Let Me Talk to You

by GinnyRose

Chapter 2

Notes:

Content Warning for Fire Nation and Earth Kingdom attitudes towards omegas and women. There is brief, nondescript allusions of sexual violence perpetuated by soldiers in war and discussions of a rape-culture amongst the Fire Nation and Earth Kingdom cultures. Nothing happens to any of the characters, but if that is something that you are sensitive to, please be aware of it.

Zuko knew that his hope for a silent trip back to the Western Air Temple was in vain. There was nothing quiet about traveling with any of Team Avatar and Sokka was the loudest of them all. Still, he had thought sneaking to the back of the airship and throwing fireballs into the furnace would be enough to encourage the others to keep a respectable distance.

He should have known it wouldn’t have stopped Ty Lee. Ty Lee was, after all, incredibly used to spurts of outrageous fire bending and she wouldn’t bat an eye at Zuko’s small, contained blasts. Had it been a normal day, had he not been still able to feel the wet marks her tears had left on his threadbare prisoner uniform, he would have pushed her away with brusque words and several glares.

As it were, he felt ridiculously responsible for the girl – probably because he may or may not have been ultimately to blame for what had basically been her kidnapping – and so he hadn’t said anything when Ty Lee had acted like a silent shadow behind him.

He had expected her to be angry, at least as angry as Ty Lee could possibly get which wasn’t very much at all, maybe even yell at him a bit. He would have felt better if she did.

But Ty Lee didn’t have an angry bone in her body and her first words to him, soft and barely discernible over the low roar of the furnace fire, shouldn’t have been quite so surprising. “I don’t think Azula will really kill her.” Zuko didn’t want to acknowledge her but he couldn’t help but glance over in surprise, certain he had misheard. Zuko was Azula’s elder brother and Ty Lee was one of her closest friends, they both knew exactly what she was capable of.

Zuko meant to be honest – no good came out of lying and he was pretty sure Ty Lee knew him well enough to tell anyway – but he stopped short when he saw her face. Her eyes were still red-rimmed and swollen from her tears but there was a hopeful, almost desperate glint in her bright eyes. It reminded him, quite painfully, of the frantic energy that had possessed him for the three years he had been searching for the Avatar, convinced beyond all reason that if he just found the Avatar, his father would welcome him back with open arms.

Zuko hadn’t needed the truth then, even if Uncle had been willing to break his heart to tell it to him, and it wouldn’t have done any good to try and convince him of it. It didn’t matter what he thought would befall Mai, what might have already befallen her. Ty Lee didn’t need the truth, she needed hope. Zuko hated that he was the only one who could give it to her.

“I mean,” she continued when Zuko failed to respond, her voice still barely more than a whisper over the flames, “Azula’s mad, of course. But Mai’s her friend, she wouldn’t kill her, right?” Zuko had to look away from the raw hope on Ty Lee’s round face. She looked so young, too young for all of this.

He wondered briefly, if the pain in his heart was akin to what Uncle must have felt at Zuko’s sick bed, when the gentle rocking of the waves still made Zuko’s stomach turn sour and the burning pain on his face matched the scorching of his heart as he whispered over and over again that the Avatar must still be alive because Father wouldn’t possibly set him an impossible task.

Zuko had found the Avatar, though, against all reason and logic. Ty Lee was hardly going to be so lucky.

“Uh, yeah,” he knew he didn’t sound remotely convincing.

Zuko was a terrible liar, not nearly as skilled as Azula. Ty Lee must have been able to hear the doubt in his words. But she latched onto them and Zuko could hear the soft, fledging hope in her voice as she said, “I knew you’d see it too.”

Zuko had no idea what he was supposed to be seeing but he was glad he had made Ty Lee feel better. Even if it had only postponed her suffering.

They lapsed into silence once more, thank the spirits, and Zuko found solace in the quiet. No one else, from what he could hear, was talking but he didn’t dare look over to confirm. He just knew that the one time he glanced over, he’d make eye contact with one of them and then they would take that as an invitation to walk over and talk to him.

