Disclaimer: I do not own Sokka, Zuko, Iroh, Kana, Aang, Ozai, Azulon or Katara. Nor did I create the Fire Nation, Air Nomads, Earth Kingdom or the Southern and Northern Water Tribes. These belong to Mike and Brian, Avatar God-s.
Two: Zuko
The Wanderers
Zuko trudges silently alongside his portly uncle Iroh, his head down and his shoulders slumped. His mouth is dry and his tongue feels swollen: who would have thought that here, in the Southern Pole, the coldest nation in the world, one could feel thirsty?
Iroh strokes his long beard, staring at the mountains in the distance. "I wonder where all the streams are."
Zuko turns his head on the slightest so that he may shoot his uncle a quizzical glance. "What?"
"The streams. It's summer here, so you'd expect to find some ice-melt streams around here or something," Iroh replies, his eyes sweeping across the plain. "Or at least a marsh."
"Those mountaintops are still covered with snow," Zuko muses, following his uncle's gaze. Iroh nods.
"Yes, but this entire country was covered with heavy snowfall. You'd expect that when it melted…" Iroh breaks off, frowning. "I just want a drink."
"Join the club," Zuko grumbles, working his tongue in attempt to gather saliva in his mouth. "I don't think I've ever been this thirsty."
"At least we still have some food," Iroh reminds his nephew cheerily - always the optimist. Zuko glares at him.
"Tea leaves are not food. Neither are those clams you found in the last water hole," he snaps. Iroh shrugs.
"If you can swallow them and not have them come back up, then they are food," he chides gently. Zuko doesn't reply.
Iroh shifts the pack he is carrying higher on his broad shoulders. "We'll need to hunt."
Zuko rolls his eyes. "I'll need to hunt, you mean."
Iroh chuckles and his belly jiggles. "Yes, and I'll stay back at camp and make us tea!"
His nephew grunts.
They walk in silence, focusing on the snow-coated mountaintops to take their minds of the hot sun on their backs and thirst clawing at their throats. The dry brown grass rustles in the warm breeze sweeping over the plain and fluffy white clouds race over the pale blue sky. Dust puffs up with Zuko's every step.
"This isn't a country," Zuko growls, "It's a wasteland."
"It's quite beautiful in the winter time," Iroh protests. "All the snow and ice is…enchanting."
"… And people actually live here?" his nephew continues, his eyes wide with disbelief, ignoring Iroh's attempt at defending the 'wasteland'. "It's unbelievable."
"The Southern Water Tribe are a very small people. Their cities fell a hundred years ago, at the very beginning of the Great War. They-"
"I know that, Uncle," Zuko informs him curtly. "I studied a lot before I was banished."
"Of course, I should have-" Iroh breaks off when he hears a squelching sound from beneath his worn boots. "What…?"
"Mud!" Zuko exclaims, his eyes going wide with hope. "Mud means…"
"Water!" Iroh cries, racing ahead of his nephew, unscrewing the top of his canteen. "Agni bless us! Water!"
Zuko can't help but let a small smile crawl over his lips. "Finally."
"It gets even muddier here, Zuko, so watch your step-" his uncle is silent for a few moments. "Oh my."
"What?" Zuko feels alarmed at the disappointment in his uncle's voice. "Is it dried up? But this mud is-"
"There's plenty of water," Iroh assures his nephew, and Zuko feels the hope bubble up in his belly for the second time today. "But it's…ugh."
"What do you mean?" Zuko asks, jogging to catch up to his uncle. He slips and struggles to regain his composure. "I don't care what it looks like, if it's water then I want it!"
"You don't want this water," Iroh says firmly and Zuko reaches him and peers over his shoulder.
"Agni."
The ankle-depth water has sat stagnant for weeks, maybe months, and gives off the sweet, salty smell of rot and decay. Small, biting insects buzz sedately through the marsh and a cricket chirrups from its hiding place amongst the dying grass. Zuko catches a glimpse of a frog's slimy skin before it leaps to safety in the green water.
"Like I said…you don't want it," Iroh repeats and Zuko sends him a sizzling glare.
"Come on," he snarls. "There's got to be fresh water around here somewhere."
He ignores the water's dirty warmth when it seeps through the holes in his boots: he goes on tramping angrily through the marsh, muttering incoherently to himself. Iroh follows on dejectedly, no doubt mourning his midday cup of ginseng.
