secret.
"Azula? Azula was pregnant?"
The old man looks up sharply, almost meeting his nephew's eyes before catching himself and averting his gaze, and then sadness etches itself firmly into his features. "I take it she's not anymore, then."
"No," Zuko breathes, sinking into the cushion. "No, she's not."
"Which brings me back to my point," Uncle prods gently. "Is there anyone at the palace bothering her?"
His voice shakes just a bit too much, because he hasn't been able to lie through his teeth for a very long time, "No. No, there's no one. She'd kill anyone who tried. You've seen those nails of hers."
Uncle sighs, and at long last, he meets Zuko's gaze head-on, and the disappointment evident there almost freezes the room. "And that is why I am concerned for you, Prince Zuko. A leader cannot start a kingdom by placing a lie as its first stone."
Behind them, the kettle shrieks.
***
He doesn't remember passing the doors and he doesn't remember passing the dilated-eyed Dai Li and he doesn't remember counting them but he knows that there's always one of them around him at all times (two when he's inside the palace walls and he wonders if that means anything) and then he's standing there on the red carpet with pillars spiraling away in the corners of his vision and she's at the top of the steps, and Lord Feng is simpering at her and she's got her arms crossed and her fingers crooked on her elbow in that way that says she's about to set someone on fire.
He wonders that if he takes his soul and crushes it into crumbs and then scatter them behind him when he walks past her, will she follow him? Has anyone ever followed him and the trail of soul-crumbs he leaves in his wake? (Did anyone ever look for Mom?)
Will she come after him and give him that look that says she could think of a thousand other things she could be doing, up until he starts asking her the questions no sixteen-year-old girl should ever have to answer?
He doesn't remember moving, but suddenly she's looking up at him and her eyes are rolling and her lips are saying, "He would have been a perfect firebender."
"Who, Feng?" he takes his eyes off her and finds the man, who’s walking away from them, stiff and proper and his robes are too neat and straight to be human, shining and silky and he’s dropping the crumbs of his soul, too, a trail of dark and grimy nuggets with bits of want and need and lust for power.
And there are one, two, three Dai Li.
"Mhmm," she says, and he looks at her and sees their child and doesn't know why he feels like he's lost something important because how could they do that to another human being; take him and take her and make someone that's entirely them and (through your blood you inherit your father's crime) and it doesn't stop him from wanting to meet that person but he can't now and he shouldn't dare to hope that there would be a second chance.
Why didn't you tell me? Why did you go to Uncle first?
It should mean something that he catches her by surprise, reaching out and seizing a hold of her elbow like he did (like she doesn’t consider him a threat or, maybe, maybe, because she trusts that he will never hurt her) and he uses the press of his thighs against hers to push her into the dark side of the pillar and she doesn't see the kiss coming and frankly, neither does he.
"What are you doing?" she barks, her hands finding his chest and pushing him away and when he runs his tongue over his lips he can taste Mai's paint and the peaches Ty Lee had found in the gutter in the courtyard. "The Dai Li will see us!"
"I know," he says, and (you can't build a kingdom with a lie as its first stone) so maybe this defines him. He’s the one who takes the chances and she’s the one that reaps the prizes (how about you give the Earth Kingdom back, slime?) and it's always been like this and he doesn't think he wants to know what life would be like without her. "Why did you say you needed me?"
"I didn't," she answers and maybe this is what defines him.
"I didn't need you. Not then. I just thought it would be fun to see what you would do--" drag her into the alcove behind the War Council room and kiss her senseless "-- and then Father would come and that would be the end of that and I would go back to the Fire Nation and start a new game. Why did you take my offer?"
I need you.
I love you.
You smell like Mom.
I reached a crossroads and I took the only path that didn't spell death for everyone involved.
When he kisses her, he misses and gets a bit of her chin in his haste before he latches onto her mouth and he grabs her head between his hands and his thumbs are digging into the shells of her ears and he can't really get her mouth any closer, can he, and he sucks at her lips and tongue and he tastes blood and he isn't sure who it belongs to and it doesn't matter, really, because its all the same kind.
She gives in and kisses him back, and his hands move to cradle the swell of her hips and the curves of her thighs through her clothes, which in turn prompts her to heft herself up and wrap her legs around his waist and they brace their weight against the pillar and then her fingers are tangling in his hair and he's almost glad he grew it out. She yelps when he digs his nails into her flesh, mouth gaping momentarily around his, and he knows she'll walk with a twinge tomorrow and he'll be proud because who ever gets to do that to Azula? And by tomorrow, everyone will know it will be because of him and Uncle will have his proof that --
He untangles himself from her abruptly, hands closing around her ankles crossed together in the small of his back, and she makes a noise of protest that is entirely woman.
He sets her down and she looks at him with her eyes hooded and curious and dark, and he can feel her fingertips, hooked into the front of his pants, and he isn't sure what he's proving to who when he places both his hands on the pillar beside her hips.
He thinks that now, if anyone asks, he can throw lightning.
***
"You know they're sleeping together!"
Zuko squeezes his eyes shut. Lord Feng really didn't have to slam his balled fists down at that point; his words themselves were effective enough. Did that mean he was losing his control? Had he planned to say that then, or had it slipped out because of his desperation? Because he felt like it was his last straw?
He would have been a better firebender.
It really didn't matter, did it? Because it was the most pointed, sharpest weapon possible to use against them. It played on shame, again, and nothing destroys a person faster than that, destroys a cause faster than scandal and there's a reason there's so much of it because it works and it's silly to almost feel hopeful, because everything was going to come crashing down now and he knew it would and yet he went and kissed his sister out there in front of --
Wait.
"They're sleeping together," Feng feels the need to repeat, even though the walls of this room have never heard such things before and still ring with the sound. His fists relax, palms uncurling on the table and shoulders beginning to droop as if being weighed down, and if Zuko was noticing this, it meant he has opened his eyes. "My agents have caught them, numerous times. And it's... it's consensual. How wrong is that?"
Wait.
His eyes snap to Azula, whose mouth is twisted with fury. Sparks crawl around her knuckles, and there is no surprise anywhere in her face, just the righteous fury of a woman accused, and there is no shame.
There is no shame.
And if there is no shame, there is nothing Feng can use to destroy them.
The Avatar merely blinks, like he isn't sure how this is relevant at all. He folds his hands in front of him, fingers steepling, and says, slowly and assuredly so that they don't miss a single word, "Yes. I know. However, my job is to protect this fledgling nation against power-hungry tyrants who brainwash their subjects and lock away their monarchs, not to judge two people in love."
***
"I don't think there's ever been so many earthbenders cooperating at one time in all of history," comments the eternally-astonished Earth King, turning in a wide circle on the palace roof to take in the sight. "In the past few months I've seen amazing teamwork in the army, but this! This will go down in the legends."
"We couldn't have done it without you," Zuko says, partly bemused by the Earth King's almost childlike delight in his world and all the people in it, and partly floored by his absolutely jovial attitude towards him and Azula, for all that they kicked him off of his throne and stole half his kingdom. "We need as many specially trained earthbenders as we can get."
"Oh, stop yapping," Toph cuts in impatiently. "Some of us would like to get this done with before we all grow hunchbacks and chin hairs."
"Is everyone in position?"
She widens her stance, digging her heels into the stone and concentrating hard. "Yes."
"Then let's bring this city to its knees!"
"I like to think of it as bringing them to their feet," Azula murmurs to him, as Toph raises her arms into the air, and when she shrieks, "NOW!", she slams her fists down hard, burying them deep into the stone, and the two firebenders sling a giant flare high into the sky, glowing brilliant blue against the clouds.
