Chapter Text
Before the dreams started, Zuko had considered his most peaceful moments of the past few days to be when he was asleep. Now he doesn't even get that respite. The dreams keep his rest restless, and his waking hours are filled with people who refuse to leave him alone.
There's always someone around to gawk at him. Sometimes he gets a brief moment to himself in the ice house, but they never last more than a few minutes before someone is breezing through the door and rambling about something he couldn't care less about. When it's not Aang, it's the siblings, and when it's not them, it's the healer.
But it's usually Aang.
"How'd you sleep?"
"What's your favorite tea?"
"What did you do for fun on your ship?"
"Do you know how to play any instruments?"
The random questions are endless, each followed by Aang rambling about whatever prompted it, because most of the time, Zuko doesn't answer. He feels like his sanity is being chipped away with every second.
Maybe that's dramatic. But when his jaw aches constantly from clenching it, to the point where even the healer notices, he thinks that maybe he is actually going crazy.
"You need to relax, young man," is what she says.
She's got her hands on his face and is palpating his jaw with her fingers, because when he tried to decline some more medicinal tea, it popped and pulsed and he couldn't help but flinch. Her fingers press into the muscles just in front of his right ear, firm enough that he reflexively slackens his jaw to ease the pressure. Her other hand stays near his chin.
"You're going to crack a tooth at this rate."
She pulls away, and he doesn't miss the contact, because he hardly fucking knows this lady. Can't even remember her name, even though she told him once. Has no idea why he even lets her do things like grab his jaw and ramble about his weaknesses.
"Though," she hums, her hard look softening, and Zuko's never been above punching an old lady before. "It's normal, given what happened. And you're not sleeping well."
Damn it. He hasn't seen his reflection since well before all of this, but he knows lack of sleep shows on his face like the date on a calendar, blatant and nagging and always causing Uncle's brow to pinch in concern even though he's fine. The nightmares must be obvious on his face.
The healer's brow pinches together, and oh. That's why. Got it. "There are some medicines that could help. Do you want me to bring you something?"
Zuko shakes his head. The last thing he wants is to be drugged to sleep, not here.
"There's no reason for that pride," she scolds. "Plenty of our warriors have needed it to get through the nights without dreaming. There's no shame in it."
For once, Zuko can say that it isn't about pride. He doesn't say anything.
The healer waits for a response that he won't give before sighing. "Well, the offer still stands if you change your mind."
She leaves, and Aang's right fucking there, lounging on his own bed and trying to catch his gaze. Zuko doesn't let it happen. He just flops onto his back, drives his palms into his eyes, and tries to pretend that he's not constantly being held on display like some fucked up little zoo animal.
"So, are we gonna talk about it, or...?"
Zuko feels his lip curl into a grimace, and he shoots a questioning look at Sokka. Really, it's more of a scowl with expectations, but still.
"About you almost dying," Sokka deadpans. "And you trying your hardest to make that happen."
"I didn't—"
"Fight us at literally every turn? Basically tell us to let you die before you broke down crying at the thought?"
Zuko tries to keep from visibly wincing.
"And then last night, you were running around outside in the dead of night like you're invincible."
That... is what he did, yes. But they had every reason to expect that he'd run. It's not his fault they were unprepared.
"Look," Sokka sighs. "I'm not saying it's an easy topic, but you went through some serious stuff. You can't just..." He tapers off, waving a hand around like he's hoping a word will materialize in front of him.
Zuko, who's never taken well to being told what he can and can't do, huffs. "I'll do whatever I want."
"You'll hurt yourself that way."
He squares his shoulders and glares. "Why do you care?"
The hostility is supposed to shut people up, not make them stare into his eyes like they've got a front row seat to his soul. But Sokka does it anyway.
Finally, he asks, "Do you?"
...What does that even mean?
"Do you care? If you hurt yourself?"
Whatever Zuko expected from this conversation, it was not that.
Something about that question feels dangerous. Like if he stops to peer into that well of emotion too long, something's going to jump out of the water and drag him down. Mentally, he skitters away from it, almost on instinct.
Sokka doesn't look satisfied by his lack of response. He looks just as pensive, even bordering annoyed, as he did before he asked that dumb question.
"Right." Gently, he pushes off the wall, finally breaks eye contact, and walks outside.
He dreams of the explosion. He can't hear it. He knows there's the sound of the blast, of metal tearing, of his own startled cry, but he doesn't hear it. If he thinks about it, he swears he can, that it's not just imagined, that his brain has those sounds tucked away and won't let him hear them. But all he really hears is ringing.
He wakes to a plate of breakfast by his head.
In the grand scheme of things, his escape attempts really aren't all that eventful, just sneaking around the icy city as he makes his way to the docks. Really, his biggest obstacle is time. He just has to reach the docks before he collapses, or before the others wake to find his bed empty.
This time, however, he's found himself with another mundane obstacle: navigation. It's hardly his fault when all the buildings look the same. Now he's turned around in some frozen back alley, unable to see further than the streets in front of him.
It's not like he jumped head first into the throng of ice houses. Just, the path naturally turned away when he hit a wall, and it was either climb the wall or follow the path. There was no climbing that wall, not when it was all slick ice for at least fifteen feet. And the path turned out to be much more winding and confusing than he anticipated.
The stars tell him that he's still facing the right direction, but that means very little when his next turn to keep himself headed south leads him to a deadend of an icy courtyard. He could double back, or try and scale a building and take the rooftops.
It's not impossible, he concludes. The buildings have plenty of embellishments that would make for excellent handholds. It's just a matter of strength. He takes a deep breath, anchors his hands on the nearest ledge, and starts to pull himself up. If he has to scale the building with nothing but sheer willpower, he will.
Doesn't matter how lost he is, it seems. They find him anyway.
