Chapter Text
Dear Ty Lee,
So I know it’s been almost a year since my last letter and Mai probably wants to use me for target practice and maybe Azula is upset about it too. I figure you’re probably not happy with me either, but you’re nicer than they are so I’m hoping you’ll actually read this and give me the chance to explain myself.
When I last wrote, I think I told you I was going to investigate a swamp known for spiritual activity. I went, and it was a success in some ways. I got guidance to go to the North Pole, so that’s what I was ready to do once I got back to my ship. But, instead, I was stranded for several weeks because my crew was suddenly reassigned away from me.
I got on the bad side of some commander at the beginning of my journey, and I think he sent one of his captains to give me a hard time. But this captain is a piece of work and has it out for me personally. At least that’s what I think. I won’t bore you with all the bullshit he’s pulled, but the biggest and latest (haven’t run into him since, thank Agni) thing he did was that he took almost my entire crew without immediate replacements.
As you probably remember, I had a pretty good relationship with my crew, as well as had a few friends. He didn’t like that and took them away just to mess with me. And, well, it worked. I was upset for a long time, and even if I did know I had letters from you all waiting for my response, I probably wouldn’t have wanted to write a response because I had nothing good to write about.
My friend Chanda is forcing me to write that I was throwing a tantrum. I highly disagree. My reaction was justified for the situation! She doesn’t know——
[The paper has several ink blots and a small tear around here. The following words are in a different handwriting.]
He was throwing a tantrum.
The point is, I didn’t know I had to reply to you and wasn’t willing to write letters at the time anyways. Then a lot of stuff happened and I… Well I would say I forgot but that’s a lie and Chanda is about to steal the paper from me again. I was upset that you and Mai were ignoring me. And I recently admitted this to my friends and then my steward realized she’d been holding on to your letters for me this whole time and forgot about it! (But I can’t be too mad at her, because someone tried to tell me to write to you, but I also forgot about that...)
To make up for this, let me write about my year since then. I’ve been really busy. I hope the stories make up for my silence. And I’m sorry. I didn’t write that first. I should have. But I am sorry. I know we weren’t close when I was still back home, and I always thought of you as Azula’s friend. But it meant a lot to me when you said we were friends, and I hope we can continue to be…
So, let me start my year report by telling you about these whacky musicians I met when Uncle was helping me find a way to the North Pole——
When Zuko stepped out of the deserter general’s tent to the sight of Ensign Jae and Kavi arguing, he thought his entire world was going to shatter around him. Again.
Maybe it would have if this happened before finding the lóng egg, before reading Yanchen’s memoirs, before carrying the memory and secrets of mixed-bending creatures and people. A Zuko who did not have those experiences would have been too betrayed to give Kavi a chance to explain.
But Zuko did understand the weight of carrying secrets, of wanting to reveal them but being terrified of the reaction. He knew how that guilt curdled in his stomach and made him upset with himself. While he didn’t personally know the level of grief Kavi experienced, Yangchen did. And Zuko could see echoes of Yanchen’s words in his cousin’s best friend—his partner as Akari had been to Yangchen.
So Zuko listened and his world did not shatter. Instead, he dared to hope.
Lu Ten may not have set out with the same goals as Zuko, but ultimately their visions of the future were the same. When he first learned the truth of the Air Nomad genocide, he’d been afraid of disrupting the war effort. Now, Zuko knew his cousin was right. It was difficult to accept, but if the war was strangling their own people, then it had to end if there was to be any hope of airbenders returning to the world.
But where Zuko was alone and uncertain in how to begin planning, let alone bring his vision to reality, Lu Ten had found like-minded people and built an entire organization. With Lu Ten gone, his organization was offering to help Zuko .
Before he could accept that offer, Zuko needed to reveal his own secrets. If Bun Ma and Ju Long were still here, he would have confided in them by now. This was too big to handle on his own, and Zuko was willing to risk trusting Lu Ten’s Wings. Even without the whole story they were willing to help him, and it seemed despite keeping things secret from Zuko, Kavi cared .
Really, how could he not forgive Kavi when they were guilty of the same offense?
