Fic: Airbender's Child: Water 9/12
Disclaimer: I don't own anything in this story, in fact a lot of the dialogue will probably be cadged straight from the show itself, which means I own even less.
Author's Notes: It`s been a while, I hope everyone enjoys the new chapter. I also want to thank everyone who`s favourited this, and the Proposal Series, and everyone who's added the story, or me, to their alerts.
In the end, they just picked a direction and flew, and when they landed, it wasn't with particular care. Zuko was tired from being captured, from bloodloss from the wound in his shoulder and from clinging to Shuga's back. Shuga was tired from struggling the whole time she was captured and having to fly more carefully than usual to avoid bucking Zuko off.
Which was why neither noticed any of the signs that there was an encampment of some kind nearby, and why they both pretty much curled up together and fell asleep moments after landing, despite Zuko's still sluggishly bleeding shoulder and the uncomfortable positions they were both in.
"Hey. Hey!" Zuko woke to the shouted words and someone poking him.
A half-second to recall he wasn't with the Avatar's little group any more and another half to recall where he was, roughly, and Zuko snapped awake, lurching away from the person who'd been standing beside Shuga, using a long stick to prod Zuko where the firebender was sleeping on his bison's back. Unthinking, Zuko snapped a hand out and set fire to the stick. The man's eyes went wide, and then he said, "Oh! You're a firebender! Who are you? What's that animal? Why are you here?"
"I'm here because I was banished," he said bluntly. "Who are you?"
"Banished? Really?" said the man. "Wow. I just deserted."
Zuko sighed. "Huh," he said unencouragingly. His shoulder was starting to hurt really terribly, and all he wanted to do was get it bandaged and go back to sleep. "Is there a doctor or a herbalist around somewhere I could visit?" he asked.
"Well-" the man started, but was unable to finish. He was interrupted by a dozen men, armed to the teeth with spears and wearing unusual straw helmets and armour.
"Who are you?" demanded the man in the lead.
"I'm Chey," responded Zuko's newest acquaintance. "You know my name already, Lin Yi."
The man's expression somehow became grimmer than it already was. "Not you," he snapped. "I meant the boy."
That was a little much. "I'll thank you not to call me 'boy'," Zuko snapped back. "I'm sixteen. Not a child." Shuga rumbled from behind him and started to settle into the posture that meant she was about to start bending the men away. "You might want to aim those spears somewhere else," Zuko told them, trying not to show how much pain he was in. "Shuga gets cranky when people threaten me."
Lin Yi just smirked. "Well, she can be as cranky as she wants, but you're coming with us."
Giving in to the inevitable, Zuko just sighed. "As long as someone's willing to look at my shoulder, right now I don't even care."
That seemed to take the man a little aback, not that Zuko blamed him. He would have tried to get away if he'd been well enough to, but right now he was outnumbered and too hurt and tired to put up a serious fight. They trundled through the woods, finally reaching what looked much like a soldiers' camp. He was thrust into a tent and found himself face to face with an unexpected person. "The Deserter!"
"The Banished Prince," Jeong Jeong replied mockingly.
Zuko's eyes narrowed in irritation, but he supposed the other had the right. He'd started it, after all. "General Jeong Jeong. It is an honour to meet you," Zuko said, bowing and placing a fist on his chest as was the custom. Then he hissed. The movement had stretched the slowly scabbing wound on his shoulder.
The man frowned, then asked, "What brings you to our camp, your highness?" That mocking edge remained, and Zuko, not one for people playing games lost his temper a little.
"Your men, apparently. I was doing nothing but sleeping on my bison when that man, Chey, woke me. I had simply asked where there was a doctor or herbalist nearby so I could get my wound bound, and I find myself dragged before you." He glared. "I make one error in rudeness due to my surprise at seeing the elusive man known as The Deserter, and now I am to suffer constant mockery for it?"
Jeong Jeong just looked at him, saying, "You are impatient."
Rolling his eyes, Zuko told the man, "You are playing games. I didn't ask to come here, I was dragged. I didn't ask to speak with you, I was forced. If you're expecting me to beg you for help or some other favour, I have no intention of it. Either let me go, help me or at least tell me what you want. Stop playing games."
