Chapter Text
Catching lightning was nothing like Zuko could have guessed. His few paltry attempts at creating it had been disasters of smoke and force and heat, but real lightning was… purer. Colder. His entire body hummed with it, the way a body shivered as it waded through a river icy with snowmelt. The power was remorseless and unstoppable, but not unkind. It was a force of nature, and it naturally followed the path down into his stomach and out the other arm.
It was natural, too, for his arm to point straight before him, like any other combat form—but at the last moment he realized he was pointing at his father. His stomach lurched and he recoiled, and the bolt struck the base of the dais. The force knocked his father against the wall. The tapestry fell, and Zuko turned and slipped silently from the room.
He had barely taken a dozen steps from the door when his knees wobbled, and he stopped and fell back against the rough wall. His breath left him in a shaky sigh and he squeezed his eyes shut tight. It was done. This was the hardest thing, Zuko reminded himself. Everything here on out—rescuing Uncle from the tower, convincing the Avatar and his friends to accept him, teaching the Avatar firebending—everything else would be easier than this. He had almost convinced himself when there was a sudden rush of wind.
He opened his eyes just in time to glimpse a scrap of saffron fabric as it disappeared around the corner.
“Wait!”
“Aang! Wait for us!”
No, Zuko thought. No, not now, not now—
There was the sound of boots slapping against stone, and then the Water Tribe boy and the Earth Kingdom girl burst into his section of the tunnel. The boy was carrying a sword, and at the sight of Zuko his eyes widened and his grip tightened.
“You—”
His eyes flickered between Zuko and the door to the bunker. There was a ring of steel as Zuko lifted his dao to counter the blow.
“No, it’s not—it’s not what you think—”
“Let me handle him,” the girl said, striking a bending stance, and Zuko stumbled back as the ground beneath his feet trembled. He risked a desperate glance over his shoulder.
“We don’t have time for this! The eclipse is over, and my father— he’s going to get himself killed!”
A dull roar shook the rock around them, like a tornado brought beneath the earth, and Zuko hunched his shoulders. He had enough self-control to keep hold of his swords instead of dropping them and pressing his hands against his ears, which popped and ached with the sound—but it was a near thing. Out of the corner of his good eye he spotted a lick of flame, and without thinking he jumped forward, crashing into the two others and pushing them out of the path of a whirl of fire. The earthbender drew up a curtain of gravel that shielded them from the worst of the heat, but sweat poured down Zuko’s temples.
“Sokka, he’s right,” the earthbender said grimly. “We can fight later but first we have to—”
She was still talking. There was a flash of blue so intense it was almost white, and the air tasted like copper. Zuko’s heart plunged.
He took a step, and then another, and then he was running, turning the corner, bursting into the bunker—
His father stood on the dais, breathing heavily. Loose strands of hair had fallen from his topknot and stuck to his face, inelegant—but his features were twisted in an expression of triumph that Zuko knew too well. Sprawled on the ground in front of him was the Avatar. The room was thick with the acrid smell of burning cloth.
“So, Zuko,” the Fire Lord sneered. “What next?”
Zuko’s limbs sank into a bending form without any command, but his heart was hammering. He couldn’t fight like this—he couldn’t catch his breath—he couldn’t stop looking at the Avatar. He sucked in a breath as the fabric stirred. There was no wind in this underground room. Was he still…?
“Aang!” Sokka cried, anguish in his voice, and in the moment the Fire Lord’s eyes flickered towards the door, Zuko leapt forward.
He didn’t try to attack. He knelt and gathered the Avatar in his arms. It wasn’t difficult—he was small. Spirits above and below, he was a child. Zuko had known that, but why had he never thought about it? He stood, and the Avatar whimpered. Sokka had raised his sword, prepared to attack through his tears, but Zuko grabbed his elbow as he passed and yanked him back. They fell into the tunnel just as the earthbender sealed the bunker shut.
Zuko looked down, trying to assess the damage, and found the Avatar’s eyes cracked open. He smiled feebly.
“Hi, Zuko,” he croaked.
