Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

-Weeks ago-

They’d found traces on the beach, however late. The impressions of feet in sand; more than one set, less than four. The discarded cloth a certain servant had packed his rice balls in. His shoes, neatly set above the tide line and apparently voluntarily discarded, because spirits forbid her brother be kidnapped with a little dignity.

“I know a good bounty hunter,” Governor Shohei had offered. “She may still be in town.”

The bounty hunter had not, in fact, still been in town.

The bounty hunter had left in some hurry the night prior.

“…Ah,” the governor had said.

-Now-

“Brother,” Azula said, and was pleased to witness his entire frame lock up, even with the gulf of their ships between them.

It was good to be remembered.

Katara wouldn’t board Azula’s ship for explanations.

His sister laughed across the distance at the idea of boarding theirs.

Zuko did not think he would feel particularly safe on either ship.

“Brother,” Azula said. “So help me if you take yourself hostage again.”

…If he left this one, he wasn’t sure what she’d do to a ship that had been so impertinently carrying him.

His sister’s hands were gripping the rails. Maybe it was just the moonlight, making them seem so white. But.

But he trusted her. It had been a decision, and he’d made it.

(He’d promised he wasn’t leaving. He hadn’t meant to break it, but “hadn’t meant to” had never meant much in their family.)

(Except that she’d come for him, like intentions mattered. Like she trusted him, too.)

“I’m coming over,” he called.

“I thought you were going to explain,” Katara said, her arms crossed. “Or was that a lie, too?”

“I didn’t⁠⁠⁠— I can. Maybe. But I don’t think we have time, right now. Azula isn’t⁠⁠⁠—”

“Brother. You are trying my patience.”

“⁠⁠⁠—Patient,” he finished, lamely.

“Why should I let you go back? So you can start another civil war?”

“I. Don’t think that’s how civil wars work.”

“You’d be the expert.”

“Please watch my people while I’m gone,” he said.

That was trust, too. He didn’t remember when he’d made that decision.

He was still holding his black mask with its lone white dot. He offered it back to her; it belonged to the Water Tribe, anyway.

She took it. “…Are you going to be okay?”

She might come with, if he asked. They were still mask buddies.

Are you going to be okay, she’d asked, like the future of his nation hadn’t just caught up with him.

“As long as no one tries to kill me,” he said, “then probably. …Uh. Could you give me a ride over?”

To Azula’s ship. In her fleet. How did she even get a fleet?

-Somewhat less than weeks ago-

“Please,” said Admiral Arata of the Central Fire Navy Fleet (formerly the Southern, but southern maneuvers had become unfashionable in the current court). There was not a single shred of amusement to be found between his trailing moustache and his tea cup. “Please, do not go visiting sick relatives on me now.”

Admiral Masuko, formerly a lieutenant of the Northern fleet, now its ranking survivor, slurped his own tea with culturally appropriate levels of obnoxiousness.

They had found a little used balcony for their mid-meeting tea break. Their little balcony overlooked the hawkery. The hawkery in which the Avatar and his remaining Water Tribe ambassador were checking, again, for messages.

“There have been a lot of storms by the Sun Warrior’s island lately,” the Avatar said. “If Appa can’t get through, maybe their snowy owl hawks haven’t been able to, either?”

“Or maybe,” the Water Tribe boy said, “the North saw a free political hostage.”

“Not a word,” Admiral Arata said.

“Perhaps,” said Admiral Masuko, which very much qualified as a word, “His Majesty will reconsider his stance on enforcing our northern border, now that the Avatar’s own waterbender has been waylaid.”

Along with an entire navy crew and the largely Fire Nation prisoners they were transporting, neither man said. (Including a ranking navy officer who’d retired in good standing, neither was privy to.)

The Fire Nation Navy’s decline hadn’t begun with the promotion of a singularly unfit man to admiral, nor with the scrapping of a sizable portion of their combined fleets at the northern seige. It had begun when Fire Lord Ozai had been handed some mechanic’s designs for flying ships.

The man never had taken good care of his toys, new or old.

Perhaps they’d have to invite the Admiral of the Aerial Fleet to the next one of these little tea breaks. Whenever someone with enough rank was found lively enough for the promotion. If their new Fire Lord even cared to appoint one.

Down below, the young Avatar was rocking on his heels. “ ‘Hostage’ is a pretty strong word.”

“Sorry,” the Water Tribe boy self-corrected. “I meant my sister is their honored political guest.”

Admiral Arata snorted under his moustache. Raised his cup. Nearly dropped it.

There was a girl on their tea balcony. A teenager, dressed largely in black. Neither veteran had seen her approach. She was leaning in the shadows by the doorway, where niether those in the hall nor those below could see her.

“The Northern Water Tribe has your prince,” she said, in a rather singular monotone. “Are you coming?”

This was Governor Ukano’s daughter; a favorite of both Ozai’s children.

After the abuse and neglect of Fire Lord Ozai, under the benevolent de-prioritization of Fire Lord Iroh, both admirals remembered a boy who’d shouted at the war council on behalf of their lost fleet.

“…One of us should stay,” said Admiral Arata.

“I’m sure they’d give her back if I went there and asked,” the Avatar was saying. “Once the storms⁠⁠⁠—”

“You are not making their guests plural, Aang.”

“I command the Northern Fleet,” said Masuko. This was official etiquette amongst the admiralty for calling dibs.

-Now-

“Sir,” greeted the youngest of his two admirals, a man promoted post-siege to the rather vacant position of Admiral of the (Also Rather Vacant) Northern Fleet. He seemed to have acquired more ships, since then.

“Admiral Masuko,” Zuko said. “Are you… committing treason?”

“The fleet has no standing orders from the Fire Lord, Sir,” the man said. “Except to refrain from engagement with the Northern Water Tribe.”

The Water Tribe ships had drawn up short. The moon glittered over the generous distance they’d left between fleets.

(The Water Tribe, a hundred years from combat though they might be, had the tactical sense to realize they were no match for the steel wall ahead of them. Not unless the Ocean was inclined to intervene.

The ocean, who had lost its first ever boat race fair and square, was too busy replaying the adventure with some very confused merchant ships in the southern hemisphere, half of whom were going to make very good time.)

“Wrong question, Zuzu,” Azula said. “It’s not about whether he’s committing treason now. Admiral, what would you say if I ordered you to engage with them?”

“Then,” the admiral replied, “I would be committing treason.”

His tone was not disinclined; his gaze was on the vessel Zuko had just come from. And its deck, covered largely in blue-clad figures.

“Our own troops are on that ship,” Zuko said. “All the survivors of the invasion.”

The admiral took a breath in; closed his eyes, and let it out. When he opened them again, it was to the more distinctly Water Tribe ships that he turned. “Yes, Sir. And for the rest?”

The treason ship had not yet sailed. But all hands were, as they say, on deck.

Zuko squared his shoulders. “There has never been a reason for us to attack the Water Tribes.”

“Zuzu,” Azula started, eyes narrowing.

“There hasn’t. The South had no resources we wanted. Does the North even have land under its ice caps? Zhao’s attack was an unprovoked and entirely unnecessary waste of life.”

The admiral looked at those ships a moment more, before turning back to him. He inclined his head.

“They took you,” said Azula, who needed no further provocation.

“They didn’t even know they had me.”

“Excellent,” she said. “Let’s inform them.”

“Azula. This isn’t a dream.”

(She knew that. She just failed to see the relevance.)

“We can tell them,” Zuko allowed. “When we send them our ambassador. From the colonies.”

His sister tilted her head, slow as an owl-shrike. “ ‘Our ambassador’? Why, brother, one would almost think you were done running.”

He held his head as high as he ever had with a crown. “Let’s go back, Azula. And… thank you for coming for me,” he said.

“As if you needed it,” she sniffed. “I cannot fathom why you keep attempting rescues, if this is how lackluster they feel.”

“You came,” he said, because having now been on the other side, that was the part that felt important. “…Where are our eggs?” he asked, when it became clear she would not be trapped in the gooey feelings of their previous conversational topic.

Ty Lee, as it turned out, had three baby slings under her coat. Only two of them were occupied. Zuko watched her gaudy rock wobble from side-to-side on her head in the arctic breeze, one former-circus-acrobat’s height from a hard kiss with cold steel and possibly a quick roll into the ocean waves. Fire Nation railings were not made with child care in mind.

“Balance is good for its aura,” she said sagely.

“…I’ll take ours back now,” he said. And did. As he settled them under his own parka, their heat seeming to reach out into his core, Azula turned her gaze back to him.

“Let’s be clear, brother. From now on, only I’m allowed to leave.”

…That was fair.

Together, an entire fleet of steel⁠⁠—including one ship under new management⁠⁠—set course south.

“Zuko,” Azula asked much later, into the darkness of their shared captain’s quarters. She had, of course, claimed the actual bed. “Did you put on weight in a labor camp?”

“I slept, too,” Zuko said, from his floor futon. It was nostalgic.

She snorted into the dark. An entirely imperfect sound. “Shut up and be an egg heater.”

“You were the one who⁠⁠⁠—”

“Ssssh.”

The captain’s quarters on an imperial class cutter were no prison. Nevertheless, Zuko slept quite well.

