A/N: So. This is my third Avatar fic in like three months? It's a problem.
Anyway, this takes place during the "The Western Air Temple", where Zuko offered himself as a prisoner as a way of joining their group. And since I'm the trash person that I am, I couldn't get the idea of how things would have played out if they actually did take him prisoner. So here ya go. I wanted to originally write it as a one-shot, but I quickly realized this was going to take a lot longer than a reasonable one-shot would allow.
Lo the debauchery. No warnings apply in this chapter.
When Zuko had decided to join the Avatar, he knew there would be challenges. He'd done everything he actively could to burn every bridge he could have ever formed with their group, and he knew that from their perspective, he was nothing short of a monster. He was the Fire Lord's first born, the blood of the man they all despised in his veins, and up until this point he'd given them no indication that there was anything in him beyond loyalty to his father. But he was more than that. He knew if he could just put that into words—if he could just show them the person he'd grown to be instead of the petulant boy they had known—they could possibly understand him.
It had been a long time ago, now, but Aang had even thought they could be friends. Of course, Zuko had been too angry to even consider the statement as anything more than a taunt and lashed out at him, but now he wonders what could have happened if he'd just listened to the boy and done things differently. He wonders how it would have been if he'd done a lot of things differently.
"Well, now what?" Katara asks, and Zuko looks between her and the rest of their group. He'd offered himself as a prisoner as a last resort, but he hadn't truly expected them to take the offer. They'd—for a lack of a better word—ambushed him at his makeshift camp after initially rejecting him, and he hadn't fought them after the initial shock. He'd let Sokka bind his hands with rope, restraining the biting comment that tying a firebender up with a flammable object wasn't the best idea.
"What do you mean?" Sokka responds, frowning and looking to their prisoner. Zuko shifts uncomfortably, both Katara's intense gaze and the itchy rope around his wrists forcing him to fidget.
"What are we supposed to do with him?" Every pair of eyes is directly on him as if they expect him to suddenly spring forward and grab at Aang. Instead, he stays perfectly still.
"It'd be helpful to know where I'm going to be staying." Zuko finally speaks, as no one seems to have an answer.
"Right!" Sokka says, gesturing with his sword and making Zuko pull away from him warily. As a master swordsman himself, he knew the respect and control it took to wield a sword. From what he'd seen of the young tribesman, he didn't quite believe he had that control, so the Prince couldn't help but be nervous as he waved it back and forth, "Obviously, you put the prisoner in a cell. And that's what we're going to do."
"Cell?" Zuko questions, his unscarred brow arching upwards.
"He's right, Sokka, the Air Nomads didn't have prisons or dungeons or anything. There wouldn't be any cells here." Aang finally speaks, drawing everyone's attention; "We'll just have to put him in a regular room."
"And what's going to keep him from escaping?" Katara asks. It earns an aggravated sigh from the Prince. He knew they didn't trust him, but did they not even understand what his general goal was?
"After putting this much effort into being here, why would I try to escape? I wouldn't have let you capture me if I didn't want to be here." Sokka snorts indignantly, gesturing with the strange sword again in a way that only further unsettles Zuko.
"You didn't let us! We caught you fair and square." The firebender can't resist rolling his eyes at that. If Zuko had put any effort into it at all, he could've easily escaped their so-called ambush. It was obvious no one in the group had any true formal training in the art of the properly executed ambush, and as such their form had been sloppy, leaving plenty of weak points for him to manipulate to escape. But he hadn't, simply raising his hands in a gesture of surrender.
"That doesn't really matter." Zuko murmurs, "Just take me to my cell so I can get settled." Sokka grins as if he's won some imagined battle, pointing with his sword—which he still hasn't sheathed, aggravating Zuko to no end—away from the open area.
"This way, prisoner!" Zuko walks past them, ignoring the boisterous boy behind him as he moved. Zuko had to admit; he'd never paid Sokka much mind when he'd been hunting Aang. He was a nonbender, and not particularly threatening to his plans, so he'd really never bothered to learn about him. He wasn't sure he wanted to now, with how glaringly Sokka's personality clashed with his own.
But that didn't matter. He wasn't here to make friends.
Sleeping in the unfamiliar, minimal room had been easier than Zuko had anticipated. In his nights at the palace after returning to his father, he'd slept fitfully and restlessly as guilt ate at his conscience. Here, though, trapped in this air temple room by a wall of rock that blocked the doorway, he slept more soundly than he had in weeks. When he wakes with the rising sun, he stretches as fully as he can with his hands still bound awkwardly behind his back. His shoulders ache from the forced position, and he knows he could relieve the tension by simply burning the ropes, but he needed to earn their trust. Keeping his hands bound was a way of showing he was on their side, he hoped.
