Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

There is a ghost on the Wani.

This fact once caused disquiet amongst the crew. But three years is a long time to live with a ghost, to learn tricks like ‘never try to touch his skin’ and ‘let General Iroh handle him’, and to allow terror to fade. 

The problem with the ghost on the Wani is that he doesn’t know he’s dead. Prince Zuko turns up regularly to give orders in search of the Avatar, a shadow of the mission he would have been given had he survived the fated Agni Kai. The crew follow, mostly because they had been selected for this mission in the first place. And helping a spirit to return to the spirit world is a more honourable mission than searching endlessly for a fairytale, anyway.

They travel to the Air Temples. At first, General Iroh seems to think that a place like this - natural in its spirituality - will aid Prince Zuko in moving on. It doesn’t work. Nothing works. The boy is angry and bitter at his own banishment, even though the banishment orders never had a chance to come to fruition. 

Every now and then, one of the crew will hear General Iroh try to gently explain the boy’s predicament. He speaks in a low, loving tone, about death and the importance of moving on. More rarely, someone will slip up and touch the boy skin-to-skin and pass right through him. Whichever way it happens, Prince Zuko will panic and disappear. 

But he always returns, staring out at the ocean, as if nothing has happened.

Three years is a long time to live with a ghost.

One year into their fruitless search for the Avatar - one year into their fruitless search for Prince Zuko’s path to the world to come - Lieutenant Jee looks at the prince and realises that he is taller. 

It’s not always easy to notice the growth of children you see every day. It’s more disturbing, however, when those children are no longer living.

Jee approaches Iroh when the boy is haggling for the price of their necessities in an Earth Kingdom port. Iroh prefers to keep an eye on him in these moments, lest someone tries to shake the prince’s bare hand and suffers quite a fright.

“Do you ever wonder,” Jee asks, “why he seems to be growing up?”

Iroh sighs. “His hair changed, too,” Iroh adds. “He didn’t have a chance to shave after the Agni Kai. And I think it’s longer now.” It isn’t an answer, so Jee waits for Iroh to turn the question over in his mind. Finally, Iroh says: “I expect it’s because he doesn’t realise that he doesn’t need to grow up.” 

Jee tries his hardest not to flinch at Iroh’s words. He also tries his hardest not to flinch when Prince Zuko loses his temper and shouts at the vendor. 

The ghost of the Wani is an angry spirit.

Two years into their fruitless travels, Prince Zuko is caught stealing. 

Iroh rubs at his forehead, sitting across from his nephew. Tea is cooling in cups before them. Iroh takes a sip, allowing the flavour and the heat to calm him. 

“Explain,” he insists, and then listens. 

Zuko has never been good with words. He stumbles over them, says things he doesn’t mean out of anger, slams up walls when he thinks he might seem weak. This is a difference between Zuko’s life and his death: while Zuko in life had never been good with words, he had also been well-mannered and kind. Zuko in death is bitterly afraid of anything that could be read as weakness.

Iroh does not blame him for it. The way that Zuko was taken from life… it would make anyone brittle and shuttered. 

Eventually, the truth is bitten out between excuses. Zuko had seen the governor’s theft from the locals, and - already suspicious that he had more information on the Avatar than he was willing to share - his nephew decided to solve two problems with one mask and two swords. 

Iroh hides a smile behind his jasmine tea. 

The ghost of the Wani cares deeply for honour. 

Three years into their seemingly endless spiritual journey, Prince Zuko looks out to the ocean and sees a great light.

They find the Avatar. 

It isn’t the mission the crew had expected to fulfill. 

Zuko bursts through the outer wall of the village, and he is so engrossed in the search for the Avatar - in the possibility of going home - that he doesn’t quite process the destruction he’s laid at the doorstep of the Southern Water Tribe. 

Zuko faces the Avatar, ready to fight. 

The Avatar holds his hands up, but he looks concerned about something other than the upcoming combat. “Um,” he says, slowly lowering his arms. “Are you… okay?”

Zuko hesitates. “What do you mean, ‘am I okay’?” he asks. “What kind of question is that?”

“Right,” the Water Tribe boy agrees from behind Aang. “What kind of question is that?”

“You look,” the Avatar starts. 

And Zuko attacks.

Later, when the Avatar is onboard the Wani, he turns to the first unmasked person he sees.

“Is he okay?” the Avatar asks Iroh. 

Iroh raises an eyebrow. “That is a strange thing to ask, of the person who just captured you.”

The Avatar frowns at where Zuko is barking orders. “I just have this feeling that something isn’t right,” he admits. 

Iroh hums. The Avatar is whisked away, and Iroh finds himself wondering if their two missions - to find the Avatar, and to find Zuko a way to move on - had really been the same mission all along. If anyone would understand Zuko’s spiritual malady, after all, it would be the Avatar. 

They lose the Avatar, but they keep searching.

The ghost of the Wani leaves a trail of destruction in his wake. 

There are a great many rumours about Prince Zuko in the Fire Nation. Some say he is dead; others say he is banished. There was never a funeral, and there are stories of interactions with the angry prince of the Wani, so most people believe the latter story. 

Some believe the story so much that they find themselves locked in competition with a ghost. Iroh has never known whether to despise Zhao or pity him. 

Zhao attempts to take Zuko’s life. He fails, because Zuko has no life to take.

Zuko is on board during the explosion, but it hardly matters. He swims to shore, though Iroh imagines that he could simply appear there if he understood his own lack of limitations. 

The moment that Zuko meets Princess Yue, everything changes. 

The Avatar is right there for the taking. But the princess’s eyes meet his, and the princess stands, and it is like Zuko is rooted to the spot.

Zuko should be shivering from the cold of the waters he swam through to get here. He should have needed his breath of fire. But he feels nothing.

“Get help!” the waterbender insists, raising her hands, readying herself for battle. “I’ll protect Aang!” 

Neither the prince nor the princess respond. They both continue to stare. 

Princess Yue begins to approach him. 

“Get away from him, he’s dangerous!”

“He’s barely here, Katara,” Princess Yue responds. “Can’t you see that?” 

Zuko frowns at Yue, and then looks down at himself. He feels more solid than usual, not ‘barely here’. 

Princess Yue lifts a hand to Prince Zuko’s face. Her skin touches his. Zuko draws in a breath, sure that something is about to happen, but nothing does.

“What happened to you?” she asks. 

Zuko scowls and pulls away, and Yue’s hand falls back to her side. “I don’t know,” he admits, and it feels huge - it feels like he’s just revealed too much of himself to this stranger, who might use that information to harm him.

But Zuko doesn’t even know what he’s revealed. 

Princess Yue only nods. 

“What is happening?” the waterbender asks, sounding bewildered and afraid. 

“Come and sit,” Princess Yue invites. Zuko finds himself following her to the edge of a pool. “It’s safe for you here. Do you know about the Spirit Oasis?” she asks, her face and her hands kind. Zuko sits with her and shakes his head, and she begins to tell him the story.

The Water Tribe boy joins them.

“Uh, what is happening?” he asks. 

“That’s what I asked,” the waterbender responds, crossing her arms and pouting. “He came in here to attack, but now she’s just… telling him a story?”

The siblings stand to one side. Zuko can see them in his peripheral vision, but he focuses on Princess Yue, who tells him the story of Tui and La. 

“That’s a beautiful story,” he says eventually, because he thinks he’s supposed to say something.

Princess Yue smiles at him. “Look into the waters, Prince Zuko,” she says, even though Zuko is sure that he never introduced himself.

But - how had Zuko known Yue’s name? He’d read about the Northern Water Tribe and their princess, but he’s sure that he shouldn’t have recognised her. He doesn’t know her (how does he know her?) and he shouldn’t trust her (why does he trust her?). 

Zuko leans over and looks into the water. 

Zuko’s reflection looks back, but it isn’t right. 

“Oh,” Zuko says, and he hears his own voice shake on it. It’s subtle, the difference in his reflection, but it is there. His hair is unshaven, pulled back into a neat phoenix tail like he used to wear it back in the palace. And his eyes are glassy and unseeing. “Oh.”

“It’s okay,” Yue insists, pulling him back from the water with her hands on his shoulders. “It’s okay, Prince Zuko.” 

Zuko looks down at his own bare hands. He understands, suddenly, how he hasn’t been cold. How he’s uninjured from Zhao’s attack. 

“This is usually when I fade,” he says, because he understands this now, too. “Why am I not fading?”

Yue is looking out to the swimming koi fish. “Things work differently in the Spirit Oasis,” she says, and then looks back toward the Avatar. The Avatar continues to glow silently as he travels the spirit world.

“Um, why are we having story time with Zuko right now?” the Water Tribe peasant interjects. 

Zuko closes his eyes. “I’m no threat to you,” he explains, even though he could be a threat if he wanted. But there’s no want for that, anymore. Even if he does capture the Avatar, there is no going home. There is no restoring his honour. “I’m already dead.”

“What?” the waterbender asks, quiet and hushed. “What happened?”

Zuko opens his eyes. He still isn’t fading, even though he said it out loud. 

“I died a long time ago,” he says, but it isn’t an explanation to the Water Tribe children; it’s for Princess Yue. Yue reaches out a hand and takes Zuko’s. Her skin is warm and soft.

“Me too,” Yue responds. “The Moon Spirit gave me life. Do you think the Sun Spirit…?”

Zuko shakes his head. “This isn’t a blessing; it’s a curse.” 

They sit together, children of the Sun and Moon, and watch the spirit water. 

“Aang will know what to do, when he wakes up,” Yue insists. “We’ll help you move on, Prince Zuko.”

Zuko squeezes her hand. He doesn’t know if he wants to move on. He wants to see his uncle, and his sister, and his home again. But it has never mattered much what Zuko wants. 

The waterbender sits on the edge of the water, far enough from them to be non-intrusive. Her brother continues to hover, glaring and confused. 

“How did you die?” the waterbender asks. 

Zuko doesn’t like to think about it. Something in him wants to fade away, desperately, but he’s kept in place by the Spirit Oasis. 

“My father,” he explains eventually, the words feeling like treason on his tongue. Zuko knows that it’s true, but something in the air around him rejects it. He watches the fish so that he doesn’t have to see anyone’s faces. 

The waterbender gasps, and it’s a quiet sound, but it still feels huge in this peaceful space. 

After a moment, she adds: “Aang will know what to do, Zuko.” 

“Are we really,” the Water Tribe boy starts, and then makes a frustrated sound. He sits down heavily at his sister’s side and glares at Zuko. “I don’t like you,” he explains. “You’ve tried to kill us a whole bunch. But yeah, Aang will help you die properly.” 

“Sokka,” the girl reprimands. 

“Katara,” the boy responds in the same tone, and Zuko’s mouth lifts into an almost-smile, because it reminds him of how he and Azula were, a very long time ago. 

Now, his only task is to die properly. 

How is Zuko so bad at everything that he can’t even die properly? Azula would probably find that funny, too. 

The children sit around the spirit water for long minutes. Yue’s hand continues to feel warm in Zuko’s. It might be the most that he’s felt, physically, in years.

(Is that really true?) 

And then Zhao attacks. 

The Avatar is still on his spiritual journey, so it’s up to the children to defend him from Fire Nation soldiers. Zuko falls into place against his own people. What does it matter, now, whose side he should be on in a larger war? The Spirit Oasis needs to be protected. Zuko almost imagines he can feel the Moon and Ocean spirit calling out to him.

Zuko’s firebending is not strong. It never has been. His fire comes out in oranges and yellows, not hot enough to do enough damage. He fights anyway. It’s almost enough, up until Zhao changes his target from the children to the spirits. 

Uncle Iroh arrives, and the Avatar returns, but it’s too late. The moon dies, casting the night in full darkness.

The Ocean Spirit possesses the Avatar, and the soldiers disperse. They are alone again in the Spirit Oasis, but there is no calm here anymore. 

Uncle Iroh sits with them and says to Yue, very carefully: “You have been touched by the Moon Spirit.” 

Sokka tries to hold her back, and Zuko watches with faint horror as Yue says: “It is my duty.” 

But Zuko also understands duty. He stands beside the princess as she chooses her duty, and he says: “You are very brave, Princess Yue.”

Princess Yue looks up at Zuko, and her eyes shine blue even when the rest of the world has lost its colour. 

“As are you, Prince Zuko,” she says. “And it is time for you to move on.” 

“Nephew?” Uncle Iroh asks, and Zuko looks around to see that his eyes are filled with tears.

“It’s time, Uncle,” Zuko says. “Thank you for accompanying me these years.” 

Uncle Iroh reaches forward and wraps Zuko in a hug. Zuko lets himself be held for a beat, and then pulls back.

Prince Zuko squeezes Princess Yue’s hand, and then they both let go.

Yue holds the koi fish, and the white drains from her hair. 

Zuko walks into the water, down and down and down. 

Yue ascends, and Zuko descends.

The Avatar wakes slowly. 

They tell him about the battle, about Yue, about Zuko.

“He went where?” Aang asks, frowning. 

Katara repeats herself.

“No,” Aang says, shaking his head. “That can’t be right.”

“He was dead, Aang,” Katara says, very softly. “I know it’s… it seems strange, to know… But he had to let go. Yue helped him let go.”

“No,” Aang says again, louder this time, a thread of panic winding through his voice. “That isn’t right. Avatar Roku didn't say that Zuko needs to let go. He said that Zuko needs to fight.”

Zuko wakes, sudden and sharp.

“No,” he says, realising where he is. “No, no, no.” 

Zuko curls into a ball, pulling at the chains that tie him to the bed. 

Chapter Text

There is a prisoner in the palace.

It’s a strange turn of events, because prisoners are usually kept in prisons. But this one is contained in a far-off room, below ground level, in an unused corridor that only servants and the Fire Lord ever tread. 

There are very few servants who are permitted to serve the prisoner. There are whispers that this prisoner is a ghost, because he seems to the servants to be barely there. He hardly ever speaks, just quiet ‘thank you’s after his hair has been brushed or food has been brought. He can often be found completely silent, staring at the wall or his own reflection with entirely blank eyes. This used to scare the servants, but three years is a long time to live with a boy who’s scarcely more than a ghost. They grow used to his silence. 

Some servants still speak, holding up one half of a conversation as if it might be some small comfort. The boy smiles, occasionally, when that happens - a tiny, faraway thing, but a smile nonetheless. He meets eyes, sometimes, and listens carefully. But even in those better days, when he’s present and listening, he never responds to say more than ‘thank you’. 

(Once, a very long time ago, the boy harmed one of the servants with his fire. The servant was burned up both forearms. Things moved in quick succession in that day: the Fire Lord’s footsteps fell heavy in the corridor, the servant disappeared, and the prisoner was ordered to be put in chains. The prisoner didn’t even make it past the guards at his door. He hasn’t attacked a servant since, but they remain armed nonetheless.)

There has been a whisper, once or twice, that the Crown Prince never left the palace. But there are always whispers in a place like this, and most are unfounded. The Crown Prince, after all, had been spotted on the deck of the Wani before she departed. The Fire Princess opens monthly letters from her brother, saltwater-stained, containing handwriting and turns of phrase that nobody would be able to replicate. Every now and then, the Fire Princess writes back - around the Crown Prince’s birthday, usually - with thinly-veiled insults and threats. 

The prisoner of the palace remains quiet, glassy-eyed, and barely-there. The servants call him a ghost. 

The prisoner of the palace searches for the moon. 

He has a single window, high up on the wall next to the bed of silk and iron. The window is at ground level, high above him, and there is a small stretch of sky that he can see from the correct angle. Most days, he uses this to catch the sunlight and spend time in Agni’s warmth. Now, he also looks for the moon. 

Zuko knows about the dream. He isn’t stupid. He knows that his mind simply takes him to a story, because his mind doesn’t want to be with his body, chained to this bed. But somehow, he dreamed the dream away. He dreamed that he walked into the spirit water as Princess Yue ascended, and now he can’t get the dream back.

(In Zuko’s dream, he has everything he doesn’t have here: he has an escape, the open sea and sky, his uncle’s loyalty and love, a purpose. But now the dream is gone, and Zuko cannot sink back into it, no matter how hard he tries.)

And so Zuko knows that he has never met Princess Yue. She is probably nothing like his dream, anyway; he’d invented her in his mind, drawn her up as kind, as filled with honour and duty. She’s a fiction. The real Princess Yue is out there still, safe and sound, and likely nothing like Zuko’s dream. Which means that Princess Yue is not the Moon Spirit, and Zuko is grateful for this fact. 

But he still seeks out the moon, and on the few occasions that he catches it, he dips his head in an approximation of a bow. He imagines that she watches him kindly. 

He only hates her when Father returns. 

(Zuko tries to leave in his mind, tries to find his path back to the dream, but he cannot anymore. He’s trapped here in this room, trapped in his body, telling himself don’t fight, it’s worse if you fight, and he hates Princess Yue for telling him to let go of the dream.)

But he apologises, when he sees the moon again. “I don’t hate you,” he says, looking upwards, pulling at the chains so that he can see the moon in all her glory. “I’m sorry. You were only trying to help.”

And then he remembers that it was only ever a dream, and that the moon is a strange spirit and not a princess who felt like a sister - who felt how Zuko imagines a sister should feel - and he curls up into himself.

The prisoner looks away from the moon.

(The moon does not look away from the prisoner.)

Days pass. The prisoner cannot slip back into the dream.

He watches his servants as they arrive, flexes his wrists when they unchain him and lead him to the washroom, listens as the kinder servants speak to him.

Zuko doesn’t respond when they ask questions. They don’t seem to expect him to.

Father doesn’t appear every night. But even on the peaceful nights, Zuko is too awake, waiting. 

Days turn into weeks. 

Zuko tries to leave himself when Father’s footsteps resound in the hall. He stares at the window and he thinks about the dream, about saltwater air, about chasing the Avatar, about Uncle offering cups of tea and ridiculous advice. 

The dream doesn’t appear. Zuko continues to stare at the window, escapes his body emotionally even when he cannot mentally, and waits to be alone again. 

Zuko gives up on the dream. 

“He moved on.” They’ve had this conversation so many times now. Katara is starting to grow frustrated by it. “It’s what he was supposed to have done when he died, Aang,” she reminds him.

Aang doesn’t look comforted. Katara sits by the fire and lowers the bag of rice they’ve bought. Sokka and Toph look up from where they’ve apparently been having their own argument, distracted by Katara’s sharp tone. 

Sokka looks resigned to the same conversation. Toph looks confused, and it takes Katara a moment to remember that she never met Prince Zuko. 

“Huh?” Toph asks. “I thought you went to get rice - who’d you kill on the way there?”

Katara makes a face at Toph before she remembers that Toph can’t see her, and then she feels sheepish. “Nobody,” she replies. “We’re talking about someone we met… kind of… before we met you.”

“Kind of before you met me?” Toph asks.

“No, kind of met,” Sokka corrects her. “It was a super angry ghost of one of the Fire Nation princes. He chased us around the world trying to kill us.”

“Um, awesome,” Toph comments, which is not at all what Katara was expecting. “How come I didn’t get to meet your angry ghost prince?”

Katara sits back on her heels. “Because we helped him move on,” she explains. “Well.” She looks at Sokka, judging whether or not it’s appropriate to bring up Yue, and then decides that it’s worth it to give Yue the credit she deserves. “Princess Yue helped him move on.”

“And I’m saying that it was a mistake,” Aang interjects. He crosses his arms. “I knew there was something going on with Zuko. And I asked Avatar Roku about him when I was in the Spirit World, and Roku said--” 

“Yeah, yeah,” Sokka interrupts him, leaning back on his hands. “One spirit said another spirit shouldn’t come home to the-- You know what, maybe Roku just didn’t want Zuko to be in the Spirit World, because then he’d have to put up with him.” Sokka snorts at his own joke. “So he was hoping to pawn him off on us.”

Aang uncrosses his arms, and his face draws into a frown. Katara has rarely seen him this unhappy. Anxiety gnaws at her stomach.

“You don’t get it,” Aang insists. “Roku seemed really bothered by what was happening with Zuko, it wasn’t-- wait.” He pauses, and then his eyes go wide. “The Spirit World! Sokka, you’re a genius!”

“Well, yeah,” Sokka accepts, and then adds: “What did I say?”

“The Spirit World,” Aang repeats. “That’s where I’ll find Zuko. I got there before - I can get there again. And then I’ll give him Roku’s message.”

It takes a long time for Aang to find his way back to the Spirit World. 

When Aang is glowing, Toph asks: “What was the message that Aang wanted to give the ghost prince?” 

Katara bites her lip as she watches over Aang. 

Sokka shrugs. “Something about fighting and not letting go.”

Toph pings a pebble past Aang’s ear, and Katara turns a glare on her. Then Katara remembers that glares don’t work on Toph, and says: “Don’t disturb him.”

“Wouldn’t fighting and not letting go be terrible advice to an angry spirit?” Toph points out.

“Exactly!” Sokka agrees. 

They watch over the Avatar.

Zuko finds the moon again. It’s late, and a servant is brushing oils through his hair. Part of Zuko snarls, doesn’t want to be kept pretty, wants to spit fire and cause destruction. But he’s done with that. Anger in this room only ever makes it worse, and there is no dream to express anger anymore. Zuko feels it churn up inside him, and gives it up, like he gives up feeling and thinking anything.

And then his eyes catch on the mirror, beyond his reflection and the reflection of the servant woman. He can see a sliver of his window from this angle, and through his window, the crescent of the moon.

Let go, his dream had told him, and he’d done so. 

Let go, let go, let go. 

And then, more quietly: You need to fight. 

Aang finds his way to the Spirit World, but he doesn’t find Zuko there.

Avatar Roku appears to Aang, and when Aang explains, Roku says: “If he was here, I could tell him myself.”

Aang feels himself slump. “I didn’t think of that,” he admits. 

“It is no mind,” Avatar Roku insists, quiet and comforting. “Someone else is delivering my message.”

Time passes. 

The prisoner stops counting days.

He looks for the sun and the moon, and sometimes - deep into the night - he feels like the moon is looking back. (You need to fight.)

Zuko thinks that he hasn’t spent this much time feeling physically present in years. The servants don’t seem to notice when he ignores them, and so Zuko continues to do this, even though he sees and hears everything. They bathe him and anoint him. One even encourages him to move and stretch, and Zuko moves as he is moved, and doesn’t make eye contact, and imagines sun and sea. And Zuko is alone for long hours. 

Zuko pulls at his inner fire, just checking that it is still there. His routines don’t include meditation or firebending, so he thinks the state of his inner fire must be messy, if it’s even still present.

His fire comes out orange-yellow, but stronger than when he is dreaming, because now it is real. Zuko stares at the flame on his finger and thinks about meditating, just to give himself something to do other than stare at nothing and wish for the dream. 

He sinks into the flame, even though he has to keep himself from full meditation. He has to ensure that he hears the footsteps coming to his door. But for now, Zuko stares at his own flame, and lets himself have something. This is his. This is his.

It feels, strangely enough, like fighting. 

Father’s visits don’t follow a pattern. Zuko has probably never noticed this before, too busy being lost in a dream. But he knows now: any day, any time of day, he might hear those footsteps in the hall. 

Zuko misses the dream. He misses being able to pretend. 

“Boy,” Father greets as he opens the door. Nobody calls Zuko by name anymore. Zuko stares at the wall and does not look at the looming figure in the doorway, even though he can’t escape anymore, even though he’s trapped in his own body. 

Father approaches. Zuko allows his eyes to unfocus, letting the world turn to a blur. 

“I’ll have you on your knees today, I think,” Father suggests. 

Zuko shifts from the bed to the floor. The chains clatter as they hit the stone. 

Father’s hand trails down his face, almost gentle. 

Zuko wants to go away. He wants to go away. 

Zuko closes his eyes. It’s the most he can do now that the dream has abandoned him, just like everyone and everything else has abandoned him. He closes his eyes and he imagines being anywhere but here, on his knees, trapped in his body. 

Father’s hand winds into Zuko’s hair, grasping at the base of his phoenix tail. 

Anywhere but here, Zuko thinks. Anywhere but here. Anywhere but here.

Zuko opens his eyes, and the sun is bright. 

The dream, Zuko thinks, but he isn’t on the Wani anymore. There is no ocean. There are buildings, and the bright sun, and-- 

Zuko feels dizzy. He takes a breath, and thinks that he should sink to his knees before he falls-- 

And at the thought of sinking to his knees, Zuko’s stomach clenches like he might throw up. 

He reaches up to his phoenix tail. His hair is long again, all over his head, like he wears it in the not-dream. He imagines that he can feel the ghost of pressure there, and panics. 

Seconds later, Zuko doesn’t quite remember reaching for his dagger. He remembers the slide of a blade through his hair, and he looks at his own hair on the ground, and he thinks: that’s better.

And then he thinks: why is that better? 

“Uncle?” Zuko asks, suddenly overcome with confusion. How did he get here? 

Zuko wanders, looking for Uncle Iroh. He feels that he is supposed to be on the Wani, but-- 

No, that’s right, there is no Wani anymore. Zhao. The Moon Spirit. Princess Yue-- 

“Yue,” Zuko says out loud. Princess Yue told him to walk into the… that’s right, the Spirit Oasis. Because Zuko is dead, and Zuko needs to move on.

Zuko looks down at his hands. It seems that he has failed to move on, just like he fails at everything else. Zuko wishes that Uncle Iroh was here, or that Princess Yue was with him. They would understand what is happening. They would understand why he isn’t dying properly.

And then, a voice. Possibly the last voice that Zuko expects to hear.

“Azula,” Zuko says, following the sound. There’s a crash, and a flash of blue fire. “Azula!”

Eventually, quiet falls.

“Ugh, really, brother?” Azula asks as he turns the corner. She has both hands raised for an attack. 

The Avatar stands across from her, also poised for a fight. 

“Zuko!” Aang shouts, and then all but launches himself at Zuko. Zuko sidesteps inelegantly, muttering don’t touch me, and Aang withdraws. “You’re here! You’re… still here.”

“Still here,” Zuko agrees. 

Azula clears her throat. “You know, when Uncle Iroh said you were gone and started following me around instead, I really didn’t imagine he was lying.” 

Zuko looks to Azula. She still has her hands raised for an attack, but she also looks like she’s expecting an explanation. 

Zuko hasn’t seen her in three years. She’s so much taller, now. Her cheeks are still a little rounded with her youth, but she looks like Mother. And she... doesn’t look good. Her eyes look a little too sunken, her posture a little too alert, her hands still in the way that speaks of conscious control rather than calm.

“He wasn’t lying,” Aang says when Zuko only stares. 

Azula raises an unimpressed eyebrow. “You faked your death to give Iroh the slip? I didn’t think you had it in you,” she admitted. “Well, Zuzu. We’re here, the Avatar’s here. Let’s have a party.”

She nods like she’s expecting Zuko to join her. 

“I didn’t fake anything, Azula,” Zuko explains. “I really am dead.” 

Zuko wonders if he should be putting more weight on that statement, but he feels weightless with it; what does it matter, anyway? 

Azula hesitates, and then scowls. “We don’t have time for games, Zuzu.” 

“He isn’t playing a game, my niece,” Uncle Iroh calls. 

Zuko turns around, relief washing over him. “Uncle,” he says in greeting.

Uncle Iroh wraps him in a very careful hug. 

“I thought you had moved on, nephew,” Uncle Iroh says, pulling back. “What happened?”

“Oh cool!” says the little girl behind Uncle. “Is this the ghost prince? I’m Toph. Big fan. Did you know you still have a heartbeat? You probably don’t need that.” 

“Toph,” another voice chastises, and Zuko realises that they’ve been quickly surrounded by the Avatar’s friends. 

“Nephew?” Uncle Iroh asks, very gently.

Zuko shakes his head. “It’s okay. I know I’m dead. I remember the Spirit Oasis. I remember everything,” he explains, recalling long hours on the Wani, recalling how he would usually disappear the moment that he realised that he wasn’t really there. But not anymore. 

Zuko suspects that entering the Spirit Oasis might have grounded him more, instead of allowing him to let go. 

“This is not as entertaining as you think it is,” Azula says, but she falls quiet when she sees Uncle Iroh’s face. “Uncle?”

“It is no joke, Azula,” Uncle Iroh explains. When Azula just frowns at him, Uncle says: “Zuko, perhaps you can illustrate this to your sister by extending your hand.”

Zuko lifts a hand and takes a step toward Azula, who takes a step backwards with a glare. But Zuko knows Azula, even after three years of absence. He waits with his hand extended. Curiosity will overcome her eventually. 

“How did this happen?” Katara asks, voice hushed. “I thought he moved on?”

Uncle Iroh sighs. Azula continues to glare. “Ah,” says Uncle Iroh, “I suppose it is difficult to find a solution to a problem one does not understand.”

Zuko throws Uncle Iroh an annoyed glance over his shoulder, and looks back to Azula to find that she has done the same thing.

“I don’t believe you,” Azula insists.

“Then touch my hand,” Zuko suggests. 

“Well, how did Prince Poltergeist mess up dying?” Sokka asks. Zuko throws him an annoyed glance, too.