Outside the heat of the battle, it was all too easy to recall Azula’s words. Calling him a whore, he had expected. She didn’t really mean it, not in the way that others might, but she knew it would get a rise out of him. He hadn’t known what it had meant, the first time his father had said it, after he had returned to the royal meals after his first heat, but he could feel the shame in the word. His cheeks had heated up in response to it and Azula had immediately latched onto it with the gleeful vindication any little sibling would have.

Even after one of the tutors had overheard her call him it and carefully explained that it was a very bad word to say – although he hadn’t been foolish enough to explain why it was a such a terrible word to the young princess - Azula had kept with it.

Zuko had grown so used to hearing the word from Azula that even when he learned what it meant – after doggedly following and demanding that one of his guards tell him the meaning– he mostly felt annoyed when she said it. Had the words come from his father, he would have undoubtedly felt that deep, traumatizing shame he had felt the first time it was sneered at him and had it come from anyone else, he would have been enraged. But Azula hadn’t even yet known what the word meant when he had left and it simply didn’t carry the same weight in her mouth.

He had expected her to jeer about Sokka as well. Of course she would. She had barely contained her comments when he had more or less been courted by Mai, there was no way she would pass over the opportunity to disparage Zuko for even being in the vicinity of an unmated and unmarried alpha. It wouldn’t have even mattered if the alpha in question was an eighty-year-old, Azula would have made the exact same comment. It had bothered him, of course, but it was hardly worth dwelling on.

No, Zuko was used to Azula being cruel and he wouldn’t dwell on those comments. What was replaying in his mind was Azula announcing his orientation to the prison at large, as calmly as she would have his name, with that infuriating little smirk she always wore when she had the upper hand. It wasn’t exactly common knowledge amongst the Fire Nation that Zuko was an omega, but neither was it forbidden.

Traditionally, a celebration would have been carried out after Zuko presented but Azula had presented soon after him, which had taken precedence, and then he had been banished before the ceremony could have been done and by the time he had returned, most of the Nation had assumed he was a beta, an idea neither Zuko nor his father had cared much to correct.

The assumption would have been rectified once Mai was officially named as his betrothed, but that had still been in the distant future when he had left the second time. Zuko had foolishly thought the incorrect belief would carry at least until the end of the war. It wasn’t that he was ashamed of being an omega but there were benefits to being considered beta he hadn’t been quite ready to give up. More importantly, was the feeling that Azula had stolen something from him. It was supposed to be his decision when his orientation was announced – even had he stayed and eventually consented to marry Mai, tradition dictated that the omega decided when to announce the betrothal. The public wouldn’t have learned anything about it until Zuko wanted them to.

In the grand scheme of the war, losing the ability to announce his orientation in his own terms was an inconsequential thing and it was stupid for Zuko to be upset about it. But, even knowing that, Zuko couldn’t deny that it stung and the fact that he was allowing such a small matter to bother him just served to make him even more irritable.

Even worse than the useless sense of loss plaguing him was the inescapable dread that accompanied being surrounded by people who now knew his orientation and had yet to react. Ty Lee was easy; she had been one of the few to know about his orientation before he’d left the Fire Nation and, apart from gushing about how nice it would be to have a fellow omega around when he’d returned, had never treated him differently for it. Sokka, painful as he was to deal with, was at least a known obstacle. Zuko just knew the other boy was biding his time to say something stupid and infuriating and part of him couldn’t wait for it. They were out of danger now and it would feel good to really unleash on the idiot when he tried him.

The others though, Zuko had only a very vague idea on how they would react and very little of it was positive. Chit Sang was likely to not care. He might be surprised that he hadn’t known the Crown Prince’s orientation but the Fire Nation wasn’t nearly as obsessively weird about omegas as the other nations were and Chit Sang didn’t seem the type to really dwell on other people’s business when it wasn’t beneficial to him anyway. Zuko would like to think Suki wouldn’t care – she certainly didn’t let Sokka get away with treating women as though they were weaker and she had sided with Zuko against how Sokka had been acting at the prison.

