Special thanks to Gift Of Dragons for beta-ing!
~~Z~~
"Zuko!"
"What are you doing?"
The ex-prince looked up, and found Mai staring down at him from one of the larger komodo-rhinos, face just shy of her usual bland apathy.
Zuko truly saw no harm in his actions, not really. And yet the whole situation made him feel guilty somehow; like he had been caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Or maybe if he'd been caught in his parent's master bedroom, dressing up in one of his mother's silk dresses.
Yes; the last situation would have better explained the tone of Mai's voice: "What are you doing?"
Well, it was actually a fair question.
And, in all honesty, Zuko was not quite sure how it had happened either. He was not, after all, one very good at polite conversation.
When one of the soldiers close by had wondered out loud how much longer they would have to track through Earth Kingdom sludge, Zuko had simply thought to offer a little insight by sharing his own experiences. After all, it had taken Zuko over two years just to find the boy.
The silent question on everyone's lips then, was of course why he had not managed to catch the Avatar then and there. So, without further prompting, the teen that had hunted the Avatar across the globe had launched into what he had thought was a very dry and boring factual retelling of his adventures.
The soldiers, however, seemed to find them amusing to no end. They had tried to mask their giggles at first. But amazingly Zuko had felt no shame at their laughter. He felt so detached from this obsessed boy he had once been, that it hardly felt like these things had happened to him at all. Or, perhaps as he no longer had to be a Prince he didn't have to worry about honor anymore.
After Zuko had smiled and shrugged at their first snickers, they soon engaged in open laughter.
"So I was actually sure I finally had the little pest at that abbey." Zuko continued, feeling strangely encouraged by crowd he was gathering. "But with all that perfume, the shirshu went mad; itstarted flicking its tongue out at everyone and everything. Uncle got hit. Needless to say, I did too - on a rather embarrassing part of my anatomy.
"Then, the building caught fire. Neither of us could move, and we hadn't been able to bring backup. For a moment, I thought me and Uncle were going to burn to death. That would have been rather an ironic end for a pair of fire-benders. Especially as we - well, alright, I -caused that fire.
"However - to my immense embarrassment - the Avatar and his boy-scout friends went and rescued us."
Zuko bit back a grimace, pulling a leg from the mud. It was not due to the men's near-hysterics. He'd been convinced both his legs were fine, after the fall. But after so many hours of walking, all sorts of small injuries started to act up. Talking did take his mind off of it though.
"The worst part was that when the poison cleared, my body still didn't work right. I couldn't feel- well, much not much of anything below my waist. I figured I could ignore it, and it would go away on its own. It didn't."
This seemed to amuse the men further, so he figured he might as well elaborate.
"I couldn't fight, I couldn't train, Agni, I could hardly walk - though I could disguise that well enough. Uncle kept worrying about me, though; he knew something was up as soon as I opted out of practice the next morning. But I was too embarrassed to say…
"Well, in the end he tricked me. Invited me for tea and put ice in the pillow I sat on. When I didn't notice sitting in wet ice-water for half an hour, he called me out on his suspicions and incited the ship's the healer. Who then set out to manhandle parts of me I would rather not have any man touching and gave me a lecture on the dangers of ki-blockage in combination with poison."
The chuckling went up to actual guffaws this time. Still, for prudence's sake, the ex-prince censored the part of the story - where he went and rescued the Avatar out of Fire Nation hands as the blue spirit.
"A little while later I found the Avatar again. That time, he asked me if we could be friends."
"What did you do, pr—eh Zuko?" Lieutenant Malkun again, who had been at his side since yesterday.
He and his friends had divided Zuko's meager belongings, and stashed them into their own packs. For once, the teen was content to just be grateful; he had enough trouble keeping tempo without getting winded, and breathing too deep still hurt. Also, he was pretty sure his shoulder wouldn't take kindly to a rucksack.
"What would you have done? I shot a fireball at his face, of course."
When the soldiers had quieted, Zuko added, quietly: "He gave me a wounded turtle-duck look over it and flew off. He really isn't a bad kid. In fact, if he'd been brought up on Fire Nation honor instead of all that life-is-sacred stuff, I don't doubt he would have accompanied me home willingly out of his own sense of duty."
And that was when Mai suddenly called his name in an accusing tone:
"Zuko!"
~~M~~
"What are you doing?"
Mai stared, down from her saddle, in utter shock and confusion.
After hours and hours of sitting around in a jolting and shaking tank, Mai had decided to get some fresh air. Well, she was just so incredibly bored.