(It was very easy to confuse the wiggling of an egg for the rocking of a ship.)

The ice pack gave way to warmer seas; the polar bear geese stalk-swimming in their wake were replaced by dolphin-oarfish arcing at their bow. The northernmost colonies came into sight. The coastline was familiar to him from three years of sailing, in a way the shores of the Home Islands hadn’t been.

Zuko had never thought of the colonies as his, while he’d been banished. They’d not been the Fire Nation he was trying to get back to.

And the governor’s mansion at Shinchiheisen was certainly no imperial palace. Yet he’d returned to it as many times, now, as he’d ever returned home.

“Are we staying, Zuzu?” Azula asked, while Zuko moved his egg from its sling into the nest of his crossed legs. They were in Governor Shohei’s office, which was of course now Azula’s office. “Or are we finding that nice Earth Kingdom family of yours?”

There were stacks of correspondence by her hands. An older woman was collecting the pile in her outbox; this woman was not quite in the clothes of a head housekeeper, but what she wore now was far finer than a kitchen servant’s.

“I see you’ve noticed my lion-ferret,” Azula said.

“Lady Huian,” Zuko said, bowing over the low table where he sat. (His egg wiggled forward as he did. This, too, was easily overlooked.) “Thank you for the rice balls.”

“Thank you for not losing them in the sand,” she said. And stopped to straighten his rather hopeless clothes in passing.

“Would you rather serve him?” Azula asked from behind her desk, like it wasn’t a test.

“I’ve had enough gray hairs from this one.” She applied herself to tidying Azula’s space: refreshing the paper and envelopes and sealing wax, switching a new ink stick for the much ground down stub of its kin. Zuko had never wondered what happened to all those stubs, until he’d been balancing the budget on his own ship, and grinding them to their last. He’d spotted them in the palace, when he’d returned: when they were down to nubs, the higher servants gathered them up, and dumped them on the new hires.

The papers on Azula’s commandeered desk were stacked higher than when Zuko had left, but not so high as to imply that she’d let a mere missing brother impact her political efficiency. Tax flow reports; records of import and export; a partially covered map marking the retreat of their soldiers back to colony territory. Theoretically, most would then be placed on ships home; theoretically, that entire fleet off their coast could be used for said ferrying.

There were crop forecasts. Another map, left significantly bare in its own corner of the desk, with new lines he hadn’t understood until he’d spotted the ones around Omashu. These were the lines along which the Earth Kingdom was projected to shatter. There was no Earth King on the throne. Not even a figurehead with a bear to hold them together, when one prefecture’s famine became another’s refugee problem, when an army built over a hundred years found itself losing cohesion.

Unless they didn’t. Unless they looked to the colonies, from which Fire Lord Iroh was withdrawing his support. Unless they studied their own maps and trade reports and crop forecasts.

Thus far, the Fire Nation⁠⁠—and a handful of children, small enough to fit on the back of a bison⁠⁠—were the only ones to acknowledge the end of the war.

“I don’t think,” Zuko replied, at long last, “that a nice Earth Kingdom family is going to help anything.”

“You don’t need to help, Zuko. That’s hardly what being in charge is all about.”

“It should be,” he said.

“Yes,” said Lady Huian. “It should.”

Azula narrowed her eyes at the woman, before shifting her gaze to Zuko, a smile contorting her lips. “Adorable, isn’t she? Now leave.”

Her gaze did not shift back to the woman.

“I’ll be back with snacks, Your Highnesses,” Lady Huian said. She took the trash bin with her when she left, even if it was only half-full with ashes. No firebender would ever leave rough drafts about.

Azula saved her snort until after the door had closed.

“You could be nice,” Zuko said.

Azula ran light fingers over the egg in her own sling. “She knows I’m not. Are you telling me to lie to our loyal servants, Zuzu?”

“Lying and being nice aren’t the same,” he tried pointing out.

“Mm,” she replied, skeptically.

Zuko flopped back on the floor, his own egg secure in his hands.

“Why is anyone listening to us?” he asked. “Why do they want to listen to us?”

“We’re royalty, Zuko. The commoners crave to be ruled. Who are we to deny them?”

“That’s not⁠⁠— What about being Ozai’s children makes us more fit to rule than, than… than the Water Tribe Ambassador?”

“You still don’t know his name.” She sounded delighted. (In her delight, she leaned forward, rather missing her own egg’s wiggle.)

“You do?” he challenged.

“Zuzu, some of us did our research before haring off after the overpowered child gang. They’d had wanted posters for months.”

“They spelled my name wrong on mine,” he muttered.

“Correction: I ordered your name spelled wrong on yours.”

“You⁠⁠⁠—!”

“I missed your birthday, while you were⁠⁠—what was it, again?⁠⁠⁠—ah yes, pretending to be dead in a ship explosion. What do you get for the boy who has nothing? The realization that he is nothing.”

“If I’m nothing, why do you want me to rule again?”

“I don’t,” she said. “You do.”

Zuko. Blinked.

“Zuzu. Instead of telling Uncle Usurper no, you very publicly declined to be crowned by him.” She started counting off on her fingers, like there was enough to warrant counting. “You then incited a riot at our nation’s most high profile prison, during which you gave a full list of political dissenters to the Water Tribe Ambassador⁠⁠⁠—”

“You don’t know his name either.”

“⁠⁠⁠—Whose name starts with an ‘s’, ends with an ‘a’, and does not rhyme with ‘Snoozles.’ Disregarding the implications of reintroducing dragons to the world, you then distinctly did not remove yourself from this lovely mansion when the governor began gathering his honey-buzzards around us. And when you were removed, you immediately threw yourself not only on the cause of liberating every single prisoner of war held by the North, but in making off with a significant percentage of their trained bending masters, with whom you wish to negotiate for continued healing services for your people.

“Tell me again,” she said, “how much you don’t want to rule.”

Zuko hadn’t thrown sparks at her since he was nine and she’d learned to neatly side-step, fan the flames, and blame him for the resulting destruction of imperial relics. But the urge had never quite gone away.

“I don’t want to. I just…”

“Can’t help yourself?”

“I’m bad at it. Why is everyone else worse?”

“You’re an idiot, Zuko. And you know you’re an idiot. Are you aware how rare that is, at the leadership level? Nepotism doesn’t breed competence, it breeds the illusion of it.”

“Then why do we have the right to rule?” he asked.

Azula, daughter of Ozai, granddaughter of Azulon, great-granddaughter of Sozin, and so on, etcetera, et al, fundamentally did not understand the question.

“Because long long ago,” she said, as one might to a particularly vacant toddler, “our honored ancestors won. And no one in our most illustrious line has been inbred enough to lose that power since. What, do you think someone else is going to do better?”

“Yes,” Zuko answered, with no hesitation.

“And this hypothetical someone,” she asked, “do you think people will agree they have the authority to? Or is ‘authority’ what we have, and what all those peasants crave?”

His egg seemed increasingly toasty in his hands. Had been, since he’d gotten it back. Probably he’d just grown too used to the cold in the North.

“And there you have it,” Azula said, as he continued not to answer. “Make yourself a council out of these mythical someones you expect can do better, and take the credit. History shall praise you for being wise enough to delegate.”

(As father had distinctly not done, when he’d commissioned his Special Day outfit, and gone to stand on the prow of an airship and burn things himself.)

“Then what will I do?” Zuko asked.

“What you always do: shed crumbs everywhere for the little ducks to flock after.”

“…What will you do?”

“We’ve had this discussion, Dum-Dum. I want to sit there and be terrifying. All of the power with none of the expectations.”

He wasn’t sure they’d discussed it, so much as mutually hallucinated their way through thoughts of it.

“Otherwise,” his sister added, speaking mostly to her egg, “what was being his daughter even for.”

…He’d spent three years trying to convince himself that paternity had a meaning. She could have a little more time clinging to the idea, too. Having a destiny had felt a lot more certain than… whatever this was.

Lady Huian knocked. Entered, without particularly waiting for permission, as if she was quite certain she’d be given a ten second head start on any potential immolation.

She set a little sweets platter next to Azula, and what could have passed for a light meal on the table Zuko was nominally sitting at. She didn’t stop patiently waiting until he sat up properly and took a bite.

“Shall we review your appointment book?” she asked, still watching him.

“…I have an appointment book?” Zuko asked.

“Normally,” Song said, setting her bag down, and leaning her cane against the same end table. “People schedule with their doctors, not the other way around.”

Zuko wasn’t apologizing anymore. So he didn’t. He just sat on the edge of his bed, and tried not to look as much like he wanted to run as he did.

He’d stolen her ostrich horse.

And now he was shirtless. And she was being completely professional, which was a chilly change from when he’d sat on her porch on a warm spring night, and she’d tried to bond over burn scars.

His weren’t the same as hers. She had to know that, now.

“This healed… extremely well,” Song said, after long moments inspecting his arm.

“Waterbender,” Zuko said, by way of explanation. The women Katara had led south had set up a sort of wharf-side clinic, healing townspeople in exchange for the money and supplies they’d need on their journey. Song would be familiar with their work, by now.

“Almost too well,” Song said, and proceeded to remind him all about the stretches and massages he should have been doing to maintain flexibility and reduce pain, which he knew, he just… hadn’t done them as much as he should, with his face.