But Zuko didn’t know if Kyoshian omegas escaped the stifling treatment the rest of the Earth Kingdom gave the orientation and he had no clue on whether Suki would still side with Zuko now that she knew why Sokka had acted so strange. Even if Suki didn’t have quite as extreme views as Sokka, there was no doubt, given his personal experience with the rest of Team Avatar, that she wouldn’t be treating him the same. The awkward, budding sense of camaraderie he’d had with the girl was probably irreparably shattered.

Then there was Hakoda. The man had already been an unknown, intimidating figure. Zuko had dreaded being around him when the man just knew him as the angry Fire Nation royal who had chased his children all the way across the world. Now that the man knew that he was the angry Fire Nation royal omega who had chased his children all the way across the world, it was bound to be so much worse. Sokka had gotten his attitude about omegas from someone and Zuko doubted it was the tiny old lady he had once taken a hold of in the desolate Southern village.

Zuko’s mind flashed back to the fight. Hakoda had left the gondola to fight alongside Suki but he had refused to fall back when Zuko had taken on the guards. He had kept step with him even after the fire-breathing stunt Zuko had pulled, as though he thought Zuko needed his protection after all that. Zuko just knew the man was bidding his time until he could confront him. Even now, so far away from the rest of the group and tucked into the corner with Ty Lee, Zuko could feel the heavy weight of the chief’s icy gaze on his back.

Zuko didn’t want to deal with Hakoda’s reaction to him anymore than he wanted to ruminate over his fledging friendship with Suki which had probably already died, strangled in the cradle by his sister’s calculating words. He didn’t want to deal with Sokka, who undoubtedly had a lot of words to say and very little value in any of them. He didn’t want to deal with the others, either. He didn’t want to have to figure out how to fit Ty Lee into their group or how he could convince Chit Sang to disappear quietly without giving too much information away.

He didn’t want to worry about Katara’s constantly shifting moods that ran the gamut between icy hatred and smothering concern. He didn’t want to have to try and discern what Haru and Teo’s weird looks meant or field Toph’s teasing comments or Aang’s playful jokes. He didn’t want to get jumped on by the Duke or hounded to play another round of mock-fighting.

Zuko was tired. He could feel the ache of overused muscles throughout his entire body. The skin on his exposed arms was tender from where he had been too slow to fully escape Azula’s fiery blows and he could feel the cracks in his lips and feel the burn of every breath where his own fire had brutalized the unprepared skin. His head, now that he had come down from the adrenaline of the fight, throbbed faintly from lack of sleep and overexertion.

Zuko was tired and in pain and the only thing he wanted to deal with was finding Azula’s private room, locking the door behind him, and sleeping until they arrived back at the Air Temple. But Zuko was one of only two people with the ability to keep the air ship in the air and although Chit Sang had proved himself by not selling them out back at the Boiling Rock, there was no way Zuko would trust him to keep them from crashing into the ocean let alone navigating through the treacherous mountain peaks that protected the air temple.

And he couldn’t just abandon Ty Lee to the rest of the group either; she had been instrumental in getting Suki and the rest of the Kyoshi Warriors thrown in jail and in the infiltration and capture of Ba Sing Se. As far as they were all concerned, she was still an enemy and it was Zuko’s responsibility to keep her and the others from fighting.

He had to stay and get them all safely to the Western Air Temple. He knew that. But that didn’t mean he had to like it and he wasn’t about to lower his guard. He knew the moment he did, one of them was going to be over with a comment or five about his orientation.

Just thinking about it made exhaustion weigh even heavier on Zuko. 

