Zuko breathed in the dank smell of the forest with the rotting leaves and the dirty animals and the danger and the heaviness. This wasn't just scouting and possibilities anymore, this was certainty. He knew for certain that she had been there. He knew for certain that she was alive. He knew for certain that she was close.
He let out a shaky breath, and groped blindly for Katara. If there was nothing to anchor him, he might give in to that insistent nagging in the back of his mind that said this was his only chance to make things right. Giving in to that nagging meant putting more weight on this mission than he'd put on anything before. It meant he was more likely to be careless, and someone would get hurt. He'd been down that "what if" road before. What if he'd been a better bender? What if he'd been the prodigy instead of Azula? What if Ozai hadn't been too caught up in his scheming for the throne to be a proper father? What if…?
Katara squeezed his hand, and briefly, Zuko let his body sag before they took off into the forest. He gave in to that one moment of despair, then told himself enough was enough. Katara had been right; he needed to be calm, rational, and on his toes. Asking what if only led to infinite possibilities and self-doubt. The what ifs didn't matter—what mattered was what actually happened, and what he'd do about it.
"I'm here," Katara whispered.
Zuko ran his thumb over her knuckles before dropping her hand and, with a pounding heart, took them deeper into the forest. He focused on the known—that they were being followed, and that there would be danger in leading the tracker to Ursa. If they went slowly, they would be easier to see, so Zuko opted for speed, sometimes dragging Katara behind him as he took a zigzagging path to their meeting spot. His eyes constantly moved about, but only saw owl cats and badger frogs. Branches moved, but it could be an animal just as easily as it could be a person.
They reached the clearing, gulping for air, and Katara wrinkled her nose at him as she breathed with her mouth open. It was a rough run, but as far as he could tell, no one had followed them. Katara was pointing to the where Inara had already set up a stack of rocks, signaling that she was the first to arrive. Zuko kept watch as Katara rearranged the rocks into a pyramid, then they hid in the brush. Even though he could see it was Inara cautiously moving toward the rocks, Zuko grabbed for his dao, and Katara went for her water just in case Inara wasn't alone. Slowly, the three made their way into the open.
"Well, that was uselessly complicated," Inara said, dumping her pack on the ground.
"We're being tracked," Zuko said flatly.
She began pulling out her new supplies, shaking her head and murmuring something about rookies getting caught. Zuko glared at her back. They didn't make a living hiding in trees, but they weren't rookies, and it certainly hadn't been the plan to be followed.
"If I had known you couldn't handle one or two people following you, I would have requested someone else," Zuko said.
"If I had known you were so poor at this, I wouldn't have accepted the job."
Zuko was about to respond when Katara caught their attention.
"You two need to cut it out," she said, pulling out medical supplies. She was looking directly at Zuko. "Back off."
Zuko did, taking a few steps away from them both. When Inara wasn't looking, he took a deep breath and blew out a jet of steam.
"Smart," Inara said, the moment having passed for her, as she inspected Katara's supplies. "I didn't think we'd need any for a scouting mission, but if you guys have someone trailing you, it might help to have them."
"Better safe than sorry," Katara said. "We've got a bit of information that might change our mission."
"How close do you think you can get us?" Zuko asked, still standing away from them.
Inara shrugged. "How close do you want to get?"
"We're looking for a certain prisoner. We heard she was there as little as three weeks ago."
Inara nodded. "Three weeks ago would have been a good time to have a look at the prison. Something was going on down there, but I couldn't get a good look at it."
Zuko cursed and started pacing. It was like Ozai was always one step ahead of him, even in prison. He was chasing a ghost, except he knew for certain that she wasn't a ghost. Someone had to have seen her in order to confirm that she was there. If they'd had the information three weeks ago, they could have freed her. Ozai was toying with him; he knew it. Ozai and his damned supporters hell bent on ruining everything.
When Zuko didn't say anything, Katara took over. "Do you know if they were removing any prisoners?"
"They could have been," Inara said, unrolling a map on the ground.
"Can you be a bit more specific?" Zuko growled.
"We have a lot riding on this project for the Fire Lord," Katara explained. "Do you know who we're searching for?"
Something stirred in the trees, and all three turned in three different directions, hands moving for weapons. Zuko held his breath and waited, but all he heard were the proper sounds of a forest. For a moment, Zuko thought he saw eyes, and wished he had some sort of ranged weapon. Dammit, he wished he had Sokka's boomerang.
"No," Inara said, removing her hand from the knife on her back, apparently satisfied that nothing was there.