There's a sound like the world being wrenched apart, and for a moment everything holds absolutely still, sparing the groaning of the earth like a door creaking open. Toph strains, every vein in her forehead standing out, and then, at last, there's a sound like half a dozen teeth popping out of its gums, and then the entire Inner Wall, the one that seperates the Lower Ring from the Upper Ring, lifts right out of the ground. Toph lets go, and the earthbenders step up to plate, hundreds of them from all over and every corner of the world, breaking the wall apart and crushing it into more manageable bits midair, swinging them around and around above their heads like a slingshot and then they let go --
And the next ring of earthbenders, the more moderate level ones, catch the pieces as they fall, swinging them down and around and then up, out farther than Zuko or Azula could see, to the next group, to the next, until they reached the Outer Wall and could dispose of all the rubble and debree safely, and he jumps when he feels his sister touch his elbow and say, "Now we have one city, with no visible boundary between the rich and the poor. Father will hate it."
So maybe you're here to further the interests of your father, but something about your scar tells me you're not.
"Should we keep the name?" he muses. "Ba Seng Se?"
"Why? Do you have some amazing, inspirational name for it instead?" she asks scathingly.
"We no longer have a New Ozai," he shrugs, and grins at her as she blanches. "How about New Ursa?"
Her expression is absolutely stoic, but her eyes glitter when she says, "Never again."
"So," Toph interrupts, shifting so that she was facing them and smiling that cocky, superior grin that she always wears. "Are you two really smooching it up or is that just the Dai Li spreading their nonsense again to try and tear you down?"
Zuko looks at Azula and Azula looks at Zuko, and he opens his mouth and -- you are a brother; that is your duty, first and foremost -- then he laughs, grabbing his sister and wrestling her into a headlock, grinding his knuckles into her scalp and thoroughly messing up her hair. It takes her all of four seconds to escape, and she backs away, scowling and raking her nails through her hair impatiently and looking almost pleased. Then she darts forward again to press a kiss to his mouth, hot and spontaneous like she does everything.
"Yes," she tells Toph. "Yes, we are."
The earthbender arches an eyebrow, and then she shrugs and says somewhat exasperatedly, "Great. Now I owe Sokka five coins. I'll never understand firebenders!"
***
It shouldn't surprise him as much as it does when, five days later, he finds himself caught in the middle of one of the most intense conversations he has ever witnessed.
"That's your problem! You can never decide anything!" The little girl stamps her foot so that the heel of her boots kicked up sparks, wild black braids flying as she twists her head from side to side with fury. "That's so typical of a waterbender! They're so wishy-washy!"
"Oh, yeah?" her opponent bellowed as well as he could with his high-pitched child's voice, his dark face darkening further with rage. "Well, no one likes to play with you anyway, because you're a firebender and when they get mad, they ruin everything!"
"My daddy says it doesn't matter that I'm a firebender!" The little girl clenches her fist, squeezing her eyes shut as if she could force her beliefs to be truer that way. "It doesn't matter anymore because we're safe here! Nobody's allowed to hate firebenders!"
"Ha!" the waterbender points at her, teeth bared. "My mommy says that your daddy isn't really your daddy. My mommy says that your real daddy is a fire nation soldier and that's why you came here as reffi-gees, and that your daddy doesn't know and that's why everyone laughs at him when he's all confused about why you're a firebender. Because he's a big dummy, just like you!"
Zuko knows what's going to happen the instant the girl sidesteps from the awning of the building they're standing under to be in the sunlight, bringing her hands up. He starts forward, but he's too late; she sweeps her arms up and locks her elbows, shooting an impressive jet of flame right at the boy. He jumps to the side not a moment too soon, but the florist's shop he was standing by didn't have the luxury of mobility and was instantly ablaze.
Color drains out of the faces of both children, and their argument is forgotten in a heartbeat in their search for the quickest escape route.
The florist himself is quicker, however, and snatches them both up by the scruffs of their collars. They yelp and swing their fists, like fish caught on a hook and desperate to escape. The cracking and popping of the timbers drown out the sound of all three of them yelling.
Before he's truly aware that he's moved, Zuko grabs the florist by the elbow, surprising him into dropping both the children. The man stammers something, but Zuko's attention is on the waterbender and when he yells, "Do your duty!" the kid jumps near clean out of his skin and then he catches on. He spreads his arms wide and turns his palms outward.
Then he clenches his fists and a dozen nearby homes suddenly find their kitchen sinks and bathtubs empty as all the water comes crashing down on the florist's. With a movement like a weaver dragging his loom down, the boy condenses all the steam that immediately shoots up into the air with a screaming hiss and brings it down again, until every lick of orange is gone, leaving a severely disfigured front parlor in its wake, but a standing, solid building.
The boy looks up at him, his face a mixture of fierce pride mingled with recognition and fear and Zuko smiles at him without really thinking about it.
Then he fishes in his satchel and tosses a couple gold coins to the florist, "When you have a chance, go to the palace. Ask for a man named Feng. He's recently unemployed and has a wonderful eye for interior design and I'm sure he'll be happy to help you. And also, I'd like to purchase that," he points at a potted infant tree set far enough to the side of the shop that it had been undamaged by the fire.
The florist blinks, utterly relieved, somewhat bemused, and most definitely not sure what to think, but he nods his assent and Zuko goes and hefts the pot up onto his hip.
"Come with me," he says to the two children. "I have something to teach both of you."
The boy nods, but the girl's eyes are fixed firmly on her boots and her mouth is little more than a thin white line on her face. When he leads them both down an alleyway to a wider, more open space, however, she follows, albeit reluctantly. He sets the tree down and turns to her, kneeling down and tilting his head towards her so that she has no choice but to look at him with the trademark golden eyes of a firebender. Her gaze immediately flicks to his scar, and she goes even more ashen and glances away quickly, turning her hands up and staring at her palms like they're the most disgusting things she's ever seen. Like she looks at them and sees her brother with a mark like his.
"Tell me what firebending is," he begins.
"I hate it," she replies in a heartbeat, tossing her head to clear her braids away from her face. "It does nothing but get me in trouble. Just when I think it might be cool, I go and set someone's house on fire."
"How do you do it?"
"I don't know," she stretches her hands out in front of her, stance widening. "I just ... do it." Her eyes narrow and the next second, there's a huge gush of flame arcing from her fingertips, and she snatches her hands back to her, mouth twisted.
"I see," Zuko frowns, having not been sure until this point that a person could even firebend with so many mistakes. He stands, dusting off the knees of his trousers with a sigh. "First off, you're letting the fire control you. You're feeling it inside of you and you want as much of it as possible and that's why it gets out of hand so much. You're a firebender, girl. There will always be fire inside of you. You don't have to be scared of running out.
"Second, there are three exit points a flame could take. You're only using one; your hands. The other two are your feet and your mouth, although most people consider it terribly rude to belch fire, so try and save it for someone particularly obnoxious," here, he shoots a pointed look at the waterbender, and she stifles a giggle. "But you also use your feet, which is why a firebender must be light and never truly rooted." He kicks into a handstand, shifting his weight back and forth so he could turn and face her. "Fire doesn't have the brute strength of a rock or the tenacity and thoroughness of air and water, but its sly and nimble in its own right and that's why the fire nation army places so much into a soldier's agility scores.
“A firebender must give up the solid foundation and support that the earthbenders have, the comfort of waterbending’s repetitive movements and the sheer dizzying amount of fuel that the airbenders never run out of, and they’re left with an element that can hurt them as much as it can help them and in the right hands, that’s its greatest power.” With a twist of his hips and one arm, he becomes a momentary vortex of flame before backflipping onto his feet. "If you use one exit point too much, you'll risk damaging them permanently and mangling your bending from there on out."
"So I've got to learn to take smaller amounts and spread them out through my body?" she looks at her hands and her feet thoughtfully.
"Like taking cookies from a cookie tin. Only take one and never from the same tin twice."
She lets her arms drop down to her sides, face shuttered close. "That still doesn't change the fact that all fire does is destroy. It destroyed my home and now I'm destroying other people's."
