AtLA fic: Airbender's Child: Earth 1/12
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: No, sextuped is not the correct formation in English for six-legged critter. However, since the word quadruped is Latin in origin and hexapod is Greek in origin, it is distressing to my sense of linguistic consistency. Thus, the word for six-legged I will use is Latin in origin. Thus . . . sextuped. Thank you for feeding my crazy.
Aang and Katara were training in waterbending and Zuko and Sokka had both stripped down to their loincloths, enjoying the hot day and cool water. Somewhere Sokka had found a giant leaf he was using as a float, and he'd let his hair out of his so-called warrior's wolf tail. Zuko was looking a little enviously at his friend's naturally tanned skin, and thinking that his own pallor, as much as it was a symbol of high status, didn't look nearly as nice as a tan.
Then he shook the thought off because really? What was he, a girl?
"You guys are gonna be done soon, right ?" Sokka inquired as he lay there looking stunningly disinclined to move. "We've got a lot of ground to cover if we wanna make it to Omashu today."
Zuko looked at Sokka from where he had been sprawled on top of Shuga, one hand and one foot dangling in the water. "Where'd you get your leaf?"
"There's a plant behind the waterfall," Sokka said gesturing vaguely.
Zuko left to get his own leaf while Katara and Sokka argued about whether or not Sokka was as determined to get going as he was trying to appear. Happily, he picked himself out a leaf and waded back, plonking it next to Sokka's in the water. He happened to glance up in time to see Katara standing behind a deeply blushing Aang as she adjusted his stance.
He sighed and lay down on his leaf with a sigh of contentment. "Aang's at it again."
"What's he doing now?"
"He had Katara behind him, adjusting his stance."
Sokka grunted in displeasure. "The old, 'I don't know how to hold a net, can you guide my arms?' trick?"
"Looks like," Zuko replied. "I can't wait until he's old enough to realise that, just because she's really pretty, doesn't mean she's the right one."
Looking over at him, Sokka raised an eyebrow. "Had that happen?"
"I had a sort-of girlfriend before I left the Fire Nation," Zuko admitted. "But me and Mai were as much politics and the fact that my sister was forever convincing Mai that she was in love with me."
Getting a little more interested, Sokka perked up, ignoring Aang kibitzing in his octopus-bubble. "This Mai-girl pretty?"
"Yeah," Zuko said. "I mean, not as much as some of the girls, but she also wasn't stupid and she had a mean hand with senbon."
"Huh."
They would have gone back to comfortable drifting, but Momo sat up on Sokka's belly, where he'd been comfortably dozing, and flew off just as the sound of poorly played instruments reached their ears. Then the singing. "Don't fall in love with a traveling girl. She'll leave you broke and broken hearted."
Sokka was on his feet and hurrying to the water's edge. Zuko followed at a slower pace. When he saw the people he felt like whimpering. "Hey-hey! River people! And Lee! Hi Lee!"
"Hi, Chong," he said flatly. "Moku. Lily."
"Hey man! We took your advice and got married," Chong told him. "Man, you were right. People are nicer when I introduce her as my wife and not the-chick-I-sleep-with-lots-and-no-one-else!"
"Kill. Me. Now." Zuko muttered in Sokka's ear. His friend was just standing and staring, disbelieving of what his senses were telling him. "Congratulations," he told Chong and Lily.
"We're nomads," Chong informed Aang and Katara. "Happy to go wherever the wind takes us!" He then strummed what he seemed to think was a dramatic chord.
"You guys are nomads . That's great! I'm a nomad," Aang told them.
"Wait for it . . ." Zuko murmured.
Chong's vacant grin turned up a notch. "Hey, me too."
Zuko hissed his annoyance. "And there we go," he said over Aang's confused and irritated reply that Chong had already said so.
Then Chong turned to them and said, "Nice underwear."
When Sokka freaked out and tried to use Momo as a cover, like an ingénue in a third rate romance play, Zuko moaned and just headed back to his leaf. If he fell asleep, maybe he would wake up and it would all be a bad dream.
It wasn't, and Sokka insisted on making him get dressed and join the other boy in talking Aang and Katara into getting going. "If he offers you the mushrooms," he told Sokka. "Don't take any. Worst mistake I ever made."
"Are they poisonous?" Sokka asked, aghast.
"No," Zuko said. "They make you see things and think really weird things and that's why Chong and the others are the way they are." He paused for a moment. "That, and the stuff they smoke, but I never tried that. The shrooms were fun, though. I think that was the time I wound up sharing a bed roll with Lily's cousin Magnolia."
Sokka's eyes were very much larger than usual as he stared at Zuko.
Not much was said after that until they were both dressed and Sokka had gone back to convincing the other two they had to get moving. Zuko supported him in theory, but he also knew that it wasn't that likely they'd get moving fast. Especially not while the nomads were braiding Shuga and Appa's fur. Shuga loved getting her fur braided, and Moku was a top notch shoulder scratcher. So the two bisons lolled happily about getting spoiled by the attention.
