Work Text:
"Okay but seriously, are we sure this is safe?" Sokka asked, poking at the mushroomy lump of hek-te Aang had unearthed from a jar in the Western Air Temple's storerooms. "It's been molding for like… a billion years."
It looked a sickened tree lump and smelled like old foot. Potentially old Air Monk foot, which might explain Aang's nostalgia. It did not explain the determination to host the 'friendship bonding tea night' Aang promised he'd been missing the entire time he was frozen in an iceberg.
(Sokka would call that manipulative, but he had to admit that if he were frozen solid for a hundred years, he might also be very nostalgic for a hot beverage, even one that tasted like foot.)
He could hear the bouncy airbender clanging around in the temple kitchen trying to find an intact kettle. Their window of escape was rapidly dwindling.
Their window to throwing the old fungus OUT the window (and off the very steep cliffs, never to be seen or smelled again) remained promising.
"Fermenting, Sokka," his sister huffed. "And Aang said the monks used to keep their jars completely air-tight. For their very special, mind-clearing tea." She narrowed her eyes. "He's very excited to share his culture with us, Sokka."
Her tone implied that there would be dire consequences if Sokka was not also very excited.
"I'M excited to drink 100 year old mold!" Toph called out, gleeful as a chuckling hyena-viper. "It smells super gross!"
Considering how the young earthbender often smelled after a training session, Sokka wasn't sure she had any room to be pointing, well, toes.
(At this point, none of them smelled particularly amazing after a workout, except Zuko, who had probably brought his prissy palace soaps with him on his escape from the Fire Nation. Nothing else could explain how consistently he smelled like sweat-but-not-funk. Maybe a hint of cinnamon. Never failed to make Sokka hungry for like.... a salted pie or something.)
Sighing, Sokka turned to his last chance of salvation, his one -ugh- remaining hope.
"Prince Ponytail, please tell these lunatics we're not drinking hundred year old mold!" He chose to ignore that the awful ponytail had disappeared, replaced with a shaggy mess that had no business looking as soft and fluffy as it did.
Prince Ponytail would always have an awful ponytail in Sokka's heart.
Zuko continued sharpening his swords by the fire, quiet as he'd been since… well, since he'd arrived all bristly and awkward-apologetic and 'Let me join your Gaang, I need to redeem my honour' two weeks ago.
The firelight played against the harsh planes of his face, softening his expression until Sokka could almost fool himself the other teen was smiling.
Utterly deadpan, Zuko replied, "I am very excited to share the cultural traditions of the Air Nomads."
Sokka threw up his hands in disgust. "Great! But if we all get poisoned and die, I'm gonna kill us."
---
Zuko is six years old and touch feels like fire. His father's hands are ember-warm when they pluck him from the ocean and carry him, coughing, back to shore. His mother's arms are warm like candlelight when she wraps them around him.
Lala's hands are warm when she pats them against his hands, when she swipes them at the back of his head, batting at his topknot like a pygmy-puma kit. Her voice and her movements are like the sparks thrown off a hearth-fire with an earth-shattering pop.
---
Hey, Ponytail--
---
In every way she is the precious baby whose chubby cheeks he used to kiss goodnight. In every way she is the unrepentant brat who twisted the heads off of his Love Among the Dragons figurines and heaped them at the foot of his bed.
---
Somehow, Sokka was never going to forget the look of befuddled pain on Zuko's face when he saw Aang attempt to add the entire brick of hek-te to the kettle before it finished boiling.
"That's-- the portions aren't-- and the water temperature needs to be--" For someone who regularly called tea 'hot leaf water', Zuko seemed utterly distressed by the way Aang was preparing theirs.
Katara lifted her chin at him from across the fire. "Hey! This is Aang's tea. He knows how to prepare it best, so--"
Sokka watched his sister pull a thread of water from her pouch and use it to draw a threatening line across her throat. Zuko gulped, but continued watching Aang flit around the fire. The lump of hek-te bobbed in the kettle, dissolving slowly with a pungent odor.
For a moment, Sokka was utterly sure that he saw tears starting in Zuko's eyes.
"A h-hundred year old Air Nomad tea… boiled like a stew…" Zuko murmured, almost too soft to hear. "U-uncle would cry."
And just like that, Sokka's last shred of hope in the Out-the-window maneuver died a slow, pitiful death.