The only indication that he's been caught is the rhythmic whistling of Sokka's boomerang. He drops to the ground without thinking, and he hears the boomerang fly past him and clank against the wall he'd been trying to climb.
"Nice dodge," he hears Sokka call, which is so fucking stupid, because who compliments someone for dodging their attack?
He's at Zuko's side in only a couple of steps, where he bends down to collect his boomerang and offers Zuko a hand up.
Zuko very deliberately uses the wall to stand.
Without so much as a frown, Sokka drops his hand and straightens. "Where ya headed?"
"...The docks."
Sokka pointedly looks around the courtyard they're in. "Hm."
Oh, fuck off. Growling, Zuko stalks past him and stomps out of the courtyard.
"Where're you going now?"
"Back."
Sokka trails behind him, and just has to ask, "So, not the docks?"
Zuko doesn't grace that with a response.
He makes it about five more paces before Sokka calls again, "Do you even know where you're going?"
Infuriatingly, Zuko does not.
Sokka tails him anyway, like he's got nothing better to do than watch him flounder through retracing his steps. And he really is floundering. All the buildings look the same, and he didn't pay much attention to the turns he took because he didn't plan on coming back. But he's stubborn to a fault, so he keeps going.
It's only after the fifth deadend, which might look more familiar than he cares to admit, that Zuko's forced to stop his rage fueled stomping. Sweat dots his brow, and he's breathing heavier than is reasonable for just walking around.
Sokka strolls up behind him, not sweating or panting. "Tire yourself out yet?"
Zuko is doing an absolutely amazing job at restraining his murderous urges, because there Sokka stands, not dead. Instead of murder, he stares at the wall in front of them and clenches his jaw tight enough that his teeth squeak against each other. If he opens his mouth right now, he's going to breathe fire and burn them both.
"Come on," Sokka says lightly. He turns and starts down the road with a certainty that leaves Zuko fuming.
Zuko follows, keeping several paces between them as he works his teeth into dust.
He's exhausted for the rest of the following day, and hardly bothers with his strengthening exercises. Frankly, the jaunt around town was enough.
"We weren't supposed to..." Katara blurts this out like she didn't plan on it, and then trails off into nothing.
Zuko fights the urge to ask what the fuck she's talking about, lest he come across as actually caring about what she says. This manifests as a pointed scowl.
She's got a distant look on her face, like she's just talking because she needs to, not because he needs to hear it. "We weren't supposed to take it out. The shrapnel. At the pier."
Oh. He doesn't get much more than a breath to adjust to the topic, much less time to consider if he wants to hear it, before she continues on.
"Just.. yanking it out like that probably only made things worse."
Idly, Zuko thinks that he sort of preferred not having that blade of steel stuck in him for three days. The thought of just leaving it in doesn't sit well with him.
"I just felt so useless," Katara almost whispers. She's clutching her elbows tightly, a step away from hugging herself. "Everything I did could've helped just as easily as it could've hurt. We're lucky you survived long enough to suffocate."
His jaw clenches. It didn't feel like luck.
"It's just so much easier to hurt than it is to heal. Why is it so much easier?" She sounds desperate for an answer.
Zuko doesn't have one.
"You don't make it easy." And suddenly she's mad, which is just great. He's already halfway lost in this conversation, (he hasn't even said anything,) and she's mad.
"Don't give me that look," she bites. "You've been causing trouble for yourself since all this started! It's like you don't care what happens!"
He does care. Obviously he cares, or he'd have jumped off the bison himself. "What do you know?" he snaps. "I didn't ask you to care."
"Why not?"
Zuko's mind blanks.
"I'm literally a healer, Zuko! And I've been pretty fucking clear that I'm helping regardless of what you've done! So why is helping you like pulling teeth?!"
"Fuck off!"
She throws an arm up in exasperation. "There, again! Why do you do that? Why do you make it worse?"
As if he doesn't ask himself that every day.
"Fuck off."
He dreams of Uncle, sticking by him regardless of the abuse hurled his way. It's tea and proverbs until it's not. Then it's smoke and metal and blood, because Uncle chose to sit in with him instead of take a walk.
He wakes with an extra blanket on him.
His next attempt involves trying to scale a building from the start. He's not looking to get turned around in those icy corridors again.
Unfortunately, his next attempt is also his most embarrassingly brief one.
Believe it or not, his body isn't exactly eager to indulge him in his standard acrobatics. Every pull and heave leaves him panting, muscles straining and lungs burning. He's about halfway up a three story building when he starts to think that maybe this isn't a good idea. Maybe he should get down before he hurts himself.
He hasn't even decided which direction he's going when a tendril of water wraps around his leg and yanks. With no warning, he doesn't have time to brace himself on the wall, so apparently he's going down.
His right shoulder takes the brunt of it. The force of the fall knocks the air out of his already weak lungs, and he's left gasping like a fish on land.
How the fuck did they notice so fast? He's got to be more thorough when he checks that they're all asleep next time.
Katara is immediately hovering over him, looking far too concerned considering she's the reason he's wheezing right now.
"Shoot, I'm so sorry! I didn't think it would work that well, I only just learned that—"
Despite his hard breaths stealing most of his attention, Zuko can't help but think of Azula. Bending prodigies and their "accidents." Well, at least Katara actually sounds genuine.
There's a hand on his back as he flounders for air, and he wants nothing more than to shake it off and shove her away. When her other hand, dripping with water, heads for him, he actually does, pulling away with bared teeth in a perfect imitation of his behavior on the bison. This time though, she doesn't look angry. Her brow twists up as guilt mars her features. Half of him thinks, Good. The other half of him thinks, Don't look at me, and you won't have this problem.
She doesn't stop looking. Of course she doesn't. Zuko's hardly had a moment of solitude since he woke up in the bison's saddle.
With a frown, she glances up at the wall he was scaling. "Why were you trying to climb a building? That can't be the most direct way out of here."
