Disclaimer: I do not own Avatar or anything associated with it except my fanfictions.
Edit: Super important thing I forgot to add. Please read end.
Edit: Kataang edit on this chapter, too!
Aang approached the lemur cautiously. "Hey there, little fella," he coaxed. "Don't worry. We're friendly -"
The lemur suddenly took off, leaving two very shocked and confused boys behind. "H-hey! Wait up! We won't hurt you!" shouted Aang as he used his airbending to chase after the lemur. Zuko coughed in the dust left in their wake.
"Aang, you wait up! You're still my prisoner, you know, and I won't let you out of my sight!" he shouted exasperatedly as he started to run towards the escapee and the animal. He wasn't sure which one was which; they both were escaping from something and both acted like ridiculous little creatures.
Despite his efforts, Zuko finally crouched over, out of breath. He painstakingly pathed towards a run-down building he saw the Avatar and the lemur run into.
He opened the flap. "Aang, what's the big deal? Why'd you leave me like that -" his eyes widened at the spectacle before him. Scores and scores of Fire Nation troops, laying askew, and at the very end, much like a king and a palace's pillars, there was a skeleton in Air Nomad clothing, sitting somberly even after death, as a witness - no, as a monument - of the devastation wrought a century earlier. "Oh," he whispered.
And the necklace on that skeleton bore the same insignia as the Air Temple sanctuary, the same symbol the statue of that Monk Gyatso wore...
Too late Zuko recognized the warning signs. He tried to get to Aang, but the blast of wind emanating from the enraged Avatar was more than enough to nearly send Zuko off the mountaintops.
The statues stayed still, silent, solemn, waiting for their moment to shine.
Suddenly, the eyes of Roku's statue lit up. The earthbender next to him did so as well, and slowly, the eyes of all the Avatars began to glow in a spiraling pattern, lighting up the dark spire from within and shooting a beam of light high into the sky.
Kyoshi's memorial statue stood worn and torn, its paint flaked off, its wood rotten.
If the mayor of the town nearest the statue hadn't passed through the area of it, he would have dismissed any accounts of the statue's eyes glowing. As it happened, he saw the glowing eyes and the beam of light shooting to the sky, gasped, and then fainted in front of his entire village. If the onlookers weren't so enraptured by the awesome sight, someone would have called for assistance for their fallen leader.
The Fire Sages were zealously performing their duties and rituals of maintaining the Fire Temple, when suddenly Roku's eyes flared with a brilliant white light. The Fire Sages gasped, and quickly, after much communication, a relay of bells began to ring throughout the Fire Nation. They had not been used in over a hundred years, yet they rung out as if they had been newly minted.
Their sound only portended one thing.
And that was when the world knew, that the Avatar had returned.
Welp, the Avatar's back, Zuko thought sarcastically.
He saw the beam of light shooting from the spire they had just left, and the statue of Roku in the Fire Temple on Crescent Island was likely the same. He bet that the entire world knew the Avatar had returned - if not aware of who, what, or where he was.
But did the matter of the Avatar really matter to him if he was going to die by falling off a mountain? He gathered his focus, his grit, his determination, and slowly edged towards the halo of wind that enclosed Aang.
"Aang." As soon as Aang saw Zuko, the winds started to lessen. "I know it's hard to lose someone." He could see that despite the trance he was in, Aang was held onto every word that came out of Zuko's mouth. He said earnestly, "My mother... I didn't get to tell you much about her. She hated the palace life. The only thing keeping her there was me and Azula. She was so protective of me, like a mother turtle-duck. She comforted me when I was scared. She held me when my father berated me. She protected me no matter what, to make me happy. And then one day... she was gone. No trace. No letter. Just an empty bed and my father standing next to her favorite fountain. It was only in the suffering afterwards that I truly understood what I lost. But Aang. There is more to life than the ones you lost. There are people you meet, people you fall in love with. People like me. And my crew. And... Katara."
Aang slowly settled back down to the earth, his expression less angry and hurtful, more... sad. More solemn. Zuko continued.
"Like it or not, you have a new family... you have new friends, new acquaintances... and we care about you. We won't ever leave you. Promise," he expelled the last word, and when he was within touching distance, Zuko put a reassuring hand on Aang's shoulder.
Aang collapsed to the ground, and not for the first time Zuko cradled him like a baby. Aang slowly opened his eyes. "I'm sorry," he said.