"That's where you come in," he gestures for the waterbender to come in closer, which he does with an almost relieved look, and he tugs them both over to the tree. He touches the tip of the top branch, and soon it begins to smoke and then burn.
"Each element has its potential for destruction. Waterbenders can make floods, earthbenders earthquakes and airbenders tornadoes. Each one can kill," he turns his palm towards the tree and pushes, and the whole thing goes up with a soft whoosh. "But each one also has the ability to, if not heal, then at least to built anew."
They remain there until the tree is nothing but ashes and glowing embers, and at that point Zuko holds up the tiny seed he had brushed off the elbow of the florist's sleeve earlier, and then he pushes it deep into the ashes.
"I need both of you," he murmurs. "Boy, a plant has no blood, just water. Stretch the water out, force it into boundaries it might not be ready for. Encourage it to grow. Girl, focus on the sun. Feel it on your scalp, feel its light and its warmth. The plant needs it more than you do. Channel it. Do not start a flame; light and heat only. Entice the seedling out. It is the first step of control; the smallest increment only." He stops talking at that point, because both of them have become so wrapped up in what they were doing, palms spread open above the empty pot and brows furrowed, he doubts they can hear him anyway.
The seconds drag into minutes and then longer and then... and then the ashes fall away and something miniscule and incredibly pathetic pokes its tiny green head up into the light.
"Well," Zuko says wryly. "It works a lot better when there's an earthbender and an airbender, too, but for some reason we don't have any volunteering earthbenders and the only airbender I know of is busy fixing the world and doesn't have any children. Though that's likely to change soon enough."
Both the children beam up at him with grins too wide for their faces, and for one startling moment, Zuko sees a flash of Azula in the young girl's eyes, in the way her face stretches with joy and self-satisfaction that comes with mastering a new trick and it disconcerts him and makes him nostalgic all in one go.
He imagines the child Azula never had would be something like her.
Something scuffs against the cobblestones behind him, and when he turns he finds his uncle standing next to the well, and he can tell by the look on his face that he had been watching the whole thing.
The man steps up to him as he turns back to watch the children, spine automatically straight and stiff up until Iroh rests a hand on his shoulder. They stand there for a moment, and then Zuko says in a low a voice as he ever could, "Azula and I ... we split from the Earth Kingdom and started a new nation with only revenge on our minds. Now, that, I think," he smiles at the firebender, who is cupping a tiny lick of flame between her palms and staring at it like she saw so much more about it than she ever had before. The waterbender stands next to her, shoulder-to-shoulder, filaments of water snaking around his wrists. "Is why we fought to keep it."
He knows that it’ll be only a matter of weeks now until their father’s full retribution comes down on them and that will hurt in every possible way it can, but he thinks of Azula and he thinks of Uncle and thinks of the way Mai said, ”you two would do a good job together” and the way the facepaint girl said, ”the people trust you” and he thinks he can handle it.
He could probably build a wall around them and their entire nation using only the pride in Iroh’s voice as he says, "Well done, King Zuko."
Fandom: Avatar: the Last Airbender
Word Count: ~10,000
There had been no special event that had triggered the first licks of suspicion in his mind. This was all right with him, since his life was full of triggering events and he had yet to shape any part of himself on his own.
"Father is coming in a fortnight," she breathes, and it doesn't escape his notice that she can only say this with her back arched and her shoulders and heels pushing like she's trying to snap in half, and his teeth graze against the ribbon of flesh extending from her neck to her shoulder and her fingers (so strangely, unusually cold, for all they spark fireworks and banner the skies with blood) rake down the curves of his abdomen. "To... uhnn, to congratulate us."
It was almost to be expected; reluctance on both sides to mention Father; they threaded around it in conversations like they did furniture in a room.
He lifts her hips up, catching on the sheets and brushing them away impatiently, and slides down her body, planting open-mouthed kisses all in a row from the hollow of her throat to the bundle of nerves between her legs, and he knows without looking that her eyes have gone dark with lust behind their shut lids. "Have you told him about me?"
"No. Not yet."
And click goes the gears in his brain. His lips pause, arresting his urge to bite down hard enough on the soft flesh of her inner thigh to insure she'll walk with a twinge tomorrow, and the instant he stops, he knows she knows that he's stopped, and her muscles tense beneath his fingers. Suspicious. Mistrusting.
He pulls away, crouching low at the end of her bed, hands wrapped around his ankles. "You never were planning on telling him, were you?"
"Don't be silly," her lips say, but her body says otherwise, slinking towards him like a woman placating a man and not a lover meeting a lover (and never, never like a sister greeting a brother because they crossed that line a long time ago). She tilts her head up to meet his, lips brushing and then molding, and her body meshes with his somewhere in the middle and he pushes her back against the pillows. He makes sure to leave nothing behind, no incriminating mark or scent that she can use against him when Father arrives.
He is already paying for enough crimes that, officially, to whom it may concern, he never committed.
He will always remember the shame that will never go away (his uncle turning away, forehead high and chin tilted down) and the shame he can never escape (his sister, coming with his name buzzing in her mouth.)
***
She chases a stray rice ball across her plate, and he watches the light play across her silverware. He remembers their first week here, where the only thing she slipped up on was how she held her fork and spoon; pinched together like they did with the chopsticks at home. Then she'd shift them, and if he hadn't been watching her so closely he never would have noticed.
Eventually, she gets frustrated, burns the rice ball to a crisp, and gets another one from the platter.
"Are we going to do anything about the flooding in New Ozai?" Zuko asks, tucking his cold toes into the flesh of his inner knees and ignoring the steam wafting from the cup of tea on the corner of the table. If he looked at it, he would blow it up. He knows it.
"That falls under Lord Feng's jurisdiction," Azula flashes, like it's crossed her mind to worry about it but then she pushed it away.
"Does it really?" He resists the urge to say anything as she tried to cut the rice ball in half with a spoon and it scoots across her plate with a soft squelching noise. "And when was the last time he left the palace? Has he recently traveled to the outer towns? Is he really your best bet for an advisor?"
The rice ball bites the dust. "If there's something you want, big brother, all you have to do is ask," she simpers, but there is a sneer coiling on the edges of her mouth and he knows it.
"Nothing I want," he says idly, and he tucks his hands into his sleeves the way the people in the Earth Kingdom did because he knows it annoys her, and also because it keeps him from reaching for his tea on automatic. "I'm just concerned that the system that aided us is now hindering us. Besides, you said you needed me," and he will burn if those words, muttered to the ground in that cave more than two months before with half the world as their witness, hadn't made the hair rise on his arms and his stomach twist into knots. "And I really don't think you do."
Although she has yet to master a rice ball with silverware, she reaches across the table and grabs his tea, and her eyes flash with knowing when he doesn't protest.
"Isn't this what you wanted?" she inquires, sickly sweet, flipping her spoon over so she could stir with the handle. "Some big prize to show to Father so you could get your status back and not slink around the woods and the Lower Ring like a leper? Or were your needs more commonplace than that? Peace, love, security, some proof that you're not the belly-crawling scum everyone back home says you are?"
"I don't think you know me very well," he tells her, and surprises himself with how composed he is. Sticks and stones may break his bones, but Azula always lies.
"I think I know you very well, all things considered," she snaps back, hot and quick, before tilting her teacup up to her lips, and the image would be almost demurely poetic if not for her nails, crooked like claws, digging into the dancing bear print of her cup. He thinks of her, the brat from his childhood who would make their tutors' chairs smoke and their shoes shrink and then point at him with wide, innocent eyes and trembling lip.
"Father's not coming, is he?"
She sets the cup down slowly, and it trembles in its saucer and suddenly, he doesn't see the brat and he doesn't see the supposed tyrant of the Earth Kingdom; he sees his sister, and he sees his sister crushed down into one, small tiny (but never fragile, never helpless) thing as she says, "No."
