AN: Americans: Happy 4th of July!
Brits: Happy Ungrateful Colonials Day!
Everyone Else: Happy New-Season-of-Stranger-Things!
Ya'll are lucky my spousal unit slept in until literal noon, or the marathon watch would have put this chapter off by a day or two.
On the subject of comment replies: I'm starting to get a lot of comments across my fics (especially Towards the Sun crowd, who have given me literal hundreds of comments on those last two chapters). Working on the assumption that most of you would prefer new chapters to comment replies, I'm no longer going to be replying to all comments. I'll still reply as time allows, but it's absolutely nothing personal if you don't get a reply—it's just a "there is literally not time in the day" issue. Please know that I read them and love them and they truly inspire me. You fuel my inner flame. 3 (For the record, AO3 comments stand a much higher chance of getting a reply, because the system over there is much more author-friendly.)
%%%
3. It Starts and Ends with a Bison Crash
Sokka kept pulling at the reins. The sky bison kept pulling the other way. They were arguing in great big circles in the sky and he was really starting to wish for a canoe, nevermind that a canoe wouldn't have been flying in the first place, unless he'd done something very wrong (or… very right?) (Man, wouldn't that be cool if someone somewhere invented a flying canoe-thing? He could just picture it now, soaring majestically and turning the direction it was told—)
"The ship! Is right there!" he shouted, in case deafness was the creature's problem. "That mountain did not take him, the ship did! Object recognition, you gigantic pre-cooked steak!"
The bison groaned and shook its head. Sokka held onto the reins with one hand and a horn with the other because he wasn't really sure how invested the bison was in keeping him in the air.
Katara crawled carefully out of the saddle and up next to him, and of course that's when the flying fluffball settled down. "You didn't see it, Appa, but we did; they took Aang onto that ship. Can we please go down and check? If he's not there, we can go to your mountain next."
The bison groan-muttered in a really surly way. Sokka wasn't biased in this assessment at all. But at least it started heading for the ship.
Katara smiled and thanked it and rubbed it on the spot right above its ear, spoiling it like she always had the polar bear dogs, which was exactly way no one ever let her train the polar bear dogs. Then she crawled back to the saddle, and gripped the side.
The bison turned its head and looked at her grip with a giant black eye. And looked at Sokka, not-having-a-grip.
Which gave Sokka all the warning he was going to get before it dove straight down.
%%%
The cloud came screaming down towards the deck, in a more literal manner than the crew was used to.
"Huh," Crewman Teruko said, briefly pausing at mahjong. She instinctively put a hand over her tiles as she turned to stare up, because Hawker Genji was an unabashed cheater and spirit-shenanigans had never stopped him from fleecing the rest of the crew.
"Tch," Genji said.
The cloud grew closer. Took on definition. Became something with a brown arrow on its head, and…. six legs.
"The fuck," Engineer Hanako summarized the situation with her usual eloquence.
"Language," Lieutenant Jee snapped habitually, even though the prince wasn't thirteen anymore and the general wasn't there to quietly disapprove of them.
The six-legged furry cloud-thing hit the deck with a resounding boom, knocking over Helmsman Kyo and his lost-the-last-game mop bucket, and sending exactly zero player tiles skittering across the game table. Everyone had covered theirs.
"You guys have terrible priorities," Genji groused.
"I'm going to be sick," the sky-beast moaned, from the top of its head.
"Not on the deck, please?" Kyo gripped his mop like a spear. A spear held by a guy who was a Helmsman, not a Pikeman.
The beast whuffed. And then two Water Tribe children jumped down off of it, shouting.
"Give us back the Avatar!" the girl said.
"Or else," the boy said, with shakier enthusiasm. And stance. And a general greenish tinge to his dark skin.
Kyo offered him the empty mop bucket. The tribesman glared at him, raising some kind of animal-bone club. The Helmsman cringed back, and—
Teruko caught movement out of the corner of her eye. The new guy had an actual spear. And a look in his eyes like he didn't realize they were dealing with literal children. She made a grab for him, knocking over her chair and closing one hand around his waist and one hand on the haft of his spear in case he got any bright ideas about throwing the thing, which… made for two hands. That were not defending her tiles.
"Yes," Genji said.
"You better have a very good excuse for denting our ship, Water Tribe," Teruko growled.
"Give us," the girl said again, taking a step forward like that was supposed to be menacing. "The Avatar."