"A reasonable request, I suppose," Jeong Joeng told him. "Allow me to help. There are a few things we need to discuss, in any event. General Iroh has been quite worried about you," he said as he stood and started helping Zuko out of his shirt.
Zuko was a little dismayed when his voice cracked, belying the calm facade he wanted to present. "Has he?"
"Yes," Jeong Jeong said, his tone of voice a rebuke. "He searched for you for two years before finally admitting you had vanished into the Earth Kingdom."
"Do . . ." Zuko hissed as a cloth gently sponged the injury. "Do you communicate often?"
The man didn't answer, and Zuko was aware of a close examination of the cut. "This is quite deep. Unfortunately we do not have a practiced healer here to stitch it closed, and it may become infected if we simply bind it. Not to mention the scarring."
"I can take another scar," Zuko started indignantly.
Jeong Jeong came around to face him. "Perhaps your pride can, but this is in a bad place. If it scars too severely, you may find yourself with the mobility of the arm limited."
"Oh." His eyes went wide. He hadn't even thought of that. "Then what am I going to do?"
Jeong Jeong gave him a narrow-eyed look. "If you are willing, I can cauterize the wound."
"That won't leave less scarring," Zuko told him. "Whether with firebending or something else."
"I have long found firebending to be the most despicable of elements," Jeong Joeng told him. "I hate the way that, unlike water or earth, it is only good for destruction."
Zuko nodded in agreement. "I know what you mean. Even when you're just lighting a campfire, a wrong move could hurt you in a way that the simplest moves of earth, water or air can't."
His lips slowly curving into a smile, Jeong Jeong said, "You cannot know how surprised I am, Zuko, to hear such words from one so young. You would be much wiser than many of my pupils." He shook his head, "But that is not what I was going to discuss. I have sought ways to create constructive uses for fire, and this is one I developed on the battlefield."
He held up a single finger, and as Zuko watched, a needle-fine point of fire emerged. "You developed a better cautery technique," Zuko said, awed at the fine control being demonstrated. "That's . . . amazing."
"If you would consent?" Jeong Jeong asked, putting out the flame.
Zuko nodded. "Yes. Thank you."
Soon, Zuko found himself with the cut closed, his shoulder bandaged, and dozing from a dose of poppy to take the worst of the pain. He was vaguely aware of being moved to a tent, and Shuga following, even insistently sticking her head through the tent flap once the men had left. With her big head a comforting sight, Zuko slept.
He woke the next morning to Jeong Jeong sitting next to him while Shuga snored away, having parked herself in front of the tent. "Good morning," he said. "Now that you have been healed to the best of my resources, I would like an answer to why you were travelling near my camp, and how you came by a sky bison."
"I was near your camp because that's where Shuga and I wound up after escaping from Zhao's ship," Zuko told him honestly. Everything he'd heard about the man suggested he was honourable and his defection from the Fire Nation over its excesses spoke even more strongly of that. Also, Katara's question, Do we have any reason not to trust him? echoed in his mind. "He wanted me to tell him where the Avatar was."
"The Avatar?" Jeong Jeong said sharply. "You were travelling with him? Is that how you gained the sky bison?"
"Shuga's origins aren't my secret to tell," Zuko said. After all, trusting Jeong Jeong with himself was one thing. He'd sworn never to reveal the secrets of the airbenders to the Fire Nation however, and the Deserter was too close to that for comfort. "Anyhow, we parted ways before that, and Zhao was under the mistaken impression that I knew the Avatar's location."
Jeong Jeong shook his head, sadly. "My old pupil was always impulsive. He had no desire to learn restraint. He was too concerned with forcing others to his desires."
"I know," Zuko said. "He burned his own men to get to me. I was lucky to have picked up some tricks from the Avatar."
"Tricks?" The Deserter's voice was sharp again. "What has he taught you of firebending?"
"Nothing," Zuko said. "He hasn't even learned waterbending yet, only air." He grinned. "But there are still things to be learned from other bending styles," he said. A flick of the wrist, and a ball of spinning air, much like Aang's air scooter was hovering above Zuko's palm.
"How . . .?" asked the man. He didn't look so much baffled as eager.
Zuko shrugged. "Probably just a matter of focus. Like your pinpoint cautery." He flushed. "It's a little less impressive when I remember that I still haven't actually mastered fire, just . . ." He trailed off, not certain of how to express the thought.