"We're looking for a high profile prisoner. If she was being removed from the prison, there would have been a lot of guards around. I imagine they would have extended the watch further beyond the prison walls," Zuko said. For whatever reason, Ozai was intent on keeping Ursa in his clutches, and Zuko was pretty sure he'd spare no expense when it came to making sure no one could get to her. More prison guards to make sure the forest was clear just might do that.
Inara thought this over as she knelt in the earth. "More guards, yes, but I'm not sure it could have been a prisoner transfer. They were milling about the courtyard, all lined up. They were waiting for something, but I didn't dare get closer or stick around for too long. Cloudless sky, bright moon and all that."
When Inara returned to the maps, Zuko came over and crouched with the other two. Inara showed them the prison layout. It had been a house, and the rooms were turned into single cells, groups of cells, or storage. All the prisoners there tended to be important people, she said. It's where Ozai would send his most vocal and hated detractors. Inara had heard stories about the things they did to the prisoners inside, pointed out the "interrogation" rooms, and added that what they extracted from people there wasn't information.
"Once you're at the point where Ozai sends you here," she said, "giving up information is the least of you worries. Chances are they don't want to hear what you have to say."
Zuko closed his eyes and breathed deeply. This was not where he wanted his mother to be, not on his account, not for anything. He didn't know why Ozai hated his own wife so much, but it only made Zuko's dislike for his father deepen, inching closer to hatred. He needed to find her, and quickly; he didn't know what kind of pain she'd gone through just because she wanted him to be safe. Ozai wasn't the type to let people get off lightly, but this… Zuko wanted to believe that this was even too far him.
"It's not your fault," Katara whispered, her mouth right by his ear. "You didn't do this to her."
"Not directly, but what does it matter? She did this for me. I…" He stopped, swallowed hard. "Whatever."
"This is where I'll take you today," Inara said, pointing to a spot on the perimeter. "I can give you the map if you want it. You'll just have to return it to Hau when your mission's done."
Zuko declined. The layout wouldn't give them trouble, people would, and those kinds of things tended not to be plotted on maps. Once they'd finalized their route, and the places along the perimeter they wanted to hit, the three headed off into the forest.
The image he had in his mind of her was of the last time they were at the turtleduck pond, and he held onto that desperately, as if letting go of the image would mean letter her go. He was showing her how Azula fed the turtleducks, and the mother attacked him. For too many years, her words haunted him: If you mess with their babies, they'll bite you back. There was never any doubt in his mind that Ozai had meant to kill him, because it sounded so much like the Ozai he knew, even if the warning had come from Azula's mouth. Azula liked to lie to him, except when she knew the truth would hurt more. Ursa bit back, but Ozai's bite was stronger.
By the time they reached the perimeter, Zuko could almost feel the weight of her arms draped over his shoulders, and smell her perfume, which was something like a spring garden. The feeling stayed with him as they climbed the trees and came closer to the wall surrounding the prison. They verified the rotations, just as Inara had been doing for the past six months. One guard passed their perch every minute. Further up, it was the same. Inara pointed out the shaded spot.
"It might be best to scale the wall, here. If you need to, you can climb a tree a few back, then make your way over. Some of the branches are young, so you have to be careful," she whispered. The three of them were crowded together on an old branch with the bark painfully digging into Zuko's back. He kept quiet. He'd had worse pain. A guard was passing underneath them.
They made a circuit of the prison. Since the building was located toward the left side of the property, that's where the guards were concentrated. They could either take their chances sneaking past triple the number of guards, or brave a dash through uncovered, but lightly guarded, territory. Tomorrow, there would be a quarter moon, and Zuko didn't think they could wait for a crescent or new moon to provide them with more darkness. They would have to make a decision on the spot the next night.
Inara kept them well in the shadows, and they spoke even less on this trip than they had on the previous one. Mostly, they watched and waited, timing the guards in the courtyard, waiting for gaps that never came on the left, then moving back around to the right. There were only two ways of entering the prison: the heavily guarded front door, and a back door, reinforced with metal.
"We might have to fight our way in," Zuko whispered to Katara.
The guards didn't seem to be taking their job too seriously, and if they were lucky, Zuko and Katara might be able to get off a few surprise attacks before being overwhelmed and brutally killed. Someone had set up a pai sho board on an old stone table, and a few of the guards were gathered around. They were uniformed, with some insignia in the middle of the chest too small to be made out at that distance except for a bright burst of red on the black shirts, all were armed with identical swords strapped to their waists. It didn't look they were wearing armor, which said they didn't expect any sort of attack. They looked to be completely unsupervised, and Zuko began thinking of ways to use this to their advantage.