"Stupid country," Zuko gripes, pulling his pearl dagger from its holster and slashing at the grass with it. "Stupid heat, stupid empty canteen, stupid bugs - STOP BITING ME - stupid water, stupid-"
He breaks off with a cry of disgust, back-pedalling so fast that he bumps into Iroh, who grunts in surprise.
"Zuko, what are you doing?"
"There's…a hand," Zuko chokes out, telling his stomach to stop trying to sick up his breakfast of the moss he spent so long scraping off all those rocks. "In the grass."
"What?" Iroh questions, peering past his nephew's shoulder. His eyes bugle. "Agni, it is too."
The hand is dark-skinned and calloused - the fingers (several of them broken - the bone of the middle fingers juts out through the skin) are curled over a long spear. Blood and mud are spattered over both the weapon and the disembodied appendage.
"Is there anyone attached?" Iroh asks, edging closer. "Zuko, go look."
"I don't want to!" his nephew protests. "Uncle, that's a body!"
"Well, so far only a hand. But go look and see if there's a body, too."
Swallowing rapidly and telling himself firmly to stop being such a girl, Zuko treads softly closer to the hand, half-convinced that it might reach up and grab him.
"Is it a body?"
Zuko ignores his uncle's question. Attached to the hand is a long, muscular arm, dislocated from the bare shoulder that belongs to the dark-skinned young man lying unconscious before him.
"Uncle! He's breathing!"
Zuko crouches to feel for the young man's (surely he's not older than seventeen) pulse: it beats steadily, if not too fast, beneath the bloodied skin on his wrist. Deep purple bruises blossom at random over the young man's bare torso and legs: Zuko can see a puffy area on the young man's chest that might mean broken ribs. The lungs beneath the ribcage are working fine, though, so Zuko is almost certain that the bones have not penetrated the respiratory organ.
Iroh crouches stiffly beside him, reaching out with a wrinkled hand to wipe a smear of blood from the young man's brow. "He's a native."
"What happened to him?" Zuko asks, frowning.
"I think he must have been hunting moose-bear," Iroh muses thoughtfully. "See these hoof prints? And these tufts of hair on the grass? It looks like he got caught in a stampede."
Zuko nods and touches a thin stream of blood that has trickled from the native's mouth. "It can't have happened too long ago. His blood isn't completely dried." His gaze sweeps over the plain. "I don't see any animals."
"They are surprisingly speedy for their size. They may well have reached the edge of the plain and disappeared into the mountains."
"Why would he hunt such a big animal alone?" Zuko enquires confusedly, shaking his head. "Undeveloped mind-state?"
Iroh laughs heartily, despite the situation. "No, Zuko. The Southern Water Tribe are every bit as intelligent as us…if a little primitive. I thought you'd studied them? Don't glare at me like that, Zuko. I'd say he wasn't alone. Scout around. See if you can find anyone else. I'll try to bring this boy around."
Zuko nods and sets off through the marsh, his eyes peeled for a flash of skin or clothing. The native boy found had been donned in loose blue cotton pants.
When he sees clotted blood on the dead grass, he calls out to his uncle and falls to his knees, scouting for any sign of human life. He spies a tangle of dark hair caught up in a clump of reeds and reaches out to touch it. The scalp beneath is tacky with blood.
"Uncle, there's another one!"
He crawls around the clump of reeds and his eyes fall on the crushed body of a young woman, as dark as her companion. Her small face is turned away from him, the eyes closed and thick lashes brushing her bloodied cheek.
Zuko cannot see the full extent of her injuries like he could on her companion, because she wears a mud-spattered dress of fur and blue cotton. A battered quiver of arrows and a bow that has snapped in half lie not far from where she lies.
Zuko feels for her pulse and finds it, beating too fast in her thin wrist. Her breath comes in shallow gasps, but she's alive.
"It's a girl!"
"A girl?" Iroh's voice is closer than Zuko expected and he sees his uncle pushing through the grass. "Let me see her."
"She's worse than the boy."
Iroh brushes her hair off her motionless face and frowns. "Her breathing is too shallow. One of her lungs must have been punctured." He glances up at his nephew. "She's smaller than the boy. I can carry her. You take the other one."
"What are we going to do with them?"
"Take them to their home."
"How are we going to find their home? This place is huge!" Zuko protests, but deep down he knows it's the right thing to do. Iroh shrugs.
"Hopefully one of them will regain consciousness."
