AtLA fic: Airbender's Child: Earth 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: Yes, I threw in a Blackadder reference. I happen to like the goblin song. You can look it up on YouTube. Also, I feel like the ending was forced, but it was like the whole story was just going and going and going and going. I couldn't make it stop to go on to the next chapter. So I made it stop.
The hours passed and eventually it started to feel cool enough to move. Zuko turned to Shuga and asked her, "Do you think you can walk?" In response she heaved herself to her feet and began shuffling slowly in the direction Appa had flown. "Good girl," Zuko told her, petting her. "You just stop when you hurt too much or get tired, okay?" She rumbled an affirmative.
Katara had dropped to the rear, and after a moment, Zuko told Shuga he was going to check on Katara and he'd be back up at her head shortly. When he got to her, she was staring fixedly at Shuga's tail. She glanced at him and said, "I'm a healer. I should have been able to do better than that."
"You did the best you could," Zuko said. "Are you just back here because you feel guilty?"
"No," she muttered. "I'm not you."
"I do not get irrationally guilty," he objected.
Toph was clearly listening from where she was trudging along letting Iroh guide her. "Yes, you do."
"Do you mind?" Zuko said to her. "This doesn't involve you."
"I don't mind at all," she replied with a wicked grin. "That's why I'm talking to you."
Zuko made a sound of disgust and turned to Katara. "Anyhow, you have nothing to feel guilty about."
"I'm just here because I want to keep an eye on the injury. Just in case Shuga pushes herself too far." Zuko eyed her, but none of them could afford to waste the energy on a fight, and she had a point. So he went back up to Shuga's head and walked beside her, asking every few minutes if she needed to stop. Finally, Shuga deliberately sneezed on him as an expression of her irritation.
"I get the point," he groused at her. "Ew."
It was a few minutes later, that his uncle called them to a halt and tripped merrily off, returning with a cactus he'd chopped open and carried in his cloak to avoid the needles. "Ah! I may have our rescue here," his uncle said. He cheerfully gulped some of the juice from the plant. Then he paused. "Of course, this may be the wrong kind of cactus."
"What do you mean, uncle?" Zuko asked in dread.
Iroh tilted his head, saying, "I suppose I should have thought more before taking a drink."
"Why?" Katara inquired.
Iroh frowned at her, his eyes a little narrowed. "One kind of cactus makes a wonderful thirst-quenching drink."
"The other?" Zuko demanded.
His uncle dropped the cactus to the sand and started cavorting about. "Look at all the goblins! See them dancing!"
Katara promptly poured the juice onto the sand. "It was a nice hope while it lasted," she said mournfully.
"See the little goblin/ See his little feet./ And his little nosey-wose,/ Isn't the goblin sweet?" sang Iroh.
Toph nodded along to the singing. "It's a catchy little tune," she commented.
"Uncle?" Zuko said, grabbing the older man by the arm. "Come on. Why don't you sit down?"
"Come, Prince Zuko! The goblins are calling us to dance with them!" His uncle pulled away doing an odd sort of hopping dance across the sand to music only he could hear.
Zuko felt a frisson of fear. His uncle had always been a bastion of calmness and sense. Even when he was playing at being a dotty old fool there was a sense of . . . reason behind it. This was just crazy. Like Bumi crazy. "Uncle! There aren't any goblins! Just stop!"
"Zuko, it'll wear off," Katara said, reassuringly. "Let's just try to keep him corralled, and let it go. If he's still . . . off, in a few hours, we'll worry then, okay?"
He let himself be soothed, and they just spent the rest of the walk, far into the evening, keeping Iroh from wandering off. It was a good thing for Zuko's panicked self that several bisons landed next to their little camp after his latest attempt to talk his uncle down.
Shuga bellowed and made a move to get to Appa, then sank back down with a squeal of pain. Appa was next to her, rumbling and grunting his concern. "What's wrong with your uncle?" Sokka asked, as Iroh started jigging again.
Zuko twitched, but before he could say anything hysterical, Katara cut in, briskly. "He thought he recognised one of the cactuses. Unfortunately, instead of it being safe, it's hallucinogenic."