(It wasn’t like his face was going to get better.)

She was still talking, when he interrupted.

“Why do you even care?”

Song’s face froze for a moment. Then it slipped into a perfectly pleasant smile.

“Keeping you healthy,” she reminded him, instead of any of the other things she could say, “keeps my people alive.”

…Zuko may have forgotten that. He shouldn’t have. “Are they… being treated well?”

They’re still in prison, her smile said, without saying anything. In prison for defending their homes. Ozai⁠⁠—or rather, Captain Izumi, on behalf of Ozai⁠⁠⁠—had awarded medals to the Home Guard for doing the same, on the Day of Black Sun. But those had been Fire Nation citizens defending Fire Nation soil from foreign attack: heroes. These were Earth Kingdom rebels, refusing to acknowledge that they now lived on colony lands: criminals.

Song started packing away her supplies. “I don’t like how quickly the skin and muscle healed; they’re tighter than they should be. We’re going to meet for physical therapy in the mornings. If Your Majesty’s schedule permits.”

“Yes,” Zuko said. “Thank you.”

He wasn’t a Majesty; Iroh had taken that. And Zuko hadn’t let himself be crowned a Highness again. It was easier to take things away than to give them back.

His healer left. All her reasons to be loyal to him stayed, in a prison a stone’s throw from the governor’s mansion.

Katara hadn’t seen Zuko since he’d left the Kanna’s Betrothal.

(The ship’s name hadn’t been her idea. But it hadn’t not been, either. And if it made the other women laugh, if it got Healer Yagoda telling stories of a friend she’d once known when her hair had been black, if it got the younger women spinning wilder and wilder tales of how one Northern girl could have possibly made it all the way south⁠⁠—of how much harder it must have been for her all alone, of how relatively smooth their own journey would be, with all of them together on their own ship, and the realization that every port they docked at would find their skills valuable⁠⁠—if it gave them courage to remember a woman most had never known and to tweak Pakku’s nose in advance, then the Kanna’s Betrothal would have its maiden voyage.)

Katara hadn’t seen Zuko since his sister had come to collect him. He hadn’t even asked to come back to their ship. And she hadn’t gone over to Azula’s, obviously. When she’d tried to enter the mansion, said she was there to see him, she’d been routed to an older woman with an appointment book.

Katara. Had needed to schedule an appointment. To see her mask buddy.

She was shown to a room with a low table. He was already seated on a cushion when she came in, a baby sling with a giant egg in it over his chest, and he half-stood as she entered and then saw her face and froze. And sat back down.

Katara sat, too. The servant who had shown her in returned a moment later, and did not put their tea set anywhere near Zuko’s hands as they poured.

They left again.

“You… wanted to see me?” Zuko asked.

Katara crossed her arms. “You tricked me.” Again, she didn’t say, because not even she was sure if Ba Sing Se counted and that wasn’t what this was about right now.

“I didn’t mean to.”

“Really,” she said. “Then why didn’t you take off your mask?”

“So I could… trick you?” he finished, with a wince. His face flushed, and his voice raised, and he didn’t meet her eyes. “You wouldn’t have worked with me if you’d known who I was.”

“No,” she said. “I wouldn’t have.”

They might or might not have gotten everyone out of there, if she hadn’t. That wasn’t what this was about, either.

“Did you care about us?” she asked. “Or were we just there to help you and your people escape?”

“We all did, together,” he said.

Which didn’t answer the question, She narrowed her eyes.

He cleared his throat. “I don’t… understand why yours needed to leave? It was their home. I was always trying to get home, and if there was something wrong there⁠⁠⁠— The best place to change things is from home. isn’t it?” He wrapped an arm under his egg sling. “But. But I needed to leave, too. Not from the North. From my home. Because homes aren’t always a place you can change by staying, are they?”

She didn’t think he meant any kind of broad, impersonal you.

“Maybe you couldn’t,” Katara said. “I’m going home.”

“I’m… happy for you? I hope it’s how you remember. Or better.”

“I’ll make it better,” she said, because she already knew home wasn’t going to be the place she remembered. It shouldn’t be: all of this, from the moment Aang woke up, from the moment her father left, from the moment her mother died to keep her alive, all of this was to make things better. “You can make things better, too. Not just for your own people.”

“Do you think the Fire Nation can be better?” he asked.

If he’d said it like a rhetorical question, or like a test, she wouldn’t have answered.

He didn’t. He said it like a question he’d been asking himself.

“Yes,” she said, after a long moment. And she didn’t even snark about how it could hardly be worse. “But what’s your idea of better?”

He didn’t immediately answer. Which was, actually, a better answer than she could have hoped for.

“I think,” he said. “I can see why Azulon continued the war. I still don’t know why Sozin would start it, I don’t know that I want to understand that, but. But we have a jail full of Earth Kingdom rebels. They’ve been attacking the colonists. And if I let them out, they’ll probably keep attacking. And there have been attacks on our troops as they retreat; if we don’t secure an alliance with someone in the Earth Kingdom who can actually enforce it, then there will be attacks on the colonies themselves when the famines start, and⁠⁠—and there would be fewer mouths to feed if they all died attacking us, wouldn’t there? And less people to complain about it. And of course we’d move more colonists into the lands left empty, otherwise we’d just be leaving fields fallow, and weren’t they complaining about a lack of food anyway? If they aren’t going to accept the peace I offer, if they’re just going to keep attacking, why shouldn’t we keep winning?”

Katara was in the middle of yet another Fire Nation stronghold. Without the backup of her friends; with an entire ship of women depending on her. Therefore, she did not pop the cork of her water skin, not even to redirect her desire to strangle the boy in front of her. She settled for clenching her fist in her lap, the nails digging in.

“My idea of making the Fire Nation better,” he said. “Is figuring out how to get my people to view continuing this war as a loss.” He stopped staring at his egg long enough to meet her eyes. “But it would be easier to just keep the war going. It’s what everyone expects.”

She had expected it from him, when they’d landed in Caldera.

She unclenched her fists. Crossed her arms. “Since when do you ever do what’s easy?”

“…What?”

“You followed us all over the world.”

“I’m not apologizing for that,” he immediately cut in.

Of course he wasn’t. Suki had told her about his no apologizing, no bowing rule. And that wasn’t her point, anyway.

“You fought me in the North, during a full moon, with a snow storm outside.”

“Capturing the Avatar was my mission. I had to. Well, I didn’t. But I thought I did.”

That was probably as close to an apology as she was getting. Still not the point.

“How did you get into the city, Zuko?” she asked. And then realized she knew her mask buddy well enough to know. “Turtle seal tunnels, Zuko?”

“They worked,” he said, with such outraged indignity that she wanted to rage-bend a blanket at his face.

“So make it work,” she said. “Find the stupidest, hardest to kill, most Zuko way to keep this war from starting again. Make that your new mission.”

He paused. It was a very long pause. “…You’re probably going to regret giving me a mission. My father certainly did. And, ah. I didn’t actually succeed. At my last one.”

“Do better,” she said.

(And, wow. She could sound like his sister and his father, simultaneously.)

“Do better,” she repeated, “starting now. My people are earning supplies, but the coal we need is under military control. And we need guarantees that the Fire Nation fleet won’t attack us on the way south. In fact, I think you need to formally cede the Kanna’s Betrothal to us.

“…The what?”

“It’s named after my Gran-Gran,” Katara said, with a certain vindictive pride. “You’ve met.”

It took him a second. The flush on his face told her exactly when he remembered his visit to the South, and his manhandling of an elder.

“The North stole it from you, and we stole it from the North,” she added. “It’s ours.”

“…Has anyone told you that stealing is wrong?”

“Has anyone told the Fire Nation?” she said.

He winced.

“Sokka tried,” she allowed. She still had that waterbending scroll. She was going to invest in some of that beautiful clear glass she’d seen coming from the mixed fire-and-earth glassmakers of the colony’s workshops, and frame that scroll.

It took her a moment to notice the way his face had lit up, in a way entirely inappropriate for this conversation. Took another moment, to realize why.

“You still didn’t know his name. Did you.” She did not need to make it a question.

“It’s Sokka,” he said, with a grin that made her want to waterwhip him.

“Passage south,” she reminded, instead. “And the right to refuel coal at any port.”

He leaned forward, his posture relaxing enough to emphasize just how stiff he’d been up until now. …She’d relaxed, too.

“Okay,” he said. “I can do that. I think? I’m really not sure why anyone’s listening to me. What do you have to trade? I could try to make it free, but you’d get less of a run-around if there was documented proof that you’d paid somehow. Military supply officers don’t like giving things to people outside their command chain for free.”

He’d said outside their command chain with a very certain scowl, like there were years of frustration behind it.

“We can offer the services of the finest waterbending healers,” she said. “And the safe return of all Fire Nation prisoners taken by the Northern Water Tribe.”

“Are you… ransoming my prisoners back to me?”

“No,” she said. “I’m opening the first treaty between the Fire Nation colonies and the newly expanded Southern Water Tribes.”

Katara remembered him complaining, back in his fancy palace, that the Gaang didn’t have any real negotiating power.