---
Zuko is eleven years old and touch feels like f i r e.
His tutors drill him until his muscles tremble and burn from rote-repeating forms his sister mastered years before. When Azula catches him anywhere near her lessons, she 'misses' in his direction, and he has to soothe the prickling ache her perfect aim leaves him before he can sleep.
His father grips his shoulders too tight when they visit Grandfa-- Firelord Azulon. His mother smoothes her fingers candle-soft across his forehead when they attend Lu-Ten's funeral, and the ember of admiration he held for his cousin turns to cold ash in his chest.
---
Can you hear me? Ponytail-- Prince--
---
The fires in the throne room flare high when he and Azula listen behind a tapestry. He runs before he can hear the ultimatum. Azula lies like she breathes, she lies like groundfire lurks under ash, waiting to catch a spark. Azula always lies, unless the truth hurts worse.
His mother hugs him, kerosene-desperate. Then she leaves.
His father's flames flare in the throne room, hungry and blindingly bright.
Zuko has never felt so cold.
---
The tea was somehow even worse brewed than it smelled dry, Zuko thought. He was mostly sure he managed to say it soft enough that Toph was the only one to hear it. The blind earthbender had apparently decided to poke her tongue out and stick it into her cup to test for…. Doneness? Flavor? Whatever it was, it must have passed the Toph meter of satisfaction from the grin that curled over that tiny face.
She cradled the cup like a noblewoman born and began slurping loudly. Zuko had to disguise his snort of laughter at the pained grimace Katara made in response.
It was still not as great as the face when Katara took her first sip of (over-steeped, over-portioned, potentially actually moldy) hek-te and had to -- he thinks?-- actually force herself to bend it down her own throat instead of spitting it out.
On the bright side, he was fairly sure that the boiling had killed any remaining.... live... mold. Probably. Given that it had been boiling into a roiling sludge for, oh, the past half hour.
No tea boy worth his lumps would have allowed this to happen to such a valuable find. Somehow, watching the travesty being performed in their only clean teapot made Zuko actively wish he could join his uncle in jail rather than be party to... all of this.
Sokka, he was fairly sure, had actually poured his entire beverage back into the pot, utterly untasted, and was now pretending to sip an empty mug.
Aang sat wide-eyed and humming dazedly in what might, actually, just be a normal level of meditative daydreaming for him.
Zuko shrugged, bent a little more heat into his palms, and braced him to drink his entire cup of 100-year-old Air Nomad hek-te. For Uncle, who would expect no less from him.
From there, the night whirls and fractures
into
flames.
---
There is a secret every Fire Nation citizen knows and it is seared on his face.
(Trained firebenders can control the heat of their blows. Imperially trained firebenders are precise in the application of force to a matter of centimeters.
Firebending masters of the imperial family never leave a scar they do not intend.)
---
Zuko. Shh, shhh…
Tui and La, what the absolute fuck.
---
Zuko is thirteen years old and touch feels like f i r e .
No matter where it lands, he burns.
There are two truths he holds bitter to his chest:
His father wants him to return home, triumphant, with the Avatar. He wants this because he loves Zuko, his oldest child, despite how often he is a disappointment. He does this despite Zuko's many failings.
His father wants him to be in pain. Zuko must learn respect and suffering will be his teacher.
Zuko is fourteen and spends the weeks leading to his birthday feverish and half-blind on a ship with an entirely unknown crew, a poorly-supplied Navy medic, and his uncle. The sweat of his fever boils through his skin. He wakes up coughing up bitter bile and fever-tea when he doesn't jerk himself awake screaming.
The hardest thing is not re-learning how to walk. Nor is it compensating for his dulled hearing, the eye that will not open correctly or see distinct shapes. It is not his reflection in the mirror, the travesty wrought on the hair his mother loved, or the weight he cannot quite manage to gain back despite months at sea.
It is not even the firebending practice, which is at least a familiar flavor of nightmare. He may not enjoy it and he may never find peace in his bending the way Uncle asked him to do... but not even fire burns as badly as touch does to his over-sensitive nerves.
The hardest thing is that he lives on a confining metal vessel of military-trained, firebending adults and even the slightest whisper of their presence against his skin makes him lose breath control for hours.
Uncle's warm hugs used to feel as freeing as sunlight. He wishes he could bear the way they ache now.
