Chapter Text
The waters of the Southern Sea were unrelenting. The storm had been raging for days, waves battering the small Fire Nation ship as torrents poured from overhead, making the metal that usually stood so strong nothing more than a slippery mess. Thunder cracked across the sky as lightning tore across it, as bold and vicious as the sea itself.
Still, Zuko stood on the deck of it, bare fingers gripping the rail as the ocean roiled beneath him and the ship tipped back and forth. The water poured off of him in sheets, his clothes clinging to him, and it was cold , but the noise drowned out anything else.
Zuko had always liked storms. Even ones that were trying to kill him.
“Agni, it’s cold,” a voice hissed, bitter and cutting through the sharp winds. Zuko had to turn his head fully to see his sister approach him from his left side, dressed in her gleaming gold and red, flames crackling lightly around her in a vain attempt to keep her dry.
“Hi, Azula,” he said with a sigh.
“What are you doing out here, Zuzu?” she asked, quirking an eyebrow. “Do you think the Avatar is going to appear out of the water for some inexplicable reason?”
“Maybe,” Zuko mumbled, turning back to the stormy expanse in front of him. Azula sighed heavily, inching closer to him. He could feel the faint warmth radiating from her, her mouth set in a thin line of disapproval at his actions. He felt the old, sour tang of jealousy in his throat, at how simple firebending was to her, how easily flame flickered to his fingertips.
Zuko had tried to produce fire and flame for thirteen years before realizing that he would never be a bender, and even if he was a bender, he would never be good enough. Not for his father.
Lightning cracked across the sky and Zuko jumped back as his sister redirected it away from them with a crackle and a tinge, the air around them humming with electricity for a short second. She eyed the bolt distastefully as it disappeared into the water, waves enveloping the last sparks quickly.
“We should go home, soon,” she murmured, blowing off her fingertips, which were smoking. Zuko readjusted himself, leaving more space between them, even if it did mean the heat emanating from her body was only faint tendrils.
He laughed. “ You can go home soon.” They both knew it was unlikely Zuko would ever step foot into the Caldera ever again—no, not even home home; he wouldn’t even be able to enter Fire Nation waters without being gunned down or arrested. There would be no entering the Fire Nation unscathed, especially when he had been at sea for three years with little success as he chased the flitting dream of the Avatar and tried to ignore the fact that it was just that: a dream, and a hopeless one.
Azula sighed in annoyance. “What’s the fun of going home if you’re not there?” she asked, petulantly.
Zuko shook his head. He had never understood the logic his fourteen year old sister had went by when she had declared she would be accompanying him for his search for the Avatar last year; it was a punishment, a curse, not an adventure, and certainly not what she should be wasting her time on when her firebending prowess was sure to grow even more. There was no reason his father’s favorite child would go with his banished disgrace of a son, except to torment him.
Surprisingly, Azula had become a source of company for him. One Zuko would almost call welcome—trouble rarely found them when they saw her behind him, one finger burning a cold blue flame, with Zhao being the exception. Apparently, his need to harass Zuko wasn’t overridden by Zuko’s somewhat psychotic younger sister. There was also the fact that Zuko had spent two years with a crew where the youngest was still fifteen years older than them, every single one of them having seen the war and failed at it. His crew had been brought from the corners of the Fire Nation, from the ones who had been dishonorably discharged to the ones that were downright mutinous—the only thing Zuko had learned from them was how to curse like he had been born on the seas instead of baptized in them.
The rain dripped down his face, cold against the old burn. Zuko’s fingers twitched, brushing it in an old habit, before he quickly forced them down and away, letting the water run over the grooved tissue. He felt the old pain of the burn sear across it, a phantom pain of when his skin had been there, of when his skin had been melting away as his father’s hand cupped his face like another father might do to comfort their child.
You will learn respect, and suffering will be your teacher , he remembered his father saying as his eyes gleamed gold and his fire flared white hot.
Haven’t I suffered enough? the selfish part of Zuko wanted to ask, the self entitled child who had been willfully ignorant of the world around him and the love his father did not have to give to someone like him.
“Zuko!” Azula’s harsh voice cut through his thoats, a searing hot hand pulling him back from the edge just as a wave curled and crashed down across the deck, seawater spilling forward with its white caps and salt. The railing where Zuko had been standing seemed to crumple and bend at the force of the water.
His sister’s hand was still gripping his collar, and Zuko could feel the heat in it, smell the acrid smoke wafting from it. He wondered, briefly, what it was like to be warm all the time. He was so cold; it had chilled him to his bones.
The reminder of the cold was enough to melt the numbness in his brain that always came over him when he remembered his father’s fire, burning so hot it felt like the ice of his wrath.
“It’s dangerous out here,” he said, his voice ringing in his ears. “You should go inside with the rest of the crew.”
“Why, so you can drown yourself out here peacefully ?” Azula spat, fist twisting in his shirt and knuckles grazing his neck, sending hot pain spiking through it. Zuko wouldn’t be surprised if he turned and saw her hand ignited with blue flame; Azula was always carefully controlled, but she was prone to letting her fire out when her emotions rose, her firebending fluctuating with her anger with an ease Zuko had always wished to achieve.
Well, in order to achieve that ease, he’d have to be a firebender in the first place.
“Maybe,” Zuko told her with a glare, but was cut off from finishing it as the sky above them darkened and he and his sister looked up to see a tall wave tower over the deck of the Wani for one agonizingly long second, before crashing down.
He was underwater and he couldn’t breathe. The water roared in his head, louder than anything else, absolutely deafening. Zuko felt the pressure on his body, as if he was a metal can made to be crushed beneath the earth, except the harsh waters were much less forgiving than the soft soil of the land he had not touched in months. It was dark everywhere he looked, and his vision was already blurry.
He was being swept out to sea, Zuko was sure. He would drown, his bones sinking to the bottom of the sea slowly, the saltwater wearing away at every part of him. All the scars would be gone, the bump parts of bones that had healed wrong smoothed over and weathered away until he was no longer Zuko, but just another skeleton swallowed up by La and left to rot away slowly.
Then he slammed back into metal and the wave was gone, leaving Zuko alone on the edges of the deck, one cold hand finding the railing behind him and gripping it tightly. He looked for his sister first, only to see her diagonal from him, coughing up seawater with steam wafting off her body as she dried herself.
More importantly, there was an iceberg on the deck of the Wani.