As she was a little sister, Zuko should have known that would come back to bite him.

“You could join the circus,” Ty Lee offered. She’d brought her own rock over for an egg play date.

“…Why am I joining the circus?” Zuko asked.

“It’s about exploring your options, silly. Azula said the Earth Kingdom family idea was out. But you don’t need family, if you join the circus!”

Which had probably been a prime selling point, when the septuplet had left home.

“What would I do, juggle?” Zuko asked.

“No, you could do sword tricks. Why would you say juggling?”

(Somewhere rather far away and behind the world’s greatest walls, a girl he’d once gone on a date with was still wondering that. Juggling, Li? Really?)

(Still not Jin’s worst date.)

“I’ll keep the circus under advisement, Ty Lee. Thanks. Um. …Send in my next appointment?”

“I’ve still got five degrees with you,” Ty Lee said.

“She does,” Lady Huian agreed.

“Ooo,” said Ty Lee. “Let’s do backbends! It’s really hard to stay all tense after a good backbend.”

Lady Huian politely refreshed their snacks tray, abandoning him to five more degrees of Ty Lee.

“You’re late,” Azula said.

“My last appointment went long.”

“You’re relaxed.”

Zuko flushed, and sat down. Everyone else was already there: the governor, the northern fleet’s admiral, Lieutenant Jee on behalf of the former prisoners, and the bounty hunter who had kidnapped him.

Zuko stared. “I want my coat back.”

June crossed her arms, and leaned back. “And I want free transport home to any of my people that need it, lodging and job training for any of them that want to stay here, and honorable discharges from all future military service, complete with full pensions, for the lot.”

“Your people?”

“I didn’t see you standing up for them, Shark Bait.”

Jee cleared his throat. “We’re aware she’s not actual nobility, Sir.”

“Are you?” Zuko asked, drawing on the same deep skepticism he’d used during two and a half years of the lieutenant’s shipboard decision making.

“You are?” June asked, a beat off.

“Yes, Sir.” Jee shifted. Underneath him, his chair creaked with a bone-deep aggrievement. “She’s your body guard. …Sir?”

Zuko looked to Azula, because he could at least count on her to⁠⁠⁠—

Azula was smiling. It was the kind of smile someone unfamiliar with teenage girls and Greenland sharks seals might mistake as pleasant.

The governor had looked politely lost since this conversation had begun. With the delicacy of a man used to the kind of meetings that came with minutes, he tapped his stack of papers on the table in front of him.

“Might I suggest we start by reviewing the lodging and health care requirements of the rescued prisoners?”

He had spreadsheets for them. His clerks must be almost as good as Zuko’s had been.

And so they descended into practical minutia, like spaces required, expected costs, and the time it would take to transport them all back to the Home Islands, assuming the aid of their good admiral and his ships.

Their good admiral did not disagree, which… Zuko was not going to comment on, because the man was still technically in Fire Lord Iroh’s chain of command, and had not technically committed any treason. The popularity of being the one to bring their people home⁠⁠—which was the result of a purely internal water tribe affair, as formally attested to by Master Katara⁠⁠⁠—should secure him enough popularity to continue being an admiral.

“I’d like for as many as possible to leave with you when your ships do, Admiral. Any who are stable enough to be moved.” Zuko said. “We can provide the extra supplies for them. …I think.”

There was silence at the table. The kind where people were sneaking glances to each other. Glances that did not include him.

He looked to the governor. “Do we… have enough supplies?”

“There are certainly not so many of them as to tax our reserves,” the man said. “But I’m not sure that’s the problem, Your Majesty.”

Admiral Masuko and Zuko’s former lieutenant exchanged a look.

“And the ones who don’t want to leave, Sir?” Jee asked.

It was immediately clear to all that Zuko hadn’t considered not going home as a thing people could want. …But he had more experience with the concept than he’d had in summer.

Jee shifted in his chair. It creaked, eloquently. “The men and I have been talking,” he began, which back on the Wanyi would have been the point where Zuko would have sent Iroh in with tea to head off a mutiny. “Some of ours do want to go back to the Home Islands. Some weren’t from there, to begin with. And some want help bringing their families over here.”

“They have to know that⁠⁠⁠—” Zuko started, and wasn’t sure how he’d finish, but apparently Jee thought he knew, because he interrupted just as readily as he had during officer briefings.

“They know, Sir.”

“They aren’t even wrong,” said the inexplicable bounty hunter still sitting in on their meeting. She gave the most making-fun-of-how-a-noble-might-shrug shrug Zuko had ever seen. “If Uncle Groper is serious about stopping the war, your economy’s about to crash. The main islands export, what? War machines, colonial leadership, and soldiers? This side of the ocean’s got all the raw resources and at least as much land, not even counting what you guys haven’t conquered yet. You literally don’t need those islands; they need you.”

“How do you even know what an export is?” Zuko asked. “You’re a bounty hunter.”

“She’s a what?” Jee asked.

“She is,” the governor confirmed, looking relieved that someone had finally addressed the elephant-shrew in the room.

“You think an all-leather outfit is cheap, kid?” June asked. “Why do you think I worked the colony circuit? War is profit. Half my catches were your soldiers, running away; the other half were your escaped mine workers, aka the other guy’s soldiers. And absolutely nobody shuts up when they’re trussed up over a shirshu’s back. A businesswoman hears things.”

Azula was grinning again. Just a hair wider. Just a little sharper. Not in any way helpful. She was, indeed, sitting there looking terrifying, and letting him do all the work.

“If they already lived in the colonies, that’s… fine. Okay.” Zuko started. “No one should blame them for that. But if they belong to the Home Islands, they need to go back. I didn’t rescue them to see them branded traitors.”

“Excuse you,” June corrected, “we rescued ourselves.”

Zuko open his mouth. Shut it. Opened it again. “I am not arguing this.”

“Great,” June said, her leather creaking with the insubordination of any officer’s armor as she crossed her legs. “Then the ones who want to stay are staying. How are we handling getting their families? Admiral?”

“We currently have full run of the ports, Sir.” Zuko’s admiral replied. To the bounty hunter wearing Zuko’s stolen coat. “And with the diminished fleet resources since the Northern invasion, we’ve been lending ships across to the central fleets. I can arrange patrols to any island we⁠⁠⁠—”

“No,” Zuko interrupted. “No, you⁠⁠— Traitors get⁠⁠—” He motioned vaguely, and definitely not in a face-ward direction, or a bounty-hunter-ward one, “they get killed. I’m not going to let a ship full of prisoners walk straight into execution warrants. Let them go home first, at least. Talk to their families; think it over. Give them the chance to return. Then if they still want⁠⁠⁠— Then they can desert. But they need to go home, first.”

“And how did that work out for you, Zuko?” Azula asked, not helping.

Admiral Masuko met his gaze steadily. “Fire Lord Iroh didn’t get my men out of the North, Sir.”

“Neither did I, when I was Fire Lord.”

“It didn’t take you long once you joined the colonies, Sir.”

“…Admiral. You’re going home.”

“With due respect,” put in Lieutenant Jee, his tone exactly as duely respectful as Zuko had remembered, “if we’re not in your chain of command, then you can’t order us to leave. Sir.”

“Ahem,” Governor Shohei said, with an agenda-reasserting paper shuffle. “That does lead us to the next item. Regarding your titles.”

Which was certainly one way of asking whether they were Highnesses or Majesties; whether they claimed any titles at all.

“I won’t be your Fire Lord,” Zuko said. “You have one.”

The governor made a note in the minutes he was keeping. He didn’t break eye contact.

“…But. I think it might be a good thing, if our people could say no to the Fire Lord, and not be hunted down by bounty hunters.”

Said bounty hunter was not taking notes.

“I will not start a civil war,” Zuko continued, after a deep breath. “I won’t bow to the Fire Lord. I won’t kneel to the governors and nobles who run the colonies, either. If I am to be your prince, I will not be a figurehead. You will swear to me. I will listen to you, but you will listen to me. I am your prince, Azula is your princess. and if these lands are Fire Nation colonies, then the people here are our citizens. All of them are our citizens.”

He knew the governor had been gathering his contacts again, like he had before Zuko’s unplanned arctic field trip. Bringing together the other governors and the nobles and merchants who’d spent a hundred years finding opportunities in this war.

“Consider whether you can accept that,” Zuko finished, “before you start making our crowns.”

The man had stopped taking notes. He didn’t seem to know what a safe reply could possibly be, to a teenager who might or might not be his prince.

…If Zuko was going to be a prince again, he didn’t want people to wonder if it was safe before they answered him.

“Right,” June said, when the silence had stretch long and longer. “Politicking aside; can we get back to sorting my people?”

The governor fell back on the safety of his papers. “The next item for consideration⁠⁠⁠—”

The doors to the room opened. Lady Huian stood in them, very slightly out of breath. “Excuse me. The Avatar has landed his bison in the courtyard.”

…Of course he had.

In the following commotion, it was entirely too easy to miss the quiet sound of an egg tooth poking through a shell’s inner membrane. Pip, it said.

And, not to be outdone, so did its sibling.

Déjà vu did not exist in any of their world’s languages, but the Avatar and his companions were working hard to invent it.