“I’m—” Zuko swallowed. “I’m here to teach you firebending.”
The boy’s eyes drifted shut.
“Knew we’d be friends,” he mumbled.
“Aang?” Sokka asked, his voice high. “Aang, are you—?”
“We need to get him to your sister.”
“Let me—”
“Sokka.” The earthbender had gone pale. “We don’t have time.”
The rock beneath their feet trembled and began to rise, and suddenly they were aboveground. Zuko blinked and tried to squint through the sunlight.
“Where is she?”
“There!” the earthbender pointed.
The mixed Water and Earth forces were making a hasty retreat, with war balloons rising in the distance behind them. As Zuko’s eyes adjusted, he spotted a slight figure supporting the lead warrior. He started walking, but Sokka was faster. He ran, shouting his sister’s name and waving frantically. She hastened towards them.
“Tell her—” the Avatar said through labored breaths. “—sorry.”
“Sorry for getting hit by lightning? Don’t be stupid. I can teach you how to redirect it.”
“Sorry for dying. Tell her.”
“Stop it, Aang!” the earthbender said in a voice edged with hysteria. “You’re going to be okay! Katara!”
Katara was close enough that Zuko could see the way her eyes widened with shock and then narrowed with hostility. Before she could reach them, though, there was a blast of air that flattened the grass around them. The Avatar’s bison touched down lightly for such a large creature, and let out a low cry. The Avatar smiled and closed his eyes.
“Hey, buddy.”
He exhaled.
Zuko stared down at him. The boy was warm, but he seemed very, very still. Zuko realized that the air had been circulating around them, so subtle and natural that he hadn’t even noticed until the heat and humidity of the Fire Nation summer began to creep back in.
Katara dashed around the bison and reached for the Avatar, her hands already gloved in glowing water.
“What did you do?”
“It wasn’t me,” Zuko said. His tongue was thick in his mouth, and he was acutely aware of his own thudding heartbeat. “He got hit by lightning.”
“Aang? Aang!”
She touched her hands to his slim chest. The water twisted and thrashed, and her forehead creased with frustration. Zuko bit his lip.
“I think… I think…”
The bison roared, a harsh, animal sound that Zuko felt in his gut. Tears flowed from Katara’s eyes, but she ignored them.
“Put him on Appa,” she ordered. “We need to get him to a safe place. I can heal him properly then.”
“I don’t—”
“You don’t know him and you don’t know me!” she snapped. “Either do what I say or leave.”
“Okay.”
He shifted the body in his arms and was able to hoist himself up on the bison’s shoulder. Katara started to climb the other side, but as soon as Zuko laid the Avatar down, the bison lowed and shook. They both lost their grips on the thick leather armor and slipped to the ground. The lemur, who had been wrapped around one horn, soared away and landed on Sokka’s shoulder with squawks of complaint.
“Appa!” Katara scolded, but the bison launched itself into the air. “Appa, what are you doing? Come back! Come back!”
The earthbender was silently weeping. Sokka had his arms around her, and he touched his forehead to her wide-brimmed helmet to hide his face as his shoulders shook. Zuko watched the bison as it flew, evading the war balloons with ease, until it was no more than a hazy red speck in the sky, like a drifting ember.
“The Air Nomads…” He cleared his throat. “When—when an Air Nomad died, the others would give the body to their bonded bison, and the bison took it away. They always knew, somehow, what was going on, and where they had to go.”
“Where?” Katara demanded.
“No one knows.”
She whirled around and grabbed the front of his tunic.
“You have to know. You hunted him for years—you followed us around the world! Where are they going?”
“I don’t know.” His voice cracked. “I don’t. The bisons never came back. The Air Nomads thought they were flying away to a mountain— maybe where the bisons first came from. But they didn’t know which one. Their writings say the location of the last resting place is one of the Great Mysteries. I never found it. I’m sorry.”
Her eyes raked over his face, as bright and blue and scalding as lightning. Her other hand came up in a fist and she beat it against his chest as a sob tore from her throat. She hit him again, and then she clutched at his tunic with both hands and wept. Zuko didn’t know what to do; his hands hung limp at his sides and he let her cry.