"He ran," Lieutenant Jee said. He pointed a thumb back over his shoulder, towards the forest they'd made a token effort to search after lunch, and the suckers who had drawn short straws were still searching. "That way. Knock yourselves out."
"...You sure you don't want the bucket?" Kyo asked.
"No, I don't want the— You are all being suspiciously helpful," the boy said. "And where is your shouting teenage anger problem?"
"He went that way, too," Kyo helpfully replied.
"...Why does that make an alarming amount of sense." The boy kept his club raised, darting suspicious gazes all around. The crew had weapons at hand, or bending at breath, but… in three years of Avatar-hunting, they had dealt with a lot weirder than two kids and a huge-but-tangible-(and-presumably-burnable) flying-bison-thing.
Except for the new guy. The new guy was hyperventilating under her arm. So that was great.
"Could you move?" Kyo said, motioning to the deck under their feet with his mop. "I need to, ah..."
"Oh sure, sure," the boy stepped back. "Sorry. ...WHY ARE YOU NOT BEING EVIL?"
"Uh… I'm not currently under orders to be evil. Am I, sir?"
Lieutenant Jee sighed one of his do I really have to answer these questions sighs. "No, Helmsman. You are not."
"Right. Just moping, no evil. And you're really young, so it's not like I'm actually feeling threatened right now. What are you, thirteen?"
"Fifteen."
"Fourteen!" the girl said, like she was feeling a little ignored. Some of the mop water on the deck jumped, which… Teruko noted, in the corner of her brain that also noticed the girl's stance was terrible, and that the Southern Raiders had apparently missed one (though not the people who could have taught her).
"Wow, that's great. You're so grown up." Kyo smiled like a guy who was both cripplingly sincere and completely crap at dealing with children. "But I'm still pretty sure I could take you with this mop."
"I'm a warrior!"
"That's nice. I'm a helmsman. Oh, ah. Sorry about running into your village. I tried to aim for the sturdier-looking ice, but not too sturdy because I like not destroying the bow of my ship while in enemy waters. Not that you were really enemies, I mean your village was so small and I felt really bad about it—"
"Wait. Wait wait. That was you?" the boy was re-brandishing his club.
Kyo looked more puzzled than concerned. "Yeah. Uh, I'm a helmsman? I said that, right?"
"Why?" the girl demanded.
"Orders," Kyo shrugged.
"You… you." the boy said, gesturing with his weapon alarmingly close to Kyo's head. (In Teruko's arms, the new guy bucked.) "You… weren't kidding about the evil-orders. How… What…"
Behind them, the flying beast was sniffing at the air. It turned and stared in the direction the airbender had gone, towards the temple mountain. It crouched down, hunkering on its unnecessarily many legs like a whole flock of albatross-roos about to take off.
"Sokka—!" the girl said, scrambling to get back up to the saddle.
"Clubs beat mops!" the boy shouted, and scurried after her.
"They're not really directly comparable weapons, but sure. Nice meeting you!"
The flying beast took off. The deck made a sad straining noise and popped back up, leaving only a small crease where the bison-dent had been.
"...Did you just awkward them off the ship, Kyo?" Teruko asked.
"It's a talent," The Helmsman shrugged modestly. And… flushed. "Umm. Do you want me to help with Kazuto? I could, uh. Bring him to the infirmary. Or to bed."
Teruko shook the new guy, just a little. His breathing had gotten a whole lot better once the blue-clad kids had left his sight. "Hey. You okay?"
"Was that… normal?" Pikeman Kazuto asked. It was questions like that that cemented his 'new guy' status, even though he'd been with them for four months now.
"Eh," Teruko said. "Better than spirits. Can't stab those. Come on, you look like you need some of Cook's spiced cocoa."
"I could take him there," the Helmsman offered. "Really. Wouldn't want to interrupt your game."
"Yeah," Genji said. "Wouldn't want to interrupt our game."
Teruko eyed the Hawker, and her undefended tiles that might or might not be the same ones she'd had when she stood up. Then she steered the new guy towards the stairs. "...I've got this."
Kyo watched them go, sagging over his mop.
"So," Engineer Hanako said. "You and the new guy…?"
"Shut up," he sighed. "...And now I have to scrub giant footprints off the deck. It flies, how does it have dirt on its feet?" He returned to his mopping, with significantly more muttering.
"We could have told them he's not the Avatar," Genji said.
"I could have done a lot of things with my life," Lieutenant Jee said.
Which was altogether too real, and needed to be cleansed with a new game.
