Chapter Text
The last few days’ events hadn’t really been what Hakoda had imagined. Well, then again, it was a little hard to imagine much when you were captured by your enemies and brought to an inescapable prison. But breaking from said prison thanks to his son, his son’s friend who was the ex-Fire Nation princess, his girlfriend and a prisoner, while also bringing back the Fire Lord’s son and watching him almost murder his sister before they both made up was a bit hard to imagine.
Through all of this, he was trying to play his part as a father, and the only adult in a group of children and teenagers who had seen far too much war. (Well, there was also Chit Sang, but he didn’t strike him as a fatherly man.) But it was hard to do so when he himself didn’t really know what to think of these events. He didn’t know how to see them, let alone help his kids and their friends through them.
When he woke up, Azula was already awake and sitting near her brother. She seemed very protective of him from what he saw, and with how quickly she turned to Hakoda as he got closer, he could tell that this was the case.
“Good morning,” he tried to say with ease. “Did you sleep well?”
“Not really, I kept waking up.” She looked away before looking back to him. “You?”
“Well, I suppose I’ve had worse nights.” Seeing that massive wall of flames had given enough to his imagination to create some gruesome scenarios in his sleep.
She nodded and turned to look at her brother. From the tenseness in her shoulders, he could tell that something was bothering her.
“Is everything alright?”
“Yeah, it’s…” She paused. “He always wakes up at sunrise. I’m a bit worried.”
Hakoda turned his gaze to her brother, who looked like he was completely knocked out. “Oh… Well, maybe he’s just very tired.”
She shook her head. “He’s always managed to get up even after barely sleeping. I think something’s wrong.”
He crouched down to take a closer look, but the boy didn’t look sick or anything, just sleeping very still. “Maybe all the lost hours of sleep have caught up to him. He seemed quite tired last night.”
She sighed. “He’s always tired.” She frowned and looked at her brother with a pained expression. “You’re right, maybe that’s why…”
More and more people slowly woke up as the morning went by. Hakoda went to help Katara make breakfast and was glad to see that she looked a little less angry at everything. Although, he was worried that this would come back once she saw Zuko again.
He felt completely powerless to help her with this situation, because what was there to say? He couldn’t just tell her that sometimes, you had to deal with people you didn’t like, because she and her friends had every reason to want Azula’s brother gone. He’d personally witnessed how him almost murdering Aang had completely drained the kids of any joy, of how that joy had finally returned once their friend had woken up again. He’d seen the expression Aang had made when he’d learned that everyone though he was dead. He completely understood where they were all coming from. If this had literally been any other situation, Hakoda would have told them that people made mistakes, and teenagers were extremely prone to do those, but the problem was that this wasn’t any other teenager. This was a soldier. The boy was considered Ozai’s weapon for a reason, and Hakoda saw that with every move Zuko made. It was disheartening, just like how it was disheartening to see soldiers so young on the battlefield, or to see his own children and their friends fighting alongside adults against a conflict they were born into. But just like those enemy soldiers that looked far too young, he needed to look past this and focus on the fact that this teenager was raised to kill.
As such, he didn’t really know how to help his kids deal with all of this, but the way the prince had been acting with The Duke last night had at least been promising. It had also been extremely nerve-wracking.
Speaking of The Duke, the boy seemed more than willing to hang around the prince again, even if he was still knocked out. He kept asking Azula when he would wake up, to which Azula would shrug. Then someone else had to practically drag him away so that he would actually do something else and stop bothering the increasingly anxious firebender.
When lunchtime came around, Aang and Katara came back from their training since Azula didn’t want to leave her brother’s side. In fact, she seemed weary to leave him alone at all, which Hakoda could understand. By this point, Katara had gone back to glaring at her, with the rest of the group looking uncomfortable as per usual.
Her brother still didn’t wake up as the afternoon came around.
At some point, Aang managed to convince Azula to come train him, but she still looked very reluctant to leave Zuko. Deciding that this would finally make him useful for a change, Hakoda went to lend her a hand.
“I’ll keep an eye on him.”
She frowned and stayed silent for a bit, before nodding. “If anything happens, you tell me.”
By that point, no one was in the camp except for him, the sleeping prince and Chit Sang, who seemed to be consciously putting as much distance between him and the boy as possible. Hakoda didn’t know much about the man, but he could relate to that. Still, he sat close to the boy, whose rock bindings had been bent away after Azula had asked Toph for the fiftieth time.
“I don’t see why they don’t just run away and leave him here,” Chit Sang muttered from his seat.
“Well, Azula made it clear that she doesn’t want to leave him.”
“In all honesty, they should leave the both of them. You can’t trust royalty.”
He shrugged. “She helped you get out of prison.”
He shrugged back. “Who knows how they work…”
Silence.
“So, what were you in for?” Hakoda asked, mostly just to keep his mind off of the dangerous teenager sleeping near him.
“Oh, you know, assault and arson which lead to some deaths, one of which was a noble. Got me landed really quickly in a high security prison, but because of my bad behaviour and my aggressive tendencies against prison guards, I got moved to the Boiling Rock. Classic story, I’m not the only one who had it there.”
“Why the assault and arson?”
“Robbery gone wrong. Really wrong. Not as up there as that guy that tried to rob the Fire Palace and got murdered by the Fire Lord back when he was young, but close.” He chuckled at Hakoda’s surprise. “Yeah, it’s a well-known story. When people didn’t believe it, they apparently brought out the corps for all to see for a few days.”
