A/N: The Following is rated M for Meetings and Partings.
It takes place, chronologically, somewhere during the series finale S3E18-21 "Sozin's Comet."
Reader discretion is advised.
Chapter 19: The Battle of Dust and Snow
Early Winter, Year 12 in the Reign of Fire-Lord Ozai
Everywhere was dust.
The flat stretches of arid badlands a few days outside of Ba Sing Se, despite being pockmarked with the occasional abrupt spar of stone, were very conductive to cavalry charge. The masked cavalrymen of the Nanbu clan, loyalists and Scorpions all, had made good use of the terrain in the implementation of their ambush, going so far as to carve hiding places in the small buttes that dotted the landscape, and then flooding out into a quick charge after the initial disorienting volley of firebending. Whether by intent, or by accident, the dust that had flared up in the initial explosion was made an order of magnitude worse by the quick and fevered charge of so many ostrich-horses. So thick was the dust that it functionally blinded both sides and made establishing a functional line of battle a tactical impossibility.
Everywhere was chaos.
General good order and discipline could only go so far in such a situation, and it had dissolved quite quickly in the face of the numerous ringing explosions that had sounded up and down the column. The surprise of the ambush, completely unexpected this close to the walls of Ba Sing Se, as well as the absence of a clearly visible line of battle to advance to or withdraw from, created pure pandemonium on both sides of the fight. Every unit fought on their own, companies of soldiers occasionally finding one another like drunks stumbling around in a dark and unfamiliar room, colliding with one another, fumbling to ascertain the other's identity, and then either supporting one another or descending into a fury of combat that would see both bloodied until the flow of battle divided them again. In such a time as this it was down to the individual skill levels of the junior officers to keep their unit's cohesion, their troops fighting, and to try to find some semblance of a strategy in the dust-choked madness that was this battle.
Zuko had to say that he liked his chances.
Or he would have, had he had the time to think about such things.
He'd lost his ostrich-horse a half an hour ago to an arrow that had appeared sourcelessly out of the dust, and he thanked the spirits that the first troop of soldiers he stumbled across after that were some of his own. He had taken command of the company of officer-less yari-spearmen and begun leading them again and again into the pockets of Nanbu that sporadically appeared out of the ever-present dust. The Nanbu were shockingly quiet at first, even for light cavalry, but those quiet taloned footfalls quickly became thunderous once they had ascertained that they had found an enemy. The Nanbu themselves shrieked like howling demons in the midst of their charge, which, while it did have a demoralizing effect, also usually gave away their position very clearly, giving Zuko a target and dragging him from conflict to conflict.
Five minutes ago it had dragged him up a small incline, through a stymied enemy force, and onto a hilltop in the midst of a mixed force of purple and red-clad samurai, all of whom fought under a purple and white banner displaying a jian sword crossed with a boomerang.
"Where in the spirits' name did you get that?!" Zuko roared above the din of battle as he waded into the center of the formation.
"Suki…" Sokka paused momentarily, grunting as he whipped his boomerang at an enemy bowman who was eyeing Zuko's back, "…made it for me!"
"Suki can sew?" Zuko said, hurling a blast of fire at a suddenly very surprised, and now very dead, Nanbu who had breached the formation's perimeter.
"Yeah, she's just full of freezing surprises!" Sokka said, his grin a mix of happy and feral as he caught his returning boomerang.
"Any idea where Aang is?" Zuko asked as he put his back to Sokka's, watching the faltering Nanbu that were now second-guessing this particular foray and being driven back by his sudden appearance.
Sokka grimaced and shrugged. "No idea. He's probably above us somewhere, trying to figure out what to do… Or looking for Katara."
"Ash," Zuko said with a snarl as he snapped a firewhip at another Nanbu. Even now, surrounded by enemies to kill, the impulse to go moose-haring off to find Katara was quite powerful. It was only his duty to the soldiers he had taken charge of that stayed his hand.
That, and the fact that Katara, as she frequently reminded him, could take care of herself, thank you very much, and would be exceptionally cross at him for doing so.
So, mangled face torn between frustration and ferocity, Zuko began barking orders to fully integrate his soldiers in with Sokka's Water-Tribesmen.
"Honor before reason!" He roared.
"Death before dishonor!" they roared back spears pointed outward and their voices mixing with the thunder and shrieking of a newly appeared and charging enemy.
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Sokka had started laughing.
While Zuko was no stranger to laughter on the battlefield, the impulse still came to him regularly, demon or no demon, when confronted with pitched violence, but it was unusual to see it coming from Sokka. For the most part, Sokka had maintained a stoic teeth-gritted silence that was part and parcel for a Unicorn on the defensive, only opening his mouth to bark an order, or a warning or, half under his breath now, to call out one of his ridiculous attack names.
