Chapter Fourteen: The Winter Solstice (Now with 200% More Dragons)

As they flew away from the highly volcanic and ironically fiery destruction of Fire Nation cultural heritage, Sokka leaned over the saddle, scanning the ocean around Crescent Island one last time. Still nothing. Huh.

"I kind of expected Zuko to be here," he said.

"What is that?" Katara asked, squinting at his hand and the totally expert carving he was holding. "A badgermole?"

"It's a bison! How many legs do you think a badgermole has?"

"I was going to ask you that," his charming sister muttered. "Wait. Did you make that for Zuko?"

"Umm." Sokka looked into the face that sewed his pants and washed his socks and could vote with Aang to form a majority block against meat in their meals. "Not specifically, no. But I made it, and then I thought 'Hey, if I was going to throw a small wooden bison at someone's head, who would that be?' and Zuko was right there at the top of my list. So it's not really for him, just… aimed in his general direction?"

"He stole mom's necklace!" This seemed to be Katara's primary point in any conversation concerning the prince. It made it hard to talk to her about horrifying suspicions Sokka may or may not have.

"Oh yeah, your necklace." (This was not the right response, and she would make him regret it later.) "Maybe I could trade with him!"

Katara narrowed her eyes. "What happened in the spirit world?"

"What happens in the spirit stomach stays in the spirit stomach, Katara."

Aang turned around on Appa's head, and ever so helpfully joined the conversation. "I told you what happened to me."

"What happens in the spirit stomach stays in the spirit stomach, Aang."

From Commander Zhao, to the Fire Lord: —Though General Iroh's protection continues to prove problematic, I successfully diverted the banished prince from his quest and confronted the Avatar myself. His capture would have been assured were it not for the traitorous actions of the Fire Sages. I will temporarily remain at Crescent Island to determine how deeply this plot against Your Majesty has festered—

The Wani lay anchored near a jungle infested island. Lieutenant Jee watched dubiously as General Iroh ordered a rowboat readied for just the prince and himself. A crewman started putting in a second set of oars, then paused, and took them back out.

"Are you sure you won't take a marine with you, sir? For the rowing, if nothing else." Lieutenant Jee was not volunteering. He could hear the mosquito-ticks from here.

"I can assure you this island is perfectly safe. Why, I killed the last dragon myself!" This was less reassuring than the General seemed to think. "I am simply taking my nephew on an educational archaeological exploration into one of the Fire Nation's most ancient sites. We will compare the architecture with that of modern fire temples, and observe the murals of the Sun Warriors. Perhaps even study an ancient firebending form or two from their silent statues—"

Lieutenant Jee was bored just listening. He wasn't sure if this was a continuation of the General's Omashu punishments for the boy, or just an elaborate Avatar-and-Zhao-free detour. Probably both.

"We will be back before sunset. Please keep the crew on the ship, the island's traps are still active!"

...Jee was less bored, hearing that.

Zuko had thought unagi vomit was the worst thing that had ever happened to him (besides the obvious worst thing). Then he'd thought it was spirit leeches. Now he knew for a fact it was mosquito-ticks.

"It was as big as my hand, Uncle," the prince muttered. "My hand."

"A slight exaggeration. I would say it was only as large as your eyeball. Ah, we're here!"

Zuko shuddered from head to toe. It took him a moment to appreciate what he was seeing.

They'd emerged from the jungle into a wide, tick-free street in a sprawling ancient ruin with a hundred dark semi-collapsed buildings that a twelve-year-old could wiggle into but an Uncle probably couldn't, wrapped up in thick easy-to-climb vines like a present waiting to be opened.

"Whoa."

And then the half-dressed people surrounded them before he even had a chance to touch anything.

Of course Uncle knew them. Now they were talking, and Uncle was doing his how-are-you-and-your-obscure-second-cousins thing and they were going to be standing here for hours and probably then they'd have tea. It wouldn't hurt to slip into just one building, right? He'd be back before anyone even noticed.

Zuko was really good at going unnoticed, when he thought theatre thoughts.

There were many kinds of traitors, and many forms of treachery. Fire Sage Kaito reflected on this truth as he stood on the deck of Commander Zhao's ship, shackled like the others, tuning out the man's pontifications. It was not meant for his prisoners.

Shyu's treachery was the most obvious: the young fool had actually escorted the Avatar to the inner sanctuary, and allowed for blasphemous Water Tribe trickery to open doors made for holy fire. Sixty-year-olds; pssh. Fire Sage Kaito remembered all the flamin' tomfoolery he'd gotten up to at sixty. That was precisely why he'd opposed the boy's transfer here in the first place.

"—threats to the Fire Nation, blah blah blah—" Commander Zhao was still saying. "Treachery something something."

Ah yes, treachery. That was what Kaito had been thinking of. There were many forms. Zhao's was hardly more subtle than Shyu's: the man did not care who the Avatar was, who the Fire Lord was, who the Sages were. Zhao was the sort of dog-vulture who would run to the biggest bowl, regardless of who poured his food.

