Disclaimer: I own nothing but the conceits and headcanon.
Notes: Assume each season of AtLA is a year, not just a few months.
Notes2: I want you to imagine that the Tortallan universe is on one hemisphere of the planet and the Avatar one is on the other.
Sokka had been concerned and baffled when Daine had clearly had Appa land, but that had evaporated when the bow, strange-looking and foreign but clearly a bow, had been pointed out. He supposed it made sense. Before he'd known what Appa was, he might have done the same, and Zuko had passed along these people were just out of some war involving a lot of dangerous flying things. It was hardly surprising. Meanwhile, Daine was clearly talking the man down, probably chattering about the bow to soothe him with commonplaces.
"Why are we stopping?" Aang demanded.
How Aang was still so innocent of the aggression people could bring to bear, Sokka didn't know. "That man was going to try shooting Appa down, so Numair and Daine are talking to him, probably to calm him down, and to start making sure people know that Appa's not dangerous."
"Why would they think he's dangerous?" Aang asked. "He's just a flying bison."
"Because he's very big, and he has horns and he flies and they've never seen anything like him, so for all they know he's like a really angry cow-pig bull when you get up close," Sokka explained. "I don't know if you remember, but I was pretty worried about him when I first saw him."
"Yeah," Aang said, "But you're violent and irrational."
Sokka eyed him. "You sound like Katara."
The Avatar smiled guilelessly at him. "Well, she did say . . ." he trailed off teasingly. Then he perked up, grabbing the portrait that had been made. Toph had been able to create a stone statue of her, and Zuko had worked with the portraitist to get the colours right, and they now had a small picture of Katara to show people. "Maybe they'll have seen her!" he said, and scampered over to where the others were talking. Sokka followed, now wondering how someone in his mid-teens could still manage to scamper.
Aang was thrusting the picture at the man, who gave it a careful look. He shook his head. Daine and Numair asked a few more questions, but in the end it seemed that no one new had arrived at the small village since the storm that had brought them all to this strange country, and they climbed back on Appa and went on. After several hours of careful searching, both along the coast and moving inland, there was no sign of Katara. Daine and Numair pointed up to the sun, which Sokka could see was getting low. He sighed and said, "Aang, we have to head back now."
"How come?" Aang demanded mutinously.
"Because we were told to be back by sunset. It's not unreasonable," Sokka said. "I mean, we can't see in the dark anyhow, so we'd have to stop. We'll go back and try again tomorrow. Besides," he added, "We should head the other way down the coast when we try next."
Aang looked stricken. "But what if Katara's hurt? What if she's waiting for us to come for her?"
It wasn't like Sokka hadn't had all those thoughts himself. But of the two of them, one had to be the voice of reason, and it looked like it was him. "Aang, we can't see in the dark. So, unless you have some mystical Avatar woowoo power that'll find Katara, we have to go back."
"You're not worried at all!" Aang snapped, so reminiscent of Katara accusing Sokka of not loving their mother. It stung, just as it had when Katara had made the accusation.
"No!" he snapped at the airbender. "I'm being practical because one of us has to be. She is my sister," he snarled back, "And I promised Dad I would protect her, but he wouldn't thank me for getting my neck broken trying to find her."
Aang couldn't say anything to that and sulked their way home. When they got back, Sokka held on to his temper until he was alone with Suki. "I just can't believe him! How dare he! And in the meantime, we have to get along with these people until we can leave, and it's not like it's unreasonable for them to say we should be back at sunset."
"You know what I say, Snoozles," Toph said lazily as she cruised into the room. "We baby him too much." She paused, "Well, Katara babied him too much. The rest of us just can't deal with him when he goes all Avatar."
Suki sighed. "I'm a little torn on that, Toph," she said. "Because different people deal with things in different ways, and I don't think anyone wants him to be the way he was when we were crossing the Serpent's Pass after you lost Appa."
Sokka wasn't an idiot. "You both think she's dead," he said flatly. The look Suki shot at Toph, and the sideways tilt of the earthbender's head that meant she was looking away in her own way just aggravated him.