In the year and a half since Zuko first visited the Western Air Temple, nothing should have changed. The ruins were much harder to find than the northern temple, and a mere year would not have a visible effect after decades of sitting abandoned. Nothing had changed about the place, but everything had changed for Zuko.
“I wasn’t in the right mindset last time I was there. I could have easily missed something!” Zuko said to Uncle to justify his sudden decision to return. He grew sheepish, half an act, half genuine. “And I’d like to see if anything remains of what Yangchen wrote about her home.”
The excuse worked and no one questioned the last-second course set as the Sazanami left port. When Zuko argued with Uncle about exploring without him and conceded to Kavi acting as chaperone, no one found it suspicious. (And no, Chanda, he did not throw a tantrum . He only shouted a little when Uncle was being stubborn.)
When Zuko asked his friends if they wanted to see the temple with him, well it was almost expected. (If Zuko had been counting on Chanda’s discomfort with heights to reject his invitation, that was only for Zuko’s guilty conscience to know. )
Of the remaining Wings aboard the Sazanami , Ensign Jae and Petty Officer Takehiko (hadn’t that been a surprise) were high ranking enough to slip away for the day without garnering unwanted attention.
And so, Zuko returned to the Western Air Temple and realized how much truth had been in his excuses to Uncle. Because while his companions cautiously climbed down to the temple proper, Zuko jumped off the edge of the cliff and let the wind carry him down on his glider. He had climbed down those steep, treacherous steps determined to hunt down the Avatar and return home, no matter what. Now, he rode on the wind with a dream bigger than simply going back home.
“I don’t see why we had to trek all the way here,” Takehiko griped as Zuko landed next to the group. “Anywhere off that damn boat would have been fine.”
“Coming back here is important to Zuko’s goals,” Kavi said with a conspiratory glance to Zuko. Ever since he finished reading Yangchen’s memoirs and gave it back to Zuko, he’d been giving Zuko those looks. They hadn’t been able to properly talk about what he read yet—neither of their sign language was up to par for that level of conversation—so Zuko wasn’t sure how much Kavi managed to infer about his plans or mixed-bending beyond Siniq’s addendum.
Jae sat heavily on the base of a broken pillar and wiped the sweat from her face with the bottom of her shirt. “I don’t want to complain either, but this level of security wasn’t what I had in mind when I said we needed to have a meeting.”
“I- Uh-” How was Zuko supposed to justify his choice of location without it sounding like dramatics? They could have just gone to the next port and met somewhere off the ship. But… It felt important that they really understood the loss of the Air Nomads, and how dual-benders had met the same fate for similar reasons.
“Do you want to find it before we talk?” Kavi asked, grinning like he expected Zuko to jump at the offer.
Instead, Zuko’s question was echoed by the rest of their group.
“Find what?”
As Kavi floundered, Amphon fully focused on the conversation rather than the scenery. “Oh! Is there a mural you want to find?”
“If you dragged us here for a fucking-,” Takehiko grumbled, cutting himself short under Jae’s stern glare.
“No! I wanted us here because, well, I’m asking you to care about airbenders! But we’re all taught lies about them. So, even if Lu Ten didn’t- you don’t agree with the war, that doesn’t mean you’ll really understand what I’m asking your help for.”
As the others considered his explanation, Kavi shook his head and pushed his hand through his hair. “Zuko, I’m sorry, I’m a bit confused. I thought you lent me Yanghchen’s memoirs because- Well, besides the obvious, which I greatly appreciated, it has helped a lot, but- Are we not here to find Akari’s dragon egg?”
Takehiko’s jaw dropped. Jae pushed up her glasses. Amphon held her cheeks in her hands with a wistful sigh. They all spoke at once.
“A what now?”
“Kavi, that was centuries ago. Any egg wouldn’t be, um, still here?”
“Yangchen must have protected it! That’s so romantic.”
Any nerves that would have bubbled up in revealing this well-kept secret were overshadowed by pure shock. How did Zuko manage to completely overlook the fact that Kavi had no reason to suspect he already found the egg? Well, there went Zuko’s intended script on how to have this conversation.