***
He doesn't try to sneak up on her, so he isn't surprised when she twists up into a sitting position as he kneels on the bed beside her, sheets indenting towards him. She looks tired, and he isn't sure who curls around whom, but in a few moments they're tucked up in each other and he feels old, like he doesn't want to move until his bones have dried and shriveled up here, with hers.
"Father hates both of us," she says, flat and dry as if she was commenting about the potato crisps from dinner. "I am as embarrassing to him as you are."
"Why? Did you make the mistake of caring about the fate of your peers?" he asks wryly.
"No. I made the mistake of not caring about a opportunity to further the Fire Nation," she replies. "One day, I'm the prodigal daughter of the greatest Fire Lord in a century, and the next, it's, 'Oh, go take care of the Avatar, Azula.'"
He stiffens. "Your original mission was to find the Avatar?"
A smirk flits across her lips. "That was my only mission. I just took over the Earth Kingdom because I could. You think Father would be proud of that, but the way he's acting, you think I ruined some grand scheme. And by acting, I mean by not doing anything at all."
"Your original mission was to find the Avatar?"
She shifts her head back on the pillow so she can focus on him, as if just now realizing how he might interpret that. "Of course not. It was to find you and Uncle and stop you from further slandering the Fire Nation's name. What a great job I did."
He pushes himself up onto his elbow and watches her face as her brows furrow with anger, and a year ago he would have immediately leapt on the opportunity to mock her, but now he thinks he understands and it scares him. He's been there, down that dead end and finding nothing but more reasons to hate his father and for his father to hate him. And it's really lonely.
Catching him staring at her, Azula's lips quirk again, and she reaches up, touching the tips of her nails to the puffy flesh of his scar, and then the pads of her fingers, and then her entire hand, cradling his cheek.
He kisses her then, slow and without expectation, and he isn't sure when they crossed this line. How does one describe it? How is it possible to identify the point where a sister stops being someone you have to put up with day after day and starts being someone you want to and are prepared to spend the rest of your life with? What does he lack that everyone else has that keeps them from making that leap, from merciless teasing to kissing in the alcove behind the War Council room with a bunch of dusty scrolls? What makes her kiss him back, to go from wary and ready to attack to needy and clutching?
It's just another question to add to the dozens he doesn't think will ever be answered. What happened to my mother? Why did Uncle vouch for me? Who will become the next Lord or Lady of the Fire Nation if Azula and I are truly banished? What makes my sister lie to me and use me and then trust me with her body and soul?
Later, when she's almost completely asleep, he leans over and whispers in her ear, "We could start our own country."
***
“You can’t be serious.”
Mai drawls the word can’t on forever, as if the more syllables she forced into it the more she could block it from her mind. The very subtle widening of her eyes is the only thing that clues them in to how little she was expecting that. Then she adds, “Is that even possible?” like, on principle, she hadn’t expected either of them to stop and consider if a thing could be done before they tried to do it.
Azula’s mouth gets tight around the corners and she gets an angry sideways look to her eyes, so Ty Lee says quickly, “I want to hear this! Just think, Mai; if they pull this off, we could be there for the birth of a fifth nation! Wouldn’t that just be the coolest thing ever?”
“I might have trouble containing my excitement,” Mai replies, like she can think of a dozen other things she would rather have happen.
The two of them are hanging upside down from a tree, and their identical dark orange robes wrapped up tight around them like cocoons make them look like batorangutans, and the image would have made Zuko laugh if this courtyard wasn’t so much like a different one from a different place and time where the four of them last gathered that he found himself unconsciously waiting for the bracing cry of a turtleduck.
Ty Lee frowns at her, and then at Azula and Zuko. “Why do you want to split anyway? Wasn’t the Fire Lord going to come, or at least send someone?”
“Finder’s keepers,” Azula snaps, like she hadn’t expected them to oppose the idea at all and was now at a loss; if her two best friends didn’t take her seriously, then how were they going to make this grand shift in world history, making a country not bound by faith to an element? “Father’s ancestors have been trying to checkmate the Earth Kingdom for a hundred years without success, and I succeeded single-handedly-“ here, Zuko flinches, but his sister either doesn’t notice her mistake or ignores him “-and he’ll just take that away from me without even so much as a thank you. Well, he would, if he bothered to acknowledge my accomplishment at all.”
“How mature of you,” says Mai drolly, shifting position a little so that feeling returned to her legs. “Founding a whole new nation for the sole purpose of getting revenge on your father.”
“We can’t explain it,” Zuko breaks in, because Azula had brought two fingers up and he really did believe she could zap her own friend between the eyes. “We just had an idea and wanted your opinion, that’s all.”
Mai backpedals, “I’m just worried. It’s hard enough trying to run a city, and that’s already been established. You’re talking about making a whole new country. You’re still new here; the Dai Li’s loyalty is anything but certain, and you have a grand total of two loyal subjects; Ty Lee and myself. And with Azula being-“
She falters, because the princess is making a vicious ix-naying motion across the pale column of her throat, so Mai finishes lamely, “It’ll be hard on her.”
Zuko looks at Ty Lee and Ty Lee looks at Zuko, both of them immediately curious because the air has taken on the twangy scent of a secret, and Mai is getting down from the tree and straightening out her robes like it will take back her words and fix the entire thing. Then they both shrug; they’ve had their fill of secrets to take to the grave and have no wish for another one.
“I’ll be by your side no matter what you choose to do,” Ty Lee says to Azula, and he’s almost envious of the careless, easy way she throws promise and devotion at his sister’s feet.
Mai leaves then, brushing in between them and saying in a very soft voice, “I think the two of you could do it together,” and he looks at her in shock, but her eyes were staring straight ahead and her mouth was held in a straight line like she had never said a word and he wonders if he imagined it. It was a bit like a hummingcrow; you think you see it pecking at the ground, one pointy foot facing west and the other north, and the next second it was two stories up and thirty feet away and you’re so surprised at how quick it has moved that you wonder if you ever really saw it on the ground at all.
***
"So. Jet was right all along, wasn't he?" The scrawny thing with all the facepaint says somberly. "You two were firebenders."
They're sitting in a triangle on a bunch of barrels in the Lower Ring, her and Zuko and the third guy, the long skinny one with the hat, passing a tin of cookies from one to the other. It was, in retrospect, not the weirdest thing he'd ever done, but it was definitely up there. He wasn't even sure how he got here in the first place. The cookies weren't half bad, though.
"Man," continues the scrawny one. "Jet would absolutely flip if he were here. He'd never let anyone forget how he was right. Assuming he didn't get himself killed trying to kill you first. Although I guess he jumped a step ahead on that one."
"I'm sorry," Zuko says, because it seems appropriate.
"Yeah," Facepaint swings her legs, staring hard at the dirt caked in between her toes. Long and Skinny reaches over with the cookie tin and takes her hand. "We still miss him, and we probably always will. He was a good guy. He never really quite got it, though. He had the right idea, but something would always come along and distract him. He was just a guy, like the rest of us. We aren't gods or Avatars or princes or even benders, and even if we were, it wouldn't matter. We're still people who all breathe the same air and that in itself is the greatest miracle and nobody appreciates it. Breathing is nothing until you stop."
The cookie tin goes to him, and Zuko rummages around to see if there are any of the oatmeal ones with the giant sugar flakes left, but Facepaint grabs his attention when she says, "They talk about you, you know."
"Not surprising."
"Actually, it is. They talk about your sister the way you'd all expect them to, but you. Sure, you and your uncle are the Fire Lord's family, and through your blood you receive his crimes and they feel they can blame you for their uprooted lives, and they hate you, of course, but you were their teasmiths and fellow refugees first and foremost. You never harmed a living soul, you never once used your firebending against them. And they ... well, they trust you. They feel like they can come to you, and you would listen. You, in particular. Someone, somewhere started hoping and it spread."
