Another piece of my heart for my lovely readers.

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Waning light from low burning candles glints off the blue glass hanging in front of Zuko's face. One arm pillowing his head, the other holds the necklace before his face. He sinks into his melancholy as he does into his bed, watching the bead sway from the lightest movement of his scarred arm.

Push and pull, his mind cruelly taunts with each twitch. At least I know now. Know she's safe. Know she's healthy with her friends. Know they're making their way north. Know she hates him with all her being.

It shouldn't ache as much as it does. Her hatred is the only thing he's truly earned, aside from his scar. Both his scars. That weakness wasn't burned out of him, it seems. It didn't bleed from the snake which weaves its cruel path from elbow to the palm of his hand. Even now, as he holds the reminder of it inches from his face, wants to put it down, away where he doesn't have to see it, he can't.

At least, not until a soft rap on his door pulls him from the light doze he was seconds from fully falling into. He sits up, tucking the necklace into his belt, before calling a hoarse, "Enter."

"Prince Zuko?" his uncle greets carefully. It seems his temper was easier for his uncle to navigate. Even when gripped by his worst moods, Uncle never stepped so cautiously around him as he does when he finds him like this. Maybe his bouts of fury are not easier, but more familiar. "I thought we could have evening tea together."

Zuko waves his uncle in, getting up from his bed to clear the table of the maps, scribblings, and eye-witness accounts of the Avatar. All compiled in a fruitless effort to pick up a trail. The best he came up with was a worthy distraction.

"You're getting close," his uncle observes as he gets to brewing.

"Not close enough." His fingers rub his tired eyes. "Nothing but word of mouth. Nothing concrete enough to set a course."

Iroh hums in thought, attention on his tea until he hands Zuko a steaming cup. "See Prince Zuko, a moment of quiet is good for your mental well-being. And I find a break and a good cup of tea can cure even the deepest of woes."

Deep as the ocean, Zuko thinks glumly as he brings his tea to his lips. It ends up all over his face, lap and chest when his boat rocks violently. Slamming the cup down, he races for the deck.

"Get back!" A female voice cracks like a whip. Except she's snapping an actual whip. At his men. Zuko runs out to meet her. "Get back! We're after a stowaway!"

"There are no stowaways on my ship," Zuko announces.

He's met with an amused and all to appraising look for his taste, before the girl snaps her whip again. The beast she's mounted on shrieks at the unspoken command and, without hesitating, rips right through his metal hull. Zuko barely has the time to blink before he's throwing himself down, metal sailing over his head. The beast dips into the hole.

A shriek fills the air, this one human, and a man in green robes dashes away from the monster. Zuko watches in stunned awe as a barbed tongue flicks out and strikes the back of the man's neck. He sees no blood, no sign of puncture, but the man drops.

"He's paralysed," Zuko realises as the girl dismounts, stalking towards her prey.

"Only temporary." Holding the man's collar, she once again appraises Zuko, to the point he looks away, embarrassed. Her huff of amusement brings his eyes right back to hers. "The toxins will wear off in about an hour. But by then, he'll be in jail and I'll have my money."

Bounty hunter, then, Zuko decides. "But how did you find him on my ship?"

"My shirshu can smell a rat a continent away." She mounts the great, snarling beast, readies to kick off. "I'm good at finding things. If you're looking to find me, ask for June."

Zuko isn't quite sure what happened as her and her beast bound away.


He's pretty sure he's got it figured out by the time he finds her again. The tavern she's chosen to hole up in for the night is seedy and dank. A place filled with cheap ale and cheaper company. Zuko remembers such places from when he was fifteen.

Lieutenant Jee had just joined his personal retinue following a discharge from his previous unit due to substance abuse. Apparently, the lesson did not take. Looking to start off in his new superior officer's good graces, he insisted to the fifteen-year-old Zuko that bonding with the crew over drinks would be a quick and easy way in to earning their respect. Really, it was Jee's attempt to normalise his habit, make it seem nothing out of the ordinary to the spoiled prince. He probably thought he'd hit the jackpot in a commander looking to drink away his doubt, bitterness, and loathing.