But now, a seeming eternity after the battle's explosive beginning, he was laughing.
Laughing because… despite Zuko and his great, possibly even heroic, efforts, they were losing.
It felt like hours since they had taken this most recent hill and held it, collecting detached soldiers who emerged out of the now fading dust like specters in red and dusty-tan. Soldiers fell, were replaced, and fell again, and the circle of spears and swords was now much smaller than it had been, barely five paces at its widest point now, as the Sun passed its zenith. The laughter had truly begun in earnest when, a few minutes previously, a light wind had finally appeared out of the south and begun the slow work of clearing the dust away from the battlefield and gradually revealing a now rapidly consolidating line of battle.
A line of battle that Zuko and Sokka had discovered themselves on the wrong side of.
From what Zuko could see in the now infrequent pauses between enemy charges, the main body of his legion was doing quite well. A line of spears and stone had been established and rocks were being dropped from the airship and then noticeably being accelerated and changed in direction by the earthbending contingent. Now that his legion had achieved their footing the Nanbu would be hard-pressed to charge them effectively as Fire-Nation steel flashed and struck while stones thudded down on them from above. Also in those now infrequent moments of respite, Zuko was eternally grateful that, only the day before, he had consolidated the baggage train and the Crane medical corps, onto the battle-blimp, increasing their overall marching speed and also ensuring that something, much like what had just happened, would not cripple the legion.
Not that any of that did him any good at this particular moment.
"You know… if anyone had told me… that I'd be… dying with a Fire-Nation Prince at my back…" Sokka wheezed.
"You would have laughed," Zuko said, his teeth bared and his lone eye locked on another rapidly approaching Nanbu charge that had begun swinging their way only a few moments before, finding them an easy target in the dust clearing rising wind.
"Ooooh yeah!" Sokka crowed, "and then I'd have asked them to share whatever it was that they were drinking! Cactus-juice likely. Did I ever tell you about-"
"Set! Spears!" Zuko barked. The bedraggled remnants under his command crouched low in a doubled row, bracing the butts of their yari against the ground with their body weight, purple Unicorn and red Fire-Nation soldier almost indistinguishable from one another in the caked dust.
"-all dehydrated in the Burning Sands after we'd escaped from Wan Shi Tong's Library, and then Momo and I found this cactus-" Sokka continued, rolling his neck and taking a better grip on his jian sword.
"Though I die this day…" Zuko intoned quietly, drawing his great-uncle's katana, his firebending no longer overly reliable after so much use in driving away enemy units too large to engage effectively.
"-there were so many colors and-"
"…I go to my ancestors…" Zuko continued, his voice quickly becoming lost in the sound of the taloned charge and Nanbu screeching.
"-and then I said, maybe it's a friendly mushroom!" Sokka shouted.
"…and she survives this."
"Friendly. Motherfucking. MUSHROOM!" Sokka roared, pointing his jian at the enemy, sighting a last toss of his boomerang.
Zuko barked a laugh as he drew up into a sword stance…
…and then the world was nothing except the crash of bodies colliding, the shine of steel on steel, and the sharp tang of blood in the still dust-laden air.
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"Up! Get Up!" Zuko growled after spitting blood out of his mouth. He grabbed Sokka by the left forearm, his right hand still clenched around his katana, the blade entirely crimson, and pulled him out from under a dead Nanbu.
"Just… five more minutes…" Sokka muttered.
"The standard cavalry wheel will see them back on us in ninety seconds," Zuko croaked, his hair whipping around his head in the still-rising southern wind, his helmet now missing somewhere among the dead. "So. Unless you want to die on your back…"
"Well, damnit, when you put it like that…" Sokka said with a pained smirk. He groaned as Zuko helped him to his feet, clutching at his left side, the purple now visible and darker with slowly spreading blood. "You, ah, got something on you there," he said gesturing at Zuko's left shoulder."
Zuko glanced down and was surprised to see a pair of arrows sticking out of the gap between his shoulder pauldron and chest armor.
"Ah. I have been shot."
"Katara's going to kill you," Sokka said shaking his head.
Zuko nodded with a grunt of affirmation as the Nanbu company reached the halfway point of their wheel. There were less than a dozen figures around them now, slowly and painfully clambering their way to their feet.
"So… I am sorry," Zuko said, grunting slightly as he snapped the arrows off midway up the shaft, "but I missed that last bit. What was that about a mushroom?"
Sokka laughed. "Oh, well, apparently the liquid inside of a cactus, while quenchy, is… is…" Sokka trailed off, his eyes going wide and his mouth hanging ajar as he stared past Zuko.
Zuko turned slightly, trying to keep the Nanbu in his limited vision as he looked to see what impossibility it was that could actually make Sokka shut up.
Zuko blinked, twice, in surprise.
