Chapter Text
Zuko hated his life.
He didn’t know what he’d done to deserve this. (Okay, he had some ideas, but not the point) Aang was insisting that he needed an upbeat attitude, seriously, like he had anything to be optimistic about. His life was miserable enough as it is.
Aang was still chattering, filling the air with stories of him and his friends. Zuko listened, half out of respect and half out of morbid curiosity.
“Anyway, that’s how Katara became my waterbending teacher. And now you’re my firebending teacher! Toph was my earthbending teacher, we met her when she was pro wrestling.”
Zuko paused. What?
“She was so awesome. She was the champion, still is, actually!”
What?!
“Isn’t Toph… like, twelve?”
“Yeah!” Aang said cheerfully, still facing the front where he was steering. He couldn’t see the dumbfounded look on Zuko’s face.
“And… how long has she been the reigning champion at the time?”
“I dunno, three years? Maybe four? You might have to ask her.”
What the fuck, Zuko thought, falling back into the saddle. What the fuck.
“So, other than learning about the origin of firebending, did you two learn anything else from the Sun Warrior’s temple?” Katara asked.
Their group was sitting around the campfire, enjoying their dinner that Katara and Haru made together. Appa and Momo were off at the side, being entertained by The Duke trying to teach them how to catch food midair.
Zuko and Aang shared a glance, nodding. Aang shrugged. “Nope. It was deserted. Other than that one golden egg that Zuko had to pick up—”
“—hey! If it wasn’t for that, we never would’ve found the— uh, we never would’ve found out about the dance!”
Sokka raised an eyebrow. “Wait, what happened to the golden egg thing?”
“Uh,” Zuko said eloquently. “I dropped it..?”
“Man! We probably could’ve sold that for so much money. Would’ve been helpful.”
Zuko attempted an apologetic smile while the rest of them laughed. Haru sighed wistfully. “Too bad Zuko doesn’t somehow have access to his family’s money. We’d be so rich by now.”
“Yeah,” Aang agreed, nodding as Zuko took another bite of his food, “or Toph to hers. The Beifong’s are crazy rich.”
Zuko promptly choked on his food. “Beifong?!”
Zuko had no idea why he was doing this. He took a look at Sokka’s determined expression, heard him say the magic word honour, and just decided hey, fuck it, I’m going with him.
They walked to his war balloon in an awkward silence, neither really knowing what to say. When they had finally reached, Zuko cleared his throat. “So, this is my war balloon. For it to work, you have to—”
“I know,” Sokka interrupted, climbing in. “I helped invent it.”
Zuko stilled. “What?”
Sokka didn’t warrant that important enough to reply, instead tapping his foot impatiently. “Are you coming in or not?”
“Right, of course,” he muttered, climbing in hastily. “Just climbing into the war balloon that my ex-enemy helped invent. Totally normal.”
The balloon ride to The Boiling Rock was terrible. Zuko distracted himself by fueling the fire, but other than that, they basically had nothing to do.
They ended up talking about their ex-girlfriends. It wasn’t the worst conversation he could have, he supposed.
“My first girlfriend turned into the moon.”
Zuko had to take an entire three seconds to gather his terrible and insufficient social skills just to warrant Sokka a reply. “…That’s rough, buddy.”
“Yeah, I guess it is. She sacrificed herself for the moon spirit. I begged her not to, but she took her princess duties really seriously, and it saved the world anyway. I’m just glad she didn’t die in vain.”
Zuko’s head was reeling. “…Did you say princess?”
“Yeah?” Sokka looked up, a slight frown on his face. “Princess Yue of the Northern Water Tribe.”
“You dated Princess Yue?!”
Zuko still couldn’t believe they: A) Infiltrated the highest security Fire Nation prison. B) Did not get caught. C) Managed to find not just Sokka’s dad, but Sokka’s apparent girlfriend and a random prisoner. D) Kidnapped the fucking warden, Mai’s uncle. E) Ran into his sister. And F) Escaped in one piece. What was his life?
They were all worn out from the day, half asleep in Azula’s airship. Oh yeah, they stole his sister’s airship too. Zuko was just glad they got out of there.
He was sitting next to Sokka, who was steering the ship. Suki was on Sokka’s other side, staring out the window.
“I still can’t believe we just did that,” Sokka mumbled. “It feels like a fever dream.”
“Yeah. At least everyone’s safe for now.” Suki turned to the warrior. “Is your dad going to go back to the Southern Water Tribe or stay with us? He does have his Chief duties.”
“Nah. The war’s not over. But I’ll try to contact the rest of the tribe via Hawky. Assuming some of them escaped. I doubt Bato hasn’t.”
“Wait, wait,” Zuko interrupted. He could already feel a headache coming in. “Chief?”
“Oh, I guess you’ve never met him before this whole thing happened. Yeah, my father’s Hakoda. Chief Hakoda of the Southern Water Tribe.”
Zuko nearly fainted.
Zuko smiled to himself as he watched the Water Tribe family reunite. It was incredibly heartwarming. Even with Toph complaining that they didn’t bring back any food (which, fair enough, that was on them), nothing could beat this. He felt good.
“Hey, Zuko,” Sokka called, a soft smile on his face. It was clear their little field trip helped him warm up to him a lot. “I’m going to sharpen my weapons. Wanna come?”