There's no direct way out of here, it seems. The damn city is built like a maze, and he's just trying to cheat it.
Her brow twitches, and here they go again. She's mad. "You still look like you're going to faint when you stand! You could've fallen!"
If he'd caught his breath, he would've snorted. He did fall, thanks to her.
"What did you expect us to do if that happened? Scrape you off the ice?!"
He just wheezes in response.
Actually, the wheezing really isn't letting up like it should. In fact, it kind of feels like it's getting worse. Is it getting worse? His vision seems like it's narrowing, and that's not good at all. Screwing his eyes shut, he tries to swallow between stilted breaths.
Whatever anger Katara held in her tone is gone when she says, "Okay, actually. Let me see."
She uses a hand on his shoulder to steer him to lean against the side of the building. If he wasn't so busy suddenly trying not to pass out, he'd stop her, or at least make some kind of display of defiance for the sake of his pride.
She doesn't even bother to drag the coat off of him, just soaks the water through his clothes and starts healing. He doesn't feel any hesitation in the move, which leaves him wondering if she's been studying more than just combat while here.
The water remains for far less time than he's used to. When he cracks his good eye open to see what's going on, Katara is watching him with a worried look.
"Nothing tore," she says. "Are you okay?"
Clearly not.
"You're not choking? Nothing in your throat?"
He shakes his head.
"Do I need to get Aang?"
Get Aang for what? No, she doesn't need to fucking get Aang. He shakes his head again, the movement sharp.
Katara moves to stand anyway, so he snatches her wrist to keep her down. Where he'd expected her to pull her hand back, she just stills in his grip.
"Your hand is cold," she observes.
No shit. It's the North Pole. He's been cold since he got here.
"I thought you said firebending would keep you warm."
It would. Why is she shocked? No bending is part of her brother’s dumb rules, isn't it? Not that he's trying to adhere to those, but. Well.
He doesn't even twitch to acknowledge her words, just sits there and tries to focus on breathing. She lets him.
Instead of doing anything to help, she settles. Crosses her legs underneath her and sits in front of him like that's going to stop his erratic breathing.
That makes it worse.
She's just sitting there, letting him suffocate and not explaining what the fuck is going on. When he tightens his fingers around her wrist, she just puts her other hand on top of his like some stupid imitation of comfort, and that is not what he wanted.
He can't so much as growl his frustration around the pants. A wave of dizziness hits, and he has to drop his head to the wall behind him to try and calm it. The ice stings against his skin.
Katara shifts forward at that, and he thinks maybe she'll finally do something, but she just awkwardly tugs up the hood of the coat he's wearing and yanks it over his head. Then she sits back and watches him.
He can't breathe, and she just sits there.
He's pretty sure he passes out at some point, or at the very least loses all the sense in his brain to his gasping and just can't remember time moving at all. When his chest finally starts to settle, the cold of the wall behind him is biting through the coat.
Katara hasn't moved, hasn't pulled her wrist out of his now slack grip. She's just patiently waiting for him to recover. How amazingly helpful.
"What," he gasps, "was that?"
Katara looks uncertain when she answers. "I'm guessing you just got the wind knocked out of you. Since your lungs are still weak, it took you a while to recover. I think."
She thinks.
He thinks that's fucking stupid, and his lungs need to fucking get with it.
Zuko finds his breath randomly hitching for the rest of the day. He also finds a pair of gloves that definitely weren't there before nestled beside his boots.
"Zuko? Are you awake?"
Unfortunately. Zuko stays silent.
On the other side of the room, he hears Aang take a shaky breath in and out. It sounds wet.
Damn it.
"What is it, Avatar?"
"...Can we go outside?"
Zuko channels all of his frustration into one harsh sigh. Then, he kicks off his blankets, tugs on his boots and the coat that is definitely not his, and walks to the balcony. Aang follows him eagerly.
The air outside is frigid, especially so under the moonlight. It glistens off of the snow and ice surrounding them, the only colors white, blue, and their shades of darkness. It's beautiful, in a strangely haunting way.
Damn him for ever considering this fucking place "beautiful."
While Aang moves forward to drape his arms over the balcony railing, Zuko hangs back to lean on the wall beside the doorway, arms crossed in some semblance of defiance.
It's silent, save for the occasional gust of wind. And even though they came out here to talk , Zuko isn't about to actually ask Aang what's wrong. Instead, he gets to wait through the silence as it slowly grates on his nerves, until Aang finally speaks.
"I can't stop thinking about it," he starts, his voice thick with something heavy and dismal. "If the waterbenders found us even a couple minutes later, you would've..."
Zuko's still not a fan of the idea that Aang would be so distraught if he died, but he knows it's an honest reaction. Aang’s too good of a person to not care. It's stupid, in Zuko's opinion, because they're enemies, but he doesn't say anything. For once, he's not trying to make things worse. (Worse means tears, and Zuko never knows how to deal with those.)
Instead, he just lets Aang talk. It's a new skill.
"Towards the end, I... I couldn't bend. I was awake, but I was just so tired I couldn't control anything. The healers took you away, and I—" His voice cracks. He swallows once, twice, then continues. "I thought I failed."
"Why don't you talk to your friends about this?" Zuko means for the words to come out bitter, but they fall short.
Aang shakes his head. "I don't know. I mean, I know they're there for me, but they don't..." He sighs and drops his head into his arms.
The quiet used to be somewhat peaceful. Now, it feels oppressive, keeping them both glued to the ice and stuck in the cold, lest they break it with the sound of movement.
When Aang speaks again, he's mumbling into his sleeve, and Zuko has to strain to hear. "They couldn't feel it."
He has no idea how to respond to that, so he doesn't. He doesn't know how to respond to much these days.