For himself, Fire Sage Kaito prefered loyal treachery. So when an upstart viper-rat like Zhao had ordered him to open the door to the inner sanctuary, Kaito's fire had slipped. Just a hair to the left, and the lock had not opened, and Zhao had not been able to capture the Avatar before Roku's spirit had intervened. Granted, he would have preferred that Roku left the place standing… but it was hardly the first time a Fire Nation temple had self-immolated. More importantly: the Avatar had escaped.

Capturing him was Crown Prince Zuko's path to the throne. If a bit of treason here kept the Avatar in play, then Kaito was pleased to be a traitor.

"—Glory and greatness and hot air—"

Dear Agni. He was still talking. Fire Sage Kaito would be decrepit before he was done.

"Young man," Kaito interrupted. "I am a hundred and eleven years old, and I would like to be escorted to my cell now. You can listen to yourself speak without me."

Zhao threw fire like a toddler threw tantrums. Fire Sage Kaito, leader of the Crescent Island Sages, exhaled a long breath and snuffed his flames.

"My cell, young man."

That ended the speechifying quite nicely.

'One building' turned into 'slightly more than one building'. If Uncle asked, he got lost. If Sokka were here to ask… the peasant wouldn't, because he'd be right next to Zuko and squealing something high-pitched, because Zuko had just tricked a solar calendar into letting him into a super-secret temple.

...That was full of completely boring statues. Ugh, Uncle hadn't been serious about learning bending from literal statues, had he? If the Masters Ran and Shaw ended up being some dead old guys on a mural (and if Zhao caught the Avatar while they were off on this stupid field trip—)

He stomped over to a statue. A floor tile clicked under his foot. Zuko, who had made his way past the awesome traps leading up to here (and had not hummed the Blue Spirit's theme to himself while he vaulted over spike pits), jumped back instantly and also ducked and rolled for good measure, but nothing tried to kill him.

Huh.

He slowly stood. And walked back to the statue. And poked the tile again with just his foot. Click. Still nothing. But now that he was looking, he could see a whole line of suspicious tiles bordering the statue ring. Zuko looked up at the statues, and down at the titles, and up at the statues. Then he shifted into the first stance they portrayed, and… click. Click, click, click.

He got to the end, and looked over his shoulder expectantly. Nothing happened.

Which was when he noticed that the ring was symmetrical, and the forms repeated themselves on the other side. Was this made for two people? Was he supposed to be using the buddy system when he explored ancient booby-trapped ruins? No one had told him that friendship had practical real life applications.

He could go get Uncle. (Who would proverb him into submission for disappearing, and not let him out of his sight the rest of the day and possibly the rest of his life.) Or...

Zuko went outside, and started dragging fallen stones back into the temple. Click. Click, click, click. When he'd perma-triggered that half of the circle, he went back to his side, and tried this again. He was rewarded by an awesome golden glowing egg on a pedestal.

...Which was a trap. He had a lot of time to contemplate how obviously trap-like it had been while he was pressed against the metal grille on the ceiling.

"Zuko?" Uncle called, in the distance. He'd been doing that for awhile.

So Zuko's choices were calling out to his Uncle for help, or staying stuck up to his neck in sticky goo that was somewhere between unagi vomit and regular mud on the scale of how awful is this thing oozing under my clothes (and why did Zuko need a scale for that, since when had this become his life).

"Zuko!" Uncle called again.

Zuko made his choice.

"Prince Zuko, why didn't you call for assistance?"

Zuko's hair was being licked clean by an aardvark-sloth. This, plus a glower and crossed arms (...he couldn't actually uncross them, they were glued that way), was answer enough. His uncle sighed.

"Did you at least enjoy yourself, nephew?"

Zuko glowered harder. This was mostly because the aardvark-sloth's tongue was really tickly, and Zuko had learned long ago about the tactical significance of not letting anyone know you're ticklish. (Ty Lee was already a chi-blocking monster, she didn't need to know she could make him laugh, too. And the idea of Azula holding him down and tickling him with that gleam in her eye that said at any moment she might add flame to her hands—) (Zuko had enough nightmares.)

When he was clean(er) (and could uncross his arms again), Uncle introduced him to the Sun Warriors. The Sun Warriors introduced him to the Eternal Flame. Which wasn't a spirit tale, it was real and Zuko was holding it and he hadn't been planning to let it go out but then they'd told him not to and now it was all he could worry about. Also he was pretty sure that one guy had just said something about him getting eaten.

"Uncle," Zuko whispered.

"Quaint local custom," Uncle whispered back. He did not hold a flame of his own, for obvious reasons. But he still accompanied Zuko on the trail up to the Master's cave. Zuko wasn't sure if this was a bonding activity, or to make sure he didn't get lost again.

It was actually kind of a cool walk. There were more ruins (which he wasn't allowed to go in), and then a winding hike, and then an epically large staircase that people in fancy loincloths had definitely not made.

