SUMMARY: "You found the Avatar," the man says. It's not a question.
"Yes," It reeks hollow on Zuko's tongue.
"Then you can find my daughter."
[Zuko is very good at finding things. People take notice.]
NOTES: Haven't posted on here in ages, but let's give it another go (also WHY does this site insist on undoing all your formatting, why.)
(it's on ao3 too. Under jackaranda)
It starts after the pirates.
A man approaches. He's haggard, the kind that Zuko sees in Jee when he thinks no one is watching, in Uncle when his guard slips, when he looks in the mirror.
He stops a few feet within Zuko and holds this ground against the scowl Zuko's face is permanently skewed in.
"You found the Avatar," he says. It's not a question.
"Yes," It reeks hollow on his tongue.
"Then you can find my daughter."
Zuko stares. The man's eyes are the soft browns of most Earth Kingdom citizens, but he doesn't flinch away from the reds of Zuko's uniform, nor the Fire that he so obviously is. It's a kind of desperation that's familiar. That's left Zuko being comfortable around pirates, bounty hunters and murderers. Even if he doesn't agree with them, hates them even, they are a means to an end, and that makes it worth it.
"Your daughter?" Zuko in lieu of anything else. He can admit, only to himself, that he doesn't have a lead on the Avatar at this moment in time and the excuse still sits on his tongue, but he hears the man out because - well. Maybe it's a little like looking in a mirror.
"Shoh. She's nine. It's only been a few hours. I woke up and she was gone."
Uncle and the Lieutenant are suspiciously silent behind him, and Zuko can feel their steadiness, soft waves of that natural Firebender heat, but it doesn't falter. They're waiting to see what he'll do, to see how he'll be an ass about this situation.
Zuko refuses to look back. Fuck them, anyway. "She's nine?"
The man nods. He meets Zuko's eyes in that steady, blank look that strikes him somewhere he can't place. "She's all I have."
That's all he needs to hear, really.
Children don't just disappear. People don't just disappear. Other people just stop looking, stop asking questions, stop poking the platypus-bear. Zuko's never been very good at sitting back and letting life walk over him, and he's not about to start now.
Shoh is nine, and her parents love her. She's nine, and she's missing, and her father stands in front of him like some desperate, crumbling statue of strength and hopelessness.
Zuko isn't this man's ally. But he knows what being at the very edge of despair feels like, and he can't ignore it, even if he wants to. Even if it's a waste of his time.
If there's one thing Zuko has learned, is that people always talk. Secrets don't stay secrets forever. There are very few people that can take their cold hard truths to the grave and die with it.
He can pick a natural gossip from a mile away, and maybe Jee says his habit of eavesdropping is 'rude as all fuck' but it's got him more leads than anything else.
Manu's girl is missing, one lady says. She's young, worried. She looks to the sky like it's there she will see the child, like the gods will return her.
Those damned smugglers, the other lady says. She's older than Iroh, face weathered from hardships Zuko will never know. He keeps his curses to himself this time, because pirates are one problem, but people smugglers are a whole other, and one that Zuko has staunchly avoided interacting with. They're unreliable at best, and at worst…
It's not something he wants to think about.
The port is small, and there are fortunately a finite number of buildings to search, and Zuko makes a quick go of it. He leaves the armour on the ship in favour of silent steps as he peers in. Most of them are derelict, which makes things harder, because that opens up more options for someone trying to hide. But Zuko searches them all anyway, peers into homes lived in and watches for anything unusual, anything out of place before he drifts to the next house.
Business owners are quiet, looking over Zuko's poorly hidden muscular features under thin cloth and golden eyes and clam up, never mind what's at stake. He's just another soldier to them, and they have nothing to sell to him, products or words. He quietly notes the stalls anyway, using hostile moments of interaction to watch for anything that goes deeper, anywhere that's wide enough to hide a child or a few.
It doesn't lead anywhere.
"You have a smuggling problem here," Zuko takes it to the sailors on the docks. They're grumpy and as intolerable as he is. Maybe that's why Zuko generally gets along with them. But sailors always notice more than they speak, and if you ask the right questions, you might get the answers you're looking for, or at least a point in the right direction.
"Something like that," the fisherman says. He reeks of fish guts, like Zuko reeks of sweat. The sun is always more brutal in the west, and it shortens tempers and heightens emotions.
"A child is missing. I'm looking for her," Zuko says.
"That so?" The fisherman doesn't budge, but neither does Zuko.