For a moment, Zuko simply looked at it, struggling to comprehend the enormity of what he was seeing. Ice twisted around and around in an almost perfect spherical shape, imbued with a strange crystal blue light that seemed to be gleaming from the inside. There was a shape inside of it, Zuko realized, the lines and form warped by the frozen sheen concealing it, but there was still something unmistakably human about it.
It was, by all means, an impossible discovery. Ice blocks weren’t something just brought by the waves, even this close to the Southern Pole.
“Lala,” Zuko managed, turning to his sister. The storm above them seemed to have quieted, the rain falling down lightly, even though a glance behind him showed that the ocean was still howling. It was almost as if they were in the eye of the storm, surrounded by this inexplicable calmness.
Or, Zuko realized as he looked back at the sphere of ice, as if the eye of the storm had come to them.
“Shall we blast this thing apart?” Azula asked, a hungry look in her eyes as she surveyed the ice sphere. Her fingers pointed together neatly, and the smell of ozone was sharp in the air as it filled with the tangible crackle of energy. Zuko held his breath and leaned back against the railing, watching his younger sister with the same horrible fascination he always did as lightning cracked down from the sky, met her fingers, and sliced through the frozen ice.
There was silence, and then an earth shattering sound split the air as the sphere cracked, Zuko flinching back reflexively as fissures appeared and the ice sphere splintered apart. He could only watch as the ice fell apart and dissolved into water that sloshed across the deck, sliding off as the boat tilted with the swell of the water beneath it.
In the midst of it all, there was a girl. She seemed to float in the air, robes of soft yellow and orange swirling around her, eyes closed and head tilted to the sky. There was some kind of beast behind her—something large and slumbering, a breed Zuko couldn’t recall ever seeing before, but seemed to tug at his memory anyways.
The girl’s eyes snapped open and Zuko stumbled back, the metal railing cutting into his spine. Her eyes were silver and glowing with a ferocious power not even Azula had been able to channel before.
She looked at them for a long moment, and Zuko wasn’t sure if she was seeing them at all, and then the light faded from her eyes and she collapsed lifelessly onto the deck, looking small amidst the water and the metal and the creature that seemed to curl around her.
Zuko found his footing first, pushing past his sister, whose head was still tilted questioningly at the girl from the ice. He knelt in front of the girl, gently turning her onto her back and taking her pulse. To his surprise, it was flickering wildly beneath his fingertips—but then again, Azula had just electrocuted the ice mass she had been in.
There was a blue arrow on her forehead, Zuko observed, as well as peeking out onto the backs of her hands and her bare feet. The realization hit him later than it should have: Air Nomad.
But all the Air Nomads were dead. Zuko had seen the evidence of his ancestor’s slaughter firsthand when he had visited the four Air Temples during the first year of his banishment. He had seen the skeletons, stacked neatly in rooms. He had held the skulls of children and burned them with torches, then scattered them to the wind in the hopes of giving them peace, a century too late.
The Air Nomads were dead; Zuko was sure of it.
Yet here this girl was, born from ice and painted with blue arrows, dressed in colors that had not been worn in one hundred years.
There was an idea starting to form in Zuko’s mind, but he refused to broach it, unsure if he could handle the thought amidst the rest of the shock he was going through due to the situation.
“Is she dead?” Azula asked, her voice ringing in the sudden quiet. The storm had almost completely died off, Zuko noticed, as if it had left with the silver from the unconscious girl’s body.
“No,” he answered, just as the door to the deck slammed open, Lieutenant Jee, the commander of the ship, appearing from the mouth of the belowdecks. He stopped as soon as he saw them, the girl, and the monstrous creature, whatever question that had been in his mouth stuttering away in the face of the scene.
“Lieutenant Jee,” Zuko said, his voice coming out more calmly than he had expected. The older man stilled at the sound of his voice. “It’s in your best interest to find the nearest land mass and dock as soon as possible, unless you want this,” here, he gestured to the creature, “causing the ship to sink.”
“The closest land is the Southern Water Tribe,” the man responded.
“Which has been abandoned for years, has it not?” Azula asked casually, sparks flickering across her knuckles as she examined her fingernails.
Lieutenant Jee eyed them for a long moment, and Zuko thought he was going to deny his orders, as he had come close to doing many times in the past, but, like always, he obeyed with a nod of his head.
“As you wish, Your Highnesses,” he said, disappearing back inside. Zuko frowned. Docking near the ruined remains of a tribe that had been destroyed by the Fire Nation was far from ideal, but it would have to do. He was no stranger to the ruins of war, after all.
He stood, stooping to pick up the girl as well. She was light in his arms, face young when her eyes were closed—she looked to be his sister’s age, maybe fifteen. Pale, unassuming, and almost weightless; Zuko had trouble believing she could hurt anyone, but he had grown out of underestimating his opponents, even ones who didn’t seem to be a potential threat.
“Let’s bring her belowdecks,” he told his sister.
Later, when the Wani had hit snow covered fields of ice and frozen ground, its anchor digging a deep trench in the unsalted earth, the two of them took tea in the empty cabin they had deposited the Air Nomad girl, sitting at a table across from the bed with their cups.
Zuko took a sip of his. It tasted disgusting and lukewarm. Across from him, his sister merrily heated her cup until it was boiling, then downed it without even a twitch.
“So, she’s the Avatar,” Zuko said, as calmly as he could. Azula glanced cursorily at the still unconscious girl, the arrows on her body in full view beneath her unmistakably Air Nomad colored clothes. Strangely enough, she didn’t contest his statement, which only served to make his heartbeat speed up more. Azula never had qualms of telling him an idea was stupid if she knew it would hurt him, which meant that the statement was entirely plausible.
The Avatar hadn’t been seen in a hundred years. When the Fire Lord—when his father —had exiled Zuko and stripped him of his honor, telling him he could only be restored if he found the Avatar, Zuko had known it was a hopeless quest. The Air Nomads were dead. The last Avatar had been an airbender—it was why his great grandfather had gone to burn and raze the Air Temples as soon as the Avatar had been announced.
The Avatar should have died a century ago, but there had been no new Avatars. The cycle had not been broken, which meant it had never ended to begin with. And, yet, the war had been raging for a hundred years with no Avatar attempting to stop it, even as the Southern Water Tribe had been wiped out except for a few, lonely boats, and the Earth Kingdom fell, city after city, to the tanks and the komodo rhinos, fire eating across the land as if it was starving.