Which was to say: Zuko stood in a courtyard, his officials and supporters and one sister talking a little too pleasantly with a bounty hunter arrayed behind him, and waited for Avatar Aang and his fellow children to descend.

Ambassador Sokka was the first down. He paused, inexplicably, to glare at Zuko’s hair. Which Zuko tried not to be self-conscious about, given that Lady Huian had just fixed it so he knew it was as perfect as it could ever get, even though he could feel that one strand that was always out of place⁠⁠⁠—

“Sokka! Aang! Toph!”

Right. Because he’d already had one Team Avatar member on the ground. Katara came running up the port street, probably having discovered exactly how easy it was to spot a bison flying over open ocean from the deck of a ship.

“Sister,” Sokka said, after the hugs that seemed requisite in their group.

“I can explain,” said Katara.

Zuko snorted, his gaze drifting to his own sister. Azula glared at him.

“Just because a parallel exists does not make it funny, Zuzu,” she whispered.

“⁠⁠⁠—And we were so worried,” Avatar Aang was gushing, still in the middle of his own hug with her. “The Northern Tribe said you were visiting but their messages were really sketchy and it never seemed like the hawks with letters from you were getting through, and there’s this big storm front that Appa was acting really weird about, he wouldn’t go north. But then we heard rumors of a Fire Navy ship with a Water Tribe crew and⁠⁠⁠— Uh. Hi, Zuko.”

“Avatar Aang,” Zuko said. Looking at said Avatar. Standing on Fire Nation soil. Again. Had father been this frustrated with his son’s banishment, every time Zuko overstayed his time at any given port? …Though Zuko hadn’t had time to make the Avatar’s banishment official. And Iroh would have rescinded it, even if he had.

“You look better.”

Zuko blinked, not sure what to do with that. Or with the kid’s bright and apparently genuine smile.

“…Thanks?”

The little monk beamed.

Zuko scowled. “Is this the point where you capture me, Avatar? Bring me back to the Fire Lord?”

Yes, Sokka was mouthing, in the background.

“That would be pretty funny,” Aang said, after he’d re-found his smile. “But I haven’t even threatened any villagers yet.”

Zuko’s scowling intensified.

Aang shuffled his feet. “Sorry. No, we just came for Katara. But while you’re here, and we’re here⁠⁠⁠—”

“We are not having peace talks again,” Zuko said. “Except with Katara.”

“Excuse me?” squawked Sokka.

Zuko crossed his arms. “She’s the chosen delegate of the Northern Water Tribe’s self-expatriation movement.”

“Katara,” Sokka said. “Sister. What did you do, and did it involve pretending to be a spirit and/or acts of foreign property damage?”

“Yes,” said Katara, as unrepentant as if she had an entire bag full of stolen waterbending scrolls.

(They couldn’t be stolen if Yagoda had brought them from her private collection.)

“Yes to which one, Katara? Yes to which one?”

“Not peace talks,” Aang said, ignoring his friends behind him. “Just… talks? And Iroh gave us all letters for you, in case we ran into you again. Which, wow, I always thought you were really good at tracking us. But this ‘running into you’ thing just kind of happens, doesn’t it? And I know you probably don’t want him to come here in person⁠⁠⁠—”

Zuko now knew the signs of a heart attack, because Song had finally gotten around to taking his full medical history, and had come back the next day to pin a list of symptoms to his wall. So he knew this wasn’t a heart attack.

But she hadn’t put up panic attack symptoms, so he wasn’t ruling that out.

“He can’t come here,” Zuko said, over whatever the Avatar was still saying.

Which is the point where Team Avatar’s fourth member shoulder-checked the boy out of the way.

She stepped straight into Zuko’s personal space. Tilted her head. “This the arm you burned at that prison?” she asked, pointing.

“…No? I mean, yes. But Katara healed me.”

“Good,” she said, and socked him.

“Ow.”

“When’s my field trip?”

“When’s your… what?”

“I’m thinking lavabending,” she said. “Apparently your grandpa used to be able to do it. It can’t be that hard to find an active volcano to practice on. Ready to re-discover a bending style?”

“I,” Zuko said, feeling much more grounded, “do not want to be near an active volcano with any of you people ever again.”

“…This is a before-I-joined thing, isn’t it. How did they not tell me about the volcano.”

“Two volcanoes,” Zuko ruthlessly tattled.

“Ow,” said Sokka, when it was his turn to be punched. “Toph, no intra-group conflict in front of the Ex-Fire-Lord Club!”

Azula raised an eyebrow in Zuko’s direction. “Should I feel included?”

“Is the group exclusive?” Zuko replied. And while they didn’t share the same sort of cackle as they might have a few weeks ago, they certainly shared a snort.

“What are you planning?” asked the Ambassador Formerly Known as Snoozles, with narrowed eyes.

…It was time for Zuko to figure that out. It wasn’t something he’d be figuring out with them.

But he could already give one answer, with great personal confidence.

“Something stupid.”

“That was rhetorical,” Sokka shouted, as Zuko turned away. “That was rhetorical, Prince Worst Ideas! Hey, I’m not done talking with you!”

“Make an appointment,” Zuko said, not looking back.

“…Let’s just capture him,” Sokka said, watching Zuko disappear inside. “Appa’s in.”

The bison lowed in front of the mansion doors, which were almost but not completely the right size to follow the prince through. He tilted his horns, and tried another, equally inadequate angle. Thunk.

“Just toss him in the saddle and go,” said Sokka.

Katara mistook wistful for joking.

“…Can I schedule an appointment?” Aang asked, of an older woman who’d come out with the prince.

He could.

He did.

“Why,” Zuko asked.

Lady Huian, who pointedly continued not to work for him, smiled. And closed the door after the little monk, leaving them alone.

The Avatar sat down across from Zuko. The Avatar started staring at Zuko’s egg. Zuko tugged the side of its sling pointedly higher, and also cleared his throat.

“I’m still not restarting the war, Avatar.”

The little monk sat up straighter. And remembered that Zuko’s eyes were up here.

“I’m not here to talk about that. Well, I would be, but I believe you. But I think not everyone will? And I don’t think everyone else is even trying to stop. Katara said the Northern Tribe still has those ships, and I’m actually getting a little nervous about the Earth Kingdom generals searching for Kuei, because searching for and wanting back aren’t really the same thing, you know?”

The kid realized who he was talking to. Laughed, nervously. His fingers were twiddling, chasing each other in circles like he needed something between them. Where had his staff gone, anyway? Zuko hadn’t seen him with it since that ghost town.

The boy continued, his words tumbling one after the other, and was he still on the same breath? “Of course you know. But⁠⁠⁠— We should all be talking. So the war really doesn’t start again. I don’t really know how it all happened, a hundred years ago. But I don’t think more talking would have hurt. So here I am! Talking.”

He ended with a too-bright smile.

Zuko closed his eyes. Took in a slow breath of his own, because it was not his place to tell the kid to breathe. He wasn’t the Avatar’s teacher, and would never be. Regardless, the little monk took a mirroring breath.

“Why did you take my father’s fire?” Zuko asked.

“…I thought it would end the war. And I didn’t want to kill him. I don’t think killing people fixes the things that made them, and it’s not what my people would have wanted me to do. I’m all that’s left of them. Ozai’s the one that thinks killing is winning.”

It was polite of him, to say Ozai instead of the Fire Nation.

“So letting him choose what winning looks like,” the kid continued, “letting everyone keep believing that’s the only way, just because they don’t remember that there used to be others⁠⁠⁠— If the only way to win is by the rules Ozai and the other Fire Lords set, isn’t that losing? We can’t let the same people who start the wars decide how they end.”

…It was easy to forget, with a kid that only came up to Zuko’s chest, that he was dealing with the collected wisdom of thousands of years.

“That’s what I think, anyway,” the kid said, looking down at his twiddling fingers again.

Or maybe this wasn’t the wisdom of the Avatar speaking. Maybe it was just Aang.

Zuko let out a breath. “Under what circumstances would you take someone else’s bending away?”

“I… don’t know. Master Shaw⁠⁠⁠—”

(Who was Master Shaw?)

“⁠⁠⁠—Is helping me learn more about it. And about bending. I’m waking up with the sun, now. Sort of.” The kid gave him a hopeful smile. Because he was both an ancient spirit, and a twelve-year-old.

But then, Zuko was a caravan wreck of a sixteen-year-old, and a prince.

Being born to power was, perhaps, not the most effective system.

“I still don’t want you on Fire Nation soil,” Zuko said, and pressed on, even as the kid’s smile faltered. “But. I’ll read Iroh’s letter. And yours, too. If you want to send them. Aang.”

The kid beamed. Zuko was already regretting this.

“Are you sure it’s okay, leaving me here?” Zuko asked. “You know it’s not what he actually wants.”

The kid sat up straighter. Stopped having trouble meeting Zuko’s eyes. “Iroh is my teacher, and my friend. And he’s really old and he knows a lot of things and I don’t think I could have won the war⁠⁠—err, stopped your father⁠⁠⁠—without him. But he’s not always right. Back when⁠⁠⁠— When I was twelve, instead of a hundred and twelve, people traveled more. And not everyone liked having strangers come through their towns, even then. Especially if you were any kind of nomad, not just an air nomad. There were already governments that demanded passports, and gates you were supposed to enter through instead of fly over or go through secret tunnels around, and. And I had a lot of friends, but not everyone I met was nice. But we were just living. And you’re just living. Air is freedom. I think we could use more people traveling around and just living again. Being different, and talking to each other. …Are you sure it’s right for you, staying here?”