“Uh- So about that…” Zuko carefully pulled the bundled egg out of his bag and pushed the blanket aside to reveal its soft glow.
Kavi dropped to the ground, unable to support himself in his laughter. As Amphon began bombarding Zuko with excited questions, Jae stared in shocked silence.
Takehiko dropped his head into his hands. “Fuck me, the layabout was right .”
“It’s only fair if you know the full story before choosing to trust and help me.”
Jae thought Zuko was being a dramatic teenager when he said that. What could he possibly have to say that would make them wary of helping him? ‘Making a world where airbenders could return’ was vague enough that Jae hadn’t put much thought to it. She was ashamed to admit she simply assumed it was, again, Zuko being dramatic in how he expressed wanting to end the war. Well, she learned her lesson now. Zuko was, without a doubt, as dramatic as they came, but he said what he meant.
Spirits help them, Zuko might be even more radical than Lu Ten .
Banished and burned at thirteen, Zuko had every reason to ignore signs that the world wasn’t right. Instead, he found his ancestor’s legacy in the home of his enemy and began to question . He befriended colony-born soldiers; lived, learned, and flourished with people of the Si Wong, Foggy Swamp, and Northern Water Tribe; forced himself to accept the truth of the war, alone in a spirit library, and began to plot how to bring freedom back.
Zuko didn’t just want to end the war. He wanted to upend the order of the world.
The Air Nomads were gone, Sozin had made sure of that. But they hadn't been the only ones to bend air. A world where airbenders could return was a world where dual-bending existed. Zuko learned the truth of the war. He also learned a truth about the four nations that had been lost to time. Well, lost to everyone except the Northern Water Tribe.
It sounded ridiculous, impossible , but the more Zuko spoke, the more Jae believed. No one knew how the ability to bend was passed on, but everyone knew that the first people to bend learned from creatures born of the elements. Dual-bending creatures still lived , and if the spirits knew gifts of wind would not be a death sentence, then… New airbenders could come into the world.
But first, the Wings needed to convince the world that a mix of elements wasn’t the unnatural, volatile offense they believed it to be.
“Alright, so I think our first course of action should be making sure all the Wings are aware about the truth of the Air Nomad genocide,” Kavi said decisively once Zuko concluded his tale. “It was remiss of Lu Ten and I to overlook that. It’s not enough for our members to be against the war, they need to understand and respect the memory of what our nation destroyed.”
“Wait, really?” Zuko exclaimed, as if he’d been expecting them to rescind their offer of help once they knew his whole story.
Amphon scrunched her nose at him. “I joined the Wings to help right some of the wrongs in the world. If I knew just how wrong things were, I- Well, I don’t know what I would have done! But now I know and everyone should know!”
“I think we should start on a small scale outside the Wings.” Jae’s mind raced with the logistical challenge of an underground propaganda campaign. “Let’s see what works with the Sazanami crew. I hand picked the majority of them for being decent sorts. It’ll be a good gauge of the average citizen. We should probably bring Iroh in-”
“Absolutely not.”
“Uncle?! No!”
Jae expected Kavi to object. He tried his best to hide how much he detested General Iroh, but Jae knew how to see through him. Zuko’s abject horror was unexpected, so Jae ignored her friend as she focused on Zuko. “He’s a far cry from the general who led the siege on Ba Sing Se. Lu Ten’s death changed him and I know he cares a lot about you. I’m sure it won't be difficult to convince him to come to our side, if he’s not already.”
“We can’t tell him,” Zuko insisted. He hugged his egg close, curling around it protectively. “I- No matter what his opinion on the war is. He- He killed the last dragon. I can’t- I won’t- We can’t possibly tell him about our plans without him figuring out I have a lóng egg. He’s too smart not to figure it out. I can’t take that risk.”
As much as Jae wanted to defend the man, she didn’t have any facts to support her feelings that Iroh could be trusted. He didn’t seem like the type to destroy the lóng egg, but he didn’t seem like the sort of man who would have been ignorant to Lu Ten’s true nature either. Lu Ten had never trusted his father enough to confide in him, and it seemed Zuko would be following in his cousin’s footsteps.
