Chapter Text
Three Weeks Ago
“And you’re absolutely sure there’s no way I can convince you to stay?”
“Quite sure,” Suki managed as she caught the bag Sokka dropped down to her.
“Because I want it on the record –” Sokka grunted as he hefted another bag – “That I’d be cool with sharing my seal jerky with you, if it meant you’d stay.”
Suki laughed as she braced herself to catch the next sack of stuff – Rangi, that was heavy. What on earth had Ensign Takahashi put in that one?
“Tempting offer,” she panted as she stowed it under the seat and looked up at her boyfriend from the little sailing boat she and Takahashi were preparing to leave on. “Terrible innuendo, though.”
Sokka frowned. “What’s an innuendo?”
Suki smiled up at her goofball boyfriend as she clambered back up the rope ladder to the deck, and gratefully accepted his hand as he reached out to pull her over the railing.
“You know why I’ve got to go, Sokka,” she told him plainly, holding onto his hand as he moved to let go.
He sighed, and Suki could see the warring emotions in his tired blue eyes, but he still tangled their fingers together and gave her hand a gentle squeeze.
“And you know why I want you to stay,” he offered eventually, looking at her with a resigned smile. “But that’s why I have to let you go, right?”
Suki gave him a wan smile of her own. Just like her, Sokka was dedicated to taking care of the people he was responsible for. Even if the two of them were still figuring out exactly how that worked for the two of them in a relationship, she knew that Sokka understood why she had to leave.
Suki honestly didn’t have the first clue how things had gone down in Ba Sing Se – and that had been before Sokka’s theory about what Zuko might or might not have had to do with it had made things even more confused. But even if Suki wasn’t sure what had happened with Azula in Ba Sing Se, she was at least clear on how Azula had gotten into Ba Sing Se. She’d somehow disguised herself and her cronies as Kyoshi Warriors, and Suki intended to find out what had happened to her girls.
“We’ll be back for the invasion,” she promised, taking both his hands in hers in a very real and daring display of affection that Huong and Byeol-jji would have given her no end of teasing over. The thought of the two girls, thick as thieves and twice as sneaky, only reminded her of what she needed to do.
“I know,” Sokka conceded, rubbing his thumbs over her knuckles in soothing circles. “Just… promise me you’ll take care of yourself?”
She smiled, and raised their entwined hands to press a kiss to his wrists, then the back of his hand, and then a long press of her lips against their fingers together. He smelt like pine resin, and that seal jerky he was always eating, and the kind of sweat that you worked up after a good sparring session.
Suki appreciated a good sparring session, so she maybe spent a bit more time smelling her sweaty boyfriend than was acceptable in polite company.
“Everything ready?” An impatient voice broke in. “Or do you two turtleducks need another ten minutes to say goodbye?”
Then again, Suki was getting the feeling that there wasn’t much polite about Ensign Takahashi’s company.
Sokka sighed, and Suki felt him press a kiss to her forehead where she had bent her head over their hands. “All set, Taki.”
“Good,” the stern-faced, dark-haired Fire Nation sailor muttered. She’d swapped out the armor she’d been wearing last night for a dark, sleeveless tunic and a pair of dark grey pants, but she still looked ready for business. Maybe she and Suki would get on pretty well after all?
“The seal jerky’s still on offer,” Sokka said with a feeble attempt at humor as Suki clambered back down the rigging.
“Still just as tempting an offer as before,” she replied once she got to the bottom. She had to hold onto the side of the rocking boat as Taki dropped the last two feet to land with crococat-like grace.
Showoff.
“You want me to say anything to the others?” Sokka called down.
“Tell Katara she’s amazing,” Suki replied. “And tell Toph she’s the second-coolest Earth Kingdom girl I know.”
She counted Sokka’s fond half-smile as a win. It broke up the worry lines on his face. “Will do. What about you, Taki?”
“Tell Jee thanks for the fireflakes,” Taki answered as Suki started rowing. “And that he’d better have the oil lamp in my room fixed by the time I get back.”
“He doesn’t know you’ve nicked them, does he?”
“He should have fixed that lamp sooner!”
Suki would have laughed along with Sokka at that, but she was already a little out of breath from all the rowing. If she’d known it was this much of an all-body workout, she would have been doing this for her warrior training a long time ago.
“You got my bag?” Taki asked as she busied herself with… whatever she was doing. Something to do with some ropes and knots. Suki didn’t know anything about boats. It was probably a bit ironic that she had grown up on an island and yet didn’t know port from starboard, or anything else like that, but that was why Taki was coming along.