As was protocol, one of the soldiers had supplied her with a Komodo-mount the moment she had stuck her head out of the still-moving vehicle. Then, as she had nothing better to do, Mai had thought she might as well go and look for Zuko.
Alright, so she was glaringly obvious. In her defense, she thought she was entitled to worry. Zuko had taken quite the fall just two days before.
But, it seemed she should not have had to worry.
Though, on the other hand… perhaps Zuko had fallen victim to some form of brain damage?
A quick scan of the lines had failed to yield that familiar scowl-and-scar, and so Mai had had to ride around the troops. As she did though, she stumbled on a group in the back. They were not keeping lines very professionally, and they were also talking way too much. Every now and then, the whole bunch of them broke out in that low-toned laughter of men, only one or two female voices breaking the baritone drone.
When she drew closer, curious, she to her amazement found Zuko at the center of this irregularity.
"Doing…?" he asked, looking up at her with some confusion, apparently pleading innocence and ignorance.
"Well, I was just telling a story actually."
Mai would have liked to gape, but settled on a more neutral slack-jaw. She rode her komodo-rhino closer, hardly noticing soldiers left and right jumping to get out of her way and back in rank. "Since when do you tell stories, Zuko? Spirits, since when do you talk to anyone?"
Her childhood crush shrugged, slowing down. The action allowed the last of the men to pass so they were effectively alone; left behind. One soldier threw a last, wary glance from her to Zuko, and then ran to join the ranks.
"I thought I'd adapt to my new environment," he supplied, so dreadfully reasonable. "Try something new for a change. I thought Uncle would have approved."
The Zuko Mai had known, three years ago, was never reasonable.
He was proud, dutiful—if perhaps a little spoiled and easy to anger. Eager to please, that too, yes; but never complacent- he would never have just...
"So, you're just going to accept this?"
Mai felt a little chuckle tear itself from her throat; laughter born of desperation. "You really are just going to roll over and take this like a wart-dog? What happened to never give up without a fight?"
Another one of those irritatingly calm shrugs. "What would you have me do? Challenge Azula to an Agni Kai? All that would achieve is get me killed. No, I think 'pick your battles wisely' would be a better proverb today, do you not agree?"
The road was silent; the noise of men squishing through mud was falling away in the distance. Into the dreary, wet air, Mai breathed: "Zuko, your sister has stolen your birthright, and once she captures the Avatar, your last chance to rectifying it all will be gone."
"Oh, I don't know, Mai. I am sure there are downsides too. But—capture the Avatar?" Suddenly the boy she thought she knew sported a wolfish grin. "Are you sure she can?"
"You know better than anyone." Mai's face turned smooth just at the thought of the princess. "Azula can do anything. And she definitely has the resources."
Zuko made a humming noise. "I am sure Uncle would have supplied me with an allegory about fishing nets with meshes too big for their intended catch. As it is, the Earth Kingdom is a big place. And the Avatar is an awfully small boy." he held out a hand. "Come, walk with me?"
"She put you in charge of finding him Zuko. If…"
"She put me in charge of tracking the Avatar. That is something completely different from finding—though I don't doubt we will run into him again."
"This is serious, Zuko." Mai turned up her nose. "Besides, I do not like mud."
"Uncle always said, the best girls are the once that know how to appreciate a good bit of mud." Eyes turned up in thought. "And then they box in it? No, that's not right. Judo? Knife-fight..? Something…"
Mai slid off to punch him lightly on the arm; the good one. "Your uncle is a dirty old man. You need to stop obsessing over him."
He shrugged again; but not as lightly as before. "How can I not? For his fate I do feel terribly responsible."
~~K~~
Katara was in a foul mood. It occurred to the water bender that she was, indeed, just like the mother goose-duck Toph had on occasion compared her with. It also occurred to her, - but never to Toph – that someone needed to mother this bunch of ingrates. No, Katara was just fine with having to be the only grown-up in the group. The only one with enough responsibility to, as the earth bender put it, mother them all.
No, her problem was that all of Katara's chicks were headstrong and individualistic to a suicidal amount. How in Yui's name was she supposed to keep her family safe, if one after the other went out on a righteous and dangerous crusade to save the world?
Even that she could have accepted. Katara was an easy-going person; she was actually okay with the crusading part, to a certain degree. And she was all for heading out to save the world.
But it would be nice if all those she felt responsible for would at least head on their quest in the same direction. - So she could protect them all from harm. Instead of having to flurry after them all in a state of near-panic as they all ran their separate ways, straight into danger.