It was, Zuko supposed, entirely plausible that the Avatar had survived the attack on the Air Temples and frozen themself below the waves in a desperate bid for safety, especially if said Avatar was fifteen, give or take a century.
The thought was enough to make him shaky. He gripped the teacup tighter and took a tentative sip, the tangy water settling into his twisted stomach.
“What are you going to do about it?” Azula asked him, methodically setting her cup down, her fingers wrapped around it.
“The Avatar is the only person in this world with a chance of restoring peace,” Zuko responded.
“And?” Azula asked drily, one eyebrow lifting skeptically at him.
“Meaning she’s one of the only people who would be able to stop fa—the Fire Lord,” Zuko continued, catching his slip.
Azula paused and pursed her lips. “Where are you going with this, Zuzu?”
Zuko swallowed, carefully judging her reaction. She didn’t seem upset, or like she was going to burn him—at least not yet.
“I want to stop the war and father,” he said, as calmly as he could. “And you want to be the Fire Lord, don’t you?”
His sister smiled, her eyes glowing eerily electric blue in the reflection of the fire she had sent skipping across her half drunken tea. Zuko imagined, for a split second, the flames leaping up and burning away the rest of his face as punishment for uttering such a treacherous thing aloud.
Instead, Azula continued to smile as the flames died down. “I like this idea, Zuzu,” she said.
A gust of wind woke Zuko before Agni did, disturbing his sleep and sending him spiralling awake suddenly, panic a jackrabbit in his heart as he felt the beginnings of rays rise somewhere above the metal he was confined in.
He turned and found himself face to face with a frowning Air Nomad. She was sitting up, tugging at the three braids that spilled down her back from the ponytail she had put them in, with her back straight and her legs crossed in a way that reminded Zuko of Azula when she meditated.
“Who are you?” she asked. “And where am I?”
Azula stirred across from Zuko, yawning and sitting up. She rubbed at her eyes and then immediately looked more awake than Zuko had ever felt in his life, regarding the scene with a bright energy dancing across her face.
“We’re not going to hurt you,” Zuko said as cautiously as possible, but the girl was already looking around, clear dismay on her face.
“Where’s Moshi?!” she cried, rising with a light breeze, her feet barely skimming the ground.
“Your beast is outside,” Azula said.
“She’s a sky bison,” the airbender snapped back, anxiety clear in her face. “What did you do to her?”
Azula thought for a long, hard minute, and Zuko found himself holding his breath, sure his sister was about to strike this girl down for her impertinence, Avatar or not.
“ She’s outside,” Azula finally repeated. “We can go there, if you’d like.”
The girl paused uncertainly for a moment, then smiled widely and nodded. Zuko blinked. Never before had he met someone so seemingly impervious to his sister’s sharp edges, cutting smiles, and words with double meanings hidden in their folds.
He stood up, grabbing his dual dao swords from the wall they had been leading against and slung them across his back, just in case they came in necessary, then followed the airbender girl out the door, Azula leading the way with a smile as thin as his blades. Zuko had never been sure what she was thinking before, and certainly wasn’t able to now.
The crew they passed saluted them, but they were half hearted. Eyes tracked the girl in the middle, expressions of curiosity and suspicion warring across the former soldier’s faces. Zuko would not say that he trusted his crew; they, he knew, liked it better when he wasn’t around, and he had taken their turned backs as the best thing he would get. The least he could do was let them do their job. However, the absence of a personal connection left much to be desired, one of those things being the fact of how trustworthy they were, exactly.
Not that they knew the girl in front of Zuko was possibly the Avatar, but everyone in the Fire Nation had gone to history class and been forced to memorize the textbooks that displayed the defeat of the Air Nomads, depicting their clothing and appearances quite clearly.
The door to the deck slid open and Zuko was affronted by a cold breeze that only grew sharper as he graced the top of the steps and slid out onto the metal, which had begun to ice over due to the water that had rushed over the night before. The storm had cleared out the sky: it was a deep, azure blue above them, devoid of any clouds, the sun burning a bright and distant white.
Azula burned a walkable path across the deck as she walked, though the airbender skimmed so lightly and agily over it that Zuko doubted it had much of a benefit for her. She didn’t look concerned at all, especially when she vaulted over the side of the ship and landed in front of her awoken sky bison with a cry of joy and relief.
Zuko watched in odd fascination as the creature rolled over and licked her, which seemed to delight the airbender, who flung her arms across the animal as best as she could, barely wide enough to span the length of its nose.
In front of him, Azula stepped off the ship, and Zuko followed, tentatively testing the frozen earth beneath him. It held, though his foot sunk into the snow several inches deep. They weren’t dressed for the weather of the Poles, their clothing thin, but it was not as if Water Tribe clothes were something that could be easily purchased. Not when the Southern Water Tribe had been destroyed in every place it could be found, and the Northern Water Tribe had long since isolated itself and closed their borders.
Cowardly , Zuko thought, to hide from a war that would not end until the Northern Water Tribe had given itself up and fallen to the flame that swept across land and sea alike.
He shivered, crossing his arms against his chest and tried not to be bitter at the fact that Azula hardly looked perturbed at the cold.
“This is my sky bison,” the girl said, turning to watch them approach. “Her name is Moshi. And I’m Ty Lee.”
“That’s not very Air Nomadic,” Azula observed, her eyes narrowing into dark slits.
“You run out of names easily when you have seven daughters at the same time,” Ty Lee chirped, but the smile slid off her face as she looked around, seeming to finally realize where she was. “...Where are we?” she asked.
“Southern Pole,” Zuko said flatly.
Ty Lee—it was really uncanny, to hear such a Fire Nation name belong to a girl who was as far from Fire Nation as one could be—blinked, her sunny smile wavering. “I suppose,” she said, in a near whisper. “That I traveled further than I thought.”
“A lot further, if Zuzu’s prediction is right,” Azula chimed in.
“Zuzu…?” Ty Lee questioned, and Zuko sighed, stepping forward and giving her a short bow.
“I’m Zuko,” he said. “And this is my younger sister, Azula.”
“Princess Azula,” his sister corrected. “And Prince Zuko.”
Ty Lee’s eyes brightened, missing the small flinch Zuko gave at his sister’s usage of his burned away title. “Fire Nation royalty?” she asked, gasping, then frowned. “But...Fire Lord Sozin has no children.”
Zuko’s stomach plummeted to his knees. He swallowed against his dry throat. “Fire Lord Ozai rules now,” he managed to get out. “Fire Lord Sozin...died almost a century ago.”