“I don’t know what’s right,” Zuko said. “But Azula said I can get advisors.”

The kid snorted. “When we first met, I wouldn’t have believed you had a sense of humor.”

“I don’t.”

The kid laughed.

Zuko scowled. “You may stay in town until Master Katara is ready to depart. But we are not having more peace talks.”

“Of course not,” Avatar Aang chirped. “Those are going to be at the South Pole.”

It was entirely unclear to Zuko whether he’d just been invited.

(It was entirely unclear to the rest of the world whether he should be.)

Inside its shell, a little egg tooth began the exhausting process of zipping a dragon-sized circle.

“Hello,” said the teenager wearing a fake moustache. “I’m Wang Fire, local citizen. And I would like to schedule a meeting with Prince Zuko.”

“…I’m afraid his schedule is full today,” said Lady Huian, not opening the appointment book. “Try again tomorrow.”

“Maybe tomorrow, buddy,” Sokka said, patting a giant furry side. “Let’s get that saddle off.”

Appa groaned a groan of agreeable disappointment.

Sokka kept a loop of the good rope with him, just in case.

“If someone kidnapped my brother,” Mai said, unscheduled, “what would you do?”

“You have a brother?” asked Zuko, sitting up in his bed. He hadn’t been sleeping, anyway.

Mai sat down on the other side. Started sharpening her knives. Or at least… sharpening her pre-sharpened pieces of metal?

(Mai had met Engineer Hanako en-route. They had exchanged prison souvenirs, as one professional shiv maker to another.)

“Yes, Zuko,” said Mai, as she made a piece of ship steel progressively more aerodynamic. “I have a brother. He’s two. …Three.”

“That’s… little.”

Yes, Zuko, she did not say.

“Uh. Well if he’s three, he’s not helping with his own escape. But he’d be pretty easy to carry. So I’d probably just… sneak in, grab him, and run? Is your brother kidnapped?”

“Not currently,” Mai said, worryingly. “And if the kidnappers made it a hostage exchange?”

“…Do they like the hostage we have?”

“Yes.”

“Are they likely to double-cross us?”

“No.”

“Then… we should do the hostage exchange?”

“It’s a political hostage,” Mai said. “For a toddler.”

She had more shivs. Zuko had his own sharpening supplies. He picked one up, and started helping.

“…So we don’t want to make the exchange? Then sneak in, grab him, and run,” Zuko returned to.

Mai eyed the edge of a blade critically. Twirled it over her finger. Then tested its value as a throwing knife, against the threads of a spider-mouse nest the servants hadn’t noticed yet. The web fluttered down from the ceiling. The spider-mouse squeaked and self-evicted itself from Zuko’s room.

She hadn’t tested it in his direction. So whatever this conversation was really about, at least she wasn’t angry at him.

“That’s nice,” she said, finally. “Now guess what your sister did.”

“Do you,” he started, “still have a brother?”

“It was the Avatar’s group that had him. Apparently their lemur did the kidnapping.”

“The lemur took him?” Zuko blinked. “Your brother is definitely small enough for an easy rescue, then.”

Mai eyed Zuko, egg sling and all. Mai let out a sigh.

“My dad is coming,” she said.

“A lot of the governors are,” Zuko said. “…Wait. Is this a political interview? Are you deciding whether your dad should support us?”

“He’s already decided,” said Mai. “You aren’t Iroh.”

…Which was, Zuko feared, what most of his so-called supporters were basing their decision on.

Mai looked at him, a moment more. Nodded once, seeing as he’d gotten it. Then she returned to the only consistently interesting thing in the world: her knives.

“If they try backstabbing you,” she said, “and the circus thing doesn’t work out⁠⁠⁠—”

“There is no circus thing, what has Ty Lee been telling people⁠⁠⁠—”

“⁠⁠⁠—we could always be pirates,” she finished.

Zuko huffed a laugh. He’d always appreciated Mai’s sense of humor.

“…Mai. That was a joke, right? Mai?”

“Mutinies at the fleet level aren’t boring,” she said. “And now I know a guy.”

“Mai.”

“Don’t worry,” she said. “If I take to the high seas, I’ll leave you a letter.”

“I,” Suki was stating, with a certain delicacy, “would not advise Fire Lord Iroh to ask his fleet admirals about their loyalty.”

“Suki,” Sokka said, “that is. A very good reason Iroh should⁠⁠⁠— Fire Jerk incoming, hide,” and he tried to pull her away from their very obvious public collusion, but she did not budge at all. Had her biceps always been that big, strong, and distracting?

“Suki,” said Fire Jerk said, crossing his own big biceps. “we need to talk.”

“Zuko,” Sokka said. “what unfortunate timing. Suki and I were just catching up. Carnally. Hence the dragging towards a deserted alleyway.”

Zuko looked like someone had shoved a dead canary-puppy in his face. Suki did not have a look, because there was a palm on her face, blocking any such looks.

“I could… come back later?”

“Please do,” Suki said, behind aforementioned hand. “I’m not done telling him all your secrets yet.”

“Okay,” said Prince Moron.

“Uh,” said Sokka. “And you’re… not worried? About her doing just that?”

“She will,” Zuko said, with a tone that further implied obviously. “But I trust her.”

“Uh,” said Sokka, who was beginning to feel a little actually bad about this.

But not bad enough.

“So hey,” Sokka said, “while you’re here. Can I talk with you? Alone? Over there. By the bison.”

“Later,” Zuko said, brushing past. “I have people to yell at.”

“You cannot requisition a ship,” Zuko said, where most people would have said hello.

Katara lifted an eyebrow at him, as she knelt by a healing pallet set up on the docks in front of the Kanna’s Betrothal. A ship that could be defined as a requisition, if one squeezed the term.

“You can’t requisition another ship,” he corrected.

“I’m not,” she said, her hands steady over the leg of her patient. “The Fire Nation officers I was traveling with are.”

“And you can’t keep the prisoners,” he continued trying to insist.

“The Fire Nation criminal prisoners,” she said.

“Does this conversation need to happen now?” asked resident spooky guy Helmsman Kyo. Who then looked at his prince’s face. “Sorry, yes it does, carry on.”

“You can’t⁠⁠—” Zuko took in a deep breath, and apparently realized both that she could and had and that it technically hadn’t been her. “You can take the rest of them, but the Southern Raider stays here.”

“Does he,” said Katara.

“You can’t hand pick which soldiers to prosecute.”

“Really?” she asked pleasantly, her water glowing very intensely under her hands. “So who can?”

Zuko tossed up his hands. “I don’t know! But if he’s guilty, he’ll be guilty in colonial courts, too. And it won’t look like Iroh is doing vengeance trials because one of the Avatar’s entourage asked nicely!”

“Did I ask nicely?” Katara asked.

The prince’s response was best onomatopoeiad as rrrrr. “What are you even trying him for?”

“Killing,” she said, with the kind of pleasantness that had Kyo holding perfectly and exactly still under her bendy-glowy hands, “my mother.”

Which at least got him to take a breath.

“…Can we try Ozai, too?” he said, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I’m… not sure that’s actually a crime, under Fire Nation law. Even assuming she was a civilian, if he just… claims he felt threatened…”

“She’d surrendered.”

“But that’s obviously not what he’s going to say, and. Ugh. What even is a crime, during war? Because we can’t just say everything⁠⁠⁠—”

“Even if it’s true.”

“Yes, even if it’s true, or that’s every soldier, and then every soldier is going to back whoever wants the war to keep going because it’s either that or⁠⁠⁠— or get personally sent to jail by the Avatar’s team, apparently. And that’s not even getting into the people who weren’t on the field, just giving orders, and the ones designing the weapons and building them, and the merchants supplying everything and the people overseeing the prisoner camps and mines and⁠⁠⁠— We’re going to need to establish rules on what’s a crime even in war, then figure out who did those, and how are we even going to collect evidence when most of it is murdered mothers and burned villages⁠⁠⁠—”

(What was even the point of growing back his hair if he was just going to tear it out.)

“The criminals,” Katara repeated, “are going back to your country’s capital for trial. All of them. Your own people, in your own courts. It’s better than any Earth Kingdom rebels or Water Tribe pirates were given.”

“…We still need to figure this out.”

“We do. But. Not just us.”

War crimes, and what those even were, would apparently be joining the agenda at the peace talks.

Zuko continued to hover.

“Zuko. I’m trying to concentrate, here.”

Waterbending was excellent for easing inflammation and getting blood vessels back in order; less so, at resetting slightly misaligned bone, which was more like stone.

Maybe Toph could⁠⁠—

That was a horrifying thought and Katara was never touching it again.

“She’s trying to concentrate, here,” echoed Helmsman Kyo.

“Go bug Sokka,” Katara said.