His flesh seizes like lightning-tremors. His hands shake when they are not clenched into fists. His voice quavers when it does not shout.
Touch feels like fire, and Zuko knows how much damage both can do.
---
Zuko is sixteen years old and he counts every time one of his new… friends? Allies?... brushes past.
Toph punches him in the arm, lines her still-tender feet next to his legs when they sit for dinner, butts her head against his back when he walks too slowly for her liking. Her rough hands feel like coals against his skin, steady warmth.
She seems as likely to mould him new tiny figurines of the Blind Bandit as she is to drag trussed-up Fire Nation commanders and leave them at the foot of his bed, and there's something very comforting about her viper-hyena grins.
---
Zuko. Come on, guy. Can you look at me?
---
Aang flits past him like flickering flame. Their sparring feels like tinder at the edge of catching light.
In every way he is the spirit of their world, vast and unknowable. In every way he is the 12-year-old who set Zuko's own room on fire and blew him into a wall when they first met while apologizing.
Sokka's hands brush against his when they reach for food, for Appa's brush during grooming time, for fishing poles to catch dinner. The casual, incidental touches feel like branches settling into place, tumbling towards warmth as fire eats through their veins.
Somehow, Sokka always seems to be reaching out -- to the world around him, to their scattered support, to Zuko himself.
Somehow, Zuko finds he reaches back.
Sokka does not touch him often.
His sister does not touch Zuko at all.
She once whispered that she could have the moon drag him out to ocean where no one would ever find his bloated corpse... and despite the crippling flashbacks he had to wrestle with that night, that was a brand of little sister-speak he respected immensely.
---
I can't tell if you're responding-- you keep shivering so… just don't kill me for this, Ponytail.
---
Zuko is sixteen years old and (unintentionally) utterly tea-ed out of his mind. His eyes are filled with flames. He cannot tell if they are hearth or wildfire. He cannot tell if he is burning or shivering.
He keeps asking if touch should feel like fire. He keeps asking if it should feel like lightning. Azula may only know touch that feels like lightning, and the thought of it brings bile to his rasping throat. He has lost breath control, if he ever had it. Does she know it can feel like hearthfire, like candlelight, like sun? Can she remember their hands, grappling together over Love Among the Dragons figurines? Can she remember it didn't always hurt?
Does she even know she's left scars on him now? Lala always prided herself on the fact that she never did-- she believed there were two kinds of targets, the kind you let run and the kind you didn't.
(The kind you did would be intimidated but not disfigured. The kind you didn't would never heal enough to form scars in the first place. Sometimes, Zuko does not understand why people think Lala is less merciful than Father. She may not intend kindness, but her cruelty is calculated.
Calculated cruelty may very well be the only comfort Lala knows how to give, he whispers.)
"Shhh, Shhh.."
His hands are gripped in warm hands.
The side of his face that has known fire is curved into a warm shoulder.
His body is curved against a warm body.
He is shaking, but not with cold.
He is not the only one shaking, clutching, holding tight, holding together.
"Buddy, shhh, shhh, you're okay, you're alright," murmured against his good ear. Voice as sure as morning tide.
Hoarse like it's been … hours of this.
Zuko's sixteen and he can't quite feel if all of his limbs are in the right place…. Or... quite... how many he has. Something feels weirdly floaty, like his legs might be on backwards or bending behind his ears. Everything feels rubbery, overstrained, except for his mouth, which has registered a single opinion he can feel.
It is disgust.
He has clearly eaten what tastes like baby skunk-hog musk and now he is paying for it.
"--ughhhhhhhhh." He tries.
Shoulders that are not his own tense and clutch tight.
"Blegh." He tries again.
"Buddy?"
Arms that are not his make a gentle effort to push him in the general direction of away and upright.
Zuko is a firebender, imperial-trained. He has taken thermodynamics since he could read.
He knows what happens when heat sources move away. Leave. Disappear. Vanish into the night after committing patricide and regicide.
Zuko marshals the arms that are his to wrap tighter, the head that is his to burrow forward. He leaves the legs, as those are probably still floating.
The shoulders that aren't his are shaking again but this time he can hear chuckling.
"Alright, bud, we'll try again in the morning," whispers against his forehead.
"Mrgh," Zuko agrees.
He curls forward into solid hearth-fire and rests.