“What happened?” a voice asked. The rest of the troops had reached them. At the head of the group was a warrior in blue armor, walking with the support of another man. “Katara?”
Katara broke away and threw herself against the man’s chest.
“It’s Aang,” Sokka said. “He—he—”
“The Avatar is dead.”
If Zuko had not already guessed that the man was Sokka and Katara’s father, he would have known from the look directed at him. The same lightning blue, the same deadly suspicion. Behind him, the warriors gasped and groaned. There was a shadow as the airships passed overhead. The warrior looked up and frowned; the man supporting him drew in his breath sharply.
“Hakoda, they’re not attacking. They’re heading to—”
“The submarines,” he grimaced. He took a deep breath and gently pried Katara away from his chest. “We need to get you kids out of here.”
“What?” she said in a watery voice. “No! We can’t leave you behind!”
“We’ve already suffered one tremendous loss today,” Hakoda said quietly. He looked up at Sokka, the earthbender, the troops surrounding him—some of whom, Zuko realized, were no older than himself, some several years younger. “The only hope we have is you. Our future. We can’t lose you, too.”
“The adults will stage a distraction,” the other man declared. “We’ll give you as much time as we can before we surrender. We’ll be prisoners, but we’ll all survive this war.”
“I’ve got some experience with Fire Nation prisons,” one of the earthbenders said. “It’s not going to be easy, but we’ll survive.”
“No, it’s too dangerous,” Katara insisted. “We’ll never make it on foot—you’ll all be captured or killed, and for nothing!”
“I have a balloon,” Zuko interjected. “I stashed it not far from here. I don’t know how many it will fit, but— but the air balloons won’t attack us when they see the Fire Nation emblem. I can fly it.”
“Who are you?” Hakoda asked in a hard voice.
Zuko opened his mouth, but no words came out. Katara answered for him.
“Zuko. He’s the Fire Lord’s son.”
At once, several of the warriors swore and reached for their weapons—Hakoda’s arms tightened around his daughter.
“No,” Zuko said, an instinct, like the breath leaving his stomach after a punch. “I—I never asked to be his son. And he never wanted to be my father. He tried to kill me— before, and just now—” The words were panicky and disjointed, and he took a deep breath. “I know I’ve done some bad things in the past, and I understand if you don’t trust me, but I swear, I’m trying to help. I told my father during the eclipse that I was going to leave the Fire Nation, to try and help the Avatar. I—”
His throat squeezed shut. He had no right to mourn the Avatar. He hadn’t really known him. He didn’t think he had ever called him by his name. But he still remembered how the little spark of hope had grown into a warm flame in his chest, when he decided that he was going to leave. His arms still felt the weight of that slight body that would never grow into a man.
“He’s not lying,” the earthbender said after a long silence.
“Look at me,” Hakoda ordered. It was difficult to look him in the eye, but Zuko did it. “If you even think of betraying my children—if you do anything that leads them to harm—” A muscle in his jaw jumped. “Don’t,” he finished, and Zuko felt a chill run up his spine.
“On my honor,” he swore.
Katara made a derisive sound, but Hakoda nodded. He held out an arm for Sokka and embraced them both.
“Look after each other,” he said in a husky voice, and then he whispered something Zuko couldn’t—wouldn’t—hear.
He averted his gaze and found himself watching the young earthbender. Her face was blank, with a waxy cast, and tears still glittered at the corners of her pale eyes. She sniffed, and he had a sudden, powerful memory of Azula, six years old, clutching a fractured ankle and insisting it didn’t hurt. Hesitantly, he touched her shoulder. Her head turned slightly towards him.
“I stuck up for you because I could tell you weren’t lying,” she said in a sword-edged voice. “That doesn’t mean I trust you.”
Zuko looked up at the tower in the distance.
“Why would you?”