Zuko blinks. "Why?"
Facepaint shrugs again. "It's time for a change. The people, they came here to Ba Seng Se because they were on their last chance, and they were at their most desperate and they were so afraid of trying and failing that they just followed the rules and the lies fed to them, and look where it's gotten them. The city's in figurative ruins. It needs to change. And okay, so maybe you're just here to further the ambitions of your father and the Fire Nation's inane wish to take over the world, but something about your scar tells me you're not.
"The Avatar can't do it by himself, and unlike him, we don't have hundreds of lives to live. We've only got one."
***
They’re considerably easier to sneak up on than they should be, considering they’re supposed to be in deeper hiding than ever before. It only takes him a week to find them this time, as opposed to an entire winter last year.
They’re all laughing about something, as if the more frequently they crack jokes than the easier it will be to ignore the comet that can be seen clearly at night now.
Zuko leaps into the firelight, and the moment his feet hit the ground the earthbender’s spinning and the words “I need your help” have just barely left his lips before she slams her heel into the ground and the bones of her thighs and hips drag the earth up and he darts to the side just in time, but a boulder follows and his stomach hits the ground and then he’s up again, not of his own power because the wind’s blown him back into the cliff and all the breath leaves him.
He hits the ground and rolls, eyes flickering in their direction and then he has to duck because there’s a boomerang flying for his head and then again because a boomerang comes back, and he can firebend the water whip away but he doesn’t, he yells, “I’m not here to hurt you!” and it pauses, so close to his face he sees double.
“Prove it,” Katara sneers, and he lowers his arms as she raises hers.
“Anything,” he goes. “Anything I can do to prove it, I will.”
“How about you give us back the Earth Kingdom, slime?” the earthbender says in that voice like an earthquake, the one that always sounds like she’s saying, “on your knees!” like she can get away with it. She tilts her palms up and locks her elbows, and he feels rather than sees the dirt respond and so he reacts.
“You can have it.”
They freeze, all of them, and it would have been funny if it wasn’t so serious.
“What?” That’s the Avatar, and Zuko only knows it’s him by process of elimination. He looks so different; his torso is wrapped again and again and again in drab-colored Earth cloth and he remembers the gaping hole in his back and the lack of an exit wound and knows he’s got that lightning bouncing around inside of him, frying his blood and messing with his bending, and there’s a sheen of soot grey fuzz on his head that covers up the airbender’s arrow.
“You can have the Earth Kingdom,” Zuko repeats, calmly and slowly. “We’re giving it to you. Take your king and put him back on the throne, and get him a better advisor.”
The Avatar’s eyes narrow. “So we can just walk right into Ba Seng Se and you’ll walk out?”
“Well, no,” and all at once they raise their arms in preparation to attack and he says quickly, “Just hear me out, will you? Let me explain what my sister and I have planned, and then if you don’t like it you’re more than welcome to wreak all the magic havoc you want on me. Deal?”
There are a few moments of silence, and he can see all of them looking at one another out of the corners of their eyes, and then the Avatar lowers his staff to his side and the rest of them follow suit and realization strikes him hard and fast.
He understands now, how come it was so easy to find them and catch them by surprise.
Before… well, before a lot of things, they were bound by a mutual fear of the unknown and a secret agenda to beat each other at bending (except for the boomerang guy, who was obeying his father’s last wish to protect his little sister and Zuko could understand that).
And now, now they were forgetting to watch their backs, because they trusted each other so thoroughly and completely that they didn’t have to; there were three other people watching their backs for them. And, although it was a bit odd to think about it, he didn’t think any one of them would ever get married, because what are vows to love and cherish when they’ve sacrificed blood and life and sweat to keep each other safe, when they already love each other so much that they might as well be married, all four of them, and he should stop thinking. Now.
Because he’s already drawing parallels between them and him and Azula.
He shucks his sandals off and comes to sit by the fire, and when he pulls a map of the world out of the folds of his tunic they gather around him and he spreads it out into the dirt.
“The Earth Kingdom is by far the largest continent in existence, and when divided, it falls pretty evenly into three parts. Here, you have the southern half,” and he draws his finger around the chunk of land in the south and the three islands that accompany it. “And it has the largest concentration of citizens, by far, and it’s also the most heavily infiltrated by the Fire Nation. Then you have the northwestern chunk, which is just a boat’s ride away from two of the Air Temples, the North Pole, and the Fire Nation. Lastly, you have Ba Seng Se. Azula and I plan to cut it in half.”
This is met with an immediate explosion of “no way!” from the gathered ensemble, and he waits until they fall silent before he draws a dividing line between the two northern halves and the southern half.
“This will be the new Earth Kingdom. Roughly, it’ll be the same size as all the other nations. Your best bet for a capital will probably be New Ozai - er, Omashu,” he corrects himself when their eyes flash fire. He pulls another scroll from inside his tunic and extends it to them. The Avatar takes it and looks at it, and his eyes go wide. “Show that to any Fire Nation general, admiral, regent, and whatever they call those people who supervise the mines, and they’ll have no choice but to move out and head on home, by order of Fire Lord Ozai, acting through Fire Princess Azula. Basically, that’s your key to the kingdom. Please don’t lose it. Azula practically had to write it in her blood.”
“What about the rest of the Earth Kingdom?” demands Toph impatiently, because pieces of paper are no interest to her.
“That belongs to Azula and I.”
“As what?” she says dryly. “The new Fire Nation?”
“No,” he answers, so flatly that surprise flits over all their faces, and the next second, realization hits Katara’s eyes and he turns his head away so she can’t see his scar and he can’t see her pity.
“Ozai has no idea you’re doing this, does he?” she goes, very quietly.
“No,” he repeats, just as softly.
“But if it’s not the new Fire Nation,” puts in the boomerang guy, who’s thinking along the same lines as Toph. “Then what is it?”
“Neutral territory. A nation with no affiliation to any kind of bender.” Four sets of eyebrows go up. “Think about it. Ba Seng Se is already home to almost all of the world’s refugees, and as I’ve already stated, this northwest part is half a day’s boat ride to any of the major temples. It’ll be a place where any bender can have any bender as a neighbor and there will be no special treatment for any one of them.
“They’ll even have the advantage of natural elements. The northern half of the Earth Kingdom has some of the world’s major waterways, and it’s cold enough in the winter that the waterbenders will feel right at home. For earth and sandbenders, there’s a major desert surrounding Ba Seng Se, and earthbenders are right at home anyway. Airbenders… er, well,” he shoots the Avatar a sheepish look. “We aren’t exactly sure what you need, but we’re sure we can make something work. It’s the firebenders who are lacking the most, but we can exist pretty much anywhere so long as there’s sunlight.”
He swallows against his dry throat and watches them think.
“You do realize that by helping us do this, by giving us an Earth Kingdom, you’re giving us an advantage in the war?” the Avatar asks.
“We’ll give you whatever you need,” Zuko replies, and lets them take that where they will.
“What about your uncle?” Toph says sharply, hands clenching into fists on her knees. “Are we ever going to see him again?”
Zuko starts, because he’s almost forgotten about Iroh entirely, and he doesn’t think he could have, but here he is. “Of course,” he rasps. “The instant I get back, I’ll let him go.”
There’s a pause, and then the Avatar blows himself to his feet and extends his hand, his face drawn all serious, and Admiral Zhao flashes briefly across Zuko’s mind, drawing his hand to his chest and dying instead of failing, and he doesn’t think he’s ever shaken a hand more firmly than he did the Avatar’s in that moment.
“Do you have a name picked out?” the airbender asks almost conversationally as he reseats himself next to Katara, and if he hadn’t been watching them Zuko would have missed the way she laced her fingers with his and gave them a proud squeeze.