%%%
Uncle had finished with the last of the shrouded forms by the time they came down. The urns were lined up in two distinct groups that needed no explanation. They'd inked names onto the ones they could identify, mostly the soldiers—it wasn't uncommon for them to have been carrying a letter from home, or to have scratched their name in the back of their armor. For the rest of them… they'd have to cross-reference with the records of troop deployment, if they could get their hands on them. They obeyed their Fire Lord's orders and died for it: they deserved to return to their ancestral shrines. The Air Nomads… he didn't know. If they could get into the inner sanctuary this time, maybe they could leave them there.
Or... he could ask.
"Airbender. Um, Aang. What should we… do with the…" He was terrible at asking. "The only scrolls I've found about Air Nomad burial customs weren't written by actual Air Nomads, and they were… probably not right." Seriously, who hacked up their loved one's bodies and tossed the parts to vulture-coyotes? 'Sky burials' sounded like something Sozin's propagandists had come up with to emphasize how abnormal airbenders were, and how little respect they paid to any life, including their own venerable ancestors—
"...Do you have any bison milk? Or flour?"
Zuko preemptively glowered down at the little monk. If this was a joke… But the kid wasn't looking back at him, and he definitely wasn't smiling. He was staring down at the urns of his own people, his arms wrapped around himself, and just… not passing out. Which was an achievement Zuko was willing to acknowledge.
"Why?" he asked.
"We don't cremate. But. But if they were up here for a hundred years than the vulture-coyotes already—" The boy continued not to pass out. Zuko continued to be impressed. "I guess what you did counts as breaking down the bones. So… we need to mix them with something, so the crow-hawks can have their share. Then they'll go back to the sky."
...Or maybe Zuko's scrolls had been completely accurate, and the Air Nomad disrespect for the dead was just one of those backwards cultural things he was going to have to deal with. Like the Earth Kingdom burying people in sunless, airless holes for worm-roaches to eat and leaving them there, taking up great tracks of land with rotting corpses (and if that wasn't a sign they had more land than they needed, Zuko didn't know what was). And the Water Tribes sinking their dead into the dark-cold of the ocean to bloat. They lived on the sea, how did they not know what decomposition did to water-logged bodies?
"We don't have bison milk, or flour. Just naval rations. I'm not sure the crow-hawks would want them," especially not full of corpse-ash, "but we could try."
He tried to keep the disgust off his face.
%%%
Aang tried to keep the disgust off his face. Zuko and his uncle had meant well, that had to count for something, but if he thought too hard about how they'd taken people murdered by the Fire Nation, people he knew, people he couldn't even picture right now because they were just piles of ash stoppered up in confining airless pots after their bodies had been burned to ash, he was going to throw up.
"There's… there's another way. At the Northern Temple they scatter the bone-dust to the winds."
"Right. Okay." Zuko's shoulders slumped, like he was relieved. "Let's do that."
So… they did. The prince was really efficient when he got moving. He had the urns tucked into an empty wooden case before Aang could even really help, and why had he had a case in the first place and why did it fit the urns so perfectly—
That question. Kind of answered itself, didn't it?
"There's a good spot this way," the prince said. "Or. I think it's good. Just… tell me if you see a better one, okay?"
It was the same spot Aang would have picked. Up five stair cases, and over to the far side of the temple, where a balcony overhung the cliff and the winds were strong and below them was a river of clouds. He'd flown here a lot, the air currents were the best, all bumpy-chaotic but actually really gentle, so even the smallest kids couldn't really get in trouble. Unless they flew into the side of the cliff like Gansho had that one time, oh man that had been really scary-funny—
The prince was unpacking the urns, and laying them out at the balcony's edge.
Aang had flown here a lot. So had everyone.
"Are you… going to do this with me?" he asked.
The prince startled, looking up at him with wide gold eyes, like a half-grown fox-leopard. "Oh. I could… Go."
He'd set each urn in a careful line. Many of them had trinkets looped around them: bracelets or necklaces, each distinctive, worn by time and weather in a way they hadn't been when Aang had seen them last. Zuko and his uncle had tried to make each urn identifiable, without ever knowing their names, or how they sounded when they laughed, or anything except where and how they died. Which was the only thing Aang didn't know about them. Between him and Zuko, they knew everything. Beginning to end.
"You can stay. If you want. You came all this way to help; I don't think they'd mind." And Aang didn't want to be alone.
The prince nodded, sort of jerkily. And swallowed. And stayed. He stayed kneeling, handing each jar up to Aang, and Aang… let them go. The winds took the ash up. The clouds down below took the urns, and the trinkets, and kept flowing on.