Zuko did not want to go bug Sokka. But Sokka had maneuvered between Zuko and the path back to the mansion, and Zuko was not taking the long way around, he had too much to do. Now that he was doing things again. If Lady Huian would stop scheduling physical therapy and cancel Ty Lee’s reoccurring egg play dates and allow him to choose his own sleep schedule, maybe he could make some real progress⁠⁠⁠—

“So about that talk over by the bison,” Sokka said, stepping even farther in his way.

Zuko stopped walking. Took in a deep breath. Did not body-check the Water Tribe Ambassador. “Can we make it quick?”

“Yes, definitely,” the teen said, starting to lead him away. “This will be very quick.”

Which was the point Suki hooked her arm through Zuko’s, and pulled him back towards his original path.

“Me first,” she said. “Sokka never.”

“Suki please,” the boy shouted after them, “Suki. Don’t I deserve nice things?”

As this was the same thought that had led to Azula pulling a prison alarm, it immediately killed Sokka’s chances of a very quick moment alone with Zuko.

Appa continued chewing his breakfast and watched the prince go, with approximately ten tons of patience.

Suki leaned over, elbows on her knees, palms pressed together in front of her face.

“Okay. That sure is a thing to drop on someone this early in the morning. Let me think,” she said. “Just. Let me think.”

She took a breath in. Out.

“You’re going to need a council. Not just those people the governor invited, and not just Fire Nation citizens. The people who actually live here.”

“The Fire Nation does live⁠⁠⁠—”

“If you want me being your conscience,” she said, “then this is your conscience speaking: shut up, and listen.”

“To who?” he asked, like that being a serious question didn’t make her want to scream more.

“We’ll work on it,” she said.

“…So should I?”

“Do it,” Suki said, straightening up. “Be stupid. It’s your primary skill.”

“Thank you for your advice,” he said, “Councilor Suki.”

Which was the point where a dragon snout finally, finally pushed its way through its egg shell. This would have been a much easier (and more easily noticed in advance) endeavor if someone hadn’t placed its egg upside down into the sling.

The first squeak with which it graced the world was an entirely affronted one.

Zuko stared down. As did Suki. At the scaly red head sticking out, baring its tiny baby teeth; at the itty-bitty claws grasping the rim of its shell; at the wing it would definitely grow into wedged halfway-up next to its ear.

Rwoar, it tried, but what came out was more of a murderous cheep.

“Why is it always dragons with you,” Suki said, already tired. Maybe she could schedule some Ty Lee time.

Azula’s egg became the secondborn, as was only fitting; like her, it would be forced to prove its worth.

The hatchling raised its golden snout triumphantly into the air, before physics asserted its dominance, rolling hatchling and egg over and depositing both in Azula’s lap. Rather than looking displeased, the creature took this as its cue to blink ignorant baby eyes up at her. When she offered a generous hand to correct its indignity, it wiggled free two tiny arms with which to grasp her thumb, and settled its baby teeth against her skin in the most delicate of grips. It was still looking up at her. Its eyes were blue, which was its saving color.

“We shall tell them that your first action was to bite me,” Azula said, suitably abridging their history together.

The hatchling had fallen asleep in her palm, and was therefore unable to correct the record.

Song was training as a country doctor, which had not left her unprepared to be a vet.

“Well,” she said, returning a hissing blanket to Zuko, and letting Azula’s golden dragon stumble-tumble its way off her lap and into its mistress’ waiting hands, “they’re certainly the healthiest dragons I’ve ever examined.”

“Peasant,” warned Azula.

“They’re both walking well, with no sign of splayed legs or wry necks. Scales are glossy. Hearts and lungs seem strong.”

Hiss, Zuko’s blanket continued, as he tried to unwrap it and was met with teeth dragging it closed again. Meanwhile, a tail was wiggle-lashing its way out the bottom, quickly followed by its hind-claws.

“Initial muscle tone seems fine. I have no idea what a proper diet would be, but I’d suggest starting with cooked ground meat, and watching for any signs of distress. Make sure they have water access at all times. And heat. …Though I doubt that will be an issue, for firebenders.”

Azula’s dragon had draped itself around the heat-shimmer of her neck and taken the tip of its tail between its teeth, making a little golden necklace. This would have been more dignified without its little fork-tipped tongue constantly fluttering out to taste the air.

“And,” Zuko said, “about the other thing?”

Song could only pretend to rearrange her doctor’s bag for so long. She set it aside; set her hands in her lap. Met his eyes.

“Prince Zuko,” she said, because Junior wouldn’t do. Not for this conversation. “If you want me on your council, I will of course accept.”

The prince slumped in apparent relief, like there’d been any doubt about her answer. Which rather underscored her next words.

“But I don’t know how you expect me to give any honest opinion when you are holding my countrymen hostage for my behavior.”

“…So if I want you on my council, I should let them go?”

He’d stolen her ostrich-horse. This fully meant that he’d be paying all her wages in double, for the rest of his life.

“You must also accept one of our leaders to your council. One that we pick, not you.”

“Oh,” Zuko said. “That will probably solve the problem of them immediately renewing their rebellion, at least for awhile.” And he smiled at her, like the Dum-Dum she so often heard his sister call him behind closed doors. “Thank you, Councilor Song.”

…That was going to take some getting used to. The name, and the smiling.

“You understand, of course,” the Fire Princess said, as her tiny dragon continued bleeping around her very dignified neck, “that you’ll be paid in our gratitude.”

As that was how the Fire Nation always paid, Song did not reply.

“…We’re also giving you a salary,” Zuko said, turning a frown on his sister. His red hatchling took this moment of apparent inattention to finish wriggling free of its blanket prison. It bolted up his arm to a shoulder-perch, from which it chirped a scathing review of the world.

It’s sibling chirped back. It did not take its tail out of its mouth to do so.

“Let’s establish a royal income stream before we start making monetary promises, brother,” the Fire Princess said.

The red dragon fluttered its wings. Having met peacock-snake chicks, and their ability to fly as soon as they’d preened the sheaths off their primary feathers, Song was the only one prepared for the hatchling to fly.

All eyes tracked its first little leap-and-glide.

As hers was the nearest shoulder, the hatchling did not go far. It stomped a little claw-tipped circle around her collarbone, entirely pleased with itself, before settling down into its own little bleep necklace. It had the dignity to hug its tail instead of bite it, though.

Song was, as was her unfortunate habit upon meeting certain people in this room, entirely charmed.

“We’ll give you a salary… later?” the Fire Prince offered.

Song smiled. Song stroked the warm little ring of scales around her neck, with one light finger.

Song whispered to its little head, while the Fire siblings returned to their bickering, “I’m going to call you Ostrich-Horse.”

If they were gathering this adorable council of differing opinions, then Azula had her own pick to make.

“Lady June,” she said, as their next meeting concerning the repatriated northern prisoners came to an end. “A moment.”

She tapped the tip of her golden dragon’s tail. It blinked awake in her lap; another insistent tap had it raising its head, assessing the direction of Azula’s gaze, and hissing with suitable enthusiasm. Azula slipped it a bite of grasshopper-cow jerky.

“Please don’t train it to do that,” Zuko said.

“I’m merely honing its preexisting instincts,” she said.

A point he could not argue, given that his own hatchling had needed no training to defend his shoulder. Or the top of his head. Particularly from his ponytail, to which the creature took great and roll-kicking offense. It was training her brother to use a proper top knot again; clever creature.

…Her own would be just as clever. It was simply taking its time to evaluate the situation.

Meanwhile. The bounty hunter had paused in the doorway, narrowing her eyes.

“I think a promotion is in order,” Azula said. “Don’t you, brother? Lady June is working so hard for your people. How… noble.”

“Oh fuck you,” said the bounty hunter, catching on.

Which was exactly the attitude Azula wanted, in her own council picks. Father could have used a few less yes men, and a few more fuck you women.

The soon to be officially ennobled Lady June leveled a finger at the origin of her problems.

“I am never kidnapping you again,” she said.

When it came to trying to capture people, this made her a quicker study than Zuko.

Sokka, with his hair done up in a top knot, snuck around a corner in one of the mansion’s hallways. Sokka, wearing the servant’s uniform he’d swiped off the back lines, was… functionally indistinguishable from the newer staff hired to deal with all these fancy people who’d been arriving.

Sokka, three errands and one bitching session with the kitchen staff over the constant demands of the guests in the Wisteria room later, snuck even harder towards a certain room.

A certain, hard-to-schedule-officially room.

“…And then he… snuck away? Around the side of the building,” came a voice from behind the door. A voice Sokka could already picture with its stupidly perfect hair with its one strand out of place.

“Yeah,” said Toph, who was utterly exempt from the scheduling blackout, “he does that.”

“I just want to know why he left Appa under my window.”

Sokka paused to reassess. But the audible bison-snuffling outside meant his getaway hadn’t wandered off yet, and Toph was generally down for the least-legal option in any situation, with minimal to no prompting.

“Don’t worry about it,” Toph said. “Now come on, show me.”

“No.”

“Just a little grabbity-peak.”

“Why do you have to phrase it like⁠⁠⁠— No.”

“Come on, I won’t even tell the others, it’ll be our little secret⁠⁠⁠—”

“No.”

Which was when Sokka stealthily burst in on

Toph’s hands

All up in Zuko’s robes.