"You are not out of control, as a child is," Jeong Jeong said. He thought for a moment, then said, "I once swore I would take on no more pupils, but I wish to learn these 'tricks' from you." He smiled slightly. "An exchange, then? Your 'tricks' for my teaching?"
It was something Zuko had always wanted. Someone who would teach him fire, without referring to Azula and perhaps even think he was a good student.
The time that followed - only a few weeks, but still - was one of the best times Zuko had ever had. He had been introduced around the camp as Jeong Jeong's nephew Lee, who had been burned and banished for taking his uncle's part in too public a way. The men there accepted him as someone's family and part of the larger family of expatriate Fire Nation citizens. Jeong Jeong trained him in firebending, giving him lessons in the advanced techniques he'd envied Azula for having mastered, and in exchange, he showed the other man his counterfeit airbending.
That airbending had done more for his firebending than he'd realised. The intense focus it took to infuse heat into the air and move it, or to use the energy created by his firebending without creating anything more than the barest hint of fire, had honed his control. It was, perhaps, the proudest day of his life when he was told by the Deserter, "You have been my best student. I am glad I had the chance to teach you, your Highness."
He was assigned chores, and had to work, but he'd been doing that alone and with Aang, Katara and Sokka since he'd run from his uncle's ship. This time he had camaraderie and no need to hide who he was. For the most part, anyhow.
News reached them of the Avatar's arrival in the area, and Zuko silently vowed to make absolutely certain not to let himself or Shuga be seen. He was therefore happy when Jeong Jeong gave the men the order not to bring the Avatar anywhere near them.
Chey, who had turned out to be a genuinely good-natured idiot, therefore managed to get them all within shouting distance of the camp, told them everything, and Zuko hid himself and Shuga, her in a nearby valley and him watching from a place in the trees, as his former friends were brought into camp. He watched as Aang tried to get in to see Jeong Jeong, was told he wasn't getting in, and Chey get taken into the man's lean-to, no doubt for a chewing out he would hopefully not forget.
For the rest of the evening, Zuko made himself scarce around camp, avoiding seeing or being seen by the three. He had just curled up for the night, when Jeong Jeong approached him. "I should warn you," he said, a little grimly, "That I have agreed, against my better judgment, to teach the Avatar firebending."
Zuko sat bolt upright. "What? Why? Aang's a nice kid, but he doesn't have the temperament for firebending. Not yet, anyhow."
Jeong Jeong sighed. "As we spoke, I had a vision of Avatar Roku demand that I teach the Avatar's next incarnation. What else was I to do?"
"Huh," Zuko said.
The man smiled. "You must be tired. Normally you attempt greater wit than that." Zuko gave him a sour look. The man who had been letting Zuko call him 'uncle' said, "I came here because you must decide now whether to make amends with your former companions or hide and remain here." He placed a fatherly hand on Zuko's shoulder. "I would not be unhappy if you stayed, Zuko, but I must tell you that I believe you should at least attempt speaking with your friends."
"I . . . I'll think about it," Zuko told him. "Thank you."
"For what?"
Zuko took a shaking breath. "For everything. For teaching me, for letting me stay and . . . for saying you'd like it if I stayed."
Jeong Jeong looked at him, a little sadly. "You are most welcome, and I would wish you had heard it more, and from others. It is because I believe the Avatar and his friends will say the same that I feel you should speak with them."
"I will think about it," Zuko repeated.
Perhaps sensing that Zuko wouldn't, or couldn't, say anything more on the topic, Jeong Jeong bid him goodnight and left. For all that he was nervous about the others being very close by, Zuko still fell asleep quickly, a feeling of happiness suffusing him. The Deserter knew who he was and had not rejected him. Had trained him and said that he'd all but mastered fire in those few short weeks. All that was left was increasing his knowledge of bending techniques. That same man wanted Zuko to stay.
Zuko woke up the next morning, refreshed, but still uncertain as to whether or not to talk to Sokka, Aang and Katara. In the end, as had happened with their last separation, Shuga made the decision for him. While Aang was off with whatever lesson Jeong Jeong had planned, she had come back from the valley, disgruntled at being bustled out of the way, and had practically bowled Appa over with an enthusiastic greeting.