"How would she survive?" Toph asked, flatly. "She may have been a waterbender, and a great one, but Katara's only human, Sokka."
He couldn't believe his ears. "She's not-"
His girlfriend cut him off. "Sokka, if I weren't really worried about how Aang would take it, I'd be telling him this, too. I don't see how she could have survived. It would need the intervention of the spirits themselves."
In a blind fury, Sokka stormed out, heading for the practice dojo. It took only a couple tries to find a wooden practice sword that was to his liking and then he threw himself into the forms Piandao had so painstakingly taught him. It wasn't until another practice sword blocked his lunge that he even noticed the orange-haired warrior-woman, Alanna, had joined him. She backed away a moment, saluted him with the sword, then settled into what was clearly a 'ready' stance. He considered her a moment, then did the same. Even if she beat him up and down the length of the dojo, at least he was doing something. They both waited a moment, taking each other's measure, and then Sokka broke first, making a straightforward lunge at the woman who evaded it easily. At first he just let his grief and anger drive his movements, but it wasn't long before that wore away and he began really concentrating. Spirits knew, once he'd actually begun properly sparring, he had to. She was incredible. Every move she made was easy, smooth and perfectly calculated. She was just as good as Piandao, and even as Sokka knew he was outmatched, he couldn't help but appreciate the undeniable skill of the woman. More, he found himself wishing he could watch a match between her and Piandao.
Because this wasn't the fight for his life he thought he'd been in with Piandao, and because he wouldn't necessarily be able to explain himself, Sokka kept to a proper sparring style with Alanna, rather than the ragged half-flailing he'd done when he'd fought his master. In the end, the fight was fairly short, but she wanted to go again, and Sokka didn't try to argue. She was the best, and anything he could learn from her would be good. It was on the third bout that he realised what she was doing. They fought, and this time she abruptly shifted her hold on the practice sword to match his own, slicing in a perfect crescent moon move that Sokka knew he would be hard-pressed to replicate, even though he'd trained in the style and she had just picked it up by watching him.
In response, in the fourth bout (he'd lost the third when he lost his concentration in surprise over her new technique) he adopted her hold and used one of her moves against her. She blocked it, but a delighted smile lit up her face as she twisted out of the way. After that, they stopped sparring and took turns teaching each other sword moves. She was a very good teacher, and Sokka tried his best to match her patience and the clarity with which she worked through any given stance or movement.
By the time they were through it was late, they'd collected an audience, and he no longer felt like screaming.
"Sokka, if I weren't really worried about how Aang would take it, I'd be telling him this, too. I don't see how she could have survived. It would need the intervention of the spirits themselves."
Aang froze, staring at the doorway to the suite of rooms they were sharing. He felt a whirl of emotions. Anger at Suki and Toph for saying those things about Katara, anger at himself for yelling at the one of their friends who was actually on his side and helping him look, guilt because he'd told Sokka that the Tribesman couldn't love Katara as much as Aang did and guilt because his friends were scared of him. He fled, just as he heard Sokka storm out and off in another direction.
The worst thing about everything, about the guilt and sadness and all of that, was that some part of him knew Suki and Toph were right, but at the same time they were all so wrong. Katara had once told him that she'd still had faith in the Avatar's return before she'd accidentally rescued him from the iceberg, and Aang felt like he couldn't do any less. Until he saw some real proof, he wasn't going to give up on her.
But in the meantime, he had to prove, to himself if no one else, that he could keep his temper. He supposed that there had to be a middle path between his rage when they'd lost Appa in the desert, and the way he'd tried to feel nothing while crossing the Serpent's Pass. Katara had explained it to him once, that it was about feeling sadness or anger, but not letting it control you. Allowing the emotions to give you a reason to do a thing, but not allowing the emotions to make you do things. Why couldn't Guru Pathik and all the other adults put things like that? Explain it so that it made sense? All that talk about letting go of Katara, and when she'd explained it he'd understood it was about not letting your love stop you from doing the right thing, the way The Mechanist had let his love for Teo stop him from standing up to the Fire Nation. You had to be able to let go of the person, not the feelings for them.