The others finished making their goodbyes, and Zuko led them all to the balloon. It was a tight squeeze, with the four of them and three Earth Kingdom boys. In the back of his mind, Zuko had hoped—foolishly—that he could persuade them to make a quick landing on top of the tower, so maybe he could sneak down and free Uncle. That hope was quickly dashed, and soon they were sailing over the remains of the invasion force, who jeered and waved their weapons and made the ground ripple as Fire Nation troops crawled towards them. Then someone spotted the balloon and sent up the call, and there was a clatter of bone, wood, and steel as the Water Tribe cast their weapons down. Sokka looked away.
Zuko opened his mouth to ask where they should go, but he looked around at the drawn faces and blank stares, and couldn’t bring himself to add one more burden. He remembered his last flight from the Fire Nation and set a course for the Western Air Temple.
There had been a brief exchange of introductions when they first boarded the balloon, but aside from that, no one spoke until they reached the temple. Zuko wasn’t confident he could maneuver the balloon into the canyon without damaging it, but Toph managed to bend a set of stairs that would let most of them simply walk down, and Teo could glide.
There was something otherworldly about the Western Temple—not just the strange, upside-down buildings, but the way it was tucked into the canyon, cutting off any view of the world around it. Zuko found it disconcerting, but no one else seemed to mind. They found a set of crumbling stone seats and huddled together around what looked like an old firepit, while he hovered nearby. Tea, he thought. Tea would help.
The lemur glided after him as he went deeper into the temple to look for the kitchen, and rooted among the cupboards until it found an ancient store of nuts. Zuko found a heavy iron kettle on a shelf, and promptly dropped it in alarm at the sight of an enormous spider-fly living in the handle. The lemur dropped the nuts and went for the spider-fly instead, and Zuko shuddered.
There was a tap in the kitchen, and he washed the kettle and a stack of clay cups, before filling it with water. He searched for firewood and didn’t find any, but there was a large basket near the stove filled with flat circles of something brown and speckled with bits of dried grass. Bison dung, he realized with revulsion, and he pinched the bridge of his nose. Yeah, this was happening. He returned to the firepit—the lemur had preceded him—and lit one of the dung circles quickly, before anyone could ask. It didn’t smell as badly as he expected. Earthy and kind of grassy. He set the kettle over the fire.
“I’ve got some whale jerky, if anyone’s hungry,” he said. “And some other food in the balloon, too, although I’m not sure how long it will last with so many of us…”
“Do you have vegetarian options?” Katara asked. “Aang doesn’t eat—”
She stopped short and buried her head in her hands. Zuko kept his gaze fixed on the water as it came to a boil. He set a strainer over the opening and added the tea leaves—ginseng, which he had taken from the palace especially for Uncle. When it seemed like the liquid was dark enough, he poured the tea and handed the first cup to Haru, who was nearest. The other boy began to pass it around the circle, until it stopped at Sokka. He blew on it and lifted it to his lips.
“Wait,” he exclaimed. “What are we doing? What are you doing?”
“I’m—making tea,” Zuko said stupidly.
“Sokka’s right,” Katara said. She lifted her head and glared at him. “What are you doing here, Zuko?”
“I told you, I came to help—”
“And we’re supposed to just believe that? After you spent the last year trying to attack us? Well congratulations. You got what you wanted, so go home.”
“I never wanted this!” He was holding a full cup, and the tea inside was beginning to simmer again. He set it down hastily and rested his closed fists on his thighs.
“He’s telling the truth, if anyone cares,” Toph drawled.
“You can’t always be sure, Toph,” Sokka said. “Azula proved that.”
The earthbender shrugged, and Zuko’s fists tightened. He had known it wouldn’t be easy for them to forgive him—and now it would be ten times harder. He needed to keep hold of his temper. There was a sharp edge to his retort, but he was proud that the volume didn’t change.
“If you think I’m as good a liar as my sister, you’re crazy.”