Zuko shook his head. "Don't be. None of this was your doing. No matter what happened to get you in that iceberg, you're not the one that burned down all your people. Also... if it makes you feel better..." he pointed to the skeleton of Aang's deceased guardian. "Look at him."
Aang stared at the bones. "All I see is a skeleton of Gyatso," he said sadly.
Zuko nodded. "What does that mean, Aang?" he said.
Aang squinted at Zuko, and then realization dawned on him. "He... he didn't -"
Zuko smiled and consoling smile. "If it helps at all, it seems that your mentor truly was the greatest airbender of his time. He doesn't have burned clothes, and there are no scorch marks on his bones. If I had to guess, he died in peace patiently waiting for you to come back."
Aang's face fell. "I didn't get back in time."
Zuko turned Aang's face towards him. "But you came back. And that's what matters."
Zuko smiled at Aang reassuringly, and Aang stood up with a determined gleam in his eye. "Monk Gyatso might have been the best airbender of his time. But his time is gone. My people are gone. But us... this... all of this is a new era, a new start, a new time," he stared at Zuko. "And our destiny is to give it the glorious beginning it deserves."
Zuko smiled and silently affirmed the Avatar's words. Wait. Why was he acting like this? Why was he being so chummy with an enemy of his nation? And then another headache came, this one the worst of them all. Something within him must have snapped, for when he came to after Aang shook him awake, the boy was staring at him in apprehension.
"Zuko... I never heard anyone scream like that before..."
Zuko shook his head. "Probably didn't sound as bad as my screaming when my own father gave me this scar." But he knew his dismissal of his condition was a false pretense of bravado. He was pretty sure Aang could see through him as well.
Aang's eyes widened. "He... did that... to you?"
Zuko nodded. "Yeah. Not now. Some other time."
Aang understood, and didn't bother pressing the issue. "Gotcha, Hotman."
Zuko rolled his eyes. "You recover quickly from horrible tragedy."
Aang smirked. "Well, someone's gotta keep annoying you, Commander Prince Hotman, Sir."
Zuko banged his head on the wall next to him, ignoring the fact that the structures left were priceless artifacts from a time long disappeared into history. "Go to your bison. Now. Before I blow this place up with how you're irritating me."
Aang nodded. "Flameo, Hotman!"
Zuko's eyes bulged, and then he silently counted to one hundred in his head. Then counted back down. He still hadn't calmed himself down enough by that point to talk, so he just gave up on trying not to explode. "Let's just go," he growled.
It was significant to see Zuko leading the Avatar to his bison, trusting the prisoner out of his sight.
"Yip yi!-" Aang said before something fuzzy hit him on the head. "Ow!" he sputtered before Zuko extracted the thing from his bald head. They gasped when they saw what it was.
"You're back!" Aang cried ecstatically. Then he saw what the lemur held in his hands. "Razzleberries! Just like the berries Gyatso put in my favorite pies!" Aang cried. "Thanks so much, mister lemur. By the way, it seems rather lonely up here. Whaddya say to joining the last airbender and the last flying bison on a trip to save the world?"
The lemur chittered animatedly, jumping up and down in its excitement. Aang chuckled. "I'll take that as a yes. So, we need to give you a better name than 'that flying lemur.' Not that that's a bad name to begin with..." Aang added hastily to the lemur's chagrined face. "How about I call you... Momo?"
Zuko sighed. "A boy witnessing destruction deciding to call an animal by the cutest, naivest name possible."
Aang shrugged. "Just because we shouldn't live in the past doesn't mean we can't keep some fragment of it withing ourselves."
Zuko thought about this piece of wisdom until they landed back on the ship, where they ignored every attempt to greet or acknowledge them and crashed onto their beds unconscious. The last thing Aang thought was about his new companion. The last thing Zuko thought was about how his entire supply schedule had been ruined by not one or even two, but four new occupants on his ship. He only wondered how to catch the fourth in its thieving acts...
A piece of meat.
A piece of delicious, mouthwatering meat.
The foreign creature happily gobbled up the lychee nuts laid before it. Little did the admittedly-cute fuzzball know that it was about to become a meal itself.
The stowaway had been living in the airducts for days upon days, subsisting on a few scraps of food he managed to swipe from the supply rooms. So far he had avoided detection, although his minor exploits were widely talked about among the ashmakers. But it wasn't enough for the meat and sarcasm lover. He. Needed. His. Meat.
And he was about to get it.
Poised to strike, the stowaway unleashed a silent battle-cry as he leapt upon his prey, which turned into an unfortunately loud squeal as he tripped on another pile of lychee nuts he had failed to take into account.