“I suspect,” Uncle Iroh says, slowly and carefully, “that it had less to do with Zuko, and more to do with the circumstances of his death.”

Zuko frowns. He turns his head to look to Uncle Iroh. “The Agni Kai?” he asks. 

“What?” Azula asks. “That was three years ago.”

Uncle Iroh looks at them both. Zuko’s hand falls back to his side. “Azula,” Uncle Iroh says, his voice soft, “I’m afraid this has been going on rather a long time.” When Azula only glares, Uncle Iroh turns back to the Avatar. “I had hoped that you would understand my nephew’s predicament. I have travelled far and wide, seeking answers. The only suggestion I have heard - and it is only a glimmer of a suggestion - is that Agni himself may have been angered by the circumstances of Prince Zuko’s death.”

“Why would Agni be--” Zuko starts.

Azula’s hand passes through Zuko’s, and it feels cold and sharp. 

Zuko gasps, brought out of the moment, and--  

The children stare. 

“Did he just…?” Toph asks, confused. “I had a heartbeat, and feet on the ground, and now nothing. What happened?”

“My nephew fades, sometimes, when he is touched skin-to-skin,” Iroh explains. “I had thought him to be over this, since he is now aware of his predicament.” 

Azula continues staring, one hand still extended. It had passed through Zuko’s skin like he was made of air and thought, not of flesh and bone. 

“I didn’t tell him!” the Avatar suddenly declares. When Azula looks up, the Avatar has one hand on his forehead. “I was supposed to tell him - Avatar Roku said that he needs to fight. I was supposed to tell him!”

“I believe he will be back, Avatar Aang,” Iroh says in a calming tone. “It seems he has not moved on as we had hoped. I will pass on your message, should I have the chance. And if you would seek to understand how Zuko can leave the physical world, that would be most appreciated.”

Most appreciated, Iroh says to the Avatar, as if-- 

Three years is a long time to be dead, Azula thinks. Three years ago, Azula had watched from a distance as Zuko’s mass of bolts had left port. She had seen him there. He’s been writing her letters. He’s been searching for the Avatar. But he died the night of the Agni Kai, and Uncle thinks that the circumstances of his death-- 

Azula is suddenly, blisteringly furious.

Luckily, she doesn’t need to be reminded to fight. 

Zuko’s mind returns to his body, and the first thing he feels is relief that the dream is back. He can escape again.

The second thing he feels is nausea, because his mind might not remember what has occurred in its absence, but his body does. 

Much later, when Agni’s blessing is leaving the sky, Zuko wonders why he cannot recall dreaming of his sister before tonight. He has dreamt of writing her letters, even of reading her responses - unpleasant as they usually are - but he has never seen her face. Zuko wonders what Azula really looks like now. 

And something in him must be feeling stronger, with the return of the dreaming and the return of his fire, because he finds himself asking a servant: “How is my sister?”

The servant looks stunned for a long moment. Zuko supposes that he never speaks to any of them, even when he is fully present. They must be used to his silence. “Your sister?” the servant asks eventually, not meeting Zuko’s eyes.

And Zuko remembers: they never call him by name. 

They must know, but they don’t call him by name, let alone by title. 

They must know what happens here. There aren’t many servants who are permitted to him - Zuko knows their faces, knows who will talk and who will remain silent. They must know. They tend to his body, and they leave when the Fire Lord is close. They know, and they do nothing. They don’t even call him by name. 

Zuko was right to remain silent. His eyes shift away from the servant and to the wall. He doesn’t ask after Azula again. 

After they escape Azula, they don’t see Zuko again. 

This upsets Aang, who is hoping to pass on Avatar Roku’s message. And the fact that Aang is upset about the lack of angry spirit in their lives upsets Sokka, who would like to put the whole crazy Fire Nation royal family behind him, thank you very much.

Which is why, when they find themselves in a spirit library, Sokka finds himself especially annoyed at his own brain. 

“Ugh!” he says, stopping in his tracks. 

“Sokka?” Katara asks, turning to face him. 

Sokka sighs deeply, pinching the bridge of his nose. “I hate that I’m about to say this. But we’re in a spirit library.” 

“Uh huh?” Aang asks cheerfully. And then, as if he’s worried that Wan Shi Tong is also He Who Hears Ten Thousand Things, he adds: “Seeking knowledge for knowledge’s sake!” 

“Yes, that,” Sokka agrees, because you really can never tell with these spirits, “and also, you know.” When Aang and Katara continue to look blank, Sokka spends a moment despairing at everyone else’s brains before he says: “Aang. You should look for something to help Prince Angry Jerk.” 

Aang’s eyes widen. “Right! Do you think we might find something here?” he asks. 

“You and Katara go find out. I’ll find the Fire Nation section.” 

Naturally, everything goes very wrong, very fast. That’s the only way anything happens in life anymore. But they do leave with two important pieces of knowledge before running for their lives: 

First, the Day of Black Sun is coming. They can and should invade the Fire Nation while the Fire Nation is at its weakest.

And second, there is no way that Prince Zuko should have been able to walk into that Spirit Oasis, dead as a doornail, and not move on from the physical world. It’s as good as walking through a doorway and finding yourself back on the same side. 

Something is very wrong with the Fire Prince, and it’s not just that he’s been chasing them while dead. 

It is no longer easy for the prisoner to slip into the dream. Once upon a time, it was so simple that he would do it by accident while having his hair combed. It now requires struggle from Zuko’s mind. But he has found the path to the dream - it is no longer locked away from him - so Zuko utilises it when he needs to, when the sounds of the Fire Lord’s footsteps echo in the hall. 

Zuko sits with Uncle Iroh on his way to Ba Sing Se. Uncle needs to escape from the Fire Lord, too, now that he has been branded a traitor. 

Uncle tells him that Avatar Roku has sent him a message: Zuko must fight. When Zuko asks what this means, Uncle Iroh has no solid answers. 

“Perhaps he means that you must fight in the war,” Uncle Iroh suggests. “Or perhaps he simply means that you should not attempt to move on, just yet.” 

But Zuko doesn’t want to fight in anyone’s war. He’s dead - shouldn’t he be able to stop fighting?

And part of him wonders if it is treasonous, even in death, to suggest that he doesn’t want to fight for the Fire Nation. Avatar Roku was a Fire Nation Avatar. Perhaps he is trying to tell Zuko that fighting for their glory is still his duty, even in death.

(Zuko thinks of Princess Yue, who will spend eternity fulfilling her duty. Zuko can hardly bring himself to contemplate fighting in his death. Princess Yue hadn’t even needed time to contemplate.)

Zuko follows Uncle Iroh into the impenetrable city. He follows the Dragon of the West past the walls that he had been unable to breach in battle. But this time, Iroh is here to escape a war, not to win one.

(Zuko thinks of Lu Ten, who lost his life in the fight for this city. Zuko wonders why Lu Ten merited death and Zuko was found unworthy of it. But Zuko was always less worthy than Lu Ten, and he thinks he does understand - just a little - why he is unworthy of death itself.) 

Zuko follows Uncle Iroh all the way to Uncle Iroh’s happiness: a tea shop serving the locals of Ba Sing Se. Zuko hasn’t seen Uncle this content before. 

When Zuko needs to leave his room in the palace, it is to help Uncle serve tea in Ba Sing Se, and Zuko cannot think of a better dream.

And Zuko remembers, more and more. 

“Zuko,” Uncle Iroh calls. “I think it’s boiled now!” 

Zuko blinks, and then looks down at his hands. He’s been overboiling the water again. Zuko sighs and dumps it out, beginning the process again. 

This keeps happening. Zuko feels like he’s slipping back into his mind. 

Zuko loves it here, in Uncle’s tea shop. But he is remembering more and more, and so he is rarely able to hold onto the lie that this is the only thing he knows. There is an elsewhere, an Other Place, where Zuko exists when he isn’t here. And something terrible happens there. But when Zuko tries to grasp for it, tries to understand what it is about that place that fills him with dread and horror and revulsion, it whispers through his fingers and is gone.

He drifts, somehow, between the here and the there. 

The water is the correct temperature. It’s not always easy for Zuko to control, because his fire is a confused, weak thing. Zuko removes his hands from the teapot and pours the water over the leaves. 

“Uncle,” he asks, and receives a distracted hum in response. “Do the spirits sometimes punish or reward people in the physical world?”

Uncle Iroh pauses in his writing.

Zuko looks up and behind him, to find that Uncle Iroh is frowning at him. “Why do you ask?” 

Zuko looks away. He thinks it is obvious why he is asking, so he only shrugs in response. 

Uncle Iroh pauses for a long time, and then explains: “The spirits rarely see fit to interfere in the physical world. But sometimes they do.” He pauses, and adds, with gravity: “When they are offended.” 

Zuko feels his muscles tense, feels his heart beat more quickly, and is annoyed at both of these responses. Surely he should be beyond experiencing physical reactions by now. 

“I understand,” Zuko replies, and thinks about the Other Place, and thinks about what Uncle Iroh had almost said to him and Azula and the Avatar. Agni had been angered by the circumstances of Zuko’s death.

Zuko is being punished. 

Zuko can always feel the tug back to the Other Place, now. He doesn’t want to go, but he knows that he cannot stay in the tea shop. 

Zuko awakens in the room, a prisoner, again and again. 

Time passes. The moon waxes and wanes. 

Uncle Iroh is captured. Zuko isn’t there while it happens. The guilt pulls at him when he slips from the Other Place, looking for his uncle, only to find him in a prison cell.

“What happened?” Zuko asks, kneeling by his uncle’s side. 

Uncle Iroh lifts a hand to quieten Zuko, and then glances back toward the guarded door. 

“You must not be here,” he says in a hushed voice. “It is not safe for you here. You must leave.” 

“I’m dead,” Zuko responds. “Nowhere is unsafe for me. I can probably get the keys for--”

“Leave, ” Uncle Iroh insists. 

Zuko continues to plead - quietly, now, to appease his uncle - but Iroh only turns away and ignores him. 

Zuko’s anger bursts. Fire sputters from his palms. 

But if he makes a noise, the guards will assume it is Uncle , and will use this as an excuse to-- 

Zuko stands, defeated. He looks at Uncle Iroh for a long moment, and then accepts that he has to return to the Other Place.

(He returns too early. Zuko squeezes his eyes shut and tries to pretend that nothing is happening, but he also cannot slip away in his mind, because he is not welcome in the dream.)

Zuko is afraid to return to the dream. For the first time in all of his years of dreaming up freedom, Uncle has told him to leave and does not want him to return. And the dream has always been with Uncle: on the Wani, at the ports, in the North Pole, in the Earth Kingdom as a refugee. Zuko doesn’t know how to attach his dream to anyone else.

But Zuko is not welcome with the dream of Uncle Iroh, and he does not want to face rejection from him again, even if it’s a rejection that only exists in his mind. So Zuko tries, one evening, to dream himself somewhere else. 

“Zuko?”

Zuko opens his eyes. He’s on a beach. 

He’s left the Other Place (which fades behind him, a nightmare half-remembered), but he has landed in a different area of the physical world. This is good - he won’t return to Uncle until he thinks he will be welcome again. 

“Hello, Azula,” Zuko says. He offers her a smile. 

This is Ember Island, he realises. Azula is on Ember Island, where they played as children. Things were uncomplicated back then. Azula would follow Zuko around wherever he went, and Mother would read them stories, and Father-- 

Zuko doesn’t want to think about Father. A shudder crawls through his spine.

Azula scowls at him. “What are you doing here?” she asks. 

Zuko goes to shrug, before he realises that she might be an important source of information. “Uncle is imprisoned,” he states. “Did you know this?”

Azula rolls her eyes and wanders closer to Zuko. The wind from the sea tosses her hair, which is partly down for once. Zuko thinks it makes her look younger. His own short hair catches in the breeze, and Zuko glances up at Yue in the dark sky.

“Of course I knew. I put him there.”

“What?” Zuko scowls at Azula. “Why would you do that?”

“He’s a traitor to the Fire Nation. Why do you care? Shouldn’t you be worried about, I don’t know, dying?” Azula’s words sound light, but her expression is serious. She looks far too pale in the moonlight.

Zuko shakes his head. “Avatar Roku said I need to fight.”

Azula hums. “Well. I suppose a ghost warrior could be useful,” she admits. “You could be a good distraction while remaining unharmed.”

“I don’t think--” Zuko starts, and then catches himself. “Never mind.” 

Azula sighs in annoyance, and then sits herself on the sand and nods to the space next to her.

Zuko sits next to his sister. And all the things he wants to say - things about how she needs to free their uncle, things about how he regrets letting Azula push him away and not trying harder to be a better brother - they all wither and die on his tongue. Nothing he says here will change anything. But it’s better to be here than the Other Place, even if Zuko can never quite remember why.

“I think I know why I’m here,” he says instead. When Azula only frowns at him, he explains: “Why I didn’t die right.”

“Trust you to be bad at dying,” Azula says, and Zuko smiles at her, because he remembers imagining that she would say something like this. “Well? What is it, then?”

Zuko looks back to the sea, and then back to the moon. 

“I’m being punished,” he explains. 

It was harder, when Zuko wanted to say this to Uncle Iroh. That was the problem with being loved. Zuko can be honest with Azula, because with Azula, he has nothing left to lose. 

“I’m being punished,” Zuko says, “for the Agni Kai. It should be an honourable death, but I refused to fight. You can’t refuse to fight and then die in honour. So Agni refused to take me, at least completely.”

Azula is silent next to him. The breeze picks up again. 

Eventually, Zuko looks over at his sister. 

Azula isn’t doing anything special, like scowling or glaring. But Zuko knows her better than that - even after three years of being dead and far away - and he knows that Azula’s expression being carefully blank speaks volumes more about her anger. 

“You are an idiot,” she states, and then stands and leaves him. 

Zuko blinks, watching her retreat. And then he looks back to the moon - to Princess Yue - and tries to stay in the physical world for as long as he can, before the Other Place comes for him.

Zuko is unwanted by the dream of Uncle Iroh, and unwanted by the dream of Azula. But he cannot bring himself to try to attach himself to a dream of his father - the thought makes him nauseous - and Zuko doesn’t know many other living people. Mai and Ty Lee were his friends once, sort of, but he might only manage to dream them with Azula. He thinks about other people he knows, but the palace servants - he can’t imagine them, because some of them know and they… 

It’s a little pathetic, Zuko realises, but the truth is that Zuko doesn’t even know where he will be welcome in his own dreams. 

So for a while, Zuko refrains from dreaming. But it cannot last. He can’t stay here, in his own head, pretending that nothing is happening without being able to slip away from it. He can’t do it. He isn’t strong enough.

Zuko wonders if he could try a place instead of a person. 

This is how Zuko finds himself dreaming of the Spirit Oasis. 

He arrives there suddenly, more solidly than he usually dreams, and then Zuko shakes his head, confused - is he dreaming? And he remembers that this isn’t a dream at all. This is the physical world. The Other Place… might not be the physical world. It is wherever Agni wishes to keep him. 

(He’s so confused. His head feels too full, most days, like he remembers too much but also doesn’t remember nearly enough.)

Zuko looks out at the spirit water, at the koi fish swimming around one another, and sits at the edge of the water. 

Zuko breathes. He is alone, and he is safe. He can relax here, like he could relax in the tea shop in Ba Sing Se. 

“Zuko.” 

Zuko opens his eyes and turns to find that he isn’t alone. 

“Yue?”

Princess Yue smiles at him as she joins him at the water’s edge.

This must be a dream, Zuko realises. It doesn’t make sense for Princess Yue to be here again. But why would Zuko be dreaming? Zuko is dead, and the dead don’t dream. Do they?

“How can you be here?” he asks. 

Yue tilts her head. “I’m here the same way you are, I suppose,” she suggests. “In that neither of us is really here.” 

Zuko nods, because that seems as good an explanation as any. 

Yue reaches over and takes Zuko’s hand, and her skin is warm in his, even though neither of them are really present at all. 

“I owe you an apology,” Yue says, her voice careful.

Zuko frowns. “You do not.”

“I do,” Yue argues. “I told you to let go. That was bad advice.” 

“Just because I can’t let go doesn’t make it bad advice,” Zuko responds. “You didn’t know that I was being kept here.”

Yue is quiet for a long moment, and then she squeezes his hand. “You mean being kept there,” she corrects him. “This is where you’re free.”

Zuko turns to face her more fully. “I mean,” he starts, before realising that he doesn’t really know what he means. “I mean being kept from death.”

Yue’s expression shifts into a frown. “Zuko,” she says, very patiently, “what do you think is happening?” 

“I’m being punished,” Zuko explains, again, to another sister. “There was an Agni Kai. It’s a firebending duel, for the sake of honour, under the eye of Agni himself--” Zuko cuts himself off, realising that he’s trying to explain matters of the spirits to a spirit. He clears his throat. “I refused to fight, and I died without honour.”

Yue is shaking her head. Her white hair catches in the starlight. “You are not being punished, Zuko,” she explains. “You were wrong, before, when you told me this was your curse. This isn’t a curse. You have been given a gift.”

Zuko stares at Yue, and he feels his face shift into a scowl. He pulls his hand back from hers. “I do not want this gift.”

“Zuko,” Yue says. “I fear you’ve deeply misunderstood what is happening to you.”

“Then explain it to me,” Zuko insists. 

Yue takes both of his hands this time. “Listen to me,” she insists. “This might be difficult for you to remember when you wake up, so please listen carefully.”

When he wakes up? But this isn’t a-- 

“You are not dead, Crown Prince Zuko of the Fire Nation. You did not die in your Agni Kai. But the Sun Spirit was angry, is angry, and has given you the blessing of escape.”

“No,” Zuko says, because she doesn’t understand, “the Other Place--”

“The other place is real,” Yue insists, her voice insistent. “You are going to wake up soon, and you need to remember this. Please try to remember: You need to fight. You will never escape, really escape, if you don’t fight. Please, Zuko. Please fight.”

Zuko wakes up shaking. 

Chapter Text

The prisoner dreams of the Moon Spirit. 

Fight, demands the Moon Spirit of his dreams. Zuko remembers, grasps at the edges of the dream desperately, because Princess Yue insisted that he remember. You will never escape if you don’t fight. 

The prisoner knows this, but he won’t escape by fighting, either, will he? Everything he tries makes it worse. He doesn’t want it to be worse. It’s barely survivable now - might not be survivable at all, if a servant were to be careless about the placement of a pair of scissors -

You need to fight, Yue insists, but Yue is just a dream, isn’t she? A childish dream of a spirit, a figment intended to comfort. 

Zuko has nowhere to go in his dreams. All of his dreams have turned against him. Even the idea of dreaming of Princess Yue makes Zuko’s hands shake, because he doesn’t want to wake up thinking that he needs to fight when fighting will only make things worse. 

Zuko blocks the pathway to the dream.

It was never real, he reminds himself in the long hours of solitude. Zuko didn’t get those years with his uncle on the Wani. He didn’t get to see Azula again, her hair loose in the breeze from the ocean. He never met Princess Yue. The Avatar is still missing, nothing more than a longed-for fairytale. There is no going home, because Zuko never left, and there is no leaving home, because Zuko is trapped. 

Zuko still dreams, but now he only dreams while he is sleeping. And when he slips into unconsciousness, he is joined by two dragons twisting about him, whispering orders into his ears. Let go, says the dragon with father’s voice. Fight, says the dragon with Princess Yue’s. 

And when Zuko wakes, he tries to shake off the urge to fight. Zuko knows what happens when he fights. He knows better at this point. He knows better. 

But he still sometimes brings fire to his fingertips. It’s stronger now than it ever was in the dreams. It burns hot, moving from orange to red.

Until one day, it doesn’t come at all. 

The dream, Zuko thinks, staring at his hand. His fire has escaped him, because he has somehow shifted into the dream once again. 

Zuko blinks, and it feels like he’s underwater. His heart is beating too fast. He’s in the dream, but he’s still in the Other Place, like they have merged into one. 

Zuko doesn’t want to dream of being here. 

Anger simmers under his skin. He reaches for his fire again, but nothing happens. 

The door opens. A servant enters, towels over her forearm. Zuko watches with quiet fury as the servant walks into the bathing area and prepares a bath for him. He makes himself look away as the servant reaches for the key in her robes, pushes it into the iron of Zuko’s shackles-- 

(Zuko has never dreamed of being shackled before. In the dream, Zuko is usually free. This is not fair. This isn’t how it’s supposed to go.)

As soon as Zuko’s hands are free, he fights. 

When the servant is unconscious at his heels, Zuko looks around himself. There are guards outside the door, but Zuko can hear no movement. They don’t know what has happened in this room. Can Zuko take them by surprise on his way out?

Zuko flexes his wrists. They are roughened from the shackles, sore from lack of movement. His body isn’t strong. He won’t make it past the doorway. 

But this is a dream. There’s always another option in-- 

This isn’t a dream, Zuko remembers, and shakes his swimming head. It isn’t a dream. Ghosts don’t dream. Zuko is dead, he isn’t-- 

Zuko needs to get out of here. This is the Other Place. This is where bad things happen, and he has somehow been pulled back here, but he can get out if he fights for it.

Zuko eyes the window, high up on the wall.

It takes too long. If Zuko wasn’t dreaming (Zuko isn’t dreaming, he reminds himself) he might not have tried, but what is there to lose in a dream?

(Not a dream. What is there to lose, when you’re already dead?)

Zuko shakes his head again. He tries to pull up his fire, but it doesn’t obey him. Is his fire broken? Has it finally died like the rest of him?

Zuko’s head is too full. He can’t think. He pushes everything else away and focuses only on the window. After a moment’s consideration, Zuko uses his chain and the poster of the bed to jump up the wall until he is balanced precariously on the shallow indent of the window, and then he uses the shackles themselves to smash the glass. 

The guards certainly heard that. The door bursts open behind him, but Zuko is already out. 

He runs. There is ground beneath his feet, catching at the sensitive skin there. 

Zuko runs. He runs. He runs.

Of course Sokka spots the ghost again on the worst day he’s had since the Siege of the North. Of course. 

Sokka is just strengthening himself for what he has to do - calling up every shred of courage he has for leaving Dad and their allies behind, fleeing when they should be fighting, when he sees Prince Angry Jerk in the distance.

Ugh.

“Hey!” Sokka shouts, waving his hands in the air. “Zuko! Ghost jerk, over here!” 

“What?” Aang asks, distracted from the end of his speech. “Why is Zuko here?”

“I don’t know, but if he’s here, then Iroh isn’t far,” Sokka reasons. 

The ghost appears before them, so fast that Sokka isn’t sure if he sprinted or if he just did his scary spirit appearing act. 

The prince doesn’t look good. He’s so pale that Sokka imagines he might fade into nothing at any moment, and he has a wild look in his eyes. 

He heaves a breath, which Sokka thinks is weird - how do spirits get out of breath - and then he asks: “Am I dreaming?”

Dad frowns at him. “You didn’t come in with us,” he says, and looks to Sokka with a questioning expression.

Sokka slaps Zuko on the back. Zuko flinches hard and jerks away from him, and Sokka remembers: right, don’t touch the ghost, he might go poof at any moment.

“This is Prince Zuko,” Sokka explains, and then holds up a hand when Hakoda looks alarmed. “It’s okay, he’s not dangerous. To us. Right now. I think? Is Iroh nearby?” Sokka asks, hoping against hope that having the Dragon of the West on their side might mean that they can turn the tides instead of fleeing.

Zuko just looks at Sokka, wild-eyed. He sways a little. 

“I don’t… Uncle? He was captured?” he says, and lifts a hand to his head. “I don’t-- What’s happening?”

Sokka sighs. Of course Zuko can’t show up to be helpful. That would be too much to ask.

“On the bison,” Sokka insists, pointing. Zuko is technically amongst their young, and maybe when he’s being less weird, he can give them useful information. 

They leave Dad and their team behind. Sokka has failed, and now they have to flee. 

There’s silence among the children on Appa’s back as this sinks in. Everyone has had to leave someone they love behind. All because Sokka’s plan didn’t work. 

Sokka shivers a little, and then realises that the ghost next to him is shaking like a leaf.

“Hey, spirit boy,” Sokka says, moving to nudge Zuko before remembering that he doesn’t want to accidentally make him disappear. “What happened down there?” 

Zuko blinks, and then blinks again harder. He doesn’t seem entirely here. 

“Zuko?” Katara asks softly. She reaches out a hand, looking unsure, and then gently touches Zuko’s clothed arm. Zuko flinches away again, and Katara’s frown deepens. Trust Katara to get concerned for a guy who is both a psychopath who tried to kill them a whole bunch, and also already dead and therefore unable to be hurt. “Are you okay?”

Zuko just blinks again. It seems to change something this time, because he lifts his own hands and stares at them. “I was in the Other Place,” he says, like the realisation is occurring as he speaks. “I escaped.”

“The Other Place?” Aang asks, sounding concerned. 

“The place I go when I’m not here,” Zuko explains. Sokka throws an exasperated glance to Haru, because Haru is closest to him, but then he realises that Zuko probably makes even less sense to Haru. “When I’m not… on the physical plane.”

“You go somewhere in the Spirit World?” Aang asks. He lets go of Appa’s reins and slips back down to the saddle to look at Zuko properly. “I tried looking for you there, once.” 

Zuko looks faraway again, and then shakes his head as if to clear it. “I don’t know where I go,” he admits. “I can never quite…”

“It’s okay,” Katara insists. “You’re here now. I think you need to rest.”

“Rest?!” Sokka asks, because this whole conversation is ridiculous. “He’s a ghost! Surely dying is enough rest!”

“Well clearly not,” Toph points out. “Have you ever met anyone living who needs a nap as much as Spooky here always seems to need a nap?”

Haru clears his throat. “I’m sorry,” he says. “Did you say ‘ghost’?”

And this is how Team Avatar is reduced from a whole army down to a bunch of kids and a ghost. Sokka sighs.

At least they’re being haunted by a firebender. That could come in useful.

Zuko continues to feel dazed and confused through the rest of the day.

They arrive at the Western Air Temple, where Zuko remembers travelling with Uncle Iroh long before Zuko realised that he wasn’t there at all. It must have been difficult for Uncle, Zuko realises, to spend all that time with the spirit of his dead nephew. Zuko’s chest aches, and he thinks about trying to go to Uncle now, but Uncle told him to leave. And Zuko has spent enough time following him around, enough time not allowing Uncle to move on with his life.

(Three years, letting a ghost direct a ship. Three years is a long time.)

Zuko goes through moments of lucidity, but he spends long hours in confusion. He can’t seem to remember if he’s dreaming or if he’s dead. His mind floats back and forth between the two. At times, the looming threat of the Other Place just feels nightmarish and vague, and at other times he remembers it with crystal-clear clarity. And then it’s gone again, wisping through his fingers, and the rush of relief at its disappearance is replaced with confusion - why doesn’t he want to remember?

Once or twice, Zuko slips back to the Other Place. He puts his back against a wall, far from the others, and feels himself drawn away. He sees the walls and hears Father’s footsteps in the hall, squeezes his eyes shut and reaches for the dream, and when he finds himself back at the temple he can’t seem to catch enough air in his lungs. 

Night falls quietly, and Zuko calls his fire up to light the campfire.

(His fire is back, he notices - he isn’t broken yet - and then he is confused again by the realisation. Did his fire go somewhere? When did that happen - and where?)

By the time they’re sitting down to dinner, Zuko feels like his soul has settled a little. He’s still confused easily, but he doesn’t feel like he will fade away at any moment. The Other Place is a distant memory again, a blur that beckons horror to every fibre of his being. Zuko is here, with the Avatar and the Avatar’s allies. 

“Do you need to eat?” Sokka asks, scowling and suspicious as he always is.

Zuko looks down to the bowl he’d automatically picked up. 

“Oh,” he says, remembering. “No, I suppose I don’t? I mean, I always have, but until recently I didn’t know I was dead.” He hesitates. “I shouldn’t eat. There’ll be more to go around that way.”

“No,” Katara responds, her voice sharp. “It might not be a physical help, but that doesn’t mean it won’t help.” 

She glares at her brother, who lifts up his hands. “I wasn’t telling him not to!” Sokka insists. “It’s weird, that’s all. How he’s all ‘oh no, I’m disappearing’ one minute, but then he’s like ‘yeah, rice sounds good’. That’s weird!”

“And how you have a very useless heartbeat,” Toph notes. “Though I guess it’s useful for me , so I know when you’re lying.”

The newer kids seem more weirded out by Zuko than those he’s met before. They eye him warily from across the fire. Zuko doesn’t blame them for being ill at ease.

Zuko shrugs. “I guess it’s all part of the not-believing-I’m-dead thing,” he suggests. “Like how I keep growing. And my wrists hurt.” 

He flexes his wrists again. There are dark marks there, and the skin is roughened. Zuko isn’t sure that he noticed this when he was on the Wani - have they always been there?

“And your hair keeps changing!” Aang notes. 