Aang pulls his head up just enough that he's not talking to his sleeve anymore. Zuko kind of wishes he hadn't. "I could feel how hard it was for you to breathe. It wasn't just bending breaths for you. It was forcing air in, then pulling it out, and I could feel your lungs fighting me every time. I could feel where the holes were, where the air was leaking out—"
"I get it!" he finds himself snapping. "I could feel it, too, you know!"
"I know." Aang turns just enough to catch his gaze. "That's why I can't talk to them about it."
Zuko can't help but feel exposed. After all, his suffering became a public affair. His body's failings were spread out before him, then patched together and held in place by someone else's hands. Flesh and blood and organs, so deeply personal that they were nearly impossible to share, were shared. Wrenched away from his own person and cradled by another. Felt and functioned at the command of someone else.
And at the same time, the inverse was true. Zuko could feel Aang's breath as his own. He could feel the hitches, the laughter, the fatigue. Energy, hesitation, exhaustion; they were all in Aang's breath, and by extension, Zuko's.
For those three days on the back of the bison, Aang and Zuko shared the same set of lungs. A part of someone that just couldn't be shared was.
So yeah. The siblings don't get it. They were never involved.
Zuko gets it because he didn't have a choice.
"It was a stupid plan from the start," he grumbles.
Aang's face falls, like he was expecting something else, and all he got was Zuko.
Tough. All Zuko has to offer is rage and an inability to say the right thing ever. If Aang wanted something else, he shouldn't have chosen Zuko as his midnight crisis partner.
(He tries his hardest not to feel sick over the disappointment in those gray eyes.)
"But what else could I do?"
"I don't know! Doesn't make it any less stupid."
Aang is quiet for a long while, long enough that Zuko thinks the conversation is over, before he mumbles to the ground. "Yeah. It was stupid."
It's just an echo, but hearing Aang say it with that haunted, tired voice of his makes Zuko wonder if he regrets it. He doesn't ask. He can't.
He dreams of Zhao, of the look he has when he sees the swords on his ship. Then he's outside the stronghold, holding them to Aang's neck when an arrow sends him to the ground. He resurfaces, and it's not to a canopy of browning foliage, but to Zhao's laughter.
He wakes to a lemur on his legs.
If the damn lemur won't let go of him long enough for him to escape, then the lemur is escaping too. Zuko doesn't even care anymore. The thing can fly. It can always get off his shoulder and go back to its friends.
It's later than he usually goes. (Or earlier, depending on your perspective.) It's sometime in the early morning, because he's pretty sure they've taken to sleeping light around their usual bedtime in order to catch him leaving. That's what happened last time.
He doesn't try to climb any buildings this time, and he steers away from any paths that block his view of the horizon. The lemur is with him, a silent companion as he steadily trudges through the city, eyes on the distant masts.
He makes it the furthest he ever does with the lemur on his back. That is until the thing screeches and yanks at the hood of the coat he's wearing, flapping towards the direction they came. The pull drags him out of his own thoughts, and he trips over his own feet to fall straight on his ass.
"Fuck!"
The lemur, now calm as can be, just blinks at him from where it sits on the icy ground in front of him.
While it's not exactly dignified to yell at an animal for being an animal, that's never stopped Zuko before. "What was that?! Why did you do that?!"
The lemur just flicks its tail, sweeping a small dusting of powdered snow into the water behind it.
Water?
In the stillness, the canal looks as smooth as the ice beneath his feet. The water hardly ripples at the lip of the walkway, only a pace away from where he's fallen.
Shit. He almost walked right into the freezing water.
Maybe on a moonlit night, he'd have seen it, but with the snow, tonight is darker than it's ever been. He's really losing his edge.
The lemur blinks again, and Zuko tries to ignore how expectant the look feels. He's not thanking it. Not out loud. Instead, he just plops a gloved hand on its head.
It doesn't seem very appreciative of the gesture, but that's fair enough.
Shaking off his hand, the lemur jumps back up onto his shoulders. Zuko gives himself a moment to rest before dragging himself to his feet and trudging onwards, hyper vigilant of the ground beneath him.
After a good few more minutes of walking, the boats are closer than ever, to the point where he can hear the waves slapping against the swollen wood. He's just got to cross a canal and walk a few more meters before he's out.
There's an elevated bridge a little ways down the path, with spiral steps on either side to allow access. He heads that way.
He's careful to breathe, to not get too excited, because getting to the docks is only the first step. He's not nearly through with this.
It's a good thing, he'll think later, that he didn't let himself get hopeful.
Slick from the falling snow, the ground is extra slippery tonight, so Zuko's not entirely surprised when he steps onto the first stair to the bridge and his foot slips out from under him. The fall isn't as rough as his last, but doesn't need to be. His reaction time is fucked. Walking across the whole city has him exhausted, so when he pitches forward, he doesn't catch himself in time.
Out of all the falls he's had in the past few days, this is the first one that hits square in his chest. The steps up to the bridge jam into his torso painfully, and he's left without any air in his lungs for the second time in the past two nights.
The lemur flies off the second he hits the ground. Where, he does know or care. He's too busy trying to force his lungs back into breathing properly.
Maybe he just happened to fall in the worst possible way. Maybe his tumble off the edge of a building did most of the work, and this was just the last straw. Maybe he put too much faith in the waterbender's healing. Maybe he's been close to tearing himself open every night. Or maybe he's just unlucky.
Either way, when he finally breathes in, there's a crackle in his lungs.
He's so fucking tired of this.
When he props himself up and scoots back to lean against a wall, he tells himself that he's tired, and that's why he's giving up on this attempt. Even though he can see the boats from where he sits. Even though he can hear them jostling on the waves from here. He's just tired.
Predawn light filters through the sails before him. Watching the boats bob on the water, blood in his lungs crackling with each breath, he waits for them to find him.
The sun breaks over the horizon at the same time the lemur returns, plopping into Zuko's lap as he chokes down another cough.
