Chapter Text
“Any last words?” Azula asked, watching on with barely-disguised amusement as Zuko drained the last of his watermelon juice and stood up from the table in Li and Lo’s kitchen.
“What would you suggest?” He asked, crossing to the sink and washing out his cup.
Zuli tsked disapprovingly at him. “A prince who is not wise himself will never take good advice.”
It took Zuko a moment to place the phrase, but he rolled his eyes as he heated his hands up to steam the cup dry. “Not the catchiest, but it’ll do.”
Azula barely batted an eye. “You could do a lot worse than Fire Sage Fukuyama for your last words, Zuzu. It would certainly be better than whatever banal apology you composed after your little tantrum last night.”
If Zuko was to quote Fire Sage Fukuyama, he remembered a line from one of his more satirical works that would perhaps be more fitting.
“‘No circumstance is ever so desperate that one cannot nurture some spark of hope’,” he quoted in return, remembering what Uncle had once told him.
In the darkest times, hope is something you give yourself. That is the meaning of inner strength!
He still needed to talk to Uncle Iroh when he got back to the capital. In his banishment, Zuko had always imagined that returning to the Caldera to meet Uncle would go rather differently.
His sister let out an amused scoff. “If you believe that, you’re in for a rather rude awakening when you knock on Mai’s door.”
Zuko didn’t respond as he left his cup on the counter and set off for the hallway, trying to ignore the way Azula’s eyes followed him like an eagle-hawk watching a lemming-vole.
It was probably safe to say that in the wake of his banishment, Zuko had taken his anger out on those around him. Uncle Iroh, Lieutenant Jee, Boatswain Honda, Midshipman Yang… pretty much anyone who had caught him in a bad mood had gotten the brunt of his temper. And because Zuko had been in a bad mood for about a year and a half, that meant that he’d yelled at a lot of people and had a lot of arguments in those eighteen months.
For those eighteen months, life for Zuko had followed a set routine. He would wake at dawn for his firebending meditations with Uncle, and then have two cups of tea; one jasmine, one shōgayu. He would shave his head as a mark of his continuing state of dishonor in the Fire Nation’s eyes, and then prepare himself for the day ahead, trying all the while to convince himself that today might be the day he would seize hold of his destiny. He would remind himself of what it took to be honorable: courage, and faith, and hope.
And then, he would summon up his courage, have faith in Uncle’s advice, and hope that Ensign Takahashi wouldn’t turn him into a pincushion before he could apologize to her for whatever rude and disrespectful thing he’d said the other night.
By the time he was fifteen, Zuko had been inducted into the Order of the White Lotus and found his own destiny, and life on the Wani had become a little more bearable for him and all others aboard. But he’d still been more than a little scared of Taki. Not because of her throwing knives – or, rather, not just because of her throwing knives – but because she knew a lot of embarrassing stories about a nine-year-old Prince Zuko, and had made it fully clear that she was prepared to tell the crew about how His Royal Highness had cried at the Hira’a Acting Troupe’s performance of Love Amongst the Dragons if His Royal Highness kept shouting orders at her without asking nicely.
Uncle wasn’t around for his firebending meditations, the Fire Nation didn’t consider him a failure anymore, and he hadn't drunk shōgayu since he'd come home. But here Zuko was again, after an argument with a terrifying Fire Nation lady, knocking on her door the morning after they’d both shouted themselves hoarse.
The door opened, and Zuko swallowed hard as he was met with a supremely unimpressed Mai.
“What?” Her voice was the poised, collected monotone again. So different to last night.
“I,” he began, before he needed to clear his throat and swallow nervously again. “I apologized to Ty Lee earlier.”
Ty Lee had been much more forgiving than Zuko had deserved after he’d called her circus freak. When he’d gone to speak to her, he’d been fully expecting to have various parts of his anatomy frozen into the middle of next week, but she’d given him a hug and told him that she’d known he hadn’t meant it, and that their talk – she’d actually called it a talk, not a huge argument – down on the beach last night had actually helped her learn a lot about herself. He’d still made her a bowl of apple and mango slices as a breakfast apology, though.
“Good,” his sort of, it’s complicated, maybe ex-girlfriend replied simply. “You were a jerk to her.”
She leaned against the doorway and folded her arms, which Zuko took as a hopeful sign that she wasn’t going to throw a sai at his head. “I think I owe you an apology, too.”