Aang pushed aside the tiny voice that reminded him that he was refusing to do just that right now.
He'd allowed himself to wander about, until he'd found himself at what looked like a small temple attached to the palace. Going in, he saw that it seemed very much to be such a thing. There were wooden benches instead of the mats he was used to, but the quality of silence, the candles and incense all spoke of a holy place. He edged in and sat quietly in the back, letting the whole of it wash over him. He just hoped they wouldn't be upset to find him in there. Some people got weird about their temples, as though the great spirits would somehow take offence at people enjoying these places.
Closing his eyes, he sank into meditation. He wasn't trying to reach any conclusions, to contact previous Avatars or reach the Spirit World, Aang was just Being. There was something so freeing about existing in the moment, without thought for either the future or the past, with nothing more in his mind than the wood beneath his legs, the cool air of the tiny temple, the scent of incense and the soft murmur of the world outside the doors, no more intrusive than the sound of ocean waves.
An unfamiliar voice in a familiar tongue spoke. "From what Prince Zuko tells me of you, Avatar Aang, it is appropriate you would find yourself here, in the temple of the Horse Lords."
Looking up, Aang saw the ambassador standing beside him. "The Horse Lords?"
"Some of the most powerful gods of the people of Sarain," the man explained. "Queen Thayet is from Sarain, and so the king had a temple to the Horse Lords added to the palace for her." He pointed to the four tapestries that hung above the altar. "Bian North Wind, goddess of trade, sleep, horses, and fertility; Chavi West Wind, goddess of cleansing, faith, music, and marriage; Vau East Wind, god of creation, travel, strength, and truth; and Shai South Wind, god of magic, volcanoes . . ." he glanced at Aang, "Physical intimacy, and healing."
Looking at the signs and symbols, Aang suddenly saw how it looked like the tent of a nomad, like the tents his own people had once travelled with when they left the temples. It was airy and free and Aang felt a confusing mix of comfort and homesickness. "It's like the worship tents of my people," Aang admitted. "We had come to live in the air temples, but we're . . . we were nomads."
"Blown by the four winds," Menitako said, nodding. "How went the search for Katara?"
Even as tears pricked his eyes over Suki and Toph's blunt summation, it was calming to be in a holy place again, to know that there was an elder with whom he could speak. "Not well," he said. "No one's seen anything and . . ." it burst out of him. "Suki and Toph think she's dead. Zuko probably does too and I just yelled at Sokka just because he's trying to avoid being in trouble."
"It is not-knowing that is the hardest," Menitako told him. "I lost a favourite uncle to a storm when I was young, and the weeks and weeks of wondering if today would be the day that brought him home, those were even harder than the day they found the wreckage in a place that showed no one could have survived. Harder still to see everyone else declare him gone while my family still held out hope."
Mutinously, Aang said, "Katara's a master waterbender. If anyone could have survived a storm like that, it's her."
Menitako eyed him a moment, then said, "I will be honest with you, young Aang, it was a terrible storm and it is doubtful that she survived." He held up a hand to halt Aang's reply. "But, I do not know the full power of her . . . bending," he clearly paused over the unfamiliar word, "And these recent years have seen some great prodigies and miracles. So, I shall not decry your faith in your friend and I will pray that the Wave Walker saw fit to keep her safe."
The raw honesty presented to him seemed to cut all his determination down to its essentials. Aang looked up at the tapestries and the wooden walls and said, "Then I'll try to accept that it's possible she's . . . gone, while I hope that she isn't," Aang told him. He reminded himself again of the tenets of Master Gyatso. "I'll try to concentrate on what is, not on what was or may be."
"Wise indeed," Menitako said.
"Gyatso was very wise," Aang told him. And when asked, spoke of his mentor and the temples and all the crusty old goat-dogs that didn't know how to have fun. He had not spoken much of his people to the others because it was so hard to have the constant refrain from them that the Air Nomads were dead and he needed to deal with it. But the ambassador didn't tell him to deal with the loss, he let Aang remember, and in speaking he was able to reclaim that sense he'd had so briefly with Guru Pathik that the Nomads would live so long as he made certain they were remembered.