That sounded extremely gory. “Well, good thing you didn’t try to rob the palace then.”
He snorted. “Yeah, although I was lucky to not be sentenced to death. Or maybe unlucky, depending on how you see it. At least I’m free for the time being, so that’s nice.” Hakoda nodded. “And what about you?”
“Prisoner of war. I was one of the leaders for the invasion when the eclipse happened.”
“There was an invasion?”
“Yeah, but it failed. Didn’t you hear about it?”
“We were on a far-off island, what little news we got from the outside world is stuff someone overhears or things they want us to know. They were really eager to tell us about the fall of Ba Sing Se and the death of the Avatar.”
“My kids were there when it happened.” This time, it was Chit Sang’s turn to look surprised. “Actually, they even tried to stop it, that’s why Aang almost died.”
“Huh, and here I thought I’d heard the weirdest part about them.”
“What did they tell you about the fall?”
“Oh, you know, how the might of the Fire Nation once again trampled on the Earth Kingdom, how we are one massive step closer to victory, how that royal brat is the most amazing firebender to ever live.” He shot a glare to the prince. “You know, that kind of stuff.”
“You don’t like the royal family?”
“Not a fan of how they treat their own people, no. We’ve got cowards, traitors and monsters leading us, what’s not to love? Some say that family has gone mad, but most of them get imprisoned or executed for that. Would surprise me if he met a few of those people.”
“Do you really think he’s an executioner?”
“Wouldn’t know, I wasn’t in the military. But the fact that so many people have heard of this means that it’s probably true.”
“I’ve heard of those stories too while at sea. I knew he was young, but it was always a little hard to visualise how much.”
Chit Sang shrugged. “I mean, the military starts training pretty young. It wouldn’t shock me that he started even younger.”
Hakoda couldn’t help but feel disgusted at that thought. He knew on an intellectual level that this was most likely the case, but the image of a child raised to be a soldier wasn’t one he liked. There was a reason he’d never trained Sokka when he was young. He would have later, but with the war, he never got a chance.
“It’s hard to imagine a father training their own child this way.”
“Well, people here focus a lot on training their kids to fight, especially if they’re firebenders. Although I’m pretty sure that the Fire Lord isn’t a very fatherly kind of guy, especially with how both of his kids called him a dick yesterday.”
He nodded. “True. But you still don’t trust them?”
“I wouldn’t trust royalty with my life. The only reason I went along with the princess was because I didn’t know who she was. I just thought she was some overzealous sassy teenager until the fucking Fire Prince showed up. That was definitely a surprise.”
The both jumped at the small sound of rattling chains and turned to look at the prince. He was still sleeping, but was flinching a little. Probably a nightmare.
“Well, that’s my cue to get as far as possible,” Chit Sang said as he got up and walked away. “You coming?”
“I promised Azula I’d keep an eye on him.”
He shook his head. “Never promise anything to royalty, it’ll bite you back in the ass. Good luck.”
Hakoda sighed and resisted the urge to roll his eyes before turning back to the prince. He was getting more and more agitated, and while Hakoda would like to say that he wanted to wake him up so that he wouldn’t accidentally burn something, he also just wanted to do so because seeing anyone let alone a child in distress hit his parental instincts too hard.
He slowly got closer to the boy and gently shook his shoulder, bracing himself to roll away in case on any attack. But the prince just jerked his shoulder away and kept shifting, leaving Hakoda to try again a little harder.
“Hey, wake up,” he said softly. “It’s just a-”
The familiar feeling of a knee kicked to his stomach knocked the wind out of him, and he was quickly shoved off before he could figure out what had just happened. Gripping his stomach, he looked up and saw the prince looking at him intensely with fire daggers in both of his hands placed defensively in front of his face. They stared at each other for a few seconds while panting for different reasons, before Zuko relaxed ever so slightly and dropped his hands. He then looked down to his chains in mild confusion, and Hakoda took this as his opportunity to breathe correctly again and calm his heart down.
“You’re safe, remember?” he said gently as the boy stilled. He was clearly startled, so Hakoda couldn’t really blame him for this. “Azula’s training Aang right now she should be back in a few hours.” His eyes didn’t leave his cuffs. “You got those on for safety reasons, remember?”
Zuko just hummed and wrapped his arms around his knees, clearly trying to avoid eye contact.
“I’m guessing you’re hungry?” Hakoda tried, hoping that he wasn’t letting his fear for the worse outcome show.
He said nothing, but Hakoda was pretty sure that the prince was hungry, so he got up and found a leftover portion that Azula had insisted they keep out just in case. It was cold now, but the heat and humidity would probably make that fact more bearable.
“Here, it’s your portion left from lunch.”
The prince glared at the bowl, and Hakoda suddenly remembered his outburst last night, where it was clear that the boy had thought that his food was poisoned. He was pretty sure that telling him that it wasn’t poisoned wouldn’t help. Instead, he just set the bowl next to him and went back to his old spot, not too near him but still near enough.
He tried to not make his glances too obvious, but when his eyes met the prince’s scowl, it was clear that he’d failed. But still, Zuko just sat there and didn’t touch his food.
The silence was deafening.
“Where’s Azula?”
Hakoda almost jumped at the question. “She’s training Aang.”
“Where?”
“Ah, well… probably on another level in the temple.”
The prince sighed and fidgeted a bit, before doing and redoing his hair a few times while leaving his hairpiece to the side. He then tapped the back of his neck repeatedly, looking like he was debating over getting up or not.