"Didn't realise you had a soft spot for child-snatchers," he thinks of Manu. The blank, hard look of someone at the end of their rope, and decides that being soft about this is not something he'll ever be.
The fisherman meets his gaze then. He has a storm in his eyes, raging and blistering, but he doesn't look at Zuko like he's a kid, like he's an annoyance. Assessing, maybe.
"You're protecting yourself, I get it," Zuko pushes. "She's been missing only a few hours. There is hope."
The fisherman looks west - the ocean extends out as far as they can see. The Fire Nation is directly over the horizon, and Zuko is here. It's bizarre, and he can't dwell on it longer than a moment.
"Rumour has it they're taking them to Ba Sing Se," the fisherman says.
"That's fucking far," and fucking stupid, but Zuko keeps that to himself.
"And risky," the fisherman says, agreeing with Zuko's unspoken thoughts. So, it's likely a red herring. Ba Sing Se is near the eastern coast, this lonely little port is on the other side of the country. That's a long way to travel, and a long opportunity for someone to escape, for children to get sick, for someone to intervene.
"There are other cities," the fisherman says. Zuko's attention snaps to him, and there must be something to his intensity, as the man takes a near unnoticeable step back.
Omashu is not that far to the south, just a few days ride on a Komodo rhino. "You're sure?"
"No. But I've been around a while, kid."
Zuko bows, mostly because he's relieved after three other sailors had nothing to offer to him and the hours keep ticking, and Shoh is nine.
He doesn't stay to see the fisherman's reaction, it's not important.
Jee wants to come with him, and Zuko says yes, because he's tracking people smugglers and a little girl, and he's done some stupid shit before, but he won't say no to some help beating the fuck out of child-snatchers. And he doesn't hate the lieutenant. Not that it's something he'll admit out loud.
It's not a solid lead, but it is something, and it is what makes the most sense. The port is small, and Zuko already searched it. They could have hours on him, but there's only one road to Omashu wide enough to carry significant cargo, and Zuko won't let Shoh disappear. Never.
The thing is, Zuko is stubborn. Stubborn to the point where the lieutenant thinks he's annoying, and the helmsman thinks he's kind of weird. He's never given up on anything before, and why anyone that's known him for longer than two minutes would think that he'd let Shoh slip through his grasp severely misunderstood him on the very foundations of who he is.
Too bad the people smugglers don't know him.
Theycatch up. The Komodo Rhino's aren't happy being run as ragged as this, but it's worth it even just for the look of unmitigated fear that crosses their faces as Zuko and Jee make their presence fucking known.
They're smugglers, not fighters, and Zuko and Jee outmatch them on strength alone. It's hard not to be scared of two people who tore your operation to pieces like it was a plaything, and not something so depraved that people would rather board their windows than even speak out about the things they know.
Shoh is hidden away in a cage along with three other children in one of the carriages, three more in the other from Jee's hoarse, desperate shouts of relief, and Shoh reaching out her tiny arms to his own as he pulls her close, scooping up as many children as he can is the easiest decision he's made since - since then.
They leave the smugglers where they stand, belongings stripped from them, nothing more than the clothes on their back left to them. Zuko and Jee don't kill them, but whoever they owed the children to might.
"I found you once, I will find you again," he says, and he finds he means it, it rings true and hard, because Shoh is in his arms and her father and mother will hold her in their arms tonight, instead of the horrible unknown sitting on their chests, crushing them day by day, wondering what happened.
"Don't give him a reason to go looking," Jee adds. His voice booms across the clearing, a finality. All that matters are the children, and Zuko will bring them home.
A port and a thousand rumours to the future, a woman walks up to him, a bag of gold coin in one hand, and a raging despair in her eyes that rivals Zuko's at his best and forces it into his palm.
"I need you to find someone for me," she says. "My fiancé."
It takes Zuko only a moment to say yes.
NOTES: Completely not how I thought this one would go but hey, whatever, i don't think it turned out too horrible.
BUT I JUST THINK that zuko being forced on his redemption early because people keep employing him to Find Shit is so funny. The Avatar is once again put on the back burner because Zuko has a huge soft spot for kids and literally cannot say no. Someone's cat is missing and zuko is in hard denial about being avatar's Disney princess but he still says yes because of course he does.
Add in Blue Spirit shenanigans and you've got a beautiful cocktail of the most insane fuckery. Zuko is both the weird fire nation sailor that can be easily swayed to help you Find Your Shit AND the masked vigilante that's currently one of the fire nation's biggest headaches and that's something you're just going to have to reconcile.
My tumblr is blluespirit