8 - Druk

"But why?" Omika demanded, crossing her arms in a deeply unsettling mimicry of her mother. Fifteen years old, a talented Firebender, and more stubborn than the Earthbenders she'd grown up around.

"Because we don't have a way to keep him healthy and happy here in Ba Sing Se," Zuko explained, again, doing his best to hide the discomfiting fact that he was intimidated.

"We made him healthy after we found him!"

"Helping him recover from an injury is different from keeping him and letting him grow up. Dragons are dangerous. Your great-great-grandfather, Fire Lord Sozin was killed by one, remember." Omika rolled her eyes, deeply unimpressed by one ancestor's early demise. "If we lived in the Fire Nation…"

"Then let's go there!"

"Omika, really."

She grimaced, seeming to know it had been a miscalculation. Zuko and Katara couldn't just leave their positions at the heights of their careers to go raise a malnourished adolescent dragon in Zuko's homeland. The dragon in question had been found on the shores of the ocean just east of Ba Sing Se after an unseasonable monsoon, half-drowned and with one of its wings broken. Zuko, the only one with any knowledge whatsoever about dragons, had been enlisted as its nurse, and Omika had become an even more dedicated dragon-sitter and unfortunately, formed a serious attachment to it over the last four months. Zuko watched her cast about for something that he would take seriously, curious what she would come up with.

"I'll take him by myself then," she finally declared, throwing her head back proudly.

"What?"

"Why not?" She pressed him eagerly, using his shock as leverage. "I could stay with Grandmother and Grandfather or Aunt Azula! I could train with other Firebenders, and learn more about our culture, don't you want that? Raising Druk would teach me about responsibility. Plus, I'll be sixteen in the spring and then I'll be allowed to matter what you say."

She let that threat hang dramatically for a moment, as though expecting Zuko to need the time to process it, but all he said was, "Druk?"

She blushed stupendously pink. "That's his name," she said, trying very hard for haughty and falling well short.

Zuko nodded slowly, resisting the smile he felt building in his cheeks.

"I'm right about everything else though!" she said hotly, hands clenching to fists. "And I want to do it and you don't have a good reason I shouldn't!"

"You're right," Zuko said.

That caught her off guard. "I am?"

He couldn't help the smile now. "You are. But you'll have to tell your mother."

Her blue eyes widened. "What? Why can't you?"

"Because you want to do this, don't you? If you can't convince your mom then how do I know you're serious?"

"Dad!"

A/N

I have a small headcanon that in canon, Izumi named Druk as a lil baby because she couldn't say 'dragon'. Clearly went for something different here, but I still like it. :)

Also the easiest way I've found to make the war not happen is just to kill Sozin off young, in this case while hunting dragons, lol.

E.I. signing out