Eventually Sokka won, nixed the idea of the secret tunnel and got them moving, but not before effectively calling his sister a wet blanket. "She's gonna put frogs in your sleeping bag for that, you know."
"Pfft. She knows it's true," Sokka said dismissively, turning his back as he tossed things onto Appa's saddle. Zuko moved a little to the left and blocked the sight of Aang handing Katara a jar for her frogs.
They took off, and moments later were under bombardment by a squad of Fire Nation soldiers. Resigned to following the directions of the same people who had managed, in their own innocent way, to destroy the last shreds of his innocence, Zuko followed everyone into the tunnel.
Shuga rumbled encouragingly to Appa the whole way. She was used to secret tunnels and nipped playfully at her boyfriend, groomed his shoulders and flirted shamelessly to convince him that the tunnel was okay. Just as they got solidly inside and the light from the sun had begun to fade, they heard a rumble and the entrance collapsed from the efforts of the Fire Nation.
Appa panicked and started trying to dig his way out. Shuga was by his side, rumbling soothingly. Appa gave her a disgruntled look that clearly said, "Are you nuts? What do you mean it's going to be fine! We're trapped!" Shuga just nuzzled him comfortingly, rumbling a little more.
As Shuga got Appa calmed down, Sokka was confidently declaring they'd be fine, he'd make a map and they'd get out. Lily, as her usual dizzy self, lit all their torches at once, sending Sokka into fits. Zuko shrugged it off.
"Why aren't you freaking out like Sokka?" Katara asked once they finally got underway.
Zuko shot her a small smile. "I've dealt with Chong before. If you react to everything, you'll only tire yourself out and make yourself crazy." Up ahead, they saw Sokka waving his hands and making squawking noises. "Case in point, Sokka."
They trudged along, Sokka in the lead making notes on his parchment. After the first dead end that shouldn't have been there, Zuko joined him at his map. "Hey. I'm not criticising," he said carefully. "I just wanted to check if you'd missed anything."
"Have a go," Sokka said, shrugging.
Sokka hadn't missed a thing, and Zuko watched as he carefully made his notes as they continued their journey. Zuko was soon as frustrated as Sokka. When Katara said, "Sokka, this is the tenth dead end you've led us to." Zuko backed Sokka immediately.
"I've been watching. Sokka's keeping an eye on things. Somehow, these tunnels are actually changing after we go through them."
Chong, inevitably, put in his two coppers. "We don't need a map. We just need love." Zuko tried to keep from smacking his forehead like Sokka. "The little guy knows it," he added gesturing at Aang.
Aang sourly replied that he wouldn't mind a map and then the tunnels rumbled. Before their eyes, a section of tunnel they had just come through shifted and changed direction. Chong's eyes became mildly hysterical as he said, "The tunnels… they're a-changin'. Ah, it must be the curse. I knew we shouldn't have come down here."
Before Sokka could really get going on his sarcastic response to that, Katara hushed them, they were attacked by wolf-bats, Appa lost his head entirely, and between the cave-in and the panic, Zuko, Aang, Katara and Appa were separated from Sokka, Shuga, Momo and Chong's nomads.
They sighed and picked a tunnel. Nothing was going to get done if they just waited around. Appa was mincing anxiously around, glaring balefully at the walls and was extremely skittish. "Aren't you worried about Shuga?" Aang asked Zuko.
"Not any more than I'm worried about Sokka or Momo," Zuko said. "Less than I'm worried about Appa, anyhow."
"How come?" Katara asked curiously.
"The enclaves in the Fire Nation are in volcanic tunnels. Shuga's used to going underground a lot," Zuko explained. "That's why it was so easy to get her in here. She's not going to panic from this any more than Sokka will."
"Huh," Aang said, and they trudged on.
It was a terrible disappointment when they found what looked like a door out and came out into a tomb instead. Appa was particularly irate at the disappointment and could be seen stomping around the space and muttering to himself in his own sextuped fashion.
Zuko joined him while Katara and Aang ooed and aahhed over their discovery of the tombs of Oma and Shu. "Do you think you can smell anything that might give us a direction?" he asked Appa. "I know you're not an eelhound, but your nose might be more sensitive than ours."
Appa nodded eagerly and started sniffing around the room. Zuko followed him, looking around for any sort of clue that might point their way out. He knew that the airbenders he'd spent so much time around, usually had clues hidden about to direct a person if they got lost and knew what the clue meant. The people who'd built this tomb had to have had a way to get out again.
"Well, I'm not sure which I'd rather do!" he heard Katara snap behind him. He and Appa turned to see her storming away from Aang who looked utterly dejected. Avoiding Katara, girls were unpredictable and scary when they were angry (especially one as already crazy as Katara), Zuko approached Aang.
"What happened?" he asked the airbender.
Aang sighed. "Katara thought that, since the legend says you need to trust in love, and the carving there, says, "Love is brightest in the dark," that the carving of Oma and Shu kissing is a clue."