Katara and Sokka, who'd been talking whipped around and stared at the two cavorting bisons. "Shuga?" Katara asked, hesitantly. Shuga looked up from where she'd been eagerly nuzzling Appa, and charged over, came to a thunderous halt and licked Katara. Then she licked Sokka.
Zuko, who had discovered her missing from her hiding spot had followed her there, and sighed, saying dryly as he emerged into the clearing, "Bad bison." She just gave him a look of annoyance and marched back to Appa, where the two had clearly gone right back to where they left off.
"Lee?" Katara said. "Lee . . ." She came closer, looking like she might cry, and Zuko felt very nervous that she might. Which was why it took him that much by surprise when she reared back and slapped him. "Where have you been!" she shrieked. "We were worried sick about you!"
"What?" That couldn't be right.
"I was just trying to get an explanation out of you and you ran away!" She shouted. She started hitting him with each word. "Stupid jerk . . . idiot . . . what's wrong with you?"
"What?" Clearly she'd gotten delirious or something again.
Sokka pulled his sister away. "What Katara's trying to tell you is that no one was going to throw you out. How could we do that? You'd just saved a town by bending lava and almost passed out."
"What?"
"Is that all you're gonna say?"demanded Katara in exasperation.
"I . . ." Zuko said the first thing that came to his mouth. "I thought you were going to reject me. I wanted to leave before you actually said it. I didn't want to hear anyone else-"
"So you ran away before I had a chance to hear why you'd lied and maybe invite you along again anyhow?" Katara asked.
That made an eyebrow raise. "I?" he asked her.
When Katara flushed, Sokka said, "Well, if you'd been paying attention, you might have noticed that Aang wasn't angry at all, just confused, and I already knew. Katara's the only one who might have said otherwise, and she would have been outvoted."
"Does that mean I can come with you again?" The words were out of Zuko's mouth before he could stop them. He'd missed Aang's wide-eyed wonder and Katara's cheerful outlook. He'd really missed Sokka's common sense and stupid jokes. He'd also, although he'd never admit it to anyone, missed Katara having claimed him as her replacement stuffed tiger-seal.
Katara's face lit up and she flung herself at him in a hug that left him breathless. Sokka joined in and Zuko sighed. He looked up to see Shuga curled up against Appa's belly while the larger bison groomed her neck. Sokka said dryly, "I have a feeling Shuga wouldn't let you go alone, and she has no intention of leaving Appa."
And with that, everything was back on very familiar ground. "Shuga! I told you! No calves right now!"
"I bet bison calves are really cute," Katara said.
"They are, and don't encourage her," Zuko told her as he deliberately sat on top of Shuga to keep anything untoward from happening.
Sokka asked, "How exactly would you plan to stop her?" He shook his head reprovingly. "You can't sit up there forever."
"Watch me," Zuko told him, knowing he sounded like he was six.
Katara was already climbing up beside him. "You're just so adorable when you get like this." Then she wrapped herself around him, ruffling his hair and making him squawk in indignation. Sokka gaped and then freaked out about how Zuko was too close to his sister and tackled him. While the boys rolled around, wrestling with each other, Katara made snide comments to Shuga about how boys were so immature.
Aang returned later that evening, looking thoughtful and tired, but he greeted Zuko happily enough and the three told him a long involved story about a friend of their father's, nuns, a bounty hunter with a strange animal and Zhao.
"Wait. Did she have long black hair and spiral tattoos on her arms?" Zuko asked.
"Yeah," Sokka said. "How did you know?"
"Zhao used her to track Shuga and me down. I guess after we escaped, he decided to try going after one of you to get to Aang," Zuko told them.
"Escaped?" Katara gasped. "What happened?"
"After we separated-" started Zuko.
"Ran away," muttered Katara.
"The bounty hunter caught me and Shuga and handed us over to Zhao," Zuko continued, determinedly ignoring her. He told them about his capture and the escape. When he told them about Jeong Jeong cauterising his wound, Katara demanded that he take off his shirt so she could see. "No!" Zuko said. "I'm fine."
"Let me see!"
"No! Sokka! Do something about your sister!"
"Like what?" Sokka had leaned back to enjoy the show.
"Aang?" Zuko pleaded as he tried to fend off the determined waterbender.