He pulls himself off the bed and to his feet, taking a moment to stretch out stiff limbs. His clothes are crusted with sweat and dirt and the fabric is randomly singed from his father's lightning. He shifts in the clothing uncomfortably, wanting to both rid himself of the dirt and the memories of betraying his father. They hadn't given him back his bag, and he'd been forced to sleep in the same clothes he'd been wearing for several days and nights. His hair was in no better state, starting to gain the shine of overdue grease. He desperately needed to bathe, and wondered if he could convince them to let him go long enough to wash himself and his clothes.
Zuko waits hours before he can even make such a request. He waits. And waits. And waits. The sunlight stops streaming in from the windows at an angle, indicating it was nearly noon and still no one had come. His stomach nags at him, having grown used to the regular, rich meals of the palace. He wonders if they were simply going to let him starve in here as his punishment for everything he'd done to them. Perhaps he deserved it.
Finally, by what he estimated was mid afternoon, the wall of rock falls from the doorway in one quick motion. The movement is shaky, the earthbender's feet still unsteady beneath her as she recovers from her burns, but he's glad to see they hadn't forgotten about him.
"He's all yours." Toph says plainly as Katara rounds the corner and descends the steps into his room. He's dismayed to see neither of them have any food for him, but doesn't mention it.
"Just making sure you're still here. We weren't sure if you would be." Zuko sighs, even quicker to aggravation than he normally was due to hunger and discomfort.
"I'm not going anywhere." A heavy silence follows, the air so thick it felt as if he could chew it.
"Good." She says the word sharply, the syllable hitting him like a shard of ice. She turns to leave.
"Katara?" It's the first time he's said her name out loud. It rolls off the tongue in a way distinctly foreign to him, the sound being so different from the Fire Nation names he was accustomed to. She doesn't turn around completely, only tilting her head to look at him.
"I would really love to get out of these clothes." He barely finishes his sentence before water hits him so forcefully that he's slammed back against the wall bordering his bed. Ice suddenly gathers along his shoulders and pins him there. Despite the chill, he feels embarrassed heat rising to his cheeks, "Not—not like that! I didn't mean—" Why was he so bad at this?
"I meant that I need to bathe! And get a change of clothes from my bag. I've been wearing these for a few days and they're kind of unpleasant." He considers his words more carefully this time, making sure not to make the mistake of accidentally insinuating something of that nature. Katara's hands are still outstretched, the ice pausing in its ascent up his neck as her fingers curl ever so slightly. Her tightly furrowed brows relax.
"Oh." She huffs. He swears he can hear a chortle from the hallway and Katara's glare flicks in Toph's direction before it returns to him. The ice suddenly melts with a practiced twist of her hand and he's left soaked to the bone with chilled water before she suddenly bends the liquid right out of his clothes and off of his skin. It's an odd, strangely intimate, sensation that sends a shiver through him. The water returns to the canteen on her hip, which she quickly caps with her thumb.
"Fine. Come with me." Zuko scoots closer to the edge of the bed, getting to his feet and turning to her. She gestures for him to go first, obviously uncomfortable with the idea of having her back turned to him. He considers being annoyed, or even wounded, by that fact, but he knows she's being surprisingly smart. He does as instructed, walking out of the room preceded by Toph and tailed by Katara. Going back out into the bright open space that the rest of the group had apparently decided on using as a general gathering area is refreshing. The sun on his face instantly revitalizes him. Firebenders weren't meant to stay indoors all day, locked away from the sun.
The second source that draws his attention is the residual smell of food. It seems to be the remnants of their lunch, Aang waterbending clean water into the pots and dirty water out of it. The smell of the food cooked in the pots lingered, though, and his stomach protests loudly at the continued denial of sustenance.
"What is he doing out?" Aang asks, hands and water stilled midair as he catches sight of Zuko.
"He said he needs to take a bath." Zuko can't fathom why she seems so annoyed by that statement. Surely she understood this was something beyond his control.
"And get clean clothes from my bag." He adds, spotting said bag resting against the fountain in the center of the space. It's contents had been dumped out, his clothes haphazardly tossed aside while the other contents that had been inside of it were strewn about for whoever had felt the need to rummage through his things. "Or the floor."
"Oh, yeah, sorry. That was Momo." It's an unfamiliar name to Zuko, and he wonders which one of the three others that resided in the temple he doesn't recognize that is. "He really liked the dried fruits you had."