“I put it underneath the seat,” Suki answered in between breaths. “What’ve you got in it, anyway? It weighed a ton.”
“Couple of boxes of ginseng,” the sailor replied.
Ugh. Suki hated ginseng.
“I’m not hauling a ton of ginseng around the southern Earth Kingdom,” she huffed, pulling on the oars and relishing the burn in her triceps.
“That’s cool,” Taki said distractedly, holding a piece of string between her teeth as she fastened some rope round the… jib? Or the stern?
Suki was suddenly really glad Taki was here, because she had no idea what all this stuff did.
“What I mean is that if your bag’s just full of ginseng, we can save ourselves some time and effort, and just toss it overboard now,” she tried again.
“Can’t do that,” Taki replied, spitting the string out. “It’s not my ginseng.”
“What?” Suki wheezed.
“It’s not like Master Iroh’s going to miss it.”
First the fireflakes, now the ginseng. “Is any of the stuff you brought along actually yours?”
The Fire Nationer hummed consideringly as she looked at the bag under Suki’s seat. “I’m pretty sure at least half the shit in that bag is Zuko’s. Even the bag.”
Suki shook her head, but she had a grin on her face all the same.
…
Sokka would have been happy to keep his eyes on Suki’s auburn hair for as long as he could, until she and Taki were well over the horizon. But part of being a man was knowing where you were needed, and right now, he had things he needed to be doing.
With a sigh, he pushed himself back off the railings and headed for the bridge. Dad, Lieutenant Jee, and Cook Yoshida were waiting for him when he got there.
“Master Sokka,” Jee greeted him. He looked tired, but still as stiff and severe as ever. “Ensign Takahashi and Miss Suki have left?”
He nodded. “I’ve just seen them off. How’s everyone else doing?”
“I’ve just come from the sickbay,” Dad answered. “Avatar Aang is stable, and Katara’s just finished a healing session on his lightning wound.”
Sokka winced, but he had to ask anyway. “Did you tell her?”
Dad raised his eyebrows. “Honestly, Sokka? I’m not sure what to tell her. You have to admit, it’s pretty unbelievable.”
Sokka did have to admit that. He’d still been reeling from how the jerkbender had sided with Azula against Katara and Aang when Yoshida had told him that Master Pakku and King Bumi were members of the Order of the White Lotus. It had been all Sokka could do not to swim back to Ba Sing Se and strangle the Fire Prince himself, even if he was still on their side.
Sokka was really glad to know that they had a complete and utter moron on their side.
“Katara told us that Master Iroh showed up just in time to hold Azula off whilst she and Aang escaped,” he explained again. “Zuko once told us about a time when King Bumi trapped him and Iroh in jennamite, and it took them a while to break free. I think the Dai Li had captured Iroh, and Zuko couldn’t risk turning on Azula until she didn’t have Iroh as a hostage.”
Just like when Zhao had captured Zuko back at the abbey. If memory served, it had been up to Sokka to save the day on that occasion. He’d done a much better job of it than Zuko had, that was for sure.
“But why did he attack the Avatar?” Lieutenant Jee asked, folding his arms. “Surely he should instead have assisted Master Iroh in escaping?”
Sokka was not going to disagree with him there. But he remembered what Zuko’s plan at the North Pole had been.
“They’ll probably attack us.”
“Probably?”
“They might not. But if they do, we need to buy time until Pakku shows up.”
Tui damn it. Sokka was the plan guy for a reason.
“If Zuko didn’t step in and make it look like he was going after Aang, Azula would have attacked him herself,” he replied. “When Suki asked Katara whether he had any major injuries apart from Azula’s lightning wound –”
Yoshida let out a slight cough, and to be fair, Sokka couldn’t blame him, because that was a pretty major injury.
“Katara said that was the only one,” he persisted. “She told Suki that Aang had been winning until Azula shot him! I think Zuko was pulling his punches and buying time until Master Iroh could show up and turn the fight against Azula in their favor, and then hoping that Iroh could stop Katara from killing him.”
But Dad was already shaking his head before he’d finished speaking.
“That’s just a theory, son,” he reminded Sokka. “That doesn’t mean we can trust him.”
“What?” Jee’s face tightened. “Prince Zuko had months to try and capture the Avatar –”
“And he had months to tell Katara and Aang who he was,” Dad cut him off firmly. “We can’t trust someone who keeps secrets from us.”
“Then you can’t trust me,” Sokka pointed out stubbornly. “I promised Zuko I wouldn’t tell them either, Dad!”