There, on a rise just at the edge of the battle, was a figure sitting atop some kind of enormous white animal and holding a rather simplistic battle-standard.
It was white, with an unadorned purple circle in the center.
Sokka, seeming to forget his wounded side, began casting around on the ground, eventually finding his own purple and white battle-standard. He hoisted it back into the air and began waving it from side to side.
"SHIN-JOOOOOOOO!" he screamed, a nearly jubilant smile splitting his blood-covered face.
And, wonder of wonders, the figure turned in their direction and hoisted their own battle-standard in response.
"Uuuu-taaa-kuuuu," came a faint voice in the distance.
A single voice that then rose in power and volume as a thousand more riders, lances covered in purple streamers, crested the rise and began moving north towards them with the deceptive slowness of a rising tsunami. The sound of accelerating ostrich-horses and shrieking coming in Zuko's direction was gradually, inexorably, buried by the rushing thunder of the enormous beasts, their oddly graceful loping movement producing a thunder unlike that of even heavy rhino-lizard cavalry.
"If you are even partially alive, get on your feet!" Zuko roared, suddenly energized by the fleeting possibility of survival. He himself grabbed an abandoned yari with his unwounded arm and jammed it into the ground, point towards the now faltering and uncertain Nanbu charge. The few ambulatory soldiers around him gave a last burst of effort, picking themselves up and finding weapons, forming a ragged spear wall to Zuko's left and right.
"This is going to be close," Zuko growled.
Sokka just wheezed a hacking laugh, his face still caught in an exhausted rictus of a grin as he waved his battle standard, almost tauntingly, at the Nanbu while his eyes remained locked on the charging white and purple cavalry to his right angling to intercept. They thundered forward, impossibly fast for their size, their spears lowered in the front of the wave and a small but steady stream of arrows beginning to arc forward, launched from curved bows by Unicorn cavalrymen in the back and presaging their inevitable collision.
A collision that occurred not five yards in front of Zuko's ragged line of spears.
The enormous polarbear-dog mounted soldiers of clan Utaku slammed into the Nanbu like a wave crashing over a child's sandcastle; without seeming to notice or slow down. The lightly armored Nanbu were absolutely and immediately shattered. Those few that remained turned away, to try and wheel again and re-establish momentum, but were instead cut down by more arrows as the enormous white-mounted soldiers pursued them.
In two passes they were gone. Wiped from the badlands as though they had never been.
The bulk of the Utaku then began to veer east, towards the rear of the main Nanbu formation as a smaller group fell back and, with a slower and significantly less threatening pace, made their way to Sokka and Zuko's dead-laden hilltop.
"Hail, Shinjo," the standard-bearer said, nodding at Sokka from atop her now curiously sniffing beast.
"Hail, Utaku," Sokka said, trying to plant his banner and grin roguishly, but instead only managing to grimace and almost fall over.
"You're Hakoda's boy, right?" another, older, voice asked as they swung out of their saddle.
"Yep, that's me," Sokka said, still going for roguish but now beginning to look and sound as tired as he truly was.
The second figure strode forward and removed her helmet, revealing an older woman with gray hair, a windswept Water-Tribe face, and shockingly deep blue eyes.
"Well, I'm Utaku Korra," she said, grinning a truly roguish grin as her cavalry crashed into the rapidly dissolving Nanbu force behind her. "And the whole lot of you owe me a drink."
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Chieftain Utaku Korra, Zuko decided, was his new favorite person.
Not just because she managed to combine a wry sarcastic wit with a sincere and obvious love for her polarbear-dogs.
Not just because she had managed to save Zuko and Sokka's lives by managing to be in just the right spot at just the right time.
Not just because she seemed to have absolutely no qualms at all about working alongside the Fire-Nation.
Mainly, it was because she was the one who brought him back to Katara.
So, really, Zuko's second favorite person.
But a very close second.
Katara managed, in that strange yet endearing way of hers, to combine indignant outrage and overwhelming relief at Zuko's "safe" return. Outrage that he had dared to "allow" himself to get wounded, relief that it was not beyond her ability to heal. She saw to him personally, right after Sokka, who was in worse shape and had spent the entirety of the ride back to the rapidly re-establishing war camp muttering pained curses at every bound of the polarbear-dog, clutching at the bannerman from behind, his face locked in a perpetual wince.
As Zuko sat and waited his turn, reports filtered in to him from various officers and clerks. Casualties were bad, but not nearly as bad as Zuko had initially supposed given his own experiences. Not only had the dust and chaos prevented the Nanbu from fully exploiting the advantage of surprise, but the earthbenders, after hearing Zuko's cry of warning, had managed to raise reasonably effective defenses in relatively short order.
Not only that, but the Crane healers, after ferrying down from The Princess Yue, were now proving that they were worth their weight not just in gold, but in lives as well.