“Listen, it’s been a really long day,” Teo soothed, holding out both hands. “Maybe we should all get some rest—”
“How are we supposed to rest with him around?” Sokka demanded. “You weren’t there, Teo. You don’t know what it’s been like! He attacked us all over the world, he tried to kidnap Aang a million times and he never really cared if anyone else got in his way—”
“And this isn’t the first time he claims he’s changed,” Katara said. Her voice was colder than a polar winter and her eyes as hard as flint. Zuko remembered the way she’d looked at him in the caverns—soft and gentle and curious—and withered before her. “How are we supposed to trust you after Ba Sing Se?”
“I just…” His voice was a dry rasp. He looked down at the cups of steaming, untouched tea and cleared his throat. “I just wanted to help. I’m not proud of what I’ve done, but… but I thought maybe, if I apologized, I could teach the Avatar firebending and help end the war…”
“So what now?”
The words seemed to echo through the canyon. The question they had all been avoiding: what now? What now, with the Avatar dead, Ba Sing Se overrun, the Earth King in exile, the cobbled-together army captured, and the comet coming? Zuko sighed.
“I don’t know.”
“Let’s put it to a vote,” Sokka proposed. “All in favor of letting Zuko stay, raise your hand.”
“Say aye,” Toph corrected, folding her arms.
“Whatever! All in favor, say aye.”
“Aye,” said Toph and Teo. There was no real need for Sokka to take the nay votes, but he did anyway.
Zuko bowed his head.
“I’m sorry. I know it doesn’t mean anything, but—I am. I’m a different person than I was before, and if you ever decide that you do want my help—”
“Fat chance,” Sokka muttered.
“—I’ll do whatever I can.”
“Right now, the best way you can help us is to leave,” Katara said, and to punctuate it, she stood and walked away, heading deeper into the bowels of the temple.
Zuko swallowed. He looked around at the others who remained. Sokka ignored him. The Duke was peering up at him with suspicion and curiosity. Teo and Haru couldn’t meet his gaze. He couldn’t tell what Toph was thinking, but her jaw was set in a way that suggested displeasure.
“Okay. Um. Bye.”
His feet felt like lead as he climbed back up the stone steps. The balloon was still where they had landed, in a clearing in the jungle. They had flown through the night, eager to put as much distance between themselves and the Fire Nation as possible, and it was just past noon now. But while most of the other kids had slept—even for a restless hour, squashed on all sides in the cramped basket—Zuko had remained awake, to tend the engine. He was exhausted. Soon he would need to step back, to assess what had just happened and to plan his next move. Now, he rooted around in his pack for his cloak, rolled it into a pillow, and slept on the mossy ground.
He woke the next morning just before dawn. His uncle had always said sleeping on a problem was the best way to find a solution, but no genius had struck in the night. Zuko ate a little and refilled his water skins from a nearby stream and spent most of the morning pacing—until suddenly the raucous noises of the jungle around him were interrupted by stomping and ruffling leaves and a few muttered curses. A bush parted, and Sokka entered the clearing, followed closely by Toph.
“What are you doing here?” Sokka sulked.
“Just… hanging out.” Zuko shifted his weight from one foot to the other. A badger-frog croaked. “What are you doing here?”
“Hunting,” Toph said, when it became clear that Sokka wouldn’t. “Most of our food was with Appa.”
“You know how to hunt?”
“Sokka knows how to hunt,” the earthbender shrugged. “But it’ll go faster if I’m here to point him in the right direction.”
“How?”
“She sees things with her feet,” Sokka said. “Come on, Toph.”
“She sees—?”
“If something is touching the ground, I can sense it with earthbending,” Toph clarified. “Especially if it has a heartbeat, which is also how I know you’re not lying—quit it, Sokka! People’s hearts beat differently when they lie.”
The Water Tribe boy had begun to stalk through the trees, and he did his best to drag her along by the elbow, but Toph yanked her arm back and planted her feet. Difficult to uproot an earthbender. He glared at her, and she scowled; Zuo guessed that the argument about what to do with him had not ended with his departure. Sweat beaded on his brow. It was still morning, and already the sun was bearing down hard. If their hunting was delayed much longer, he’d be dragging them out of the jungle with heatstroke in a couple of hours.