And with the peace of the temple and the acceptance of his memories and past, Aang felt calm and able to face the others with equanimity again.
The small group had begun travelling, taking Katara with them. That first night she was shown a map, and had their location pointed out to her, as well as their destination. In spite of the foreign lettering, it was still a map with little pointy scribbles to indicate mountains, black outlines with squiggles to show waterways and little tiny houses to indicate towns and cities. She couldn't read the names, but the map was fundamentally the same as the ones she was used to, and it was nice to have some idea of where she was in this strange land, even if she had no notion of where home was in relation to it.
It seemed like their ultimate destination was a city, one they called Corus. One thing was clear, the children's mother, Thayet, was someone important and wealthy. Possibly even someone from a noble family. She was clearly in charge of the group, had the most expensive-looking clothing and rode an animal that looked like a strangely mutated, four-legged ostrich-horse, which was glossier and prettier than everyone else's. Not that anyone had a scraggly-looking animal, but all those things added up to her being Very Important. She seemed nice and down-to-earth, however, and Katara was beginning to like these people.
As they travelled, the children took it upon themselves to try to teach her their tongue. They pointed at their riding animals, at trees, objects, they were so enthusiastic she was sometimes a little confused because they were very young and didn't always quite understand how to work from generalities to specifics. Also, while nouns were mostly easy, trees, grass, bluejay; verbs and adjectives were harder and less concrete or even abstract ideas like wind and music were even more difficult, along with all the connective bits that made a language from pointing at things and naming them into something that let you explain things.
On the morning of the third day of travel, they were attacked. It wasn't people, though, it was some sort of monster you'd expect to see emerge from the Spirit World.
"Spidren!" shouted one man. They quickly formed a circle with the children in the middle.
In a way, they reminded her of Aang's description of Koh. Giant spiders with human heads, these were terrifying, and the way they approached was clearly not friendly. They were also clever, managing to break up the formation and get between the children and adults. Katara swore, because they were too far from a good source of water, and her waterskin would only last for so long.
As she desperately fought, it became clear that this pack of 'spidren' had them outnumbered. Normally she wouldn't do it, she had learned it frightened people, but Hama had been right about one thing.
When you're a waterbender in a strange land, you do what you must to survive.
One gesture and a tree to the side shrivelled, then imploded as Katara pulled the water out of it, then another and another. All the grass and flowers in the clearing dried out, dying instantly to feed the maelstrom Katara brought to bear. She'd once used razor-sharp ice discs against Master Pakku in that short-lived fight that had led to him accepting her as his student, but these creatures had no defence against them and soon severed heads and limbs littered the clearing.
As with any other battle, Katara set aside the nausea over killing things and people to do what needed to be done.
One snuck up on her, something she only realised when she felt the burn of the injury. She spun, impaling it with a spike of ice. Between her and the other fighters still standing, they won the day, but Katara could see and hear the injured. She bent to the nearest man who lay gasping on the ground, his eyes unfocused with something that went beyond pain. She pressed her hands to him, following the paths of the water in his body and found the spreading miasma of poison. It was difficult, drawing venom out of wounds, she had to strain it from the bloodstream and pull it back to the bleeding gash.
Katara turned to the next one, healing acid burns and cuts. This was easier, as was the next one whose injuries were serious, but uncomplicated in nature. She found herself using her bending to set bones and ease the brain swelling of a woman who'd taken a blow to the head. She didn't even realise the the spider-creatures had gotten her with their venom until she stood after healing the last of the serious injuries and felt the burning in her back, the sway of dizziness and illness that comes from being poisoned and fell with the world going dark around her.
As the first tree abruptly turned into a mess of dried leaves and shrivelled bark, Thayet was startled and it was only the fact that the spidren in front of her was equally stunned that saved her life. She had been impressed before with Katara's abilities, but this was terrifying. The young woman turned the glade into a localised typhoon as she killed the spidren. Then she turned to healing.