Four unfamiliar people had climbed down from their bisons and joined them. "Yeah, cactus juice can really pack a punch in its unrefined form," said one. "I'm Jang," he told them. Then pointing at the other two men and the woman as he went, "This is Huo, Taka and Lan." He looked sadly at Shuga. "We have a sling. What we'll do is get it under her, and then Tumo and Miko will be able to carry her back to the enclave."
It took a while, particularly with Iroh dancing about, distracting Zuko with worry, and forcing him to hit Sokka every time his friend sniggered at the man's antics. They managed, however. It was as they were about to figure out how to strap Iroh onto Appa's back that the man went running off again, and started firebending wildly into the night sky.
"A firebender!" exclaimed Lin.
It was Taka who looked especially grim, however. "Iroh. I knew I recognised that name," he said. "That's the Dragon of the West."
Katara looked annoyed. "He's also the man you have to thank for the moon still being in the sky."
The others snorted, but Aang piped up. "It's true. When Admiral Zhao killed the spirit of the moon in the Spirit Oasis at the North Pole, it was Iroh who stopped the rest of his men and figured out how Princess Yue could bring the spirit back to life."
All four stared. "That unscheduled eclipse of the moon was caused by someone killing a spirit?" asked Huo.
Sokka nodded. "The Princess of the Northern Water Tribe died giving back the moon spirit the strength it gave her when she was born. Iroh recognised that she'd been touched by the moon spirit."
The four Nomads separated and had a quick, muttered conference. "We cannot just bring the General into the enclave," Lin explained. "Certainly not without the agreement of the council." She sighed. "We will bring this matter before the council. In the meanwhile, we can only suggest that your group split up, and some of you come with us, and the others join the refugees heading to Ba Sing Se. We can drop you off on the main road and send someone out with news to catch up with you."
"We'll figure out who's going and staying on the way out of the desert," Sokka said. "C'mon, let's get onto Appa. We'll figure out who stays with Iroh on the way."
They wrestled Iroh onto Appa and took off, following the other two bisons as they flew a dangling Shuga towards the enclave. Zuko felt horribly torn. On the one hand, he'd just found his uncle and the man was drugged out of his mind. On the other was his longest-standing friend, with a big hole in her tail.
"Okay," Sokka said, "I was figuring Aang would definitely go with you into the enclave. The question is, who of the rest of us is going to stick with Iroh?"
Katara sighed. "I think Toph should go with Iroh, and either you or me, Sokka, would go. I think they could probably pull off pretending to be a grandfather and his granddaughter travelling to Ba Sing Se, and we'd play at being servant on the way."
Sokka nodded. "Right, and the other one goes with Zuko and Aang."
"Sounds good to me," Aang said. "Toph? Zuko?"
It was a reasonable plan. "It . . . it sounds fine," Zuko said, staring anxiously at his uncle, who was singing the goblin song again.
Toph piped up, "That works. Iroh'll probably be a good granddad."
"Okay, so that just leaves me and Katara," Sokka said.
"I kinda want to stay so I can learn more about bisons," Katara admitted. "I wasn't able to heal Shuga as well because I just didn't know enough about how she's put together. Appa or Shuga might get hurt again," she told them. "I want to be prepared."
"Good enough for me," Sokka said. "Then that's what we'll do. I'll go with Toph and Iroh, pretending to be protection hired for the trip."
It was a good thing they'd decided by then, because the bisons carrying Shuga had started to land. It was the work of a few minutes to get Iroh off, and Sokka and Toph's things. Zuko hopped down for a moment, and hugged his uncle goodbye. "I'll see you soon, okay uncle?"
"Goodbye, my son," said Iroh.
Zuko flinched away, and said, a little coldly, "I'm not Lu Ten."
"I never said you were, Prince Zuko. It does not make me feel any less as though you are my son. I love you the same." Then the moment was over and Iroh was lost again, babbling about whether they wanted to hear about the goblin or not.