The food stayed untouched.
“Hey, you’re awake!”
They both turned to see a very excited The Duke arrive, along with Suki and Haru who looked much less excited.
The Duke ran straight to Zuko, ignoring Haru’s call to not do that. “Did you sleep well?”
The prince blinked and the kid sat down next to him. “Uh, sure.”
“Cool! I dreamed of flying whales. They were pink and blew bubbles.”
He nodded. “That’s nice.”
“Did you eat?” He picked up the abandoned bowl and practically shoved it in Zuko’s face. “It’s not too salty today, so you should definitely eat this. It’s really good!”
Zuko slowly took the bowl and held it, which was apparently enough for The Duke since he didn’t comment on the fact that the food still stayed untouched.
“You wanna go explore some of the temple with me?”
Haru sighed from where he was standing. “The Duke, we talked about this-”
“I wasn’t talking to you, I was talking to Zuko!” He turned back to the prince. “So, do you?”
“Well… I wouldn’t mind.”
“Awesome!” He got up and put his helmet back on correctly, then sat back down. “But you gotta eat first. You always gotta eat before going on an adventure!”
“The Duke, I don’t think he wants to come with you,” Haru said as he got closer to lead the kid away.
“But he said he wanted to.”
Zuko nodded while eating some fish with his hands. “Yeah, I want to.”
“See?”
The earthbender looked like he was trying very hard to not argue with the prince, and then turned to Hakoda. “Sir, he’s not allowed to leave the area, right?”
“I told you, you don’t have to call me ‘sir’. And as for the area, he can’t be left alone, no.”
“But I’ll be with him,” The Duke argued.
“You’re too young, sorry.”
“But he’s nice, I wanna hang out with him!”
In all honesty, Hakoda had no idea why the kid had latched himself onto the prince so much. All he knew was that it wasn’t a great thing to happen.
“I can supervise them,” Suki offered.
Haru stared at her in shock as Hakoda frowned. “Are you sure about this?”
She shrugged. “I mean, they were alone for a bit last night. And yeah, Toph could still sense them, but he doesn’t really seem like he’ll attack him.”
“You make it sound like I kill children on a regular basis,” Zuko muttered. They all stared at him, and he turned back to his half-finished bowl. “You know what, don’t answer that.”
“Why would you kill a kid?” The Duke asked.
He shrugged. “Beats me.”
Suki cleared her throat. “Well, if I go with them, things will be a little safer, right?”
Haru blinked at her. “We’re talking about the prince of the Fire Nation.”
She nodded. “Yup.”
“A very dangerous guy.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Wields fire like he’s made of it, all that stuff?”
“So I’ve heard.”
“Literally managed to take over Ba Sing Se.”
“Can you stop complementing me?” Zuko said loudly. “It’s getting embarrassing.”
Suki snorted while Haru stopped himself from talking back. “You walked into that one.”
“No I didn’t.”
“Yes you did. And for the record, I’ll be careful, don’t worry about it.”
The look on Haru’s face made it very clear that he was worrying about it, which Hakoda could understand. But he didn’t interject since watching Zuko interact with The Duke made him look much more human than how he was described.
Hopefully he wasn’t wrong in his assessment. He didn’t want his lack of judgement to be the reason for a child’s death.
---
Zuko had been stupid. So fucking stupid. For fuck’s sake, he’d almost attacked that Water Tribe chief and ruined everything Azula had tried to do for him. Sure, the man was tall, and imposing, and had looked far too much like Ozai as he’d opened his eyes, but that was no excuse. He was lucky that the man hadn’t mentioned this to anyone.
Agni, he wanted to find Azula and not let her go for the rest of the day. He was already feeling like shit, and he’d just woken up. Eating had somewhat helped, even if his stomach seemed to fight every bite he’d swallowed.
The moment it hit him that he should have apologised to the Water Tribesman, him, The Duke and Suki had already left the camp. Shit, he couldn’t even do that correctly. He didn’t understand why The Duke even wanted to be near him. He should just let him rot in a corner like everyone else wanted to do.
“Well, this is nice,” Suki said while looking at a random wall.
“Yeah, it’s… rocky.”
The Duke snorted. Zuko just wanted the ground to swallow him.
They stopped in front of a mural depicting some sky bison. Zuko’s eyes followed the fading orange lines as if that would make him feel less uncomfortable. There was a little spider-fly walking about near that line, so his attention was mostly drawn to that.
“It’s a cool mural,” said Suki.
The Duke nodded. “Yeah! Aang told us the story it said a few days ago.”
Silence.
“And… what’s the story?”
“I don’t know, I wasn’t listening.”
Zuko and Suki both let out a small laugh at that, before turning to each other in surprise, then looking away awkwardly. Agni, just kill him already.
They kept walking, slowly making their way to a more dilapidated part of the temple. The Duke kept running around, which wasn’t nerve wracking at all considering the massive dangerous piles of rubble he wanted to climb.
“Could you not climb those?” he asked the kid. “I don’t want people to get mad at me because you got injured.”
The Duke groaned, “Fine,” and instead started looking at rocks to add to his collection.
Zuko decided to aide him in his quest, because why not, and Suki also did the same. He decided that since she was the one to have volunteered to stick around him, he might as well annoy her with more theatrical trivia.
“By the way, I checked the whole thing about the different versions of Love Amongst the Dragons, and turns out there are at least nine of them.”
She paused for a moment, turned, and blinked at him. “Really?”