Zuko lifts his spare hand to his hair. That’s right. He had a shaved style in light of losing the Agni Kai, and then long hair again, and then… had he cut it off? But it’s long again, pulled up into a phoenix tail like he used to wear it.

“You’re growing?” Toph asks, her head tilted. “I kind of imagined you were just like this when you died.”

Zuko feels a shudder pass through him. He feels cold, which Zuko thinks might be a bad thing. 

“No, I was… younger,” he finishes.

Sokka is scowling again. “How much younger?” he asks, in a tone that Zuko doesn’t understand. His voice is lower than usual, and it almost sounds like he’s preparing himself to be angry.

Zuko throws him a bewildered glance. “Thirteen,” he answers. 

Sokka’s face darkens more. “Your father - the Fire Lord - murdered you at thirteen?” he asks, but it’s apparently rhetorical, because he turns to Aang straight away. “In case you needed more reason to take that guy out, Aang.” Sokka gestures to Zuko.

Anger sparks under Zuko’s skin. “He didn’t murder me,” Zuko explains. “I lost an Agni Kai.” When Sokka just looks confused, Zuko explains: “A firebending duel.”

“You died by accident?” Katara asks, gently. 

Zuko feels his shoulders rising and tensing. “No,” he says. “I refused to fight.” 

“Doesn’t seem like much of a duel if you’re not fighting,” Sokka mumbles. “Sounds more like murdering a thirteen-year-old. ”

“I wasn’t murdered!” Fire spurts from Zuko’s palms, and he puts the bowl down on the ground. “I-- I disrespected my Father, and I accepted an Agni Kai. I accepted and then I didn’t fight.” 

“Um.” Toph raises a hand. “Why did you accept if you weren’t going to fight?” 

“I didn’t know it was going to be an Agni Kai with my father ,” he explains. “I thought it would be with the general I-- but it was--” He fights to draw a breath. How is he so bad at breathing even in death? “I couldn’t fight him. I was loyal.” Another shudder crawls up his spine. “So I didn’t.”

Sokka is still glaring at him. “Yeah, buddy, you just described being murdered,” he says, and then turns back to the fire. It’s a subtle dismissal, but Zuko catches it. “You know, usually when we tell ghost stories around the campfire, it’s more ‘scary’ and less ‘horribly depressing’.”

Zuko blinks, and the anger seeps from him. What does it matter, what these kids think about his death? It happened. That’s all that really matters. “Sorry,” Zuko says, picking up his food again. “I’ll try to be more scary next time.”

Sokka huffs, and then snickers, and then laughs properly. When Zuko frowns over at him, Sokka explains: “You just told a joke, like a real boy.” He reaches out as if to pat Zuko’s arm. “Good job.”

Zuko shifts away as quickly as he can. “Don’t touch me.” And then, because maybe that was a little rude: “I don’t want to disappear.”

Sokka hums, and continues to watch Zuko for the rest of the meal.

Zuko rises with the sun. For a moment, he isn’t sure whether he was sleeping (does he still sleep?), or arriving back from the Other Place. 

Nobody else is awake to ask. 

With nothing else to do while the children slumber, Zuko practices his firebending forms. 

For the last three years, Zuko has been practicing regularly with Uncle Iroh. Uncle decided to train him even in his death, which is a decision Zuko appreciates but doesn’t fully understand. Zuko goes through his forms out in the sunshine, under Agni’s grace, and wonders at the fact that his body feels weaker and his fire feels stronger. He feels frail in the body he doesn’t really have, thin and aching, but his fire burns hot and red. 

Once he’s gone through his katas and stopped to stretch, Zuko hears clapping. He turns to face the Avatar. 

“You know,” Aang says, sounding more cheerful than yesterday, “I’m looking for a firebending master.”

“I’m not a master,” Zuko points out, immediately dismissing the idea of trying to teach Aang. 

And then he reconsiders. Avatar Roku and the Moon Spirit have both told him that he needs to fight. Maybe this is what they meant. Maybe they intended him to train the Avatar. Can he do that? Can Zuko turn against the Fire Nation and teach the Avatar? 

Zuko hasn’t seriously considered his place in this war since the realisation that he didn’t survive the Agni Kai. Understanding his own death made something loosen in him. The desperation to return home has disintegrated. When Zuko thinks of home now, he feels a confusing mixture of longing and dread. 

Fire Lord Ozai killed him. It wasn’t murder - Zuko knows this is too strong a word, knows that death in an Agni Kai is never murder - but he did challenge Zuko to an Agni Kai knowing that Zuko would have declined  if he understood the terms. He did allow the challenge and its acceptance, even though Zuko wouldn’t be of age for an Agni Kai for another five years. 

And the Agni Kai happened because of the Fire Nation’s decision to lead its own noble soldiers to the slaughter. Is Zuko really loyal to this, even in death? Is Zuko really loyal, after three years of witnessing the decimation of the rest of the world? 

Will Zuko anger Agni even further by turning against the Fire Nation?

Zuko licks his lips and draws his eyes from the distance and back to the Avatar. Aang looks nervous as he watches Zuko. He’s about to say I can’t turn against the Fire Nation, but then--

Then Zuko thinks about Princess Yue. 

Yue had to leave behind her mortal life because of the Fire Nation. Yue’s people suffered because they were too proud to submit, the same way that the Southern Water Tribe and the Earth Kingdom were suffering from refusal to submit. 

Fight, Yue had told him. Hadn’t she? That wasn’t a dream, was it?

Zuko shakes his head, trying to clear it. 

Teaching the Avatar is not declaring a position in war, he reasons. The Avatar needs to learn. Avatar Roku was his great-grandfather, and he wants Zuko to train Aang. The Moon Spirit herself wants him to do this. The Sun Spirit is already furious with Zuko, and if he hasn’t earned Agni’s forgiveness in three years of death, he isn’t going to anytime soon.

“Okay,” Zuko says eventually, and a smile blooms on Aang’s face. “I’ll teach you what I can.”

Days pass. The ghost of the Western Air Temple trains the Avatar, and he walks as far as his feet will take him, and he slips back to the Other Place a little less every day.

Zuko avoids the others when they are not training. He doesn’t like the way they look at him, with fear and pity and confusion. And he often feels overwhelmed by their presence. There are so many of them, and they touch each other constantly and easily, and they keep reaching out to Zuko like touching him doesn’t matter. Like it doesn’t make him seize up in panic, like one slip won’t send him back to the nightmare. 

After a few days, Sokka approaches Zuko with his usual suspicious scowl. 

“Here,” Sokka says, holding something out.

Zuko looks at the material in Sokka’s hand. “What am I looking at?”

Sokka shakes his hand. “They’re gloves,” he explains. “So you can stop being weird about-- So we can stop almost making you disappear.” 

Zuko takes the gloves with very careful fingers. He slips them onto his hands.

He’s covered now, from his neck to his gloved hands to his socked feet.

Something inside him relaxes. 

“Thank you,” he says, not looking Sokka in the eyes.

Sokka rubs the back of his neck, clearly feeling just as awkward as Zuko does.

“Why are you always so worried about disappearing?” he blurts out eventually. “Is the Spirit World really that bad?”

Zuko’s fire burns, and he has to be careful not to keep it from catching. He doesn’t want to burn the gloves. 

“Where I go is,” he admits. 

They get used to not touching Zuko. Toph experiments with punching him on his arm and finds that being punched is received better than other touches. The others withdraw, because it’s worrying to watch Zuko go even paler whenever anyone tries. 

And then Zuko and Sokka take off ‘hunting’ and return with Dad and Suki and a new tagalong, and it becomes apparent that nobody told Dad that he should avoid touching Zuko.

Zuko freaks out when Hakoda’s hand lands on his shoulder, too close to the skin of his neck for comfort, and he disappears. Fortunately, he does this by scrambling away and hiding out somewhere in the temple. Katara thinks that Dad might have been even more shaken if Zuko actually disappeared. 

“Right,” Sokka says, his expression uneasy as he looks out to where Zuko ran off. “We probably need to explain him to you.”

Dad frowns. “You said he’s the prince of the Fire Nation?” he says. “I imagine he has a… complicated relationship with fathers?”

Katara feels herself wince, and Sokka says: “You don’t know the half of it.”

Katara lets Sokka explain Zuko’s predicament. Honestly, Katara feels bad that they’re using Zuko’s firebending skills instead of working on helping him, but they really don’t know what to do. It sounds like wherever Zuko goes in the Spirit World is bad, so they can’t help him find his way there and stop coming back. But Zuko can’t continue to walk the earth forever, can he?

When Sokka is done explaining, Dad glances at Katara for confirmation. Katara just nods. 

Dad lets out a long breath. “That’s…”

“Super messed up and weird?” Sokka suggests. “Yeah. I don’t know. He’s teaching Aang now though, so it’s helpful to have him around.”

And then later, they go through the whole thing again, when Dad and Suki notice that Zuko does things like eat and sleep. He might not do either nearly as much as a living boy should, but Katara understands that it takes a while to get used to watching a ghost act like he isn’t even dead.

“He seems like a normal kid,” Suki points out to Katara, talking quietly so that they don’t catch anyone else’s attention. Zuko and Aang are sitting very close to the fire, pulling shapes out of the flames. Zuko has positioned himself so that nobody is at his back, and he’s clearly hyper-aware of the adults, but he’s also smiling a little as they play with the fire. It might be the most relaxed Katara has ever seen him.

“Yeah,” she says. “Sometimes he does.”

Aang finds Zuko as the sun rises, bowing on the edge of the cliff.

“Hey, Sifu Hotman!” he greets. “Let me guess: we’re going to start with breathing and hot squats, and then you’re going to beat me up?”

Zuko rises from prostration and sits back on his heels. 

Concerned, Aang walks quickly to where he can see Zuko’s face. He’s accidentally gone for Zuko’s left, where Aang knows he can’t see or hear as well, and where Aang can’t read his expression properly.

“I’m almost done,” Zuko says, his voice quiet.

“Okay,” Aang replies. And then: “What are you doing? Is this a type of meditation you haven’t shown me yet? Can I join you?”

Zuko closes his eyes and sighs. Then he sits back properly. “I was praying.”

“Oh,” Aang says. “Oops. Sorry for interrupting. Do you normally pray before we train?”

Zuko turns his face so that they can see each other. Aang smiles encouragingly. “No,” Zuko replies. “I thought I should try, though.”

“How come?”

Zuko turns to face the sun again. “I made Agni angry,” he explains. “That’s why I’m stuck here. I thought-- A while ago, I was thinking that if I haven’t been forgiven in three years, maybe it won’t happen. But I realised that I haven’t been asking for forgiveness.”

“Oh,” Aang responds. This is a sad moment, isn’t it? Aang has been so busy being glad that Zuko is here, helping them instead of being blisteringly angry and chasing them around the world, and getting a little calmer and less worrying every day… that he’s forgotten that there’s still the problem of Zuko’s inability to move on. “What does Agni need to forgive you for?”

For a moment, Aang thinks that Zuko is going to dismiss his question, but then he takes a deep breath and explains. “Not fighting after accepting an Agni Kai is dishonourable,” he says. “It’s a duel for honour. Agni watches. Agni is angry with me because I died dishonourably in an honour duel.”

Aang blinks. “That… doesn’t sound right.”

Zuko’s face shifts, but Aang can’t see what it means at this angle. The scar seems to be in a permanent scowl. It makes reading his face kind of tricky. 

“Yue said that, too,” he says, quiet and light, like he didn’t mean to say it out loud.

“Yue?” Aang asks. “Princess Yue?”

Zuko shakes his head quickly. “That was a dream. I think?” He lifts a hand and presses the heel of his palm to his temple. He does that sometimes - gets confused and touches his head, like he has a bad headache. It always makes Katara look worried. 

“I don’t think the Sun Spirit would be mad at you for not fighting your dad,” Aang says. “You didn’t even know you were supposed to fight him. And you were thirteen! That seems like the kind of thing he would be mad at your dad about.”

“That’s not,” Zuko starts, and then draws a deep breath. “That’s not right,” he finishes. “We should train.” 

Aang follows Zuko when he stands. 

Something definitely isn’t right. But Aang isn’t sure what it is.

“So I have an idea,” Sokka announces over lunch, with a mouthful of rice.

Hakoda smiles at him, and Katara rolls her eyes. “Try swallowing before talking, Sokka,” Katara says. 

Sokka glares, but he also chews and swallows before he tries again: “I have an idea. About fighting the Fire Lord.”

Hakoda watches as the ghost sits up straighter in his peripheral vision.

Hakoda is having a difficult time reconciling Prince Zuko with the ghost story that the kids are telling. They insist that they have watched Zuko walk down into spirit waters and not come back up, and that they’ve seen him disappear upon being touched skin-to-skin. And of course Hakoda believes them - the Avatar of all people must understand spirits more than a Water Tribe chief. But the thing is this: Zuko just kind of seems like a normal, scared kid to Hakoda. 

Sure, he’s clothed head-to-foot in an attempt to avoid skin contact, and sometimes he seems unsettlingly vacant when he stares into the distance, and when he’s gone for long hours the kids assume that he’s literally in the Spirit World. But he also eats and sleeps and bathes, and smiles a little at some of Sokka’s worst jokes, and likes to brush Appa when he thinks nobody’s watching. 

It’s difficult to adjust to living with a ghost. It’s especially difficult when he doesn’t seem like a ghost at all. 

“Go for it, Snoozles,” Toph encourages. “At this point, I’ll take anything.”

Sokka raises his hands, and then gestures to Zuko. 

“Well, we’ve got kind of the perfect target here, right?” he suggests. “In case you have forgotten, let me remind you: the Worst Father Ever thinks that Zuko here is long gone. It’ll be a real shock to the system for him to turn up. And Zuko can do damage but not take damage. He’s basically the perfect secret weapon!”

Hakoda tenses up at the same moment that Zuko does. Zuko visibly attempts to draw a breath and struggles with it, his chest rising and falling unevenly. 

Sokka doesn’t seem to notice.

“I know it’s not really a plan, it’s just part of a plan. But I think it’s pretty good!”

“Sokka,” Toph says. “Time to stop talking.” 

Zuko stands hastily and knocks his water to the ground. 

“Zuko,” Hakoda says. He speaks as softly as he can manage. “Nobody is going to make you face your father. It’s okay.”

Zuko’s golden eyes catch on Hakoda’s, and he flinches back the way he does when someone tries to touch him, even though Hakoda is nowhere close.

“Uh,” Sokka says. “Oops? Didn’t mean to freak you out--”

And then Zuko turns and walks away, far too calmly. 

“Bad plan?” Sokka asks, watching after him.

“Really bad plan,” Suki answers. She pats Sokka’s arm.

“Spectacularly bad plan,” Toph agrees. “Spooked-Spooky bad plan.”

Sokka bites his lip, looking guilty. 

“You meant well,” Hakoda points out, and it only makes Sokka’s face fall farther. 

Aang stands up. “I’ll go after Zuko,” he suggests.

The Avatar doesn’t manage to locate the ghost of the Western Air Temple. 

“He might be in the Spirit World,” Katara points out when Aang returns. 

Aang’s shoulders come up, nearly all the way to his ears. “Do you think I should try to go there and find him?”

“Maybe leave him be,” Katara suggests. “He’ll come back. He knows we won’t actually make him face the Fire Lord. We’re his friends.”

It gets late, and Zuko doesn’t return.

And then they are attacked. 

Zuko walks.

He isn’t sure whether he stays in the mountain range or not. His head swims, cold panic and hot anger warring inside him. At some point, his flames spin a little out of control and he burns Sokka’s gloves. But he thinks he also loses his grasp on the physical world, thinks he slips a few times back into the Other Place. 

At one point, Zuko feels like he has stopped breathing entirely. 

But it doesn’t last. Zuko walks and he walks, and he eventually finds himself unable to feel panic or anger anymore. He just floats, barely existing, until he comes back to himself.

The sky is darker. Zuko is cold and his feet hurt. He feels suddenly present here, like he can feel every stitch of muscle that isn’t really there. 

And he realises:

Zuko needs to fight. He needs to fight. Zuko might be what stops this war, what brings the world from an era of bloodshed to an era of peace. All he has to do is face his father.

And Sokka is right: Zuko has nothing to lose. Zuko can’t be murdered again. He’s the perfect weapon. 

Maybe, Zuko thinks, maybe this is what he’s here for. Maybe Agni isn’t furious with him after all. Maybe Zuko was preserved here, trapped in the physical world, in order to help put a stop to the Fire Nation’s war. Maybe Agni plucked a child of fire to bring his nation back to a place of peace.

(It can’t be the whole truth. Zuko knows that. It doesn’t explain the Other Place. But it’s a nice idea, isn’t it? That there’s a possibility this isn’t an eternal punishment - or a punishment at all? That maybe Zuko is just caught in the grip of destiny?)

Zuko walks back to the camp. It takes a long time.

He arrives to chaos. 

It takes Zuko’s tired mind a moment to realise that they’ve been attacked. Once he understands what is happening, Zuko discards Sokka’s burnt gloves, calls his fire, and jumps into the fray. 

They are Fire Nation, Zuko realises, punching out fire and ducking. But they’re not here with the backing of the military - their weapons don’t speak of an attempt to find the Avatar. They’ve stumbled across this place and its current inhabitants, and now they’re attempting to collect a bounty for it. It won’t work. They are up against too much power. 

Zuko shouts as he fights, and his fire is so strong now, even if his body (his lack of true body) is only slowly relearning its strength. 

Something, somewhere along the way, goes very wrong. Zuko knows the moment that it has happened, but it still takes long moments for him to internalise the problem. 

(The problem is this: Zuko is sloppy. Zuko is sloppy because Zuko is dead. And now--)

Some of the fighters have fled. Others are unconscious. Chief Hakoda is saying something about the necessity of moving on, about how this place is no longer safe as a hideout, and-- Zuko frowns, pain and cold and confusion pulling at his mind. He reaches down to where the arrow seems to be protruding from his abdomen, and… well, he should be able to just pull it out, shouldn’t he? So he does. 

And Zuko’s blood is warm, rushing out of him. Zuko presses a hand to the wound and pulls it away, and yes, it’s blood - bright red, slippery, all over his hands. 

Zuko’s knees go out from under him, and he falls hard. 

Chapter Text

There is a prince in the palace. 

It’s been a long time since this was the case, so it takes the princess a few moments to realise that this is not her mind playing tricks. (Not that the princess’s mind ever plays tricks. It, like everything else, obeys her every command.)

Princess Azula watches her dead brother’s reflection in the mirror for several moments, and then forces herself to continue brushing her hair. It’s only a ghost, she tells herself; there’s no need to react. 

“Brother,” she greets.

Zuko blinks hard, like he’s trying to focus, and presses a hand to his abdomen. “Oh,” he says after a moment, voice a little weak. “I didn’t mean to come here.” 

“You’re welcome to leave,” Azula points out. Things would certainly be simpler if her brother’s ghost would stop haunting her. She watches Zuko’s reflection in her peripheral vision - this version of him that is three years older, scarred from the Agni Kai, hair dishevelled from wherever he has been, and yet utterly and completely dead. 

Dead, dead, dead.

Azula wonders if she’s supposed to be feeling more about this. Mostly, Azula just feels irritated. Zuko has always been a failure, and now here he is: a failure in death itself, and unable to even cling to an understandable vision of his thirteen-year-old self. 

Zuko shakes his head like he’s trying to clear it. He sways a little, as if he has any balance to lose. 

“I was somewhere else,” Zuko says. He has a hand at his temple, on the scarred side of his head. “There was-- Someone was--”

“I’m sure this will all be very interesting to Uncle,” Azula states pointedly. 

“Uncle,” Zuko repeats, his tone wondering. “That’s where I usually go when I leave the Other Place. Why am I here?”

And just like that, anger bursts underneath Azula’s skin.

“Yes, why would you visit your sister in the three years since your very timely death,” she agrees, sharp and vicious. 

Her useless brother looks surprised, and it appears to break him out of his confused daze. His golden eyes meet hers in the mirror, and Azula very carefully refrains from glaring before she looks back to her own reflection. It isn’t like she cares, after all. 

“Oh.” Zuko moves closer to her, and then sits on the chair beside her. “I didn’t know you wanted me to visit you.” Azula’s hands still. She refuses to react, internally or externally. “I-- You know that I didn’t know I was dead, right, Azula? I didn’t realise that I had the option of visiting you.” 

Zuko has always been an idiot. Azula just didn’t know that he was a murdered idiot, taken down by their own father, years before anyone would bother to tell her that he was gone. 

(Sometimes - every now and then, and very quietly - something in her that sounds like Mother says: it was wrong. What happened was wrong. Zuko should have been punished, and Azula was right to be filled with glee at his banishment, but murdering him in an Agni Kai he couldn’t legally consent to-- 

But on the rare - very rare - occasions that this voice speaks to Azula, she extinguishes it beneath her palm and moves on.)

“If you were trying to find Uncle Iroh, you’re too late,” Azula informs him. When Zuko goes still beside her, Azula sighs internally at his stupidity and adds: “He escaped. I heard the servants whispering about it.” 

“His prison was in the palace?” Zuko asks. 

“Keep your enemies closer,” Azula reminds him. “And it was hardly a prison, anyway. I found it. It wasn’t that hard, once I knew there was something to look for.” 

Zuko turns to face her properly, and Azula glances over at him. He’s frowning deeply, but he doesn’t look dazed like before; he’s just watching her like she said something surprising. “What do you mean ‘hardly a prison’?”

“I mean, aside from the chains, it was basically a small guest suite,” Azula responds. “Apparently Father has some love for his brother. I would have thrown him into a cell, myself, not a cushy bedroom with silk sheets and nothing but some guards and some shackles to keep him chained up.” Azula snorts. “And there’s no way I’d give him a window, no matter how high up on the wall it is.”

She turns to Zuko, about to make a comment about how Prince Iroh must be more spritely than he seems to climb to the window, only to find--

Zuko’s face has drained entirely of colour. He looks dazed again, eyes glazed like he’s looking straight through Azula, and his chest is rising in uneven heaves like he’s choking on breath he doesn’t even have.

“Zuko?” 

Zuko presses his hand to his head again. 

Great, Azula thinks - this again. And then Zuko gasps out a sound which sounds like it’s trying to be a sob, which is… new. 

“Zuko,” Azula tries again, shaping her voice to be authoritative. “Calm down or leave.” 

“No,” Zuko says, and Azula scowls until she realises that this isn’t a response to her words. “No, no, no, no.” 

“Zuko?” Azula’s voice sounds small to her own ears this time, so she tries again: “Zuko! Calm down!” 

She grabs his shoulder, wrenching him back from his half-curled-over position on the seat. Zuko looks up then, and there are tears on his face, and he looks-- wretched. 

“I remember,” he states, voice suddenly dipping low and hushed. And then his whole posture falls, tension snapping out of him like his strings have been cut. He squeezes his eyes shut, fresh tears escaping from his unscarred eye. “I remember.” 

Zuko’s eyes open again suddenly, gaze snapping to Azula’s. 

“You need to get out of the palace,” he says. His expression is shifting so much that it’s almost dizzying, and Azula is left to be swept in the tide. 

“What are you talking about?” Azula asks. “What do you remember?”

“You need to get out of the palace, Azula,” Zuko says, tension back in the shoulder that Azula is still grasping, but all of his frenetic energy is focused on her now. “Get out of here. It isn’t safe for you.”

“You’re acting crazy,” Azula points out. “This is the safest place in the world.”

Zuko shakes his head, and he looks-- crazed. He looks crazed. Zuko grasps at the material of Azula’s sleeves as he says: “Not for us. It’s not safe-- it’s not safe to stay with Father. You need to get out.”

“Father isn’t going to kill me,” Azula insists, irritated, and goes to shake Zuko off her sleeves - 

Only to remember too late why she shouldn’t grab his hand. 

Zuko’s horrified face dissipates from before her eyes, and Azula is left alone in her bedroom. The sound of her own laboured breathing fills the space. 

There is, once again, no prince in the palace.

Zuko wakes, and his head is swimming. Azula, he thinks - Azula is in danger - but he can’t remember why she’s in danger. 

There’s pain in his-- body? Does he have a body? Zuko can’t remember, can’t seem to grab onto the edge of any thought, but there’s something painful in his middle, and… and something cool and soothing there, too, like his body is battling between being torn apart and knitted together. 

Zuko thinks he feels fingers in his hair, sweeping it back from his sweaty forehead. He tries to open his eyes, and he isn’t sure he manages - but either way, he’s sure, for a moment, that he sees Princess Yue’s face. 

Fight, Zuko, she says, her voice urgent and gentle.

“He’s going to be okay.” 

It has been hours since Katara started working on healing Zuko. Hakoda has spent most of that time standing at the edge of the room, with occasional bouts of pacing outside and trying to reassure the children. But this is the first time that Katara has indicated that there might be a positive outcome. 

“Are you ready to discuss why it seemed like he wouldn’t be okay?” Hakoda asks. He keeps his voice low. He’ll take the good news to the other kids soon, but first he needs to understand the news. 

Katara looks back at him for just a moment before refocusing on her patient.

“I can touch him,” she states. “I-- I tried really hard not to.” Her voice wobbles a little. “But it’s hard to heal-- I did try!”

“Of course,” Hakoda replies. “I know you did.”

“And he didn’t disappear,” Katara explains. “So. Something is different to before.”

Hakoda uncrosses his arms. “Has it occurred to you--”

“Of course it’s occurred to me,” Katara snaps. “But if he’s come back to life, he doesn’t seem to know he’s come back to life.” 

Hakoda nods, trying to parse out the mystery before them. “Could it have been the spirit waters?”

Katara shakes her head. “No. It has to have been afterwards - he still disappeared after, even though he remembered…” She sighs, sounding weary and tired. “I need to concentrate.” 

Hakoda nods. “I’ll go tell everyone that you think he’s going to be okay?” he suggests. 

And then Prince Zuko stirs, his one eyebrow drawing down and in, and Hakoda is struck again by how he just looks like a boy. Like any living, hurting child. And Hakoda knows that there’s something else happening here, but he’s also sure-- 

Zuko’s good eye cracks open, unfocused and not quite present, but aimed in Hakoda’s direction. And then the boy seizes up with alarm. “No,” he slurs, trying to curl back, like he’s… 

Like he’s frightened of Hakoda. 

“No,” he says again, and Katara tries to hush him. 

“Zuko, it’s okay,” Katara says, her voice soft even where her eyes and hands are firm. “I need you to stop moving, okay?” she asks, but Zuko still cringes away-- 

Katara looks up then, noticing that Zuko’s attention is drawn to Hakoda and Hakoda alone.

“Dad, you need to go,” she states, and Hakoda nods - pushing down the slowly growing horror in his core - and leaves the room. 

Something is very wrong here.  

Zuko escapes from the Other Place. He refuses to stay, he refuses, he won’t do this anymore-- 

And he finds himself out in the sunshine. 

Zuko tilts his face up toward Agni’s blessing. The light kisses his skin, and for a moment, Zuko allows himself peace. 

“Zuko?”

Zuko turns toward his uncle’s voice. They’re outside - there’s no cell. Uncle Iroh is free. Except, was this a surprise? Didn’t Azula tell him--?

Zuko’s head aches. 

“Nephew,” Iroh says, grasping at Zuko’s shoulders. “It has been some time-- I was worried.”

“Uncle,” Zuko responds, trying to focus on what is in front of him. “It’s good to see you.” 

Uncle Iroh smiles, and all is right with the world. “And you, my dear nephew,” he says, and draws Zuko into one of his very careful hugs. “I apologise for before. I was concerned that if someone saw you in that cell…”

“I understand,” Zuko assures him. He relaxes in Uncle’s embrace, and the ache in his confused mind eases. Uncle Iroh feels like safety and home. Zuko is going to be okay, he realises; even though he’s dead, he’s still going to somehow be-- 

Zuko pulls away sharply, and presses his hand against his own abdomen. 

Zuko wasn’t okay.

“Uncle,” he says - and Zuko is confused again, but this time, it isn’t a swimming, unbalanced feeling. This time, it’s like Zuko can see the pieces of the puzzle, and can see that they don’t fit together. “I was hurt.” 

Uncle Iroh frowns at him, and Zuko finally looks around them. They’re in a camp, outside in the bright (bright, bright) sunshine. 

“What do you mean?”

“I mean I was hurt,” Zuko explains. “There was-- I was with the Avatar. I’ve been teaching him firebending.” Zuko ignores Uncle Iroh’s surprised hum and continues: “And there was a fight, and.” Zuko presses harder on his abdomen. “How could I have been hurt?”

Uncle Iroh’s mouth pulls down into a frown. “Well, you’re unharmed now,” he points out.

Is that true? Zuko tries to rifle through the pieces, the tiny slivers of information that don’t fit together. Is Zuko hurt? He can’t feel any pain, but then again, he can never feel the Other Place when he isn’t there, either. 

(Zuko’s entire being cringes away and refuses to examine the Other Place. It can be a half-remembered nightmare, a looming shadow in the corner, and it will not be anything more.)