He couldn't help grimacing a little as he rejoined Katara and Aang on Appa. "It'll be okay," she murmured. "You'll see." She squeezed his hand and he squeezed back, and they shared a brief, private smile. Doing the tiger-seal thing wasn't an option then, but this was good enough for now.
They all followed the bisons in the lead through the air and to a mesa, just out of sight of the city walls. From bison-back, their guides did something with their bending, and the whole top of the mesa seemed to fold away, revealing an enormous hole in the ground. Appa balked, and Zuko heard Shuga bellow something that made Appa grumble and follow the other bisons in. "What do you bet she just called him a chicken-pig?" Katara asked.
"I wouldn't put it past her," Zuko said. "Oh," he added, "I think that, for now, we should keep who I am quiet. Just . . . to make this simple. You know?"
"You'll be Lee again for the duration?" Katara asked.
"I think so," Zuko replied, nodding.
Aang looked sadly at him. "It doesn't seem fair that you don't get to be who you really are most of the time," he said.
Zuko shrugged, resettling a little. Appa's saddle was so much better than Shuga's for the rider's comfort. He was going to have to see about how to fix that. "It's okay. It's better than I was used to now, anyhow."
There was nothing to say to that, really. Katara squeezed his hand again, anyhow.
They followed the other bisons through a long passage large enough for them to fly Shuga the whole way, emerging into a large underground chamber, much like the other enclave bison shelters, this one lit with phosphorescent stones. As Shuga was set down, several people instantly converged on her, quickly undoing the bandages and slathering something on the wound. Appa landed and hurried over to stand nose-to-nose with her while Zuko and the others dismounted. Katara immediately joined the healers at Shuga's tail, explaining what she'd done and how she'd done it. Zuko found himself off to the side, hovering anxiously.
From behind him, he heard Aang suddenly shout, "Azula!"
Zuko whipped around and saw, "Hello, Aiko."
"What?" said Aang.
There stood his older sister. A slight tilt of her head, that hint of an arrogant smirk, and for the first time, Zuko realised just how much both his sisters took after his mother in looks. He took in a breath. "I'm glad you're okay."
"Are you really?" she asked. "Mother said-"
"Mother thinks I'm worthless no matter what I do," Zuko replied sharply. "I've had it pointed out rather forcefully that I'm not her son."
Aang spoke up, hesitantly. "So she's not Azula?"
"No," Zuko said. "I want you to meet my older sister, Aiko, Aang." He turned back to her. "Aiko, meet the Avatar, Aang."
"What does he mean, 'She's not Azula'?" Aiko asked.
Zuko turned back to watching the healers fuss over Shuga. "He means you look so much like our delightful baby sister that you could be mistaken for her. Didn't our gracious lady mother ever tell you that?"
"No," Aiko told him. "And I wouldn't believe you about it either because you're a liar and a firebender."
Zuko just sighed. It wasn't worth arguing about. Aiko had never been much outside of the enclave in the Fire Nation, and she probably never went out of this one either. Whatever their mother told her was enough gospel truth for her. Aang, however, was offended. "What is wrong with everyone in this family?" he demanded. "If this is what happens with most families, no wonder we always took the children to be raised in the temples."
"You really shouldn't take us as typical, Aang," Zuko told him, hastily. "I think Katara and Sokka are a much better benchmark."
Aiko was watching this whole exchange with a look of confusion on her face. "What is he talking about?" she asked Zuko.
"I'm talking about the fact that the Fire Lord is trying to take over the world, Princess Azula is just horrible, and his mother out and out said he was evil just because he's a firebender!" Aang was very incensed by this point in time. The sheer unfairness of it all really seemed to rub the boy the wrong way. "And then you come along and tell him he's a liar as though it's the same as being a firebender. The only decent people in your family seem to be Iroh and Zuko."
"A firebender?" came a sharp voice from behind them. "Avatar, you didn't mention you wished to bring a firebender into the enclave."
They whipped around to see a new face. "Uh . . . Qeng," Aang said, wide-eyed. He seemed about to defend himself, when the dark look on the man's face made him pause.