Casualty reports, once disheartening, were rapidly amended by visibly stunned Fire-Nation officers as most incapacitating casualties were downgraded to full recoveries in a matter of hours.
Unfortunately, the figures of the dead would not be decreasing.
Despite that, Zuko found himself in rather high spirits. While he did not find pleasure in hearing just how many men he had lost, his blood seemed to ring with excitement, not just for his somewhat miraculous survival, but as his legion, far more rapidly than he could have hoped, pulled itself back together. The amount of damage that could have been done was several orders of magnitude higher than what had been done, and the buzz of an efficient well-ordered camp reverberated across Zuko's veins like singing.
The battle was over, but the war had well and truly started, and no matter that he had been on the wrong side for some time, Zuko knew one thing very well.
He had been made for war.
Despite the feelings of pride in his soldiers, his relief at not being dead, the still somewhat present battle-spirits, and his excitement at the potential tactical uses of a heavy cavalry unit as powerful as clan Utaku seemed to be, there was still one rather large and worrisome problem.
No one seemed to know where Aang was.
At first it was a minor concern, easily dismissed. After all the Avatar himself was not a part of anyone's chain of command and so obviously none of the formal reports would include him. Later, after the initial frenzy had died down in the wake of the arrival of the waterbending healers, it became a larger concern. Zuko had assumed that Aang was likely still in the air, possibly on the airship, but the Crane were certain that they had not seen him at all today.
Concern turned into a terrible disquiet when Zuko realized that he hadn't seen Mai yet either.
To his relief he managed to find her before the Sun went down, talking slowly and quietly to a blanket-wrapped, rather dazed-looking, Ty Lee.
"Mai! There you are, where in the Sun's name have… you…" Zuko trailed away as Ty Lee looked up at him blankly and the blanket she had had over her head fell back, revealing her hair. She had always had incredibly long hair, and bound it tightly in a braid that hung down to the middle of her back.
Now, however, it was quite short, barely past her ears. Short and ragged.
The hair was the first sign that something was very wrong, her eyes were the second and more important one.
Zuko had seen those eyes before. During the siege of Doromuri when the assault had been particularly gruesome.
"Ty?" Zuko said quietly, crouching down and softening his tone immediately. "Are you alright?" Mai kept her eyes on Ty Lee and her hand in constant motion, rubbing soothing circles on her back.
"What?" Ty Lee asked. She cocked her head to the side slightly but her eyes seemed to have trouble finding and focusing on Zuko. "Me? Oh. No. I'm… fine." It almost sounded like a question as she smiled weakly and looked to Mai as if seeking confirmation.
Zuko paused for a moment, his somewhat fatigued mind eventually recalling when he had last seen Ty Lee.
Where, and with whom.
"…Ty? What happened?" Zuko asked, fighting against a now rising dread.
"Oh. You know," Ty Lee said distractedly. "Boom." She shrugged almost helplessly.
"Boom?" Zuko asked, and Mai shot him a warning glance.
"Yeah. Boom. I heard you… you were yelling about it," Ty Lee said, her eyes unfocusing further as though trying to recall the events of decades past. "You were yelling, and the… the old guy said… said something about… I don't… but, then there was a big boom and there… there was fire. Fire and screaming and I… I couldn't do anything!" She looked at Mai again rising panic showing on her face. "Mai, I couldn't do anything and it… it hurt. Oh… oh, spirits. It hurt! Why did… why doesn't it still… I couldn't… couldn't… DO anything… and… and…" she began to cry and Mai pulled her into her shoulder as she dissolved into tears.
"I found her in the waterbenders' tent," Mai said quietly, her voice in its normal monotone despite the circumstances. "They are amazing. She doesn't have a mark on her. But from the way her hair is missing…" She shook her head. "She must have been hit near to head-on. Whoever was with her…"
"Aang," Zuko said hoarsely. "Aang was with her."
"Uh-huh," Ty Lee said, nodding exaggeratedly into Mai's shoulder as she went even paler than normal.
Zuko leapt up and began walking as fast as he could without allowing his panic to show. His mind raced as he headed back to the command tent while the Sun sank below the horizon.
Ash! Oh, burning piles of ashy pitch and darkness! We've got to find him! He can't be dead. Not after all of this! We'll go through those who are still unconscious… maybe… somebody didn't notice… his tattoos?
Zuko's face broke into a snarl at his own idiocy.
Who am I kidding? The only way they wouldn't have was If he was completely… DAMNIT!
It was only the knowledge that the Legion would suffer a demoralizing wave of panic upon seeing their commander in a full sprint that kept Zuko at just below a trot.
A trot which stopped in a skid, and the most powerful exhale of relief he had probably ever breathed, as he made it into the firelight outside the command area and discovered a still very alive Aang.