“I don’t think it’ll be that bad, you know.” A slight cheerful edge had returned to Ty Lee’s voice as she spoke, quietly breaking the silence that had been surrounding them and bringing Zuko out from his thoughts. It wasn’t nearly as much as her usual chipper tone and Zuko didn’t believe its sincerity for a heartbeat but he knew she was trying. The best he could do for her now was entertain her need for a distraction. Even if it was one of the last things he wanted to do.

“What do you mean?” He asked after a moment, unable to figure out what she was talking about. He must have missed something she had said, too lost in his own thoughts. He didn’t bother looking away from the furnace as he threw another blast into it, certain that he was about to be subjected to one of Ty Lee’s random chats. He had fought the first few times she had tried to have them with him, even going so far as to throw her half across the room when she had unexpectedly grabbed at his arm, but between her incessant attempts and the realization that Ty Lee, as another omega, was the only unrelated person his age he was allowed to talk privately with without fear of rumors starting around the palace, he had become accustomed to them.

The chats were always full of meaningless drivel that Azula wouldn’t tolerate for long and caustically called “omega nonsense” and while Zuko privately agreed his sister and often told Ty Lee to bother someone else with it even though he knew she wouldn’t listen, if talking about random nonsense now made her feel better, Zuko would willingly half-listen.

“Them knowing, silly!” Ty Lee’s voice was still mercifully quiet but was now flooded with the all too familiar Zuko’s-socially-stunted-but-that’s-okay-because-I’ll-help tone that always inevitably showed up in these conversations. It was remarkably similar to a tone Uncle got sometimes whenever Zuko refused to join in on any social activity on the ship, although he was mostly sure Uncle’s didn’t mean the same as Ty Lee’s. He still hated both.

“Them knowing what?” Zuko whispered back. His limited supply of patience was dwindling fast despite his resolve that he would deal with this for Ty Lee’s own sake. He didn’t want to help her if she was just going to be annoyingly vague about everything.

“About you being an omega!” It was lucky for everyone involved that Zuko had not been adding more fire to the furnace in that moment because the speed at which he had whipped around to stare at Ty Lee would have been more than enough to send sparks flying everywhere.

Ty Lee didn’t flinch at his violent turn around and she wasn’t fazed by the glare he leveled at her. “I know you don’t like talking about it - and that’s fine! But I can tell you’re worried about it and I just wanted to let you know I don’t think they’ll care. They seem cool.” Ty Lee’s words were accompanied by a small smile that – although Zuko was sure it was supposed to be like her normal cheerful smiles – didn’t quite reach her eyes.

Zuko knew Ty Lee was trying to act normal and pretend that her world hadn’t come crashing down all around her – and that part of her normal was butting into other people’s business without apology. He also knew that whatever way the group acted about him being an omega would affect her too. Ty Lee was trained to mask her scent in battle and although Zuko had never seen her mask it outside of fighting, she still was.

Part of her still felt unsettled enough to keep masking and whether that was because she thought they were being pursued or because of the others, Zuko was sure that how they reacted to him would impact whether or not she revealed herself anytime soon. Those were the only two things that allowed him to keep his tongue and push down the spike of unwarranted anger her words caused. She wasn’t the one who had some sort of problem with his orientation.

That didn’t make him anymore willing to have this conversation and he shot a quick glance at the others to make sure they were still awkwardly standing around in silence before grudgingly responding. “They already knew.”

“Really?” There was surprise in her voice and even as Zuko tried to channel his Uncle’s most peaceful, patient teachings, he couldn’t fight the scowl that crawled across his face.

“Well, just Sokka. And the others at the temple.” It was better that Ty Lee knew that rather than getting blindsided when they arrived.

“So it’s all fine. You can stop worrying!” The cheer in Ty Lee’s voice was a little more real and Zuko wondered whether, under all her normal exuberance and cheerful indifference, if Azula’s omega comments had affected her too. Zuko was pretty sure Azula had saved her most cruel comments for him alone but she hardly spared anyone and Ty Lee couldn’t have been wholly blind to Azula’s alpha superiority complex.