Aiko seemed to come to a conclusion. "It's a figure of speech," she said. "An insult, common among those of us in the Fire Nation enclave. A general insult of someone you dislike. My brother and I rarely get along well." She turned to him, aiming one of the cheap shots of air he'd learned to deflect as a matter of sheer reflex all those years ago. He'd been the butt and victim of airbending pranks until he learned how to fight them off in a limited way.
This time, Zuko didn't just do some minor block to keep himself from taking the brunt of the hit. He spun back a move he'd picked up from Aang, slicing a path through her shot, splitting the blast around him. With the same ease Azula had always shown with her firebending, Aiko blocked and dissipated his return shot with her bending. "Could I do that if I were a firebender?" Zuko asked, coolly.
"My apologies," the man said. Then he bowed. "I am Qeng. I am in charge of our middle ring. I was given to understand you wished to stay with your companions, Avatar."
"Yes," said Aang slowly. He was trying to figure out what had just happened. "I assumed we'd all be in the same place."
"This presents a difficulty," the man said.
Aiko snorted. "It only presents a difficulty because you can't decide whether my father being a firebender means I belong in the lower ring, or my being of noble blood and an airbender of some talent means I belong in the upper ring."
"What's all this stuff about rings?" Zuko asked.
Aiko sighed, dramatically. "They divide people up here according to where they are on the social scale. The least valuable people are in the lower ring, and the highest are in the upper ring. The middle ring is for everyone who's not really important, but also isn't just a peasant."
He nodded his understanding. "So you're still miffed about not being in the upper ring where you deserve to be," he said.
"No!" she snapped. "Do you think I'm our mother? I'm upset because I can't even go into the other rings without being stared at suspiciously and-"
Qeng gave a supercilious snort. "Her lover is from the lower ring," he said, infusing the term with sheerest disdain.
"So what if he is," she snarled. "It's not your business who I'm seeing."
"It is if you lower the value and worth of your section of the ring by . . . cavorting with that man."
Zuko took this in with surprise. It was a side of his sister he'd never seen. Aang hastily spoke, "So what's the trouble with where my friends and I stay?"
Aiko turned and said, "I assume that, since Lee's my brother-"
"Didn't he just call him, 'Zuko'?" interrupted Qeng.
This put them on familiar ground. It was a game the siblings had played at their last enclave. Back and forth until their inquisitor was so annoyed, he'd let it go to make them be quiet. "Mother had twins, you see."
"Lee and Zuko."
"They're easily confused with each other."
"No we're not."
"So you say"
"The major difference-"
"Is the bending."
"And everything else."
"Except you look the same."
"No we don't."
"Yes-"
"Fine!" the man said. "I don't care. The point is, he's her brother, and he must stay in the middle ring unless I hear otherwise." He turned to Aang. "You, Avatar, and your other companion will be in the upper ring. I will fetch Kang. He handles all those in the upper ring." Then he practically ran away.
"I think that's a record," Aiko said contemplatively. "You've gotten better at it, though."
Zuko smiled hesitantly at her. "I have a friend who wants to try that someday. He practices with me."
Aang was looking very unsure. "Z- Lee. Are you sure? I mean, after what happened with your mother . . ." he trailed off. "I just . . . Sokka said me and Katara should keep an eye on you."
"It'll be okay," Zuko told him. "I need to talk to Aiko anyhow. Properly. You go with Katara. We'll catch up together later." When Aang looked uncertain, Zuko added, "I promise this won't be like with my mother. If anything happens I'll ditch Aiko and come find you two. Okay?" Aang kept looking uncertain, so Zuko played a trump card that was going to get him in trouble with Sokka later. "You'll be alone with Katara," he wheedled. "I know you like her."
The Avatar took the bait. "Oh. I . . . Thanks Lee!" he said and scampered off.
Zuko shook his head. "That's gonna get ugly at some point," he said. He turned to his sister. "I think we really need to talk," he told her. "Just . . ." he shrugged.
"I think so too," she told him. "There's a lot of things that . . . that I know now. Did you want to stay here with Shuga a while longer?" she asked.