“Are we all going to ignore the tiger elephant in the room?” Takehiko drawled. He was too good at sounding like someone who needed to be punched in the face, not like someone who supported their cause. “Prince Zuko, all of this is just a roundabout way to maybe find the Avatar so you can end your banishment. But if we’re caught, banishment is going to be the least of your worries. You’ll be considered a traitor to the Fire Lord.”
Zuko swallowed roughly and closed his eyes to escape from everyone’s sudden attention on him. “I know. But- I’m never returning home without the Avatar anyways . So- I think the spirits have been showing me the path to restoring my honor. If I start fulfilling Akari’s destiny, the Avatar will surely return. I have to risk being branded a traitor to have any hope of returning home and convincing my father to end the war.”
Wind whistled around them.
There were moments in Zuko’s story where it sounded like he thought he could reason with Fire Lord Ozai, as if the Fire Lords had been duped into the war, but Jae had brushed it aside. Hadn’t she learned her lesson? Zuko didn’t say anything he didn't mean!
Takehiko scoffed. “You’ve got to be shitting me. Convince Fire Lord Ozai to just end the war?”
“I- No, I’m not shitting you!” Zuko secured his egg in its blanket nest, then jumped to his feet. He started pacing, his hands and arms sporadically moving in sign language to accompany his words. “He’s- He’s a reasonable man! A good leader. If he knew the truth of the war and how pointless it is, he’d- He’ll- He can listen to reason. If I can just- I know I can-”
Color drained from Zuko’s face and his breath started growing short and fast. Kavi shot a furious glare at Takehiko, and spoke over Zuko’s rapidly spiraling speech.
“Let’s just move forward with the intention to not get caught and figure out our next steps when we get to them,” he said, daring anyone to challenge Zuko’s delusions by tone alone.
“Exactly!” Zuko dropped to the ground with a heavy, relieved exhale. He whipped out Yangchen’s memoirs and started flipping through the pages. “I have some ideas of where we can go next to work on the crew-”
“Why don’t we have them come here first?” Amphon exclaimed frantically, pale herself as she stared at her friend with wide eyes. It had Zuko brightening with a wide smile as he praised her suggestion.
As they began discussing the logistics of justifying such an excursion, Jae sat back and watched with a frown. Well, if Zuko succeeded in convincing the world to accept dual-bending airbenders, perhaps he could even sway Fire Lord Ozai of all people- Who was Jae kidding? Absolutely not. The Wings found a new mission and possibly a fledgling leader in Zuko. If that meant they needed to protect him from his own father and misplaced trust, well, it’s what Lu Ten would have wanted.
A flickering flame of irritation sat in Kavi’s chest, but it did not flare up and try to choke him in its smokey heat. He let the fire burn beside the glowing flames of hope and love, as he had allowed it before he died and was brought back to life. Yangchen’s words and the love of those around him were helping Kavi keep at bay the inferno of hatred that once consumed him. He still had days when he burned , but they were growing further apart, and he confided in Jae now. She never let him feed the inferno.
So as the idiotic acting captain of the Sazanami barked at the gathered crew, Kavi could share a bemused, annoyed look with Jae and not begin spiraling. He wasn’t perfect. He could be petty and vindictive, but that didn’t define him.
“This is our first mission since our failure at the Northern Stronghold!” Without Zuko’s immediate presence, disdain permeated Haoran’s every word. Nevermind the crew hadn’t failed in finding the Northern Air Temple, it had just taken longer than Haoran wanted it to. “It’s of utmost importance that we do not fail Prince Zuko again!”
Honestly, this man was a pain in the ass. Kavi sighed and rolled his eyes, making Jae struggle to stifle her laughter at the exaggerated expression. Amphon’s suggestion to have the Sazanami crew witness the Air Temple was a brilliant first step toward swaying them against the war. It had been by exploring the Air Temples that Zuko himself began doubting the lies he was raised on. But what could possibly be a valid justification for making the entire crew explore the temple ruins when Zuko had been content going without assistance before?