"Is there a warden here?" Katara asked.
"If there is, I haven't seen one."
Zuko wondered how Katara would feel if they had to massacre them. How would he feel if they did that and Ursa wasn't there? If they'd gone through all this searching, only to be met with another dead end? If Ozai won again? Zuko hadn't been surprised to find that there were very few records about this place. That he knew of, it had no name. There was no current prisoner list, nothing that listed its employees, their rank, or salary. He might have sucked at being Fire Lord, but it was as if Ozai had made the prison disappear.
The longer they watched the nightly proceedings at the prison, the more Zuko became convinced that things weren't going to end well. The soldiers all seemed too casual for them to actually be guarding anyone.
A whistle trilled, and the three froze, Zuko's heart pounding so hard it was threatening to give him a headache. The pai sho game was abandoned, and the guards all lined up with perfect military precision. What Inara said about them being highly trained was true. Within seconds, they were standing at attention, awaiting orders.
A man exited the building, hand on the sword at his hip. He saluted the guards, and they saluted back in unison, the faint sound of their hands slapping the leather scabbards echoing into the trees.
"Two days from now," the man began, "we will be receiving a new prisoner. Her crime is serving that treacherous bastard king sitting on the throne now."
Zuko winced, hurrying to think of anyone who'd gone missing. As far as he knew, everyone was accounted for. He glanced at Inara, but she only shrugged. He didn't care if they were after him, but to pick people off just because they were working with him? He leaned forward, but Katara's hand was on his chest, pushing him back. She shook her head. Now wasn't the time.
"Let's give this bitch the welcome she deserves. We can mail the corpse to that bastard child when we're done with her." The guards cheered. They cheered. "Long live the rightful Fire Lord, Ozai!"
Zuko dug his fingernails into his palms. Let that pain remind him of where he was and what he was doing. They were cheering for the pain they would cause this woman simply because she'd switched to the new regime. It was sick. He knew there were people who hated him and thought him unworthy, but whenever he was faced with something like this—people who wore their hatred as a badge of honor—he wondered if there'd ever truly be peace, or if the war was destined to continue forever.
These were the men who held his mother. These were the vile beasts… All because Ozai was a coward, all because the only way Ozai could ever have a throne would be to kill his own son. Dislike slipped a little more toward hatred.
Katara covered his eyes to get his attention, and he snatched her hand away. Inara was signaling that they should leave. Zuko hesitated for a moment, then nodded, sighing steam from his nose, and trying to expel some anger with it. Inara's eyes snapped to him, and she gave him a questioning look. He ignored it.
Swiftly, they moved through the trees, and Zuko focused on the movements to clear his mind. He forced himself to be empty. Any levity he'd felt earlier was gone. Inara led the way back to their campsite, taking over Zuko's paranoia from the night before. They moved as silently as possible, but the forest seemed to be more alive than usual. An owl cat hooted loudly, and several others answered the call. Badger frogs chirped. A hogmonkey grunted.
As they moved away from the prison, Zuko was on even higher alert for that tracker. He was seeing shadows everywhere. He tried to console himself by saying that whoever was following them couldn't have been part of the group guarding the prison. Those men weren't trained for stealth; they were trained for combat. The moment they snapped to attention, Zuko could see it in the way they stood, their feet planted firmly on the ground, their shoulders set, the way they wore their weapons around their waists, rather than on their backs. But if it wasn't the same people tracking them, who was? That presented a whole separate set of problems. If he really tried, he could come up with a list of people who'd be interested in following his every movement that stretched three miles long.
As they reached the camp, it hit Zuko. He knew who the prison guards were. He'd only heard their name once or twice before, uttered by Ozai himself. Zuko had been sneaking through the passages in the palace when he heard Ozai tell someone that the Phoenix Brigade would demolish a pesky Earth Kingdom town. The woman had sounded skeptical, saying the town was large—at least ten thousand people—and that twenty men could scarcely hope to take that on by themselves. Ozai's answer had been firm. He had every faith that they'd be able to do it.
It was that bright red that made the memory come back to Zuko. Ozai had closed the conversation with the woman by saying "Red on black is the sign of the army that does not exist." Or at least, that's how Ozai closed that part of the conversation. When the grunting started, he'd moved on so he wouldn't have to hear Ozai betray his wife in another manner.
"Fuckin Agni," he said, burying his face in his hands and struggling to breathe. He couldn't believe Ozai would do that to her.