Ty Lee laughed, as if she thought he was joking. “Don’t be silly,” she said. “I can’t have been gone that long.”
Azula’s eyes narrowed. “And how long, exactly, do you think you were gone?”
Ty Lee thought about it. “Only a few days,” she decided. “I was flying on Moshi, but we got caught in a storm, and the last thing I remember is...is drowning.” Her expression shuttered, for a brief moment, and she looked down at her hands, turning them over to stare at the blue arrows.
“You were in an iceberg,” Zuko said. “When we found you.”
“Ah,” she said. “I...think I recall that.” She was still looking at her hands.
“And you’re an airbender,” Zuko continued, treading carefully over his words. “When the Air Nomads are all dead.”
Ty Lee’s hands fell to her side and Zuko froze, but when she looked up, the smile was still on her face. “What are you talking about?” she asked, and her voice was so sweet that it grated on his nerves.
“What Zuzu’s trying to say nicely is that the genocide of the Air Nomads happened a century ago. None of them survived. Meaning you’ve been in your iceberg for a hundred years. Is it getting through to you yet?”
Ty Lee turned her head to Azula uncertainly. “That’s…” she started, her words failing. “That’s a lie, isn’t it?” She sounded very small, and Zuko wished they had said it in a better way, but how did one sugarcoat the genocide of another one’s people?
Azula only smirked, so Ty Lee’s eyes traveled to Zuko. They were dark brown and glistening with unshed tears. Zuko shifted uncomfortably.
“If there are any airbenders left,” he finally said. “They would have to be very good at hiding.” He didn’t tell her about the skeletons he had burned when he was thirteen, or the ones he hadn’t been able to get through before Lieutenant Jee had come up to him and told him they were running low on rations. He didn’t tell her of the crumbling spires or the burn marks that scorched the beautiful mosaics that had sprawled across the tiled floors in colors so bright and lovely that they had nearly made Zuko cry when he had first laid his eyes on them.
Ty Lee slowly sank to her knees, one hand twisting into Moshi’s fur behind her. The sky bison gave a low bellow, kneeling behind her owner, and nudging Ty Lee with her nose. She stared blankly at the ground, her other hand digging into the snow, cold granulated crystals of it melting over her knuckles.
“I…” she started, but the words stuttered out as quickly as an extinguished flame. “I—” She drew in a shaky breath, and Zuko waited with bated breath, sure that she was either going to dissolve into tears or attack them.
Ty Lee did none of those. Instead she sat for several minutes, letting the silence stretch, and then she inhaled again and looked up.
“I’m sure,” she said, a stubborn set to her mouth. “Not all of them are dead.”
Zuko’s heart sank lower. Azula laughed, a sharp peal that split the sky. “You can dream,” she said, and Zuko did not know if his sister meant to be so cruel, or if she thought she was being kind.
“My people ,” Ty Lee said, her mouth trembling. “Would not just die like that.” She rose to her feet, a staff in her hand that somehow had slipped Zuko’s notice before. It must have come from the saddle on Moshi’s back, he supposed, as that was the only logical source she could have procured it from.
“Air Nomads are disgusting pacifists,” Azula retorted. “They never were and never will be able to stand against the Fire Nation and survive.”
Privately, Zuko thought that it was kind of important that the one in front of them did, in fact, stand up to the Fire Nation and survive, but he did not want to get between his sister and her potential blue flames.
“My people are not pacifists,” Ty Lee said, sticking her chin out, hiding the wobble of her lip. “We live in harmony in nature, in coexistence with the people. Why do you think we’re the only people where every one of us is born a bender?” She was flushed, and Zuko didn’t think it was because of the biting cold. “Do not disrespect my people like that, when the rest of the world are the barbarians.”
Zuko secretly agreed with that: the Fire Nation was razing the earth as they claimed it, the Earth Kingdom either lived in willful ignorance or poverty, much like the regular citizens of the Fire Nation, the Southern Water Tribe was nothing but ashes for trying to stop it, and the Northern Water Tribe had done the equivalent of turning its back on the world, and especially on its sister tribes in the South.
“So you do have a spine,” Azula said, her eyes sharp and calculating. She paused and seemed to think, which was never a good thing when it came to Zuko’s younger sister.
“Are you the Avatar?”
Ty Lee gasped. “How did you know that?” she asked, her voice dropping to a whisper, and Zuko held back a laugh at the look on her face.
“Why do you think all the Air Nomads were murdered, Ty Lee ?” Azula spat. “Great grandfather Sozin wanted to kill you .”
Ty Lee shrank back, then seemed to remember who she was. She straightened, tapping her staff into the snow. “And what if I am the Avatar?” she asked, putting a valiant effort into hiding the tremble of her voice and hands. Zuko wasn’t sure if the tremble was because she was still shocked after hearing about the genocide of the Air Nomads, or because she had realized just how dangerous of a situation she was currently in.
“If you are the Avatar,” Azula said. “Then Zuzu here wants to take down our father with you.”
Zuko did not appreciate being thrown under the bus, as Ty Lee turned her attention back to him as if seeing him for the first time. She blinked, the unshed tears still shining in her eyes.
“I’m not ready to save the world,” she finally said, her voice so soft it would have gone unheard, if they weren’t on a sheet of ice where everything echoed and the air was so still it seemed to not exist at all, as if it was waiting for sound to break it apart. Zuko appreciated that, despite what looked to be her stubborn optimism in the face of everything, she had a good memory.
Azula rolled her eyes in his peripheral vision. “No one ever is,” she said, her tone mocking. Zuko knew his sister personally didn’t care about the outcome of the world, but she cared about the crown, which Zuko decidedly didn’t, and if they both got what they wanted, then what was the issue?
Ty Lee looked at her feet, twirling her staff. At first, the motion made Zuko reach for his blades, but he paused when he realized she wasn’t beginning to airbend or intending to strike, but rather shifting the staff around almost absentmindedly, as if it was an old habit to occupy her hands.
“I’m serious,” she finally said, in a small voice. “The day I ran away was the day they announced I was the Avatar.” She blinked, tears glistening on her cheeks where they had silently fallen. She drew in a shuddering breath. “And I...I didn’t want to leave home, or even my annoying sisters. I wasn’t even that serious about airbending. All I wanted to do was-was live peacefully.” She sniffled. “I mean...I always wanted to be different , to be special , because who doesn’t when six other people have the exact same face as you? But being the Avatar...that was too special for me. So I ran away.” Her eyes were fixated on her feet, but Zuko could see the tears finally falling, splashing onto the ground and quickly joining the snow.