Sokka's voice filters in at his right. "You tried to steal our lemur?!"
Zuko grits his teeth and cracks his eyes open.
The dumb thing is still on his lap. Katara looks entertained by this, like their pet taking a liking to their enemy is cute and not a problem.
Sokka, on the other hand, is appropriately outraged. "Momo! Come here!"
The lemur chatters good-naturedly, and doesn't.
Katara, not nearly as offended by the response as her brother, quirks her lips into a smile. "At least he made a good alarm system." Her tone switches to doting as she bends over to ruffle the lemur's fur. "Are you playing guard for us? Yeah?"
The lemur chatters traitorously. It sounds exactly the same as a normal chatter, but it comes with Zuko feeling betrayed.
(That's unfair, a distant part of him thinks. The lemur's tattling tendencies are the reason they even found him this fast. And he was waiting for them to find him.)
Aang's the only one unconcerned by the lemur. He's got his eyes on the docks, barely even a few dozen feet from where Zuko's slumped on the ground. Brow drawn together, Aang slides his worried gaze back to him.
"Zuko?"
Zuko clenches his jaw hard enough that it creaks, and he can feel a headache spreading across his skull. Slowly, he pulls his hand out of his lap, presenting his palm to the sky. It's spattered with blood.
Aang and Katara gasp, and he's pretty sure Sokka just says, "Dude, what the fuck," but he can't be sure. Katara jumping into his space with water from the canal at her hands kind of disrupts his listening skills. The lemur flaps over to her shoulders the second her knees hit the ice.
A blob of water soaks into the coat and presses against his chest. He still hasn't gotten used to the strange feeling of stinging cold water mixed with the ease healing brings.
There are quite a few beats of tense silence before Katara looks up, water still held to his chest. She has the faintest smile on her face when she says, "I think the bleeding already stopped on its own."
He could've just left.
Zuko slams his head against the ice wall at his back.
"Hey!" Katara's tone is sharp, maybe a little shocked. She pulls a hand back, the other deftly assuming control of the bubble of water to his chest, only so she can smack him on the shoulder. "Don't do that!"
An indignant squawk escapes him as he pulls away. It didn't hurt, not with the thick coat in the way, but what the fuck? For someone who's scolding him for hurting himself, she has some interesting methods.
Her other hand resumes its position over his chest. "I'm not helping if you give yourself a concussion. Now stay still." The direction is more of a formality; he doesn't plan on going anywhere, nor does he make any motion to. "You're not bleeding, but I don't want to move you until I can heal some of this."
Fair enough. He's not exactly itching to tear his lungs open, despite what they might think.
There's a moment of silence. With the sun's rays breaking over the horizon and the lapping of the not so distant shoreline, Zuko would almost call it peaceful. Until Sokka speaks.
"Well, you almost made it," he observes. "Though I expected you to stop by the market for supplies before hitting the docks. Which is, y'know." He jerks a thumb to his left, away from them and away from the docks.
Oh. Yeah, that probably would've been the smart move.
Aang looks endlessly frustrated. "If you didn't get hurt, would you have even stopped to get food?"
Zuko works his jaw, and otherwise doesn't respond.
Aang throws his hands in the air with a shout. "Why not?! Did you even think this through?"
That's really not the reaction he expected. Yelling and scolding, sure. About the effectiveness of his plans? Not something he'd considered.
"I did!" Zuko bites back. He might not have thought it through well, but he did think it through. He's done nothing but think these past few days.
In an almost comical reversal of their roles, Aang glares down at him. "This can't be how all your plans go! Your planning sucks! I'm really starting to wonder how you even survived chasing me across the world!"
Okay, ouch. He'll admit he's not great at planning, but he's made it this far, hasn't he?
"What did you expect?" Zuko scoffs. "I'm not going to just sit around like some docile prisoner."
"You're not our prisoner, okay?!"
This apparently isn't something they've agreed on, because Sokka hesitates. "Aang—"
He just shakes his head. "I don't care! What was the point of everything we did to get here if you're just going to kill yourself trying to escape?"
The scene reminds him of the first day on the bison, with Aang accusing him of doing things that he's definitely not doing.
"I'm not going to— I just slipped!"
"It's not about just that!" Aang looks desperate and frustrated, an expression that Zuko seems to be very good at putting on his face. "It's everything! Every time you hurt yourself trying to escape, every time you try to stop Katara from healing you, every time you wake up from a nightmare and don't say anything—"
Zuko does not like them having opinions on, or even knowing about, his nightmares.
"It's the fact that you would've sailed off into the ocean without any supplies just to get away from us!"
Of course he's trying to get away from them. It's not like he can just sit here and wait for his own assassination. "What do you expect me to do?!"
"Think!" Aang supplies, jabbing a finger into his own forehead.
"I don't have time for that!"
Aang groans and throws his head back. "That doesn't make any sense!"
"You don't make any sense!"
"Neither do you!"
"You don't know anything about me!"
"Clearly!"
"Okay, guys." Surprisingly, it's Sokka that steps between their shouting match. "Loving the energy here, but maybe we can tone it down. It's only sunrise."
"Sokka's right," Katara says, pushing herself to her feet. She stopped healing at some point while Zuko was preoccupied with shouting. "You're loud enough to wake up the whole neighborhood."
Opposite of their usual positions, it's Aang that has to grit his teeth and breathe. Then, with a much more reasonable volume, he continues.
"Zuko—" He cuts himself off and sighs. It sounds so much like the sighs Uncle gives when he's run out of new words to scold with. "We'll fly you wherever you want to go when you're healed, and then you can keep chasing me and throwing fireballs or whatever—"
Throwing fireballs. He wishes.
"But you've got to stop trying to leave," Aang stresses. He looks desperate, maybe a little hurt by his own words.