“Not counting all of the more niche versions that naturally happen when a play is wide spread, yes.”
“Wow, I’d never thought there would be that many. Then again, it is an old play.”
He nodded and stayed silent for a bit. “By the way, I’m sorry for sending you to the Boiling Rock.”
She picked up a rock and stared at it intently. “It wasn’t exactly a nice thing to do.”
“No, definitely not. That’s why I’m apologising. And also for threatening to burn down your island, although if it helps, I wasn’t actually going to do that.”
She stilled and turned to him. “So you’re saying that if I hadn’t told you what I did, you wouldn’t have done anything?”
If Zuko weren’t so used to people looking at him so intensely, he would have looked away. “Well, I would have definitely done something, just… not that…”
“What are you talking about?”
They both turned to The Duke, and Suki shrugged. “Boring stuff.”
“Well come on, let’s go check out more rooms!”
He’d never been to an Air Temple. Why would he? They were hard to access, and there wasn’t much to check out there except for haunted ruins. Zuko didn’t believe in ghosts any more than others did (there was probably a joke there, what with the fact that he kept seeing things that weren’t there), but every step he took felt like he shouldn’t be there. This may come from the fact that his great-grandfather had ordered the genocide of the people living there.
He knew it had been a genocide. He’d been taught that it had been a great battle against an air army and all that, but there were only so many secret reports of the time that he could sneakily read before those lesson went down the drain. It had been a massacre, and he was honestly surprised that there weren’t any bones in the area. He wondered if Azula felt that same unease in being here, or if that was just his rampant paranoia.
Or maybe it was just his own guilt being distilled into something else. He had plenty of that to go around.
They entered a large room with thick roots breaking through the ceiling. Rubble was thrown everywhere, but they could still make out some broken tables made of rotting wood. It must have been a refectory or something along those lines. Now, it was an unusable room inhabited by too many shadows for his liking. Even with the fact that he could sense heat, he didn’t like such dark shadows unless he was the one in them.
“Hey look!” The Duke ran to one of the broken table and picked up what looked like a bit of pottery. “It has a bunch of cool drawings on it!”
He and Suki joined him to see the bit of pottery, and Suki agreed that it looked cool and the two started debating on what the piece used to be.
He would have also done that if it weren’t for that little spider appearing in his field of vision. He could tell it was the same spider as before, even though they had moved several rooms since then. He knew that because… well, he just knew. It looked entirely ordinary and like something that could fit in his palm with some wiggle room. And yet something didn’t feel right about it. He hadn’t really noticed it before, but the more he looked at it, the more unsettled he felt by it. That was weird, he wasn’t afraid of spiders, far from it in fact, but there was just something about it that elicited a shiver through his spine.
He watched as it scuttled through the rubble and slowly followed it, wondering why in the world he felt so disturbed by it. All of his senses seemed to focus on it, to try to figure this out. He could almost hear its little legs hitting… the… Little? Why little? It was around the size of his hand, why did he call it little? It passed through a shadow and disappeared, before reappearing with the same colour as those shadows. It was as if it were made of them. Did that even make sense? And why was its scuttling so damn loud?
He kept following it and stopped as it entered a dark corner of the room. The shadow there was large and pitch black, and he had no way of seeing what was inside. He couldn’t sense anything there, but he knew that there was something there. He didn’t know how, but he just knew it-
Two small white dots appeared in the abyss. They slowly grew in size as more and more twin dots appeared. He could feel them staring at him, hatred filling those illuminated voids.
Something in the shadows moved. What seemed like four long sticks slowly showed themselves to be a hand fitted with long spindly fingers. More of those hands appeared, and with them the dots grew larger as the thing slowly revealed itself. Multiple faces seemed to litter its entire mass of a body, as many faces at it had limbs. Even if they couldn’t all look in the same direction, he knew that their minds were all on him. Its faces where indiscernible from each other, but he knew who they were. With each step it took, his guilt grew to constrict his ribcage.
He watched as it crawled towards him, paralysed even in the face of the thing ready to end him. He couldn’t move despite every cell in his body screaming at him to do so, and it knew that. It was utilising that. That fear. That weakness.
He couldn’t run.
Eventually, the thing stopped and slowly moved its hand upwards, towards his face. He could hear each of its articulated fingers slowly crack as they spasmed, like tiny electric shocks constantly coursed through its body. The hand slowly rotated itself towards his left cheek, ready to grab him. Millimetre by millimetre, it advanced to his skin, making it crawl and burn at the mere thought of being touched.
Yet still, he couldn’t move. And the thing knew that.
And it was so happy to finally be able to inflict on him what he had done to every part of what it comprised of. Any second now, it would finally have him for itself, enacting its well-deserved vengeance on him. Any second now, he would be dead, and there was nothing he could do. Any second now. Any… any…
He blinked.
He breathed.
He ran.
---
The Duke was having a good time. It wasn’t that he hadn’t been having fun since getting to the temple or anything, there were plenty of things to explore, and Teo and Haru were cool to be around. But right now, digging through rubble and finding old stuff with Zuko and Suki was probably the most fun he’d had in a while.
He liked Zuko. He also liked Suki, she was fun too, but Zuko reminded him a bit of Jet and Pipsqueak, and he liked that. He wasn’t like Jet or Pipsqueak, but he treated The Duke the way they treated him, and he liked that.
He missed those two. Hopefully he would see them again. Well, he had to see Pipsqueak again, since he’d promised The Duke that.