Azula sniffed. “So you only know airbending, big deal. The point of being the Avatar is that you have to learn the other three elements as well.” She sighed. “It’s a shame that the Fire Nation will probably kill you before that.”
Ty Lee looked at her in alarm. “Me?” she repeated, voice scratchy.
Azula nodded, her smile curving around her lips, the color of blood red. “Zuko here was banished and sent on a quest to capture the Avatar and gain father’s favor and his honor again.”
The airbender turned to Zuko, her eyes darkening, and suddenly she wasn’t absently spinning the staff anymore, but holding it out in front of her as if it really was a weapon. “Then what’s stopping you?” she asked. “Is this a ploy to trick me into trusting you?”
Zuko snorted. “At least you’re not as naive as you look,” he admitted grudgingly. “Did you miss the whole part where Azula told you that I wanted to take down our father?”
“Your father...the Fire Lord,” Ty Lee stated, haltingly. She frowned, her brow furrowing. “You want to kill your father?”
“Wouldn’t that be a dream,” Azula muttered, off to the side.
“The world has been at war for a century,” Zuko said. “It started with the massacre of the Air Nomads, but it didn’t stop there, even if the Avatar disappeared. Do you see that hill over there? The Southern Water Tribe used to be there, but now it’s nothing but ruins. They’ve been slaughtered too. The Earth Kingdom is being razed to the ground, and it’s only gotten worse since my father took the throne six years ago. He doesn’t want power; he wants world domination, even if he has to burn it to the ground to get it. Children are being sent to war and dying there. People are starving. Famine has been sweeping the land for the past three years. The war needs to end before my father breaks down Ba Sing Se’s wall for good, because if that happens, then there’s nothing left, and the world will burn.”
Ty Lee was frozen. Zuko wasn’t sure what life had been like a hundred years ago, but he was sure it had been a lot more fun and games than the current state of things.
“So…” she said, taking in a deep, meditative breath and closing her eyes. “You want to kill the Fire Lord, who happens to be your father, and end the war. You need me to help you do that, since I am the Avatar and all that. And to help you do that, I need to learn the other three elements.” She opened her eyes; they flashed silver for a brief moment, disorienting Zuko. “Is that right?”
“She catches on fast,” Azula said, voice filled with satisfaction.
“But who...who can I even learn from?” Ty Lee asked, her voice cracking. “Doesn’t the Fire Nation want me dead? Who’s to say they won’t be after us?” She looked at their red and gold clothes.
“We likely won’t be able to keep it a secret for long,” Zuko admitted. “But we can try. Plus, you’ll have us on your side.”
Ty Lee’s gaze slid to his swords. “And what does that mean?” she asked, cautiously shifting feet into a less defensive state.
Azula promptly lit her arm on fire, blue flame streaking up it. Ty Lee gasped, but stopped when she realized that, while Azula’s arm was on fire, her clothes weren’t burning. “You’re a firebender!” she exclaimed, leaning in closer. “But I’ve never seen blue flames before. How did that happen?”
Azula shrugged, but Zuko saw a smile tug at her lips at the pure awe on Ty Lee’s face. “Sheer power of will,” she answered. “My flames are hotter than even my father’s.”
His sister would have been the perfect heir, Zuko supposed. He had always been a failure, but his sister had been better, had ended up burning all her firebending masters permanently so that they could suffer the humiliation of losing to a ten year old. Had sat in while their father had tortured people and later rubbed it in Zuko’s face. She was a brutal machine oiled and shined for war, a tank that ran over people without a care for who they were.
When Zuko thought about how his sister had been raised and how she had been shaped for too long, it made him want to throw up. She was his baby sister, and she might have been born already cold and cruel, but their father had been doing his damn best to transform her into a monster fitting of being crowned, and Zuko hated it. He was infinitely glad that Azula had joined him, even if it had been under the guise of ‘defeating people from around the world’. Zuko might not know her true intentions, though he had a suspicion, but he knew that even a year away from their father would do her good.
For him it had been three, and the effects still lingered, clinging to his soul and refusing to leave. They burned him all over again when Lieutenant Jee let some of his frustration show, or one of the crew yelled sharply, or when someone appeared on his left side. It waited there, waiting for someone to show him that, yes, pain and violence was his birthright and punishment and suffering were mantras he should live by. Everytime that failed to happen, his chains only clenched tighter in a sick game of waiting for the other shoe to drop.
“Someone’s coming,” Ty Lee said, suddenly. She pointed, and Zuko spun lightly on his feet, already prepared to draw his swords and attack whoever it was, but she had seen a ship, not a person. It was a Fire Nation warship, cresting around the edge of a wall of ice, too far away to see them, but getting closer every minute.
Zuko cursed, releasing his swords. “It’s Zhao,” he said, and Azula let out a short sigh. When he looked at her, he saw her holding blue flame daggers in her hands, stance shifting. He wanted to say they shouldn’t act confrontational, but the only way to force Zhao to move on was to beat him.
Zuko was glad, for once, that he had a sister on his side.
He turned to Ty Lee. “Take your sky bison and hide behind the hill,” he ordered. “If Zhao sees you, it’s likely all three of us will be dead.”
“Why?” Ty Lee asked, already opening her staff. It was a glider, Zuko realized, a light blue one that would easily blend into the sky.
“Zhao’s been searching for his glory for years,” Zuko explained. “And he thinks he can find it by antagonizing me and shoving in my face how I still haven’t the Avatar. If he catches wind that I’ve been successful, he’ll try to take you for himself. You don’t want that, Ty Lee.” She opened his mouth, but the look in his eyes must have told her something, because she only gave a sharp nod and nudged Moshi, then slid into the air as easily as taking a step up.
Zuko watched her fly away on her glider, keeping low to the ground. Azula melted the snow around Moshi’s track, concealing them. Ty Lee dipped below the hill and disappeared. It was as if the Avatar had never been there in the first place.
“I could use a good fight,” Azula said, her eyes gleaming with the excitement that came from hurting others. “Are you ready, Zuzu?”
Zuko touched his dual dao swords one more time, a reassurance that he could defend himself, one he had been doing for years. “I’m ready,” he replied, grimly.
They turned to face the warship.