A remarkably filthy Aang, that had half-collapsed on top of Katara, who was now making familiar soothing motions on his back as he sobbed.
Zuko, now very confused on top of being relieved, looked a question at Katara.
She mouthed a word at him above tearful eyes, and while it wasn't loud enough for him to hear, he certainly made out the word as his heart dropped into his stomach.
"Bumi."
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The command tent stood in uneasy silence.
It was to be expected of course, they had been ambushed out of nowhere and lost one of the main cornerstones of their new strategy not fifty miles outside of Ba Sing Se. A great master, almost one-hundred-twenty-years-old to be sure, but a name that was known and respected almost anywhere in the world.
Kuni Bumi. Lord of Earth. Earthbending master. Mad genius.
The silence extended, not only at the loss of such an important and powerful ally, but at the implications for the rest of those still living.
An earthbending master, snuffed out in an instant…
…and the Avatar himself, knocked unconscious for the entirety of the battle.
The silence continued, in memoriam, until Zuko finally broke it.
"The immediate plan… has not changed," he said, calmly but with enough volume that many of the assembled officers and chieftains started in surprise. "We ride west. We engage where necessary. We liberate Omashu and capture the airships. None of that changes."
Arnook looked on the cusp of saying something, but quickly decided against as most of the table nodded unconsciously in agreement.
I want double sentry and patrols tonight," Zuko said leaning over the conference table, resting on his fingertips. "I doubt they will come back, but if they do… well, we will drive them away. Again."
Not the most inspiring speech, Zuko thought to himself, staring down at the table map of the Earth-Continent as the assembly began to bow and file out. But then, I don't know what else to say. We all knew that the plan could change, that any of us could die at any moment.
Zuko sighed and looked up expecting to find the now silent tent empty.
And it was, except for Aang.
"We need to talk," Aang said, his grey eyes remarkably serene despite everything he had been through today.
Apparently he had regained consciousness, entirely unharmed, but under Bumi's corpse in the final minutes of the battle. The reason that no one had seen him is that, after he had discovered that there was nothing to be done and the battle concluded, he had taken Bumi's body up on a nearby bluff and buried him himself.
By hand.
Despite what Zuko assumed to be Katara's best efforts, there was still badlands dirt under his fingernails, and the two of them eyed one another from opposite sides of the conference table as a strange tension filled the otherwise empty tent.
"I don't think I can do this," Aang said eventually, a hint of sadness creeping through the serenity.
"Do… do what?" Zuko asked, despite being reasonably certain he already knew what.
"Fight a war," Aang said simply. "I don't know if I can…" he looked away. "All this violence, I don't think I… I can't do this. I think… I think I have to leave."
"Aang," Zuko growled, his temper working its way into the cracks exhaustion had made in his control, "you will not just abandon everyone who-"
"I don't want to abandon anyone," Aang continued, cutting Zuko off with a quelling gesture. "It's just… I don't know if… if this is where I'm supposed to be. If this is how I'm supposed to… to fight? I only saw the last few minutes of the battle and still…" He shook his head in a mix of disgust and embarrassment. "…I don't know if I'll be any good to you."
"Aang," Zuko sighed restraining his anger with a shake of his head, "you are the most powerful bender in the world. Just you being here-"
"Gives everyone a false sense of security if I can't do anything," Aang finished, looking miserable. "People are already talking out there. I can hear them, in the wind. They're wondering what their chances are now that I, just me, was knocked unconscious."
"Aang, it was… it was just bad luck," Zuko said. "Do you think that… that by leaving you're going to make things better or worse?"
"No. I'm not… not really leaving… just… taking a different path," Aang said, an odd thoughtful look passing across his face. A look as though he was trying to remember the answer to a difficult riddle he had once heard. "Bumi, just before he passed, was talking about how, often time, different paths, the tunnel, the high road, the mountain valley, they all eventually lead to the same destination." That look of thoughtfulness increased as Aang nodded to himself, his grey eyes losing their focus for a moment. "At least I think that was before."
"Aang, you are in shock," Zuko said, moderating his tone. "It's nothing to be ashamed of. You need to get some food and some sleep. Now is not the time to make any big-"
"I'm leaving tonight," Aang said suddenly, nodding to himself again as if surprised to find himself in agreement with his own words.
"…The ash you are," Zuko snarled after a moment, walking around the table and stalking towards him as he bristled. "You think you can just run away again?! From all of this?"
"Do you think you could stop me?" Aang asked. There was nothing in his voice, no fear, no sarcasm, not even any real curiosity, and Zuko drew up short to him.
"Aang…" Zuko ground his teeth together. "We've talked about this, you have to be the one to-"
"Oh, I will," Aang said, suddenly smiling. "It's just… I have to do it my way. You've got your path, and it's a good one. Stick to it. But it's… it's a fire path. Which will work. For you, I mean. But I… I need to take a different one."