But there’s something wrong with the assertion that Zuko is unharmed. Zuko knows that there’s some deep untruth here. He pulls at it, and finds Katara. Katara was there, wherever he was a moment ago, and she was… was she helping him? Why did she need to help him?

Zuko’s consciousness sharpens, and he looks to Uncle Iroh with determination. “I need you to show me a map.” 

The next time Zuko wakes, he seems present. He comes to consciousness all at once, with an abruptly drawn breath. Katara leans back to give him space. He isn’t fixed entirely - not yet - but Katara can afford to let him shift if he needs to. 

Zuko’s bright eyes meet Katara’s, and he looks determined. 

“We need to go,” he says, moving to sit up. 

Katara places a hand on his shoulder, encouraging him to lie flat. “I’m not done,” she insists. “It won’t take long, I promise.” 

Zuko hesitates, and then nods and lets Katara return to work. Katara is exhausted down to her vital organs, so this last part of the process is going slowly. But she’s as determined as she is tired. 

Time passes. Katara works, and she tries to ignore Zuko’s piercing gaze on her, and she tries to ignore the question of whether or not her patient is alive. 

Eventually, the others pour into their makeshift medical room. The family who owns the house have stayed away, but it seems that everyone else is attempting to burst through the door. Katara gives Zuko a harried glance. 

“So!” Sokka greets, sitting heavily on the other side of the bed. “Have we figured out why you’re a real boy again?” 

He pokes Zuko then, directly on Zuko’s unscarred cheek. Zuko cringes away, and it’s a long moment before he seems to realise that he isn’t disappearing. 

“Sokka,” Katara reprimands, and then pulls Zuko’s tunic down over his abdomen. “Please don’t deliberately scare my patient.” 

Zuko goes to sit up, and this time, Katara allows it. She’ll need to work on him again, but this will do for now. 

“I didn’t disappear,” Zuko states. 

“And!” Sokka adds, in a voice that is too bright to be sincere. “You bled. Kind of a lot! Which is exciting.” 

Katara glares at her brother. 

“Exciting!” Sokka insists, and then his voice drops the cheer to add: “Also, really weird and freaky. Hey, do you think you got resurrected?” 

Zuko lifts a hand to his temple, and Katara’s heart rate picks up. But this time, his hand falls away almost like it was an automatic movement, and not a response to the confusion and pain that he’s clearly been struggling with since he joined them. 

“Why would I have been resurrected?” Zuko asks. “I didn’t do anything.” 

“Maybe Agni changed his mind?” Aang suggests. “You said you thought you were being punished - maybe Agni decided to stop punishing you?”

Zuko shakes his head. “But why not just… let me die?” he suggests. He looks down at his own hands. “We don’t know that I’m alive again. Just that… I can get hurt.” Katara watches as his frown deepens. “Maybe that’s worse.”

Katara sits back against the side of the bed and draws her knees up. The other kids are sprawled around the room, and Dad is standing at the doorway with a serious expression on his face. Katara closes her eyes. Just a few moments of rest, she tells herself.

“Well, it does seem worse,” Toph admits. 

“Toph!” Suki hisses. 

“What?” Toph asks. “I’m just saying - he had one trick, and now it’s gone!”

“Two tricks,” Zuko insists. Katara opens her eyes and cranes her neck, but she can’t see him properly, so she quickly gives up. “I can still… move around, like before. I was just with Uncle Iroh.”

“Uhh,” Sokka says. “No you weren’t? You were here the whole time. Katara was all--” Katara doesn’t bother to open her eyes to see whatever ridiculous motion Sokka has decided represents her healing. “And you were unconscious.” 

Zuko hesitates, and then says: “But I was with Uncle?” He sighs. “I don’t-- understand anything. But I went to see Uncle Iroh. And I know where he is.”

Travelling to the White Lotus camp takes longer than it should. There are multiple issues: Zuko isn’t fully healed, and Katara insists on taking breaks to work on his epic arrow wound; Chit Sang decides to leave them and the war project, which is understandable, but he announces that decision while they’re in the air; and while Appa works hard, he’s unused to being quite so heavily burdened. 

Sokka navigates, of course, because nobody else can be trusted. And in the moments that he isn’t sitting at the front of the saddle, Sokka entertains himself by poking Zuko on exposed areas of pale skin. 

“Stop it,” Zuko says, but it completely lacks any kind of intent. Plus, now that Sokka is really thinking about it, three years is a long time to not be touched, right? He pokes Zuko’s bare wrist again for good measure. 

Zuko glares half-heartedly, but also does not move his arm away. 

Sokka wonders what Past Sokka would have thought about how Present Sokka is following Prince Zuko’s lead on where they’re going next in the war, while also trying to get him used to being touched like a real, living person. He’d probably burst a blood vessel. But hey, life gets weird when you befriend the Avatar. Sometimes your enemy turns out to be an angry ghost, and sometimes the angry ghost turns out to be a scared kid who needs to be hugged more. 

Not that Sokka is going to hug him. Zuko can get hugs from Katara and Aang, and probably his uncle. But Sokka can make sure that he doesn’t go from ‘nobody can touch me because I’ll disappear’ to ‘nobody can touch me because I’m a messed up ball of nerves’. 

Being friends (kind of?) with a ghost turns out to be more sad than it is scary. 

The princess sees a shadow shifting in the reflection on the pond. 

Zuko, she thinks, and turns to face her brother. Too many words build up on her tongue - questions, rebukes, accusations - 

But Azula is alone. 

Hugging Uncle feels different now that Zuko’s physical presence has changed. At first, it feels amazing - it feels like so much more than usual, and a comforting rush washes over him. And then, abruptly, it’s too much. Too warm, smothering, itching, and Zuko has to pull back. 

“Prince Zuko,” Uncle Iroh says, and his smile is bright and warm.

“Uncle,” Zuko says. He suddenly feels very urgently that he needs to tell Uncle everything. Surely he will understand. “Look.” 

Zuko grasps at Uncle Iroh’s hand, skin on skin, and looks up to him. He waits patiently for the answer. 

Uncle Iroh’s face shifts a little, smile going from bright to thoughtful. “I had suspected this might occur after the spirit waters,” he states. “Your disappearance seemed to be based on the revelation of your… situation.”

“But he also got hurt,” Katara says, coming to stand beside Zuko. “I had to heal him. He was bleeding out, it was like he was going to--” She halts, and then looks at Zuko. 

“Like I was going to die,” Zuko finishes for her. 

Uncle Iroh frowns and nods for a moment, then turns to Aang. “Well, we have an expert in the spirits among us.”

Aang just looks surprised. “Um. Me?”

“You knew that my nephew was only present in spirit when you first met,” Uncle Iroh points out. “There are men who have spent months interacting with him, and wouldn’t notice without a… mishap occurring.” 

Zuko recognises the expression that falls over Aang’s face. It’s the same look he gets during training, when Zuko asks him to repeat a move that he did on instinct alone, and Aang has realised that he has no idea how he did it. “Um…”

“But first,” Uncle Iroh says kindly, “I think we should sit for tea.” 

Zuko recalls his uncle’s many offerings of tea when they were on the Wani. He recalls his incandescent anger at the possibility of ever slowing down on his quest to regain his honour. But now, Zuko hears Iroh’s request, and he finds himself smiling.

“What I don’t understand is this,” Sokka says, waving his teacup in the air. Katara watches warily as a few drops splash down the sides of the cup. She’s pretty sure that the Fire Nation has a lot of etiquette about tea, and that her brother is breaking at least a few rules. “If it walks like an otter penguin, and it squawks like an otter penguin, and it’s excellent for riding down slopes like an otter penguin…” He raises his eyebrows pointedly.

Iroh only blinks back at him.

“Then… Then it’s an otter penguin!” Sokka finishes with a flourish. He puts his teacup down (thank the spirits), turns to one side, and pokes Zuko deliberately in the cheek. “It’s probably just an otter penguin!” 

“Uh,” Zuko responds. 

“See what I mean? He walks like a living person, he talks like a living person, he gets stabbed and bleeds out like a living person. So - maybe he’s just alive?” 

“Except that I died,” Zuko points out. “And… everything else from the last three years.” 

“Ghosts don’t bleed.” Sokka crosses his arms. “So something changed. You’ve been… bodified.”

“Embodied,” Iroh suggests. “You think that Zuko has been gifted with his body.” 

Zuko scowls down at his own cup. 

“Something did change,” Aang says, quietly. Katara looks to him attentively. He hasn’t said much since Iroh put him on the spot. “After you joined us, it was… You were different.”

“Different how?” Iroh asks, leaning forward into the circle of space between them all. “And when did this begin?”

“The Day of Black Sun,” Aang explains. “Zuko joined us when we were escaping. And you seemed really freaked out,” Aang says, now turning to Zuko. “But it was a pretty freaky day, so I guess we just let it slide. I did think you seemed different. More…” He frowns deeply, looking into the distance. “I guess you were less angry? You just seemed lost.” 

Iroh chuckles. “We did call him the Angry Spirit of the Wani.”

Zuko scoffs angrily. Katara tries to hide a smile behind her teacup.

“And I thought that it was just because I was getting to know you better, because you were teaching me firebending, but I did think you seemed more… real, somehow?” Aang purses his lips for a moment, and then says: “When we first met, there were these little flashes where I almost thought I could see right through you, like you weren’t really there. I haven’t seen that in a while. Since you joined us, I guess.” 

Katara frowns as she listens, remembering that day. So much happened - so much that Katara hasn’t really been able to process - but Zuko… 

“You said you escaped from the Other Place,” Katara remembers. “You used that word: ‘escaped’. What did you mean by that?”

“The Other Place?” Iroh asks, turning to his nephew.

Zuko’s face goes a little tight, and Katara isn’t sure if it’s in thought or pain. “It’s where I go,” he says eventually, and then flinches a little. Katara sits forward, unsure if Zuko’s expression is from physical pain, or from not wanting to talk about the place he disappears to. 

“It’s the place in the Spirit World,” Aang explains. “The place Zuko goes to when he’s not here.” 

Zuko’s chest is rising unevenly, and Katara starts to get nervous about where this is going. And then Zuko does the thing again - he lifts the heel of his hand to his temple, pressing down as if to relieve pain, and Katara has officially had enough.

“Your head,” Katara says, reaching for her water skin. “Let me see if I can help.” 

Zuko moves further away from her as she approaches, and Katara sits back on her heels, waiting impatiently for him to catch up. 

“Zuko,” she says, attempting to be soothing. “Your head hurts you a lot. Just let me see if I can relieve it for you, now that we know I can touch you.” 

“When does your head hurt?” Iroh asks, frowning with concern. “This didn’t use to be an issue.” 

Zuko shakes his head like he’s trying to clear it, and says: “It just… It happens sometimes, when I try to figure things out. It just feels like.” He hesitates and Katara watches him glance around their circle, from his uncle to their friends, lingering on Dad like he isn’t sure he trusts him, and then returns to Iroh. His voice is lower this time. “It just feels like there’s too much, and when I try to figure it all out, it hurts.” 

Concern lines Iroh’s face. “I do not think this is a physical kind of pain,” he says to Katara. “I trust that you mean well, Katara, but I do not think matters of the mind can be healed this way.” 

Katara frowns, because-- shouldn’t she at least try?

“Well, the pain is still a physical thing, right?” Sokka asks. “So if the problem is that Zuko can’t think without it hurting, maybe Katara can use her magic to ease the pain, and Zuko can pull the answers from his own head?”

“It’s not magic, it’s waterbending,” Katara snaps automatically, and then realises what her brother is saying. “But maybe that could work?”

Iroh looks thoughtful, and then turns to Zuko. “Nephew,” he says seriously, “if your mind is trying to stop you from remembering, it might be for a reason.” Zuko looks away pointedly. “You need to know that you are willing to remember your time in the Spirit World before you try to relieve what might be protective pain.” 

Katara takes a deep breath, feeling thoroughly chastened by Prince Iroh’s words. Katara had spent so much time in the North learning from Master Pakku that it sometimes overshadows her time with Master Yugoda, but she remembers vividly now how her healing instructor had said: Look for the damage, not the pain; healing only the damage heals pain, but healing only the pain causes damage. 

Zuko is quiet for a long time. Katara hears those on the other side of the circle start talking between themselves, but their voices feel far away. She tries not to stare at Zuko, but she’s almost certain that she’s failing - and when she drags her eyes away to look at Sokka instead, it’s only to find that Sokka is watching Zuko with an uncharacteristically serious expression. 

“It’s bad,” Zuko says, voice even quieter. He doesn’t look up even once. “I know it’s bad. I can… It feels like a nightmare.” 

“You don’t have to remember,” Sokka says, and Katara looks to him in surprise. She expected her brother to want this situation fixed as much as she does. “What does it matter, really? You’re here now and you’re alive. I’m… seventy percent sure of it.”

Zuko doesn’t look up, but his mouth twitches like he’s thinking of smiling. And then finally, he heaves a deep sigh and looks at Katara. “Okay,” he says.

“Okay?” Katara asks. 

“Do it,” Zuko says. “I’ll try thinking while you heal me, and… maybe it won’t come to anything anyway.” 

Katara reaches for her waterskin again, but her hands feel less steady this time. “Are you sure?”

Zuko nods decisively. “It’s just remembering,” he states. “It happened whether or not I remember, right?” 

The water is cool and soothing around Zuko’s head. It quietens him, calming the flare of pain that tries to surface when he calls up the faded images of the Other Place. 

And then there’s a rush, like the earth has been torn from under him, a great crash of pain as the world tilts-- 

And Zuko-- 

He rips himself back, away from Katara’s hands and the water, and scrambles as far as he can in one fell swoop. 

And Zuko--

The world aligns. The world aligns, and Zuko knows. He knows. He knows too much, and it throbs in his head, and he desperately hopes that it will fade - hopes that it will slip through his fingers like water - 

But it doesn’t. It stays there, planted solidly in his mind. The Other Place has come to meet him at last. And it isn’t otherworldly at all. 

Zuko jolts to his feet, unbalanced, and snatches himself away from hands that try to right him. There are words - a great cacophony of words, crowding him, too much and too many - and all Zuko can say is:

“I’m not dead.” 

Everyone expects him to explain, he knows, but the idea of-- 

He’s going to vomit. Zuko’s mouth fills with saliva, and he pushes away from the crowd, only thinking anywhere but here, anywhere but here, and then pulls himself back. He can’t think that, because this place is-- this place is safe, and there are a great many other ‘anywhere’s that aren’t--

Zuko flees, and he hides, and he curls himself tightly into a ball. His wrists ache from the cuffs--

No, wait, there are no cuffs. He isn’t slipping back into the Other Place, because that can’t happen. Can it? If he thinks too much of the Other Place - of the palace, the palace, there is no Other Place - will he find himself there? 

No, Zuko thinks. Anywhere but there. Anywhere but there. Anywhere but-- 

“Go away,” Azula insists as she spots the shadow in the mirror. “You’re not here.” 

She watches as the ghost of her brother - or her mind’s depiction of the ghost of her brother? - pulls in deep, uneven breaths. 

Zuko draws closer to her, outside of the shadows. Azula closes her eyes briefly, sure that if she turns to face him, he’ll be gone. 

“You need to get out of here,” Zuko says, his voice destroyed again, like it was last time.

Last time? Has he ever really been here before? Has Azula’s mind betrayed her so much that she’s imagined all of it?

“I’m not going anywhere,” Azula states, calm and level. “I belong in the palace.” 

Her chair shakes when Zuko leans his weight on it, and Azula opens her eyes to watch him in the reflection. He looks terrible. Feverish, maybe. His hair is plastered to his face, and his eyes are reddened and watery - even the bad eye. Her brother looks like he might collapse at any moment. 

“You have to get away from Father, Azula,” Zuko insists, his voice shaking pathetically. “You have to get out of here. It isn’t safe.”

Azula sighs. “This again?” she asks. “I told you, Zuzu. Just because it isn’t safe for you doesn’t mean it’s unsafe for me.” 

Zuko flinches at that, a full-bodied jerk. He draws in air like he thinks he’s been underwater, and says: “Does he ever-- Does he ever hurt you, Azula?”

He isn’t meeting her eyes anymore. Azula frowns, thinking of the occasional burn mark when she’s been too slow - there to teach her, nothing more - and thinking of Zuko’s disfigured face. 

“Of course not,” Azula replies. “Why would he ever hurt me? I'm not you.” 

Zuko goes still so suddenly that it sends a chill down Azula’s spine. He looks up into the mirror then, and there are no more tears. He looks haunted, somehow. Haunted and haunting, like a terrible parody of death. 

Azula refuses to feel bad. She’s only speaking accurately. Zuko had died (been murdered, her mind supplies) for his own shortcomings. Azula owns no such flaws. 

She raises her chin, and her brother’s face shifts until he just looks… tired. He breaks eye contact, shoulders dipping like he’s out of energy. 

Confused, Azula turns in her seat, intending to ask him to his face what this is about - 

Only to find that she’s alone in the room.

The spirit waters are calm. 

Zuko is not. 

His mind whirls, and he’s so - he’s so tired, why can’t he just rest? Why has nobody ever let him rest? 

“You fought.”

Zuko raises his head, and some of the calm of the spirit waters washes over him as he watches Princess Yue sit beside him. She reaches out a hand to take his, and Zuko finds himself leaning against Yue until his head is tilted against hers. 

“You fought,” Yue repeats. “You did it. You got out.”

Zuko is just so tired. “I think I would rather have been dead.” 

They sit together at the waters, awful understanding settled heavy over them, and Zuko tries to fight the tendrils of thoughts that say if he wasn’t dead then, he can still die now. He tries to ignore that it feels like a comfort.

And for a terrible moment, Zuko finds himself jealous of Yue’s death. 

But the woman - the spirit - pressed against his side did not ask for death. She gave up her decades of life as a sacrifice for the world. Zuko knows that it's disgusting that he finds himself wishing for the death that Princess Yue gave herself over to, as if she's only here to be a model of honourable death to a dishonourable prince. As if she isn't a person in her own right, a girl torn too early from the world.

The prince and princess sit together for a long time in silence. Zuko holds himself back from asking what do I do now, because she doesn't owe him any kind of answer.

Yue lifts her spare hand and brushes it against Zuko’s hair. “Keep fighting,” she tells him, as if she heard his silent question after all. 

When Zuko comes back to his body, there is a moment of confusion in which he thinks he can still feel Yue against his side. 

It takes a moment for him to catalogue the sensations of his body: the leftover ache in his abdomen; the rock against his back; the cool night air against his face; and the weight against his sides and over his legs. 

It takes him a few more moments, blinking in the dim firelight of the nearby camp, to place what is happening.

Aang is tucked up against Zuko’s left arm, his hands curled around Zuko’s bicep and his face pressed to the rock behind him. And there’s a third hand there, too - the back of Sokka’s hand is pressed against Zuko from where his arm is slung around Aang’s shoulders. As if that wasn’t bizarre enough, Katara is on Zuko’s other side, her head tilted against Zuko’s shoulder. Suki is lying on the ground directly, curled up on her side with her head on Katara’s lap, arm splayed haphazardly across Katara’s thighs. And across everyone’s legs lies Toph, her head propped up on Suki’s hip.

Zuko blinks, glancing at each of them again to confirm that he isn’t seeing things. But he’s sure that he isn’t. If he was dreaming, his legs wouldn’t be numb from Toph’s weight, and Katara’s hair wouldn’t itch a little against the skin of his neck. 

There’s a brief flash of panic down Zuko’s core when he realises that he’s essentially trapped. He can’t get up without waking everyone. And they’re touching him, his arms and his legs, and Suki’s hand is tucked between Katara’s hip and Zuko’s. It’s too much.

He must tense up, because Toph shifts and says: “Spooky? You back with us?”

Zuko swallows and tries to relax. “Yeah,” he says. 

Toph hums a little, and then asks: “Where did you go?”

Zuko blinks into the dimness, and then looks up at the night sky. “I went to see my sisters,” he says, and then hears himself and tries again: “I went to see my sister, and I went to see Princess Yue.”

There’s a long stretch of silence, and then Toph says: “Well, I have a lot of questions about all of that. But I guess it’s more important to ask what you learned about your whole life-and-or-death situation.”

Zuko feels his heart pick up speed, thumping against his chest in a way that makes him feel vaguely sick, and he knows that Toph can feel it too. “I’m not dead,” he says. “I was never dead. I was just… leaving my body behind.” 

“Hm,” Toph says. “Like you did just now.” 

“Yeah.” 

Zuko hopes that will be it, but the world has never been kind to him, so of course Toph asks:

“And where was your body, all that time?”

Zuko clamps down on the urge to run. He clamps down on the feeling of too many hands, on the vague idea that he might slip back into his prison in the palace at any moment, and says: “I’m not. I’m not talking about that.”

Toph hesitates, and then says: “That bad, huh.” 

Zuko nods, even though Toph can’t see him. And when Toph slips back into sleep, Zuko stays alert, staring into the darkness and occasionally glancing up at the moon. 

(Yue saved him, Zuko realises. Zuko thought they were both walking to their deaths that day in the Spirit Oasis. But Yue has been saving Zuko ever since, and Zuko is much too late to return the favour.)

The moon moves across the sky.

Eventually, the warmth of everyone pressed against Zuko stops feeling oppressive. 

Azula stops looking into reflections.

Chapter Text

Uncle will want to talk. Zuko’s mind keeps returning here, as the night draws toward the day. Zuko will need to give some kind of explanation, needs to find the correct words, words that will make everyone stop digging deeper. But he knows, soul-deep, that he will never talk with anyone about what actually happened in that room in the palace. 

Never. 

Even the idea of it, the idea of them looking at him and knowing, makes Zuko’s skin grow cold. The idea of them looking at him and seeing the Fire Lord’s son is bad enough. He can’t have them look at him and see the Fire Lord’s whore-- 

Zuko cuts that thought off firmly. Zuko isn’t going to talk about it, and he isn’t going to think about it, either. He isn’t in the Other Place anymore and he doesn’t have to go back. He can be anywhere but there. Anywhere in the whole world, and never back in the palace.

And yet. On the other hand, there’s Azula and the war, and Zuko knows that he has to go back. 

He shudders, still cold, and finds that the skin and cloth pressed against him feels awful. Katara’s breath is fanning across Zuko’s collarbone. Aang’s forehead is pressed against the outside of his shoulder, and he keeps turning his head a little, as if he’s trying to burrow in his sleep. Toph has somehow turned over in the night and has both arms wrapped all the way around his leg, trapping his knee against her chest. 

Zuko is caught. He finds himself on the verge of shrugging everyone off, but his body freezes before the he can move, trapped in position-- 

And he slips.

Zuko closes his eyes tightly, dragging himself desperately back into the present moment. There is no Other Place to claw at him. The Other Place was real, was a room in a palace with silk sheets and iron shackles, with solid walls and a guarded door, and Zuko can’t be pulled back there. So why can he almost feel it? Why does his breath get caught in his chest like this, why can he hear Father’s footsteps in the hall, why do his wrists feel heavy with the cold cuffs-- 

“Get off me,” Zuko explodes, pushing away the hands. “Get-- get off, leave me alone, get-- leave me alone!” 

And suddenly, Zuko is present again. 

He finds himself standing - finds himself there, with no true memory of how he went from sitting with the other children to standing across from them. His fists are on fire, casting shaky light over them. And the others blink up at him, half-awake and more than half frightened, and Zuko’s heart hammers away in his chest. 

“Zuko?” Aang asks, rubbing his eyes. “Are you okay?”

And Zuko is not okay. Zuko is furious. How dare they join him when he was trying to get away from them? How dare they pile themselves on him out here when Zuko wasn’t even really here in his body?

Zuko snarls. “Leave me alone,” he insists, trying to keep his voice calm and missing by a mile. 

He turns on his heel and walks away from the camp.

And walks, and walks. 

It takes him a long time to calm down. But fury takes energy, and Zuko is all tapped out - so his anger melts eventually, and leaves a ridiculous kind of desperation in its wake. Zuko doesn’t know what he wants, but his mind keeps swimming back to his little sister. She’s still in the palace, and while Zuko hopes she’s right that Father would never hurt her, that it was something wrong with Zuko that-- While Zuko hopes that Azula is right, it doesn’t make it any easier to leave her there.

Eventually, Zuko returns to a space close enough to the camp to be aware of its presence, but not so close that he is likely to be disturbed. He closes his eyes and reaches for Azula.

(He sees her, just briefly. She’s in a meeting room, tea steaming before her. Azula turns her head to listen to Father, and then her eyes catch on Zuko’s and widen just a fraction--

And Zuko sees Father, and panics, and disappears.)

Zuko gulps deep breaths, trying to ground himself in the present moment. He feels the rock at his back, the sun on his skin, the air in his lungs. He grounds himself here - not slipping into the nonexistent Other Place, not pushing from his body to see Azula, just here. 

“Zuko?” 

Zuko looks up at Katara, and finds her lit more brightly than he expected. The sun is creeping high in the sky. Zuko has lost time again, he realises. That isn’t good. 

If it’s daytime, that means: “I forgot about training Aang.” Zuko closes his eyes for a moment, internally berating himself. This is why he’s here; it’s what he’s good for. He can’t just-- Although, maybe he can just stop. “He should train with Uncle. He’s a better firebender.” 

Katara is quiet for a long moment, and when Zuko looks up at her, it’s to find that she’s frowning at him. “You’re Aang’s firebending master,” she insists. “And anyway, it’s okay. Toph trained with him this morning. He’s been neglecting earthbending since you finally got him excited about fire, you know.” 

“I’m not a firebending master,” Zuko corrects her. “I was teaching Aang because he didn’t have a better option. Now he does.”

Katara’s frown only deepens. Her mouth tightens, too, and Zuko looks away; he doesn’t have the energy to deal with her anger. “If you don’t want to teach Aang anymore, you should--” she starts, voice firm, and then she pauses and takes an audible breath. “That’s okay,” she says. “If that’s what you want. We don’t want to make you do anything you don’t want to do, Zuko.” She pauses again. “But Aang learns well from you. He was so scared of fire before you started learning together, and he trusts you.”

Zuko knows that he’s supposed to respond, but he’s too tired to find the right words, so he just shrugs. Katara wavers where she’s standing. Her shadow shifts. 

“I brought you something to eat,” Katara says, and her voice is quieter now. “You missed breakfast. And lunch.” 

Zuko’s traitorous body reminds him that he’s hungry, and he uncurls to accept the bowl of food. “Thanks.”

Katara wavers again. “Do you want me to leave?”

Zuko doesn’t know what he wants. Part of Zuko just wants to go to sleep and never wake up again. He makes himself eat a bite of the food, and then makes himself look up at Katara as he answers: “I don’t know.” 

Katara hesitates, and then nods. “Can I stay, and you can tell me if you want me to leave?”

“Okay,” Zuko replies, and they sit together in silence. 

“When I sailed away with you,” Iroh starts, looking at the steam as it rises from his tea instead of looking into his nephew’s eyes. Iroh blinks and scolds himself for his cowardice. He sits back a little, straightens his spine, and looks directly at Zuko. “When I sailed away with you,” he starts again, “and I thought I was aiding you in death where I failed to in life... I was actually sailing away from you, wasn’t I?”

Zuko’s face is almost eerily still. He isn’t looking back at Iroh. His good eye is lined in shadows, in a way it never was when they were on the Wani. 

Eventually, Zuko nods just once. 

Iroh draws a deep breath. He’s known this to be the truth since Zuko fled yesterday: if the children found him on the Day of Black Sun, body and soul aligned, that means that Zuko’s body had been in the Caldera. Which Iroh had left, while arrogantly assuming that he was helping his nephew. 

Everything Iroh has done for Zuko in these last three years has been a failure. He’s been trying to convince Zuko to die. And here he sits, alive and whole, and it is entirely due to his own strength. 

Iroh is so proud. And he is devastated. 

“Do you believe you understand how this occurred?” Iroh asks, as gently as he can. 

Zuko’s eyes flicker up to Iroh’s, and then back down to his untouched tea. “How what occurred?” he asks, which is fair - there has been a lot of confusion. 

“Your… skill.”

“Oh.” Zuko lifts the cup in his hands, brings it close to his face, but does not drink. “No. It just… started happening. I don’t really remember how.” The silence feels charged, and Iroh commands himself to wait for Zuko to fill it. “I… I thought I was dreaming. When I would wake up in the Other-- in the palace, I thought that being with you on the Wani was a dream. But when I was dreaming, I didn’t remember reality.” Zuko’s eyes flicker to Iroh’s - and, again, away. “And then after the Spirit Oasis, I was remembering more, but it was… jumbled.”

Iroh nods. “And then? What happened on the Day of Black Sun?”

Zuko’s eyes shift from the tea to his own hand. “I thought I was dreaming,” he explains, “because my fire was broken. It never worked well in my dreams. I mean, when I was--”

“Ah,” Iroh says, thinking of all of those long days of training aboard the Wani, Zuko’s fire pale and weak. “You were not truly aligned with your inner fire, because it was with your body.” When Zuko does not take up the story again, Iroh scolds himself for interrupting. “So when your fire did not come to you, you thought it was a dream?”