"Are you doing that?" the prince asked, his eyes following the ashes as they hung in the air, swirling and mixing, making patterns that were almost pictures before breaking apart again, little black drifts on a background of white and blue.
"No," Aang said. "It's important that it's natural. That way they get where they're meant to go, not where someone wants them to be."
Zuko handed him the last urn. A necklace was wrapped around it; faded red tassles on either side of a broad wooden pendant carved with air symbols. He hadn't seen it in days. In a hundred years.
...It really had been a hundred years.
He squeezed his eyes shut, and remembered Monk Gyatso's smile and how he raised just one eyebrow instead of talking sometimes, and… and lots of things that he'd thought he'd get to see again, and he never would, and it felt like if he could just go back he could make it right, never leave, fix it all or stay with them when it happened so he wouldn't have to stand here alone and, and…
(He wasn't alone.)
The monks taught that people and pain were both impermanent. The people were gone, and the pain would be too. Someday. It was okay to hurt. The monks taught that, too. That it was natural to feel for as long as he needed to. There was no shame in feeling, and there would be no shame when one day he would realize the feeling was lighter and he was living without them and living without hurting, that he'd let them go.
He opened the last urn. The wind swirled down to take Gyatso away, brushing against Aang's hands like it had spent a hundred years waiting for him to come home.
%%%
If the monk was crying, Zuko didn't see it. That was how things worked in the Fire Nation: no one cried. And a lot of people didn't see.
He thought of the urns back at home; Lu Ten and Grandfather and Great-Grandfather and all the others, sitting in neat rows in the family shrine. A part of him didn't understand what the little monk was doing at all; who would want to be cast aside, to never go home, even in death?
(And a small part of him watched the ashes swirling unfettered in the wind, and understood perfectly.)
(That was the part of himself that needed to shut up, if he ever wanted father to forgive him.)
"Why were they still here?" the airbender asked. "Why didn't anyone… Even if they got it wrong, if they burned them or buried them, why didn't anyone do anything?"
"People don't care," Zuko said. It was one of those truths of the world that it didn't hurt to learn early.
"Except you."
Zuko was still kneeling on the balcony, next to the empty box. The monk was looking down at him with some kind of weird expression on his face, something Zuko couldn't even start to understand. The kid was still holding the last urn, his fingers curled in the beads of the necklace wrapped around it. And he completely didn't care that he was crying, so Zuko had to turn away to give them both a little dignity.
"I don't care," he said. "About anything. Except finding the Avatar."
Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the little monk let the urn fall. But he kept holding on to the necklace. And kept holding on. At least he finally scrubbed his eyes with a sleeve, so Zuko could look back.
"You could keep it." he nodded to the necklace. "If you want. They're your people; you have the right."
The kid fidgeted with the beads. They were thick and wooden, and still had traces of bright paint that the rain hadn't completely stolen away. "We're not supposed to keep things after people die. It's… too permanent."
"He's already waited a hundred years. Just throw it away when you're ready." Zuko shrugged, and something in his words set the kid off again. He had no dignity; none. Zuko jerked his gaze away. "Besides, maybe he'd like to see the world. That's… what we do, on my ship. Unless you want to tell me where to bring you home…?"
The kid sniffle-laughed. "You're really bad at interrogations. I bet when you find the actual Avatar, he'll just say 'I'm totally not the Avatar' and you'll believe him."
"Shut up, airbender."
When he looked back, the kid was wearing the necklace. And smiling, just a little. "There's something I want to show you." He held out a hand. Zuko stared at it. "You're supposed to take it. So I can help you stand up."
"...I can stand on my own."
"That is not the point," the airbender said, and kept holding out his hand. So Zuko… took it.
He regretted his life choices immediately, as the airbender literally dragged him through corridors and down stairs, aided by just enough wind to propel himself forward and keep Zuko stumbling after.
They stopped in a small courtyard, in front of a statue wearing the same necklace the kid wore now. Must be a popular design.
"This is Monk Gyatso," the kid said. "He was… um, they told a lot of stories about him. About how he was super nice and funny and he cheated a pai sho all the time, and—"
Zuko stood there, a little dazed, wondering if he should take notes on airbender culture.
"Why did a monk get a statue?" he asked, in one of the rare lulls as the kid caught his breath. "Isn't that the opposite of impermanence?"