Captain Zhao was a man the age of Zuko’s father, and acted in a way that only served to remind Zuko further of Ozai. He walked and talked with a brash arrogance that Zuko has gotten rid of from his own body after he had pleaded his father for mercy and was met with a flaming lesson instead. Zuko found him to be a sad excuse for a man, but he couldn’t ignore the fact that Zhao knew the best way to get under someone’s skin, and he had been practicing getting under Zuko’s for three years now.
They met on the deck of the Wani, Ty Lee and her sky bison successfully out of sight, if the lack of words about the Avatar from Zhao’s mouth were anything to go by. If he’d known they’d found the Avatar, and that she was only a hill away, he would have been sure to attack them.
“I’m commandeering your ship and conscripting your crew,” was what Zhao started with.
Zuko laughed before he could stop himself at the sheer audacity. “On what premise?” he asked.
Zhao looked at him stiffly, an ugly sneer stretched across his lips. “My own,” he hissed. “The Fire Lord has graciously appointed me an Admiral, and gifted me with the task of laying siege to the Northern Water Tribe.”
Zuko lost his breath, only for a moment. Then he swallowed and forced himself not to choke when he inhaled again. “The Northern Water Tribe?” he echoed, as indifferently as possible.
“Fire Lord Ozai grows tired of waiting for them to surrender.” Zhao’s smile curled around his lips uglily—Zuko did not have to guess who had been whispering in his father’s ears. It would have been easy, the plant the thought of destruction in the path of a fire that longed to devour more so that it could grow, grow until it was larger than life.
“They’re a neutral party,” Zuko responded.
“Not for much longer,” Zhao said, wearing a savage imitation of his father’s smile. Zuko didn’t have the heart to tell him that he paled in every way to the power of the Fire Lord. No one could incite the same fury and fear as Ozai did, least of all Zhao.
“Do you have official orders?” Azula asked, stepping up to stand next to her brother, her arms crossed. The fire had been extinguished, but the threat of it still danced across her eyes and knuckles.
Zhao smirked, but did not say anything, which was telling.
“Then you have no right,” Zuko said, folding his hands into tight fists to prevent them from reaching treacherously for his dual dao swords. He wasn’t scared of Zhao; he couldn’t be.
The man was silent for a long, hard moment. Then the amicable smile he had been playing out fell away to reveal his usual sneer. “And who’s going to stop me?” he asked. “I’m sure the Fire Lord will be happy to hear that his son is actively hindering the war effort.” Zuko heard the undertone: if it was said like that, actively hindering quickly turned into outright treason.
Azula tensed next to him. Zuko was sure it went unnoticed to Zhao, but he had lived in a psychotic family for years, and he was well learned to notice the subtlest changes in mood and stance, ones that would prepare him to duck the moment before a blow fell.
“Then you plan to leave us stranded in a wasteland of ice, Admiral ?” she asked, raising an eyebrow.
Zhao’s smirk widened. Zuko thought that he didn’t know Zuko’s sister very well if he had missed the tight fury in her voice.
“I wouldn’t dream of it,” he said. “You two would be dropped off at the nearest port.”
The nearest port would be in Fire Nation waters, at a Fire Nation occupied island. A place where Zuko was sure to be arrested, bound, and dragged back to his father’s feet for breaking the rules of his banishment.
He glanced back at the rest of the crew, who were going about fixing parts of the ship that needed repairs, but could take time to fix, time that they now had. They were actively trying to look like they weren’t listening in, but Zuko knew their conversation had to be ringing across the deck, especially as Zhao was anything but subtle.
“You’re not taking my crew,” Zuko said, as stiffly and respectfully as possible. “My crew has been discharged from the military for years now. They’re no longer soldiers.”
“The Fire Lord has decreed that all discharged soldiers can be recalled into war if there is a need,” Zhao responded. “Decree 1567 of Fire Lord Ozai’s rule under the light of Agni.” Zuko stole a look at his sister; she wasn’t denying it, which meant it was true. He wished she could have mentioned it earlier, but Azula never did anything under obligation, ever.
When Zuko didn’t say anything, Zhao’s eyes narrowed and he said, “I’m taking your crew, Prince Zuko.”
“No,” Zuko said, the word slipping from his lips. “It’s my crew, and it’s my ship. If you really want to take them, you’ll have to go through me first.”
There was a cough. The engineer slipped away belowdecks, no doubt bringing news of what was occurring to the crew crouched by the entrance to the door. Zuko’s palms were sweaty. He wasn’t sure why he had done that. It wasn’t like he had a personal attachment to the crew, or even to the decrepit Wani, but it had still been his floating home for the last three years, and he knew that sending his crew along with Zhao was just as good as sentencing them to death.
“You’ve offended me,” Zhao said. “I challenge you to an Agni Kai.”
Zuko lost his breath. He knew it was a ploy to undermine him, knew Zhao had said it because he knew exactly how to get under Zuko’s skin, knew that one or another, Zhao would be leaving here with Zuko’s crew and Zuko’s ship.
Knew that Zuko couldn’t let him do that, not only because of his pride, but because it felt wrong .
“Anyone who wants to challenge Zuzu has to go through me first,” Azula said, sighing heavily, as if she hadn’t wanted to do this.
Surprisingly, Zhao didn’t have a sense of self preservation, or maybe he thought it would be more beneficial for him to give Ozai’s favored child a humiliating defeat. It was also highly unlikely, Zuko realized, that Zhao knew just how much of a talent Azula possessed. He had been at sea for many years; he would not have seen how hot Azula’s flames grew in the time he was gone.
It was likely that Admiral Zhao thought the skill of Ozai’s daughter was nothing more than a rumor.
“As long as Prince Zuko has no objections,” Zhao said snidely, cutting a glance at Zuko, as if he expected Zuko to take insult at his sister stepping in.
Zuko swallowed his pride like he had done countless times since his father had taken it away in a flare of molten flame, and stepped back. “If my sister wishes,” he said, against a dry throat. Azula spared him a glance, her lips twisted into her usual cruel smirk.
Since Azula was a girl—a woman, Zuko was sure his sister would argue if she ever caught someone referring to her as such—they forwent the usual rituals, only snapping bands of gold over their biceps as their breath frosted in the cold air. The distantly bright sun was starting to dip, wavering over the horizon line, and Zuko could tell from the twitch of Azula’s fingers that she had felt it: fire came from the sun, came from Agni, and he was sure she could feel it trailing away slowly, receding with the sunlit rays.