Between Azula and the rare snide, thinly-veiled comments that had been thrown at Ty Lee by the most conservative members of the court who had taken her travels with two unmated alphas as distasteful rather than a show of national pride and commendable bravery, Ty Lee might have held a little more reservation about her orientation than she had ever revealed.

Zuko felt like a fool for never considering that and he bit back his immediate response. It wasn’t like he could exactly hide how much he and Sokka didn’t get along – mainly because the alpha was a complete idiot – or how much weirder everyone had acted once they found out he was an omega. But there was no reason to warn her away from it either. And at least it was far more likely that Ty Lee was going to get overly smothered than physically hurt by them. With how much Ty Lee generally loved attention, she might even welcome their behavior.

He was still choosing his words, trying to think of the best way to explain how the others were going to react and why it wasn’t all fine without worrying the girl when he realized their little private corner had been invaded.

Suki had light, quick feet but Zuko, even exhausted, was not quite stupid enough to ever fully let his guard down. He turned to face her before she had even spoke, his body suddenly tense. He knew, logically, she wasn’t about to attack him and was pretty sure she hadn’t come to exact her revenge against Ty Lee either, but that hardly made him feel much better. He had expected one of them to approach eventually and he would rather it be Suki than the chief, but he still dreaded this conversation.

Suki’s face was carefully neutral as she held up her hands in a pacifying gesture. “Hey.” She greeted, her voice soft enough not to carry. Zuko risked a glance behind her and saw that she wasn’t the only one who had made a move. Chief Hakoda had a firm hand on his son’s shoulder as Sokka turned to face him and Chit Sang had gone off – undoubtedly to look for things that might fetch him a nice price with the right buyers. Or maybe he had simply disappeared before the quiet had turned to overly personal conversation.

Zuko highly doubted Suki’s approach was a coincidence just as much as he doubted she wanted to talk to him about the weather.

At least it was only Suki. Zuko didn’t know if he could have handled the chief.

He didn’t know if he could handle Suki either, but at least she didn’t have disapproval written all over her face.

Suki was no stranger to the weird and contradicting. She’d grown up on a tiny island devoted to the last Earth Kingdom avatar, in a culture that wasn’t quite Earth Kingdom but wasn’t quite its own either. She’d been born in the midst of an unceasing war to a home that hadn’t quite been touched by it yet. A liminal space, her teacher – the previous leader of the Kyoshi Warriors – had called it once, although Suki had been far too small, still stumbling over the hem of her long skirt, to know what she meant.

She did know, however, what the odd looks meant whenever they traveled to the mainland. They – Suki and her girls – trailed after their elders, feeling both pride at the respect they could see on the faces of the mainlanders and a nagging feeling that they shouldn’t be basking under that awe. Not yet, when they still needed help drawing the perfect lines around their eyes and their fans were still boned with dull wood rather than sharp metal.

Not every face was reverent and Suki knew all too well the feeling of hot shame that would coil in her stomach whenever dark eyes fell upon her or whenever a cruel sneer reached her ears. Kyoshi Island had prospered by keeping neutral in the war, had prided itself in its ability to keep the shores around them safe although they did very little besides keeping the unagi happily fed and in their waters. Not everyone around them was nearly as lucky and the resentment could be felt.

Her teacher had told her to ignore it. Had told her, time and time again, that the Avatar Kyoshi had fought valiantly and viciously to keep Kyoshi Island independent from the crushing oppression of the mainland monarchies and it was the sacred duty of the Kyoshi Warriors, first and foremost, to keep that independence. Whatever happened in the outside world was the outside world’s problem and Kyoshi Island would not get involved until it reached them.

That didn’t mean, of course, that Kyoshi Island was completely devoid of feeling. It was a place of contradictions, not quite Earth Kingdom but not quite something else either, not quite war-touched not quite peaceful. They took in refugees when they could, mostly women and children fleeing the burning of their villages. Suki’s own mother had been but a child when her parents had tucked her into the floor of a small fishing boat, kissed her brow and told her that, no matter what, she could not sit up until she’d reached the island. She’d already had Suki on her hip when she’d learned that her entire village, including the fisherman who had smuggled fifteen children out before being caught, had completely vanished under the onslaught of the Fire Nation. Killed or dominated, every last one of them.