The airbender grinned. "That's another funny story. See, Gyatso traveled a lot, and helped all kinds of people. One time he helped carry medicine all the way down from the Northern Water Tribe to the southern Fire Nation—"
Zuko jolted. Because… the Water Tribes? Helping the Fire Nation? With Air Nomad assistance? This Gyatso had probably been dead for centuries.
"—and they were so grateful that they commissioned an Earth Kingdom artist to make a statue! But they wanted it to be a surprise so they didn't tell anyone, and suddenly this ship docks in the harbor and a team of komodo-rhinos drags a huge box up the mountain, and bam, they just set it down in the middle of the courtyard, this giant granite statue, all super proud. But the monks were like '...That is the guadiest thing ever, we're going to push that off the cliffside as soon as they're gone,' and they did, but they didn't wait long enough and the people in the harbor spotted them doing it. So they came back up and asked why they did that, and the monks said 'We didn't. It was a stray breeze. But if we did, it would be because we don't keep permanent images of people.' And all the Fire Nation villagers huddled together, and then one of them looked right at the monks and said, 'Define permanent.' And the monks said 'If you have to ask, it's permanent', which is kind of how they started a lot of their sentences, I mean, the monks I know do. I don't actually know if these ones did because it's not like I was there or anything. But anyway, Gyatso and his student were watching all this and laughing really hard. And three months later the villagers came back and dragged up another box, and inside was a wooden statue. 'Look, it's impermanent,' they said. 'The only way it'll become permanent is if a stray breeze pushes it off the cliffside. Then we'll have to keep replacing it. Over. And over. And over—"
Zuko made token efforts to free his hand throughout this speech, but the kid kept snatching it back and excitedly gesturing with it.
"He almost looks like he's smiling," he said. "...Did monks smile?"
The airbender grinned up at him. "Only when they're throwing pies at other monks."
"...What."
"I'll show you some time," the kid promised, somehow managing to smile wider.
"No thanks."
"It would be my honor."
Zuko flinched at the h-word, and looked away. Not before he saw the little monk's smile turn to confusion.
"You should go back to the ship." He finally managed to tug his fingers free. "We'll be up here for a few more days."
"Looking for the Avatar?"
"Always."
He didn't know why, but that made the kid smirk. Zuko might have given it more thought, but a noise caught his attention. A really distinctive cutting whistle, one he'd heard before, but which… didn't make sense here. He turned towards the noise, trying to spot what had to be some weird bird or frog or lemur, because it couldn't be a boomer—
%%%
Aang winced in reflexive sympathy, and just as reflexively caught the fire prince as he slumped.
"Aang!" Katara shouted, and she was here and running forwards and here and smiling and she looked like she wanted to hug him and seemed really confused when he didn't drop Zuko to immediately enter her arms. Actually, he was a little confused by that too.
"Aang, step away from the ashmaker."
...And she'd brought her older brother, too. Great.
Zuko groaned, his head lolling against Aang's shoulder. Aang eased him down to the ground.
"How hard did you hit him, Sokka?" he asked.
"Uh, hard enough?" The tribesman caught his boomerang as it came whistling back around. "Come on, let's go, your bison is—"
Appa lumbered into the courtyard.
"—Is really bad at following simple commands. I told you to stay. Your head is the size of a polar-bear dog, how do you not understand stay?"
Appa walked past the teen, looking like he wanted to lick Aang and then get some quality cuddles. He seemed just as confused as Katara when Aang didn't come running to him, either.
"We're rescuing you," Sokka said slowly, like he suddenly realized this might need explaining. "This. Is a rescue. Which means we should leave Mister Creepy Bad Man on the ground now, and fly off on your magical bison, and go on some kind of Avatar adventure—"
"...Avatar?" Zuko's eyes fluttered open at the word because of course they did. And wow, he could go from unconscious to jumping up with fire on his fists really fast.
"Wait, no, stop!" Aang wrapped his ams around Zuko, kind of side-tackle-hugging him, and now the fire prince looked just as confused as Katara and Appa. But only about half as confused as Sokka, who had the best how-is-this-my-life face.
"...Why are you touching me?" The fire prince still looked really dazed. And there was a definite bruise starting on the super pale skin of his forehead, right where it would be hidden if he believed in hair.
"I would also like to know the answer to that question," Sokka seconded.
Aang shuffled his feet somewhat awkwardly, looking at them around the side of the prince. "Sokka, Katara. This is Prince Zuko. He's… not as big of a jerk as he could be?"