He also spent time with Zuko because he looked like he was lonely. People around camp didn’t like him, obviously, but even with them all telling The Duke to stop getting near him, he didn’t really understand why. They’d told him that Zuko was dangerous, but as far as he could tell, the only dangerous thing about him was that he wasn’t very good at eating his food, and that he was a firebender. But one, Longshot was also very bad at eating his food properly, because he kept accidentally skipping meals, and two, Azula was also a firebender, and so was Aang in a way. So those excuses just didn’t seem very convincing. They were probably hiding something from him, but if that was the case, it was their fault that The Duke still wanted to hang out with him. They should just stop treating him like a baby.
Maybe they just thought he looked scary? He kind of did, in a way, especially when he’d first come into the temple. But Teo and Haru had quickly left with him, so he didn’t really know what else had happened afterwards. When they came back, Zuko had been wearing handcuffs, and Sokka had told them that he would be staying with them for a bit, but that he was dangerous and that it was better to stay away. He also looked scary because of his scar, mostly because it looked like he was constantly glaring, but plenty of people had scars, and it wasn’t his fault that it looked unsettling. He also looked imposing, but so did Pipsqueak, and he was one of the nicest people The Duke had ever met. And then there was the fact that he was wearing red, and that he looked a lot like an ashmaker, but so did Azula, and she was on their side and also kind of nice, so that wasn’t an excuse either. And neither was the fact that he was the Fire Nation’s prince since that also applied to Azula, and she was fine, even if Katara kept looking at her like she wanted to freeze her.
So, from The Duke’s point of view, the others were just being hypocrites.
He moved a few more rocks to find more bits of pottery, and jumped as a spider-fly ran away. He shuddered, because spider-flies would never not be creepy, and then picked up a piece of a broken yellow and orange plate.
“Hey, look at that!” He turned to Suki to show her, because she was the closest.
“Wow, the paint’s almost fully there!”
“Yeah!” He picked up the two other pieces of the plate and realised that they all fit together. He then excitedly turned to Zuko, who was standing further away from them and looking at something else. “Hey, Zuko! Look what I found!”
Zuko didn’t respond, which was disappointing.
“Zuko!”
Again, nothing. Was he ignoring him? That would be rude.
The Duke got up to get closer to him, thinking that maybe Zuko was just zoning out.
“Hey, Zuko! I found this cool plate!” Nothing. “Zuko, look at it!” The Duke frowned at the lack of answer. “I wanna show you something, look!” He moved to stand in front of him, and looked up. Zuko wasn’t looking at him, but at the shadowy corner. The Duke turned to it, then back to him. “Zuko?”
“Is something wrong?” Suki asked as she got closer.
“I don’t know, he’s just looking at something…” It was honestly a little creepy because of how blank Zuko’s face looked.
The Duke tried to follow Zuko’s line of sight, but there was nothing very interesting in that corner. He got a little closer to it, and grimaced as a bunch of spider-flies moved around.
“Maybe he’s just scared of-”
He stopped talking as he heard someone run away. He turned around to see Zuko disappear from the room, and turned to Suki to understand what had just happened. Suki turned back to him, looking as confused as how The Duke felt.
“What was that?” he asked.
“I don’t know…” She turned back to the exit. “We should probably follow him.”
The Duke nodded and put the three pieces of the plate in his pocket before following her. But as they entered the hallway, the realised that Zuko was already long gone.
“Shit,” Suki muttered.
“Zuko!” The Duke called out, but nothing. He turned to Suki, feeling himself grow more and more worried. “Is it bad?”
She nodded frantically as they started running. “We need to find him.”
“We should split up,” he said while trying to keep up with her.
They both stopped as the hallway split in two, and while she looked really hesitant, she nodded. “Okay, but be careful!”
The Duke nodded and ran off, calling Zuko’s name over and over again in the hopes of finding him. It didn’t work all that well. He almost lost his helmet several times too.
But eventually, The Duke did find him sitting down in a small hallway, completely hunched up and hiding his face in his knees.
The Duke sighed in relief and got closer. “There you are! Why did you leave?”
He didn’t reply. He didn’t even acknowledge him.
“Zuko?”
His stomach started doing weird things as Zuko still didn’t reply. The Duke sat down next to him and noticed how tense he looked.
“Are you okay?” he asked in a quieter voice.
Nothing.
Could… Could he even hear him?
It only hit The Duke now that Zuko probably couldn’t.
Slowly, The Duke went to touch his arm to get his attention. It didn’t do much. If anything, it made The Duke feel even more worried because he could now feel Zuko’s arm trembling. He looked back up at him, and realised that all of Zuko was trembling, as if he couldn’t breathe properly.
The Duke didn’t know what to do about that. He wanted to leave and go find Suki, because she probably knew what to do, but he didn’t know where she was, and he was worried that something bad would happen while he was gone. So instead, he just stayed close and tried to hug Zuko, only really managing to put an arm around his back.
He didn’t know how long they stayed like this, but eventually Zuko started breathing correctly again. The Duke sighed in relief as he felt him relax, and he looked up to see Zuko sitting up to lean on the wall, breathing deeply with his eyes closed. The Duke just kept looking at him, waiting for him to say something while staying close and holding Zuko’s arm.
With one last exhale, Zuko finally opened his eyes and blinked a few times before looking around him.
“Huh…”
The Duke sat up at held him a little tighter. “Are you okay?”