They bowed to one another. Turned their backs and took three paces away. Knelt. The crew had come up from belowdecks, filtering out slowly, all two dozen or so of them. Lieutenant Jee approached Zuko, bowed low, and said, “Your Highness?”
“My sister will battle Admiral Zhao in an Agni Kai,” Zuko said stiffly.
Lieutenant Jee’s voice dropped lower. “For the…” He didn’t say, the airbender, the girl, the Avatar, but his eyes drifted towards the snow banks anyways.
Zuko hissed sharply between his teeth. “For this ship,” he spat back, catching himself before his voice rose. Lieutenant Jee said nothing to that; he stepped back with a short bow and joined the rest of the crew opposite the rails where the Agni Kai would take place, where they would be safe from any wayward balls of fire.
Zuko flexed his fingers nervously over the hilts of his dual dao and exhaled, trying to calm his stammering heart. Azula would be fine: Zuko knew this, just as he knew Zhao would soon regret ever underestimating a girl, for ever thinking both of Ozai’s children had turned out as weak and cowardly as Zuko had.
Agni dipped beneath the horizon line. Azula and Zhao turned in unison to face each other, on their knees, and the Agni Kai began.
Azula struck first, a whorl of blue leaving her feet as she sprung back on her hands and flipped herself into a standing position. There was no mistaking that it was she who left the first mark, spat the first sparks; his sister left no room for doubt; she was as fast as a viper, striking with its poisonous fangs.
Zhao was startled by this, Zuko could tell, but it only hardened the lines of age on his face. His fire flared to life, a sickly orange, and then they were fighting. Zuko held his breath and watched—he wasn’t afraid of fire, even if it had taken him years of flinching away when one of the few firebenders on the crew casually lit one even remotely close to his face, and he knew Azula could take care of herself, but his heart still clenched in worry as he watched her small, lithe form against Zhao’s brute force.
In the end, it was hardly a match. Zhao fought hard, but Azula was relentless in a calm and collected way few had been able to achieve. She never tired. She never ran out of flame, even as Agni sunk lower and lower. Zhao kicked at her, hit her in the ribs, but she didn’t even flinch, instead slamming fire into his gut and sending him sprawling.
The Agni Kai ended with Zhao lying flat on his back, breathing heavily, Azula standing triumphant over him, except she didn’t look pleased; only a cool, cold smile tugged at her lips, as if he wasn’t even worth her pleasure. She hadn’t broken a sweat; Agni Kai’s were simply warm ups to someone of her prowess and mastery.
Lightning crackled on the deck between them as Azula drew the last few sparks into her fingers as if it was something akin to drinking water. The lightning disappeared; the sun slipped beneath the horizon line, the rays in the sky fading away into the cool gray dusk. The air was cold, the only heat available what was still radiating out from his sister.
“You will take your ship,” she said, calmly. “And leave the Southern Pole tonight. You will not bother or attempt to co-opt the Wani ever again.” Her eyes flared. “That’s an order from your Princess .”
Zhao opened his mouth, anger taut in his eyes. Zuko was sure he longed to scream at her, but Azula was not banished or exiled like her brother. She was here, on her own free will, and she still carried all the superiority, honor, and power she had in Caldera here.
“You’re not saying anything, Admiral,” his sister remarked, the last of the lightning filtering away. The blue illuminated her face in a flash, the edges carved out of fire itself.
“Of course, Princess Azula,” Zhao blustered, lowering his head. He was still laying on the deck, though he must be freezing. Or, on second thought, maybe not; Zuko was sure it was common for firebenders to regulate their body temperatures. His mind jumped fleetingly to Ty Lee; he recalled a tome on airbending he had read, stating that airbenders could do the same. He hoped it was true, and that the Avatar wasn’t slowly freezing herself and her sky bison alive again somewhere over the ridge.
Azula turned on her heel, a laugh on her lips, and Zhao moved, a flame dagger in his hand aimed for the back of her neck.
Zuko reacted, his hands that had already been resting on his blades pulling them out and swirling in an arc. One redirected the dagger, dissolving it with a clash of metal, and the other clanged down onto Zhao’s wristguard, the only thing really preventing it from cutting off his hand Zuko’s precise control over the most minimal movements. His dao swords were an extension of his body, of his breathing, of his arm; Zuko had grown up with them as much as Azula had with her firebending. It was an art; it was a skill.
And now he had nearly cut off the Admiral’s hand.
For a moment, they both stared at the blade, Azula turning around slowly, a strange look in her eyes. Zuko wasn’t sure if she was upset that Zhao had tried such a backhanded thing, or upset that Zuko hadn’t trusted her to take care of it herself.
“Just because I have no honor, doesn’t mean you can sacrifice yours, especially when it comes to my sister,” Zuko said, his words a slow growl. He sheathed the dual dao blades slowly and deliberately, his eyes never leaving Zhao’s. The Admiral looked a bit shaky, the neat cut through his wrist guard smoking from the clean force Zuko had used, blood bubbling from the thin slash.
“Now get off my ship ,” Zuko said, anger cutting into the words, and Zhao’s face contorted into fury. Zuko was sure he was going to attack them—and a part of Zuko was ready for it, filled with a strange and savage delight at the thought of finally battling someone, because of how alive it would make him feel.
Zhao let his fist fall, the wristguard slipping off. One of his soldier’s scurried up behind him, picking it up and taking the gold bands. Zhao nearly slapped him away. “Come on,” he growled, to the low form bent in a perpetual bow behind him. “We have the savages and their spirits to destroy.”
Zuko watched him go, the words sinking in slowly. “Spirits?” he said, aloud, and Azula gave a short laugh.
“He’s a moron,” she said, slowly. “If he thinks he can destroy the waterbenders treasured moon spirits , or whatever.”
Zhao was a moron, but Zuko was sure that he was completely serious about destroying the Northern Water Tribe’s spirits. How that would be possible, Zuko had no idea, but Zhao also being able to seamlessly cut off Zuko at every route, even when they weren’t remotely near one another, should have been impossible too, and he had done it anyway.
They watched Zhao’s ship turn tail and retreat, disappearing from view, but waited until even the smoke was gone to traipse back across the ice to where Ty Lee was. When Zuko reached the climax of the hill, he looked down to see the ground scattered with snow angels, Ty Lee leaning against Moshi with her eyes fixated on the rapidly darkening sky.
Azula blew out a stream of fire, lighting up the ground and alerting the spaced out airbender to their presence. She jumped to her feet immediately, gliding up on a sweet of air. Behind her, the sky bison lumbered to her feet.