“A name?” he echoes. “For what?”
“For your new country,” Toph elaborates with a giant, “Duh!”
“Well, no. Not really. I mean, what can we name it? We’ve got the Air Nomads, the Fire Nation, the Water Tribes, the Earth Kingdom, and the one that doesn’t belong. We’ll have to decide sometime, I suppose, but maybe we’ll wait until my children grow up, so they can name it without having known what it was like before,” and he lets them all picture him as a father and after they all shudder simultaneously, he continues, “Assuming I have children and assuming they inherit. They might not. Again, that part we haven’t really thought through. My sister’s still in that stage where she’s convinced that she’s going to live forever.”
An idea strikes the Avatar like a fork of lightning and he jabs his finger up into the air, exclaiming loudly, “Hey! If its neutral territory, you could call it the Third Jin!”
A few heartbeats of silence later, Toph says, “No,” so flatly and resolutely that the Avatar goes, “Oh, okay” in this really small kind of voice that really doesn’t suit him at all, and Sokka titters at him and that isn’t a strange sound at all, oh no.
Then they all start laughing, including Zuko, and go on longer and harder than was decent, until it gets to the point where they all know they aren’t laughing at the joke anymore, but more laughing for the sake of laughing with each other, and the way that it makes all their muscles all taut and hard like fighting does.
Like nothing can ever hurt them, and that’s a better security than even bending could be.
***
No matter how hard he tries, his uncle won't meet his eyes, and for that, Zuko isn't sure whether he's angry or grateful.
"It's a bit dusty, but it's good to see that it hasn't been ransacked," the old man goes nonchalantly, swiping a finger over one of the tables and holding it up to show the amount of grey that collected. "Hopefully it won't be too hard for business to pick up again. Although I do believe I shall need a new assistant before I can open shop," and here he puts his hands to his belly and laughs, even though there's hardly a drop of humor in what he says.
"I hope you'll be happy here," Zuko tells him, and Uncle pauses, tilting his head in his direction like all the false sincerity his nephew drips is weighing it down.
"You know I will," he says quietly. "It is you I'm concerned about."
Zuko chuckles. "Me? I think I'll be happy just about anywhere, so long as I'm not wearing a frilly apron and serving tea to old soldiers and pretty girls." A heartbeat of silence follows this, and he grows serious when Uncle refuses to take the offer of a joke, to pretend to be offended so that they can fall into their usual routine, to go back to the way things were before he betrayed him and the Avatar because isn't that why he got Uncle out of jail and took him back to this place?
"Yes, I suppose you will be," Uncle sits on one of the cushions, crossing his legs on automatic and gesturing for his nephew to do the same. "You rule this country now, anyway. That's your occupation. But more importantly, I think, you're a brother. That's your duty, first and foremost."
Suspicion licks at the edges of Zuko's thoughts. "What do you mean?"
Uncle looks troubled, as if he hadn't been expecting that he would have to explain it. "Is there anyone at the palace bothering Azula?"
"What do you mean?" Same words, different question.
"Hmm. Maybe that is the problem with growing older. I grow more prudish and the ways of the youth seem all the more uncouth. But she is so young, is she not? So very young," his hands fiddle in his lap, clenching and unclenching so the flesh grew flushed around his knuckles in the same way Azula started blushing at the base of her neck and it went down from there, like he has something to hide, or like he wants there to be a teacup there most desperately. Starting to feel a bit antsy himself, Zuko gets up and goes to make some.
"You're worried she's not old enough to run a country?" he asks, removing a kettle from one of the hooks above the kitchen sink and filling it up. He sets a fire in the stove with a snap of his fingers and goes to hunt down the tea.
"No, nothing like that. Definitely not. She is frighteningly capable in that regard. It's just that..." he pushes his fingers together awkwardly.
How can he not find any tea in a teashop? He closes the cabinet door labeled "tea" and goes fishing in some of the bins by the back door, but all they hold are the relics of whoever lived here before they moved in for all of three days, it seemed like. He scowls and straightens up, "Uncle, what exactly did you mean when you said 'is anyone bothering Azula'?"
"Backroom. I put them there before we left for the palace and locked it. My own foresight amazes me sometimes." As if he senses the hostility that flares in his direction, he adds quickly, "But never mind that. Azula came to visit me while you had me locked up in that most uncomfortable cell. She wanted to talk to me about poisons. Said a teasmith should know more than the common herbalist. Not quite sure I understand her logic..."
"So she wants to poison someone. She's known how to do that since she was five."
Uncle bows his head, and says heavily, like each word is a stone being removed from his heart, "She wanted to know if there was anything that could kill a child but not the mother that was carrying it."
Click, go the gears in Zuko's head, and he grabs onto the edge of the nearest table as the world around him shifts on its axis. What with Azula being … it’ll be hard on her, and his nose is assailed with the stench of a secret.
"Azula? Azula was pregnant?"
The old man looks up sharply, almost meeting his nephew's eyes before catching himself and averting his gaze, and then sadness etches itself firmly into his features. "I take it she's not anymore, then."
"No," Zuko breathes, sinking into the cushion. "No, she's not."
"Which brings me back to my point," Uncle prods gently. "Is there anyone at the palace bothering her?"
His voice shakes just a bit too much, because he hasn't been able to lie through his teeth for a very long time, "No. No, there's no one. She'd kill anyone who tried. You've seen those nails of hers."
Uncle sighs, and at long last, he meets Zuko's gaze head-on, and the disappointment evident there almost freezes the room. "And that is why I am concerned for you, Prince Zuko. A leader cannot start a kingdom by placing a lie as its first stone."
Behind them, the kettle shrieks.
***
He doesn't remember passing the doors and he doesn't remember passing the dilated-eyed Dai Li and he doesn't remember counting them but he knows that there's always one of them around him at all times (two when he's inside the palace walls and he wonders if that means anything) and then he's standing there on the red carpet with pillars spiraling away in the corners of his vision and she's at the top of the steps, and Lord Feng is simpering at her and she's got her arms crossed and her fingers crooked on her elbow in that way that says she's about to set someone on fire.
He wonders that if he takes his soul and crushes it into crumbs and then scatter them behind him when he walks past her, will she follow him? Has anyone ever followed him and the trail of soul-crumbs he leaves in his wake? (Did anyone ever look for Mom?)
Will she come after him and give him that look that says she could think of a thousand other things she could be doing, up until he starts asking her the questions no sixteen-year-old girl should ever have to answer?
He doesn't remember moving, but suddenly she's looking up at him and her eyes are rolling and her lips are saying, "He would have been a perfect firebender."
"Who, Feng?" he takes his eyes off her and finds the man, who’s walking away from them, stiff and proper and his robes are too neat and straight to be human, shining and silky and he’s dropping the crumbs of his soul, too, a trail of dark and grimy nuggets with bits of want and need and lust for power.
And there are one, two, three Dai Li.
"Mhmm," she says, and he looks at her and sees their child and doesn't know why he feels like he's lost something important because how could they do that to another human being; take him and take her and make someone that's entirely them and (through your blood you inherit your father's crime) and it doesn't stop him from wanting to meet that person but he can't now and he shouldn't dare to hope that there would be a second chance.
Why didn't you tell me? Why did you go to Uncle first?
It should mean something that he catches her by surprise, reaching out and seizing a hold of her elbow like he did (like she doesn’t consider him a threat or, maybe, maybe, because she trusts that he will never hurt her) and he uses the press of his thighs against hers to push her into the dark side of the pillar and she doesn't see the kiss coming and frankly, neither does he.
"What are you doing?" she barks, her hands finding his chest and pushing him away and when he runs his tongue over his lips he can taste Mai's paint and the peaches Ty Lee had found in the gutter in the courtyard. "The Dai Li will see us!"