The queen was reminded of Numair, how he was such a powerful sorcerer, but such a gentle soul at heart. When a few of their guard protested being treated by the young woman, Thayet shut them down. And when Katara collapsed from a wound no one had noticed, she was taken to the nearest healer and the best of care was demanded and paid for. It set back their return to Corus quite a while, but what sort of woman would she be if she did otherwise? She owed the young woman for the lives of her children twice over, and for the lives of her people who would have died in the attack.
While the young woman was bedridden as she healed, Thayet finally turned more of her attention to communicating with Katara. It took some mangled nouns, scribbling on paper with an awkwardly held pen, but it became clear that Katara had been travelling with others on a ship. A small number of younger people like her and a very large animal with fur, horns and something like a beaver tail.
It was difficult to communicate when they didn't have a language in common, but Thayet did her best to explain to the young woman that she would help her find the others. At least the beaver-bison shouldn't be too hard to find if it were anywhere to be found.
In the meanwhile, she commissioned clothing for Katara that met the young woman's specifications. It had taken some time to make it clear to her that they were arranging for clothing that she was comfortable with, but once that was understood, she had bent to the idea with a will. They were like breeches of dark blue cloth that belled out from the hip going down to the ankle, in a design that looked like it was meant for leather or hide. It was something to be worn over heavier underlayers, but that went without that in the warmth of the summer. The bottoms were lashed into place by the leather boots that came up the calves. Overtop was a lighter blue knee-length tunic edged in white that was folded over like a dressing gown, held in place by a white sash. There were slits down the sides for ease of movement, and Thayet thought it looked not only very attractive, but practical.
Katara looked much more at ease, and Thayet suspected it had a lot to do with being back in clothing she was comfortable with, much in the same way that Alanna never quite looked at home in a dress. The thing that seemed to make her happiest though, was the thoughtful creation of one of her men, who had taken the woman's waterskin and redesigned it not for drinking, but for carrying her primary weapon. Katara had lit up when he'd demonstrated his changes, bouncing forward to hug him with a wide smile on her face. It was the same look Buri had had the time Raoul had produced a brand new set of knives for a Midwinter gift for her.
When they were finally able to set out again, it was with a happier-looking water mage, who had gained the appreciation of the locals by using her skills to fix the village well before they left.
The day after the spell had been cast to give Zuko's friends Common, Aang showed up at Numair's door. They looked at each other a moment, then Numair wordlessly gestured him in. Whatever it was that Aang had wished to say to him, it was clear that he was now going to do so.
"I know you've been wanting to speak to me about something," he said to the boy. "Let's not beat around the bush."
Aang took a deep breath, then said, "I just . . . they said you're the most powerful mage here. Maybe the most powerful ever. At least, Zuko said that was what people told him."
Unable to see where this might be going, Numair agreed hesitantly. "I do have a more powerful Gift than anyone else in Tortall, as far as I know, maybe all the Eastern Lands."
"How do you deal with it?" The words seemed to fall out of Aang's mouth as though he'd been holding them in. "I . . . the Avatar is the most powerful bender in the world. Kyoshi could make an island, Roku was nearly able to stop an erupting volcano. When I was at the Northern Water Tribe, during the siege, the Spirit of the Ocean was able to use me to destroy nearly the whole of the attacking fleet. My friends are scared of me, scared of what I might do if I get upset, and sometimes when I'm angry I just . . ." he trailed off looking miserable and scared. "How do you keep from hurting people? How do you get them not to be scared?"
Whatever he might have been expecting, Numair knew this wasn't it. But now he looked at the boy, fifteen years old with so much more power than he knew what to do with and saw himself in that. He could recall the first time the sheer scale of his Gift had made itself known and the way that so many people had given him a wide berth at the university in Carthak. The headaches and loneliness that came from too much power, the way that it sometimes wrested itself from his control to do things that hurt and frightened people and the hard lessons he'd had to learn about self-control.
It was a complex balancing act to learn how to feel things, let himself feel things, while holding tightly onto that control over his power so that his anger didn't just spill over into bringing the world down around his ears.
Everything he'd heard from and about Aang said this was a well-intentioned, half-trained, very powerful mage - or bender as they called themselves. "It's hard," he told Aang. "It's very hard because you have to learn how to hold your power separate from your feelings so that you don't bring it up unless you choose to." Aang brightened at that. "Make no mistake," he cautioned, "If you're angry and you think you'd like to use your power to smack someone around, it will come up, but I have learned how to ensure that it won't just because your feelings are intense."