Whilst he’d tried to make a point of avoiding Uncle Iroh whenever that Jin girl had been hanging around Pao’s teahouse in Ba Sing Se, Zuko was pretty sure he didn’t need Uncle to tell him that telling Mai that she was just a big blah wasn’t necessarily the nicest compliment he could have paid her.
“Yeah, you do. You were a jerk to me, too.”
He sighed. This was probably what he got for accusing her of keeping all her feelings bottled up inside. “I’m sorry I yelled at you before.”
Mai sighed too, and Zuko remembered that Taki had been the one to teach Mai how to hold her throwing knives. Apparently, she’d also taught her how to hold a grudge.
“I don’t care, Zuko.”
Right. Because Zuko had said she didn’t care about anything. He probably deserved that.
“I’m sorry I said those things to you,” he ventured. “I know you’re not – you’re not just a big blah.”
“No, I’m not,” Mai agreed, turning around and heading back into her room. It looked like she was in the middle of packing, even though they were only meant to be leaving in the early afternoon.
“But I am hungry, though,” she continued, “So instead of just standing there like an idiot, you can get me a fruit tart from the kitchen.”
Zuko supposed that might have Mai’s way of saying she forgave him, but he wasn’t entirely sure. He also wasn’t sure whether she’d packed up her throwing knives yet, so it was probably safer if he just went and got her that fruit tart.
…
Sokka had been asked all kinds of questions in his life. Most of them were of the How could you be so stupid? variety, in one form or another, and those were pretty easy to answer. The Is it more important to look cool, or deadly? questions were a little more challenging; the Are you sure Prince Zuko isn’t pregnant? questions were quite tricky as well. But he’d thought a lot about this question as he’d gone to collect the firewood for the night, and he thought he had a pretty good answer.
“I’d probably want to drink cactus juice-flavored tea,” he eventually decided. “All of the quenchy goodness, but none of the hallucinogenic properties.”
He felt like that was a pretty good answer to Aang’s question as he hauled another log over to add it to their campfire. The sparks rose into the fast-darkening twilight, and he traipsed back to his sleeping back and wriggled into it. That should do for another hour or so, until it was time for bed.
Aang looked excited at his answer, but far from being impressed with his wisdom, Toph merely scoffed. “I thought the crazy space-tripping cactus magic was supposed to be the best part of the Si Wong mini-vacation experience?”
Sokka winced. “Have I mentioned that I’m, again, extremely sorry for subjecting you all to that?”
“Not nearly enough times,” the earthbender muttered, folding her arms. “I was picking sand out of my headband for ages after that.”
“Not nearly enough times,” Katara agreed, giving Sokka that to recall your stupidity exhausts me look she’d learnt from Gran-Gran.
“Well, what about you, sis?” Sokka scowled, tucking his hands grumpily into his sleeping bag. “If you had to make tea out of a random forest plant and drink it to learn something new, what would you want the forest plant tea to taste like, and what would you want to learn?”
“I don’t even understand where this question came from,” Katara retorted. “How did we even get onto that subject?”
“Oh, that was me,” Aang answered, giving an enthusiastic little smile and pointing at his arrow tattoo. “I was thinking earlier, like, ‘How did that guy blow stuff up with his mind?’, and ‘How do you even learn how to do that?’, and so I was thinking, like, ‘What’s the weirdest way he could have learnt how to do that?’, and I remembered how Zuko once told me that sifu Iroh accidentally poisoned himself when he tried to make tea out of some random forest plant, so I was wondering, like, did he have to drink a random forest plant to learn how to bend explosions?”
Sokka was pretty sure that Aang had used his airbending to take an extra deep breath before launching into that sentence. He might even have used his airbending to make that breath stretch further.
“That’s a pretty specific question,” Katara laughed. “I’d probably have to think about it, though – you’ve kind of put me on the spot. What’s yours?”
Aang looked kind of like he’d been put on the spot now too, which Sokka thought was kind of weird. He’d spent so long asking the question, he could have come up with quite a few answers in that time. “Um… can I drink egg custard tart-flavored tea?”
“I don’t see why not,” Sokka encouraged him. “It’s your question, right? There’s no reason you can’t do it.”
Toph snickered, and Aang giggled as he kicked his sleeping bag.