He skidded across the floor, coming to a stop right in front of the animal, whose disarming eyes silently mocked the hunter before it.
Rage engulfed him. He was a hunter. He would not be laid low by a little creature whose eyes were likely larger than its brain. He made a swipe at the creature, who simply leapt out of the way, and when he pounced once more, the lemur spread wings the stowaway didn't see before, and what had first seemed like a small yet silent victory turned into a bitter defeat that tasted sweet due to the lychee nuts now embedded in his mouth.
The door to the room suddenly opened. He grimaced, knowing he had been caught.
The boy with the scar burn on the left side of his face came up to the stowaway and gasped in recognition. "Sokka?"
Sokka sighed. "How's it going, Zuko."
Zuko glared at him. "Where - "
"I'm surprised you don't regularly check your air ducts. Someone hiding there could easily access you and then assassinate you."
Wrong word choice. Zuko's eyes narrowed.
This was going to be one long night for Sokka.
Zuko paced up and down the deck of the ship in his agitation, the crew and Aang anxiously watching on.
"So let me get this straight, Sokka," Zuko said, his soft tone belied by the raging fire in his eyes. "You decided to accompany the Avatar, to not bring your sister who happens the be the only person Aang thinks about day and night, and took our dwindling supplies, without leaving behind a goodbye? Or an apology? Or EVEN A PATHETIC NOTE FOR YOUR LOVED ONES TO REMEMBER YOU BY?" Zuko screamed this last part loud, and everyone present flinched.
Sokka winced. "Yo, prince, Your Majesty, whatever. It's not as bad as it looks, promise."
Zuko interrupted Sokka. "Your actions to try to eat Momo convince me otherwise," he said dryly.
Sokka's eyes widened. "Wait. You named the creature? It's, like, not to be eaten?" Sokka asked with a quizzical expression. "I'm sorry. I thought it was fresh meat."
Aang shuddered. "Please. No meat." Sokka looked at Aang like he had suddenly sprouted three heads.
"No meat? YOU DON'T LIKE MEAT? WHAT KIND OF SACRILEGIOUS PERSON ARE YOU?" Sokka screamed at Aang.
Zuko had enough. "Sokka! Silence! I'm the one yelling at you, not the other way around! Aang simply follows what his long-gone culture has taught him. Although they are in the past, he can still cherish their ways in whatever way he can," he said as the two exchanged a smile over Aang's piece of wisdom. That smile quickly changed into an enraged expression as Zuko continued to assail the watertribe stowaway in front of him. "And what about you? Apparently the water tribes are built on family and community, and yet as head of your tribe you left behind your village and your family on a wild goose chase with the Avatar?"
Sokka shrank inward. "Okay, okay! I'll admit I didn't think this as thoroughly as I was supposed to. But I wanted to travel the world, to meet my dad, to take down the Fire Nation, no offense to you guys. I mean it's not like I'd be able to do that anyways, so I just settled on sticking with the Avatar to make sure he stays around."
"Pretty sure you'd be better off worrying about yourself," snorted Zuko, and the audience broke out into laughter.
Sokka turned red, and he thanked the stars that it was nighttime when it would be too dark to see. Then he remembered there were firebenders around him. His face turned redder, and in a last-ditch attempt to save face, he said, "Hey! By the way, I didn't leave home without leaving my family a note! Trust me, at least I thought that part out well! I'll recount to you exactly what it said. It goes: -"
Dear Katara and Gran-Gran and anyone snooping in our business,
I'm leaving. Sorry about that. I just wanna follow the Avatar. No offense to you, sis, but you're a girl, and still more you're my baby sister. I can't let anything happen to you.
I guess Kanna will have to take charge as acting chief now, as the oldest female in the village. None of the boys are grown up enough to take lead of the village.
Hope you all stay well. If I see dad, I'll tell him I said hi from you guys.
Stay safe.
Love,
Sokka.
Katara read the hastily scrawled letter ten times. Then she screamed and almost ripped it apart before realizing what it was. A last letter from her older brother.
He just left them all. Left. Them. Just to go find dad and stay with Aang. With Aang... Why didn't he take her? Her heart ached for the boy with the stormy grey eyes and the innocent laugh and... and...
Wait. What was she thinking?