He blinked a few more times before turning to him. He looked really pale. “I, uh… I think so,” he rasped. “What happened?”
“Well, you ran away from the room.”
“Oh…”
“Were you scared of the spider-flies?”
His eyes moved down to The Duke’s arms holding his, and he shrugged. “I guess… It was a really big one.”
The Duke nodded, because he could understand that. “Do you want a hug?”
He stayed silent for a bit, then nodded. “Yeah.”
He moved up his arms so that The Duke could hug him without hitting the handcuffs’ chain, and The Duke made sure to squeeze him as much as possible, because he knew he really liked it when people did that.
Zuko chuckled. “You trying to break my ribs?”
The Duke laughed at that. Of course he didn’t want to do that!
“You’re really warm.”
He snorted. “Yeah, I get that a lot…”
The Duke let go and waited for Zuko to move up his arms again so that he wouldn’t be stuck in the chain. “You’re a firebender, right?”
“Uh-huh.”
“Does it hurt when the fire’s close to your skin?” he asked while looking at the scar on his face. “I mean, people say that firebenders are hard to burn, but I don’t actually know if that’s true.”
“We are harder to burn, but not by much. It’s more like our skin heals just a little faster. But when you just hold a flame in your hand, it doesn’t hurt. You know, as long as you’re careful.”
“So you weren’t careful when you got your burn?”
Zuko blinked, and The Duke only realised then that that probably wasn’t a polite thing to say. Zuko moved his hand to his scar and looked away for a bit, and The Duke wondered if it hurt. It must’ve hurt when he’d got it, but it did look old.
He moved his hand away and looked back at The Duke. “I didn’t get it by accident, but I did get it because I was reckless.”
“Oh… Does it hurt?”
“Sometimes, yes. But much less than before.”
The Duke smiled. “That’s good.”
Zuko nodded back with a small smile. “Do you want to see what it feels like? To hold fire?”
His smile quickly left his face. “Uh… I’m not a firebender…”
“Don’t worry, you won’t actually be holding fire. It won’t hurt.”
“Promise?”
He nodded. “Promise.”
Well, fire was definitely scary, but if Zuko promised, then it would probably be fine, right? Haru had even said that he was really really good at controlling fire, so it should be fine.
“Okay…” Yeah, he didn’t sound super convinced.
Zuko nodded and opened one of his hands to make a little flame. This would have probably been normal if not for its colour.
“Holy shit, it’s blue!” He threw his hand over his mouth and stared at Zuko with wide eyes. “I’m not supposed to swear, please don’t tell the others.”
Zuko just chuckled. “I won’t, don’t worry.”
“Why is it blue?”
He shrugged. “It just happened at some point. It wasn’t always like this, but now it is.”
“That’s pretty cool!”
Zuko smiled at that, and The Duke was proud of that because it looked like a genuine smile. He then gently took The Duke’s hand and carefully placed it between his palm and the flame. The flame was really close to The Duke’s skin, which made him pretty nervous, but after a few seconds of waiting for it to hurt, he realised that nothing was happening, and so he relaxed.
“So?”
“It’s really warm.”
He chuckled. “Yeah, that’s what it feels like when you hold fire. I used to do this with Azula before she could bend.”
“Really? Azula seems really good at it, though. When was that?”
“Until she was around seven.”
He gasped. “Seven? Isn’t that too old to start bending?”
“She was a late bloomer.”
“Huh…”
Zuko snorted. “Don’t tell anyone though. She can tell other people on her own.”
“Don’t worry, I won’t.” He looked back at the little flame and smiled. Fire did look pretty cool when it wasn’t trying to kill you.
“There you are!” Zuko let go of his hand, and they both turned around to see Suki running towards them angrily. “What was that all about? You just ran off out of nowhere!”
Zuko grimaced. “Sorry…”
“Why did you leave?”
Zuko just looked away and said nothing, so The Duke replied for him. “He saw a creepy spider-fly.”
She blinked. “Seriously? A spider-fly?”
“Spider-flies are scary, okay?”
Suki just sighed and leaned on the wall near her to catch her breath. “Well, did you show him what you found?”
He gasped and took the pieces of plate out of his pocket. “Right! Look at what I found!”
Zuko took the small pieces of pottery and looked at them appreciatively. “That’s a good paint job. You can barely see the brushstrokes.”
“It’s just broken in three pieces! Isn’t that cool?”
Zuko nodded, and The Duke felt very happy that he agreed.
“I’m sure we could try to repair it,” said Suki.
“Oh, we could even give it to Aang! He’d be happy with that, right?”
They both nodded as Zuko put two of the pieces together. “The best way to repair it would probably be with staples.”
“Oh, I’ve done that before. You wouldn’t believe the number of times I’ve broken pottery and have been forced to repair it by our mayor,” Suki chuckled.
“What kind of metal do you use?”
“Uh, brass mostly.”
“I’m pretty sure you can find some brass plates in the airship, they usually keep some in case for repairs.”
“We’ll also need a small drill.”
“Don’t know if you’ll find something that small.”
“Teo has small drill bits,” said The Duke. “We can ask him!”
“Does he also have a hammer, a metal clipper and a sanding file?” she asked.
“Probably, he has a little tool kit with him.”
She nodded. “Alright, you two get the tools, I’ll go get the brass, and we meet back at camp. Okay?”
The Duke frowned. “But I want it to be a surprise!”
“Alright, then what about the second floor landing?”
“Okay!”
“I don’t know where that is,” Zuko said.
