Chapter Notes: Crisis time! *rubs hands together*
Chapter 6
Toph's scanner is great when unexpected stuff is happening - like the other night, at least before all that mist made it freak out. But it can be a little overzealous sometimes, and right now, it's insisting that she'd better watch out for Aang's infirmary bed.
"Yeah, I know it's there, I'm standing next to it on purpose," she mutters, and moves a little closer so that she can drop a hand onto the bedrail - sometimes that helps, when it realizes she's touching things and therefore knows where they are. And, sure enough, it reluctantly shuts up.
"I could totally fix that for you," Aang says weakly, and Toph grins and aims a light punch approximately where his shoulder should be.
"We've talked about this," she says, "that would be cheating. How're you feeling, Twinkletoes?"
"Actually, pretty okay," Aang says thoughtfully, and Toph hears Katara blow out a breath in relief. Katara always worries so much. "I mean, I'm hoping I don't have to do that again, but I don't think I actually hurt myself."
"No, of course not," Suki says, "you've been unconscious for almost a whole day because it's fun." By the tone of her voice, Toph's pretty sure her arms are crossed.
"I was just tired," Aang protests. "Usually I just - touch the computer system, see how everything's working. And I've done that a million times. Fighting off a virus somebody planted takes a tiny bit more effort."
"Wimp," Toph declares.
"By which she means to say we're all glad you're okay," Katara says, and Toph can tell by the sound of her voice that she's smiling. Toph would object, but it's pretty much accurate.
"We are indeed," Iroh says.
"Glad, yes, of course," Zuko echoes awkwardly next to him, and Toph rolls her eyes. He's so ridiculous.
Aang takes it easy for the next day or two - or Katara makes him, anyway - and everyone relaxes; the rest of the trip to Pohuai is so quiet it's almost unbelievable. Toph would never have known anyone had messed up her systems if she hadn't been there herself, everything's so clean and glitch-free. Even her console switches seem to be sticking less, though that might well be her imagination.
But even on quiet days, she loves being at the Appa's helm. She likes the Appa the best out of all the ships she's ever flown; maybe it's because the core's never been reset, but there's something about it that makes it feel like a ship, not just a bunch of pieces of metal welded together. Like it's more than the sum of its parts, somehow.
She gets an alert when Pohuai Station comes up on short-range, her screenreader's cool voice saying, "Destination closing," and reeling off coordinates and velocities. She switches Huisheng on - strictly speaking, there's no serious need for her, but Toph likes being able to hear the thrusters firing when she docks. It makes it smoother, somehow.
She contacts the station, and a woman on the other end of the video link directs her to a docking arm on the far side - Pohuai's ring-shaped, she knows that from the sensors. She thinks that whatever Aang did must have made the thrusters a little more responsive, because there's no lag at all when she switches them on, and they cut off the second she eases back; it's one of the prettiest docking maneuvers she's ever done.
Her video link plays a tone, and then her screenreader reads off the contact number, and she grins. "Accept," she tells the computer.
"Hey, Toph," Sokka says. "Haru saw you coming in, he says to tell you nice landing."
"Thanks," she says. "But don't tell him that. Tell him he wishes he could pull that off."
"I do," Haru admits, faint; he must be somewhere off to the side. "I really do."
"So, when are we leaving?" Sokka says.
"I'm not sure," Toph says. There's a thunking of footsteps on metal behind her, but she figures it's Katara, and she's not listening closely when she says, "We might need a few things from the station - our fuel cells are in good shape, but maybe some more food-"
"No," Zuko says from behind her, and Toph stills in her chair. She's listening, now, and that's the buzz of laser blades - something longer and thinner than Suki's fans, by the way the sound changes when she turns her head - and somebody's sharp, too-hurried breathing. Somebody who's not Zuko.
Toph reaches under the console and flips the intercom switch. "Oh?" she says.
"Now," Zuko snaps, "we're leaving now, unless you want Aang's head rolling around under your chair."
"Ooo, evocative," Toph says.
"Toph-" Aang says, but then the laser-buzz shifts, and he falls silent.
"Shut up," Zuko hisses. "I said now - tell them to head back to the core. Huojia."
"I won't do it," Sokka says, tight and angry, and Toph turns her face back in the general direction of the video link.