“Then I’d probably drink that,” he decided with a nod. “Or roast duck-flavored tea – I heard it tastes really good, and that way, I’d be able to see what it tastes like without giving up my vegetarianism.”
“Nice loophole,” Katara teased him. “Who’d you hear that from?”
Aang hesitated before glancing at Katara, which told Sokka that it had probably been Zuko who’d told him about the wonders of roast duck, and the little guy didn’t want to say it out loud.
“I really liked the roast duck your parents gave us at your place, Toph,” he said, saving Aang from a potentially awkward conversation.
“You like any food, Snoozles,” she responded.
Medicinal frogs and Aang’s burned soup notwithstanding, Sokka had to admit that was a fairly accurate statement. “That might be true, but I still liked the roast duck.”
“I think I’d probably want to drink some jasmine tea,” Katara pronounced, having apparently decided at last. “And I’d want to learn Southern-style waterbending.”
“That sounds cool,” Aang agreed. “Like, there was that waterbending scroll from the North Pole, right? That’s what got that crazy metal man after us in the first place – it would be pretty ironic if you got to learn Southern-style waterbending after all that!”
Sokka wasn’t quite sure that was how irony worked, but he’d have to think about it a bit more. And he’d also have to ask Aang to clarify what exactly was the ironic part, but he might do that a bit later as well. Asking Aang questions about the inner workings of his mind was always better done later rather than sooner.
“I thought your favorite drink was ginger?” Toph asked, frowning in Katara’s direction.
Katara got a weird look on her face, and her hand peeped out of her sleeping bag to touch her mother’s necklace, but Aang unintentionally saved the day by launching into a rambling monologue about how his least favorite drink had been Guru Pathik’s onion and banana juice, which Sokka could understand completely. The fact that such a travesty was allowed to exist had done more to convince Sokka that the spirits were cruel, capricious beings than anything else he’d seen or experienced.
“Your guru sounds kooky,” Toph pronounced tersely, with her characteristic lack of subtlety. “You should try and put him on to Gramps’ Tieluohan.”
“I don’t know about kooky,” Aang said thoughtfully. “But I think he seemed like the kind of person who’d get on pretty well with sifu Iroh.”
Sokka was pretty sure he got on pretty well with Master Iroh, and from what he’d heard about Guru Pathik, he wasn’t sure whether he appreciated the comparison Aang was making. He’d liked their previous conversation a lot better.
“What about you, Toph? What would you want your random forest plant tea to taste like, and –” he yawned – “What would you want to learn?”
“I’d want Gramps to make my tea,” Toph answered blithely. “Don't really care what it tastes like. And I’d want to learn how to bend metal, because that’s obviously impossible and you’d have to be the world’s greatest earthbender to be able to do something that awesome.”
Toph’s impressive yet terrifying confidence reminded Sokka vaguely of Suki. He would say it was just an Earth Kingdom girl thing, but Takahashi was kind of like that as well. Maybe it was just this innate gift the spirits gave to certain people whose destinies were to intimidate Sokka into agreeing with everything they said.
…
There was, at least, one good thing about the Fire Nation at this time of year, Katara thought wearily to herself as she rubbed her eyes and tried hard to blink the sleep out of her eyes. Although they were approaching the beginning of summer, and they only had a few months left until Sozin’s Comet came, at which point the Fire Nation was planning on attacking the Earth Kingdom and ending the war once and for all… well, at least it was nice and warm in the mornings.
Of course, she would much rather prefer to enjoy that warmth whilst being tucked up in her sleeping bag, snoozing contentedly away like a crococat, or maybe a gilacorn sunning itself on a rock. But someone needed to make breakfast, and the chances of that someone being Sokka were zero on a good day – and there was no way Katara was going to let Aang or Toph loose with her pots, pans, and supplies – so she’d gone to sleep last night resigned to waking up bright and early. She’d actually been woken up by Aang shaking her awake at dawn’s first light and announcing that Avatar Roku had come to him in another spirit dream and told him that they needed to get to the Fire Avatar’s home island on the day of the summer solstice. Dawn’s first light was far too bright and early for something like that.