“Don’t worry, I’ll show you! Plus, you’re not allowed to be alone, so you gotta stick with me!”
“Okay.”
They all got up and left, with The Duke feeling extremely excited for the present. This was gonna be so cool!
---
Finding the brass sheets wasn’t that hard since it was in the now mostly empty storage area. The room was empty because they had looted the place for supplies, and it was a good thing that they had decided to do this today because they would be moving the airship soon. When Suki passed the training area, she moved a little faster so as to not be asked questions about what she was doing.
To be fair, she wasn’t doing anything wrong, but her friends were very reluctant to interact with Zuko so she didn’t want to start an argument. Well, she was also a bit reluctant, but he was here, and he wasn’t hurting anyone right now, so she might as well help him and The Duke out. Plus, she did enjoy stapling pottery sometimes.
She met up with Zuko and The Duke on the second floor landing, and they all started working. She decided to start drilling the holes while Zuko prepared the staples and The Duke watched. He kept asking them what they were doing, which ended with Suki basically explaining to him the entire process of stapling pottery back together.
“Why aren’t you drilling all the way through?”
“If I do that, it’ll leak.”
“Why aren’t you drilling straight down?”
“If I don’t drill at an angle, it won’t bind as well. Plus, some of the glaze might fracture if the angle is too wide.”
It was at that point she realised that she had once again forgotten that rope was a necessary part of this process, but Zuko had thankfully thought about this and found some rope for her.
Truth be told, she found it very hard to outright dislike the firebender. Sure, she still held a bit of a grudge against him, mostly because he beat her in a fight, got information out of her and sent her and her girls to prison, but just like when he had captured her, she couldn’t help but just go along with conversations and feel at ease. The others probably wouldn’t like hearing that.
As she started hammering in the staples, The Duke naturally got a little bored and started walking around the landing and looking at columns, leaving her and Zuko alone.
“Are you gonna tell me why you actually left now?”
He stilled as he bent another small piece of brass to make another staple. “The Duke told you, it was a spider-fly.”
“I’m sorry, but the image of the big bad Fire Prince being scared of a spider-fly is a little ridiculous to believe.”
He frowned and shifted a bit. “It was a big one.”
She blinked at him. “Do you seriously expect me to believe this?”
“Can’t you just drop it?”
“No, because you ran off when you’re not supposed to, and if someone asks me about it and I tell them you didn’t answer truthfully, they’ll get suspicious. You’re on thin ice, remember?”
“I wasn’t planning on betraying any of you, if that’s what you’re worried about.” His eyes met her glare, and he glared back. “Look, I’m tired and I got spooked. It happens to everyone, okay?”
She sighed in annoyance as he handed her another staple to hammer in. “You’re really not gonna tell me?”
“I already did,” he gritted out. “It was a spider-fly, a particularly disturbing one at that.”
Suki just rolled her eyes, and hammered the staple. They stayed silent for a few more minutes before he talked again.
“Are you gonna tell the others about this?”
“I don’t know, should I?” she said sarcastically. But then she looked up and realised that he looked a little guilty, so she started feeling bad.
“I’m not planning anything, okay? I just… I’m just tired.”
She looked at him and sighed. “Alright, I won’t say anything. But don’t think it’ll happen again if you do that in front of the others.”
“Yeah, I know… Thanks.”
“No problem.”
By the time The Duke came back, she was sanding down the plate’s last staple.
“Are you done?”
She couldn’t help but smile as his impatience. “Almost.”
“I think Aang’s gonna come back to camp soon, I really wanna give it to him today!”
“I don’t think you’re helping by telling her to go faster,” said Zuko. “She’ll be done soon.”
“Do you think he’ll like it?”
Suki shrugged. “I don’t see why not.” She blew on the staple and looked at the underside of the plate, feeling happy about her work. “I’d say it’s one of my best repairs!”
“Are you done now?”
“Let’s pour some water on it first just to make sure.”
The water test was in fact a success, and after drying the plate, they all went back to camp. When they returned, everyone was back and chatting while Katara and Hakoda cooked dinner. Suki handed The Duke the plate, since he wanted to be the one to give it to Aang, while she handed Teo his tools. Zuko just went to sit next to Azula while trying to evade everyone’s glares or tense glances.
“Hey, Aang! I wanna give you something!”
Aang turned from brushing Appa’s fur with curiosity. “What is it?”
“Ta-da!”
Aang’s eyes grew large at the sight of the plate. “Where did you find that?”
“In the temple under some rubble. It was broken, so we fixed it!”
“We?”
“With Suki and Zuko! We stapled it back together, and it shouldn’t spill because we put some water on it and it didn’t go through.”
Aang took the plate and stared at it, looking like he was trying to stop himself from crying. “This is amazing.” He smiled and hugged The Duke. “Thank you so much!”
“You’re welcome, it’s way cooler than the spider-flies we found.”
Aang chuckled as he let go and went to Suki to hug her, which she eagerly accepted. “Thank you!”
“Don’t mention it, stapling pottery is surprisingly fun once you get the hang of it.”
“Well, I’m pretty sure you did a bit more work than him, so…” he whispered.
She snorted at that. “True. Although Zuko did help a lot.”
Aang’s smile faltered a little as he let go of her. “Ah, right…”
He gulped as he turned around to look at Zuko, who was slowly being approached by Momo. They both looked equally sceptical of the other’s presence as Azula stared, as if trying to supervise the encounter. Zuko carefully extended his hand towards Momo, clearly waiting for the lemur to get closer at his own pace, which was a bit awkward because he had to also move his other hand since they were both cuffed.