Aang smiled cheerily. "I don't know . . . you look kinda scared Lee. You should see your face." The smirk the boy was wearing was absolutely pure evil.
"What? You're getting revenge on me with th-" In his distraction over Aang's sudden payback, Zuko missed one of Katara's grasping hands, and his voice was cut off as she got his shirt mostly over his head, muffling his voice and tangling him hopelessly. He was distracted from his struggles to get out of the shirt and sash he was sure she'd twisted him up in deliberately, by the feel of Katara's warm hands running over his back. It felt odd. But sort of nice.
After a few moments, she stopped and Zuko resumed trying to get out of the shirt. Aang and Sokka just sat there and laughed at him. It was embarrassing, sure, but not as much as it might have been, because they weren't in it to humiliate him. It was good-natured laughter. Katara finally took pity on him and Zuko felt her untie something, shouting through the enfolding cloth, "I knew you did something!"
When the shirt finally came off in her hands, somehow they wound up nose to nose. Katara's eyes went a little wide, and she suddenly shoved the shirt at him. "Here."
Zuko realised she wasn't even looking at his face, but at his chest. There was a brief flush of pleasure that she seemed to enjoy looking, then embarrassment that his best friend's little sister who liked to treat him like a stuffed animal was enjoying looking. He took the shirt away and covered up his confusion by grousing about how she'd deliberately made a fool of him.
The next day, as things seemed to do on a regular basis with the group, everything went to hell again.
Aang had been given his first lesson in gaining access to his inner flame. Zuko was piecing together a new saddle for Shuga out of various odds and ends and Sokka had just headed off to the main camp to see about some more leather. Katara was talking to Aang, while Zuko tuned out the boy's complaints about not going fast enough. They were fairly typical for beginner firebenders who always wanted to start with flame fists or flashy pieces they'd seen in performances. He'd been that way himself when he'd taken his first lessons as a four-year-old. His attention was brought back to the exchange when heard Katara's voice, sounding a little panicky, "Aang! You'll hurt yourself!"
Zuko's head snapped up and he saw Aang, playing with the fire in his hands the way he would have played with his airbending. "Aang," he started, "Fire's not the same as air. You have to be careful."
Aang ignored him, saying something about a juggler, even as he handled the fire with an ease that made Azula's gifts look pathetic.
And then that idiot child spun the fire into a circle around himself and sent out a wave of fire. "Katara!" Zuko shouted. He desperately tried to block the flames, keep them away from Katara, but he wasn't fast enough. She screamed, and Zuko dashed next to her, seeing the horrifying sight of her hands, bleeding, blistered and blackened in a few places. Aang had burned her.
He stared at Aang, furious. "What did you do?" he asked, trying to keep from screaming at the boy.
"I didn't mean to . . ."
Sokka came running having heard his sister scream. "Katara! What's wrong?" He turned to Aang, unerringly. "What did you do?"
"It . . . it was an accident! Katara, I'm so . . ."
Katara fled, sobbing, and Sokka tackled Aang, shouting, "I told you we shouldn't mess around with this! Look what you did! You burned my sister!"
Zuko, cursing, ran for the tent he knew carried supplies for dealing with burns. It was standard kit for any Fire Nation military unit, and he found it quickly. He got to Katara, skidding to the ground next to where she shakingly put her hands in the stream. "Katara, I know it hurts. If you can cool the water around your hands it will help-" he started to instruct her on dealing with the burns as he ripped open the package with aloe, bandages and some other cooling pastes and things he didn't know the names of, only how to use them.
Before he could say any more, however, her hands started to glow a bluish white, and they both gasped in unison. Zuko couldn't stop himself as he reached out to examine her right hand. They were both startled by Jeong Jeong's voice from behind them. "You have healing abilities. The great benders of the water tribe sometimes have this ability." He sat on Katara's other side, looking oddly sad. "I've always wished I were blessed like you - free from this burning curse."
Katara looked puzzled. "But you're a great master. You have powers I'll never know."
"It's not that simple, Katara," Zuko said. "The essence of fire is burning and destruction. Even a hearthfire only exists with the destruction of the wood that fuels it."
Jeong Jeong added, "Water brings healing and life. But fire brings only destruction and pain. It forces those of us burdened with its care to walk a razor's edge between humanity and savagery. Eventually, we are torn apart."