“What happened?” she asked, her eyes wide. They dimly reflected the moon that rose behind the siblings, making it look like her orbs were glowing silver once again, except this time the pale light only encompassed a fraction of her pupils.
“Zhao,” Azula said, looking and sounding very bored. “An insufferable man.” She glanced at Ty Lee’s worried face. “Don’t worry, I didn’t murder him or anything, though I wish I could.” She snorted.
Zuko sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, letting out a breath. The snow was seeping through his clothes and into his bones. He couldn’t hold back a body wide shiver, though he regretted it—even in her thin, summer style clothing, Ty Lee didn’t look cold at all.
His sister shifted, and a moment later Zuko was surprised to feel heat radiating faintly across his body from her distance to him. He didn’t risk moving closer, sure that she would move away if she noticed. He couldn’t even tell if the shift was intentional at first; it was always hardest to tell, with Azula.
“Zhao plans to attack the Northern Water Tribe and officially conquer them under order from the Fire Lord,” Zuko started.
“Do I...do I have to stop him?” Ty Lee asked nervously. Her grip on her staff was tight, one of her fingers tapping anxiously across it.
Zuko exhaled. “The Southern Water Tribe is dead,” he said. “Therefore, the only bet you have at finding a waterbender to teach you is the Northern Water Tribe. Therefore , our best bet is to beat Zhao to the Northern Pole and find you a teacher before he blows it to pieces.”
Saving the Northern Water Tribe wasn’t on Zuko’s to do list. One act of treason was enough; two was a death sentence twice over. He was sure his sister would be with him, even if he didn’t like it. They couldn’t save everyone in the process of saving the world, right? It was too soon.
Ty Lee let out a breath, the wind gusting over them with a little bit of airbending whumph in it. She stared at her staff, drawing in several long meditative airbending breathes. Zuko watched her chest rise and fall curiously, noting the balance and control she had. He had thought she was still slightly volatile, if her bouncy nature and passive bending was anything to go by, but he was beginning to form an understanding that, even if Ty Lee wasn’t amazingly talented at airbending, or even carrying a beginner’s knowledge of the other three elements, she was still the Avatar, and that meant bending was as natural to her as breathing.
She opened her eyes, the air around her stilling. “Alright,” she said, softly, lifting her chin as if she had accepted the burden as easily as that. “I’ll start with waterbending, then. That sounds like a good plan.”
Azula laughed. “You’re not starting with waterbending,” she interjected.
Ty Lee looked at her in confusion. “But we’re going to the Northern Water Tribe,” she stated.
Azula’s hand illuminated the darkness around them as the blue fire flared to light. Ty Lee startled back, the moon in her eyes overtaken by the electric color of Azula’s inner flame. “Did you forget I’m a firebender?” she asked. “You’re learning fire first, Agni help me.” And Tui and La be damned, Zuko heard, but Azula was smart enough to not utter that aloud when they were feet from the ruins of a La blessed tribe.
Ty Lee was still focused on the flame, and Zuko wondered if she was remembering what they had told her, of how the Fire Nation and firebenders had destroyed her temples and her people.
“Let’s do it,” she said, and her voice was firm, determination set in her jaw, her mouth, her eyes, her hands.
Zuko nodded, once, in affirmation, and she floated to her feet with a sweep of her staff—her glider, Zuko reminded himself.
“We should start tonight, then,” the airbender said. “I don’t know exactly how much the world has changed in-in a, a century, but I do know that traveling to the other side of the world takes time.” She patted her sky bison, which had finally trundled up behind her. “Moshi can take us. She’s a renowned distance flier.”
Zuko eyed the sky bison, Azula doing the same. It wasn’t ideal, especially considering the fact he had grown used to traveling by sea, due to the fact that he had been doing so for three years. He was sure it wouldn’t be too different. The rocking of the waves could equate to the rocking of an animal soaring through turbulence, couldn’t it?
Azula sighed. “If there's no better option than riding that filthy beast,” she said.
“Moshi is beautiful ,” Ty Lee said, and Zuko was reminded that, even if she had been frozen in an iceberg for a century, Ty Lee was still mentally fifteen years old.
He wasn’t looking forward to this. Hopefully treason would be worth it.
They departed in the morning, when Agni had just started to grace the sky with his light. Zuko stood on the deck in front of Lieutenant Jee, fiddling with the strap of his dao swords, the older man’s arms crossed and a frown on his face.
“From this moment on,” Zuko said. “I hereby free you from your contract to the Wani. The Wani is yours, and you and your crew are free to do and travel as you please.” He coughed, feeling awkwardness rise in his throat.
“Where are you going, Your Highness?” Jee asked, looking remarkably clear eyed as he took in the sky bison and the girl floating around it on the deck behind him. It was not a secret, and Zuko had never intended to keep one from his crew.
“It’s best if you don’t know,” he said, finally. “I won’t ask you to keep any...secrets...from my father, Lieutenant.” He drew in a deep breath, aware that, in a few days, his death sentence was surely to be signed, and a bounty would be posted on his head, wanted dead or alive.
“Prince Zuko,” Lieutenant Jee said to him. “That girl is the Avatar.”
Zuko looked at him, then nodded. Only once. There was no point denying it if Jee had already made the connection, and there was not many connections one could make. Besides, he respected the Lieutenant enough, though he still wondered why Jee had asked. If Zuko was like his father, or even his sister, he would have drawn his swords and slain the Lieutenant where he stood.
“I won’t stop you,” Jee said, stepping back, his hands folded professionally in front of him as he lowered into a ninety degree bow. “May Agni guide you.”
Zuko coughed, his throat hoarse. “And you,” he whispered roughly, bowing back, much lower than a member of the royal family should to a mere naval officer.
Zuko turned and retreated to the sky bison, accepting a hand up from an airbending Ty Lee. He settled into the saddle, his sister already leaning back and concentrating on her bending, as if it was a normal morning.
Ty Lee floated to the front of the bison, taking the reins. “Yip yip!” she cried, and Zuko gripped the edge of the saddle as Moshi gave a flick of her tail and ascended. He leaned over the side, tentatively, and watched the Wani become nothing as they hit the cloud cover.
Then the Wani was gone, as were all hopes Zuko ever had of regaining his place as his father’s heir and honor, thrown away in favor of a century old dream and a flickering hope of a world where fire did not burn it to the ground.