Zuko's jaw worked soundlessly as his brain tried to figure out exactly what in the Sun's name was going on in the airbender's head, and what he could possibly say to counter the logic of someone who had obviously just had their very first concussion.
"I've… made up my mind," Aang said, again seemingly taken aback by his own words for a moment. Then he smiled confidently and put his hand on Zuko's shoulder. "But I promise, I'm not running away. You and Toph taught me better than that. I'm just… taking a different path." He squeezed Zuko's shoulder and turned to go.
"And what should I tell… everyone?" Zuko asked, trying to keep bitterness from his voice.
"Oh. Don't worry, I'll talk to them," Aang said, turning around and smiling at him again. "Otherwise that really would be running away." He turned and took another step before stopping again. "You'll look after Appa for me?" he asked, sounding genuinely worried for the first time in the last few moments.
"You… you're not taking Appa?" Zuko said, blinking in surprise.
"No. I don't think so." Aang squinted suddenly as though looking at something in the far distance. "I have to walk a different path. A new path. Appa… he's the old one. The old path." He turned back to Zuko again seeming mildly uncertain. "You will though? Take care of him? You're his favorite. After me of course."
"Of… of course. You…" Zuko hesitated. "You are really sure about this?"
Aang stopped again, just outside of the command tent, illuminated in moonlight, and turned to look at Zuko, seeming to give the question all of his attention.
"I really am," Aang said, still sounding a touch surprised at the fact. The look on his face was much the same as it had been when he discovered that joy was just as much a part of firebending as rage.
It was a look that Zuko was certain he'd seen before, somewhere else… long, long ago.
It was the strangest sensation. He'd had this conversation before. He felt it in his bones. There had been fear and rage, then confusion…
Then he had asked if… if he was sure…
"I am sure, Akodo," the Avatar said, bathed in blue-white light.
"Then… I will keep the peace," Zuko answered, bowing deeply over his fist, his voice seeming strange and rusty in his throat. "Until your return."
"I know you will," the Avatar said, that perpetually gentle smile on his face. "One way or another, you always do."
And with that, the Avatar disappeared into the night.
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Zuko spent the rest of that night meeting with a steady stream of people coming to speak with him.
The Water-Tribe Chieftains were first, Hakoda and Korra and Arnook.
Strangely, there was no panic. No anger or condemnation. Whatever Aang had said to each of them had not only been brief, but had been so full of the same conviction that he had had with Zuko that not even dour Arnook had found something to be upset about. The conversations trended more towards continued integration of their disparate forces, plans for the future, and simple reassurances.
That seemed to be the theme throughout the night, reassuring one another.
Toph came next, grumbling about stupid airheads, but nonetheless reasonably calm.
Sokka made a joke about how Aang was not entirely dissimilar to a boomerang. The phrase "Boomer-aang" was discussed in somewhat ridiculous detail as Suki rolled her eyes and smiled fondly at a still alive Sokka.
Yugoda, the older healer that had apparently taught Katara, stopped in ostensibly to check on how Katara's healing had managed on the arrow wounds Zuko had taken. She pronounced herself satisfied with the results, as well as Zuko's strategy, and then informed him that she had also reserved herself a "place in the line" with regards to Zuko's murder in the event of his hurting Katara.
But she said it with a smile, which Zuko took as a good sign.
Haki and both of the Uesugi brothers poked their heads in for all of a half a minute. Just long enough for each of them to give Zuko their own personal version of the phrase "the men are still with you."
The last was Katara.
Zuko was already in his cot when she staggered in, obviously fighting a wave of exhaustion.
She managed to get a single boot off before she "harrumphed" irritably at the other, and simply lay down next to Zuko otherwise completely dressed.
"Hey," Zuko said, mildly surprised at her presence. Generally speaking, in deference to Water-Tribe custom, she slept most nights in her own tent.
"Sleeping here now," Katara grumbled, rolling over and curling up against Zuko.
"I see that," Zuko said, not at all unhappily, "you are certain that your father-"
"Don't care," she muttered, shoving her hands, icy cold from being in the healing water all day, against Zuko's chest.
Zuko snorted in somewhat exhausted mirth, covered her with his blanket, and exhaled, raising his own body temperature for a few minutes.
Katara groaned in satisfaction, and somehow managed to wrap herself tighter around him as he bent the single tent's lantern out.
"…You are alright?" Zuko asked after a long moment.
"Mmhm," she answered. "Tired"
And then, just like that, she was asleep.
Zuko shook his head, not bothering to repress a smile, and managed to find sleep only a few minutes later.
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The camp was quiet the next morning as Zuko stoked the campfire nearest his tent and brewed himself a cup of tea.
