AtLA fic: Airbender's Child: Fire 5/15
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: Also a little short, this chapter. However, this is what happened between the last chapter and the next one, where Zuko will finally catch up to the gang again. Thank you all, especially those of you I have not thanked personally, for all your wonderful feedback. I'll try not to disappoint anyone with how the story goes.
Zuko silently slipped back into the palace. Now that he was a little calmer, he was still determined to leave and see if Shuga could lead him to somewhere he could figure out the truth. However, he also knew that he'd be very miserable in very short order if he didn't make sure to have some supplies with him. While it was possible that his answers would be a swift and short journey away, there was no reason to count on it.
His first few stops, a military supply office and warehouse to get a tent, camping supplies and travelling food were simple enough. The guards were comfortable with their place within the city and felt no particular need to worry about thieves. Those who were as skilled at roof-walking as Zuko were either going after items worth a lot of gold on the market, which wasn't military supplies, trained assassins, who also wouldn't be after military supplies, or those who had gone to the Academy as Zuko, Azula and other noble-born children had. They too, had no reason to raid the warehouses.
Everyone else with any likelihood of stealing were the uneducated and unskilled poor.
He'd collected the saddle he'd finished piecing together, and had put those things into a landing place close to the palace where he'd hopefully be able to get Shuga to land. With that done, he'd gone to the palace and collected a bag of clothes, odds and ends that might be useful, and liberated a pair of swords from the armoury. He'd been working with them, as he always did, because despite Azula's insistence that he should stick to the classic firebender's stance that the only weapon a firebender needed was his bending, he liked swordwork. He was good at it, and he still hadn't found out where Azula had put his blades.
He didn't even know if they were still around anywhere.
It was just as he'd finished filling his bag and changing into black clothes better for sneaking about that his door banged open, startling him. "What are you up to, Zuko?"
His uncle had always said he had trouble controlling his impulses. "What's it to you, Azula? Are you going to make Mai reinforce the fake memories the Dai Li gave me?" She blanched. He pushed. "I mean, the fake memories you had the Dai Li give me."
"What did you hear?" she asked. It was so smooth he might have missed the slightest tremble to her voice if he hadn't been looking for it.
A sneer stretched across his lips, "Why? Worried your pet's running away?"
"That's not-" she cut herself off, and seemed to rethink something. "Zuko, it's true this just started because you're useful. Because you are. Father had sent you away, and it was the best thing that could have happened to you."
That caught his attention. "Father sent me away? When?" he snapped. "Because I don't even know what's really happened over the last . . . I don't even know how long."
"You were thirteen," she said. "There was an . . . incident." Before he could ask what in the world that meant, she rushed on. "Then I met you again in Omashu, in that deserted town next to the desert, in that fight on the drill. You were . . . you were everything I could be proud to call my brother," she told him. "You were so ruthless and powerful. I could barely touch you, and I knew that if we could just get you back, we'd be unstoppable together."
Zuko snarled, "So you made sure I'd feel inadequate? That I'd mess up all the bending I tried here?"
"I needed you to accept that I was father's heir," she told him unashamedly.
He pulled away. "You always lie. Always. It's something I can't believe you made me forget. How can I even trust you're telling me the truth now?"
She didn't try to prevaricate. "I just . . . Zuko, you are my perfect match. You'd make the best right hand any Fire Lord could want. When we destroy all those pathetic other nations, I want you fighting with me. I want my brother with me."
He stepped away from her. "Listen to yourself. Destroy the other nations? This is crazy. We're going to try to destroy them, for what? For being there? For not wanting some other nation's leader to take over their land and people?"
"It's our destiny!" she shouted back. "Don't you see? Sozin's comet is there to grant the Fire Nation the power to control the fate of the world. That's why it's there!"
"That is insane," Zuko told her, flatly. "I want nothing to do with it." He scooped up his bag, vaulting out the window and dashing across the roof, pursued by his younger sister. She seemed intent on catching him, rather than stopping him at any cost, and Zuko just ran, trying to stay ahead of her. She'd always been faster, but hopefully he had enough of a head start to do what he wanted.
After leading her away, then turning back the way he came, Zuko hoped Azula was far enough behind him that he could finish what he wanted to do before he left.
Getting into the prison was nearly as easy as it was when he was simply walking in on his authority as royalty. He already knew where Aiko was, and it was the work of a moment to knock out a guard, take the keys and slip down to her cell. A few minutes later he was unlocking the door. "What's going on? Who . . . Zuko?" she asked.
"Come on, we're getting out," he told her.
She stared for a moment, not responding, and Zuko grabbed her hand and started pulling her out of the cell and down the hall. He was quite surprised when she pulled her hand sharply out of his. "I'm sorry, Zuko. But I'm staying."
He stopped, stared, and said, "What?"
Aiko sighed. "You heard me. I'm glad you've come to your senses, and that you're leaving. This place has never done anything good for you. You should definitely get back to your friends, and that Katara is definitely better for you than Mai would ever be. But . . ." she sighed, a little wistfully. "Azula needs me."
"What!"
She nodded, earnestly. "I think I'm getting through to her. She understands, now, what family's supposed to be about. I'm pretty sure she wants to change-"
"I'm pretty sure she's just decided she wants me along for the ride while she takes over the world," Zuko snapped. "I'm not really sure that means much."
Aiko shook her head. "No, don't you see? She wants family. She wants the family mother refused to let her have. This is just a first step to her redemption. Azula needs love and understanding. I can see how you wouldn't be able to offer her forgiveness," Aiko told him. "But I can, and I will."