Zuko responded by banning all alcohol on his ship. If his crew wanted to waste his hunt for the Avatar getting pissed out of their minds, then it had to be on the shore. And if they were too drunk or hungover to make it back by the time they set sail, Zuko saw it as no great loss.

Bodies shove and push against him as he marches through the press, pushing and shoving right back. Uncle simpers and commiserates in his wake, but Zuko only has words for the woman collecting her coin at the low table in the centre of the throng. The smoke makes his head hurt, so he focuses on the spiralling black snake inked into June's pale shoulder. It writhes with each armful of coin she drags towards her.

She looks up from her pile, a sly half-smile slashing her mouth as they approach. "Must not have lost my charms after all."

"Something even your beast couldn't sniff out, I'm sure," Zuko responds, taking the seat she doesn't offer.

"My Shirshu," she corrects, "can sniff out anything."

"Good." He reaches over and plucks a coin from her pile. Arms full, she watches him warily. "Your monster made extensive damage to my ship."

"Well I'd love to help you out, but as you can see, I'm a little short on money." She eyes him pointedly until he returns the pilfered coin to her pile. She grins, licks her bottom lip. "Drinks on me."

The crowd surrounding Zuko cheers. Her attempts to remind him how outnumbered he and his uncle are do not faze him. When she lifts her drink to take a sip, he snatches her wrist before she can taste a drop. "Money isn't what I had in mind."

"I'm not that kind of girl." She leans into his space, curling her hand so she can put the cup down and trace a finger along the inside of his wrist. Her eyebrow raises in interest when she bumps the ridges of his scar. "At least not sober. As for a bounty hunter, well, I'm not above using my charms."

"As persuasive as I'm sure you are, I doubt that will work on our intended quarry," Uncle chuckles from behind Zuko. His eyes have not left June once.

"Seems to be." She winks playfully to Uncle, but she's all lidded eyes and raspy innuendo to Zuko. Whatever she needs to get the job done, he supposes. While Zuko's limited experience with women all start in the same smoky tavern setting as this, the women don't usually already have the coin when he finds them.

"I need you to find someone." He cuts to the point.

"Thought you already did that part." The intent leaves her eyes when he doesn't share her smirk. "Wait, you're serious? You're not here to-"

"No." He looks around, at the men watching, more the pile of coin than them. Still, Zuko's never been a fan of spectators. "Outside."

Moth's buzz around a greasy lantern, their wings parescoping the glow. Through the film of dirt, the light is oily and dim, but it catches the glass as light always seems to do. June leans against her beast and, even in the dim light, it is clear to all gathered the mirth is gone from her dark eyes. They zero in on the necklace Zuko holds up. "What happened, your girlfriend run off on you?"

She can't possibly know, yet it still stings. "It's not the girl I'm after, it's the bald monk she's traveling with."

A dark eyebrow lifts. "Whatever you say."

It's a raw wound she pokes at, one Zuko cuts deeper each time he wonders why it's there. "If you find them, I'll consider the damage to my ship paid for."

The other eyebrow goes up, before they slam down together in a frown. "Look, kid, I don't care who you say you're looking for. I know a betrothal necklace when I see one. Whatever she's trying to get away from, I think I'm starting to see, and I'm not going to sell a sister out like that." In a fluid motion she's twisted herself up into her beasts' saddle. "Forget it."

Zuko's about to burn the snout off the creature, let her find her bounties then, when his Uncle hastily steps in front of him. "Plus, we'll pay your weight in gold!"

This gives June pause. Dark eyes regard Iroh's genuine smile, the air simmering around Zuko, before she slips down from her saddle. "Make it your weight." She pokes Iroh's ample stomach, "and you have a deal."


June leads them in mad, short dashes across occupied Earth Kingdom country. Too close to the Puhoi stronghold for Zuko's liking, but the beast takes them around the mountains and up into the forest so deeply, only a particularly determined archer could get a shot through those trees.

A hermit herbalist is no help. Mad as a bat, she talks to her cat as if it's human, but she accurately guesses they're of the Fire Nation at a glance. Zuko feels her eyes on his back until they descend the other side of the mountain, continuing the hunt.