“I can help,” he suggested tentatively. “Uh, not with hunting, probably, but—I know about edible plants in this kind of jungle. If you want to eat anything besides meat. And I’d like to learn about hunting, too, or fishing, if you don’t mind teaching me.”
“Why? Don’t you have servants to do that for you, Prince Jerky-Jerk?”
“Well, I’m pretty sure I’ve been banished again, since I… y’know… told my dad I was going to try and overthrow him? And I’ve almost starved to death twice in the last year, so I’d really like to learn how to get food somehow.”
“Smart.” Toph elbowed Sokka. “Come on, Lazy Bones, I’m hungry.”
“Fine! Fine. You can come with us. Toph, keep an eye on him, all right?”
“An eye or a foot?”
“You know what I mean!”
They spent two hours in the jungle together, mostly silent or as close as they could get—sometimes Sokka had to speak to Toph out of necessity, but he whispered to keep from disturbing their prey. The Water Tribe boy was, Zuko had to admit, a much better hunter than him. They ended the day with four plump fox-rabbits, six fish, and a pheasant-hare that he had knocked from its branch with a single throw of his boomerang. Zuko had managed to catch one of the fish but mostly observed the rest; he had foraged a good amount of mushrooms, squashes, and wild onions, though, and earned a slight measure of Sokka’s grudging approval. They carried all of their spoils back to the balloon. Zuko had learned the basic rudiments of cooking in Ba Sing Se and had some practice deboning and scaling fish. They made short work of them, and then Sokka handed over a fox-rabbit and showed Zuko how to dress it. It was disgusting, but strangely satisfying. A lot more satisfying than empty hands and an empty stomach, at least.
“Can I ask you something?” Sokka asked. He had dressed one of the fox-rabbits already, so Zuko could watch, and then another alongside him—although he had gotten impatient and finished while Zuko was still wrist-deep in guts. He moved on to the last one.
“Go ahead.”
“You said…” The sun was just beginning its afternoon descent, and even in the shade, they were both sweating. Sokka rubbed his face with his forearm to keep the sweat out of his eyes. “The other day, you said your dad had tried to kill you. Before, you said.”
Zuko tightened his grip on his knife. It was different, using it like this compared to using it for combat. He was clumsier with it. There was blood covering the blade and the hilt, deep in the grooves of the inscription, and rough hair sticking in all directions.
“Yeah.”
“Did your dad give you that?”
Zuko set the blade aside and grimaced as he scooped out the entrails. There was a big difference between still-warm organs and the neat packages wrapped in paper that came from the Ba Sing Se butcher. He had no idea how to cook organs and didn’t find the prospect appealing, so he added them to Sokka’s pile and wiped his hands on the grass, trying not to gag. The peaceful clearing around them looked like the scene of a grisly battle.
“Yeah.”
Sokka looked as nauseous as Zuko felt, but he didn’t respond. The only sound was a chatty badger-frog’s croaks, until Toph, lying down with her feet propped against the balloon’s basket, asked, “What?”
“Huh?”
“Your dad gave you what?”
Zuko looked at Sokka and raised an eyebrow.
“You haven’t told her?”
“It never came up,” Sokka mumbled.
“Never—”
“It never came up, okay? It’s not like we talk about you all the time.”
“What?”
“I have a scar,” he said finally. “It’s kind of a long story. I challenged someone to a duel and didn’t realize until later I needed to fight my father. I refused. He didn’t.”
“Oh.” Toph’s foot dangled in the air. “What even is a scar, anyway?”
“It’s the mark left after a wound heals.”
“I know that. I’ve heard people talk about them. I just don’t know what they look like.”
“Toph—” Sokka warned.
Zuko sighed. He stood and pulled a ribbon out of his pocket to tie up his hair. He knelt beside Toph. She sat up at his direction, and he took hold of both her wrists. He brought one hand up to the right side of his face.
“That’s my face.” He brought up the other. “That’s my scar.”