"I get it," she says, "I'm mad at him, too; but I kind of like Aang's head where it is."
There's a clatter behind her, shoes on metal; everybody heard all that, over the intercom. But it's too late, Toph's pretty sure. Zuko's not going to let Aang go now. He's acting stupid, but it's a different kind of stupid than that.
"What in the world," Katara says, tromping up the stairs, and then she pulls the curtain aside and goes quiet. There's an odd scraping sound - Zuko turning, and dragging Aang around with him.
"Tell him to do it," Zuko says.
There's a long silence, and then Katara says, "Sokka," in a tone that clearly conveys to Toph just how much she wants to strangle Zuko right now. "Sokka, please."
Toph decides to take matters into her own hands. It's not unusual for her to be typing; but she turns off the volume for a second, so that when she actually sends the message, nobody on the Appa will hear the little bing noise on Sokka's end. She presses the capslock key. IMAGINE I AM YELLING THIS AT YOUR FACE. DO LIKE HE SAYS. SUKI WILL BEAT HIM UP LATER, BUT RIGHT NOW, AANG NEEDS TO NOT DIE.
"Fine," her screenreader murmurs in her ear; Toph doubts it has managed to capture the sulkiness Sokka probably keyed that in with.
She unmutes the video link.
"When we get there, I'm going to kill you," Sokka says - to Zuko, Toph freely assumes - and then the link terminates with a soft tone.
The sensors pick up the Taikong Jian easily enough, and Toph listens through Huisheng as the bigger ship eases away from the station. Toph disengages the docking locks - it feels a little silly, considering she only engaged them about a minute ago - and swings out and away from Pohuai after them.
"Navigational fix successfully locked," her screenreader tells her, and she rides the little jolt into hyperspace with the buzz of Zuko's laser swords loud in her ears.
"Back up," Zuko snaps when they're finally in hyperspace, bringing the blade of one laser sword even closer to Aang's neck; and Katara reluctantly does, glaring unrelentingly.
Everybody else is crowded behind her on the steps, Suki and Jet and Uncle and Yue, and Zuko keeps his blades crossed under Aang's chin and reminds himself that he's doing the right thing. He must be; he can't let himself doubt it, if he's going to pull this off.
Jet looks like he wants to kill him, splatter his brains across the corridor right there, and the death grip Katara has on his arm as she backs out of Zuko's way is probably the only reason he doesn't do it.
"Zuko," Uncle says, very gentle. "Zuko, my nephew, don't do this."
"You know why," Zuko spits, frustrated. Nobody else here will understand, he knows that; but Uncle should, at the very least. "I made a mistake, and I've learned my lesson from it."
"The wrong one, I think," Yue says quietly.
Zuko doesn't look at her, only pulls the swords closer to Aang's throat. "Clear the way," he says. "The empty crew quarters, at the end; the door lock will be engaged, and if there's so much as a hint that you're trying to cut through or reprogram it, I'll kill him. I'll give you proof of life through the video link, however often you want it, until we get there."
Katara doesn't want to do it, he can see that on her face; but she wants Aang killed in front of her even less, and she drags Jet back against the wall.
"All of you to that side," Zuko says quickly. He doesn't want to have to maneuver between them if Jet's on one side and Suki's on the other.
He keeps one sword tipped down over Aang's shoulder and one pointed back at the other end of the corridor when Aang climbs down the ladder into the unoccupied room, and then he drops down himself before any of them can rush him, and swings the hatch shut.
Aang stumbles almost all the way to the far wall when Zuko shoves him, but doesn't complain; it's not exactly unpleasant, not having those swords right at his throat anymore.
Zuko switches one sword off and shoves it in his belt so that he can engage the lock, eyes on Aang the whole time, and when Aang moves as though to come a little closer, Zuko raises the sword in his free hand warningly. "Not a step," he says. "I know what you can do."
Aang hadn't even been thinking about it, but it's true; if he gets a hand on the hatch console, he could probably unlock it. And somehow he suspects Zuko's not going to believe him if he says he won't do it.
So he stops and moves back, sitting down and leaning against the wall.
These quarters are completely bare - never been occupied, and barely even used for anything except maybe storage now and then. It's just a floor, empty walls, and the ladder up to the hatch.