Makapu village quakes in the shadow of the huge, smoking volcano. Zuko can feel its heat raining down upon the villagers. They scream and scamper out of the Shirshu's way as it bounds up the steps of an old ornate house, where a woman waits with folded arms. She does not scream, does not so much as blink as the monster's long snout stops inches from her own.

As if she were expecting them.

"Why are we stopping here?" Zuko asks, annoyed by how the old, grey woman is looking at him.

"The girl must have spent a lot of time here," June answers as her beast snorts and stomps across the perimeter of the house. The old woman continues to watch Zuko.

"We don't have time for this!" But it appears the beast has other plans, snapping and snarling at Zuko when he tries to get it to sniff the necklace again.

"Watertribe," a crotchety voice muses behind him.

"What?" Zuko snaps.

The woman doesn't blink as she points to his hand. "The necklace. Tied tight about the wrist. You fear losing it?"

Zuko frowns. Her tone is all too knowing. "It's proving useful."

"Keep it close all you want, young prince, it will not fix what you lost." Her cool eyes stoke the simmering embers of his soul. "It will not soothe the ache in your spirit or heal the cracks in your heart."

Zuko's good eye widens. "How do you know who I am?"

The old woman smiles. "Trade secret. Let her know you're doing okay, by the way. It'll ease the storm of her soul."

"We're leaving!" Zuko announces.

"No, you are not."

"I don't know who you think you are, you old bag, but-"

"She's right," June cuts him off. The woman smiles pleasantly at him as June and Uncle dismount. "Nyla's been running all day. We'll pick the trail up in the morning."


Makapu does not wilt in the brilliant sunset. Smoke billows from the volcano, but the villagers have no fear the monster could erupt. They trust their fortune teller. Zuko, sitting on the veranda of Aunt Wu's home in the upper level of her shop he, Iroh and June have been invited to stay in for the night, has thoroughly decided he does not like the old woman. Roof or no roof, she's far too smug about something Zuko can't put his finger on. Over dinner, whenever she caught his eye, she'd offer a secret smile and go about her meal, sharing conversation with Iroh, perfectly content ignoring the brash June. Like they shared something, yet Zuko is glad her name is only one syllable, or he'd sooner forget it.

His thumb rubs the glass bead of Katara's necklace as he watches the light dip below the volcanos lip. Stars wink in and out of existence as the sun starts its descent. He shouldn't touch it so much; it will start to lose its scent. But if he's not looking at it, touching it, he's thinking about it. So, he looks at the volcano and thinks about the Helldivers of his home. Are they harvesting the Agni's Soul rocks? Is it just as dangerous as diving deep into the depths of the ocean? Did Katara think about the Helldivers, about him, when she looked at this volcano.

And now he's thinking about her again.

The screen door is pulled open behind him. "Uncle, I already said I didn't want evening t-"

June plonks herself unceremoniously beside him on the balcony. Despite their dinner, she polishes an apple on her sleeve. Red and delicious looking, his eyes follow as her lips fold around the skin and she takes a bite.

"What's her name?"

Zuko blinks. "Excuse me?"

"The girl. What's her name?" She takes another bite. She keeps talking through her mouthful. "Normally I like to know as little about who I'm hunting as possible. You've caught me bored, so spill."

"There is no girl," Zuko mutters.

June barks a laugh. "You know I hunt people for a living, right? I didn't always have Nyla to do it. Before her, I had to talk to find out where my prey was. I had to learn to read faces, tell when people were lying to me. And right now, you haven't said anything true beyond your name since we met." The apple snaps as she takes another bite. The sound is fuzzy in Zuko's mottled left ear. "Now, you're a young, hot blooded male. I'm a hot, young female. Yet you want nothing to do with me, even if you must be as hard up than an Earthbender in the North Pole.

"Now, there's only two reasons why a man puts himself through that. Judging by the way you've been watching my little show with this apple, I'm guessing you don't prefer to ride the double-headed dragon."

Zuko coughs.

"Oh, maybe I'm half right then. Either way, it's not that, unless your little pirate crew takes good care of you. But I'll take my chances and bet it's reason number two." She leans close. Close enough Zuko can smell the tang of apple and spiced wine on her breath. "You've got another girl on the mind."

"You're quite vulgar," Zuko sniffs, not looking at her.