"That would still be better than where I am now," admitted the Avatar. "I still have no control over the Avatar state, and after what happened under Ba Sing Se, I'm not sure whether I'll ever be able to control it."
Numair sat, gesturing at Aang, who joined him, then said, "Why don't you tell me about it, and then I'll see what we can do to help."
Taking a deep breath, the boy started. "You have to remember that the Avatar is reincarnated. The next one is born right after the last one died. There isn't another Avatar who can teach me things. I've learned how to contact Roku, the Avatar before me, but it's not easy and it's usually over really fast. Up until we got to Ba Sing Se," noticing what was probably a confused look in his face, Aang said, "It's the biggest city in the Earth Kingdom, maybe the whole world." Given how large and cosmopolitan Corus was, as well as Port Caynn where the small group had started, Numair was somewhat impressed at the potential scale. They weren't taken aback at the size of the city, so that suggested something on a fairly impressive scale. The youngster continued then. "I got word from Guru Pathik, who said he had known my old master, Monk Gyatso, that he could teach me how to control the Avatar state."
Numair interrupted. "Is that when you turn into one of your previous lives?"
"Not . . . exactly," Aang told him. "You see, I'm a naturally powerful bender, but in the Avatar state I have access to the total power and all the skill of all my past lives. It's like a thousand benders all working together all at once."
That was potentially terrifying, and he could see the temptation to handle an avatar with kid gloves. "So, what sort of control are you talking about?" he asked.
Aang winced. "See, right now I only enter the Avatar state on instinct. It's a survival mechanism, but I'm not in control of myself when it happens. I get upset or scared and things just . . . happen. It's more or less in line with what I want to happen, but I don't have any control personally. When I got knocked off Zuko's ship when we first met two and a half years ago, I just sort of . . . waterbended. I just did it. I didn't know how to make the tornado, I was barely conscious, it just happened. And I nearly collapsed right after. I know that there's a way to access the power under my own control, to be able to bend like a thousand benders at once if needed, but I can't seem to do it."
This explained a lot, including the story of a single woman separating a peninsula and turning it into an island miles away. But he just had to ask the one question, "So, sometimes one of the past lives is able to just . . . take control?" he asked.
"Yeah," said the boy - young man, really, with the burden of power and prophecy he carried. "I think it's because I'm half-trained, so they sort of take over instead of me being able to get at the memories myself or something." Then he looked hopefully up at Numair. "Can you teach me to control it? At least a little better than how I do now?"
That hope wasn't something Numair could turn down. It was that same hope that had been in Daine's eyes when she spoke of her own power taking her over and making her lose herself to her animal friends' mindsets.
"I can certainly try," Numair told him. "It will probably take some time and experimentation, but let's see what we can manage."
Aang smiled at him, a tension in his shoulders dropping away. The mage thought back to those long-ago lessons with one of the elderly red robes of Carthak who had not been frightened of him, but had been willing to teach a lonely boy how to control his Gift. This was a lesson he could pass forward, as his teacher had said he should.
Jonathan of Conte wasn't quite sure what he thought of most of their new foreign visitors from the far side of the world. Toph was crude, rude and her ability to tell when people were lying or what they were up to was a skill he dearly wished he could find among his own people. If it weren't for the fact that these youngsters were needed in their home he would be trying anything he could to tempt her to stay in Tortall in some capacity. All of the messy things she got up to were clearly outweighed by how useful she was, but at the same time she was exhausting, even from a distance.
Sokka was another that he couldn't figure out. The young man was brilliant, Alanna delighted in sparring with him and training him, saying that he was a natural and his constant interest in how things worked and why made him a favourite among the academics. He also made terrible jokes, had a tendency to shriek and flail at odd moments and far too easily left a trail of offended courtiers in his wake.