Zuko nodded gratefully at her. "Just until I know for sure she's okay and settled."
They stood and watched the healers finish up with Shuga, the occasional burst of glowing energy showing Katara adding her own skills to the process. It was strange for Zuko. His sister had always toed the line their mother had drawn regarding him. Calling him a liar and firebender in the same accusatory tone as if the second were as much his fault as the first was just how she'd addressed him. It had always had that ring of echoing, though - a tendency to sound as though she were merely copycatting what their mother said in lieu of her own opinions.
Unlike Azula's taunting, which was always nasty and sincere, there was a sort of reluctant admission to Aiko's words. As though she cared on some level but was forced to admit he was inadequate. He'd heard similar tones from people speaking of a loved, but eccentric or malingering member of the family.
When the healers finished, Katara waved them over. Zuko immediately went to Shuga's side and murmured endearments and scratched her on all her favourite bits he could reach from the ground. "You'll be okay tonight?" he asked. "Do you want me to stay if you need someone to run for a healer?"
She rumbled a negative and nuzzled him. Then gave him a shove with her nose in the direction of the buildings people clearly were heading to for the evening.
"Okay. I'll leave you and Appa alone."
He walked back to Aiko, to find her looking an odd combination of amused and disturbed. "Your friend Katara is very . . . forceful," she told him. They started walking together towards that so-called middle ring of the enclave.
"She can be," Zuko admitted. "What happened?"
Aiko sighed. "She pretty much threatened me if I was as horrible to you as she claims mother was."
"Oh," Zuko said, feeling a warmth spread through him again as he thought of his friends and the way they always were willing to stand up for him, even when he felt he'd done something wrong. "She feels mother was unfair to me," he temporised.
Aiko looked at him sideways. "She was unfair to you," she said. "Since I started seeing Thuan, he's . . . changed my outlook on a lot of things. I shouldn't have said what I said to you. It was just . . . habit. A bad habit."
"The rest of the world's a lot different than Cheng Dhu," Zuko commented, ignoring the first and last parts of what she said. "Do I get to meet him? I want to see if Sokka's right about brotherly impulses in the defence of our female relatives."
"Sokka?" she asked.
Zuko gave her another hesitant smile. "He's my friend. Katara's older brother."
They'd reached what was clearly her apartment by then, and Zuko leaned against the wall as his sister unlatched the door and showed him into the small, but well-appointed space. Once they were inside, she turned and said, "Lee . . . Zuko. I have to know. Is Thuan right? Were we horrible and unfair to you all those years?"
"Aiko . . ." Zuko opened and closed his mouth, helplessly. He hadn't expected this. She'd never had much time for him to begin with, and the back-and-forth routine had just been a survival tactic for him. Something to do so the enclave wouldn't know how close they were to being known to the royal family and put through a burnout. She was disdainful, distant and a little mean most of the time. He hadn't seen her that often either, because their mother had kept them separate most of the time. Zuko had assumed she hadn't wanted her eldest corrupted by his firebending nature.
She'd actually always confused him a little. Because sometimes - rarely, but sometimes - it was like she'd forget she was supposed to dislike the 'evil firebender', and they'd just be siblings. In the end, he'd lumped her in with his mother as someone he cared for who would never care back. This all took him by surprise.
Aiko looked earnestly at him. "I just . . . I always assumed I was due something as the eldest daughter of the Fire Lord. I'm royalty," she explained. "Thuan he . . . he asked me why, if my being the child of the Fire Lord should guarantee me special treatment, did the same background mean you were somehow less worthy than I am."
"I'm a firebender," Zuko said slowly. "That was always the reason. Mother never loved either Azula or me because we're firebenders."
"But that's not your fault," his sister said. "Maybe you're more prone to savagery. Maybe you're not as . . . as . . . spiritual as an airbender, but that just meant we should have tried harder to help you be better." She looked upset. Perhaps even close to tears. "Mother said you were banished because you were trying to keep a company of soldiers from being sacrificed for no reason. That's not the actions of a f- bad person."