But these weren't really the Sun Warriors, were they? They were their descendents. The real Sun Warriors had built an amazing city; their children just… maintained the traps, as the buildings crumbled around them. It felt like one of Uncle's proverbs.

Also, their tribe had totally cheated and taken a shortcut, because every single one of them had beaten Zuko and Uncle here.

"...Is there a shortcut up the stairs?" Zuko whispered.

"Of course! The Masters frequently take it," Uncle whisper-smiled back, and didn't let Zuko in on the joke.

Then the chief started talking. And Zuko started bristling. He stared down at the flame cupped in his hands and tried not to talk back, listen and learn, but the chief was lecturing him about his ancestors killing off the dragons, and how the Masters might be angry at him for it because apparently he was responsible for every bad thing his bloodline had ever done, which wasn't fair and anyways his great-grandfather might have started it but it took a lot of people to finish it and Uncle had killed the last one himself, why wasn't he getting a lecture?

"I didn't do that," Zuko finally snapped.

"Nephew—" Uncle cautioned.

"That's not who I am, and if your Masters have a problem with it than they can get out of their caves and take it up with my Father. Or the Dragon of the West. Can I climb the stupid stairs now?"

His bad ear wasn't playing tricks on him, that one guy definitely said something about 'dinner for the masters'. Zuko glared at him, then stomped off to meet his new cannibalistic teachers. He looked back once, almost expecting Uncle to be following him… But Uncle couldn't hold a flame, and he couldn't practice his bending until he'd healed more, and he'd clearly already met these masters. He just smiled, and nodded at Zuko to go on. So Zuko did, alone.

The stairs were really wide, but felt narrower and narrower the higher up he went. And he went really high. Up to a walkway where the wind tugged at his clothes and kept trying to push him towards the edges. Having seen the rest of the city, he was pretty sure this was all somewhere between five minutes and five centuries from collapsing under his feet.

(It was kind of awesome and he really wanted to go explore those caves, but everyone was watching him. Also the caves were probably just full of old people stuff, like Uncle's room.)

The wind picked up even further, until he had to widen his stance just to stay in place. It had a sort of growl to it. It was getting louder and rumblier and closer, and he couldn't place the direction it came from—in front or behind?

Oh.

Both.

Oh.

There were dragons. Red and blue and horned and fanged and too big to fly but the sky was afraid to tell them that, circling and twisting and waiting—

Dancing.

Just once, Zuko glanced down at everyone watching him below. Then he didn't think of them again for (seconds, hours), because dragons were alive, and here, and moving with him and he was moving with them—

With one of them. Just like with the statues. There was supposed to be someone else here with him; Uncle should be up here, they should be sharing this together. And Zuko really would burn the Earth Kingdom to the ground, he could feel his inner fire flaring up with the anger and hate—

—the dragons settled down on either side of him, their mouths wide as temple ruins—

—and it was really hard to hold onto that rage when fire was the color of so much more. He tilted his head back, and breathed out, and breathed in. He could feel the dragon fire just above his skin in a hundred shades of temperature, heat and the cold between them. He could see the colors shifting just as well with his left eye as his right.

He'd fought with fire to save the 41st; he already knew fire was life. But now he knew.

Zuko was at the bottom of the stairs. He didn't remember getting there. The dragons were back in their caves, but he still felt wind over his skin and fire beneath.

The chief was at the bottom waiting for him, and so was Uncle. Zuko talked to the chief first.

"When I'm Fire Lord, it will be a capital offense to hunt dragons. Let's go, Uncle."

He did not apologize. He hadn't done anything wrong. He knew it and the masters knew it, and that was maybe all that ever needed to matter.

...Well. There was maybe something else that mattered. Zuko looked over his shoulder as they started back to the ship, and then leaned in close to Uncle. "Do you think they have any eggs?"

Uncle sighed, and hooked his elbow around Zuko's. They made it back to the ship with no further dragon-cave detours. Once there, Zuko promptly started yelling at Lieutenant Jee about course corrections so he could look at the maps, so he could memorise their current location, so that when he was Fire Lord there would definitely be dragon-cave detours.

Appas were fine, but he'd just found a pet Azula couldn't light on fire.

AN: Replies to commenters whom I cannot thank through PMs—

Lila, chapter 13: May all blessings upon this story be returned upon thy thesis a hundred fold, and may any prof who dares grade you low be beset by a thousand Zhaos! (I also really appreciate that your (nested) parentheses are (so neatly and correctly (Com Sci squee!)) closed.)

Guest, chapter 12: Those were some of my favorite lines to write! Now I am feeling all warm and fuzzy and validated in-my-writing-soul.

mina, chapter 7: You have underestimated tiny Zuko. I trust you shall not make this mistake again.

delirijumbaklave, multiple chapters: Your happiness is my happiness, your laugh-tears are my laugh-tears. Together we shall embrace the adorableness. Except when we just can't. The author recommends squeeing uncontrollably in such instances, like a leaky balloon about to pop.

Guest, chapter 1: *hands you a monocle and a brandy snifter, as befits the tone she is reading your comment in*

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