Aang taps his fingers against the floor.
Zuko's still watching him, sword out.
"Come on," Aang says, "are you going to do that the whole way there? It'll take at least a day or two, even in hyperspace, and your arm's going to get tired in about two minutes. Even if you turned it off, you could still probably switch it on and run me through before I could get to the hatch."
Zuko glares at him, still holding the sword at the ready; but after a long moment, he reluctantly thumbs it off.
"So, help me out here," Aang says. "I'm still a little confused. Why are you doing this, again?"
"You thought I was like you," Zuko snaps, "but I'm not. I had to go, because - because I couldn't stay, not because I wanted to. But you - what you can do-" He stops abruptly, shaking his head sharply. "It doesn't matter, you don't need to know."
"But I want to," Aang says. Then, on a hunch, "It has something to do with your eye, doesn't it?"
Zuko glowers, and says nothing.
"That scar," Aang clarifies. "How'd you get that?"
Zuko deliberately turns away, and gazes pointedly at the side wall instead.
"How'd you get that? How'd you get that? I wonder how many times I could say that in two days," Aang muses. "We could find out together-"
"I made a mistake!" Zuko shouts, slamming a fist sideways into the wall beside the ladder. "I told you - I made a mistake."
"Okay, but what kind of mistake?" Aang says. "Self-imposed exile seems like a kind of excessive reaction to a cooking accident."
He's honestly curious, but somehow he's not expecting the answer to be that bad, until he sees the look on Zuko's face. Zuko angry, Aang is becoming increasingly familiar with; but Zuko quietly unhappy and just a touch uncertain is a new one. "Suki, she - she was on Kyoshi, she said," Zuko says.
"She was," Aang says.
Zuko stares into the middle distance for a moment, and then visibly remembers himself, glancing at Aang and then away. "I was too stupid," he says, and it sounds like a complete non-sequitur, but Aang makes himself wait. "The meetings my father had, with the Military Council of Lords - he talked like they were everything. They were everything," Zuko corrects himself. "Everybody looks at the Senate like that's where the real power is, but they're wrong. My father knew the truth. And I - I wanted so badly to be there, I begged him. But I was too stupid to understand. It had been everywhere, all the newscasts on the ansible - the terms of the truce, the length of the negotiation period-"
Aang suddenly suspects that he knows where this is going, and there's a feeling in his stomach like he just ate a rock.
"-and I couldn't understand that it had all been a lie. I thought-" Zuko breaks off, and shakes his head again. "I thought they didn't realize there was a contradiction. My father-" He stops there, but one hand drifts up, touches the scar-red skin around his eye, and Aang is abruptly certain that he really doesn't want to hear the rest.
"I thought I'd never be able to go back," Zuko says. "But the things you can do, my father - I have to take you back to him. I have to," and he looks at Aang almost pleadingly for a second, like he wants him to say that he understands.
And he does, a little; it's not the right choice, but he can see how it looks to Zuko like the only one there is. So Aang says, "I understand," as gently as he can, and then looks away.
It must be at least an hour later that Aang's woken by the beep of the video link activating; he remembers staring at the wall for quite a while before he fell asleep.
Zuko, across the room, sits up with a start - Aang's pretty sure it's not because he was sleeping, just because he was deep in thought - and then scrambles to his feet, pulls the link frame free from the wall, and accepts the transmission.
Katara's face appears; she still looks angry, and maybe a little tired, so Aang decides not to jump up and wave at her. He stands, though, just in case this is one of those proof-of-life checks Zuko was talking about earlier. He doesn't want Zuko to haul him off to some core planet and hand him over to his angry eye-burning father, but he doesn't really want Jet busting in to cut Zuko's throat, either.
"He's fine," Zuko says, "alive and well-"
"Good to know," Katara says, dry. "There's a transmission coming in for you."
Zuko hesitates. "A transmission?"
"We'll transfer it down," Katara says grudgingly, and turns to someone off to one side. "Okay, now," she tells whoever it is - Toph, Aang guesses - and then her face disappears. The video link goes blank for a second, and then a new face fills the screen.
Aang dares to take a few steps forward so that he can see Zuko's face clearly: he's staring.
"Azula," Zuko says.