They couldn’t take in every person who had come to their shores – the island too small, resources and land not nearly enough for a huge influx – but they never discriminated on who they took in. Kyoshi Island had already had a hodgepodge of eye colors, never quite as insular as the mainland with their greens and browns or the South Pole with their vivid and soft blues – but the spectrum had shifted with the influx of refugees.  Several women had eyes of dull gold, although few ever spoke about it, and numerous amounts of the children running around had gold eyes speckled with green or brown eyes a few shades lighter than normal. No one ever spoke of them but they existed. They played and laughed and cried and fought just like the children with earth and sea-colored eyes.

Kyoshi Island offered neutral aid, as well – food and supplies when their harvest had been blessed, rumors and information when it wasn’t. Never enough to gain the attention of the Fire Nation, not enough to really help the Earth Kingdom either. Few big ships came to the island – the waters too choppy, the Unagi too frightening – and Suki could have counted on a single finger how many times she had seen the Fire Nation land on her shores. They had stayed neutral for nigh on a century, until Aang had crash landed on their shore.

Aang was yet another contradiction to Suki. Over a hundred years old but not a day over twelve. A pacifist destined to end a war. A child with the weight of the world on his shoulders who could still smile as though he had never had a bad day. The last of an entire culture; the budding hope of the world.  Suki had known he was trouble before he’d revealed himself to be the Avatar but the deeply-honed reverence that had been instilled in her at birth had kept her from voicing those concerns.

Aang had been a gift to the village, even though he had singlehandedly caused most of the children their first heartaches, and Katara had been nothing if not a courteous sweetheart. Sokka had been an ass, at first, but Suki had enjoyed taking him down and she had been even happier teaching him the ways of the Kyoshi Warriors once he had been properly humbled.

She had loved their presence, far more than she had thought she would, and there had been no argument against defending them when the Fire Nation had descended on their shores. The Fire Nation, too, had been contradictory to everything Suki had thought she knew. Kyoshi Island prided itself on cultivating facts from gossip and rumors and Suki had known about the prince for many years.

A boy born to crush the world under his heel, the finely honed product of a family who had set the world on fire. A boy so vicious, so dangerous that he had been banished to the edges of the world to chase a spirit legend. No one knew what had been done to elicit such an extreme punishment – Suki was certain that not even the Fire Nation citizens were trusted with that information so it was no surprise that Kyoshi Island couldn’t gleam the truth from the rumors – but everyone was certain that whatever it had been that caused even the Fire Lord to flinch away from his son must have been truly terrible.

He’d orchestrated the deaths of an entire village who had mocked him, some sailors had whispered. He’d lined up a whole legion of soldiers, all young and inexperienced, and used them for his own target practice, others had argued. He’d killed his own mother in a childish fit, burned her until nothing was left but the golden hairpiece she had worn, and threatened to do the same to his own father, the cruelest and most outlandish of rumors had stated.

He had been such a threat to his younger sister, the beloved princess Azula, that she had to be sent away to a royal academy for her own safety was a common refrain. The Dragon of the West, the boy’s own uncle, traveled with him because he was the only one the Fire Lord trusted to survive the prince’s deadly rages, was another.

Suki hadn’t been one to fully believe the rumors, particularly the outlandish ones that gave him the powers of a malevolent spirit rather than a boy, but she had been sure that the prince was cruel and vicious, the lethal heir of a deadly nation. But then she had met the boy and nothing had quite added up. Certainly, the prince was arrogant, his crew vicious, and the devastation they had wrought on Kyoshi Island in the pursuit of the Avatar was enough to make eternal enemies of the Kyoshi Warriors but Suki had fully expected to die or kill that day.