His words may have held some comfort under normal circumstances. If Aang says he'll let him go, Zuko believes him. (He hates that he believes him.) But it doesn't matter what Aang does. Zhao's still coming, and Zuko has to be gone before he does, because if not...
He looks away, and Aang pulls a choked whine from the back of his throat.
"What do we have to do to convince you you're safe with us?" he asks.
It's not about them, that's the issue. And he can’t tell them why, because it's not something where he can twist and dodge around technicalities like every other instance.
Every other instance, he's found some justification, some work around. Most of the time, it's ranking his mission above all else, even though he knows that's not right. But it doesn't hurt anyone if he's warping technicalities, not really. Except maybe Zhao, but fuck Zhao.
Even as a banished prince, his people should come first. Violating his banishment and personally fucking over Zhao on his quest for the Avatar, those are things he can reasonably say don't affect his people. The average paddy farmer doesn't care if he's running around in Fire Nation waters or stealing Zhao's thunder. They do care if their child never comes home because he told the enemy to expect them. These are secrets that get people killed.
Maybe if Aang was more hostile, he could claim duress. Tortured into revealing military secrets. (Katara did jam her finger into his chest days ago. Does that count?) But the Fire Nation is pretty fucking clear about how they view people who talk, torture or no. Anyone with even a spark of honor would welcome death sooner than they would reveal national secrets.
He doesn't have any honor. Maybe that's how he'll spin this one.
This time, Zuko bites his tongue, because his teeth ache.
When they toss him back into bed and try to run off for the healer, he gets about as close to begging as he can. That is to say, his voice pitches higher than he means, and he peppers in some bonus swearing when he asks them not to. "Asks" is a relative term.
"I don't need the fucking healer!"
"You hurt yourself badly enough to reopen something after days of healing!" Katara argues. "You need the healer!"
"You already healed me yourself!"
"I'm not an expert, Zuko! Yagoda was your surgeon; she needs to know!"
"No, she doesn't!"
"She's gonna find out during today's healing session anyway. I'd rather not get chewed out with you because I didn't get her right away!"
"Too bad."
Katara drops her head into her hands with a tired sigh, then snaps, "Why are you always like this?"
Good question. Zuko just glowers at her.
She pulls her head up and glares back. "I'm still telling Yagoda."
"Telling me what?"
Zuko's stomach drops into his lap. The healer hurries in from the doorway, Aang at her tail. During his squabble with Katara, Zuko hadn't even realized he'd left. Sneaky brat.
"We found him coughing up blood," Aang remarks none too kindly. He still has an edge to his tone that Zuko isn't used to.
The healer settles immediately into a physical inspection, and Zuko spends the entire time glaring at Aang.
Aang just glares back.
As they knew would happen, the healer tears into each of them for it. Zuko for prancing around on the ice (her words), and everyone else for letting him do it. And as Zuko knew would happen, he feels like he wants to evaporate on the spot. He can hardly deal with Uncle's scolding sometimes. It's worse when he doesn't even have the familiarity to know when he can vent his anger and when he'd better just shut up and listen for his own sake.
This one feels like the latter.
"I don't know what's going on between you four, but you can all put it aside long enough for Lee to heal," she snaps, her tone commanding.
Zuko feels his cheek twitch, only sneering for a grand total of a half second, but it's enough for the healer to hone back in on him.
"This is no laughing matter," she bites. "Do you want permanent lung damage? Because this is how you get it."
He doesn't let himself outwardly react to that, but a drop of ice slides down his spine. He glares at his lap.
"You stay here," the healer continues. "And you rest. I am not opposed to drugging you if I have to."
Zuko refuses to meet her gaze.
After that, he's under watch constantly. There is no moment to slip out anymore, not when they're back to sleeping in shifts and the lemur has officially turned against him. He considers just trying to walk out numerous times, but everyone gets twitchy when he so much as stands now.
(It's mostly Aang. Aang won't stop staring at him.)
He almost runs while they stare him down, just to see what they'd do.
Aang does something weird. Aang always does weird stuff, but this one takes the cake.
That evening, after he's cooled off and fallen back into the Aang everyone's used to, he leaves a bag with Zuko's boots and gloves, intentionally wedged behind them so it's blocked by the legs of his boots. He doesn't say a thing, just promptly turns to help Katara with dinner.
The disregard makes Zuko wonder if the bag really is for him, much less if he's allowed to look inside. But curiosity gets the better of him, so he slowly moves to scoop it up.
No one reacts. Sokka is busy whittling another poor piece of wood into submission, Katara is completely absorbed in the stew she's prepping, and Aang is helping her cut the vegetables, back turned to him.
Gently, Zuko pulls the drawstring loose and peers inside.
It's rations. Dried foods and miscellaneous supplies, all neatly packed away. Probably good for months if they're stored properly. And, wedged between cloth wrapped supplies and tucked to the side of the bag—
Is his dagger.
He has no idea what to do with that.
"Are you... okay?" Sokka asks the next morning.
Zuko has no idea where the question came from, so he gives a weird look in response.
Then there's a finger in his face. "See? That!" Sokka sounds perturbed. "What is that? Why aren't you talking? Are your lungs okay?"
He bats the finger away and scowls. "My lungs are fine."
"Then fucking use them," Sokka whines.
Zuko glares, and refuses to.
"Are you doing okay?" Katara asks that evening.
Zuko's starting to get sick of their questions.
"It's just, you look tired. How much are you actually sleeping?"
Not much. It's hard when every nap ends with him gasping for breath.
"You're not in pain, are you? Or is it the dreams? I'm sure there's some medicine that could help," she offers, because she's too kind not to.
He doesn't respond.
"I can't help if you don't let me, Zuko."
So he won't let her.
"Zuko?" Aang asks that night.
Zuko's learned his Avatar-isms by now, and he knows what that one means.
No, he's not okay.
Zuko clenches his teeth and bites his tongue until it bleeds.