His girlfriend Suki, on the other hand, was one that Jonathan would have wished to keep without any reservations. She was smart, a skilled fighter, decent tactician and his only real problem was she had taken to helping people with practical jokes, especially frogs in his bed. Her lessons teaching court ladies how to use a bladed fan to stop an attacker made her popular with younger courtiers who wanted to emulate the Lioness, and made her a favourite of Alanna as well, who always liked learning new weapons. He rather thought she would be a favourite of Thayet's, but his wife was still travelling home. Jonathan forcibly put his concerns out of his mind. Her message had been limited and somewhat cryptic, but he knew her well enough to know when she was concerned about committing anything to paper.
The king really had no idea what he thought about the Avatar, Aang. From what he'd heard, the youth was powerful, terrifyingly so, but was also immature and and untrained. He was relieved to hear from Numair that the mage was taking the boy in hand, but the strange combination of childishness occasionally interspersed with moments of deep wisdom was uncomfortable to say the least.
That left the last one, Prince Zuko. The young man was unfailingly polite and helpful. He mixed well with the courtiers, having a sense of politics and court behaviour that clearly showed his early training as a noble. In fact, Jonathan saw some of himself in that careful handling. The ways you avoided expressing any clear favouritism among the powerful and provided careful non-answers on controversial topics - and it was clear that Zuko had been exceedingly careful to treat every topic as controversial until he had a better handle on them. He had also finally found a pair of swords of Yamani make that suited him, and had defeated Alanna on the practice courts.
She'd beaten him the second time, but barely, and they now both took time every day to spar. He was a prodigy of the sword and remarkably well-trained, but deeply humble about his skills.
That attitude was where Jonathan truly began to wonder about him, though. Because it didn't seem to be a matter of humility. In some strange way, he appeared to see those abilities as being without value. Not precisely worthless, more that they didn't matter, like someone's hobby of writing bad poetry. He was also rather constant in appearing at Jonathan's days on the throne in court, passing judgment on disputes brought to the attention of the king. In fact, every substantive public appearance the King made, he could be guaranteed to see Zuko in the crowd somewhere, watching intently.
He'd heard back from Gary about Zuko asking casual questions about governance, from Raoul about heading the King's Own and from Alanna and Myles about political history. He was also often to be found in the libraries, looking at books on law and scholarship in a variety of topics.
Finally his curiosity got the better of him, and he sent a page to fetch Zuko after a court appearance. Zuko had clearly been absorbing books on protocol along with everything else, as he stopped the precisely correct distance in the doorway and bowed to precisely the correct degree. "Your Majesty wished to see me?" he asked.
"My old protocol teacher would have loved you," Jonathan remarked. "Please relax. We're both royals and I get enough of that on a daily basis from the people at court. I do not need it right now. Trust me, you'll know when I want to be formal about things." He gestured at the other chair in the room. "Please, sit."
To encourage that, the King sat himself and watched as Zuko gracefully settled into the chair in a near-perfect imitation of how the other members of the male nobility would sit. He looked slightly off-kilter, though, and Jonathan abruptly remembered that the Yamanis tended not to have chairs, but usually sat on the floor. Perhaps this was something Zuko was more accustomed to. His attention sharpened as Zuko said, "So then, what is it you wished to speak of?"
So formal, but then, Zuko was a consummate professional at courtly formality. "I'm . . . curious, shall we say. I grant, your Highness," he began, pointedly using the formal form of address, "That a member of any royal family would have an understandable curiosity about the workings of another government, but you seem very focused. You haven't yet missed a single one of my appearances since you were given knowledge of Common by Numair."
Zuko twitched. It was subtle, but there. "Our mission, assuming we manage to figure out a way to return safely home, is to dethrone the Fire Lord, my father. At that time I am once more in line for the throne. My uncle will likely be made Fire Lord as he should have been before my father arranged for it to be otherwise, but he is getting on, and it's doubtful he would have any more children. I want . . . I need to learn how to govern my people. I need to know how to deal with the leaders of the other nations so that the Fire Nation can make reparations for the war and not be completely beggared. There are problems with the way the Fire Nation's politics work and I cannot fix them without having some idea of useful solutions."