In the time passed since Aang had waltzed in and out of her life, she began feeling a torrent of feelings - feelings that confused her and worried her. She felt things she wasn't sure she should be feeling, and others she was sure shouldn't have been felt for a boy whose voice hadn't yet deepened, who didn't even have any facial hair! Not even on his shaved head! But still, with the passing of time, Katara began to convince herself that the feelings she was feeling were genuine and justified. Aang was young, sure. He was small and slight and immature. But he was fun, and kind, and everything that Katara missed of her own life that she didn't realize she ever missed and now yearned for. And slowly, dreams came to her, of a time where the war was over, and an older, handsome, taller Aang returned to her home - in all of his glory! - and swept Katara up into his arms and kissed her and whispered the sweet whisper of love into her ears.
And so she pined for this ghost, a vision of the future that would never come to pass. An intangible object who may as well have outright stolen her heart.
Who was just another person gone from her life. At least she knew Sokka would come back. If nothing else, he was as wily as a coyote-wolf. He had proven that much by sneaking from home - with all his stuff to boot! How he managed to sneak past the entire tribe with his club and his mask and his boomerang would always remain a mystery to her.
She sighed, and walked outside the family tent. Of course her sexist brother would leave all the awkward explaining in the tribe to her.
The entire ship sat in silence after Sokka recited his letter word for word by memory. Zuko finally broke the silence. "You meathead of a snow savage... that was the worst letter I've ever heard that someone wrote! And I've seen illiterate peasants try to write letters!"
An awkward silence passed. "Well... what are we going to do with you now? Technically you're a spy and a thief, so in war time that would mean... a sentence of execution." Zuko declared.
And uproar ensued - but not by the accused. "For the record, I don't see you killing me, and I'm pretty sure you didn't destroy the enemy water tribe when you had a chance, Zuko! I think Sokka should be punished, but I don't think that killing him would do any good!" Aang shouted over the rowdy ruckus.
When everyone calmed down, Iroh approached Zuko. "Nephew. This is your own ship, and you have the final say in this decision. However, I would suggest that you spare the boy, just as you spared the Avatar, just as you spared the water village."
Zuko's eye twitched. "Fine!" he snapped. "Let the water tribe teen travel with us in pea - AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!" the scream that burst from Zuko was raw, feral, primitive, and excruciating for all to hear and experience. The pained prince toppled unconscious over the ship's railings.
"Zuko!" Aang shouted. Quickly he snapped open his glider-staff, flew down to catch Zuko, and almost lost his grip at feeling the heat emanating from the burned firebender.
He dragged Zuko back onto the deck. "He has a horrible fever. His temperature is extraordinarily high, even for a firebender," Aang announced. Iroh came up to his nephew with a grim look on his face. He felt Zuko's forehead and grimly nodded. Aang noticed something.
"You don't seem surprised, Iroh," Aang said.
Iroh shook his head. "From the moment Zuko let you on his ship, I knew this would happen. This is not a natural sickness. The critical decisions he made - about you, about that young water tribe man over there ["thanks for acknowledging me as more than a boy, Mr. Iroh!" yelled Sokka], the choices for good that he made - it was in such a conflict with the image of himself that he is now at war within his own mind and body."
"What does that mean?" asked Aang.
"It means, young Avatar, that my nephew is going through a metamorphosis. It will not be a pleasant experience, but when he comes out of his fever-entombed chrysalis, I hope he shall be the beautiful prince he was always meant to be, and do what no one else has been able to do in my family."
"And what is that?" asked Sokka.
Iroh frowned and shook his head. "Redeem our nation and restore honor to our tainted family's name."
Firelord Ozai sat regally on his throne, surrounded by burning embers. He cast an imposing figure as his sinister shadow loomed the length of the room, flickering with the flames of his anger.
A Fire Sage ran up to him, and knelt on one knee. "Firelord." Ozai stood up.
"What in the world would bring you here to me, to neglect your duties of maintaining your temple, Fire Sage? I should have you executed for treason," Ozai flared.
"This matter is not one to be overlooked. The statue of Roku began to glow several days ago. The Avatar has returned."
Ozai smiled. "Excellent. My apologies for assuming you would betray me, Shyu. I assume that Roku will eventually be calling the Avatar to his temple. The Fire Sage's job is to stop him in any way possible. Am I understood?"
Shyu stood up and bowed in deference to his leader. "We shall carry out your bidding, Firelord Ozai."
Ozai walked over to Shyu. He could smell the fear, feel the perspiration of the measly man. "With that being said and done, it seems as though a promotion is in order. I'm sure a certain Commander will be elated to finally be given the authority to carry out his wish."
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