The solstice was in only a couple of days’ time, and Katara still vividly remember the last time Roku had spoken to Aang in a spirit vision, back on the winter solstice. They’d only just gotten Sokka back from when Hei Bai had taken him to the Spirit World in Senlin Forest, and then poor Appa had been forced to fly all the way to Crescent Island so Aang could talk to Roku. It had been an awful couple of days for Katara – her big brother and Aang had gone missing, seemingly forever, and then they’d had to go to the Fire Nation, which had always been a place of nightmares for her.
Rather than dwell on the past, though, she made a start on mending a sleeve Aang must have ripped in earthbending practice. But that was all she was able to make, just a start, before Aang came and joined her where she was sitting a little way away from Sokka and Toph, who were continuing their conversation about teas from last night.
Aang turned to her with a smile. “Hey, Katara! Getting away from Sokka and Toph?”
“More like I wanted to get away from my own thoughts,” she admitted, before quickly changing the subject. “What do you think Avatar Roku’s going to talk to you about this time?”
Aang shrugged as he made a motion towards scratching the back of his head, before frowning as he encountered his dark hair. “I don’t know,” he answered. “I don’t even know how I’m supposed to talk to him, either.”
“Just like last time,” Katara remembered, her heart sinking. “For one of your past lives, Avatar Roku doesn’t seem very helpful.”
“I was thinking after yesterday, at least he’s not making me drink tea made out of some random forest plant,” Aang said brightly. Katara supposed that everyone had their own way of looking on the bright side.
“Do you think he’s going to teach you what roast duck tastes like?” She asked, trying for a joke. Aang smiled a little, but he didn’t laugh out loud or anything.
“He said I’ve got to learn about his history with Fire Lord Sozin if I’m to understand how the war began,” he began slowly, scratching his ear instead of his hair. “But I’m not sure what that would mean.”
“I didn’t know Avatar Roku had a history with Sozin,” Katara said, frowning a little.
“I thought it was kind of weird, too,” Aang agreed, gesturing with his hands. “Like – if he knew Fire Lord Sozin was going to do all these awful things, like attack the Air Nomads and start this awful war, why didn’t he stop him?”
Maybe it was because Sozin had lied about his true intentions, Katara thought viciously to herself. Just like Zuko had lied. He’d been lying to her – he’d been lying to all of them all along, and when his sister had exposed his secrets, he’d turned on them.
“I’m sure you’ll have the chance to ask him that eventually,” she decided. She didn’t want to remind Aang of Zuko’s treachery – to tell the truth, she didn’t want to be reminded of him, either. For all that he’d been a very good liar, she’d been a silly little girl to fall for his tricks.
Just like with Jet. But whilst Jet had redeemed in the end himself by helping them find Appa, there was no way Zuko could redeem himself. He’d made his choice.
“I guess so,” Aang said. “Do you think Avatar Roku’s got an opinion on what his historical nickname should be?”
“I honestly wouldn’t be able to tell you,” Katara said slowly. “Why’d you ask?”
Aang chewed his lip. “I guess I just want to be remembered as a good Avatar, and not, like, Avatar Aang, the Avatar who got frozen in an iceberg for a hundred years, or something.”
Sometimes, Katara forgot that Aang was only twelve years old. She’d waited all her life for the Avatar to return and save the world, and Aang was such a powerful bender, but it was at times like these that she just wanted to tell him that he shouldn’t be worrying about how he was going to be remembered in generations to come. He should be spending his time going penguin sledding, or riding the elephant koi on Kyoshi Island, or even going on those crazy, awful mail chutes with Bumi. But instead, they had to fly to Avatar Roku’s home island to find out what Roku’s past history with Fire Lord Sozin had to do with the war that was raging on around them every day.
“I think you get to decide for yourself what kind of Avatar people remember you as, Aang,” she tried to encourage him. “I think they’ll remember you more for who you are than for anything that’s happened to you.”
But it didn’t seem like her words had quite had the inspiring effect she would have wanted them to have, because Aang looked a little unconvinced.
“What is it?” She asked tentatively. “Did I say the wrong thing?”
“No,” Aang shook his head, still looking pensive as he looked out at the ocean beneath them. “It’s just that Zuko said something pretty similar, once.”
“Oh,” Katara said. “Do you think Avatar Roku ever tried to make tea from some random forest plant?”
It might have been a pretty abrupt change of topic, but Katara didn’t want Aang to be thinking about anything Zuko might have said to him. He would only have been lying, anyway.