"They might both die."
"I think the boy has a good chance of living. But the young lady…" he trails off and his eyes linger on her face. He reaches down to turn her over. "She is in a very bad way." Zuko sucks in breath between clenched teeth when the other side of her face is revealed. The girl must have been pretty before the accident, if not beautiful, but now one side of her face is crushed into a mess of hair and gore from her cheekbone to her hairline. The skull beneath feels spongy and broken when Zuko reaches down to touch her skin. "She could die very soon, Zuko."
"Uncle, if we move her-"
"If we don't, she dies anyway," Iroh tells him with no sympathy. "Get the boy. We need to leave now. If her tribe hosts any healers, then she might have a chance."
Zuko turns and jogs back to find the native boy, doing his best not to slip and fall: whilst agile on solid ground, he has a difficult time staying upright in the mud.
The boy lies where they left him, but his arm is relocated and his mangled hand bandaged, along with his swollen chest: Iroh has attempted to wash the most of the blood off him with the filthy water that he lies in.
Zuko bends to pull on the arm that was not dislocated, hoisting the boy over his shoulder like he would a sack of potatoes. The unconscious native lies there, a dead weight, and Zuko grunts. "Agni, he's heavy."
Just then his grunt is answered with a groan and Zuko almost drops the boy in his fright. Instead he places him gently back on the ground, lying the boy's head on his knee. The native stirs, his eyes opening and squinting against the sun's glare.
"Katara?" he whispers. Zuko frowns and shakes his head.
"No, my name is-"
"Katara!" yells the boy. His voice cracks and he clears his throat, struggling to hoist himself away from Zuko's grasp. He wails in agony and clutches at his broken ribs.
"Hold still," Zuko commands. "You're hurt."
The boy's eyes turn to him and they are deep, deep blue. He narrows them confusedly. "Who are you?"
"My name is Zuko. My uncle is with your friend."
"Katara's alive?" the boy asks and his eyes light up. "I thought-"
"She might die," Zuko says brutally. "We need to get you to back to your tribe so she can get medical attention. Can you stay conscious long enough to give me directions?"
"Sure. Walk straight ahead for one hundred steps, turn left at the first pine tree and then walk left for three steps, then right for five…" he chuckles and then winces. "Owie."
Zuko does not laugh. "Let me help you up. I need to help me get your friend - Katara - home."
The boy's face becomes serious. "Okay. Grab my arm." He offers the one that was dislocated, whimpers, appears to consider, then offers Zuko the other arm. "That one, actually."
Zuko hoists the boy to his feet and the native sags limply against him. "Yue, I hurt all over."
"Uncle!" Zuko calls. "He's conscious! Let's go!"
Iroh's shaggy head pops up some ten metres away and in his arms he carries the limp, bloody form of the boy's companion. Her head lolls against Iroh's shoulder and one of her arms hangs around his neck. "She stopped breathing for a few moments," he calls back to his nephew. "She had me worried." His narrow amber eyes fall on the native boy. "Hello there, young man. My name is Iroh."
"Sokka," the boy says distractedly. "Is that my sister? She's all covered in blood." His voice quivers. Zuko thinks that he sounds as though he is teetering on the edge of hysteria.
"Yeah," Zuko breathes. "She might still be okay." Something like sadness bubbles up to form a lump in his throat, like a lump of meat that might threaten to choke him. He swallows savagely, pushing the feeling away.
There's no reason to get attached to these people - especially the girl. She's pretty, and she's dying, but she's a stranger.
"If she was awake she might be able to heal herself," Sokka tells Zuko, biting his lip. Zuko raises his eyebrows in surprise. "She's a Waterbender?"
"That's what she calls it," Sokka nods but his eyes are far away: Zuko wonders if he realises that there are tears coursing down his dark cheeks. "A Master. Our grandfather taught her when he migrated here a few years back."
"Let's get her home," Zuko offers, making an attempt at sounding soothing. He is not sure that he has succeeded, but his suggestion has Sokka's attention. The boy nods firmly, appearing to regain some sort of control over himself.
"Yeah. That way." He points toward the mountains crouching on the edge of the plain with the hand left unbroken.
Without another word, all three begin to trek slowly and painfully through the marsh toward a snowy pass in the mountains, Zuko supporting an unconsciously weeping and dazed Sokka and Iroh carrying little Katara, all limp and broken, in his strong arms.
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