“You did,” Dad agreed, frowning impressively at him. “And we’re going to have a talk about that, too. But you were doing it to protect your sister, Sokka. Zuko was only doing it to protect himself.”
Sokka was torn. On the one hand, Zuko had saved his neck, Aang’s neck, and most importantly, his little sister’s neck more times than Sokka could count. And no matter Dad’s skepticism, Sokka’s instincts told him that the jerkbender had only been trying to protect Aang and Katara in the Catacombs.
But with no way to prove it… and the way he’d gone about trying to protect them… and the way he’d gone about everything leading up to that fact…
Sokka wanted to believe his theory was true, but without proof, it was just speculation and wishful thinking. And Sokka was Mr. Science And Reason Lover, not some wacky moron from Makapu.
“You’re right,” he decided, hardening his resolve. “We can’t trust him.”
“Then we must decide on our next move,” Yoshida spoke up at last. “If Prince Zuko knows that you’re planning on invading the Fire Nation during the Day of Black Sun, then he’ll already have told the Fire Nation when to expect you.”
Honestly, Sokka thought it was a mark of how exhausted he was after the last twenty-four hours that he could think of a few things he’d rather be doing right now than planning their next move. He’d been lying awake in bed all night running over every last one of his conversations with Zuko, trying to figure out what had happened somewhere down the line to make things go the way they did, and he’d realized something along the way.
Zuko hadn’t lied to them, but he hadn’t told them the whole truth. And Sokka… might have done something similar.
More by accident than by design, yes, but it was the principle of the matter.
“Zuko wasn’t with us when I talked to King Kuei about the invasion plan,” he explained. “The Fire Nation doesn’t know when we’re coming.”
“But surely the Prince is aware that you plan to invade the Fire Nation on the day of the eclipse?” Jee asked with a frown.
Sokka let out a nervous laugh. “Zuko knows there’s an eclipse coming up, but he wasn’t with Aang and I in Wan Shi Tong’s library when we figured out when. And… I kind of never got round to actually telling him the date of the eclipse?”
“Great work, Sokka!” Dad exclaimed, flashing him a grin full of pearly white teeth. “All warfare is based on deception – that’s brilliant! You’ve completely duped the enemy!”
Sokka wasn’t quite as sure as his Dad that Zuko was the enemy, but then again, that was what made Dad such a good leader; he could put his complicated personal feelings aside to focus on the priorities. Just like Suki.
Oh, man, Sokka missed his beautiful, hypercompetent, terrifyingly awesome girlfriend already.
“Then it’s settled,” Dad nodded decisively. “The Avatar will continue to recover aboard the Wani; Master Yoshida will alert the White Lotus that Prince Zuko cannot be trusted; and we’ll start making plans for the invasion.”
“What are we telling the others?” Sokka asked, trying to focus on the priorities. “Katara, Toph, the warriors, the crew – are we telling them about how Zuko might still be on our side?”
Dad raised his eyebrows. “After the way that Beifong girl was cursing out Prince Zuko, you want me to tell her he was a good guy all along? No thanks, son – that’s your job.”
Tui damn it all.
He was going to kill that jerkbending bastard.
…
Zuko had been told he couldn’t return home unless the Fire Lord restored his honor. But as he looked up at the moon, he remembered what Fire Sage Nakamura had said about what it took to be honorable.
Duty, and honor, and the Nation. Let these be your inspirations. Courage, and faith, and hope. Let these be your aspirations.
Princess Yue had been brave. She’d done her duty, and she’d done the right thing, and she’d done it for her people. She’d shown courage, and faith, and hope. She’d sacrificed herself to become the Moon Spirit, the source of a waterbender’s power.
“Aren't you cold?”
Zuko stiffened at the interruption. He hadn’t heard Mai approaching behind him.
“I've got a lot on my mind,” he replied, trying to cover up his wariness. “It's been so long. Over three years since I was home.”
He wasn’t sure where he and Mai stood after three years apart, but he figured that honesty was probably a good place to begin.
“I wonder what's changed,” he confessed lowly. “I wonder how I've changed.”
Mai just looked at him blankly. He felt himself color slightly, and turned back to face the ocean.
“I just asked if you were cold,” Mai told him flatly. “I didn't ask for your whole life story.”
Neither had the others, but maybe Zuko should have told them anyway. In hindsight, he was a bit late in trying this whole honesty thing.
Mai let out a laugh and reached out to his face, and her warm, pale hand touched his jaw to turn his face towards her.
He resisted slightly, and she hesitated. The kiss that must have been meant for his mouth landed on his right cheekbone instead.