Normally a Fire-Nation camp was a frenzy of activity by now. Tents were usually half-packed and rallying cries of sergeants, calling soldiers to assembly, would have filled the air before the Sun had come all of the way above the horizon. But on the morning after a hard-fought battle, with no other enemies on the horizon, things were different. The guard shifts had been doubled, but shortened, allowing the rank and file to catch as much sleep as they could. Allowing them to try and wash away that special brand of exhaustion that only comes from surviving.
Despite still feeling that particular exhaustion himself, Zuko was wide awake.
He'd never been very good at sleeping.
Despite that exhaustion hovering behind his temples, he felt alright. No matter that he'd lost two very important pieces from the board, the game was still far from decided. Even in the chilly morning light of the Earth-Kingdom badlands he felt, somehow even more strongly than a few days ago, that the war was still winnable.
I am calm. He thought. This is what calm feels like.
If someone had told him three years ago that it was the Avatar that would have given him this strange sense of peace, he probably would have laughed in their face.
Well, to be fair, that Zuko would have probably just glowered and then ordered that someone thrown in the brig. For gross incompetence or possibly for being drunk on duty.
But, as it was, he had risen, full of that bizarre calm that he owed entirely to Aang, completed his meditations, his thousand cuts and practice forms.
Then he had fed Appa. A new ritual, a new responsibility.
Then he had come back here, to watch his fire, now red with his chi, and to make himself a cup of tea. While it was just hot leaf juice, Katara was now a confirmed tea drinker and he had decided that he had better learn to brew a cup of tea that she might actually enjoy.
He had not been at all surprised at how delighted Iroh had been when he asked for his advice in that regard.
He was, however, remarkably surprised when Katara, his blanket wrapped around her, slumped next to him on the stone that he was using as a bench.
"Hey."
"you left," Katara said, irritation mostly subsumed in groggy exhaustion. "Got cold."
"Ah. I am sorry," Zuko said, wrapping an arm around her and bending her warm with another exhale.
They sat there for a moment, both staring at the fire.
"Do you want tea?" Zuko asked eventually, "Or do you want to go back to bed? This is a rest day so…"
Katara furrowed her brow and scrunched her nose in an adorable display of faux anguish at having to make a decision this early in the morning.
"Tea," she said finally. "I…" she yawned, "… need to go back to the healing tents to check on-"
"No. You do not," Zuko said firmly, releasing her and leaning forward to grab the tea kettle out of the fire. "Today is a rest day. General's orders."
"What if…" she yawned again, "…what if somebody needs me?"
"I am sure that Lady Yugoda and her students can handle whatever crops up," Zuko said, as he poured tea into one of his battered stone cups. He offered it to Katara who began to smile as soon as the odor hit her nose.
"You're sweet," she said, blowing ice crystals across the surface before taking a sip.
While Zuko was not certain he was actually getting better at brewing tea, Katara was certainly getting better at hiding the wince that his "bracing" tea inspired in most who drank it. Restraining a smile himself, Zuko poured another cup and the two of them sat in companionable silence for a few minutes as they sipped at their tea.
After Katara had had her standard two cups she groaned, escaping the arm Zuko had replaced around her as she rose to give an enormous stretch and another yawn. Afterwards her eyes, now open all the way, locked on Zuko, and a slow smile spread across her face.
"You know, maybe you were right. Maybe we should go back to bed," she said in a low voice as she turned to face him.
"Oh?" Zuko said, the right side of his mouth curling upwards as well.
"Well, yes, I just don't know if what I did counts as sleeping. What with…" she looked down at the clothes she had passed out in, "…all of these clothes on."
"You aren't worried about being cold anymore?" Zuko asked, reaching over to secure the blanket she had shed next to him, his eye still locked on hers.
"Well if I do, get cold that is, it will be entirely your fault," Katara said in that same heated tone of voice as she began to move back toward Zuko's tent.
Zuko paused for a moment, looking around quickly to ensure that no one was observing the two of them, then crossed the gap between the campfire and his tent with unseemly speed, his blanket trailing behind him.
-Ω-Ω-Ω-Ω-Ω-Ω-Ω-Ω-Ω-Ω-Ω-Ω-
"You know… I'm really proud of you," Katara said her eyes half fogged with the afterglow.
"I learn best through practical experience," Zuko said with a grin.
Katara snorted. "That's not what I meant, grumpy-bear. I'm just glad you're so on board with this whole 'rest day' thing. I half expected to find you out there trying to make Aang and the Duke recover with firebending." She chuckled at the very idea.
"…What?" Zuko said, his eye going wide as he went stock still.
"I mean I know that I know that you can't fix shock with exercise, but that's normally your solution to everything."
Oh, fuck… he didn't?
"Did… did Aang talk to you last night?" Zuko asked, his face now screwed up in a wince as his hand came up to massage the bridge of his nose.