Before anyone could reply to that, a series of fireballs lanced through the air at them, and Zuko brought up a shield of fire to block them. Grateful, once again, that he didn't have to hide who he was any more. "Who-" he started to ask.
Jeong Jeong shouted, "Go get your friends and flee! Do not come back here or you will all be destroyed. Hurry!"
Katara was already running, but Zuko paused. "Master . . ."
"I am proud to have your allegiance, Zuko, but your place is with the Avatar." He hastily shot Zuko a smile. "I will be fine, and I will see you again. Go!"
Doing the last thing his Master had asked of him, Zuko followed Katara's path and found Sokka prepping both Shuga and Appa. Zuko took over the task with Shuga and put the partially finished saddle on her back. "I'm sorry, Shuga, but I can't fly with you until the saddle's done. I'll be on Appa with the others, okay?" he asked her. She rumbled her understanding and stood attentively beside Appa.
Katara arrived back shortly, alone. "Where's Aang?" Sokka asked, concerned.
"There!" Katara said, pointing out onto the river where Aang was baiting Zhao.
"What is he doing?" Zuko asked as Aang waved his behind at the man. Then Zhao set fire to his own boat. "Oh." Said Zuko as Aang led Zhao a merry chase and got the man to destroy his own small fleet of three boats.
"Not bad," Sokka said admiringly.
"Sokka?" Zuko asked.
"Yeah?"
"How did you know I wasn't the one who burned Katara?" He had to know.
Sokka rolled his eyes. "Process of deduction. You looked angry at Aang, and Aang looked guilty. Katara was leaning into you, but she flinched from Aang." He looked Zuko in the eye. "I also know you'd never hurt her on purpose, and you're too much into that whole self-control thing to do it by accident."
Katara gave him the stink eye. "And?" she said, suspiciously.
Sokka flushed. "And I heard you asking Aang what he'd done," Sokka admitted. "But the other evidence still stands!" he said, quickly.
"Thanks, Sokka," Zuko said.
Before Katara could start harassing her brother about puffing up his ego, Aang popped out of the river nearby and shouted, "Have a nice walk home!" at Zhao.
"Aang, come on!" Sokka shouted. Aang leapt onto Appa's head and they took off, Zuko keeping an eye on Shuga. He let Sokka tell Aang that the camp had dispersed. A short time later, Zuko sat up, seeing Aang shift uncomfortably and said, "Aang! Why didn't you say something about those burns?"
"Huh?" Aang said, then looked at his singed arms.
Katara immediately leaned forward. "Here. Let me help you," she said, and uncorked her waterskin. A moment later, Zuko saw that blue-white glow again, and Aang's arms were just as miraculously healed as Katara's hands had been.
"Wow!" said Aang, admiringly. "That's good water."
"When did you learn to do that?" Sokka asked, bewildered.
"When she burned her hands," Zuko said. "She put them in the water and they just healed. It was amazing," he told her. "I didn't get to tell you that, then."
"I guess . . ." Katara trailed off. "I guess I sort of always knew," she offered. Zuko smiled at her, nodding his understanding. Sometimes bending was just like that.
Sokka, predictably groused. "Oh... well then thanks for all the first aid over the years. Like when I fell into the grease briar bramble and that time I had two fish hooks in my thumb!"
"Two?" Zuko and Aang chorused.
Katara rolled her eyes. "He tried to get the first fish hook out with another fish hook."
Zuko tuned out Sokka's ranting, preferring to watch Shuga anxiously. She was a lot smaller than Appa and he still worried about her endurance compared to his. He was also missing Jeong Jeong. He hadn't realised until then how much he missed his real uncle until he was calling another man that. Jeong Jeong had partially filled that hole in him that just wanted to hear approval from one of the adults in his life. Leaving him felt wrong somehow.
Sokka's ranting had finally wound down when Zuko felt Katara squeeze his hand. "Yes?" he asked her.
"It's been a very long month since you left," she told him softly. "And I missed my stuffed tiger-seal. I expect you to do your job tonight."
Maybe Jeong Jeong had been right that his place was here. Zuko smiled at her, then moved to the front of the saddle and joined Aang in harassing Sokka about the fish hooks.
Prologue Part 1 Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 10 Part 11 Part 12
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