Bitterly, Zuko snapped. "Mother felt I should have let them die because they were Fire Nation. She didn't care they weren't firebenders. She didn't care they were all younger than eighteen. All that mattered was that the people of fire should be dealt with the way the Nomads were a century before."
"Oh, Zuko." She shook her head. A dark almost-laugh escaped her. "I'd always looked up to her. Then I came here and everything is so . . . so different from what I thought it was."
"I know the feeling," Zuko said.
For the first time, Zuko found himself talking to one of his sisters. It was awkward. She had been so sheltered in the Cheng Dhu enclave, all she'd known was the propaganda she was told by the airbenders there. Being forced to fend for herself in a new enclave, one that was so very different than her old one, had changed her perspective. As had this mysterious Thuan, who Zuko heard a lot about over the evening.
She was still her old, arrogant, self. She still looked down on him as a firebender, but it was with pity and a desire to 'correct' his nature, rather than a certainty of his inevitable evil. He wasn't sure he liked it, but it was better than being told everything he did came from a place of darkness.
"So tell me about this Katara," she finally said, once they'd exhausted all the other topics of discussion that were relatively uncontroversial.
Zuko frowned. "She's a waterbender, a prodigy actually. She's so strong in her element." He smiled a little enviously. "You saw that she can heal. She can also fight like a demon if she's got any water to hand. It's kind of amazing."
"Heal and fight too? Impressive combination," Aiko commented.
Zuko nodded. "She's also the practical force in our group. Sokka's the one who comes up with tactics and direction, Aang's the Avatar, but Katara keeps us fed, keeps the campsite together, keeps everyone from running off in all directions and just . . . keeps us going."
"She sounds pretty impressive."
"She is. She's also completely crazy and does these things which shouldn't work at all, but somehow do. It's like she's got the Spirits' own blessing on her intuition. It's annoying as all get-out."
Aiko smiled coyly. "So how long have you been in love with her?"
"What!"
"You can't keep your eyes off her, she's amazingly protective of you and you look at her the way I look at Thuan." His sister looked eagerly at him. "It's kind of obvious."
Zuko shot a narrow-eyed look at her. "Who've you been talking to?"
"No one," she protested. "Just you. And, of course, listening to her dire threats of retribution if I did anything horrible to you."
There was a series of loud knocks at the door, and Aiko, with clear reluctance, went to open it. On the other side were Katara and Aang. "Has she done anything I need to freeze her to the wall for?" Katara asked, poking her head around Aiko to look at Zuko.
"No," Zuko said. He was quite aware this wasn't going to get him out of the conversation with his sister in anything but the short term. "You came down here to check?" he asked, feeling all warm and fuzzy again.
Aang said, "The last time we left you alone with someone from that part of your family you needed Sokka to rescue you, and you looked like you were sick with something after," Aang said. "We were worried."
That killed Aiko's mood. "I just have such a hard time believing it," she said. "She was so . . ."
"Kind," Zuko said. "That's the word you're looking for. She was always kind and affectionate to me in front of other people. When you were there she was kind." He shrugged. "I wasn't going to say anything. Who'd believe it?"
Aiko nodded. "That's it. Thuan made me realise how wrong it all was when he pointed out that she never stopped me from being horrible to you."
"You weren't horrible," Zuko said, rolling his eyes. "Compared to Azula, you were a paragon of kindness."
"Compared to Azula, everyone is a paragon of kindness," muttered Katara to Aang, who nodded in agreement.
"Anyhow," Aiko said, trying to resurrect a better atmosphere, "What's important is that Zuko is doing such a wonderful job of overcoming his deficiencies as a firebender." She smiled. "You'd think he was an airbender with the way he's going. Befriending the Avatar and the way he's so forgiving - it's fantastic."
Katara's eye twitched. Recognising the imminent explosion, Zuko said, hastily, "So now that you've found out I'm fine, that Aiko's not going to do or say anything bad," he spoke louder and faster to keep Katara from interrupting, "Why don't you two head back up to the upper ring. We should all get some rest it's been a long couple days." He leaned over to Aang, "Didn't I tell you now's a great time to make your move?"