"Yes?" Katara said, drawing the word out slightly in confusion as she rolled over to look at Zuko. "He told me about Bumi. Zuko, you saw us-"
"No. After that."
"I… no? I went back to the healing tent after I handed him off to Toph and Suki."
Fuck.
"So… he didn't say anything about…" Zuko couldn't bring himself to finish.
"Say anything about…?" Katara's face had become stern.
Ash and burning bones, I am going to absolutely kill that little-
"What was he supposed to tell me, Zuko?" Katara asked, in a tone of voice that would have sent a lesser naked man running to the hills.
"He… he said… he decided… that he needed to leave," Zuko said eventually.
Damnit, Zuko thought as Katara's face transitioned through severalexpressions of shock, disbelief, and outrage, I really should have written down what HE said. It sounded WAY more convincing… somehow.
"He. Did. WHAT!?"
A/N: Well happy… (/checks calendar) May everybody! Boy how time flies when you're trapped in quarantine. Sorry again for all the deficiency of posts during your government-mandated alone time, finals week was a thing that still happened to me as well as my muse absconding with those sweet sweet inspirations that I need to survive.
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Thanks for sticking with me, obviously you've read the chapter and made it this far and so you the gold star of participation from me, your favorite author who writes about a samurai version of Zuko. (Note within the note: if there IS another samurai-zuko fic out there please let me know, I'd love to give it a read.)
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But we've tred this ground before, please comment, kudos, review and like. I don't NEED affirmation, but that doesn't mean I wouldn't enjoy it.
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And for you few, you happy few, persons who read this far have some more of your favorite…
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META-BITS
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Nanbu Strategy: I have always tried to paint a picture in this fic of benders being rarer that their non-bending counterparts, hopefully that came through clearly, but if it did you may be asking yourself, "where did all those Nanbu firebenders come from if they were able to explode and ENTIRE army on the march?" And so I answer here in the bits o'meta, because that's what I do.
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To whit, they DIDN'T have that many.
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What they did instead is to tweak their firebending, much in the way Azula did in "The Chase" and make it more of a bigger flash-bang. Less damage, more distraction, fewer firebenders required. I feel like the whole sneaky Nanbu plan was started even before Zuko and the Legion crossed that way going east. Obviously, they were reasonably certain the he would pass back that way eventually, and so, not caring overmuch about the rebel "King" in BSS they just hung out until their moment came.
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And from their perspective, it was a pretty rousing success. If not for the timely intervention of the Unicorn the rebel forces would have lost THREE major elements to their campaign, and probably would have gone from a major, to a minor, threat overnight. But that also brings us around to…
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Utaku Korra: Yes. It's exactly what you're thinking… I think. (I don't know what you're really thinking, I'm not a mind reader) This is Korra's (the one of whom a LEGEND has been told) great-granny and the one she will be named for (should I ever get around to doing that segment of the series.)
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On the L5R side of things, it is almost exactly what is says on the tin. The Utaku Battle-Maidens are the militant wing of the Utaku family, and entirely matriarchal organization, who have the biggest and best horses in all of Rokugon (the name of the nation in L5R, and boy isn't it weird that I haven't actually mentioned that yet in these author notes?) Obviously I swapped horse for "polarbear-dog" but honestly, I think we can all agree, that THAT is an UPGRADE.
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Death: I told you it was happening, and this, unfortunately is only a small taste of what I have in store. I teased a LOT of deaths in this one, but I assure you, some of you WILL be unhappy with me by the end of this.
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Aang's Departure: I think I have made no secret of my hatred for the Lion-Turtle. I dislike deux ex machina and that damned turtle was almost a textbook example. Maybe, I thought to myself, if they had given me the story of Wan BEFORE that point I'd have been more forgiving, but in ATLA as stands, I HATE the dragon-turtle.
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I get that Aang needs to change. He needs a way to stay true to his beliefs and still do his Avatar duties. I don't even have a problem with the "spirit-bending" but not the way they did it. So, MY Aang is going to have to go on a journey. He will depart, alone and barefoot into the wilderness of the spirit realm and emerge… changed. Classic Hero's Journey stuff here.
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But then, why didn't he say goodbye to Katara?: Because, he finally figured out that he needed to let go. And I think he knew that facing her down, telling her, would have been much harder on her than it was on him. I don't think he could have done whatever mystical thing he did to Zuko and the others, I don't think she would have accepted that. So, he left, probably watched her heal for a little while before he did, but then (/deep exhale) he let her go.
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And that's the first step he had to take on his journey to true enlightenment.
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Thanks again for reading! I hope you'll stick around for the rest, whenever that happens to be.
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NEXT TIME on a very special "Avatar: The Last Dragon"...
The war continues, people die, and there is more crying.
TUNE IN. Some random Zuko time, but same Zuko channel!
Original post date: 7 May 2020