"I'm a woman who likes to get things done, and that includes having her needs met." She finishes the apple, tossing the core over the balcony. Standing with a sigh, she wipes her hand on Zuko's back. "Do yourself a favour, princeling, remember that if you ever see your girl again."

He breathes a sigh of relief when she's gone, a plume of red fire coming out with it. Cursed woman knows exactly how alluring she is, even if she is a little pale for Zuko's taste.

"She is right." His relief sours as Aunt Wu pads softly out onto the balcony. She doesn't sit and take liberties with Zuko's space like June, walking out and putting her hands on the balcony rail. "Your uncle is a remarkable man, so much wisdom after so many adventures. Not that I couldn't tell of course, but he was resistant to my offer of a reading. 'At my age, there's really only one big surprise left, and I'd just as soon leave it a mystery'. Of all the reasons I've heard not to know one's future, that, I think, is my favourite. Would you like one?"

Zuko scoffs. "And have you ask me nonsensical questions? Have me think you know me by agreeing? It's not some magical coincidence; you say my grandfather is trying to speak to me from beyond the sun's warmth. I ask which one, the one who limped or the one who favoured his pipe, and you have an answer I'm supposed to be impressed by. I know exactly how your kind work. No, thank you."

He just wants to be left to watch the last of the sunset.

Aunt Wu laughs. "I knew a young man like you. No theory in his life. Facts above all else. The girl he was with though, she could learn from you. She started like everyone else who comes to me. 'What is my fortune?' 'Will I find wealth? Fame?' Like most young women her age, she asked if she would find love."

She pauses. Tense behind her, Zuko bites his tongue.

"I told her she would marry a powerful bender."

Bitterness fills Zuko. Power. It's all everyone wants. Those who have the wealth of it at their fingertips always want more. He learned that at the burning hand of his father, from the sharp tilt to his sisters smile as her eyes set upon new prey.

He's come to learn those who were lucky enough to grasp the insubstantial fragments of power are desperate only to keep hold of it. He never pegged Katara to care about any of it. And as quickly as the notion occurs to him, he knows she'd only care so long as it can be redistributed to those lowly unlucky souls.

Aunt Wu talks over his musings, and for once he's glad for her droning voice. He crept far too close to thinking about her again.

"For most, that would be enough. Then she comes back and asks for more information. Apparently, she knows quite a few powerful benders. Wanted it narrowed down. Especially for a young man. He holds a special place in her heart, but it's shadowed with worry, confusion, and she was desperate to find the right path. Above all, she asked me one simple question. Is he okay? Fortunes don't work that way, I explained.

"So, she begins asking me every question under the sun. Process of elimination, she called it." Zuko snorts against his will. Katara would like this girl. "What shoes she should wear. Whether she should put her hair up or down. She even asked if she should have mango or papaya for her breakfast. Who needs to know something that specific? Eventually, I just began agreeing with whatever the last thing she said was."

It's out of his mouth before he can think better of it. "Katara doesn't like papaya."

He knows it's a mistake the second Aunt Wu looks slyly at him over her shoulder. "I don't recall telling you the young girls name."

He schools his features, willing the flush on the back of his neck not to spread. Gloom from the evening does its best to wash the heat away. "More than one girl can dislike stone fruit. My sister hates peaches."

She doesn't, but the point still stands.

"Yet you thought of one name in particular."

"Yet you lied to her face on multiple occasions." He's given up the pretence of pretending they're not talking about the only girl which dominates his mind.

"Ah, but did I?" Aunt Wu turns fully to him. "The last thing I said to her was that we make our own destinies. Case and point, she didn't have to eat the papaya. I doubt she's eaten one since. If things were set in stone, there would be no Makapu village left. We would be a footnote of history, brought up in those old debates of Kyoshi against Yun the false Avatar, and you would not be sitting here listening to an old woman wax on."

"My destiny is to bring the Avatar to the Fire Nation and restore my honour," Zuko growls.

Aunt Wu smiles to herself, looking up at the heavy, purple sky. "Destiny is like the clouds, dear boy."

He waits for her to elaborate. She doesn't.