Zuko nods. “So I guess I thought I could escape.”

“You could escape,” Iroh points out. “If you could escape then, you could have escaped before. Why did you wait?”

Iroh wasn’t aware that it was possible for Zuko to go paler. But then he is watching what little colour exists in his face drain out, and Zuko finally looks Iroh in the eye, and-- 

Iroh swallows down all of the words that have been bubbling up. Because Zuko doesn’t just look offended by Iroh’s question - a question he should have known better than to word that way - he looks horrified by it. Haunted, Iroh’s mind suggests. 

Betrayed, he realises, watching what little light remained in Zuko’s eyes go out. 

“I didn’t mean that,” Iroh says, careful with his words now, trying to gather back whatever clumsy peace existed between them. “I apologise. Of course I didn’t mean that you chose to stay there.”

Zuko continues staring. Silence settles in Iroh’s wake, but he stops himself from filling it with words. He breathes in the scent of their calming tea, and allows his heartbeat to settle. And Zuko keeps staring at Iroh, as if Zuko hasn’t always had trouble with sustained eye contact. But maybe Zuko isn’t really seeing Iroh’s eyes at all. 

“Nephew?” Iroh asks as gently as he can. 

Zuko swallows then, and his hands tremble hard enough that tea sloshes out of his cup. He places it back down and then returns his hands to his lap. And in the meantime, Zuko’s face remains eerily motionless. 

“I,” Zuko starts, and then apparently trips over the rest of the words. He swallows again, hard. “I request your permission to take my leave,” he says eventually, stiff and formal.

“Zuko,” Iroh says. “I really didn’t mean it like that. I’m only trying to understand what it was about dreaming that gave you the… courage, maybe? To try to escape?” 

Zuko’s back is ramrod straight. He looks more than a little lost. Iroh reaches out, intending to place his hand on Zuko’s arm the way that he has a thousand times.

And Zuko flinches back so hard that he overbalances. 

Iroh straightens, keeping his hands to himself, and waits for Zuko to regain his balance and some of his composure. 

“Zuko,” he tries again. “I only wish to understand.” 

And he pulls himself back again, waiting in the charged silence for Zuko to find his words. Which, eventually, he does.

“I request your permission to take my leave,” Zuko repeats. 

Iroh blinks, wondering if Zuko really thought that permission had been denied last time he asked. “You don’t need my permission,” Iroh explains. “You are free to leave whenever you--”

But Zuko is already scrambling out of the tent, and Iroh is left alone. Well. Aside from the deep, unsettling certainty that he has misstepped badly, and drawn them only further from one another.

Between conversations about battle strategy, Sokka keeps looking for Zuko. But he’s somehow never anywhere. Katara says that she sat in awkward silence with him after bringing him lunch, but aside from that, it seems that he’s just… faded out again. 

But then, Zuko never actually left their campsite at the temple, did he? Even if he was zapping around in spirit form, his body remained there - so Zuko should be findable, now that Sokka knows that he doesn’t actually disappear physically. But it turns out Zuko is also really good at hiding. 

“This is ridiculous,” Sokka complains to Toph. If this takes much longer, Sokka is going to eat Zuko’s meal as a second dinner. “I feel like I’m trying to draw him out like a reluctant pet. Here, Zuko! Come to Sokka for food!” Sokka hears chattering somewhere in the distance, and adds: “Not you, Momo.” 

Toph snorts. “If only someone could seek him out through feeling for his heartbeat or something.”

Sokka closes his eyes. “Toph,” he says very slowly. “Have you known where Zuko is this whole time, while you’ve watched me look for him?”

“I technically haven’t watched you do anything,” Toph points out. 

Sometimes, Sokka feels really bereft by the fact that Toph can’t read dirty looks. Because she deserves every ounce of his glare. “Toph!”

“Yeah, yeah, I know where his weird rabbit-mouse heart is,” Toph replies, and then gestures to Sokka. “Follow me.”

They find Zuko in the dark, sitting between a boulder and the back of a tent. Sokka has walked past this space at least three times. 

“Hey, Spooky,” Toph greets, carving herself a throne-like seat in the boulder. “Sokka brought you dinner. It’s probably cold by now.”

Zuko lights a fire on his palm, casting an eerie glow over himself and this strange crevice he’s managed to hide himself in. He looks… not great. Kind of living up to Toph’s nickname, actually. 

“Thanks,” Zuko says, taking the bowl when Sokka hands it over, and then extinguishes the flame like that’s the end of the spirits-damned conversation.

“Um!” Sokka says, trying not to take too much offense. “So. You know. We’re hoping to sleep inside tonight.”

“Mm hm,” is Zuko’s only response. 

Sokka tries really hard to keep his sigh entirely internal. 

“We have a tent. A big tent. And sleeping mats, blankets. Lotta set up for individual sleeping spaces.” When Zuko doesn’t say anything, Sokka pinches the bridge of his nose. 

“Snoozles is trying to say: please don’t sleep outside like a weirdo when there’s a tent option,” Toph explains. “Though to be clear, I don’t care about whether or not there’s a tent - I just want to have a pillow that isn’t actually Suki.” 

Zuko hesitates, and then Sokka thinks he sees him tilt his head. It’s too dark back here to really tell. “Okay?” Zuko offers. “Have fun.” 

Sokka doesn’t entirely manage to contain his frustrated sound. “You’re a person. A human, living person who needs to sleep. Sitting up against boulder? Bad sleeping space.” When Zuko doesn’t respond, Sokka adds: “Come and sleep with us in the tent. Like a person.”

“I know I’m a person,” Zuko huffs. 

“Well then… act like it!” Sokka all but yells. 

There’s a long stretch of silence. 

“Wow,” Toph adds, helpfully. Sokka glares at her, but both the darkness and her blindness make it a little redundant. 

“Whatever,” Sokka concludes. “I’m going to sleep. In the tent. Like a person.”

Sokka is pretty sure he didn’t handle that with as much grace as he could have. 

But later, when Sokka is bundled in blankets, Zuko shuffles into the tent. He sets up a sleeping space near the entrance, like he thinks he might want to leave at any moment. But Sokka waits very deliberately, and it eventually becomes apparent that Zuko is actually asleep. So. Sokka thinks he’s won this round. 

Aang kicks fire in a wide, controlled arc. Zuko stands back and watches his landing, and then nods once.

“Good,” he allows. “Next time, higher.”

Aang pants, hands against his knees, and then nods.

“Hey, jerkbenders,” Sokka greets with a wide grin. “How’s the jerkbending going?”

Zuko scowls, but it seems that none of his protests are able to stop Sokka from being Sokka, so he lets it go. “It’s coming along,” he says eventually, allowing Aang the moment of reprieve. “You should work with my uncle soon,” he says to Aang. “He’s a good firebender. He’ll be helpful.”

Aang stands up straight again. “Okay, but only if you work with us, too.”

And the thing is, Zuko would very much like to avoid Uncle Iroh. Even thinking about Iroh now makes Zuko want to walk far away from the camp and find a place to hide. But there’s also a war to be won, and it’s only going to happen if they have a properly trained Avatar, and-- 

And maybe Uncle Iroh wasn’t wrong. Maybe it is Zuko’s fault, just a little, that he let that happen to him all these years. And maybe it isn’t exactly fair for Zuko to punish him for pointing it out.

Zuko refocuses in time to see Sokka watching him with suspicious, narrowed eyes. Zuko does his best to control his own expression. And then he watches as Sokka lifts a hand and slowly reaches out to poke Zuko on his shoulder.

Zuko shifts away. “Don’t,” he says, voice coming out rougher than he’d been expecting.

Sokka’s eyes narrow further, and he hums with discontent. Zuko glares back at him, hoping to break the odd tension that’s growing, and then Aang interrupts with: “Can we get breakfast now, Sifu Hotman?”

Zuko’s body can never seem to tell whether it’s hungry or nauseated. 

“You go on ahead,” he suggests, stepping carefully away from Sokka’s strange expression. “I’m going to train for a while.”

“Okay, see you later!” Aang says, and then bows and goes to leave.

“Nope!” Sokka interjects, holding out an arm to hook Aang back. “We’re not going without you. Are we, Aang?”

Aang stumbles in Sokka’s grasp for a moment, and Zuko feels a strange wash of emotion at how easily they grapple with one another. Then Aang blinks up at Sokka, frowns in confusion, and looks over to Zuko. 

Zuko crosses his arms.

“Oh,” Aang says, scratching at his arrow. “Right. You should join us, Zuko. Because…” He looks to Sokka. “People who are alive are people who have to eat breakfast?”

Sokka grins triumphantly. 

Breakfast means the main camp, which means a whole bunch of people who might try to talk to Zuko. Who might even try to touch him. Going back to the main camp means that Uncle Iroh might be there, and where Zuko used to seek him out for comfort and escape, now… now, the idea of looking into Uncle Iroh’s eyes and seeing judgment there makes his knees lock against the idea of moving. 

But on the other hand, if he doesn’t come and eat quietly, he’s going to force someone else to bring him food. Zuko hadn’t expected that to happen, but it did, and there’s a war to be won here; Zuko can’t constantly leech time and attention from everyone. 

“Okay,” Zuko relents, and ignores Sokka’s pleased ‘hah’. 

The camp is busy. People are eating and talking, and Zuko keeps hearing snatches of conversation about the war. He keeps his head down as best he can. He considers letting his hair loose so that he can hide behind it, but ultimately hears the thought and calls himself a coward. 

They find the other kids sitting in a huddle, touching and leaning against one another with no consideration. Zuko takes a bowl of food when it’s offered to him and sits off to one side, carefully evading Toph’s attempt at putting her feet in his lap. 

“Morning, Spooky,” Toph greets, and then Katara looks up from where she’s being used as a leaning post to offer Zuko a smile and a quiet greeting.

“Uh. Hi,” Zuko says. He keeps his head down and tries to eat quickly, figuring that once they’ve seen him eat they’ll leave him alone, but his stomach isn’t settled enough to take food quickly. And then, because Toph’s head is still tilted in his direction and Katara is still watching him, Zuko adds: “... Is anything happening? Is there any news?”

Katara shrugs. “Lots of conversations about the war,” she admits. “The White Lotus seem to think that what your Fa-- what the Fire Lord might do with the power from the comet could be really bad.” 

“So we’re thinking we’ll murder your dad before the death comet,” Toph finishes for her.

“Toph!” Katara hisses. 

“What?” 

“We don’t have to kill him,” Aang says, pulling himself into the conversation. Aang wraps his arms around his knees, looking deeply unhappy. “I don’t know if I want to kill anyone. It goes against everything the monks taught me.”

“Uh, Twinkletoes, are you not paying attention? The Fire Lord definitely tortured Spooky, and we are definitely murdering him.”

“Toph!” It’s Suki this time, but Zuko can barely hear her over the blood rushing in his own ears. 

He didn’t torture me, he wants to explain, but-- but that would only open up more questions about why Zuko was kept alive in the palace for three years, and he can’t tell them. So he’s just going to let them make this false assumption. He’s just going to lie to them, like a coward without an ounce of honour. 

Zuko looks down at the ground, away from the faces of the kids who might be his friends (but might not, if they knew the truth), and is disgusted with himself.

“What?” Toph asks again. “Why is everyone always yelling at me?”

Katara sighs. “We can’t make Aang kill anyone,” she points out, entirely reasonably.

“Fine,” Toph shrugs. “I’ll do it.” 

Zuko looks up from the ground, trying to figure out where he should dispose of his bowl so that he can disappear. It’s apparent that Zuko doesn’t actually need to be here for this conversation, and he doesn’t know long he can get away with being silent before a lie of omission will turn into Zuko needing to put words to the falsehood. And once he does - isn’t it only a matter of time before they start questioning why he doesn’t look like he was tortured for three years? 

Have any of them noticed the lack of scars anywhere aside from his face and wrists? Or wondered why his hair has been kept long and healthy all these years? 

Zuko’s heart flutters in his chest so fast that it makes him feel a little sick.

Sokka clears his throat. “Maybe let’s not talk about murder over breakfast,” he suggests. Zuko relaxes infinitesimally, and then Sokka adds: “I was thinking that we could talk about your super secret soul-bending power, anyway.”

Zuko looks up. “Did you…?”

“Give it an awesome name, yes, I did,” Sokka replies. “So I guess question one is: it doesn’t seem like you’d need to be a firebender to do it, since it’s not so fire-y.”

“Was there a question in that?” Zuko asks.

Sokka sticks out his tongue at Zuko, which makes Suki giggle from under Sokka’s arm. They’re all touching one another somehow, Zuko notices again. He can track their contact from Suki’s shoulders all the way to Toph’s feet, which are stretched in Zuko’s direction, but resting on the ground where he had rejected being her footstool. 

“Okay, question one: can it be taught?”

Aang answers for him: “It was a gift from Agni, right?”

“I thought it was a curse from Agni,” Zuko replies. “Uncle said that Agni might have been… angered by the circumstances of my death. But I didn’t die. So I suppose it wasn’t that.”

“Couldn’t Agni have been angry with the circumstances of your almost-death?” Katara suggests. 

Suki raises her hand for attention. “What circumstances could have angered an actual spirit?”

“I died in-- we thought I died, I mean,” Zuko corrects himself, irritated, “in an Agni Kai. It’s a duel for honour, but I refused to fight. So I would have died in an honour duel without honour.” 

Suki doesn’t look particularly enlightened. “I know what an Agni Kai is,” she replies. “Aren’t you too young to fight in an Agni Kai? I thought you had to be eighteen.”

There’s a moment of quiet, and then Sokka plants his face in his hand. “Zuko!”

“What?” Zuko asks, mildly alarmed by this reaction.

“This was relevant information!” Sokka states. “You thought a spirit was punishing you for refusing to fight in a weird honour duel when you were underage for even participating? How did you get punishing you from that?”

Zuko scowls. “There’s a loophole for royalty,” he explains. “It wasn’t relevant.”

Sokka looks up from his hand and stares Zuko out for a moment. “What,” he says, “is the loophole for royalty, exactly?”

“My father could consent to the Agni Kai on my behalf,” Zuko explains. 

“Your-- The one who-- This is,” Sokka splutters, and then launches himself to standing. 

“I didn’t know that,” Aang says, and his voice is very quiet in the chaos of Sokka spluttering and Toph literally booing in the background. “I really think it was a gift and not a curse, Zuko.” 

Zuko feels a little weighed down with all of their attention. He misses being alone, but he’s pretty sure that if he walks away, Sokka is just going to follow him and continue to be loud and obnoxious. 

“I don’t know. Maybe?” Zuko says, because… well, it felt like a curse when Zuko thought he wasn’t dying properly. But being able to escape the palace had been a gift. “Yue said it was a gift, too,” he admits, because that’s easier than talking about the palace. 

Sokka goes very still. “Yue?” he asks in a still, small voice. “When did she say that? I don’t remember--”

“She was trying to convince me to fight, but it was back when I thought I was just dreaming.”

Sokka sits down again, much closer to Zuko this time. Zuko looks up, surprised and a little wary. 

“You’ve seen Yue,” he says.

There’s a moment of confusion before the guilt crashes in, and then Zuko has to give himself a moment to breathe. 

Yue was their friend. And Zuko has been clinging to her for strength all this time. 

Zuko nods. “Yeah, uh… Sometimes, when I’m not in my body, I go to the Spirit Oasis and talk to her.” He winces. “I really was confused about whether or not I was dreaming. I didn’t mean to… but I can bring her a message, if you want?” Sokka just keeps staring, his eyes wide and very blue, and the words keep pouring out of Zuko to fill the space: “Maybe if we survive the war we can go back? I don’t know if you’ll be able to see her, but I could be there to translate. She’s okay,” he insists, realising that this is probably what they want to hear. “I mean, she’s…” Actually, Zuko hasn’t even asked her if she’s okay. He’s that selfish. The guilt seeps in further, calcifying his bones. “She seems okay? I’m sorry, I don’t-- I’m sorry.” 

Sokka’s expression has shifted now, and he’s frowning, and Zuko doesn’t know what it means. He opens his mouth to apologise again, and then Sokka’s hand is on Zuko’s shoulder, and Zuko really doesn’t want to be touched but he also thinks he shouldn’t shrug him off when this is all Zuko’s fault.

“Hey,” Sokka says, still frowning. “Calm down. It’s okay.” 

Zuko pulls in a deep breath and holds it for a moment before releasing. 

“Wow,” Katara says, and her voice sounds a little wet. “That’s… amazing, Zuko. That you can still see her.” 

“It would be good to go back to the Spirit Oasis with you,” Aang adds. 

Zuko is still looking at Sokka, who is still touching Zuko’s shoulder. Too much of Zuko’s focus is there on Sokka’s palm, and he has to fight himself against shrugging it off. 

“Maybe you could tell her we miss her?” Sokka asks, and smiles shakily at Zuko.

Zuko nods. 

“If Yue said it’s a gift, I think she’s probably right,” Aang points out. He sounds a little happier now. “So you probably can’t teach it.”

Sokka hums, looking thoughtful again, and he hasn’t moved his hand.

“Could you…?” Zuko starts, quiet enough that it’s obviously only aimed at Sokka. When Sokka looks up at him, Zuko tries again: “Could you not touch me?”

“Oh,” Sokka says, and he’s frowning again, but he’s also pulling away from Zuko. “Yeah. Sure, man.” 

(Sokka doesn’t stop frowning at Zuko, and at this point, Zuko has messed up so much that he isn’t even sure which part Sokka is mad about.) 

“So I guess the question is how we use it?” Toph suggests, kicking her feet up again. Zuko shifts away, just in case she’s considering making another play for Zuko’s lap. “Because I’m thinking secret palace spy. Anyone else thinking secret palace spy?” 

“We could know all of the Fire Nation’s plans,” Sokka points out, chin in his hand. “And hey, if he’s spotted, we could revert to the ghost prince story and freak everyone out.”

Zuko keeps his eyes trained on his mostly-untouched bowl of food. It’s not a bad idea. It’s easier than Sokka’s previous plan, in which Zuko would actually try to fight the Fire Lord alone. And Zuko has gone back to the palace a few times now, trying to keep Azula safe. This would just be… one more reason to go back.

And maybe... maybe giving his ability some use in the war could do something to make up for everything he’s done wrong. It can’t touch the magnitude of his misdeeds - chasing the Avatar and leaving destruction in his wake, not trying to escape every spirits-damned day in that room, keeping Yue from her friends, lying to everyone here about what happened in the palace…

But it would be something. He could be good for something.

“Obviously,” Sokka states, calling attention to the quiet that has fallen around them, “only if you’re okay with it, buddy. It’s not necessary if you don’t want to.”

They’re being too nice to him. Making sure he’s eating and sleeping, trying to include him in their time together, trying to give him a way out of helping. 

“I’ll do it,” Zuko says. 

It’s easier said than done. 

They find somewhere quiet to practice, and it takes a moment for Zuko to realise that it’s not going to be as simple as closing his eyes and deciding to be elsewhere. Anxiety is churning in his stomach about what could happen to his body when his mind isn’t present, even though Zuko knows that this isn’t a new problem.

Zuko scowls. “Don’t touch me when I’m gone,” he requests. Suki has planted herself next to him, both of them leaning back against the rock at the base of the mountain. 

“Okay,” Suki replies. 

“And don’t let anyone else touch me when I’m gone,” Zuko adds. 

Suki blinks, and then something odd happens on her face. Her eyes go a little wide and a little soft, and her mouth pulls downwards. Zuko hesitates, unsure how he’s supposed to understand what’s happening, and finally Suki nods and says: “I won’t. Nobody’s going to touch you, Zuko. I’ll be here to make sure.” 

And she sounds serious enough about it that Zuko nods, leans back against the rock, and closes his eyes. 

It takes longer than usual, because Zuko isn’t actually trying to escape his body, but he finds the pathway eventually. He holds onto Azula, because he can’t bring himself to try to go to Father, and-- 

And then he’s there, in the gardens of the palace. It’s bright here, though Zuko can’t feel the warmth on his non-existent skin. He ducks behind a tree to avoid being seen, and then realises which tree he is behind. 

The turtleduck pond. 

Azula is sitting at the edge of the pond, apparently paying the turtleducks no attention. They avoid her, swimming on the opposite side of the pond, and Zuko’s heart is filled with longing. But he doesn’t really know what he’s longing for, so it’s a detached kind of emotion, reaching out for something intangible. 

Azula doesn’t look great. Her skin is a little too sallow, her eyes a little too sunken. 

Zuko is ready to throw the plan away, at least for now. He’s ready to walk over to Azula and make sure that she’s okay, ensure that she doesn’t look unwell because of anything Father has done, but he has barely taken a half-step forward before a servant is approaching them and calling Azula to a meeting with Father. 

It’s not exactly what Zuko wants - he needs to know when the war councils are meeting, so that he can slip into a hiding position in the room before they begin - but it’s close enough that Zuko should follow. He waits for Azula to leave, waits until he’s sure that Azula will be in the throne room, and then imagines the layout of the room. 

If Zuko is careful, he might be able to control where he appears in the room. And he knows the space well enough to push himself directly into a hiding place, behind a pillar at the edge of the room. The guards will have no reason to watch that area, because they won’t have seen anyone enter. Zuko will just have to remain unnoticed. 

His heart beats a little wildly as he pictures the place he’s trying to bring himself to, and then he closes his eyes tightly and pushes.

It’s a small victory, finding himself hidden in the throne room. Because then Zuko has to listen to Father’s voice. Everything in him wants to tremble - remembers too much, spirits how he misses not remembering - but he holds himself very, very still.

Zuko is going to vomit. 

It’s stupid and humiliating, but once the meeting between Azula and Father is over, Zuko pulls himself back to his body and can tell immediately that he’s about to throw up. He pushes himself up on watery knees, planning to walk away before embarrassing himself. His mouth is already filling with saliva, and he swallows and breathes deeply to give himself time-- 

And then:

“Are you okay, Zuko?” Aang asks, and reaches out to touch his back.

“Aang, don’t,” Suki warns, and that’s it.

Zuko flinches away from Aang’s hand, catches himself on the rocky base of the mountain to keep himself from falling over, and retches. 

His entire body shakes with it, and it’s like Zuko can’t quite get the sound of Father’s voice from out of his ears. But he hadn’t eaten much at breakfast, so there isn’t much for him to throw up - 

And it didn’t sound like Father has been hurting Azula. Zuko knows that he can’t know, not really, but he still clings to hope that she’s okay. 

Once his stomach is empty and his head is clearer, Zuko straightens up and takes a deep breath through his nose.

“Sorry,” he says, hyper-aware of the fact that all five of them have stayed put to watch him hurl. And then he remembers why they’ve stayed here. “Sorry. It was… I didn’t learn much, but I know that I can project to a specific place in the room, as long as I’m following someone. That will be helpful.”

“Wait, you didn’t know you could do that?” Sokka asks, sounding distinctly unimpressed. 

Zuko shrugs. “Now I know,” he says. 

“Zuko,” Katara says. Zuko turns to face them, because he thinks that he can only get away with so much conversation with his back turned, but he doesn’t lift his eyes. “I, um. I’m not sure if you should keep doing this. If it made you--”

“It’s fine,” Zuko insists. “It probably won’t happen every time.”

“Probably,” Toph grumbles. “Great.”

Aang steps closer, and Zuko resists stepping away. “I’m really sorry if I freaked you out,” Aang apologises, and he sounds really torn up about it, so Zuko tries to offer him eye contact and a reassuring smile. Based on Aang’s expression, Zuko figures he has failed at the reassuring part. 

But Aang really shouldn’t have to apologise for something as simple as reaching out, so Zuko makes himself use his words. “It’s okay. I’ll practice again soon.” 

Azula keeps seeing her brother's ghost in the corner of her eye. But every time she turns to look, there’s nobody there.

Eventually, Azula stops turning her gaze.

Days keep passing, and Aang settles into a routine. It goes like this: train with Zuko in the morning, with Toph during the day, and with Katara in the early evening. Pretend to pay attention when Sokka shares plans and strategies with the group. Feed Appa and Momo. Try to ignore the ever-pressing question of whether or not he’s going to kill the Fire Lord.

(Aang isn’t going to kill anyone. He can’t, no matter how much everyone wants him to.)

Also, Aang seems to be able to find time every single day to feel a moment of deep unease about Zuko. Zuko has always filled Aang with unease - from when he was trying to kidnap Aang while also having something distinctly wrong with him, to when he walked into the spirit waters and disappeared, to when he was a confusing presence in the Western Air Temple, to now. It seems like every time they take a step forward together, Zuko figures out how to trip backwards again, further and further from Aang’s reach. And while Aang is so happy that Zuko is alive that he has to hold himself back from sweeping Zuko into a hug, Aang also watches him look a little bit worse every day. 

And then the old people in the camp catch up with what the young people in the camp are doing, and it all gets a little chaotic. 

“We’ve collected information,” Sokka explains, and Aang watches as he throws a worried glance at Prince Iroh. Iroh looks unexpectedly furious. “I think it’s time to start adapting our strategies to use it.”

“You say ‘we have collected information’,” says Iroh. “To be clear, you mean that you have been sending my nephew back to the palace without informing anyone?”

“I’m not really there,” Zuko points out. “It’s no danger to me.” 

Aang has seen Iroh look distressed before, but mostly the man exudes a sense of calm. Right now, with Iroh’s gaze sharp and his mouth downturned, Aang is very aware that he’s also called the Dragon of the West. 

“You do not know that it is no danger to you,” he points out.

“And,” adds Master Pakku, “you do not know that it is no danger to us.” Pakku gestures to the camp with a hand. “Who is to say that they cannot find a way to trace your presence to here? Or that they aren’t aware of you in the palace, and feeding you false information?” 

“The Fire Lord doesn’t know I’m there,” Zuko insists. 

Pakku’s eyes narrow. “You cannot be certain of this.”

“Yes,” Zuko disagrees, and his voice is rougher than usual. Aang looks back to him, nervous. “I can be.”

“Enough,” Iroh interrupts. “I’m not concerned that he might know you’re there. You’re not in physical danger in that form. But nephew, physical damage is not the only kind of damage.” 

Aang is watching Zuko through this, not Iroh, so he sees the moment that Zuko goes even tenser. And while Zuko’s face is hard to read, Aang is learning that his body isn’t. 

“Let me worry about that,” Zuko says eventually. “We have information to share and a battle to plan. That’s what’s important here.”

“No,” Iroh bursts, and it makes Aang jump. His voice is low and dangerous. Aang looks to him with wide eyes, unsure of what’s happening here. “That is not the only thing that is important here.” 

The camp is quiet for a long moment. There’s too much of an audience for this conversation, Aang realises. Zuko doesn’t even like it when he has too many friends near him, and he doesn’t like adults. Everything about this situation is spelling out ‘uh oh’. 

Aang looks at Sokka. “You know all the information, so you can explain, right?” he asks, and Sokka nods. Aang goes to stand, but then adds quietly to Sokka: “Also, I’m not killing anyone. You can’t decide that without me when I’m gone.” 

Sokka frowns. “Where are you going?” 

“Come on,” Aang says to Zuko. “We’re going to go for a walk, or some meditation or something. See you guys. Have fun planning the war!” 

Aang stops himself from grabbing Zuko’s arm at the last moment, but it turns out he doesn’t need to encourage him to leave. Zuko shoots to his feet the second he has an excuse to, and then they’re leaving the White Lotus meeting behind. 

“Phew!” Aang says once they’re out of earshot, pulling up a flame to light their path. “Who needs a stuffy war meeting, anyway? Where d’you want to go? Maybe we could groom Appa.”

Zuko doesn’t say anything, so Aang shrugs and leads him in Appa’s direction. Appa yawns widely when he sees them, and Aang lets himself be licked lovingly. Zuko sidesteps Appa’s affection, but can’t quite escape Momo’s decision to perch on his shoulder. 

After a few minutes of working on Appa, Zuko finally speaks. 

“Thanks,” he says, quiet enough that Aang almost misses it.

Aang beams at him. “You’re welcome,” he responds. “I don’t much like being there, either. I don’t think they really think of me as a person who gets to make decisions sometimes.”

Zuko hums. Aang can’t quite see him, because he’s had to give up his flame for the sake of grooming Appa, so they’re only working with the dim light of the White Lotus camp behind them. 

“They can’t force you to kill anyone,” Zuko says. “And you shouldn’t let them. But if Toph tries to, are you going to stop her?”

Aang tries to imagine what Zuko wants the answer to be. He has never actually said that he wants his dad dead. But Aang doesn’t know what that means exactly.

“I don’t know,” Aang replies quietly. “I don’t think I would fight her. I don’t think anyone should be in danger because of the Fire Lord.” And then, because he should know: “Do you want him dead?” 

Aang knows that Zuko’s answer won’t change his mind about killing anyone. But maybe it will make some difference, to know if the man is so far gone that even his own son doesn’t want him to live anymore.