Zuko hesitantly offered the idea of the crew searching for the heatbenders’ village ruins under the guise of a hideaway Yangchen had built in the mountains. He clearly thought they would shoot down the idea, but it was a great opportunity for their dual-element benders campaign if they did find the ruins. And if they didn’t, the crew still would have gone through the Western Air Temple with a critical eye to ‘recognize airbender architecture’ and then have several days to contemplate what they saw.
Exploring the temple had gone well, especially with Zuko flitting about on his air glider as he explored parts of the temple he previously couldn’t access. The seeds of doubt were sown. But now Haoran decided he needed to take charge. He encouraged Zuko to start surveying the mountain from the sky as he had planned to do, and to leave the mundane task of organizing the crew to him, the acting captain.
In all of their plotting and scheming, Kavi and Jae had overlooked the Haoran problem. Or, more specifically, how Zuko had yet to realize how incompetent the man was. Zuko thought Haoran’s attitude was the only problem, and believed it had been rectified after his lecture before the crew’s extended shore leave. Unfortunately, that was not the case, if Haoran’s permanent sneer as he assigned the search groups was anything to go by.
Jae still could not ascertain if Zhao put Haoran in charge of the ship in hopes his idiocy would cause troubles, or if Haoran was purposefully sabotaging Zuko and reporting back to the asshole. They needed to do something about this before Haoran really caused trouble, but Kavi shared Jae’s concern that Zuko wouldn’t be able to act ignorant if he knew there was a possibility Haoran was working for Zhao…
Was Haoran assigning groups at random ? Kavi stared at the man in disbelief as he separated a pair of engineers who worked best together, but kept the deck department almost whole as a group under Takehiko. The deck department was getting absurd in their interactions with Takehiko. There was no way they were going to properly focus together.
Figuring out a permanent solution to the Haoran problem was going to have to wait for another day, but for now, Kavi wasn’t going to let this search fall apart due to Haoran’s idiotic planning.
“Sir, I could take over from here if you have other work to complete,” Kavi interjected before Haoran dispersed the gathered crew. “I believe Prince Zuko would agree that overseeing the search can be delegated now that you’ve organized it.”
“It is beneath me, isn’t it?” Haoran stroked his beard with a contemplative grin. “Yes, you can send a runner to me if there’s anything that needs my assistance, but surely a weapons head is capable of keeping everyone on track, yes?”
Kavi’s smile did not so much as twitch as he agreed and promised not to let his acting captain down. Not until Haoran was headed up the Sazanami ’s gangway did he let the smile drop as he turned to the crew, who were awkwardly standing in their randomly assigned search groups.
“Before we head out, let’s make a few adjustments. Yan, go join Souta for Agni’s sake. You both look like lost puma puppies. Takehiko, split your crew between the rest of the groups so they actually get work done. Now, let me explain the purpose of the flares you were given…”
By the end of the week, no signs of an Avatar’s hideaway nor of a lost civilization were found. It was clear to all except for Prince Zuko that Commander Haoran wanted to berate the crew for their failure. But Lieutenant Kavi had personally thanked them for their work before they returned to the Sazanami , and had assured every crew member that they did not deserve any criticism Haoran may impart on them. Emboldened by the praise of a superior officer they respected, the crew were prepared for but did not dread the expected vitriol from their acting captain.
To everyone’s delight, Prince Zuko had flown ahead on his glider and awaited the crew on deck beside Commander Haoran. He openly praised their work and expressed his gratitude, for he had not expected them to succeed but was grateful for them assisting him nonetheless. There was nothing Haoran could say after that, not without undermining the prince.
Prince Zuko declared his intentions to continue searching for connections to Avatar Yangchen, and expressed his hopes that the crew could continue assisting him now that they were familiar with the architecture and visuals of her people, even if the people had changed since her time.
And so when the Sazanami set sail the following morning, there were some beginning to question what they knew of airbenders, even if they did not yet realize it.
Ensign Jae had a different realization as Commander Haoran shouted orders like he always did. Few scrambled to listen to him, as most of what he told them was what they were already doing . Instead, many eyes trailed to Lieutenant Kavi, as if asking if they should be doing anything different.
Perhaps there was a solution to the Haoran problem after all…