There's no reason it should be any different this time, no reason that he should react any worse. He should wake up with a jerk, or a gasp, or maybe even a fitful shout. There's no reason for this.
He wakes up choking, and he doesn't know why.
There's pressure bearing down on his chest, just like before, and he's halfway convinced he's back on the bison. He can see ice walls around him, can see the edges of his bed, but they don't register. It feels like he's still flying north. The shrapnel in his chest burns, and his lungs strain against it.
He hears Aang, sees him hovering like he does. "Zuko, I need you to breathe with me, okay?"
No. No, he's not doing that again. He can't be back there. He can't. All he can do is frantically shake his head and choke. He can't breathe.
"Yes, you can! In and out, see? One, two..."
He can't. His head is spinning, his heart is in his ears, and it's happening again. His lungs are broken, and there's no helping him this time.
"Zuko, please! I don't know what to do!"
A panicked whine reaches his ears, jumping with frantic breaths, and it takes him a moment to realize he's the source. His vision turns grainy, and the world around him sounds like it's underwater.
Then he feels his lungs press against air they didn't draw in, folding and expanding as guided by an outside force. It's steady, and fear grips him. He can feel his blood racing through his veins, completely contrary to the even pace of his lungs.
He can't do this again.
Zuko doesn't think. He just reacts. He shouts, he jolts, and he bends. It all happens in a second.
In a sweeping arc, flames erupt from his hands, and he already knows it's dangerous before he feels the burn. You don't bend when you don't have control. That's rule fucking one of firebending. That's how people get hurt.
Around him, he hears panicked yelps and scrambling feet on the furred floor. He feels the skin on his hands sizzling in the heat of his own flames.
Then he's doused in freezing water, and the world jerks back into startling clarity.
He's panting, soaked in his bed, and surrounded by Aang, Katara, and Sokka. They're all standing a few steps back, looking startled and maybe a little concerned. While Katara and Sokka are poised for action, Aang just looks upset.
None of them look hurt. That's something, at least.
Unfortunately for him, the concern on their faces isn't just a trick of the light. They're staring at him, at his hands, like they have a reason to be worried. He's not going to start throwing flames again, so what...?
Burns. His palms are shiny and red, shadows of the flames coiling up his fingers and around his knuckles. It's not the worst, as far as burns go. There's no charring, no breaks, no skin sliding off of muscle. He's had worse.
Doesn't mean it isn't concerning. It's worse than his little mishap on the first night he tried to leave. Probably can't be left alone like that one.
Aang's warbling voice wedges itself between his own too rapid breaths. "Sorry, sorry..."
What is he apologizing for? He's not the one who burned him. Zuko did that to himself.
His own fire. What is wrong with him?
His hands are shaking. His whole frame is shaking. The panic may have lost its grip on his senses, but it hasn't let him go. He can feel his chest jerking, his eyes and nose sting, and...
Damn it.
The tears come, and there's no stopping them. A strangled wail makes it halfway up his throat before he smothers it, folding at the waist to bury his face in his knees. His hands sting, crushed between his chest and his legs, but he figures he deserves that much. You don't bend without control. He knows this.
His chest heaves, jumping in quick succession as he breathes out. He tries to keep silent, just choking on air and tears and not letting his throat make a sound, because at least then maybe he can pretend he's just breathing heavily. At least then he can wipe the tears away before someone sees. He can tell himself it's just anger. Anger is easier. Anger doesn't hurt.
There's a tentative hand on his shoulder, and Zuko feels that familiar rage bubble in his gut. It strangles him, makes him feel just as uncontrolled as his panic, but he relishes the fact that rage doesn't look like weakness.
He should shrug them off, or yell at them, or something, but he can't move. The tears paralyze him, like they tend to do, and his rage is left to sputter in his throat. He chokes on it, loud and wet in the silence of the ice house.
Kicking and screaming does him no favors. It pushes away anyone who tries to help and leaves him to fight alone. But he doesn't have to deal with pity, how those looks twist in his gut and remind him that no amount of raging can hide how pathetic he truly is.
They already pity him.
He just wants them to leave. To back off with a sour look and some choice words about his attitude, like everyone else does. But he can't move, so he can't force them away.
The water covering him and the blankets starts to bunch up into larger bubbles—some of his tears do, too, and that's not unnerving at all—before it's finally pulled away, leaving him dry. More tears squeeze from his eyes anyway, doing their best to keep him soaked.
"Zuko." Katara's voice breaks through the quiet, through his strangled gasps. (Too wet to just be gasps.) "Can I see your hands?"
No.
He grits his teeth together, and they can probably hear the way it shifts his breathing, air suddenly whistling through teeth. The motion to clench his fists goes abandoned when the raw skin of his fingers creaks. It stings, and if anyone knows about burns, it's Zuko. Burns on a high contact area like the hands shouldn't be ignored. That's how you get complications. Infections. Scars.
It's not like they're going to let it go anyways. They already saw the burns. They already know. He's too tired to fight their kindness this time. Maybe tired isn't the right word, but he doesn't know what is.
Whatever the right word is, it's not a proactive one. He doesn't move on his own, but he doesn't shake off the hand on his shoulder that gently pushes him up. What he does do is school his expression and choke down his erratic breathing into something forcibly managed.
His mind takes a step back, and he's left feeling too detached to even properly be embarrassed. He just picks a distant point at the edge of the bed and stares, and he lets the world happen around him.
They don't comment on the tear stains down his cheeks or the periodic hitch in his breath where his lungs protest the forced calm. They don't comment, but there's no way they don't notice. Zuko would never be that lucky.
Katara slips her fingers around his wrists and maneuvers his hands forward. There's a moment of stillness where she's probably inspecting the burns, but he isn't quite sure. His targeted gaze doesn't give him any view of her face. Whatever she's thinking, she keeps it to herself as she bends water to his hands. A blue glow meets the orange haze of the low fire in the room.