Zuko sighs. “I don’t want to live in a world that he’s also in,” he responds, which isn’t exactly a ‘yes’. Aang hesitates, trying to parse out what that means, but then Zuko adds: “But more than that, I just… I want Azula to be safe.”

Aang blinks, distracted by Zuko’s previous confusing statement by the new confusing statement.

“Do you think she’s in danger?”

The truth is, Princess Azula almost killed Aang, and Aang thinks she might be just as scary as the Fire Lord. He kind of can’t imagine her being in danger instead of being danger. But there’s something very serious in Zuko’s voice, something that makes Aang very aware that Zuko is a big brother as well as all the other things he has been in his life. 

Zuko doesn’t reply. But Aang figures the answer is obvious anyway.

They can’t actually stop Zuko from returning to the palace. 

Iroh tries his best. He approaches Zuko in places that he thinks will feel safe to him, with his friends nearby for support, and gently tries to explain why going back to the palace is a bad idea. But while Zuko is not physically strong at the moment, he has a will of steel, and he will not be swayed.

“I lost one son to war,” Iroh explains in a moment of desperation. “I only want you to be safe.”

Zuko glances up at him for a moment, and then he looks off to one side. “It’s a bit late for that.” 

And Iroh tries to calm his sharp intake of breath, because-- because if Iroh had known, had even suspected that Zuko was trapped in the palace, he would never have let it rest. Zuko has to know that, doesn’t he? 

Iroh thinks of Lu Ten and his insistence in joining Iroh in battle. And Iroh’s heart aches for Lu Ten the way that it has every day since his son’s death. But even though he’s had years to replay everything in his mind, Iroh knows that nothing he did could have withheld Lu Ten from war. Perhaps he would have survived, had a flutter bat flapped its wings differently, but the boy would have seen war with or without Iroh’s blessing. 

“If you insist on playing a part in this war,” Iroh says, “then I cannot stop you. But Zuko - please do not take unnecessary risks. I only just got you back.” 

Iroh watches as Zuko wraps his arms around himself. It’s not a tendency that Zuko had on the Wani. Zuko had been scorchingly angry back then, but Iroh had also been able to hug him carefully. These days, Zuko won’t let Iroh come within touching distance, and he’s developing behaviours that suggest that he isn’t letting anyone touch him. 

(It would be invasive to suggest to one of his friends that Zuko could use a hug, wouldn’t it?)

“But you think you would have gotten me back sooner, if I hadn’t chosen to stay,” Zuko snarls, half to himself, and Iroh freezes. 

He needs to be careful with his words right now. Iroh breathes deeply, watching Zuko refuse to make eye contact, and says: “I did not mean to imply that you chose to stay.”

“You didn’t imply anything,” Zuko says. He turns his glare to Iroh for a moment before looking away. “You said it plainly.” 

“I meant--” Iroh starts, and then pulls himself back. “I apologise, Zuko. I am sorry. I know that you did not choose to stay there. I had intended only to ask about where the courage to try to escape originated. Not imply that you didn’t want to escape.” 

Zuko looks up at him, finally maintaining eye contact, and then his face crumples. Iroh feels a bolt of horror as he watches tears gather in Zuko’s eyes. “I didn’t want to stay,” he says, and his voice shakes painfully on it. “I didn’t-- I didn’t want-- I’m not--” 

“Zuko,” Iroh breathes, and tries to move closer to the boy before he remembers that he isn’t welcome. “Zuko, of course you didn’t. Nobody thinks that.” Iroh’s hands are in front of him on instinct, half-reaching for his nephew. “You wanted to get away so badly that you left your own body behind.”

Zuko hiccups something like a laugh at that, though there isn’t anything amusing. And then he scrubs his hand across his face, wiping away tears and trying to catch his breath. 

And then a miracle occurs: Zuko shifts closer to him instead of away. 

Iroh tries not to take advantage of this fact. He holds his hands higher in invitation, but does not reach for his nephew. 

And after a moment, Zuko leans into him, pressing his forehead against Iroh’s shoulder. Iroh tries to keep his breathing steady as he gently embraces his nephew, and pretends he doesn’t notice when the tears continue to flow.

“It’s okay,” Iroh insists, voice a quiet rumble that only they can hear. “I have you. It’s okay.” 

War draws closer, and closer, and closer. 

Zuko listens in one war council and reports to another. 

Zuko sits by mystical waters and tells stories to a spirit. 

One day, Sokka reaches out to poke him on the wrist, and his instincts don’t scream at him to flinch away. 

(If they knew, a voice says in his mind - if they knew, this would all be different.)

And everything falls apart.

Chapter Text

Once - a long, long time ago - the weight of the gaze of a crowd did not suffocate Zuko. He was a prince, imbued with pride, the blessing of Agni running through his veins. 

But now, Zuko feels that the prince of the Fire Nation could not be further away. Now, when the eyes of every member of the camp turn to him, Zuko cannot imagine feeling smaller. He is being watched from too many angles, and anger and disbelief are thick in the air. And while having Aang and the other children behind him had seemed like support just moments ago, Zuko is currently hyper-aware of each of them standing where he is blind. 

The morning of battle has arrived, and everything is falling apart around them. This is not Zuko’s fault. It is not his fault.

But it seems that Zuko is the only one who believes that. 

Zuko barely even understands the battle plan, so he’s in no position to betray anyone. He has been keeping himself out of those conversations, and even Sokka has respected that Zuko doesn’t want to hear the plans. Uncle Iroh has been firm that Zuko isn’t to come close to the main fight, and after a half-screaming argument, Zuko has begrudgingly admitted that it would be a bad idea to put him anywhere near the Fire Lord. 

(Zuko can feel himself catapulting between terror and rage multiple times a day - and more often than not, when he spies on the Fire Lord’s war room, he’s physically sick upon returning to the White Lotus camp. Zuko is unstable, and he knows enough to understand that instability in a soldier is a liability.)

So it isn’t Zuko’s fault, because Zuko doesn’t even know enough of the plan to betray the White Lotus. 

However, Zuko has still done the one thing he was apparently supposed to know better than to do, even though nobody actually said he shouldn’t:

He told Azula.

It goes like this:

Zuko slips into war rooms to listen to Father every day. Father’s voice grates in his ears, and sometimes Zuko has to close his eyes and draw deep, unnecessary breaths to remind himself that he isn’t in the Other Place. 

(There is no Other Place. He isn’t in his room in the palace: the prison with the silk sheets.)

Often, Azula is present in those meetings. But it isn’t quite enough for Zuko to hear her voice - he needs to see her and speak with her, to do his best to ensure that she’s safe from Father and from the war. And so he follows her into her bedroom, late enough that the servants have left, and tries his best. 

Azula refuses to look at him. Her skin is pale and sallow, and her eyes look more sunken in her face than they should. It’s like she’s slowly disappearing before his eyes. It’s like Azula is the ghost, after all. 

(Is it possible that she looks like this because Father--)

“Azula,” Zuko says, keeping his voice as steady as he can manage. “You need to get out of the palace.” 

Azula’s eyes almost flicker to him at that, but then she turns her whole body away and fusses at her bedclothes. 

“Just tell Father you want to go somewhere with Ty Lee and Mai,” Zuko begs. “Just get out of the palace. Please.” Nothing. “Azula, the war is coming tomorrow. We’re out of time. You need to leave.” 

Azula waves a hand to extinguish the candles, and they are left only in the moonlight seeping through the window. 

(Zuko wonders, briefly, if this is how Yue felt when she was begging Zuko to fight.) 

“Please, Azula.”

Azula slips into her bed and keeps her back turned on Zuko. 

(He’s going to stay here, he decides. He’s going to stay all night, just to be sure that Father’s footsteps never sound in the hall.)

There is nothing that Zuko can say that will make Azula flee the palace. When this realisation settles, it is with a deep well of regret. If Zuko had only understood what was happening to him earlier, he could have spent three years with Azula. He could have spoken with her, grown with her, gotten to know the woman she’s growing into. Instead, Zuko’s only knowledge of his little sister is stale. 

“I love you,” he admits eventually, voice just a whisper in her darkened room. 

Azula’s shoulder hitches just slightly in response. If she was anyone else, Zuko would wonder if she was crying.

“I love you,” he says again, and settles in to keep watch.

Things fall apart in the morning. Zuko pushes himself into his hiding place in the war meeting, expecting little, and finds-- 

“They know.” The words burst from him once he arrives back at the White Lotus camp. 

Zuko hasn’t been moved in the night, because he never returned after seeing Azula. A blanket has been draped across him - and it takes him a moment to realise that the other children have joined him sleeping outside again. Nobody is touching him this time, but they are all sitting or lying nearby, and Suki is in her customary spot to his right. 

(Zuko doesn’t have time to place the emotion that bubbles up inside of him at that, but it’s warm and almost pleasant - and quickly extinguished by what he has learned.)

Aang blinks up at him from where he’s still curled into a very tight ball on the ground. “Uh?” 

“You were gone all night!” Sokka exclaims through a mouthful of breakfast. He points his chopsticks at Zuko, swallows, and then continues: “You can’t… You have a curfew!”

“Zuko doesn’t have a curfew,” Suki responds, a grin evident in her voice.

“Well he does now!” Sokka continues. “No more staying out-of-body all night. It is weird and creepy, and we don’t have a way to--” 

“They know,” Zuko repeats, and the children fall silent to look at him blankly. Zuko shrugs the blanket off himself, heart beating wildly. “They know we’re coming.” He pushes himself up to stand, allowing Suki’s brief hand on his arm to steady him, and then takes off in the direction of the main area of their makeshift pre-battle camp.

The members of the White Lotus are calculating and furious. Zuko’s heart is in his throat, and he feels simultaneously too hot and too cold. Zuko wants to leave his body, if only to leave behind the uncomfortable sensation of panic running through it.

“How could they possibly know?”

The children are all standing behind Zuko, which might be comforting if Zuko could see them. As it is, it makes him feel itchy to have people behind him instead of a solid wall. Zuko ignores the feeling as best he can and focuses on the fact that they are behind him for support, not to make him feel vulnerable.

“There must be a leak,” Uncle Iroh concludes. “We’ve been tight with information, but there is only so tight we can be when planning a war. Someone’s allyship has slipped.”

“You don’t think a member of the White Lotus…?” Aang asks, walking to stand at Zuko’s side. Aang’s presence makes things minutely easier. It’s safer having the Avatar beside him than behind him. 

Uncle Iroh shakes his head. “I am not accusing anybody. Certainly not anybody here. But there are other ways for information of our plan to have spread.”

“I can think of a way,” Master Pakku points out, and Zuko turns to listen before realising that Master Pakku is looking straight back at him. 

“Pakku,” Iroh points out, his voice taking that measured tone that means he isn’t angry, but anger is a distinct possibility on the horizon, “I will remind you that it’s Zuko who brought this to our attention. Had he wanted us to walk into a trap, he would have remained silent.”

Pakku looks back to Iroh, and Zuko relaxes infinitesimally. “I am not suggesting that Prince Zuko is… playing both sides,” he explains. “But perhaps he was seen, traced, as I said before. This was never a good idea.”

Zuko stares back at Master Pakku, and dread shocks through his system. His wrists hurt. His heart is too fast. 

Zuko told Azula.

And the thing is, it can’t be Azula. That doesn’t work, because Zuko sat by her bedside all night. He couldn’t walk beside her on her way to the war meeting, but that wasn’t enough time for the information to spread like that, and Zuko is certain that the Fire Nation knows more than Zuko disclosed. But if he doesn’t mention it, that’s tantamount to a lie, and he can’t just keep lying to everyone. He can’t. There’s no honour in this.

Zuko closes his eyes. His chest aches with how fast his heart is beating.

“Azula knows,” he admits. And then, before anyone can respond, he adds: “It wasn’t her! I was with her all night, and they… they know more than I said to her. It wasn’t her.”

And this time, when Iroh turns his gaze to Zuko, it isn’t with the careful expression of a man who might be angry.

“You told the princess?”

The voices swarm around him, and Zuko keeps his chin high even when his instincts are telling him to make himself small. “She’s my little sister,” he states, refusing to back down. 

The voices do not quieten. There are too many of them for Zuko’s mind to unpick, but he hears his uncle and his friends, and he understands the fury in their tones. He knows what this means, and he knows that nothing about it bodes well for him.

“It wasn’t Azula!” he yells eventually, fury sparking. “We have another leak, it’s not Azula--” 

“We don’t have time for this,” Iroh booms, and everyone quietens down.

Zuko hadn’t noticed himself moving, but he no longer has his back to the children. He’s shifted so that he’s standing alone with the safety of rock behind him. Nobody is listening to him. Nobody is going to listen to him.

“We always knew that it was a possibility that the Fire Lord would be prepared for us,” Iroh points out. “This is why we have backup plans. What we need to focus on now is infiltrating, and doing our best to contain the Fire Lord to the Caldera. He will likely retreat to the bunkers, but it is too late for him to retreat from the city. We are prepared for this.” 

“I’ll find out what they’re planning,” Zuko says, and Iroh turns to Zuko with sharp eyes.

“You will do no such thing.” Zuko freezes. “If you are correct that it was not Princess Azula, then Pakku may be correct: they might know that you are there.” 

And Zuko realises: 

There is a leak. Someone is feeding information to the Fire Lord, some ally to the White Lotus, and they don’t even know how much the Fire Lord might know about their plans. But nobody is going to try to figure out who it is, because everyone is convinced that the problem is Zuko. 

And they think they’re solving the problem by removing him from the equation.

The world tilts and shifts as Zuko watches the White Lotus and the Avatar’s friends finalise plans. His wrists ache. He looks down at them, trying to picture what these people would use to restrain him.

Zuko glances at Iroh, who is giving orders at a rapid pace. 

Nothing flammable, of course. Nothing he could break through that easily. But it isn’t likely that they have iron cuffs nearby, is it?

Zuko glances at Chief Hakoda, who is busy talking in low tones with Sokka and Toph. Katara is listening, too, but she’s frowning over at Aang. Her lips are pursed. Zuko understands this expression on her face, even though Zuko has always had a hard time with expressions: Katara wants to burst out with some angry statement, but she’s holding herself back. 

And Zuko realises: they can’t restrain him at all. It wouldn’t do them any good. That’s why nobody is grabbing him right now. They know that he can just slip from his body and leave. 

Aang is staring back at Zuko. 

Zuko flinches a little when he meets Aang’s eyes, and turns away to look at Iroh again. He can still feel the weight of the Avatar’s gaze. 

They wouldn’t kill me, Zuko assures himself. Uncle Iroh wouldn’t allow it. Uncle might think that Zuko is worse than useless at the moment, might regret allowing Zuko to have a hand in this war, might miss the time that Zuko was only an easily-dismissed ghost -

(Iroh might even think that if Zuko had stayed put in that room in the palace, this war would be winnable--)

- but he wouldn’t let anyone actually hurt Zuko. Zuko is certain of it. And for all Aang looks ancient and ready for war, Aang doesn’t even want to kill the Fire Lord. And anyway, Zuko isn’t even afraid of dying--

However, there are things that Zuko is afraid of. And when you know you can’t restrain someone with iron shackles, the other way to do it is by rendering him unconscious. 

Zuko’s heart beats very heavily in his ribcage as he weighs his options. He’s going to have to leave his body unguarded somehow - either because the White Lotus will deem him unfit to remain as an element in this battle, or because he will manage to help by continuing to spy on the palace. If he stays here, whether it’s with permission to help or with the decision to render him unconscious, Zuko will be defenseless. And right now, nobody is happy with him. Uncle Iroh wouldn’t let anyone hurt him, but there’s a war to be fought - protecting Zuko is not going to be at the forefront of anyone’s minds. 

And so it’s obvious: Zuko needs to escape. 

“Of course I’m not saying that we should trust Princess Azula,” Hakoda says, keeping his voice low and calm. “I’m saying that Zuko knows her better than we do, and that means that we should take his opinion seriously. If it wasn’t the princess, then somebody else has a problematic ally.”

His children give one another a serious look, and then look back up at him. Hakoda is proud that they are so prepared for battle. And it also makes him profoundly sad. 

“So we need to only trust one another,” Sokka says, and then looks around them. “I think we can trust Iroh, too.”

“But trusting someone and telling them everything isn’t the same thing,” Toph adds. “We need a super secret backup plan. Luckily, we have a super secret backup plan guy.” 

And she punches Sokka in the shoulder.

“Okay, first, ow,” Sokka says, rubbing at his shoulder. “And second - thanks, Toph.”

“We should get Suki and Zuko, see if we can sketch out a plan for what happens if everything falls apart,” Hakoda suggests. “Obviously we want Aang with us, too, but he might be swept along with the tide for a while.” He eyes where General Iroh is talking with the Avatar, and allows himself just a moment to bask in the bewilderment that his closest allies in this battle are all children, and then decides that he’ll let himself truly recognise the awful implications of that once the battle is over. 

“I’ll fill Aang in,” Katara insists. “Where are the others?”

Hakoda watches as Sokka frowns down at a map in front of him. He has to restrain himself from the impulse to fix Sokka’s hair, because the last thing his son needs is to be babied - and Hakoda isn’t sure that he’s earned back the right, anyway. 

“Um?” Toph says, voice pitched a little higher than usual. “I might… have some unfortunate news.” 

Zuko doesn’t stop running until his legs feel like they’re going to collapse under him. 

It isn’t as far as it should be, because Zuko’s body is startlingly weak. He’s thinner and frailer than he should be, after years of too little movement and barely any access to the sun. For three years in the palace, people had been more concerned with keeping him pretty than keeping him comfortable, and it shows. 

The White Lotus pre-battle camp isn’t far from the Caldera, which means that Zuko needs to avoid being spotted by scouts. There’s only so long he can flee before he’s putting himself at further risk, so he hastily finds a place to hide. 

Zuko curls his knees up to his chest and pushes away from his body. 

The throne room bustles with energy. 

He narrows his eyes.

“I have news.” Zuko arrives at the scene with clenched fists and a scowl, like he wasn’t just causing everyone to have a freaking heart attack. 

“Zuko!” Sokka would really like to punch him, but a) Sokka has only just clawed himself back to the point that he can poke Zuko without Zuko acting like he’s going to burst a blood vessel, and b) Sokka should really save his fighting instincts for the upcoming battle. “Dude! You cannot just disappear on us like that, it is not okay!” 

Zuko blinks at Sokka for a moment, apparently distracted from his news by Sokka’s outburst.

“Wow,” Toph says, because Toph is helpful like that.

Sokka is about to turn a glare on Toph, but then he realises that Zuko looks… better. Healthier. The shadows are missing from under his good eye, and his skin isn’t near-translucent with its paleness. 

And with a burst of desperate anger, Sokka realises: “You’re not here.”

Zuko blinks at him, frowns more deeply, and then says: “You need to attack now. They know our timing, which could work in our favour, because they think we’re not going to attack until later in the day.” He looks from Zuko to Dad, flinches, and then looks back again. 

“Zuko!” Dad breathes, swinging an arm over Sokka’s shoulder. “Tui and La, we thought you’d disappeared on us. Where’s--?”

“He did,” Toph states, stomping her foot so hard that the earth shakes a little. “He isn’t here.”

Sokka looks at Dad, because it’s easier than looking at Zuko. Dad looks surprised, and then more than a little concerned.

“Their information is specifically about the outside groups we have coming in for the war, and they’re being updated,” Zuko continues, like the fact that he’s currently a ghost is barely news at all. “So we need to tell them nothing, and-- I don’t know, go in as a smaller group?” 

Zuko looks to Sokka, like he thinks Sokka is going to pull a plan out of thin air at any moment. And Sokka is irritated and upset, but he’s also thinking. “If they know we’re coming, what’s their plan?”

“Bunkers,” Zuko responds. “They’re going to leave a lot of fighters in the city, but my-- the Fire Lord and Princess are going to the bunkers. They have scouts and eyes on our allies, so they know they’ve got time.”

“They think they’ve got time,” Sokka replies, and Zuko flashes what’s almost a smile at him.

“Zuko, you know you can come back, right?” Dad suggests, tone calmer than Sokka would be able to muster at this moment. “You know that nobody’s angry with you?”

Zuko scoffs a little at that, and then hastily brushes past it all with: “So you need to attack soon. I can probably find you a path in the back way. Maybe I can even distract some guards at the right moment. I’ll check how they’re guarding.”

It sounds too final. “No, wait,” Sokka says, reaching toward the ghost of his friend.

“Zuko!” Iroh’s voice sounds from across the camp, having finally spotted him. 

And then Zuko is gone. The space that once occupied him is empty - has been empty this whole time. 

Sokka allows himself a few seconds to stare, shocked and more than a little disappointed, and then turns back to Dad and Toph.

“Okay,” he says, “change of plans.”

Zuko comes back to his body, intending to check his surroundings before going back to the war room, only to find-- 

“Hey.”

Zuko jolts, entire body freezing with surprise. His breath catches in his chest, cold with panic.

Suki is sitting across from him, drawing patterns in the dirt between her knees. 

“What?” Zuko asks, shifting himself backwards. “What are you doing here?”

Suki smiles a little. It sits oddly on her face, like she doesn’t want to be smiling at all. “You don’t like to be unguarded when you’re off playing boy-ghost,” she says, like it’s that simple.

“You followed me.”

“You’re not very fast,” Suki responds, like that’s an excuse. 

Zuko feels his mouth twisting, feels his heart twisting, and he isn’t sure if he’s angry or grateful. 

“Want to update me?” Suki asks. “Or do you just want me to play bodyguard?”

Zuko breathes deeply, smothering the flames of unfamiliar emotions, and begins to explain.

It isn’t going to be enough time. 

Zuko darts between the palace and Sokka, doing his best to avoid his father and his uncle, helping to weave the new plan. Sokka insists that the correct allies have been identified, and Zuko believes that their plan makes sense: the Avatar will fight inside the palace against the Fire Lord, and their allied armies will arrive, and they might even win. But at this rate, it isn’t going to be enough time, and there is no way that they win if the Fire Lord gets to the bunkers too early. If this battle becomes about perseverance, they will lose - and if they lose today, the Fire Lord will use the comet to crush the possibility of future resistance. This battle has to be about taking out the Fire Lord, and they have to win it.

The White Lotus are banking entirely on the fact that the Fire Lord thinks he knows exactly what is coming and when, between his informants and his scouts. Thanks to Zuko’s insider information, they have confirmation of every movement and decision.

But the Fire Lord is also surrounded by generals and advisors who would have had him hidden away immediately upon receiving this information. If the Fire Lord had known about this even a day early, he wouldn’t be caught in Royal Caldera City at all. The Fire Lord’s advisors would have him retreat early, erring on the side of caution, and the truth is that Zuko’s father has nothing other than pride keeping him in the throne room for now. They can’t guarantee that this will keep him planted where they need him, 

This can’t be for nothing. It has to be today. 

Zuko needs to keep him in the throne room just a little longer.

“I’m going in,” Zuko says, appearing at Aang’s side. 

Aang blinks. “What?” 

They’re on Appa’s back, which Zuko appreciates for a few moments. He wishes he could feel the wind in his hair. 

“I can buy you time. But not much. So hurry, okay?”

“I’m going in,” Zuko says to Suki, who looks up at him with very wide eyes.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” she says carefully, and Zuko shakes his head and reaches for her hand. She grasps back, her hand strong and warm, and Zuko thinks: it isn’t a good idea at all. 

He breathes deeply, and slips away.

Zuko steps out from behind the pillar.

Azula is still.

She has been having a difficult time keeping her hands from trembling. It’s been the case for days now. 

But Azula is entirely still when the ghost of her brother walks calmly into the centre of the throne room. She is still when Father raises his eyebrows and the guards raise their weapons. They see Zuko, and Azula sees Zuko, and Azula’s hands do not tremble. 

(Her heart might, a little, but that’s nobody’s business but her own.) 

“Zuko,” she hears herself say, as if her own voice is very far away from her.

(Zuko is thirteen when he first tries to escape. He hurts everywhere - not least of all his heart - but he knows in his bones that if he doesn’t escape now, he will die in this room. He attempts to flee, burning a servant on his way out, but he doesn’t even make it past the guards. 

That night, Father closes the door behind him and orders nobody to enter. Zuko spends long, awful days chained to the bed, trying not to look at the unconscious - hopefully just unconscious - servant in the corner. One day he returns to his body, and the servant is gone. He never finds out what has happened to her. But between the burns and the lack of medical care, Zuko knows the outline of her fate.

He vows never to try to escape again.

It isn’t a promise he keeps.)

(Zuko is twelve when his fear of Father shifts. He doesn’t understand why it happens. It’s been a year since Mother disappeared, since Zuko has felt safe in the palace, but one day Father’s gaze lingers on Zuko and it unsettles him deep in his soul. 

It’s instinct that drives him to ensure that he isn’t alone with Father. But his instinct to ensure that Azula also isn’t alone with him makes Azula blisteringly angry. And Zuko doesn’t have the words to explain why he feels the need to intrude, to place himself between Father and Azula. He can’t explain that he’s only trying to protect her, because he doesn’t understand what he’s trying to protect her from. 

Nonetheless, he vows to never leave Azula alone with him.

That isn’t a promise he keeps, either.)

(Zuko is eleven when Mother disappears. She is there one day and gone the next, leaving a cavernous hole in his heart. 

Azula says that Father is planning to kill Zuko, and then Mother is gone. But Azula always lies, and Zuko vows that he won’t listen to her anymore. Father loves him. Father would never hurt him.)

Zuko is sixteen when he walks into the throne room and looks up at the monster.

“Zuko,” Azula says, and her voice is off somehow, but Zuko cannot spare her a glance right now. Zuko has a job to do, and that job is to keep Father here until the Avatar makes his way into the room. 

Zuko looks up at his father, and he feels all of the layers of terror that years have built up in him, feels them bubble over. But as Father looks back at him with wide, surprised eyes, Zuko also finds himself remembering that the Other Place is only a room, and the monster is only a man, and rooms and men can be torn down. 

Aang is going to beat him. Zuko knows it. All Zuko needs to do is keep him in this room.

“Father,” he says, reaching the centre of the room. The guards have their weapons drawn, but Zuko has no fear to direct their way. They cannot hurt him. 

“Don’t be fooled, Azula,” Fire Lord Ozai insists, unwavering, “by this imposter.”

Imposter, Zuko thinks - that would be nice, wouldn’t it? To be someone else, to only be pretending to be this man’s son?

“Imposter,” Zuko repeats, trying out the shape of the world. “Then where is your son, Fire Lord Ozai?” 

The room is quiet. The guards have not been ordered to move, and Father looks… almost amused. Like Zuko having escaped from his palace prison, only to return alone in the throne room, is some kind of entertainment. 

Father has looked at Zuko with amusement for years, now, like Zuko is nothing more than a toy. Zuko shakes this from his head, ignores the slowly-building dread and nausea, and continues his quest for time.

“Is he dead?” Zuko asks, feeling the edges of his fear bleed into anger. “Then why haven’t you announced his passing? Or maybe he’s banished? Does anyone know?” Zuko asks, turning to look at the guards - but only for a moment, because his instincts won’t allow him to look away from the threat in the room. 

“You forget,” the Fire Lord says, still looking nothing other than mildly amused, “that it doesn’t matter. If my son were alive, then he has been banished from our kingdom, and has no right to be present in the palace.” He looks down his nose at Zuko, his expression calm and unimpressed. “And it seems that his punishment has not taught him respect after all.”

“You’re wrong,” Zuko insists. “I have learned respect. And I have learned that you are not worthy of it.”

“Enough, boy,” the Fire Lord states. “Guards--” 

“Agni Kai,” Zuko says before his father can complete the command. “I challenge you to an Agni Kai.” 

Zuko’s heart is pounding in his chest, even though he has no body here. He’s safe, he reminds himself; he cannot be harmed. He only needs to trade his fear for time. 

There is a long moment of quiet in the throne room.

It takes Zuko a few moments to realise what he has done.

There is no obligation to accept the challenge of an Agni Kai. In truth, Zuko only issued the challenge to buy precious time. Had he thought this through for another moment, he might have expected an ensuing argument about how the Fire Lord has no obligation to accept Zuko’s challenge. 

But Fire Lord Ozai has heavily implied to the witnesses in the room that Zuko really is the Crown Price. Azula has even called him by name. 

The challenge of an Agni Kai issued by a Crown Prince to a Fire Lord is a direct challenge for the Dragon Throne. And the Fire Lord is obligated to accept the challenge.

Zuko’s unnecessary breath catches in his nonexistent lungs.

He only needs time. He only needs time. 

The Fire Lord laughs. 

Zuko risks a glance at his sister, who is sitting cross-legged by their father’s side. Her posture is perfect. Her eyes are round and shadowed, and she is staring back at Zuko like she’s seeing a ghost. 

The Fire Lord’s laughter fades, and when Zuko’s eyes return to his, it is to find Father’s sharp smirk. 

“My son,” the Fire Lord replies, “is not old enough to issue or accept a challenge for an Agni Kai without my permission.” 

Cold anger washes over Zuko. 