"You are still touching me," the prince pointed out. He didn't seem to know what to do with this information.
"Prince Zuko, this is Katara and Sokka of the Southern Water Tribe, and Appa of the South-Western Air Bisons."
Appa whuffed in the prince's face. The prince didn't know what to do with that, either.
"Okay then," Sokka said. "Introductions complete. We'll just be leaving, then. With our Avatar."
"He's not the Avatar," Zuko scoffed. He also kind of shook his arms out a little, like he was testing whether that would get Aang off him. But honestly, Aang was starting to think anyone this baffled at getting hugged probably needed more hugs, and hugs seemed to be natural flame retardants, so he… kept holding on.
"I'm really not," Aang grinned. And gave the prince an extra huggy squeeze, which made him go super stiff like he'd just been wrapped up by a mongoose-constrictor instead of a twelve-year-old (or like he would have preferred the mongoose-constrictor.)
"Wait, what? So we just left our homes and continental ice sheet and swam and/or flew for days to rescue some random non-Avatar kid?"
"Sokka. We are rescuing Aang, whether he's the Avatar or not. ...You're not?" She sounded a little heartbroken.
Aang wanted to say definitely not and wink, but he also wanted to not have Zuko catch him doing that. "I kind of panicked when Prince Zuko was lighting your village on fire—"
"I did not light their village on fire!"
"—and he really wanted an Avatar, so… I figured I'd just go along with it?"
"Wait," Sokka turned to Zuko. "So you kidnapped a random child? I mean, not that kidnapping a random Avatar-child would be any better, but… seriously? That's low, even for the Fire Nation."
"Shut up, peasant," the prince ground out. His hands started to spark, but then he glanced at Aang still clinging to him, let out a breath, and shook them out. "Airbender. Let go."
Yeahnope. Aang was just going to keep hugging him.
"Well, the rescue is still valid," Sokka said. "So just… let go of the not-as-big-a-jerk-as-he-could-be, and let's go. Even if you are a big fat liar and not the world's last hope, and I don't even know how I'm going to start explaining that to Gran-Gran when we get back..."
"He didn't actually lie to us," Katara pointed out. "Just to, umm..."
"Zuko," Zuko said. "It's two syllables. How can you not remember two syllables?"
"Oh really," Sokka said, "do you remember my two syllables?"
"Peasant," Zuko said, with kind of a hilarious smirk and Aang had to admit that was a good one, but also he had to drag Zuko back a few steps because Sokka looked ready to use his boomerang again and wow, that metal was a lot sharper close up, and if Zuko would stop baring his teeth and trying to struggle towards it Aang could definitely help him not get hit again—
"...Right," Katara said. "He lied to Zuko, but—"
"Prince Zuko."
"That's three syllables!" Sokka protested, and was ignored by all.
"—he told us he only knew people who knew the Avatar."
"You WHAT?"
Okay Aang was letting go of the fire prince now. Also, patting smoke off his sleeves. Also… cowering a little?
"Where is he?" Zuko loomed over him, with his super-scary-face back on, the one he hadn't used for days. "How old is he? How many elements has he mastered?"
In front of you, twelve, one. "He died!" Aang blurted. "Before I was born. So. I knew people who knew him, but… I never met him?"
Zuko narrowed his eyes. And loomed some more. And then… kind of deflated, and pinched the bridge of his nose. "So the Avatar is Water Tribe now. Great. That's… great. When did he die?"
"Umm." Any date he could give would result in Zuko harassing a whole age-group of people. "We… don't really keep track of that? Because defining a person's life by numbers would, uh, make it harder for their spirit to find freedom within the transient nature of reality, and… stuff."
"And stuff," the prince squeezed his eyes shut. And pinched his nose harder.
"So all I know is that some of the older monks knew him, and that he is definitely dead now. And not an airbender." Aang nodded in complete agreement with himself. Zuko didn't see it, but he thought it really added something to his voice.
Zuko cracked an eye. His good one. "...Is this a ploy so I don't track down your people?"
Aang didn't even have to fake his I hadn't even thought of that expression. Because his people were… already tracked down.
...He didn't have to fake turning pale, either. So. Great.
The fire prince sighed like a person who'd spent three years practicing frustrated sighs, and dropped his hand, and glared at each of them in turn (including Appa. Who snorted back, because Appa was twenty times his size and Not Impressed.)
"If the Avatar is Water Tribe now, this place is useless. I'm… going back to the ship. You'd better meet me there, airbender. Remember, you're my prisoner." He turned, and started stomping away. His stomping wasn't nearly as impressive on stone as it was back on the steel ship, Aang noticed.