Aang took a deep breath and walked towards him. Zuko turned to him, and Momo did not.
“Uh… thanks for helping repair the, uh… plate…”
Zuko blinked, his hand still outstretched for Momo. “You’re welcome.”
Azula looked like she was trying not to have an aneurism.
Aang cleared his throat. “Yeah… Well, bye!” With that, he quickly walked away to Toph, who was having a bit of a field day with this interaction.
Eventually, Momo caved in a nudged Zuko’s hand and let himself be pet, before running straight to Zuko’s lap and not leaving for the rest of the evening. He didn’t even move when, inevitably, Zuko had to place his bowl of Momo’s back. Not even Sokka calling him to give him treats would make the lemur move.
“I think you’re stuck like this forever now,” Azula joked.
He just shrugged, not looking all that bothered about the situation he was now in.
Suki turned to Sokka as he nudged her side. “Hey, did you actually spend an entire afternoon with him?” he whispered.
“Well, it wasn’t all afternoon, but yes.”
“And did you notice anything suspicious?”
Truth be told, him running away because of an alleged fear of spider-flies didn’t hold up all that well in her mind. And if that was the case, then she should be saying that yes, Zuko had been quite suspicious for leaving and running circles around the subject. But watching him interact with The Duke had made him seem so normal, and he had apologised to her and helped her do something nice for Aang even though Aang was clearly still weary of him. He didn’t have to do that, but he did.
And, well, he had kept his word on how she would be treated in prison.
“Nah, he’s just a bit awkward. Although he is good at making staples.”
That last part seemed the throw Sokka in a bit of a loop, which was cute. “Okay…”
Dinner went well this time, with no one thinking that their food was poisoned, although the air was still as tense as before. Once they were done, Azula picked up Momo in her arms, which he clearly didn’t appreciate, and announced that she and Zuko would be going to sleep in their little section of the camp further away from the rest of them. Momo was quick to jump onto Zuko’s shoulders and stay there, making it clear that he was now very much in favour of the firebender.
“He probably just bribed him,” Sokka said. Suki couldn’t tell if he was joking or not.
Aang kept staring at the repaired plate throughout the evening. “It was nice of him to help…”
“He’s just trying to make you lose your guard around him,” Katara told him.
“Wouldn’t he have given him the plate if that were the case?” Suki interjected. “I mean, he didn’t seem to have any ulterior motive when he helped me, and if he did, he would have made it a bit clearer that he’d helped out.”
Katara just shrugged in annoyance. “It’s probably just one of his tactics. Why are you even defending him?”
“I’m just telling you what I saw…”
Her annoyance dropped. “Well you should be more careful,” she said with genuine worry. “I don’t want any of us to get hurt because of him again.”
Suki could understand that, of course she could, but it was surprisingly easy for her to exist around Zuko without being too angry. Sure, she hadn’t forgiven him, and she was still wondering what the fuck that was earlier, but she still found it quite hard to be angry and weary around him as time went on.
She wouldn’t be telling the others anytime soon, but she couldn’t help but think that, apart from the heart attack he’d almost given her and their small argument, the time she’d spent with him that afternoon had been quite nice.
---
“You should ask.”
Zuko just shook his head and held her closer.
“What if it get’s infected?”
“It’s not infected, I got it treated at the palace.”
“Well it’s still hurting you.”
“That’s what burns do.”
“But if she healed it for you, it would hurt less. It might not even leave a scar if she does it.”
He just sighed, already tired of this conversation. “I’m pretty sure she would still say no if I asked.”
“You don’t know that.” Even if he couldn’t see Azula’s face right now, he could tell that she was frowning.
But Zuko still stood by his belief. If the burn on his neck had been life threatening, then maybe he would consider the fact that the waterbender would help him. But it wasn’t life threatening, and she despised him for perfectly understandable reasons, so there was no reason to make a fool out of himself and ask.
(Plus, he deserved that burn, just like all the other ones. He shouldn’t have lied, but he did, so he had no one else to blame but himself. He wouldn’t say this to Azula though, he didn’t want to see that guilty look on her face when he was the guilty one.)
He buried his face in her shoulder, not wanting to ever let go of her.
“Can I come watch your lesson tomorrow?”
“Sure, as long as you wake up on time.”
“Sorry…”
“Hey, don’t apologise! If anything, it’s good that you slept so much. You look barely awake half the time.” She paused. “Are you still tired?”
“Yeah…”
“Well… Sleep all you need, okay? You don’t have anymore constant training like back at the palace.”
“If it weren’t for the fact that I’m surrounded by people who hate me, I’d say this feels like a holiday.”
She chuckled. “Well, The Duke likes you, and so does Momo.” At the sound of his name, the lemur shifted a little between the two of them. “And Suki’s starting to come around, it seems.”
“Maybe…” From his point of view, she had only stuck around him to keep an eye on him. Agni, he’s made such a fool of himself by running away. He felt so stupid.
“But you can definitely come tomorrow. Maybe you can even give me some tips, I have no clue if I’m actually teaching correctly.”
“Do I look like a firebending instructor?”
“Well, you’ve still got more experience than I do with bending, so it wouldn’t hurt. But anyway, it’ll still be nice to have you around.”
He hummed and shrugged, feeling a little bubble of joy go through him at the fact that she was happy to have him around.
Maybe it would be nice.