Zuko doesn’t even want to fight this Agni Kai, and there are a million other injustices that his Father has committed - trespasses on Zuko’s own body, the shadow of his hands somehow a permanent, invisible scar - and this one pales in comparison. But Zuko’s fury flows through him anyway, at the injustice of denying this challenge now but accepting it on his behalf when he was an unwitting child. 

Fire sparks at Zuko’s fingertips.

The fire that Zuko can manifest in this form, far from his own body, is cool and yellow. But it is enough for the guards to shift, and for his Father’s expression to turn predatory. 

“Leave him for me,” Father insists. “Restrain him. I’ll take care of him… later.” 

Zuko is not going to vomit, he tells himself. He is not going to let the weakness at his knees pull him down. Zuko is not embodied right now, and he won’t be dragged down by the weakness of a body that isn’t even here. 

“Never,” Zuko spits, his voice wavering. “You will never restrain me again. I am free,”  he insists, and he can hear that something is wrong in his own voice, can hear the panic and revulsion lacing every word. “I am free, and you will not take that away from me.”

“Oh, Zuko,” Father says, faux pity on his features. “You will never be free from me.” 

For a moment, Zuko thinks that the low buzz of noise is the sound of his nonexistent blood rushing in his ears. But he watches as the Fire Lord responds, the tilt of his father’s chin toward the doors, and realises-- 

The smile slips from Fire Lord Ozai’s face. “What is that?”

And Zuko finds himself standing taller. “That is why I’m here.”

Ozai’s eyes flash. “You were stalling.”

“I think it’s about time you meet the Avatar, Father,” Zuko suggests, and the doors burst open.

Chaos enters the room. 

Zuko stands in the midst of it. Calm settles around him. The panic from facing his father fades into the background noise, because this fight cannot touch him. Zuko isn’t here. 

He reaches out to help where he can - trapping guards, stopping a soldier from approaching Katara from behind - and looks for Azula. 

A sword slashes through his chest and crashes to the floor with unexpected momentum. The sword’s owner looks at him with open surprise. It’s a mistake; Toph takes him down. 

Zuko walks through the throne room, through the battlefield, following the blue of his sister’s fire. 

“You!” 

Zuko turns his head at his Father’s snarl. The Fire Lord’s soldiers, guards, and allies are many. The Avatar is well distracted. But if all has gone according to plan, they are also trapped in this room. Nobody is leaving until there is a victor. 

“I told you,” Zuko says, not even jumping as his Father’s fire washes over him. “I am free.” 

And in that moment, Zuko’s Father looks nothing like a monster. He looks nothing like the nightmare from the Other Place. He is only a man, made of flesh and sinew and bone, and there will never be shackles around Zuko’s wrists again. 

“You will never be free,” Father repeats, pushing himself close to Zuko. He reaches out his hand toward Zuko’s hair, like he’s done a thousand times before. “You, boy, are mine.” 

Father’s hand lands at his hair - 

And Zuko is gone.

Zuko wakes to movement. 

The world is the wrong way around. It’s disorienting for more than a moment, and then Zuko recognises a strong shoulder at his stomach--

“No,” he snaps, pushing away. “No, no--”

He scrambles away, landing heavily on his feet, but then he is swept into running again.

“I’m sorry!” Suki shouts, dragging him by the arm. “I had to carry you, we were--”

An arrow whips by Suki’s ear.

Zuko picks up the pace. 

“Where are we going?” he asks, shaking off the horror in his body at the idea of having been moved. Suki had no choice. “Are we going toward the palace?”

Suki looks up at him, a quick flash of her eyes as she continues to lead them away. “We can be. How are they…?”

“They’re fighting,” Zuko replies.

All of the calm of battle has left him now. The detachment of being there only in spirit is gone. Zuko is human again, and in danger - and his own danger has heightened his sense that the battle in the throne room is raging and strong, and there are no guarantees. 

“We need to help,” Zuko insists. “I can check for a way in.”

Suki drags them around a corner. “Be quick,” she says. “I’ll cover you.” 

Everything happens very quickly. 

Suki fights hard, and fast, and lethal. She drags Zuko along - sometimes in body alone - and studiously ignores the deep scrape on her thigh and the pulled muscle in her shoulder. 

Zuko flits back and forth between consciousness and scouting for a way into the battle. He is both dead weight and an asset. 

Suki does not allow guilt to well up at every touch. There is no time for remorse and distress in the midst of battle. There is only the fight.

But she allows herself one moment to be a child instead of a soldier. One moment, when they are ready to enter the throne room and face the fate of the world. 

Suki touches Zuko’s arm, pulling him to a stop, and meets his eyes. 

Zuko doesn’t flinch this time. 

“Stay safe,” Suki states, and she wants something more - a hug, maybe, or to kiss her friend's cheek in what very well might be goodbye - but she knows that it wouldn’t be fair to Zuko. So she withdraws, and nods, and they enter.

“You too,” Zuko replies, a beat or two too late. 

Suki’s posture shifts, and she is a warrior again. 

The fight has progressed since Zuko was last here.

But it has not slowed. 

They have lost fighters, and Zuko can only hope that they are not lost to death. Aang keeps being pulled away from his task of fighting the Fire Lord, because he is needed to protect his friends. 

Uncle Iroh is here now, fighting with-- 

Azula. 

Zuko needs to stop that from happening, can’t stand the idea of either of them being hurt-- 

Aang turns from his fight with Ozai to provide backup to Sokka, and Zuko watches as the Fire Lord smirks. Aang’s distraction is the Fire Lord's advantage. 

Zuko calls up his fire and flings it toward the Fire Lord, looking for just a moment of distraction, just a moment to get Aang back on task, and then Zuko can provide Sokka’s backup while the Avatar-- 

“Back so soon, child?” the Fire Lord snarls, blocking Zuko’s flames and returning with his own. 

Zuko’s fire is strong now, but Zuko is also vulnerable. And whatever surprise he must have given his father by disappearing has worn off in the adrenaline of battle. This is a real fight, now, with real consequences. 

“Couldn’t stay away?” Ozai asks, his voice loud above the roar of the flames. “Don’t worry, Zuko. When this is all done, you can come home.”

And Zuko knows what he means by ‘come home’. Zuko’s hands shake once, hard, before he tamps down on the urge to flee.

Zuko’s eyes slide to Aang. He is caught up in another fight. 

Zuko shudders. 

“That’s what you want, isn’t it, boy?” Ozai asks, moving closer to Zuko. “Why else would you return here?” 

Zuko blocks another attack, and he needs to do more than blocking - he needs to actually fight - but now that he’s really here, now that his body and soul are aligned, everything about this battle feels too real. His father’s face is too real. The heat of the fire, the shouting voices, everything-- 

Blue fire washes near him. Zuko protects himself on instinct, but Azula’s attention is on Uncle Iroh, not Zuko. 

“I am here to witness your defeat,” Zuko makes himself say. His voice wavers hard, like it doesn’t want to spill from his throat. “I will never…” 

The Fire Lord’s face breaks into a smile. It fits strangely on his face, predatory in all the wrong ways for battle, like Zuko isn’t even worth focusing on as an opponent. “You will never what, Zuko?” he asks. “Tell me, do your little friends know?”

Zuko punches out fire, his mind disjointed from his body’s attack. 

The Fire Lord brushes away Zuko’s fire like it is nothing, and he laughs. 

“Do they know?” he asks, loud and taunting. “Do they know that you’re nothing more than a common whore? Than my whore?” 

Zuko’s knees shake, hard, and he has to concentrate too much on standing to do anything else. Zuko stares at Father, his eyes blurring with anger and humiliation, and hopes that nobody else can hear him over the roar of battle. 

He tries to say I’m more than that, tries to say you are a monster, or anything-- anything at all, but Zuko’s voice escapes from him. 

Something is stilling in the air around them, like the world is slowing down. 

Zuko’s knees buckle. 

His knees hit the floor with a crack that Zuko imagines he should be able to feel. 

“That’s right,” Father says, stepping closer through the chaos. “You do know where you belong, don’t you, boy?” 

Lightning crackles at Father’s knuckles.

Zuko should fight back. He should stand; he knows the stance for redirecting lightning. 

Zuko’s body won’t move. His mind feels like it is moving through molasses. 

He's going to die here.

This won’t be such a terrible place to die, Zuko tells himself, watching the lightning build. At least death means that he won’t ever have to go back. 

Zuko’s eyes slip closed, and lightning strikes. 

The sound of battle rushes back to him with a roar, and--

Nothing hurts. 

For a disorienting moment, Zuko thinks that he is numb - but when he opens his eyes, Uncle Iroh is standing before him, between Zuko and the Fire Lord, and lightning is pouring from his fingertips and slicing away from them. 

“Leave my son alone,” Uncle Iroh screams, his voice rough and enraged like Zuko has never heard him. 

Zuko should stand. It is pathetic for him to stay here, on his knees in the midst of battle, hands shaking on the cold floor. Someone will strike him from behind--

But when Zuko looks behind him, it is to find that the fight has slowed - and that Toph is providing silent cover, hands raised. 

“Your son?” the Fire Lord asks, a laugh caught in his voice. “You're welcome to him, Iroh. Though I must suggest, he's much more talented as a bedwarmer than an heir.”

The Avatar steps into Zuko’s vision, beside Uncle Iroh. 

Zuko's mind feels very far away, like he's slipped from his body without realising it. He can see the fight around him, but it seems too slow, too quiet to be real. 

And Zuko feels nothing, not even confusion at the unlikely stillness. 

“Fire Lord Ozai,” the Avatar says, his voice deep with a thousand years of history. Zuko looks up, his eyes drawn to Aang’s, because he is suddenly distantly aware that Aang is about to recapture the Avatar State. “You will answer for your crimes.” 

Fire Lord Ozai lifts his hands, ready to strike.

It never comes. 

Instead:

An awful sound tears through the air, slicing at Zuko. His head snaps around to the source, only for his vision to be washed in white and blue - lightning and fire bursting forth, hot and bright, searing into Zuko’s eyes.

The scream stops before the lightning fades. 

Azula collapses to her knees, hair as wild as her eyes. She lifts her hands to her own head and screams again, a short burst of sound--

Zuko scrambles to his feet and runs to her. 

It burns, to hold her.

Blue flames continue to rush from her as she shakes, but Zuko doesn’t care, can barely feel the pain. 

He lifts his head for a moment, looking across the throne room at the prone body of their father. 

“It’s okay,” Zuko says as Azula shakes. “It’s okay. I’m here. I’m here.” 

Chapter Text

There is a strange, unlikely quiet in the throne room as the war ends.

(Iroh and Ozai used to run around this throne room as children, using it as a play area whenever their father was away from it. The pillars and the draping flags made for excellent hiding places, ideal areas to block weak spurts of childish fire.)

Azula sleeps. 

Zuko doesn’t. 

In the quiet shadows of the night, Zuko isn’t sure what is real and what might be the tricks of his mind. He tries to look for the moon, stands shakily from Azula’s bed to open the curtains, but Yue is nowhere to be seen in the night sky. Was she a waning crescent, last Zuko looked? Or is she on the other side of the palace?

He has half a mind to walk outside and look for her, but… 

But outside the doors of Azula’s room lies reality, and Zuko isn’t ready. 

He crawls back beneath the bedclothes and listens to Azula’s breathing. She has been asleep since Uncle Iroh took them here, since even before the healers looked them over. It's like Azula’s essence was extinguished in the throne room, like she was a candle flame under a snuffer. 

Zuko yearns for sleep. He’s so tired. His joints ache with it, his eyes sting like they want to create tears but have found themselves empty, he just wants to-- 

Zuko closes his eyes. He tries to wash the sound of his father’s voice from his ears, but his words seem to be replaying endlessly.

Had it really been so quiet in that room, amidst battle? Surely not. Surely nobody else heard. Surely-- 

(But Azula heard, hadn’t she? Azula heard, and as much as Zuko is thankful that she acted, there’s a part of him that wishes that her lightning had been directed at Zuko instead.) 

Sleep, Zuko tells himself. Uncle Iroh had promised that everything would seem easier in the morning, hadn’t he? Or had Zuko invented that, imagined those words in the hopes that they might be true? 

Azula sleeps. Zuko focuses on remembering to breathe.

The palace is oddly quiet.

Iroh seems to be constantly busy, talking with generals and members of the White Lotus and… well, fixing the world, Sokka assumes. He thinks that the man looked old before-- before, but he seems to have aged ten years overnight. It feels like Sokka has aged ten years overnight, too, but somehow he’s aged in the wrong way. Like his skin is too tight, and his eyes are too tired. 

(Every now and then, Sokka’s traitorous mind latches onto the way Ozai’s mouth had said-- what he’d said, had just spat it out in the middle of a crowd, like nobody was going to notice. Or maybe like nobody was going to care, like no person could care enough about Zuko for it to begin to matter. And his mind catches on every moment in which Zuko flinched away from being touched, or the fact that they-- spirits, they sent him back to the Fire Lord, again and again and again, just to get ahead in battle plans--)

Sokka tries to focus on ensuring Katara is okay, while Katara devotes herself to healing their friends and allies feverishly. Sokka thinks that maybe Katara is working so fiercely in order to drown out her own thoughts. He wonders if she heard, if the Fire Lord’s voice really did carry as far as it felt to Sokka, or if she heard second-hand. He wonders who could have told her. 

And the palace is too quiet. 

“Where are the servants?” Sokka asks, when he realises what is missing.

Azula sleeps. 

Zuko doesn’t let anyone into the room. He considers barricading the door with Azula’s furniture, but nobody tries to force themselves in when Zuko says ‘no’. 

He’ll accept food into the room once Azula wakes up, and then maybe Azula will know what happens now. Now that everyone knows what Zuko is, now that Azula has executed the Fire Lord, something has to happen. Something big. They’re standing on the precipice. The calm is an illusion. 

(Is Azula the Fire Lord now? Zuko was the Crown Prince - has never been officially stripped of his title, because to do otherwise would be to commit to a narrative of Zuko’s life or death - but Azula is the one who dethroned the Fire Lord. Does that make her a usurper?) 

Uncle Iroh comes by in the late morning. He says a lot of words. Zuko can’t unpick them from one another, can’t parse out phrases and sentences, so he only says ‘no’. He leaves, eventually. Zuko doesn’t know how much time it takes.

Aang knocks at the door, too. His voice is high but heavy. Zuko wonders if he heard - he heard, right? Wasn’t the Avatar right there, when Zuko was on his knees like a coward, or like a-- 

Zuko says ‘no’ again, because it worked with Uncle. 

“Okay,” Zuko hears Aang respond, and something shifts together in Zuko’s mind; he can process the words now, though it takes an unprecedented amount of energy to do so. “But we’re here, okay, Zuko? Whenever you want to see us. Any of us. We’ll stay.” 

The words work, but the sentiment doesn’t make any sense. Of course the Avatar is staying. They need to rebuild the world, starting from the heart of the Fire Nation. It would be a stupid move for Aang to leave before the new Fire Lord is appointed, before the work begins-- 

Zuko is the Crown Prince. Are they planning to crown him? Is that why the Avatar is at his door? Did they pluck the crown from his father’s head after his sister killed him, to save it for Zuko? 

Azula sleeps. Zuko focuses on remembering to breathe.

Azula wakes when the sun is setting. It’s disorienting for more than a moment, because this means that her body has paid no attention to Agni’s presence. This hasn’t happened before. 

She sits up in her bed, and her entire body feels leaden and sapped of energy. She’d think she was sick, but Azula’s body knows better than to betray her like that. 

Azula breathes deeply, forcing energy back into her muscles, as she half-listens to Zuko opening the door and requesting food. Zuko slams the door behind himself hard enough that it causes a helpful jolt of surprise to run through Azula, aiding her in waking more fully from her slumber.

“What was that about?” Azula asks, looking Zuko over properly. He’s a mess: hair unkempt, still wearing sleeping attire, face drawn in like he’s a parody of the ghost she thought he was. 

“Dinner,” Zuko replies, and his voice is a little rough with disuse. 

(Azula wonders if his voice had been painful after years of solitude, or if he’d screamed at Father enough to exercise his vocal chords--)

Azula does not wince at the thought. It’s a close call.

She sits there in the bed, blankets pooled around her waist, because she’s still so tired that moving seems like pointless effort. It’s like she’s the one whose body is dead, not Father. But he is dead, isn’t he? It’s almost funny, somewhere deep in the back of her mind; Azula thought that Zuzu was alive, and then that he was dead, and she made their father die, instead. She shot him full of lightning, a trick that he was so proud when she mastered. Azula, the perfect child, the wanted child--

Though Zuko was wanted, wasn’t he? Just in a way that was broken and twisted and wrong-- 

“Why didn’t you tell me?” Azula asks, narrowing her eyes. 

Zuko is still standing halfway across the room, his arms wrapped around himself, a flimsy protection from anything Azula could fling in his direction.

He meets her eyes for a moment, a flash of gold, and then looks away. “Why didn’t I tell you--”

“You know,” Azula interrupts. “You obviously wanted me out of here. So why didn’t you just say why?” 

Zuko’s shoulders creep up toward his ears. He opens his mouth, but no words are forthcoming for a long moment. Azula is practiced in patience where it matters, so she waits in silence as he finds the words. 

“I didn’t-- I don’t,” he starts, words tripping over one another. Azula raises an eyebrow, but Zuko isn’t looking in her direction to notice. “I...”

“Zuzu.” Azula pushes the covers away from her lap. “Spit it out.”

There’s a long pause as Azula gets her feet on the floor. When she looks up, Zuko is staring back at her. She watches as he draws a visible breath. 

“Would you have believed me?”

Azula blinks, and then looks away with a frown. That’s the centre of the issue, isn’t it? Would Azula have believed Zuko, back when he was a trembling, panicking ghost in this bedroom, before she started to wonder if he was a trick of her mind? 

(Was he a trick of her mind, sometimes? Or was he really so often there, in the corner, watching her?)

She probably wouldn’t have believed him, Azula recognises. If it came down to believing Father or Zuko… well, she has very little reason to believe a ghost, or a brother whose presence has been nothing but saltwater-stained letters for three years, when the other option is the father who has always wanted the best for her and the best from her. 

Azula knows that Father has the capacity to cause pain, but it has always been educational pain. There’s nothing to learn from what he did to Zuko in the end. The Agni Kai made sense to Azula. The imprisonment - let alone what happened during the imprisonment - that doesn’t make any sense to her. 

A bolt of anger runs through Azula, starting at her throat and fanning out to her fingertips. 

Azula would not have believed Zuko. And she would have been wrong. 

“I’m glad I killed him.” It isn’t a response to Zuko’s question, but it’s an easier truth to articulate. 

Iroh is not avoiding his niece’s bedroom. He is busy trying to run a nation without even wearing its crown, restructuring the palace to suit the needs of his niece and nephew, and clearing up the remains of a battle. 

(Iroh’s brother does not have a public funeral befitting a Fire Lord. Iroh has his portraits removed and stored, for now; eventually, he will need to decide how the burden of his brother’s legacy will be carried, but for this moment, his focus is on ensuring that Zuko won’t ever have to see his face.)

But every now and then, a brief window of time opens, and Iroh knows that he should knock on Azula’s door. They will turn him away again, Iroh is sure, and that’s okay; they can afford time to themselves, to rest and - hopefully - to talk. But the longer the day stretches on, the harder Iroh finds the idea of walking over there. 

And then, abruptly, Iroh looks into himself and recognises this emotion. He’s felt it before, felt its dark tendrils pulling him inwards and away from the world, felt its weight behind his eyes and behind his heart:

Grief. 

“I didn’t lose them,” Iroh finds himself saying, perhaps slightly nonsensically, to Chief Hakoda. 

And here is the guilt, winding its way into the miniscule gaps in the depth of grief. Guilt toward his niece and nephew, who are living, and who need so much more right now - and guilt toward Lu Ten, his beloved child, for this being comparable to the cataclysm of his death. 

Chief Hakoda looks attentive, if a little confused. “But you lost something, didn’t you?” he asks. 

And maybe Iroh can’t name what he lost, precisely. Maybe it’s all a little too close to see in focus, or maybe the loss is too abstract to define, but he supposes Hakoda is correct in a way. 

Iroh finds himself in front of Azula’s bedroom door in the evening, greeting the Kyoshi warriors stationed outside with a nod, and sharing a hesitant smile with young Suki. She looks tired, he thinks; he wonders if she has left this station at all, and makes a note to himself to ensure there is an adult keeping an eye on her wellbeing. 

Iroh knocks on the door. 

“Go away,” Azula calls, just as Iroh predicted. 

“Have they let anyone in?” Iroh asks Suki, keeping his voice low. “Have they come out at all?”

Suki shakes her head. “Zuko asked for dinner earlier, and Princess Azula took it from us. Aside from that…”

“Hmm.” Iroh knocks on the door once more, waits for Azula’s snapping response, and then adds: “We need to discuss the future of the Dragon Throne.”

That does it. Azula cracks the door open to glare at Iroh. 

Iroh is startled, for a moment, by how young she looks. Her face is bare of makeup, and she is wearing bedclothes; it’s possibly the most vulnerable he’s seen his niece since before Ursa left the palace. 

“May I enter?” Iroh asks as gently as he can manage.

Azula’s glare deepens.

“Let him in,” Zuko suggests from somewhere in the bedroom. “It’s okay, Azula.”

Azula’s expression does not let up, but she opens the door wide enough for Iroh to slip through before all but slamming it behind him. 

Devoid of help from servants or care from its inhabitants, the room is a mess. The remains of their dinner sit on the floor, and the bed is in disarray. 

Zuko has placed himself in the farthest corner, standing beside Azula’s mirror. Iroh wonders if it is deliberate. 

“So you’re crowning Zuzu?” Azula asks, and Zuko flinches deeply.

Iroh sighs. 

What he wants to do is ask how Zuko and Azula are. He wants to have them open up to him, to paint a picture of a road towards healing, of a path that they can walk together towards stable ground. But Iroh knows Zuko well enough to know that he won’t talk to Iroh, not about what they now both know. And he knows Azula well enough to know that if she thinks Iroh is searching for any kind of vulnerability, she will shut him out entirely. 

“Shall we be seated?” Iroh suggests. “I can have someone bring us tea.” 

“Just say what you have to say and leave,” Azula suggests. 

“A cup of tea may calm us all,” Iroh suggests, but he’s looking toward Zuko, now. 

Iroh has not forced himself into this room, but he did press the issue when he was told to leave. Zuko has had enough freedom taken from him. He’s spent three years without even rights to his own body, and Iroh desperately wants to shy away from the thought, but he will not deny this truth. 

He waits for Zuko’s response for long enough that Zuko looks up, apparently realising that Iroh is awaiting his opinion. 

Zuko shrugs. “Tea is fine,” he says. “And… we can sit.” 

Iroh smiles. 

When they have tea - a calming blend, aimed to balm the rough edges of their emotions - Iroh breathes in the scent for a long moment before he begins. 

“There are many trails through a forest,” he says. “Many paths may lead in, and many lead out again. But if one wishes to exit, one must first choose a path.” 

His niece and nephew share a glance.

“Is there any chance we can get this without the ‘wise old man’ nonsense?” Azula asks. 

Iroh nods and tries again. “This nation needs a Fire Lord. I have been making orders since the battle, but soon, there will be questions about my legitimacy to enforce decisions.” 

“So you want Zuzu to take over?” Azula asks, and then gestures to her brother. “Does that really seem like a good idea to you?”

Iroh does not rise to the bait. “There are many paths forward,” he explains, “but the nation requires a Fire Lord, and requires strength. Zuko, should you choose to take the crown you are rightfully--”

“No.” The response is sharp and clear, and Zuko does not meet Iroh’s eyes. “I don’t want it.”

Iroh is relieved. The throne is the last place Zuko needs to be. He needs time to recover, and he certainly does not need to be in a position that others would wish to manipulate. 

“In that case, it would be my honour to serve as the Fire Lord until a successor is ready to take over,” Iroh states. 

Azula, Iroh notices, relaxes infinitesimally at this declaration. 

“Okay, good, let’s do that,” Zuko agrees. He places his tea back down. “Do I need to sign something?” 

“Ah.” Iroh takes a sip of his tea for strength. “I am afraid there is more ritual involved than that.”

Azula tenses again. “You want him to abdicate publicly and crown you.” 

“I have consulted with the Fire Sages,” Iroh explains. “I also wished for a more… quiet option. I understand why you wish to be alone, and I do not--”

“You do not understand,” Azula snaps, her gaze piercing and unrelenting. “If Zuko doesn’t want to leave, then he doesn’t have to leave. That is final.” 

“I’ll do it,” Zuko says, his voice half the volume of theirs, but still piercing through the wave of tension. “It’s okay, Azula.” 

Iroh breathes deeply. “It will be quick,” he assures his nephew. “I will minimise the rituals to the basic necessities. And Azula can remain by your side, should you wish, or any of your friends. The Avatar will be with us, too, as a show of strength. Perhaps he--” 

“Just Azula,” Zuko interrupts. “It’s fine. When?”

“As soon as possible, for stability.” Iroh drinks deeply again. “There is one more matter, on the question of the Dragon Throne.”

To Iroh’s eyes, his niece and nephew haven’t looked this similar since they were small children running around the throne room. They are both watching Iroh with identical expressions of trepidation, both dressed for sleep in the daytime, with long hair tangled around their shoulders. In a better time, their similarity might have filled Iroh with warmth. 

“What is it?” Azula asks. 

“I will need to name a successor,” Iroh reminds them. “I know that it is not simple right now, but the two of you are the only options.” 

Zuko looks down to his tea, and Azula looks over to Zuko. There is a long stretch of quiet. 

“You are next in line,” Azula points out. “You technically have the right to succeed.” 

“But you want it and I don’t,” Zuko responds. 

Iroh clears his throat. He isn’t sure that a period of peace followed by the reign of Fire Lord Azula is the best decision, but she is just a girl of fourteen. Formidable, intelligent beyond imagination, and a prodigy, yes. But also a child. Who she has been these last years has not sealed in stone who she will be as an adult, and they have all gained the benefit of being free of Ozai’s further influence. 

“We could always return Zuko to the position of Crown Prince and have him repeat the abdication process, should that be the decision the two of you make,” Iroh suggests. “I would not wish to imply to our nation that Zuko has been removed from succession due to--” 

And he catches himself just as Zuko recoils, just as Azula’s head whips in Iroh’s direction to silence him with a scowl. 

“You understand,” Iroh continues slowly. 

“We understand,” Azula responds, her voice sharp, “Fire Lord Iroh.” 

(The last time Iroh felt grief like this, he lost a crown. He hardly cared at the time, too deeply seated in despair to take notice of much of anything else. This time, Iroh gains a crown - one he has no wish for - in order to spare the children in his care. It does not escape him that the empty throne follows him in the very darkest of his moments.)

Before he leaves, Iroh turns to his niece and nephew. He never had a chance to say these things to Lu Ten, when grief overtook him all those years ago. But his niece and nephew are not gone; they will survive, and one day, they will thrive again. 

“I love you both very much,” he says, and doesn’t allow himself to be hurt when neither child will meet his eyes. “I love you, and I will care for you and protect you every way I know how, now and always. Please,” he says, and feels his voice catch a little on the bubble of sorrow that wells up from deep within him. “Please do not ever question that, for it will always, always be true.” 

The sun is shining brightly when they crown Fire Lord Iroh. Aang gets to join them for the ceremony, and as the sun beams down on them, he wonders if this means that Agni is pleased.

Thoughts of Agni, of course, lead to thoughts of Zuko. 

Zuko and Azula are also standing before the crowd. They’re dressed in intricate robes, but Aang is close enough that he can see that neither of them look okay at all. Zuko goes through the ritual motions so smoothly that Aang briefly wonders if he’s actually present in body, but then he notices that Zuko’s eyes are kind of glazed over, like he’s decided to pretend that none of this is happening. 

This does not help Aang to feel better about Zuko. He’s kind of been hoping that the days of silence were because he was healing and recovering, but… Well, he does look better than when he and Azula were on the floor at the end of the battle, but he doesn’t look enough better. 

Aang chews the inside of his cheek, and ignores the new Fire Lord’s speech about peace and unity as he looks over at Azula. 

Azula doesn’t look good, either. Her skin looks wrong, pale and almost yellowish, and every time Zuko steps forward to do something, Azula gets this really intense look on her face. It’s like she’s waiting for someone to move to hurt him, and she’s ready to shoot lightning at anyone who tries. 

It’s intense, and more than a little scary, especially because Aang is one of the people who has been shot with lightning by her before. But Aang tells himself that it’s at least good that someone is watching out for Zuko. 

Iroh turns mid-speech to gesture to Aang. Aang hasn’t been listening, but he waves to the crowd anyway, and then there is cheering. Aang assumes this means the speech is done. 

When he turns around to say hello to Zuko, he’s already leaving. Aang goes to follow Zuko and Azula down the steps, but Iroh catches him gently by the arm.