"I know," he says, and (you can't build a kingdom with a lie as its first stone) so maybe this defines him. He’s the one who takes the chances and she’s the one that reaps the prizes (how about you give the Earth Kingdom back, slime?) and it's always been like this and he doesn't think he wants to know what life would be like without her. "Why did you say you needed me?"
"I didn't," she answers and maybe this is what defines him.
"I didn't need you. Not then. I just thought it would be fun to see what you would do--" drag her into the alcove behind the War Council room and kiss her senseless "-- and then Father would come and that would be the end of that and I would go back to the Fire Nation and start a new game. Why did you take my offer?"
I need you.
I love you.
You smell like Mom.
I reached a crossroads and I took the only path that didn't spell death for everyone involved.
When he kisses her, he misses and gets a bit of her chin in his haste before he latches onto her mouth and he grabs her head between his hands and his thumbs are digging into the shells of her ears and he can't really get her mouth any closer, can he, and he sucks at her lips and tongue and he tastes blood and he isn't sure who it belongs to and it doesn't matter, really, because its all the same kind.
She gives in and kisses him back, and his hands move to cradle the swell of her hips and the curves of her thighs through her clothes, which in turn prompts her to heft herself up and wrap her legs around his waist and they brace their weight against the pillar and then her fingers are tangling in his hair and he's almost glad he grew it out. She yelps when he digs his nails into her flesh, mouth gaping momentarily around his, and he knows she'll walk with a twinge tomorrow and he'll be proud because who ever gets to do that to Azula? And by tomorrow, everyone will know it will be because of him and Uncle will have his proof that --
He untangles himself from her abruptly, hands closing around her ankles crossed together in the small of his back, and she makes a noise of protest that is entirely woman.
He sets her down and she looks at him with her eyes hooded and curious and dark, and he can feel her fingertips, hooked into the front of his pants, and he isn't sure what he's proving to who when he places both his hands on the pillar beside her hips.
He thinks that now, if anyone asks, he can throw lightning.
***
"You know they're sleeping together!"
Zuko squeezes his eyes shut. Lord Feng really didn't have to slam his balled fists down at that point; his words themselves were effective enough. Did that mean he was losing his control? Had he planned to say that then, or had it slipped out because of his desperation? Because he felt like it was his last straw?
He would have been a better firebender.
It really didn't matter, did it? Because it was the most pointed, sharpest weapon possible to use against them. It played on shame, again, and nothing destroys a person faster than that, destroys a cause faster than scandal and there's a reason there's so much of it because it works and it's silly to almost feel hopeful, because everything was going to come crashing down now and he knew it would and yet he went and kissed his sister out there in front of --
Wait.
"They're sleeping together," Feng feels the need to repeat, even though the walls of this room have never heard such things before and still ring with the sound. His fists relax, palms uncurling on the table and shoulders beginning to droop as if being weighed down, and if Zuko was noticing this, it meant he has opened his eyes. "My agents have caught them, numerous times. And it's... it's consensual. How wrong is that?"
Wait.
His eyes snap to Azula, whose mouth is twisted with fury. Sparks crawl around her knuckles, and there is no surprise anywhere in her face, just the righteous fury of a woman accused, and there is no shame.
There is no shame.
And if there is no shame, there is nothing Feng can use to destroy them.
The Avatar merely blinks, like he isn't sure how this is relevant at all. He folds his hands in front of him, fingers steepling, and says, slowly and assuredly so that they don't miss a single word, "Yes. I know. However, my job is to protect this fledgling nation against power-hungry tyrants who brainwash their subjects and lock away their monarchs, not to judge two people in love."
***
"I don't think there's ever been so many earthbenders cooperating at one time in all of history," comments the eternally-astonished Earth King, turning in a wide circle on the palace roof to take in the sight. "In the past few months I've seen amazing teamwork in the army, but this! This will go down in the legends."
"We couldn't have done it without you," Zuko says, partly bemused by the Earth King's almost childlike delight in his world and all the people in it, and partly floored by his absolutely jovial attitude towards him and Azula, for all that they kicked him off of his throne and stole half his kingdom. "We need as many specially trained earthbenders as we can get."
"Oh, stop yapping," Toph cuts in impatiently. "Some of us would like to get this done with before we all grow hunchbacks and chin hairs."
"Is everyone in position?"
She widens her stance, digging her heels into the stone and concentrating hard. "Yes."
"Then let's bring this city to its knees!"
"I like to think of it as bringing them to their feet," Azula murmurs to him, as Toph raises her arms into the air, and when she shrieks, "NOW!", she slams her fists down hard, burying them deep into the stone, and the two firebenders sling a giant flare high into the sky, glowing brilliant blue against the clouds.
There's a sound like the world being wrenched apart, and for a moment everything holds absolutely still, sparing the groaning of the earth like a door creaking open. Toph strains, every vein in her forehead standing out, and then, at last, there's a sound like half a dozen teeth popping out of its gums, and then the entire Inner Wall, the one that seperates the Lower Ring from the Upper Ring, lifts right out of the ground. Toph lets go, and the earthbenders step up to plate, hundreds of them from all over and every corner of the world, breaking the wall apart and crushing it into more manageable bits midair, swinging them around and around above their heads like a slingshot and then they let go --
And the next ring of earthbenders, the more moderate level ones, catch the pieces as they fall, swinging them down and around and then up, out farther than Zuko or Azula could see, to the next group, to the next, until they reached the Outer Wall and could dispose of all the rubble and debree safely, and he jumps when he feels his sister touch his elbow and say, "Now we have one city, with no visible boundary between the rich and the poor. Father will hate it."
So maybe you're here to further the interests of your father, but something about your scar tells me you're not.
"Should we keep the name?" he muses. "Ba Seng Se?"
"Why? Do you have some amazing, inspirational name for it instead?" she asks scathingly.
"We no longer have a New Ozai," he shrugs, and grins at her as she blanches. "How about New Ursa?"
Her expression is absolutely stoic, but her eyes glitter when she says, "Never again."
"So," Toph interrupts, shifting so that she was facing them and smiling that cocky, superior grin that she always wears. "Are you two really smooching it up or is that just the Dai Li spreading their nonsense again to try and tear you down?"
Zuko looks at Azula and Azula looks at Zuko, and he opens his mouth and -- you are a brother; that is your duty, first and foremost -- then he laughs, grabbing his sister and wrestling her into a headlock, grinding his knuckles into her scalp and thoroughly messing up her hair. It takes her all of four seconds to escape, and she backs away, scowling and raking her nails through her hair impatiently and looking almost pleased. Then she darts forward again to press a kiss to his mouth, hot and spontaneous like she does everything.
"Yes," she tells Toph. "Yes, we are."
The earthbender arches an eyebrow, and then she shrugs and says somewhat exasperatedly, "Great. Now I owe Sokka five coins. I'll never understand firebenders!"
***
It shouldn't surprise him as much as it does when, five days later, he finds himself caught in the middle of one of the most intense conversations he has ever witnessed.
"That's your problem! You can never decide anything!" The little girl stamps her foot so that the heel of her boots kicked up sparks, wild black braids flying as she twists her head from side to side with fury. "That's so typical of a waterbender! They're so wishy-washy!"
"Oh, yeah?" her opponent bellowed as well as he could with his high-pitched child's voice, his dark face darkening further with rage. "Well, no one likes to play with you anyway, because you're a firebender and when they get mad, they ruin everything!"
"My daddy says it doesn't matter that I'm a firebender!" The little girl clenches her fist, squeezing her eyes shut as if she could force her beliefs to be truer that way. "It doesn't matter anymore because we're safe here! Nobody's allowed to hate firebenders!"
"Ha!" the waterbender points at her, teeth bared. "My mommy says that your daddy isn't really your daddy. My mommy says that your real daddy is a fire nation soldier and that's why you came here as reffi-gees, and that your daddy doesn't know and that's why everyone laughs at him when he's all confused about why you're a firebender. Because he's a big dummy, just like you!"