Inara and Katara looked at him, before sharing a confused look at each other. Zuko paced, hands on hips, trying to remember several documents he'd read when he was laid up in bed after the final battle.
"Ozai had an elite team of warriors. Non-benders," he said slowly. "I remember reading some of the communiqués between Ozai and their leader. Everything was so coded, and I don't think I understood most of it."
Inara looked at him, surprised, but Katara stepped in. "Hau let us look through some documents he thought might be relevant."
"Would have been nice for him to share them with me," she said, irritated.
"He only found them before we left. Spring cleaning in the Fire Lord's office."
Inara huffed, but Zuko didn't care how angry she was. He needed to get his mother out as soon as possible. If she'd been in there three weeks, it might already be too late. He wanted to go back and see if he could clearly identify the rest of the Phoenix insignia, but returning now would be too risky. With that bloodlust in them, they would be hyper-aware of their surroundings, and there couldn't be a worse group of people to potentially capture Zuko. They wouldn't even bother ransoming him.
Their coup would be more brutal, more bloody than Azula's ever was. They would slaughter people from all the nations—including the Fire Nation. Starting with the Fire Nation. All the people who fought to end the war, those who worked to maintain some semblance of peace… Zuko immediately took back what he said about letting them go after him. Ozai would be free, and it wouldn't matter that he couldn't bend. They'd break Azula out of the hospital, undo what healing had been done. And Katara. The things they'd do to Katara… They'd make him watch…
He took several shallow, shaky breaths, trying not to heave and failing to banish those images from his mind.
"I suspect they're the Phoenix Brigade, Ozai's personal 'cleaning crew.' He used them to hunt Air Nomad conclaves, and they slaughtered whole towns just to find airbenders. An old man came to our tea shop in Ba Sing Se, said he'd seen it. You would never know people even lived there."
"So, what you're saying is that two people can't take that prison alone?" Katara asked.
"The Yu Yuan archers descended from their ranks," Zuko said helplessly, his hands dropping to his sides. "Our best hope is that this is a training facility with more fresh recruits than seasoned warriors."
"We need to regroup and tell Hau to give us some backup?"
Zuko shook his head. "There's no time for that—"
"Is this woman so important that you would risk your life to save her for a Fire Lord you've never met?" Inara asked.
"Yes!" Zuko yelled. "It was…she…" Really, what could he tell her that wouldn't give it away? It was for him that she gave up everything. He'd thought about it all those nights when he was on that ship. He hated himself for being so stubborn and not listening to his uncle. He believed she exchanged her life for his, and he'd gone and thrown it away. He should have kept his mouth shut and let those soldiers die, but when he found out she was alive, it didn't matter that he'd spent all those years without her.
"And you?"
Inara was talking to Katara now, and Zuko forced himself to focus on their conversation. His head was reeling and he was starting to feel a little dizzy.
"I intend to keep my word," Katara said.
Inara shook her head. "The two of you are nuts."
"And that just might be what keeps us alive," Zuko said, digging his and Katara's packs out of the ground. "You've been a big help to us. Tell Hau I said you deserve a bonus."
"How in Agni's name am I supposed to do that? I don't even know who you are." Inara crossed her arms, offended. "And why should he listen to you?"
Zuko laughed, and Inara backed away from him. He threw his head back and laughed at the irony of being asked for the second time why anyone should listen to him, at being outrun by a man in prison, at being surrounded by people determined to have his head on a gilded platter.
"Tell Hau," Katara said, "the 'crazy guy' he sent thinks you should get a bonus."
"He'll know who you're talking about," Zuko said with a mirthless smile, tossing Katara's pack to her. Inara looked very tired, but she didn't say anything more. They said goodbye for the final time, and went in different directions.
On the trip back to the inn, Zuko lagged behind Katara. Occasionally, she would stop to wait for him, but she mostly left him to his thoughts, for which he was quite grateful. Or maybe not. He couldn't hold back thoughts about the horrible things they could have done to her. Ozai had only burned him, but those Phoenix Brigade soldiers? They did more than burn. They burned, cut, stabbed, gouged, beat, pulled, starved, pushed, branded, seared, poked, prodded, stuck, invaded, penetrated…
Zuko quickly took a detour and threw up in the bush. The moment she heard him, Katara came running, and was rubbing soothing circles on his back. When he was done, Katara was handing him a waterskin, and he rinsed his mouth out. He was glad she didn't ask anything, because he wasn't sure he would remain sane long enough to tell her.
A/N: Ok, that was a long one, and from here on out, most of the chapters are pretty long because I've really been taking everyone's advice. Do you think it's too long? Thoughts?