"So, this is your girlfriend?" June wrangles her Shirshu as Zuko jumps down from the back of her saddle. Pretending Katara isn't there is the easiest way he can get through this. Focus on the Avatar, that's what matters here. "No wonder she left, she's way too pretty for you."

Katara extends him the same curtesy, glaring over at June as he stands in front of the prone Sokka. It's the first time he wonders if the Shirshu's venom is painful, before he squashes the concern. "Where is he? Where is the Avatar?"


The Avatar finds them. Zuko isn't surprised, letting go of Katara's limp body to leap from the saddle. He worries about leaving her strung across the Shirshu's back without him to hold her steady, until the Avatar's brutish bison rams the Shirshu when it tries to sting his master.

"Hey!" The roar leaves his throat before he can stop it.

For a moment, the Avatar is gone. Zuko can only watch the bodies strike stone. Nun's get to Katara and her brother before Zuko can, pulling them to safety.

He closes in on the Avatar in a series of blasts. Air stings past Zuko's head. Fire creates beads of sweat down the swell of the airbenders skull. Unrelenting force sucks them into each other, until their elements meet and blasts between them. Zuko's armour takes the brunt of the fall, stone tiles crunching underneath him as he slams into the low roof.

Below them, bison and Shirshu battle it out. Zuko's never seen anything as fearsome as the bison as it fights Nyla's poison. Roaring, spitting, throwing its full weight into the battle. June fare's poorly, thrown from the Shirshu after a brutal head on collision the monster had no hope of winning. Her whip lashes out across the bison's flank and even Zuko flinches at the dirty trick. The responding stomp of a giant paw breaks the earth underneath, and Zuko rescinds his pity.

The Avatar watches too, so Zuko charges while he's distracted. The boy notices right before he's struck with Zuko's whip of flame. It misses, singes the soles of his slippered feet, then Zuko's lifted off his feet and thrown into a corner tower of the abbey courtyard. The Airbender tries to press his advantage, but Zuko sees movement from the corner of his eye and dives. The Avatar's met with the snarling, furious Shirshu. The beast's seconds from tearing him apart if not for a whip of wind from the bison's tail.

The Avatar heads for the well. Zuko cuts him off, forcing him onto the lip with two successive blasts of fire, trapping him with twin arcs of flame circling from his outstretched hands.

The boy's eyes widen, then, as Zuko feels the glass bead swing loose of its secure knot, lock in on the familiar, warming glint. "You have something I want!"

He ducks into the wells pully system. Unable to crawl in after him, Zuko crushes the flimsy wooden bean structure with a single kick and chases the lithe monk around the rim. No matter how Zuko tries to trap him, the boy slips his shots, effortlessly twirling around the wells stone rim, snatching for the necklace tied to Zuko's arm.

Bellowing, Zuko lunges for him. But, without looking, the airbender is changing his momentum to fly backwards, foot slipping between the band and Zuko's wrist. He disappears into the well, a blast of fire following. Zuko realises his mistake too late as his blast of fire is extinguished in the jet of water shooting from the depths of the well. It strikes him in the face, taking him off his feet. All he can feel is water, see water, until he crashes back down, soaked, onto the hard stone ground.

He's up in time to see the Shirshu going nuts. He doesn't know where to look. The Avatar's going for his glider. June's whip cracks the air. The watertribe boy is yelling for the nuns to push!

And Katara's there. Face a picture of concentration as balls of the foul-smelling water bend to her whim. He's mesmerised, amazed by her control. How could she ever think she needed a powerful bender to compliment her when, before his eyes, her juvenile power can twist perfume into weapons, blind savage beasts, and break through metal like it were paper?

Until the Shirshu shrieks, blinded and tortured by the stinking perfume, and charges right through Zuko and June in its escape from the monastery.


Poison weighs him down, yet Zuko's wrist has never felt so light, so cold. He's up, so to speak, able to pull himself to sit back against the monastery wall and wait for the last of the effects to wear off.

His uncle does not try to cheer him, talk to him, or even continue his shameless flirting with June. She's long gone anyway, shaking her head at Zuko, not surprised when she's given a few gold pieces for her troubles and no offer of thanks. Iroh helps the women of the abbey clean the spilled perfume, leaving Zuko to trace the pale skin of his wrist until the feeling returns.


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