"Huh," Sokka said. "So… we're escaping now, right?"
"Sssh," Katara said.
The prince's shoulders tensed, and he missed a step, but he kept walking.
%%%
The little monk was probably lying. Almost certainly lying. Everything out of his mouth was a lie. And if the Air Nomad Avatar was still alive, then Aang's enclave was Zuko's best lead. It was probably where he was. But.
But.
He didn't have the men to storm a whole Air Nomad settlement. And he couldn't ask father, father expected him to do this alone—
(If father believed him, he'd send an army. They'd burn everything, and it would be another hundred years until anyone cared enough to lay the bodies to rest.)
A Water Tribe Avatar was… was good news. They might even be young enough that they only knew their own element; young enough he stood a chance against them. When he found them, which he would, because this was new information, a new lead, he could work with this, he didn't need to track the little monk's enclave down or put it on any Fire Nation maps (and if the kid had lied to him, he could come back to the southern seas later. There weren't that many islands here, and Zuko had a surplus of free time.)
In other words: he knew the monk was going to run away on him. He would take his friends and his sweet-spirits-that-was-actually-a-flying-bison, and if they were both lucky, Zuko wouldn't ever see him again. That was good. One less mouth to feed on his ship, one less annoying kid who came up and tried to talk to him like that was a thing people did (not to mention that Zuko had been touched more in the past hour than in the past three years, and it tingled).
The kid would have run away at the first port anyway, because clearly Zuko's crew couldn't be expected to watch him. It was better that he left with people he trusted.
Hopefully they had better survival instincts.
%%%
"...No," Sokka said. "That is a terrible idea. A terrible idea that makes me very concerned for your survival instincts, and why do you keep looking over the railing, I am trying to explain to you why staying with the guy who kidnapped you is a terrible horrible idea."
"I'm just making sure Zuko's really gone. He has freaky-good hearing. One time he tripped while training and I laughed at him from all the way across the ship, I had my hand over my mouth and everything, and he turned around and looked right at me."
"Aang," Katara said, "why do you want to go with him?"
Aang gestured them both closer. No, closer. Yes, Appa too, everyone join the huddle. "Because I'm the Avatar."
"Umm," Sokka stated the general Water Tribe opinion on this matter.
"When we first met, I lied to you. I didn't know the Avatar, I am the Avatar, but I was afraid to say so because I don't want to be, but I have to be now, I'll explain later but basically there's a comet of doom coming—"
"There's what."
"It's okay, we don't have to worry about it for eight months. So anyway, when we were on Zuko's ship I realized he didn't know if I was the Avatar for sure so I lied and said I wasn't and he believed me. It's perfect!"
Sokka and Katara exchanged looks. Appa whuffed. Aang bounced in place, waiting for them all to catch up with his brilliance.
"...What's perfect?" Katara asked, kind of smiling like sometimes the monks did when a super young boy ran up talking too fast for anyone to understand. Or maybe that was just how they looked when he talked.
Aang took in a breath and let it out slow, which is what Gyatso always told him to do. He touched the necklace, for luck. Okay. Try two. "He's looking for the Avatar. I'm the Avatar. But he doesn't think I'm the Avatar."
Katara nodded encouragingly, and with a complete lack of comprehension.
"So he's going to be traveling the world, probably meeting all sorts of benders. Who I need to meet, because I'm the Avatar, and I have to learn somehow."
Katara's face was doing a thing that the monks' sometimes did, when they really hoped Aang's story wasn't going where they thought it was going.
"So I could either fly around on Appa being super obvious about finding teachers. Or."
Sokka's face clicked from total incomprehension to world-shattering excitement. "Or you could hitch a ride with the prince of the Fire Nation, learning behind his back, making him a complete sucker!"
"This… isn't a good idea," Katara said
"It's brilliant!" her brother said. "Completely suicidal, but brilliant!"
"If he finds out, you're going to be in a lot of danger," Katara said.
"He's really good at not seeing the obvious," Aang said. "I think he practices. Also... he's really not that bad. He shouts a lot, but most of what he sets on fire is himself."
This didn't seem to relieve Katara of her concerns.
"I wish you the best of luck," Sokka said. "Hey, can we borrow your bison to get back home? We're kind of stranded here."
"We can't let you do this alone," Katara said.
"Uh," Sokka said.
"What?" Aang blinked.