Only three other people had ever touched his scar: the healer who had treated him after the agni kai and followed him into exile; Katara, in the caverns of Ba Sing Se; and Mai, after a few weeks of skirting it nervously, touching his jaw or the lower part of his cheek and pretending it was only coincidence. And all of them had known what they were getting into.
He watched as Toph’s eyes widened and her lips parted in shock. There was a hitch in her breath, and then her lip curled with distaste. Finally her brow crinkled and her mouth stretched into a deep frown. Her hand was rough with callouses. It traveled slowly up his face. Her fingers danced around the bone of his eye socket, then paused on the thick lump of scar tissue that was his eyelid.
“Can you see out of this eye?” she asked quietly.
“Yeah. Not well, but enough.”
She finished her exploration and lay back down, resting her head in her hands.
“You know, considering what the rest of your family is like, you could have turned out a lot worse.”
“Thanks. I think.”
“Toph, let’s go,” Sokka said. He had divided most of the meat, their portion of the vegetables, and some of the bones and fur in three separate bags, which he swung over his shoulder as he stood. “You know Katara—she’ll worry. You should bury that,” he said to Zuko, nudging the mangled fur from the fox-rabbit Zuko had butchered, useless for any other purpose. “I don’t know if there are scavengers around here, but better safe than sorry.”
“Right.” Zuko stood, too. There was an uncomfortable silence between the three of them until he bowed. “Thank you.”
“What for?” Sokka scowled.
“Oh… you know.” He rubbed at the back of his neck. “The hunting lesson. And the meat.”
“Yeah, well. We’re good people. We don’t let people starve.”
“Yeah. Thank you.”
Sokka jerked one shoulder in an awkward shrug, then turned on his heel and walked away. Toph sighed, waved her hand in a jaunty salute, and followed.
Haru and the Duke came up the next morning, this time looking for firewood. (Zuko didn’t bother to suggest the dung, and he wondered if they hadn’t found it or had decided against it.) Then Toph the day after, to ask if Zuko had found a good source of water; there were purified wells in the temple if he hadn’t. She asked him how long he was going to stay up there, waiting for Katara and Sokka to get their heads screwed on right. He said he didn’t know, and she warned him it might take a while. They were both stubborn. He told her he could be pretty stubborn, too, and she punched his arm before she left.
He didn’t see anyone for most of the day that followed. He went fishing for lunch, and paced the clearing as he considered his next move. It might be worth trying to apologize again, he thought. Maybe if he came with a peace offering.... He went foraging again, loaded his pack with vegetables, and strode out towards the edge of the canyon. To his surprise, there was already someone there.
“Hey,” Sokka said, hovering on the top step of Toph’s makeshift staircase. He cleared his throat. “We’re, uh. Having a funeral. If you want to come. Or not. It’s cool.”
“A funeral?” Zuko frowned. “But… you don’t have a body.”
“Funerals aren’t just for the dead. They’re for the rest of us, too.”
His voice was somber, and Zuko heard the echo of someone else in his words. He remembered that Sokka’s mother had been killed by the Fire Nation, and he wondered if the other boy was remembering her funeral.
They went down the stone steps to the main courtyard of the temple. The rest of the group was waiting; each one held a purple flower with long red stamens. Katara held out two for Zuko and Sokka, a little stiffly but without yelling. She carried a large wooden bowl under her other arm.
“These are saffron flowers,” she explained. “Aang told me they were really special to the monks—they used them to make dye for their robes. I thought we could each take one, and say something about Aang, then we’ll put them in the bowl and throw them all into the wind.”
“That’s a good idea,” Zuko said immediately. He didn’t mention that cooks in the Fire Nation would weep at the thought of throwing away such valuable spice flowers.
“C’mon, flowers?” Sokka whined. “It’s not manly.”
“Since when did Twinkletoes care about manly?” Toph snorted, and Sokka’s lips twitched.
“All right, that’s fair.”
He accepted the purple blossom. Katara placed the bowl on the edge of the canyon. The Air Nomad symbol was painted inside of it, endlessly repeated. They all lined up in front of it and peered down over the cliff.