With much bustling and shoving, he got them out the door. The last thing he needed was to lose the relationship that was finally coming to fruition with his sister because Katara was feeling angry that the other girl felt firebenders were naturally inferior. It was fine, he was used to that kind of casual dismissal from Azula and it didn't bother him.
Finally they were gone.
"She's very defensive of you," Aiko said as a parting shot before going to bed. "You really shouldn't be shoving her at the Avatar. You two would go really well together."
Zuko stomped off to bed in high dudgeon over the whole thing. Katara was just a friend. She was crazy, Sokka's baby sister and Aang wanted her. He wasn't going to go there. He'd never even thought of her as a girl, not until the Northern Air Temple and all that talk of exotic hair loopies anyways.
The next day, he got to meet Thuan. The man was the nonbending child of an airbender and an Earth Kingdom man. He'd lived on the outskirts of Ba Sing Se his whole life, preferring to stay outside the city. "You think the segregation is bad in here?" he said. "Inside the city you need papers just to move from one ring to another, let alone getting into the city itself."
"Great," Zuko said in irritation. "Is there any way to get those papers from out here?"
"You can talk to some of the leaders in the enclave. Or rather, I'd suggest you have the Avatar speak to them," Thuan told him. "If you're going to try living in that city for any period of time, you'll want the papers for the upper classes. They're the only ones that'll have the freedom to go where they want, when they want."
For the first time, Zuko understood Sokka's impulse to keep everything male away from Katara. He'd always felt rather sorry for anyone foolish enough to catch Azula's eye. Aiko was another matter, and this new relationship with her, that he owed to Thuan, made him feel awfully protective of her. Meanwhile, his sister looked like the handsome nonbender had put the sun in the sky, and done it just for her. Thuan had the ability to break Aiko's heart if he so chose. It was strange, and not wanting to be crazy and weird like Sokka, Zuko suppressed his desire to pull the man aside and threaten him with a good charring if he so much as thought about doing something to hurt her.
He was somewhat surprised when, after his sister had ducked into her room to change before they went out to meet up with Aang and Katara, Thuan said, "So here's your opportunity."
"I'm sorry?" Zuko asked.
"You know, 'If you hurt my sister I'll make sure they never find all the pieces of you.'"
Zuko blinked. "I . . . hadn't been planning to say anything like that." He smiled, a little wryly. "Aiko and I aren't exactly close enough for her to appreciate it, even on an intellectual level."
"She's getting better," Thuan reassured him. "Spirits know her sense that she's better than everyone else is irritating, and the fact that some part of her still thinks she's doing me a great favour by even speaking to me is appalling." He turned and looked longingly at the closed bedroom door. "But there's just something about her . . ."
"If you say so," Zuko said, doubtfully.
"Oh, when I first met your sister, she was nasty," Thuan said. "She marched into my shop with her nose in the air, calling me peasant every other word and trying to claim that, because her mother was some sort of Name in the Fire Nation that she deserved special treatment." He grinned. "When I asked her what her mother's suffering had to do with her getting special treatment, she tried pulling the royalty card."
Wide-eyed, Zuko asked, "What did you do?" He wondered a little what his reception would be among normal people of the Earth Kingdom if he told them who he truly was, and maybe this would give him a hint.
"I tossed her out, telling her that pride in being part of that family was stupid and I wasn't going to serve some faithful Fire Nation flunky."
"I'm sorry to say it took me two weeks to figure out that being Fire royalty doesn't mean anything but trouble in the Earth Kingdom," Aiko said. "It just didn't occur to me." A wry smile crossed her face. "It's kind of ironic that all that propaganda we claimed we'd avoided in Cheng Dhu still did its work."
"How did you convince people you weren't the Fire Lord's daughter after all that?" Zuko asked, curiously.
Thuan smirked. "I just told everyone she was an inveterate liar. That she was nobility, but not more than that."
"They believed him, too," she said.
Zuko gave her a tentative grin. "It's a crazy idea, isn't it? The Fire Lord's eldest daughter, the crown prince and the Fire Lady all wandering around homeless in the Earth Kingdom."