Zuko raised his eyebrow at the invitation, but he accepted it nonetheless. They made a quick stop at his room where he grabbed his dao swords before trudging to Sokka’s room. Sokka took out his boomerang from his back and unsheathed his sword from his hips.
“Your sword is really pretty,” Zuko blurted, eyes catching on to the glint of the dark weapon. He’d seen Sokka use it in battle today, obviously, but he hadn’t actually taken a proper look at it. Sokka grinned at him.
“I know, right? I got it when I trained with Master Piandao while we were hiding out in the Fire Nation. He helped me improve a lot.”
Zuko decided to ignore ‘hiding out in the Fire Nation’ for now, in favour of another piece of information. “You trained with Master Piandao? No way. He’s the best swordsman in the world, isn’t he?”
Sokka just gave him another smile before sitting down, beginning his sharpening. Zuko followed suit.
“So, the sword. You must’ve made it yourself, then?”
“Yeah! I’m just lucky that that meteorite fell on that night. Master Piandao let me use it for— why are you looking at me like that?”
“You…” Zuko couldn’t help but gape a bit. “It’s made of a meteorite?“
“Yeah. I felt kinda useless watching Aang, Katara, and Toph put out that meteorite to stop it from burning the nearby village. But now I’m glad it fell, or I never would’ve gotten to use it.”
“You put out a meteorite?”
Sokka winced. “I didn’t do anything, really.”
“But. A meteorite. A natural disaster. And you just. Stopped it?”
“They did, yeah. It wasn’t the first time. Aang, Katara and I stopped a volcano from burning down another village once. Mainly Aang, though. Aunt Wu’s prediction only came true because of him.”
“Stopped a volcano,” Zuko repeated faintly. His swords lay on the floor, long forgotten.
Zuko demonstrated another firebending kata, bowing to Aang after he did so. “There. Think you can repeat that?”
Aang nodded determinedly, attempting to copy him. It didn’t work out so well.
Zuko caught Aang before he fell to the ground. “Shit. Maybe I didn’t demonstrate that well enough. I’m sorry.”
“What? No, no!” Aang leaped back up, shaking his head frantically. “You’re a great teacher, don’t worry!”
“If I’m your definition of a great teacher, your bar must be pretty low,” Zuko drawled. “Besides, I’m your only firebending teacher. You can’t make a comparison.”
“I can, actually. I had another teacher before you, but it didn’t really work out.”
“Really?” Zuko ran through the list of tutors he had, and then cancelled out anyone who would immediately sell Aang out to his father. He ended up with no one on the list. “Who?”
“Some weird guy we ran into the forest named Jeong Jeong. Know him?”
Oh, Zuko knew him, alright. He was a goddamn legacy. “The Deserter?!”
“Yeah! How’d you know?”
If Zuko let out a shriek two whole octaves higher than his usual voice, well. That was between him and Aang.
“Soooo.”
Katara gave Zuko a look, though it was noticeably less harsh than before their fieldtrip. “What’s up?”
“When we broke into that ship. And you did… something, to that guy, and he couldn’t move. What was that?”
“Oh.” Katara looked down at her hands. “It’s a skill I didn’t really want to pick up, but I did it when Sokka and Aang were almost forced into killing each other. I learned it from a waterbender from our tribe who had escaped the prison she was put in. Bloodbending.”
Zuko’s blood ran cold, and he was pretty sure it wasn’t Katara’s doing. “Blood what?”
After their narrow escape from Azula and Katara and Zuko’s field trip, he had an idea on where they could hide safe and sound, and comfortably.
Appa landed, all of them hopping off and wowing appreciatively. Zuko gave them an awkward smile. “Welcome to my family’s beach house. It’s been empty for years. They wouldn’t find us here, hiding right under the Fire Nation’s noses.”
“This is so cool!” Aang cheered. “Reminds me of when we hid in the Fire Nation a few months ago. Ooh, we’ll have to get clothes for Suki!”
“Ugh, yes please. The prisoner outfit’s getting old.” The Kyoshi Warrior gestured to her clothes, but Zuko was too busy repeating what Aang said in his head.
“Wait, stop. You’ve hidden in the Fire Nation?”
“Yeah?” Aang turned to him. “It was nice. I went to school.”
“To school?”
“I know, right? Twinkletoes even threw a secret dance party for the kids!”
“And he’s got beef with this kid because his girlfriend has a crush on Aang,” Sokka added with a grin.
“Shut up!” Aang whined. “School was pretty nice, though. Oh, Katara and I blew up a factory together too. That was fun.”
“If you count cleaning an entire river after that fun, then yeah, sure,” Sokka grumbled. Katara hit her brother with a scoff before continuing after Aang.
“Toph scammed an entire town. I think she’s still wanted, actually? She got arrested.”
Zuko’s eyes were practically bulging out of his head now. Toph crossed her arms, a frown on her face.
“Hey! You scammed and got arrested with me! You broke us out!”
“Katara got arrested?” Suki asked incredulously. “Wow. Didn’t think you had it in you.”
Katara’s responding blush made all of them (minus Zuko, who was still trying to process all that what the fuck) laugh.
“I got therapy too! Sokka was my dad and therapist.” Aang wrapped an arm around Sokka, the two sharing a grin.
“I…” Zuko rubbed his temples. “I need to sit down.”
“Sure, buddy,” Sokka replied nonchalantly. “Hey, do you think those guys still remember me from when I was Wang Fire?”
For the second time in just a week, Zuko nearly fainted.