"We're coming with you. That's what friends do, Aang." She was smiling at him, and it was like the sun breaking free from clouds and birds singing and the first time he flew.
And sure she'd said 'friend', but she'd be coming with him, so he could work on that!
"Seriously," her brother said. "This is a terrible idea. Genius, but terrible."
"Do you want to borrow Appa to go home?" Aang offered, sweetly.
Katara's brother opened his mouth. Then closed it. Then gave Aang a very suspicious look. "Nope. I think I'll be coming along. You know, to supervise."
Aang could work on that, too.
%%%
The bison crashed onto the deck about five minutes after Zuko got back. Had they been waiting? And if they had, why hadn't they offered him a ride? Not that he'd needed one, but it was an actual flying bison and Uncle was getting too old to be climbing up and down cliffsides.
"Nephew," Uncle said, "you are underestimating me with your eyeballs again."
"I am not! And there are more important things to focus on, Uncle!" He gestured with both hands to the bison. The bison that had crashed on the deck, with a surplus of children on board. And why was Helmsman Kyo waving at them? "Stop that!"
The Helmsman eeped, and retreated a few steps.
Two children in blue and one in yellow slid onto his deck. Zuko stomped over to them—Agni, he'd missed having steel under him, it was so satisfying to stomp—and glared.
"Thank you for delivering my prisoner, Water Tribe. You may go now." He was completely confused as to why they would, he'd given them ample time to escape, but… he also had no idea why else they'd be here.
"Well, that's that," the boy said. "He turned us down, no way to change his mind—"
"Sokka," the girl said, crossing her arms.
"Great news!" the little monk said. Which… filled Zuko with the immediate desire to clap a hand over the kid's mouth before he could say anything else. He didn't. This proved to be a mistake. "Katara and Sokka are coming with us! Also Appa."
The bison padded around in a deck-denting circle, then fwumphed down in the sun like a bear-dog.
"No. They're not," Zuko said. "...Maybe the bison." It was an actual flying bison.
"Oh," the monk said, twiddling his thumbs and ducking his head. "Well, that's too bad. I mean, they would have been really helpful on your Avatar quest…"
Zuko had been tricked enough in his life to know when he was about to fall for something again. It was just a feeling he had, a sinking in his stomach. It didn't help that the monk was ducking his head to hide a grin. "...Explain."
"The Avatar is Water Tribe, right? So you'll need to know about Water Tribe culture. And Katara is a waterbender, so you could train with her. To prepare for when you fight the Avatar. And their Gran-Gran is super old, I bet she told them all kinds of spirit stories."
"This is true," Sokka confirmed. "But we've definitely forgotten all of them, so no hard feelings if you turn us down."
Zuko scowled at the peasant. And the airbender. The waterbender scowled at him. The bison remained indifferent.
"Plus, if you're going to look for the Avatar in the Water Tribes, wouldn't it be helpful to have actual Water Tribe members to guide you? They could help you get in, and vouch for you so you don't have to threaten any more villages."
"Aang, we can't vouch for him," the waterbender said. "He assaulted Gran-Gran."
"See? The Water Tribes are fiercely protective. So once you earn their trust, they'll be perfect allies!"
The peasants looked extremely skeptical. Zuko shared the expression. "Even if I agreed, the waterbender is the only one of use. What does the other one have to offer?"
The airbender shrugged. "He's part of the package?"
"I am not 'the other one'!" the peasant protested. "I've taken you out twice with boomerang!"
Boomerang was going to disappear into the ocean if the teen kept waving it around.
"Come on, Zuko," the monk wheedled. "How else are you going to catch the Avatar? Err, I mean, 'Come on, Commander Prince Zuko Sir, how else—'"
"You can't just keep repeating 'Avatar' and expect me to care," Zuko snapped.
The monk gave up his hesitant act, and grinned. "Avatar Avatar Avatar—"
It should not have been a convincing argument.
"Fine!" Zuko threw up his hands. "But you're helping me train, and you're telling me everything you know. Both of you. Other One, you're on bison clean up detail."
"I'm what?"
The bison cracked an eye. And stood. And demonstrated on the deck, as if he'd been waiting for days to prove a point to the annoying boy who'd jerked at his reins one too many times, and hadn't even believed he could fly.
Helmsman Kyo handed the peasant a bucket and a mop.
"Normally he flies off to do that," the airbender said, sounding a little puzzled. "Oh well. Once you're done cleaning, I'll show you to our cells!"
"Our what?"