"Exactly," she said. They set off in fairly high spirits, but by the time they had reached the home where Aang and Katara were staying, Zuko was feeling rather worn by Aiko's constant attempts to 'help' him 'reform' from his 'firebender's ways'.
He was incredibly grateful when Thuan reminded her that she had to get to work, and they left Zuko alone. He joined Katara and Aang in Katara's room, and collapsed onto her bed with a heavy sigh. "I don't know how much more of that I can take," he said.
"What did she do?" Katara demanded, getting to her feet. "I'll go show her what-"
"She didn't do anything," Zuko said, grabbing her hand and pulling her down beside him. "She's just . . ." he paused, searching for the right words. "I think she's convinced that my being a firebender means that if I'm not . . . not shown the right way, I'll revert to being a savage. Or something. I don't know. She still believes the things Mother does about basic firebender nature, she just wants to . . . save us? I think?"
Aang offered, "It's an improvement, right?"
"It is," Zuko said. "But it's really annoying to have someone come by, telling me over and over that I need to overcome the fundamental evil inherent to myself."
Katara started muttering and said, "I'll show her fundamental evil." This time, Aang joined him in making her sit down.
Hoping to distract Katara from attempting to beat his sister black and blue, Zuko said, "So her boyfriend told me that you need passes to get around in Ba Sing Se. It's segregated in there, like in here, only worse." That got their attention. "He suggested that Aang ask the council about getting us passes so we can pass through the various rings without trouble."
"Good idea," Aang said. "I'll go ask about it now." He zipped out the door a moment later.
Zuko blinked at his abrupt departure. "Wow. What's up with Aang?"
Katara hit him.
"Ow! What?"
"You know what," she groused. "You had to encourage him?"
Zuko frowned, then made an educated guess, based on Aang's complete inability to lie well under pressure, combined with his complete lack of understanding of girls. "Is this about his crush on you?"
"Yes!" she said, throwing her hands in the air in exasperation. "Why would I think about him like that?" she demanded.
Taking his very life in his hands, Zuko replied, "Because Aunt Wu said you'd marry a powerful bender and you suggested kissing him in the caves."
"He's twelve," she protested. Zuko fixed her with a sceptical look. "Shut up. Like you haven't done stupid things," she muttered.
"So . . . taking a wild guess, I left you two alone so he could make his move, and you told him there was no point?"
Katara nodded, managing to look both indignant and kind of mopey at the same time. "Then he asked if I was in love with you."
Zuko looked at her in dread. She wasn't going to say . . .
"I told him I wasn't. Obviously. You're just a really good friend," she said.
Zuko nodded emphatically. "Exactly. We're just friends."
A somewhat awkward silence descended, because really, what did one say after such a statement? They puttered around quietly after that, because the whole thing felt a little weird. Aang came back, informing them that he'd gotten passes, and after some discussion they decided to leave Shuga behind and catch up with Sokka, Zuko and Toph.
Shuga was fairly displeased with the solution, but until she was well enough to leave there wasn't much to be done. The enclave was fairly close to Ba Sing Se, however, so Appa would be able to fly back almost nightly.
So Zuko said his farewells to Shuga, promised her he'd be back, threatened dire consequences if he found there'd been any hanky-panky in his absence, and joined Katara and Aang on Appa as they took off for Ba Sing Se. The silence on the bison was extremely awkward, and Zuko couldn't help but wonder if Aang and Katara would have been better off without him there.
She hit him. "I don't even know what you're thinking," Katara informed him as he protested. "But I know it's stupid. Sokka made us promise not to let you think stupid things about yourself."
"You hit me."
"Stop being dumb and I'll stop hitting you."
"I thought you said violence didn't solve anything," Aang said in tones of reproof.
Katara blinked, and said, "That's not violence. That's . . . discipline. Training. I'm training him to associate pain with stupid thoughts."
"You sound like Sokka," Aang complained.
"You really do," Zuko chimed in. "Does this mean we can expect that you'll stop doing crazy things?"
When Aang laughed and she hit him again, that was good. Things were back to normal.
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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