The former Fire Lord was pressed up against the wall, his face all red, trying to hold said robes closed against this inexplicable assault.

“Toph,” Sokka said, because he’d never had a teenage male friend before (and he was NOT starting now) but so help him if he wasn’t a bro, “hands off. What are you even doing?”

“Trying to touch Zuko’s dragon,” Toph said.

“You said you wouldn’t tell,” said Zuko, which did not make this better.

Sokka took in a breath. And grabbed a grinning Toph by the back of her shirt collar. “Toph you are twelve, how do you even know about ‘dragons’?”

“Suki told me.”

“Well we’re going to go have a little talk with Suki about draconic consent.”

Sokka. Less-than-stealthily dragged a tiny menace away.

…Zuko blinked after them. The bison continued eating the shrubbery below his window. Curled up in a warm little ball in his robes, just above his sash, Zuko’s dragon continued its beauty nap.

(It was a point of pride among the palace staff, to have kept the secret of their dragons’ hatching. There may or may not have been bets on which members of the colonial leadership would spit out their drinks on whom when they were revealed.)

“Hey, remember that unspecified favor?” Toph asked, after they’d been tossed out of the mansion for not actually being invited in there, or working there, and also causing a significant hallway commotion.

“…I would like to say that I do not,” said Sokka, but he was already recalling. They’d been newly landed in the Fire Nation, and no one had usurped anyone yet, and Toph had been creating certain nicknames for people who were definitely not friends and he’d begged her to stop⁠⁠⁠—

⁠⁠⁠—in exchange for one unspecified favor.

“No,” said Sokka, with great and belated foreboding.

“I’m cashing in,” she said. “No capturing Zuko without my permission.”

“That is not an equal exchange, Toph.”

“You have had months without my best nicknames. Months. I could have been calling him Feisty Fire, Field Trip Lord, Dragon Daddy⁠⁠⁠—”

“Please never call him that again.”

“Do I get another favor?”

“No.”

The last of the colonial governors had arrived.

All of the colonial governors had arrived.

“Remember this,” Azula said, as they looked over the crowded ballroom. “This is what their loyalty looks like.”

Each had been appointed to their position by a Fire Lord; some by Azulon, most by Ozai. And while the position was not technically hereditary, he saw at least two whose families had first been granted the mandate to rule by Sozin himself.

They’d each been appointed by a Fire Lord. And if the current Fire Lord wished to take back those appointments, to shutter entire colonies⁠⁠⁠— Well. They had other options, didn’t they?

Azula had declined liquor, on both their behalves. The servants had instead brought them tea, which neither of them had drunk. Azula pretended to, mostly as a prop piece.

“Go on, brother,” she whispered, as dinner and small talk were drawing to a close, and the time for speeches was beginning. “Pelt them with bread.”

“I don’t think they’d settle for crumbs,” he whispered back. Set his own still-full teacup down. Stood.

Silence spread outward from the head table.

“You know why you’re here,” he said, after a final deep breath. “And we know why we’re here. The North has repaired the fleet the Ocean struck down. The Earth Kingdom is run by generals who ignore our messengers. Fire Lord Iroh wishes the youngest colonies to begin packing their things away, and returning home. Where is home? What does that even mean?”

They murmured their agreement, like what was a serious question for him was a talking point for them.

“Governor Shohei has invited you here. I asked him to make certain things clear: that I am not starting a civil war. That if the colonies are ours, then we will start treating them like it. That you are getting both of us, or neither of us. That I did not bow to my uncle, and I will not bow to you.”

His dragon crawled up to his unadorned top knot; curled around it, wings mantling, eyes as golden as his own glaring out over the crowd. It hissed.

Azula’s golden dragon arched up from her neck, hissing in well-practiced chorus. His sister raised one finger and gave it a delicate scratch on the chin right below all those tiny teeth. Those who’d arrived early would know those teeth⁠⁠—and the lizards they were attached to⁠⁠—were already twice as big as they’d been at hatching. The royal dragons had gone from the size of garter-gophers to the size of ferret-boas in the course of a few days. One needn’t be able to calculate solar eclipses to extrapolate from there.

His sister did not stand. She did not need to, to be terrifying. “Your reply?”

One by one, with furtive glances amongst themselves, the assembled governors and colonial officials stood.

Once they were on their feet, there was only one place for loyal children of the Fire Nation to be: they knelt.

Team Avatar received three invitations to the coronation: one for Master Katara and all her people (“Why do you have people?” “Don’t be jealous, Sokka.”), one to Master Toph Beifong (“He wants to poach me so bad.” “…Toph please stay away from Zuko’s dragon”), and one to Appa.

“…Sitting on Appa isn’t Fire Nation soil,” Aang pointed out, which was the rest of their invitations.

And also one of the best views. They were in the square in front of the governor’s mansion. Even if they were parked to the back, Appa’s mobile balcony seating (read: saddle) meant they could see right to the front. Only the people hanging out of the surrounding windows could claim a better view. A platform had been earthbent up front for the occasion, and Sokka would wonder which earthbender they’d convinced to do that if there wasn’t a willing one lounging right on Appa’s legs below him. Both feet on the ground was the best view, for Toph.

There were, inexplicably, a bunch of Earth Kingdom citizens with that fresh-from-prison look Sokka was getting way too much experiencing spotting. They had seats of honor right up front with the colonial leaders, though someone had been wise enough to seat them on oppposite sides of the aisle. Katara’s so-called people had been invited up front, too, but Katara had Team Avatar solidarity, and so the rest of the Water Tribe group had put down blankets and furs on the ground around Appa. From above, maybe it would look like a whole fluffy herd, complete with riders.

…It would have been something, to see a whole bison herd with its riders. It was the only nation they were missing.

The rescued Fire Nation prisoners had set up next to⁠⁠—and intermingling with⁠⁠—the Water Tribe women. So had the Earth Kingdom smugglers, that his sister and Zuko had casually scooped up in their wake. Like personally helping the South’s last waterbender bring home a whole shipboard of tangible hope for the future while earning the undying loyalty of a large swath of the Fire Nation navy (and associated familial connections) while freeing a bunch of extremely shady but probably well-connected Earth Kingdom smugglers was just. A thing. One did.

Sokka would very much like for Zuko to stop being an evil mastermind now.

“Press coming through,” declared one of the biggest guys Sokka had ever seen, shoving his way (relatively delicately) through the crowd, a few decidedly more twiggy people bobbing along in his wake. Why did they also have the fresh-from-prison look. “Freed Press coming through.”

“I’m just saying,” Sokka said, “that it was a weird move, politically, to leave me out of the invitations. Why insult a guy like that when you don’t have to? It’s not like I’m the one with the crazy bending-stealing power, no offense Aang. Why would he… He still doesn’t know my name. Does he.”

“Who would have told him?” his dearest sister said, while Toph cackled below.

The ceremony was starting now. The governor guy gave a speech, like they didn’t already all know why they were all there. The leather-clad bounty hunter inexplicably got called on stage next, and Sokka honestly didn’t know what that was about because the ex-prisoners were cheering too hard. But Azula personally handed her a new hair accessory before she was allowed to stomp her way back down.

It was certainly the day for new hair accessories.

Zuko joined his sister up on the stage, and his own hair thingie was huge and red and gaudy and moving. So was Azula’s necklace, which Sokka would process in a moment, because right now he needed to address one very important issue:

“Zuko’s dragon,” he shouted, leaning out over the edge of the saddle. “Toph. Zuko’s dragon.”

“Sssh,” Toph said. “I want to hear if he starts any more civil wars.”

The coronation progressed. A lot like last time, but with less priceless artifacts from the royal treasury. They would not be crowned while in the light of the same brazier that had seen Fire Lord Suinin crowned, nor would Zuko kneel on the same beaded cushion that had seen Fire Lord Jingu’s ascension to her fifty-three year reign.

Azula stood beside him, ready to accept her demotion to princess, another sage mirroring for her all the actions they took with him. She looked composed; maybe bored. Maybe this was the part of the dream she was skipping.

He took a deep breath. Kept his eyes forward.

He’d told Iroh he wouldn’t be prince again. Had sworn to himself that there’d be no more apologies; no more bowing.

He’d wanted to do his best, until he was dethroned. Wanted someone better to take his place.

Zuko didn’t know what better was. Maybe no one did. (Or everyone thought they did, which was its own problem.)

He’d wanted to have a choice. This was his.

He let his breath out.

Zuko knelt before his people, and rose their prince. Beside him stood his sister. And behind them⁠⁠⁠—

Behind them, Lady Huian and the other servants who had worked day and night to sew it in time had been granted the honor of unfurling their new flag.

A background of black. A two-tone flame of red and gold. And above it, two dragons of the same entwining together to form a crown.

The flag of the Fire Nation Principalities.

They weren’t seceding from the Home Islands. They weren’t starting a civil war, or breaking the peace he’d wanted to make. Zuko was merely taking the crown Iroh had always wanted to give him.

And if he was sharing with his sister, well. At least their generation knew how to share. He’d heard that was an important skill, for peace.

“…We should have captured him,” said Sokka.

Nobody ever listened to Sokka.

End Book 1: Autumn (Unbowed) (These Aren’t the Field Trips You’re Looking For)