He should apologize, he thinks distantly. Not that they aren't used to him throwing fire at them, but this is different. A controlled flame is dangerous, yes, but it's predictable. It's something he can stop if he needs to. And despite his anger, despite the requirements of combat, he never had any intention of burning any of them. He's not looking to hurt, just to subdue. If something did catch, or a bolt of fire did strike home, he could control it, dissolve it on impact so no heat would linger to make it worse.
That was not control. That was dangerous, downright irresponsible. He's not even sure if he could quell a fire right now if his flames found their own fuel source.
There's still a hand on his back, he realizes. Aang's hand. He can feel the warmth through his shirt, and he swears it burns.
If his entire body wasn't creaking under lockdown, Zuko's pretty sure he'd be shaking. Maybe he is, and he just can't feel it.
Katara's the one to break the stillness. "What..." A frown is obvious in her voice. "I mean... Burns aren't normal, right?"
She's looking for an answer, but Zuko hasn't even gotten to unsticking his gaze, nevermind a nod or shake of the head.
"Can't be," Sokka mumbles, voice further away than his sister's. "The amount of firebenders we've fought—The amount of times we've fought Zuko—We'd have noticed."
"So what happened?"
The amount of genuine concern in her voice just makes Zuko mentally retreat further. His breath catches again, jumping in his chest.
Then Aang inhales, fingers tense on his back like he's finally figured it out. "Firebending comes from the breath."
Zuko clenches his jaw. At least he can move that much.
Aang continues into the silence. If there was something from the siblings to prompt that, Zuko missed it. "The breathing exercises Jeong Jeong had me do, those were... This is why. If you can't breathe right..."
Good to know they're all piecing together his failures in front of him.
Katara's voice sounds strangled. "So, what? He just can't bend?"
"Not safely," Aang says. His tone lingers, like he's hoping for confirmation, or denial, or any reaction at all, but Zuko's too stuck to give one.
They're right. He can't bend, or he shouldn't. Not yet. Not without relearning the breath control he's lost first. Not without singing his own skin in the meantime.
"But that's just cuz you're hurt," Sokka reasons. He's got an edge to his tone that makes him sound uncertain. "Once you're healed up, you'll be spitting fireballs in no time."
Zuko isn't so sure. This feels different. His lungs creak like the hull of his ship, and he has a sneaking suspicion he's going to need to relearn how to breathe with something foreign interrupting his natural means of flame control—how to breathe with metal.
Learning to breathe properly on instinct takes months, if not years. He's back at square one. Back in the palace, watching Azula master a bending kata that he still breathes wrong through, that he still trips on while attempting. She wouldn't have to relearn to fucking breathe, would she? She'd just figure it out.
No one fights Sokka's assessment. It makes sense, and Zuko isn't the type to advertise his shortcomings.
The ice house falls into silence, the only sounds of the fire and Zuko's blood rushing through his ears. Katara holds her water over his hands, not even an inch away from touching as she heals.
Zuko still can't tear his gaze from the corner of the bed. Can't do anything but sit, still as a stone, even as he becomes aware of the little discomforts around him. His eyes itch from the tears. His chin tickles from drops that haven't quite fallen. His legs are too warm under the blankets, and his shoulders are too cold, and Aang's hand on his back burns, and Zuko just stares.
The hand shifts, but doesn't leave. Just an unconscious move as Aang breathes and prepares to break the silence.
"Do you want to talk about it?"
He really doesn't.
Beyond the indignities of talking about his nightmares with people like them, what's he supposed to say? How is he supposed to explain that dream? It's not like the other dreams. Nothing even happened. He just felt the rise and fall of his chest, the steady cadence of his lungs expanding, and his fucked up brain mistook subconscious for involuntary.
How's he supposed to explain that he's afraid of breathing?
When Zuko doesn't offer any reaction, Aang lets out a shaky breath.
"Sorry."
That makes no sense. Zuko slowly angles his head towards Aang's voice, nowhere near looking up. In his paralysis, it feels like a greater move than it is. He swears he can hear his spine creaking.
"For bending," Aang continues. "I shouldn't have... I mean, you were panicking, and I thought... I didn't think..."
Oh. Yeah, that is what happened, isn't it? That forced calm in his lungs wasn't imagined. He didn't just throw flames around for no reason.
Except it was for no reason. Aang was just trying to help, and it would be unfair to say that it didn't work. Maybe not according to plan, but it broke him out of his panic—
By forcing a break. What the fuck is he thinking? Intentions be damned, Aang can't just do that. He can't just steal other people's breaths because they aren't right. Zuko knows he can't breathe right anymore, and he knows he was about to pass out without intervention, but his lungs aren't public fucking property—
"I'm really sorry, Zuko."
His anger sputters, a flame dying in its own smoke.
Katara finally pulls the water away from his hands. Just by the feel of the open air on them, he can tell the burns are practically gone.
What a fucking joke he is. The burns, the breathing, the nightmares. When Zhao shows up, he'll be dead meat.
He's running out of time, but he's nowhere near healed enough to convince them to fly him out, and every escape attempt collapses under his own ineptitude. He needs to leave, but he's stuck in bed, burned by his own fire, sick to his stomach by his own breathing, and— He can't protect himself like this.
They care about his life, right? They spent the past week proving it. That has to mean something. So when Zhao shows up, there's no way they'll just let him die. Right?
(He's an honorless coward.)
He breaks.
"Zhao's coming." The words sound distant, like they're not his own. "With a fleet."
There's a beat, then Sokka curses and bolts to the exit, undoubtedly off to wake someone important. Aang and Katara remain with him, but the air has shifted.
Zuko's left doing mental flips to try and figure out how maybe, maybe that wasn't betraying his people. He lands flat on his proverbial face.