"You are unbelievable," Zuko said. "That's crazy. She had the Dai Li take away my memories. This isn't some minor bit of mischief, this is just wrong, and she knew it was wrong."
His older sister shook her head, sadly, and said in that tone of voice that had begun to grate on his nerves as badly as Azula's mocking use of 'Zuzu', "This is the failing of the other nations," she said. "You simply don't have the ability to separate yourselves enough, to be able to forgive as you should." He eyes lit up with a disturbing similarity to Azula's when the younger girl was speaking of the Fire Nation's inevitable destiny. "I know what my purpose is - the purpose of the Air Nomads. We're here to help you achieve understanding and enlightenment-"
"You're here, because Azula put you into prison," Zuko interrupted. "Azula was able to do that, because Fire Lord Sozin set up a culture of superiority that, it's pretty clear, the Cheng Dhu enclave picked up and applied to themselves."
"What are you doing?" Azula's voice spoke from behind him.
"Well, I was going to take our older sister and get out of here," Zuko said, "But since you two seem to have worked the same magic of delusion on each other, it looks like I might as well leave you both to mess up each others' heads."
"I can't let you leave, Zuko," Azula said. She looked pained. "I wanted you with me, I wanted you to help me destroy the other nations." Sadly she told him, "If you're going to leave to rejoin the Avatar, I'll have to stop you."
Azula seemed distracted, and Zuko didn't dare wait. He launched himself at her, fire in a nimbus around his hands, hoping to catch her enough by surprise that he could push by and hopefully make it to Shuga's clearing. He didn't succeed and Azula met him, force for force, the two clashing in the halls of the prison. Vaguely, Zuko was aware of Aiko begging them both to stop, but he had to concentrate on avoiding Azula's deadly brand of bending.
Some instinct had him ducking and weaving where once he would have blocked, and a grin stretched across his lips as she shrieked in annoyance. "Why won't you stand and fight?" she demanded.
"Why should I stick around and let you hit me?" he asked, casually. She whirled into a kick that he might have broken a wrist blocking, and snarled when he slipped right past her nimbly, and struck her from behind. "Looking for me?" he smirked.
"Both of you, stop it!" Aiko punctuated the last word with a blast of wind that knocked the pair apart. Zuko went flying in the direction of the exit. He twisted in the air, landing and going at a dead run down the hall, collecting the bag he'd had to lose during the course of his fight. He didn't look back, choosing instead to put all his energy to reaching the clearing. Shuga was, indeed, waiting there, and Zuko spent precious minutes getting her saddled. It would be a pretty pathetic escape if he leaped onto her back and flew off, only to fall before they'd actually gotten away.
Still, it was just in the nick of time that he got onto her back and managed to flee, since Azula caught up to him, forcing him to block her shots, even as Shuga hurtled into the air.
In a short time they were out of range and Zuko was able to relax. "I just don't know what the truth is anymore, Shuga," he told her. He took a deep breath and asked, "Do you know where I could go to find out?"
His bison rumbled an affirmative and seemed to speed up, eagerly. Zuko sighed, and crawled back into the saddle. For now, he'd let her take the lead. It wasn't like he had even the slightest clue where to start looking for the Avatar anyhow.
Instead, he settled in to examine the dreams and flashes he was now sure were memories of some kind. The young girl with dirty feet, a foul mouth and crass taste - who was she? Where was she from? Why did she make him think of Azula? There was the boy his age, clearly Water Tribe, but funny and fun - Zuko knew the name of this one, it was Sokka. The other girl, Sokka's sister, he knew her name, too. Katara. He recalled his sister's voice during his abortive rescue attempt, telling him Katara would be better for him than Mai. It sparked a different memory of the same voice.
"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."
Well, whatever had happened there, she wasn't going to let him start anything now. He could still recall the look of betrayal on her face when he'd sided with Azula under Ba Sing Se. If he'd truly been on the Avatar's side, Azula's deal with the Dai Li had probably caused him to make an incredibly dishonourable turnabout.
Even while he would have to try to figure out what had really happened, he'd have to earn their trust all over again.
Clearly, things just weren't going to be easy.
Eventually they landed, and Zuko climbed off, made camp, brushed Shuga with the intensity reserved for a person doing busy work in an attempt not to think, and finally crashed, after dragging his sleeping bag on top of Shuga to sleep. He woke after a not-very-restful night's sleep, and puttered around, wasting time in a determined effort not to think about the fact that he'd just left behind the only home he could remember having ever known.
His distraction was such that the eclipse, something the Fire Nation had been waiting for and preparing for, for weeks, caught him completely by surprise. When the terrifying eight minutes were up, he ignored Shuga's irritation over their having not left yet, to juggle balls of fire, and generally reassure himself that he could still bend.
That was when Shuga took him by surprise.
One minute he was seeing whether he could get a finer point of the fire blade in his hand, the next, she'd put her teeth in the back of his shirt and tossed him onto her back and taken off. "Shuga!" he squawked.
She ignored him, determinedly flying in a particular direction. Zuko looked ahead, and saw something that made his insides turn to ice. It was another bison.
Shuga was chasing the Avatar's bison.
He glared at her, sourly. "This is about your boyfriend, isn't it?" he asked her. He didn't know why he said it, but it just felt right.
He hadn't even known you could tell a sky bison felt smug from the back of her head until that moment.
Prologue Part One Part Two Part Three Part Four Part Six Part Seven Part Eight Part Nine Part Ten Part Eleven Part Twelve Part Thirteen Part Fourteen Part Fifteen
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