“Allow them space,” he suggests, and Aang nods. He catches sight of their matching top-knots as they disappear around the corner, and Aang feels his mouth pulling into a frown. 

Zuko didn’t even say hello. He didn’t even look at Aang. When they arrived and Aang said hello, he’d simply nodded without meeting Aang’s eyes. Aang blinks hard, pulling himself back together, and turns a smile in Iroh’s direction.

“Congratulations, Fire Lord Iroh!” he says. 

Iroh pulls him into a brief hug, and Iroh gives excellent hugs, so it soothes Aang’s sadness just a bit. And then the Fire Lord is pulled off in a thousand directions, to generals and White Lotus members, and Aang finds himself looking for his friends. 

He locates them before long, mostly because they’re also making a beeline for him. “Aang!” Katara calls, and she hugs him quickly before glancing around. “Zuko didn’t stay?”

“No,” Aang says, and he kind of wants another hug already. “He left pretty much right away.”

“How did he seem?” Sokka asks. “Suki said she basically hasn’t seen him at all, that they’re just not leaving the room. It’s a good sign that he was here, right?”

Hakoda clears his throat from behind Sokka. “I think Zuko being here was non-negotiable,” he explains. “He was the rightful heir to the throne. He needed to hand that right to Iroh himself.” 

“So how was he?” Toph asks, turning her head in Aang’s direction. “Did he say anything about when he’s going to stop being a hermit?”

And just like that, Aang can’t hold back his tears anymore.

“Aang!” Katara exclaims, and then wraps her arms around him. Like Iroh, Katara gives excellent hugs. It helps a little. “What’s wrong?”

“He didn’t even say hello,” Aang explains, and he feels a little stupid saying it. “He didn’t even look at me!” 

Katara’s only response is, “Oh, Aang,” but she continues to hug him. And before long, Sokka has joined in, fitting his chin over the top of Aang’s head. Suki isn’t with them, and Toph is more of a puncher than a hugger, so they don’t pile together like they sometimes do. But it’s good anyway. 

“Maybe we should go somewhere quieter,” Hakoda suggests, placing a hand on Aang’s shoulder. “I think it’s probably time that we talk about this a little more.”

Aang doesn’t feel like crying anymore when they find a space to sit in the gardens. But to be honest, the feeling has been coming and going since the battle, and that was days ago. Aang wonders if he’s ever going to go through a normal day without wanting to burst into tears again, or if that’s just something that happens now. He wonders what Monk Gyatso would have told him. It probably would have been perfect, he thinks; the world would probably make sense again. 

(And then, thinking about Monk Gyatso, and the temple, and the sense of home that he left and never got to return to, Aang wants to burst into tears all over again.) 

“What did you want to talk about?” Sokka asks, reaching between his knees to pull at the grass. 

Hakoda sighs through his nose. He looks tired, too. He’s been doing a lot of work with Iroh, Aang knows, and he’s also been trying to spend a good deal of time with his kids. 

“I don’t know what we’re supposed to do here,” Hakoda admits. “There isn’t an instruction scroll for how to help you all deal with this. Or if there is, I haven’t read it.” 

Toph sits up straight so suddenly that it almost makes Aang jump.

“You’re going to tell us how to help Zuko?” she asks. 

Hakoda’s expression falls a touch. “I don’t think I can tell you how to help him,” he says. “But I think that talking about this together might help you.” 

“We’re not the ones who need help,” Toph responds, and she’s starting to sound angry. “He won’t talk to any of us. He won’t even come out of his room, and I don’t know if you remember, but every time we come across Princess Azula she tries to kill one of us.” 

“Toph is right,” Katara agrees. “It isn’t good that Zuko is spending all of his time with Azula. She’s not safe.” 

Aang thinks about the way Azula watched Zuko every moment he was out of reach, like she was prepared to launch an attack the moment he was endangered. “I don’t think we need to worry about her,” he adds. 

Katara turns a frown on him. “Princess Azula tried to kill you, remember?”

“Yeah, but… She also-- When Ozai said--” Aang can’t quite make the words come out, so he gives up. “She must care about him.” 

Katara looks unconvinced, but Hakoda clears his throat again to draw their attention back.

“I’ve been trying to think about how to explain this to you,” Hakoda says, looking between each of them. “You remember during the invasion, when the Fire Nation was raining missiles down on us, and it was hard to run because the ground was shaking?”

Aang blinks, surprised. “I wasn’t there.”

“Well, whenever there are explosions like that, really. Bombs. Blasting jelly. Missiles.” 

“Toph,” Sokka adds to the list, which makes Toph smirk. 

Hakoda smiles. “Right. Like that,” he says, and then his smile fades. “There’s this space that’s hit. Maybe the ground cracks under it.”

Suddenly, it isn’t so funny anymore.

“But it’s not just about the place of impact,” Hakoda continues. “When you’re too close, the whole ground is shaking. Buildings can fall, not because they were hit, but because they were close to where it happened.” 

“You’re saying Zuko is the missile?” Toph asks, frowning deeply. 

“Ozai was the missile,” Sokka corrects, and his voice is unusually quiet. “Zuko is the ground underneath.” 

Aang looks to Hakoda for confirmation, and he offers a shallow nod. “But Zuko isn’t the only one who got hurt. You all did. And so did Azula and Iroh. And it might take a while for the ground to feel solid again.” 

“Like when Mom died,” Katara says, and she reaches up to touch her necklace. “It was the worst for us, but everyone who knew her was mourning, too. And all the kids who didn’t really know Mom that well, but they knew us, and they were hurt because we were hurt.” 

Hakoda puts a hand on Katara’s arm. “Just like that,” he agrees. “I know you’re all worried about Zuko. I don’t know him very well, and I’m worried too. But I wanted to make sure you remember that this didn’t just happen to him, and it’s okay for you to be upset, too.”

“But it did happen to him,” Toph snaps. “All that happened to us is that we know about it. Look, Chief Hakoda, I understand that you want to play dad right now, but what we really need to know is how to help. What do…” She seems to run out of steam, then, her shoulders drooping. “What do we do? Is it bad if we try to see him? Is it worse if we don’t try to see him?”

There’s a moment of quiet, broken only by the crowd still celebrating on the other side of the palace. 

“I don’t know exactly what anyone should do,” Hakoda admits. Toph sits up like she’s going to respond, but Hakoda keeps going before she can. “But I would suggest… being there when he does want to see you. Not blaming him for anything.” Toph draws an alarmed breath, and Hakoda adds: “No, I know you wouldn’t blame him for that, but I mean… the fact that he didn’t tell you beforehand, that he was hurting by himself when you wish you could have helped him, anything like that. He’s going to be raw for a while, and he might take things the wrong way, so just… be patient.”

“That sounds like a whole lot of doing nothing,” Sokka says, crossing his arms.

Hakoda nods. “Yes. Ultimately, it’s mostly just time. With time, things will get better.”

With time, things get worse. 

“Maybe we should go for a walk,” Zuko suggests. Azula looks up to find him standing by the window, pushing the curtain aside to glance out at the world.

Three years in one room, she thinks, and then shakes herself out of it. Zuko’s body might have been in that room (the room with the chains by the bed, her brain reminds her), but he wasn’t always there. Zuko saw the world. 

Azula shrugs. “Let me bathe first,” she suggests, because the only time she has changed clothing was for the ceremony. It’s acceptable for her to be disheveled in this room, because Zuko is hardly going to care, but her bed clothes are not suitable for outside this room. 

It’s odd, doing these things for herself without a servant, but Azula knows that she would hate for there to be strangers in this space they have carved out in the world. It was bad enough having Uncle Iroh in here, and he is only one person, only one pair of eyes to witness her weaknesses. 

Azula allows herself to relax as she bathes, imagining that a walk might make her feel less bone tired every waking moment. Her body seems to wish to drag her back into sleep at every waking moment, and there is only so much sleep it is reasonable to have. But by the time she emerges, clean and dressed and warm, Azula feels distinctly okay with the idea of taking a walk. She goes to approach her bedroom mirror in search of a comb, only to find that Zuko is already seated in front of it.

For a moment, Azula thinks that Zuko must be gazing at his own reflection. But then she realises that one of her drawers is open, and sitting on the table in front of Zuko is-- 

A pair of scissors. 

And Zuko is staring at them so intently that he doesn’t seem to have heard Azula approach. His face is drawn in thought, concentrating hard on the metal blades sitting before him.

The first jolt that Azula feels is panic.

(When Iroh deposited them here after the battle, he picked through the room himself, taking daggers and weapons out with him. Azula hadn’t questioned it at the time, because all she wanted was for unconsciousness to take her, but-- he wasn’t removing things they could use to hurt each other, was he?)

The second is fury. 

“What is this?” Azula spits, and Zuko jumps. He meets Azula’s eyes in the mirror, and then turns to face her. 

“What?” Zuko asks, as if he wasn’t just staring at a pair of scissors like they hold the answer to the question of his continued existence. 

“What is this?” Azula asks again, louder this time. “What are you doing? Are you trying to prove him right?”

Zuko blinks, and he looks so stupid, sitting there as if nothing is happening at all. “Azula, what do you--” 

“Are you a prince or not?” Azula asks. “Iroh crowned you Crown Prince again. Was he wrong to do that? Are you really just a prisoner? Is that all you’re ever going to be?”

Zuko flinches, and he does that all the time, like he can’t handle hearing anything with the slightest inkling of truth to it. Everything about him is infuriating, and weak, and cowardly. And he asked if Azula wanted to go for a walk, like things were getting better, while he was-- 

How dare he? If Azula had taken longer to prepare herself for this walk, would she have walked back into this room to see him-- 

“If you’re going to be more than a prisoner, brother, then it’s time that you start acting like it.” 

“I don’t…” Zuko starts, and his eyes are very wide. 

“You don’t what?” Azula asks when his sentence seems to go nowhere. “I’ll tell you what I ‘don’t’, Zuko. I don’t think I should have to put up with-- I killed our father for you - you realise that, don’t you? I shot our father, the Fire Lord, full of lightning and killed him, because he stood there in front of Agni and the nation and our enemies, and he called you his whore.” 

If Azula thought Zuko flinched before, it’s nothing compared to what he does now. He seems to shrink into himself right in front of her eyes, like it might make him disappear. Like he wants to disappear. And that’s the problem, isn’t it?

“And I did that because I thought he was wrong,” Azula continues, and her hands are not shaking because she will not allow them to shake. “So don’t go and prove that you’re nothing more than he said you were.”

There’s a long stretch of silence when Azula is done, and she waits for Zuko to respond. She isn’t even sure what she wants, but an apology would be a good start, a promise that he isn’t going to do something stupid and irreversible when her back is turned… 

Zuko does none of those things. 

Azula watches as his expression folds in on itself, something tired and devastated in his eyes, and then she watches as Zuko stands and rushes for the door. 

“Zuko,” Azula calls, a sense of dread clawing at her throat. 

Zuko leaves. 

Azula stays for a long moment. She closes her eyes, forcing her breathing to be calm, and tries not to think that maybe she said too much.

(Azula finds her brother, eventually, sitting against a wall with his face pressed into his raised knees. Azula’s favourite prisoner is by his side, staring at the opposite wall. They’re sitting by a staircase leading down to the first below-ground level. 

“He’s not here,” the Kyoshi Warrior explains. 

Azula shifts her weight, and then makes herself stop before she seems nervous. 

“Did he say when he’ll return?”

“He was like this by the time I caught up to him,” she explains, glancing over at Zuko. “But I know he doesn’t like for his body to be left alone.”

Well, Azula thinks, they don’t exactly need to take bets as to why that is. 

She sinks down to sit against the opposite wall.)

Zuko’s head rests in Yue’s lap. 

He hasn’t said a word since they got here, and he knows-- he knows that Yue has other, more important things to do. He knows that he needs to stop relying on her for this, that it isn’t friendship if all he does it take, that she is too important to the world to be reduced to this… 

But Zuko also can’t imagine existing anywhere else. 

“Can I stay?” he asks eventually, because it may be selfish, but Zuko can’t go back. He can’t. 

Yue runs her fingers through his hair, and Zuko closes his eyes. 

“As long as you need,” she says, voice quiet in the hush of the Spirit Oasis. 

The day passes into the night.

Zuko doesn’t return. 

Yue leaves at various points, and Zuko doesn’t even know enough to understand what existence as a spirit entails. He lies on the grass, eyes on the moonlight shining against the spirit waters, and doesn’t track time well enough to know how long passes.

But she always returns, her hands and her voice gentle, and Zuko stays.

They move Zuko to the infirmary. 

Suki has sat for quiet hours by Zuko’s side before, but this time feels different. The Fire Lord returns regularly, looking older and more withdrawn every time. Zuko’s sister is almost as still as Zuko, but she sits alert in a chair as she waits for him. 

Eventually, Katara comes by, too. 

“This is not a circus,” Princess Azula spits. “I don’t see why we can’t do this in my bedroom.” 

Katara hasn’t had time to get used to ignoring Princess Azula yet, so she turns a teary glare on her. “The healers need to keep an eye on him,” she snaps back. “Unless you want to be in charge of whether he stops breathing?”

Azula doesn’t reply to that, but her expression is stormy. Suki goes back to ignoring her. 

The healers figure a few things out, as the night continues: if they open Zuko’s eyes, he will stare blankly at the ceiling and blink occasionally; if they try to give Zuko food or water, he won’t respond directly to orders, but his body will take over and swallow. 

Suki doesn’t want to see any of this. Somehow, it’s much worse than when Zuko would seem to be asleep. It’s worse because it makes her think of how people did this for him, or to him, for years. It makes guilt settle in her gut because she promised she wouldn’t let anyone touch him, but she knows that the healers are only trying to keep him from hurting. 

Eventually, late into the night, Princess Azula asks: “What if he doesn’t come back?”

“What if I don’t go back?” Zuko asks. 

He’s sitting up now, which feels like progress. Yue has returned from another brief absence to sit beside him. She turns her face toward his, moonlight playing on her features. “What do you mean?”

“I could stay here with you,” Zuko suggests. “Would… Would that be okay? Maybe you could give me something to do to help you?”

Yue is quiet for a long moment. Her hand finds his against the grass, and her skin is soft and warm. 

“I would love for you to stay,” she begins, but her tone tells Zuko that this is not the point she wishes to make. “Maybe, one day, you can. I’m not sure how that works. But for now, you have a life to return to.” 

“I don’t have to return,” Zuko says. 

Yue looks sad. Zuko is always making her sad, he realises.

“You would have to watch the people you love only from a distance,” she says. “You would have to know that they will grow old and die, and you will continue to watch the world for so long that everyone forgets about them.” 

Zuko pauses, and then sighs. “We should bring your family here,” he says. “We probably should have before. I don’t know if they could see you, but I could help you talk to them.”

Yue smiles, and she squeezes his hand. “Thank you. I would like that,” she says, “but only when you’re ready. We have time.”

Enough time passes that Katara replaces Suki, and then Sokka replaces Katara.

Azula sleeps with her head against the wall. She wakes at every slight movement. 

Zuko doesn’t return. 

“I feel,” Zuko says, when so much time has passed that the argument with Azula no longer feels like a fresh wound. “I feel like I’m not anything at all, sometimes. Like I’m just empty space where a person is supposed to be.” 

Yue’s face is painted in the light reflecting from the spirit waters. Her palms settle on his neck, thumbs against his jaw, and where it should make Zuko feel hemmed in, it only makes him feel safe. 

“You are the Crown Prince of the Fire Nation,” she says, voice determined. “You are blessed by the spirit of the sun and beloved by the spirit of the moon. You are Zuko, son of Ursa.” 

Zuko pulls away, just a little, and Yue’s hands fall. 

“You survived,” she continues, eyes searching. Zuko thinks about hearing please fight from the midst of the darkness. “Now you have to survive having survived.”

Azula wakes with a start when Zuko sits up. 

She sighs. “Welcome back.” 

Returning from the Spirit Oasis feels like resetting to the first day after the battle. Azula only wants to sleep; Zuko can’t quiet his mind; Uncle wants to be with them, constantly, but they would rather be alone.

But it’s also different, in a way. There are preparations occurring for the day of the comet, in case anyone should use the extra power to mount an attack. Uncle talks about strengthening defenses against their own people, which seems awful to Zuko, but he understands the necessity. 

(One thing that hasn't changed: Uncle Iroh has never stopped looking at Zuko like he might shatter at any moment. But Zuko supposes that he didn’t do himself any favours by running away.)

Zuko and Azula don’t talk anymore. They still share Azula’s bedroom; Zuko assumes she’ll tell him if she wants him gone, and he can’t quite imagine being completely alone again. And it wasn’t like they spoke that much, in the days after the battle, but now they don’t speak at all.

The day before the comet, Zuko goes for a walk with Suki. He’s going to have to leave the bedroom in order to go to the bunkers tomorrow, and Zuko wants to walk out of Azula's bedroom of his own volition before he has to from necessity. 

He doesn’t ask Suki to join him, but she’s been guarding the bedroom more often than not, and she falls into step beside him. She doesn’t talk to him, but it isn’t like when Azula doesn’t talk; it’s comfortable, not pointed.

The corridors of palace are familiar, but… oddly quiet.

“Where are all the servants?” Zuko asks eventually, realising what is missing. “And-- There aren’t many guards here, either?”

Suki shrugs. “It’s been like this since the first day,” she explains. “I think Fire Lord Iroh let a lot of people go. He’s been slowly letting some back, after researching them? I assume it’s because he’s worried they might be loyal to…” 

Suki doesn’t say Ozai’s name.

But that isn’t the most important part of what she said. The servants and guards are gone, and are being carefully selected for returning. This is not usual practice for a change in regime. Guards and servants aren’t loyal to a specific Fire Lord, they’re loyal to the Fire Nation.

The changing out of guards and servants shouldn’t make much difference to Uncle Iroh. But it does make a difference to Zuko. 

And with a rush of clarity, Zuko understands: Uncle was trying to ensure that Zuko won’t be faced with anyone who was part of his imprisonment. 

Following clarity comes warmth. Uncle might look at Zuko like he’s afraid that the wrong word will cause him to break into a thousand pieces, and that might make Zuko feel pathetic, but Uncle is also looking out for him - and has done so from the moment that he knew how. 

Zuko only realises that he’s stopped walking when Suki turns to face him.

“Are you okay?” she asks.

Zuko knows she means to ask about this moment, because he’s stopped to frown in thought. But Zuko shrugs and answers honestly, anyway: “No, not really.” And then Zuko meets her eyes and asks: “Are you okay?”

Suki smiles, and it’s a little shaky, but it’s also honest and open in a way that Zuko doesn’t know how to be.

“No, not really,” she replies. 

The scissors are gone. 

Zuko goes back for them later that night, opening the drawer that Azula previously kept them in, but they aren’t there. He glances back to Azula, who is reading a scroll while lying on the messy bed. 

“Where are the scissors?” he asks, a little nervous to break their tense silence. 

Azula doesn’t look up. “That isn’t any of your business.” Her voice is low and dangerous. 

Does she want him out of her bedroom? It isn’t absurd that she would want her own space, but even though things are tense, Azula hasn’t made a single comment to imply that she wants to be on her own. And Zuko doesn’t much want to be on his own, either. He’s spent a lot of time alone in a bedroom in this palace. 

Do you want me to go? Zuko wonders, watching Azula ignore him. 

“I want to use them,” Zuko counters, even though it isn’t the point he actually wants to make. He watches as Azula’s expression turns. Her mouth pinches in and her eyebrows draw downwards. And Zuko has never been good with facial expressions, but he knows what Azula looks like when she thinks Zuko is being annoying, and this is… something else. “Can I just use them?”

Azula glares up at Zuko, abandoning her scroll. “Uncle Iroh removed sharp things from this room for a reason.” 

Zuko blinks, surprised both by her response and by the hostility behind it. 

Zuko barely remembers anything being removed from the room. The aftermath of the battle is a blurred smudge of fear and humiliation in his mind. But he has noticed that there isn’t anything sharp in the room, and hasn’t been surprised by this face, because of course Uncle would think--

“Azula,” Zuko says as the pieces slot together. “I’m not going to hurt myself.” 

Azula’s expression stills for a moment. She doesn’t relax, but her eyes shift from angry to puzzled. 

“I promise that isn’t it,” Zuko continues. “So could I use the scissors?”

Azula reaches, of all places, beneath her pillow. Zuko holds himself back from commenting, because in the next moment, she is holding the scissors out for Zuko to take them. 

Zuko thanks her and takes them, and then turns to the mirror. 

With a determined breath, Zuko reaches upwards; he grasps the base of his phoenix tail and drags the blades through it. It cuts unevenly, the blades too small for one neat cut, but soon his long hair is falling to the floor at his feet. 

Zuko breathes deeply, feeling the literal weight that has been lifted, and glances at himself in the mirror.

He looks awful. 

“What,” Azula says from the bed, “Was that?” 

Zuko smiles at his terrible reflection. “Father always liked my hair long,” he says, forcing himself through the words. 

He doesn’t look away from his reflection as Azula moves. The feeling of victory is absurd, and Zuko knows this, but it does feel like a victory.

“You look ridiculous,” Azula notes, appearing by his side in the mirror. “Sit down.” 

Zuko sits heavily in Azula’s chair, gaze still affixed to the mirror, and watches as Azula frowns for several moments at his awful hair. 

Then, tentative, Azula plucks a lot between her fingers and trims it shorter. 

Zuko breathes deeply, and sits still, and tries not to read too much into the moment. But this, he realises, is the first time that Azula has touched him since the fallout of the battle. 

Slowly, short pieces of Zuko’s hair join the phoenix tail on the floor. Azula moves her fingers through Zuko’s hair, shifting it around to figure out where needs to be cut. Zuko has never had his hair cut short before, and Azula obviously has no experience in this kind of work, but it’s an improvement. And Azula’s fingers in his hair feel a little like Yue’s; they feel a little like care. 

The comet comes and goes. 

It’s a remarkably unremarkable day. The royal family have to be split up, because succession laws mandate that they are not in the same rooms in the bunkers. Azula spends the period of Sozin’s Comet with Mai and Ty Lee. Zuko has been considering suggesting that he only spends the time with Suki, because she’s the only one of his friends that he’s managed to have an actual conversation with since the battle, but he doesn’t want to make anyone angry or split Suki up from her own friends. 

Which is how Zuko ends up in a room in the bunker with Suki, Aang, Sokka, Katara, and Toph. 

It’s… kind of a lot.

At first, all of the kids seem supremely awkward. And Zuko can’t stop thinking about what they know about him, about how every time they look at him they must see it. It’s worse, somehow, than the adults knowing. It’s not worse than Azula knowing, but at least Azula has her own twisted, confused relationship with their father. But this is…

This is Sokka being nice to him, offering to get him snacks even though they’re just across the room. This is Aang getting teary-eyed and then pretending that it isn’t happening. This is Toph talking quietly, which Zuko wasn’t even aware she was capable of doing. This is Katara smiling at him in that sickeningly sweet way, which Toph should be making fun of her for. 

Zuko breathes deeply, and follows Suki’s lead, because she’s the only one of them who isn’t acting weird. 

“Oh hey, I think it’s started,” Aang declares at the same moment that Zuko feels Agni’s presence alight under his skin. “Whoa! This feels weird.” 

Aang tries to throw a small fireball. 

It… does not stay small.

“Aang!” Katara scolds. “Be careful!” 

“I have a better idea,” Zuko suggests, standing and stretching his arms a little. “Let’s spar.” 

“I don’t know if that’s a better idea,” Katara says, but Toph is already cackling. 

“I’m on Team Zuko!” Toph declares, jumping up and wrapping her arms around Zuko's arm. 

And then she freezes, clearly realising that there’s a reason she doesn’t do this with him. Everyone else hushes, too, like they’re waiting for Zuko to freak out. 

Zuko allows some of the tension in his body to ease. Zuko was waiting for Zuko to freak out, too, but… it isn’t coming. “Okay. You can be on Team Zuko.” 

“Yes!” Toph cheers. “How do you feel about raining down flaming rock?”

Katara stands and folds her arms. “Well if you’re on Team Zuko, I’m on Team Aang,” she declares.

“I love it when Katara joins the bad idea,” Sokka comments. “I’m with Zuko. Could you get me a flaming sword, buddy?”

(By the time the comet is no longer powering them, the group is exhausted, dirty, and more than a little burned. 

“That,” Toph declares, “was the best and most valiantly fought battle of all of history.” 

“Ow,” is Sokka’s only comment. 

Zuko smiles.)

There's a fact that has been worrying at Zuko since his first night in the palace:

Zuko doesn’t know where the room is.

It’s under ground level, somewhere on the west side. That’s all Zuko can extrapolate from three years there. He might know everything about every inch of the room, but he knows nothing about what lies outside. So the first time he goes looking, he comes up empty.

The second time, he takes Azula.

Azula seems unsettled by his decision to find the room, but she doesn’t object. They walk down together, and Zuko’s heartbeat is hard and fast in his chest, like it might break his ribs if given the chance. 

And then they find the room, and it's… small. 

The bedding has all been removed from the bed frame, and the chains are gone, too. It’s just a room, in the end of the day, just four walls that once trapped him here. Just a physical space which was made into the haunting, otherworldly horror of the Other Place. Zuko has now walked down the corridor where Father’s footsteps would echo. 

But it’s really just a room. 

Zuko glances around, marvelling at how small it is. It feels bigger in his mind. It feels like a yawning emptiness, like the walls stretched up and up forever--

How can it be just a room?

Zuko reaches out a hand to touch a wall, too far from the bed for him to have reached by himself. 

“We should burn it down,” Azula says, and her voice is quiet and dark and filled with a fury that Zuko has no access to. Zuko feels devoid of any emotion but faint surprise. But Azula, he realises as he looks over at her - Azula is holding all of the emotion for him. 

Zuko breathes, feeling too much of nothing, and says: “Okay.” 

Later, amid crackles of lightning and red and blue flames, Zuko imagines that the room is dying.

Good riddance, he thinks, aiming a blast of fire at the mirror. It cracks under the heat and pressure, shards flying to the floor.

“What is happening here?”

Zuko spins to find Uncle Iroh in the doorway. He doesn’t look angry; if anything, he seems concerned. 

Azula continues to blast lightning at the remains of the bed frame. 

The room, Zuko realises, is now barely more than a burnt out shell. 

He shrugs, because he doesn’t have much more of an answer than that. And then Uncle Iroh moves out of the doorway, giving Zuko a direct line to escape should he choose to take it. 

Zuko walks out into the pristine hallway. Azula follows, and then she turns back to blast lightning back inside. They stand and watch her, and it seems to go on forever - Zuko doesn’t know where she’s getting the energy from, but it’s almost never ending.

And then, abruptly, it does end. Azula sags like her strings have been cut, and Uncle is there to offer a supporting hand on her back. He turns to Zuko, too, extending his other arm - 

And Zuko tucks himself close, presses his face into Uncle’s shoulder, and allows himself to be held. 

“I have you,” Uncle says, running a soothing hand up and down Zuko’s back. 

Zuko relaxes.

That’s when the tears come.

(It’s the first time, Zuko realises. He hasn’t cried since the battle.)

“It’s an Earth Kingdom invention, as far as I understand,” Iroh explains, looking over Hakoda’s shoulder. Hakoda glances over to track his gaze, and finds that he’s watching Zuko hesitantly entering the gardens with Suki by his side. “They have healers who specialise in helping with... this kind of healing.”

“Suki and Spooky!” they hear Toph shout, waving Zuko and Suki over. Suki laughs, and Zuko waves back. They start to make their way over to the other kids. 

“That’s good,” Hakoda says. He hasn’t heard of emotional healers before, and certainly not of the idea that they are paid to talk, but it’s a big world. There’s room for many things Hakoda has never encountered. “Anything that might help is good.” 

Aang is explaining something to the group, now including Zuko and Suki. Aang is being a little overenthusiastic, and keeps almost unseating the lemur from his shoulder. But whatever it is makes Hakoda’s kids laugh, and Zuko might even be smiling, a little. 

Hakoda and Iroh watch in contented silence as the kids move toward Appa. 

And then there’s more movement from the corner of Hakoda’s eye, and he turns back to the palace. After a moment, he nudges Iroh and nods in that direction. 

“Ah,” Iroh says in a hushed voice. “This is new.” 

Princess Azula stands between her two friends, looking in the direction of the other kids. It’s the first time Hakoda has seen her since the battle, aside from the coronation. As far as he understands, she’s been even more hesitant to leave the bedroom than Zuko has. 

Hakoda and Iroh watch as Zuko notices Azula. There’s a moment of confused tension, as the two groups eye one another up, and then the Avatar beams and waves the girls over. 

There is hope, Hakoda thinks. That’s all they can cling to now. 

Once, there were tales of a ghost on the Wani. 

But truly, there were never any ghosts - just a boy. Blessed by the spirit of the sun, yes, and soon to be beloved by the spirit of the moon; a victim of war and of horrors beyond; an enemy of the Avatar, but soon to be friend; a prince and a prisoner, but also just a boy. 

And ghost stories are always about life. 

The End.