"She thinks putting out the torch and kissing will get us out of here?" Zuko said, sceptically.
Aang nodded. "She said she thought it was crazy, but she suggested it anyways."
"Then what?" Zuko asked, knowing there had to be more. "Did you laugh at her?"
"No!" Aang fervently shook his head. "I was . . . um . . . thinking about it, and she laughed and said it was dumb. So I thought that since she didn't want to I should . . . go . . . along . . . with it?" He looked hopefully at Zuko. Zuko just gestured for him to continue. This he had to hear.
Katara broke in, looking still irate, and snapped as she stomped back over to the boys, "So then he said he'd never want to kiss me, and when I asked what he meant by that, he told me he'd rather kiss me than die!"
Zuko smacked himself on the forehead. "Oh, Aang. You didn't."
"I . . . uh . . . oh." Aang looked shocked, as though the backhanded insult he'd accidentally levelled at his crush had finally worked through his consciousness.
"Anyhow," Zuko told her. "That's crazy." He sighed. "But since your brand of crazy seems to work more than not, let's get this over with."
Before anyone could ask what he was doing, he reached out a hand and used his bending to snuff the torch out. Grabbing Katara's arm, he pulled her against him, and kissed her. She let out a startled squeak as he did so, her mouth opening under his. She felt startlingly pleasant pressed against him in the dark, and for a moment, he forgot about Aang and the poor kid's crush, he forgot that this was Sokka's crazy sister, and therefore off limits and he forgot all about why they were doing this.
Then his sensed a glow through his closed eyes, and pulled away, staring upwards, startled. The ceiling was glowing green with phosphorescent crystals. Aang looked quite betrayed and they could all see the crystals marked a definite path. Zuko, desperate to stop the look in Aang's eyes, said, "How does your brother stand that your brand of crazy manages to beat his common sense so much?"
"Augh!" Katara shrieked, and threw her hands in the air in exasperation. "Boys! Let's go!" she snarled and led the way out, Appa on her heels.
Aang glared at him. "Why'd you do that?"
"I didn't think it would work," Zuko tried to explain. "So I figured if I kissed her, it would prove it wouldn't work, then we could all go back to figuring out how to get out."
"But you didn't want to kiss her," Aang clarified.
"No," Zuko told him. "She's pretty, but you're absolutely welcome to her. She's crazy. Hadn't you noticed?"
Aang shot him a narrow-eyed, suspicious look and said, loudly enough to be heard by Katara. "Just wanted to be sure that you didn't want to kiss her. Glad I cleared that up! Why didn't you let me, Lee? I wanted to kiss Katara!"
Then he skipped ahead, happily certain that he'd done away with the competition. Zuko just followed behind them, grousing to himself about why he had to deal with the fallout of Aang not thinking, and why was it Katara's crazy always worked?
When they got out, Appa immediately threw himself into paroxysms of joy at the outdoors. Sokka appeared shortly after, riding on the back of a badger-mole. Shuga charged out after him and she and Appa cavorted together for a while until Momo got their attention to chatter his part of the story. Zuko stood back and watched everything, snickering when Sokka slapped a hand over the already red part of his forehead, making it redder, in response to something Chong said.
Eventually they got going, after Zuko turned down some mushrooms from Chong and Lily, and they started up the mountain for the last leg of their journey to Omashu. Zuko settled into his usual place beside Sokka and said, "By the way, Katara's going to be really angry with me for a while."
"Why's that?" Sokka asked.
"You know how she suggests crazy things and they work even though it makes no sense?" Zuko said.
"Yeah?"
So Zuko told Sokka about what happened underground. "And now Aang's made sure she thinks I think she's repulsive or something. I don't know," Zuko said. "I figured I'd better tell you before Katara told you her version."
Sokka eyed him. "Just so we're clear, you were kissing her to prove that kissing her wouldn't do anything?"
"Yes."
"I hate it when she's right for no good reason," Sokka said. "Aang really said he'd prefer to kiss her over dying?"
"Really," Zuko told him, shaking his head. "I couldn't believe it."
"That kid's never gonna get a girlfriend at all if he keeps that up," Sokka said with a snort. They settled into silence until they finally crested the top of the last hill before Omashu. "The journey was long and annoying, but now you get to see what it's really about - the destination."
Zuko chuckled. He wasn't much for philosophy, and really, you could say 'til you were blue in the face that it was about the journey, not the destination, but really, why were you on the journey then, if not for the destination? He crested the top and stopped dead, staring horrified at the sight of the burning city and the Fire Nation flag over the main gates.
Sokka hadn't turned around yet as he said, "I present to you the Earth Kingdom city of O . . ." he trailed off in horror as he took the sight in himself. "Oh, no."
Prologue Part 2 Part 3 Part 4 Part 5 Part 6 Part 7 Part 8 Part 9 Part 10 Part 11 Part 12
Go to AtLA Archive