He swallowed and looked out at the water, reaching out a hand to curl around the railing.
“After I was banished, I spent a lot of time reading the Fire Sages’ writings,” he began. “I struggled with Nakamura, but I quite liked his work.”
“I never bothered with the Fire Sages,” Mai responded. “I get enough patronizing moral guidance from my parents.”
Uncle Iroh had given Zuko an awful lot of patronizing moral guidance when he was thirteen – fourteen, fifteen, even sixteen, now. But the guards had refused to let Zuko speak to him when he’d tried to go and talk to him earlier.
Apparently, they couldn’t let him endanger himself by spending time with such a dangerous enemy, but Zuko hadn’t been fooled. His honor might have been restored, but it seemed that Azula’s crew still had more respect for the requests of the Dragon of the West, even imprisoned as a traitor, than for the demands of the Crown Prince of the Nation.
Zuko knew they were right to think that way. Uncle Iroh was the most honorable man he knew, and now he didn’t want to speak to him.
Zuko had been ready to send the Order of the White Lotus a letter to try and explain what he’d been trying to do, but he’d realized just in time that it would be safer if he didn’t try and contact Cook Yoshida. Uncle had told Sokka that the Wani was in the Gulf of Deng Hu, and for all Zuko knew, the others might have fled to the ship when they’d escaped Ba Sing Se. Even if he wanted them to know he was still on their side, he couldn’t risk leading Azula to them.
So Prince Zuko had failed to capture the Avatar.
And yet, the Fire Lord had restored his honor.
“There was one Fire Sage called Itō,” he explained. “He wrote a lot about the relationship between the Fire Lord’s judgement and the judgements of Agni.”
“Fascinating.”
Mai’s voice was making it very clear that she might have preferred to watch a performance by the Ember Island Players rather than listen to Zuko. Still, he persevered.
“Itō wrote a treatise called On the Distinct Will of Agni which made him unpopular with Fire Lord Chaeryu. He argued that Agni doesn’t always agree with what the Fire Lord says, so the Fire Lord should always make sure his pronouncements are in line with Agni’s revealed wisdom.”
“Did he, now.”
Zuko nodded. “Fire Lord Chaeryu banished Itō for questioning the Fire Lord’s will, and –”
“What, exactly, am I supposed to be getting from this conversation, Zuko?” Mai interrupted flatly, turning to face him. “Apart from a staggeringly unsubtle parallel?”
Zuko looked down at the waters. The Wani had sailed all across the world in the first eighteen months of Zuko’s exile, but they’d concentrated mainly on the Western Earth Kingdom after that, because that was where the Blue Spirit could work to sabotage the Fire Nation’s war effort.
Zuko had been dishonored and exiled for doing the right thing, and once he had realized that the Fire Lord had been wrong to banish him, he had given up hope of returning to the Nation. When the Avatar had returned, he and Uncle Iroh had learned to hope again.
But now Uncle was imprisoned, and Aang was…
Zuko looked up at the moon, the source of a waterbender’s power.
Please.
“I have loved justice and hated iniquity,” he quoted. “Therefore, I die in exile.”
“Well, you’re not exiled anymore,” Mai pointed out. “So I don’t think you need to worry about that.”
That hadn’t been Zuko’s point, but at least she had been listening. “Itō meant that it was better to be exiled for doing the right thing than to be honored for ignoring injustice.”
His words seemed to be the end of Mai’s patience with him, because she turned towards him abruptly.
“Do you want to die in exile, Zuko?” She asked him lowly. “Because if you keep talking like that, I can’t see your restored honor lasting very long.”
Zuko couldn’t help but scowl. “I want to do the right thing.”
Mai scoffed. “It sounds like you think questioning the Fire Lord’s will is the right thing to do.”
“Maybe it is.”
“Agni’s sake,” she muttered, giving his chest a hard shove. “You don’t get it, do you, Zuko? You’re coming home. You’ve got a second chance – and you’re going to ruin it if you don’t shut up.”
“You think I should just not say anything?” He demanded. “That I should just keep my mouth shut the next time Bujing wants to –”
“You should keep quiet, Zuko!” Mai hissed. Even in her anger, she never shouted. “That’s how everything went wrong in the first place!”
Zuko looked at Mai as she stood in the moonlight – her tawny eyes, her pale skin, her straight black hair. She opened her mouth as if to say something, but he beat her to it.
“You’re right,” he told her, standing up from where he had been leaning over the railings and striding past her. “That’s how everything went wrong in the first place.”