“We’re gathered here to honor the memory of Aang of the Air Nomads,” Sokka said. “The Avatar, the last airbender, and our friend. Who wants to start?”
“I’ll go,” Toph said. She stepped closer to edge, her toes gripping and releasing the stone in a soothing gesture. “Aang was the only person who ever beat me in an Earth Rumble. He wasn’t actually earthbending, but that’s still impressive. And if I live to be a hundred and twelve, I’ll never have a better friend, or a worse earthbending student.”
There were chuckles. The young earthbender dropped her flower in the bowl.
“I can go next.” Teo cleared his throat. “Aang once told me that I had the spirit of an airbender. I think that’s probably the highest compliment I could ever get. And maybe the highest one he had to pay. So I just want to say goodbye, Aang, and I promise I’ll do my best to keep the spirit alive.”
There was a slight pause before Haru spoke.
“I didn’t know Aang very well,” he said apologetically. “But I know he was a good kid. He was brave and kind, and he’ll be missed.”
“And that trick with the marbles was so cool!” the Duke gushed. They both tossed their flowers in the bowl.
“Oh man, he did that all the time,” Sokka said with a soft laugh. “He would have been so disappointed if that hadn’t come up. Thanks, the Duke.”
He took a deep breath before he continued.
“When I first met Aang, I thought he was just an annoying kid. I thought he didn’t take anything seriously. But when I got to know him better, I realized that wasn’t true. Aang cared about other people a lot. And animals, and plants, and… everything, really. But what he didn’t do is that he didn’t let fear or anger or sadness keep him from seeing the joy in life. He helped us see it, too. He gave us hope. I’m going to miss him so much, but we’re going to make him proud.”
Silence fell again. Zuko spun the little purple flower between his fingertips and wondered if he could surreptitiously drop it in the bowl without saying anything. He didn’t belong here. He hadn’t really known the Avatar; he didn’t even know what the marble trick was. Then Sokka nudged him, and he realized they were all watching him, waiting for him to speak—except Katara, whose eyes had been fixed somewhere across the canyon since they began.
“Um. The—” Zuko cleared his throat. “Avatar Aang and I didn’t really have a good relationship. Which was my fault. But one time, a couple of months ago, we found ourselves on the same side, and he helped me even though he didn’t have to. He told me about a friend he had in the Fire Nation, and asked if I thought we could be friends. Back then, I didn’t think so. By the time I changed my mind… it was too late.”
His voice was rough. He cleared his throat again and bent down to rest his flower on top of the pile.
“I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you in this life, Avatar. But I swear I’ll be there in the next one.”
He stepped back. Katara turned her gaze on him. Her eyes were as clear as the sky behind her, although everyone else had been sniffling for a while. Her face softened with a smile, and she gave a single, wordless nod. Zuko let out a breath he had been holding for days.
The waterbender knelt and carefully placed her flower among the others.
“He was my best friend.”
She stood, hefting the bowl in both hands, and stepped up to the edge. She whispered “goodbye” and then, just as she flung the blossoms into the air, the lazy wind picked up. It caught the flowers in a current of air that twisted and turned, so that the purple petals didn’t fall, but rise. The lemur took to the air and danced with the petals as they floated over the lip of the cliff and out of sight. Zuko felt a tear slip down his cheek.
“Guys—” Toph said in a curt, gravelly voice, but she was interrupted by another voice, as soft and cool as velvet.
“That was a beautiful tribute,” it said. “You have my deepest sympathies for your loss.”
The group whirled around, reaching for weapons and elements. Zuko was the slowest to turn; his limbs felt like they were moving through polar water.
A woman stood before them. She was tall and straight-backed, her face cast in shadow from the hood of her cloak. It was heather-grey, and she almost blended into the rock behind her.
“What do you want?” Toph demanded.
“Who are you?” Sokka asked, almost in the same moment.
“I am here to help,” the woman said simply.
She reached up with long, pale hands to lower her hood. The tears began to flow from Zuko’s eyes.
“Mom?”