"That's…great. I like them too; it's why I brought them. For me." He shakes his head as both of them seem to get on edge at his annoyed tone, "It's fine." He awkwardly bends to pick up his clothes, gathering them in his fists, "Just show me the way to where I can get clean." Frowning, Katara ushers him away from Aang with a quick, concerned glance over her shoulder at the airbender.
No one quite knew what to make of Zuko. Those of them who had known him for longer knew how explosively angry and even terrifying he could be, and those who hadn't known him had heard the stories. Yet he wasn't living up to those expectations at all.
As days came and went, Zuko was nothing but amiable. He stayed in his cell most hours of the day, only requesting to be let out for necessities involving toiletries and the like. Katara had even tested him by depriving him of food, yet he hadn't complained about it once. So on the fifth day, when she comes in to check on Zuko, she has a small dish in her hands.
The lack of nutrients has clearly started to weigh on him. His cheekbones are slightly more pronounced and eyes more dull than she remembered them being when he'd arrived. Yet he hadn't even asked her for food, only accepting what she decided he deserved. Guilt twists in her gut, cold, heavy and strange and she grips the contour of the bowl tightly. He may be a monster, and he may be their prisoner, but they didn't have to be inhumane towards him. And it was her fault that they had been in the first place. Aang surely wouldn't have agreed if he'd known she wasn't delivering Zuko's meals to him as she'd said she would just because she wanted to hurt him. It was her own petty revenge as much as it was a test of his character.
"I brought you lunch." She sets the dish down on the edge of his bed, along with a small cup of water. He stays as respectfully far away from her on the bed as possible, confused gaze flitting between the food and her face. He wasn't sure if he should trust the gesture, and she's surprised that it actually saddens her. In her own anger, she'd become more like Zuko than even he was. Cruelty wasn't in her, even towards monsters.
"I'm sorry." She says quietly through gritted teeth. He may deserve the apology, but that doesn't mean she likes saying it, "I shouldn't have kept food from you." He tentatively reaches out to the dishes with his bound hands, pulling them closer and picking up the chopsticks between surprisingly delicate fingers.
"I've gone longer without food." Zuko says as he raises the bowl to his lips and pushes some of the rice into his mouth. He seems to savor it, chewing for longer than necessary before swallowing. The meaning of his words suddenly strikes her, and she frowns deeply. He'd gone longer than five days without eating? She shakes her head, deciding that to be a lie. He frowns at this, pausing with another mouthful of rice protruding his cheeks before he swallows.
"You don't believe me." It's not a question.
"No, I don't. You're a Prince to the richest nation in the world, why would you ever starve?" She glares him down, her own distaste for him rising once again. She knew hunger, growing up in an arctic tundra where food was scarce when hunts were bad. But the Fire Nation was a rich and prosperous land with nearly constant warmth and prosperity. What did he know about hunger?
"A banished Prince." Zuko responds sharply, chopsticks tapping the edge of the bowl sharply, "I had no support from the Fire Nation beyond my ship and crew. We were never sent supplies or food. We had to gather those ourselves from the few cities that would barter with us. And after I lost my ship and crew, I had even less." She finds her own features softening without her consent, "The last few years have been hard for me. We don't all have the world, and the Avatar, on our side. I was fighting everyone for everything I ever got."
She wants to dismiss his words as more lies, but she can't quite convince herself of that. He's too sincere, his startlingly golden eyes moving up from the food before him to her eyes. Even starved and dulled, there's something rich in those depths that unsettles her. Years of struggle conveyed in one gaze.
"…You deserved it. You and your family are trying to destroy the world. Do you honestly expect me to feel bad for you?" She can't even convince herself that her anger is real as the foundations of her rage are shaken.
"No. I don't need or want your pity." He says plainly, continuing to eat before he speaks again, "I'm not trying to make you feel bad for me. I'm trying to get you to understand me. Maybe even forgive me, eventually." The way he speaks those words so softly, the way they leave his lips like a prayer, ignites the last struggling flames of her rage.
"Forgive you?" She hisses, fists clenching and the water in Zuko's cup shivering, "What makes you think you deserve my forgiveness? My understanding? After everything you've done, you think you deserve that? Why? Just because you put on this humble prisoner act and made up some sad story? That might have worked the first time but not now! Not again!"
Zuko isn't as phased by her anger as she expected, only his eyes widening and his posture going stiff as he answers tensely.
"I don't deserve it…" He says, searching her face as he tries to decipher her, "but I'm asking for it." Her rage freezes, leaving something heavy within her that she can't name. She can't even look at him anymore, storming from the room and leaving a wall of ice in her wake.
A/N: Alrighty, then. Hopefully I'll be able to update this at some point if anyone's interested in seeing where I'm going with this. Comments are appreciated. ~ Jiggle