Zuko knows what's going to happen the instant the girl sidesteps from the awning of the building they're standing under to be in the sunlight, bringing her hands up. He starts forward, but he's too late; she sweeps her arms up and locks her elbows, shooting an impressive jet of flame right at the boy. He jumps to the side not a moment too soon, but the florist's shop he was standing by didn't have the luxury of mobility and was instantly ablaze.
Color drains out of the faces of both children, and their argument is forgotten in a heartbeat in their search for the quickest escape route.
The florist himself is quicker, however, and snatches them both up by the scruffs of their collars. They yelp and swing their fists, like fish caught on a hook and desperate to escape. The cracking and popping of the timbers drown out the sound of all three of them yelling.
Before he's truly aware that he's moved, Zuko grabs the florist by the elbow, surprising him into dropping both the children. The man stammers something, but Zuko's attention is on the waterbender and when he yells, "Do your duty!" the kid jumps near clean out of his skin and then he catches on. He spreads his arms wide and turns his palms outward.
Then he clenches his fists and a dozen nearby homes suddenly find their kitchen sinks and bathtubs empty as all the water comes crashing down on the florist's. With a movement like a weaver dragging his loom down, the boy condenses all the steam that immediately shoots up into the air with a screaming hiss and brings it down again, until every lick of orange is gone, leaving a severely disfigured front parlor in its wake, but a standing, solid building.
The boy looks up at him, his face a mixture of fierce pride mingled with recognition and fear and Zuko smiles at him without really thinking about it.
Then he fishes in his satchel and tosses a couple gold coins to the florist, "When you have a chance, go to the palace. Ask for a man named Feng. He's recently unemployed and has a wonderful eye for interior design and I'm sure he'll be happy to help you. And also, I'd like to purchase that," he points at a potted infant tree set far enough to the side of the shop that it had been undamaged by the fire.
The florist blinks, utterly relieved, somewhat bemused, and most definitely not sure what to think, but he nods his assent and Zuko goes and hefts the pot up onto his hip.
"Come with me," he says to the two children. "I have something to teach both of you."
The boy nods, but the girl's eyes are fixed firmly on her boots and her mouth is little more than a thin white line on her face. When he leads them both down an alleyway to a wider, more open space, however, she follows, albeit reluctantly. He sets the tree down and turns to her, kneeling down and tilting his head towards her so that she has no choice but to look at him with the trademark golden eyes of a firebender. Her gaze immediately flicks to his scar, and she goes even more ashen and glances away quickly, turning her hands up and staring at her palms like they're the most disgusting things she's ever seen. Like she looks at them and sees her brother with a mark like his.
"Tell me what firebending is," he begins.
"I hate it," she replies in a heartbeat, tossing her head to clear her braids away from her face. "It does nothing but get me in trouble. Just when I think it might be cool, I go and set someone's house on fire."
"How do you do it?"
"I don't know," she stretches her hands out in front of her, stance widening. "I just ... do it." Her eyes narrow and the next second, there's a huge gush of flame arcing from her fingertips, and she snatches her hands back to her, mouth twisted.
"I see," Zuko frowns, having not been sure until this point that a person could even firebend with so many mistakes. He stands, dusting off the knees of his trousers with a sigh. "First off, you're letting the fire control you. You're feeling it inside of you and you want as much of it as possible and that's why it gets out of hand so much. You're a firebender, girl. There will always be fire inside of you. You don't have to be scared of running out.
"Second, there are three exit points a flame could take. You're only using one; your hands. The other two are your feet and your mouth, although most people consider it terribly rude to belch fire, so try and save it for someone particularly obnoxious," here, he shoots a pointed look at the waterbender, and she stifles a giggle. "But you also use your feet, which is why a firebender must be light and never truly rooted." He kicks into a handstand, shifting his weight back and forth so he could turn and face her. "Fire doesn't have the brute strength of a rock or the tenacity and thoroughness of air and water, but its sly and nimble in its own right and that's why the fire nation army places so much into a soldier's agility scores.
“A firebender must give up the solid foundation and support that the earthbenders have, the comfort of waterbending’s repetitive movements and the sheer dizzying amount of fuel that the airbenders never run out of, and they’re left with an element that can hurt them as much as it can help them and in the right hands, that’s its greatest power.” With a twist of his hips and one arm, he becomes a momentary vortex of flame before backflipping onto his feet. "If you use one exit point too much, you'll risk damaging them permanently and mangling your bending from there on out."
"So I've got to learn to take smaller amounts and spread them out through my body?" she looks at her hands and her feet thoughtfully.
"Like taking cookies from a cookie tin. Only take one and never from the same tin twice."
She lets her arms drop down to her sides, face shuttered close. "That still doesn't change the fact that all fire does is destroy. It destroyed my home and now I'm destroying other people's."
"That's where you come in," he gestures for the waterbender to come in closer, which he does with an almost relieved look, and he tugs them both over to the tree. He touches the tip of the top branch, and soon it begins to smoke and then burn.
"Each element has its potential for destruction. Waterbenders can make floods, earthbenders earthquakes and airbenders tornadoes. Each one can kill," he turns his palm towards the tree and pushes, and the whole thing goes up with a soft whoosh. "But each one also has the ability to, if not heal, then at least to built anew."
They remain there until the tree is nothing but ashes and glowing embers, and at that point Zuko holds up the tiny seed he had brushed off the elbow of the florist's sleeve earlier, and then he pushes it deep into the ashes.
"I need both of you," he murmurs. "Boy, a plant has no blood, just water. Stretch the water out, force it into boundaries it might not be ready for. Encourage it to grow. Girl, focus on the sun. Feel it on your scalp, feel its light and its warmth. The plant needs it more than you do. Channel it. Do not start a flame; light and heat only. Entice the seedling out. It is the first step of control; the smallest increment only." He stops talking at that point, because both of them have become so wrapped up in what they were doing, palms spread open above the empty pot and brows furrowed, he doubts they can hear him anyway.
The seconds drag into minutes and then longer and then... and then the ashes fall away and something miniscule and incredibly pathetic pokes its tiny green head up into the light.
"Well," Zuko says wryly. "It works a lot better when there's an earthbender and an airbender, too, but for some reason we don't have any volunteering earthbenders and the only airbender I know of is busy fixing the world and doesn't have any children. Though that's likely to change soon enough."
Both the children beam up at him with grins too wide for their faces, and for one startling moment, Zuko sees a flash of Azula in the young girl's eyes, in the way her face stretches with joy and self-satisfaction that comes with mastering a new trick and it disconcerts him and makes him nostalgic all in one go.
He imagines the child Azula never had would be something like her.
Something scuffs against the cobblestones behind him, and when he turns he finds his uncle standing next to the well, and he can tell by the look on his face that he had been watching the whole thing.
The man steps up to him as he turns back to watch the children, spine automatically straight and stiff up until Iroh rests a hand on his shoulder. They stand there for a moment, and then Zuko says in a low a voice as he ever could, "Azula and I ... we split from the Earth Kingdom and started a new nation with only revenge on our minds. Now, that, I think," he smiles at the firebender, who is cupping a tiny lick of flame between her palms and staring at it like she saw so much more about it than she ever had before. The waterbender stands next to her, shoulder-to-shoulder, filaments of water snaking around his wrists. "Is why we fought to keep it."
He knows that it’ll be only a matter of weeks now until their father’s full retribution comes down on them and that will hurt in every possible way it can, but he thinks of Azula and he thinks of Uncle and thinks of the way Mai said, ”you two would do a good job together” and the way the facepaint girl said, ”the people trust you” and he thinks he can handle it.
He could probably build a wall around them and their entire nation using only the pride in Iroh’s voice as he says, "Well done, King Zuko."