It was likely all true, but there was something else. Jonathan had been in politics his whole life. It was something you learned as the Crown Prince, from the moment you were able to speak. No matter how his father had tried to protect him from it, allow him some semblance of a normal childhood, it had always been there.
"What else, Zuko?" He asked flatly, and was stunned as the self-possessed young man's breath hitched, and he began blinking quickly, clearly trying to suppress tears.
"Katara," he began, his voice cracking on the last syllable of the name of the lost, dead, sixth member of their group. "Katara once promised to take me to meet Arnook, Chief of the Northern Water Tribe, to speak to the leadership of Ba Sing Se and even King Bumi of Omashu. She knew how worried I was about being a good Fire Lord and she promised to help with that. I . . ." He trailed off, closing his eyes for a moment, trying to centre himself. "She said I would do it, be good for the Fire Nation, for all the nations." His eyes were lit up with fervour as he looked at Jonathan, "I won't let her down."
The look on Zuko's face was one Jonathan was familiar with on his own. It was the look he had every time he looked at Thayet, remembering her being driven out of Sarain by a bad king and his determination to make her proud of his efforts to do better and be better as king. It just slipped out. "You were in love with her."
"I . . ." and then the dam burst. "Only Toph knew, because she always finds out everything," Zuko said, his voice shaking. "Aang sees himself as in love with her, maybe he is, but we couldn't afford for him to be distracted by this. Not so close to the comet, not when we were so close. She didn't encourage it, but we didn't say anything." Not the best tack to take, but Jonathan could understand the decision. Zuko pulled two silver hair combs out of his pocket. They were decorated with a stylised wave pattern in tiny blue gems. "Among the Fire Nation, if you want to get engaged you give her combs," Zuko said, his fingers tracing over the delicate metalwork. "I don't know how or why Azula missed these, but I was going to ask Katara-"
His voice broke and his head snapped down, trying to hide the emotion. But Jonathan knew a little about grief and relentlessly spoke. "No one knew, and now you can't mourn for her as her lover, but just her friend. I'm sorry." The prince was shaking, and Jon pulled him out of the chair, holding the mourning young man and letting him sob. Alanna had given this to him once, all those years ago when he knew that his father had committed suicide in the wake of his mother's death, that person who would let you break and not judge or whisper a word of it to anyone.
And when it was over, Jon invited Zuko to sit in on some more of his councils, even some of the ones that were not public, because it would take a stronger man than he was to turn Zuko away after what he had seen.
A week after allowing Zuko to sit in on those same councils and lessons that he had for his own son, Roald, Jonathan was approached by Toph, who caught him alone and approached with meticulously correct protocol, down to the curtsy, which looked remarkably odd in her trousers and bare feet. "I thank you, your Majesty, for what you have done for Prince Zuko," she said. Jon was transfixed. He hadn't realised she had learned protocol, that she even knew what it was. "I couldn't offer him what you do, and he is better now than he was when we found out Katara is dead," she continued. "I am in your debt for what you have done for my friend."
In the back of his mind, the King was grateful for all those early, tiring, ridiculous lessons in protocol that meant he could respond as he should, even while poleaxed. "Your gratitude is appreciated but unnecessary, Lady Bei Fong."
Her smile was impish. "It is necessary, but you really should remember that my father is one of the wealthiest and most powerful men in the Earth Kingdom. Just because I choose not to bother with protocol, doesn't mean I don't learn it. Everything can be a weapon when you need it." Then she sailed off, leaving Jonathan to stare after her so long that Gary and Zuko found him and asked if he was alright.
"You're running late to the taxation meeting," his cousin and finance minister said.
"I just found out that Toph Bei Fong knows our protocol and can choose to use it as perfectly as any noblewoman trained," Jon said. "Frankly, I'm now even more terrified of her."
Zuko laughed. "You should hear Sokka tell the story about how she bullied her way into free passage for all of them into Ba Sing Se with only her passport and her name," he said. "Even the Earth King has always given the Beifongs a great deal of leeway."
Jon revised his earlier estimation about Toph. She wasn't just a living lie-detector, she was clever and well-used to power. Gods, but he wished he could have one of her at court.