Well, her brother heading off on his own had left her fuming already, especially as they had yet to establish Aang's safety. And Katara supposed she should not have nagged Toph about as much as she did; but when the earth-girl had joked about wanting to head off in her own direction on some crazy quest to save sky-bison and badger-moles… well, let's just say the two girls were no longer on speaking terms.
Even when they had found Aang, perfectly safe and in a better mood then he had been in days, Katara had been unable to break out of her rut.
And so now the two girls sat at the farthest corners of Appa's saddle: Katara at the front, holding the reigns for show, Toph way in the back, staring at nothing. Animosity was thick in the air; so thick it almost make Katara feel guilty. Yet Aang sat between them, oblivious to any tension, thoroughly engrossed in the little fire-bending book Sokka had found him.
They were flying north across the marshes as Sokka had suggested. Intelligently, Katara knew the princess was following them again. But her tank was little more than a smocking plume on the horizon, so the threat was far from their minds.
At long last, Aang lowered his text: "This book is a little disturbing."
"Of course it's disturbing," Katara chided without thinking. "It's a Fire Nation propagandist schoolbook."
"Yeah. So I was kind of expecting the whole 'fire is superior' thing." Aang sighed slowly. "What I wasn't expecting was how seriousit all is."
The air bender leafed through the pages, reading at random: "A good morning exercise is calling such a flame from the horse-riding stance and both student and flame holding completely still at least two hours. Both bender and flame should remain motionless throughout the exercise." He thumbed on a bit farther, then read out again: "As this next exercise requires both bender and flame to move, it is mandatory that it is only executed under the strict supervision of a teacher, lest discipline runs slack and students spent their time indulging in games rather than work."
Exasperated, the Avatar closed the book: "It just goes on like that: discipline, discipline, stick to the rules, work hard, blah, blah, blah... this book is supposed to be written for young children, just starting out in bending. There isn't any fun in here at all."
Katara just stared, unsure on how to answer that; after a while though, it was Toph that came with a hesitant reply.
"The Fire Nation massacred both the air-people - known for their freedom, and the dragons - the legendary 'tricksters of the sky'. Add to that the way they've been trying to take over the world, they're obviously set on rooting out all freedom and fun from the world. Is it really that much of a surprise?"
"I know that." Aang sighed. "But they were so different a hundred years ago. They used to be a fun people, you know. I don't mean to offend, Toph, but right now, the Fire Nation is more rigid than even the earth-people were in my time."
This time, Katara did jump in, with her own peace offering: "I don't know how Ba Sing Se was a hundred years ago, but I imagine they were less rigid too. And let's not forget the North-Pole; completely stuck on tradition and rules. Maybe all this is just what happens when the balance is upset. Maybe it's because air - the element of freedom - has been missing for such a long time."
Aang looked thoughtful, even dour: "If that's true, then we have even more work to do then we initially thought."
"Oh, cheer up, twinkle-toes." Toph was smirking now. "If that's true, then when the war is over, you, me and Sokka will just have to re-introduce the world to the wonderful art of prank-pulling."
"Yeah." Aang sighed once more, but then he broke into that ear-to-ear grin. "Yeah, Katara too! We can keep traveling the world, the four of us. And go on a mission to restore fun."
~~S~~
The next day was the second day of Sokka's very fruitless and dangerous trek across earthen towns.
With a sigh, the water-tribesman went back to thumbing through his scribbled notes. The list detailed the names of the air-bending ghost's children and the few grandchildren that had been born to him before his death. When drawing the notes, Sokka had kept open more than enough room to add notes and names and whatever else he might find out during his travels.
So far, the pages were still a discerning virginal blank; hardly any info had been added since he had left that hidden cave yesterday.
Sokka actually thought he was having an uncanny amount of trouble finding Kherang's descendants. –Seriously, it shouldn't be that hard, right? He had their names, their last place of residence. Even if all the air-bender's children were dead, then at least his grand-children should still be around.
But, no.
Perhaps it was their nomad blood, but none of the five children had stayed in the small, nameless village that had become home to the air bender and his earth-bending wife. Sokka had actually gone from house to house, asking for any information. He had only been met with distrustful stares and apathy. Most citizens argued they had never even heard the five names he tried. The few that admitted knowing Kherang's children told him they had long since moved. But all professed no knowledge on where they had gone.
Another glare at the list; Kherang's three oldest children had been married at the time of his death. The oldest had been considering relocating with his young family somewhere to the south. That was still his only lead, and so Sokka started walking down the road, out of this unfriendly little village in which no one ever heard anything or ever met anyone.
That was the fruitless part.
The dangerous part Sokka only ran into a few days later.