 Had fully expected to see the body of a prince at her feet or witness her home become another casualty of the war, another cautionary whisper for the sailors to spread around. But that didn’t happen. The moment Aang and the others had made their escape, the prince had ordered his men back.

He hadn’t even said a word to them once the call for retreat had been made, not even a condemnation of their break in neutrality. They had not relaxed when the Fire Nation left their shores – the Fire Nation were merciless and just because the prince had left some of their village standing, it didn’t mean he hadn’t made the call to summon others to finish the job. For a week after the attack, Suki and the Warriors had stood guard at the beach, waiting for the next attack as the villagers hurried to rebuild what they could.

But no one had come. Peace, as much as could be found in the midst of an unceasing war, had returned to the island. Suki and the warriors eventually left their posts and helped restore the village. The damage had not been light but, miracle of miracles, the injuries had been. Many of the warriors who had directly engaged with the Fire Nation soldiers, especially those unfortunate enough to have tried to corner the prince, bore burns – thick pink splotches across their arms from where the flames had burned through their dresses –and some of the villagers bore minor wounds, scratches and bumps from falling debris, burns from trying to curb the flames. But none of the wounds were grievous and no one had died. For a skirmish against the Fire Nation, the village had shockingly come out well.

It had been a fluke, Suki had been sure. An unintentional byproduct of the prince’s single-minded determination to capture the Avatar and nothing more. Even the fact that no one had come to finish off  the island was chalked up to the prince’s obsession. What did a single island matter in the scope of capturing the world’s last hope, really?

She had thought it was indifference, not mercy, that had kept the Fire Nation from returning to their shores and the quiet hatred for the Fire Nation that had been instilled in her from birth bloomed into a fiery passion. The Avatar being back changed everything for Kyoshi Island and none of the elders had protested when Suki took her warriors to the mainland. There, she witnessed the full, terrible power of the Fire Nation and realized just how fortunate they were that it had been the prince who had landed on their shores. The prince was a beast but the refugees Suki had carefully watched over as they guarded the ferries had shown there were still worse things out there.

The dead eyes too afraid to meet her gaze, the thick, twirling splotches of badly scarred skin, the wailing thin-faced orphans were all the proof Suki needed that she had made the right choice and they were more than enough to wash away the enigma that was a prince who had burned half the village but left no dead.

Then she had met the princess of the Fire Nation and she had realized, truly, completely, the difference between a monster and a beast. The princess did not have as many rumors around her as the prince, a byproduct of having lived her entire life in the bosom of the Fire Nation. All that Suki had heard had been the official stories from the Fire Nation. The princess was beautiful and strong; the perfect heir to the rightful rulers of the world. Her intelligence and cunning were unparalleled; the control of her bending impeccable. She commanded loyalty wherever she went, people fell to their knees in awe of her.

It was all pigbullshit, Suki had thought whenever she heard people whispering about the princess. Surely the princess was strong – the ruling family had carefully researched and selected each potential spouse for their line for centuries, picking only the most beautiful, intelligent, and strongest of partners. A nonbender had not been married into the family line for a century – there had even been rumors that the missing Princess Ursa had come from a powerful secretive lineage, although her official genealogy had never been confirmed – and had any prince or princess been born without the ability to bend in just as long, Suki had certainly never heard of them. Each and every match was made with the virtual guarantee of the omega birthing children with amazing potential and that potential, the rumors had said, was finely honed the moment the child sparked.

Of course, with that sort of lineage and access to grand masters, the princess was strong. And of course, beautiful people tended to bear beautiful children. Her looks were also far short of unexpected. But at the end of the day, rumors or not, the princess was first and foremost a child. Any loyalty was born from her father’s strength, Suki had been certain. The rumors of her ethereal beauty and her abnormal strength were surely, in large part, Fire Nation propaganda. A testament of their superiority, that they could boast such a perfect child. In reality, Suki had been certain, the princess would not meet up to the rumors the same as her brother hadn’t quite matched his larger-than-life image when he had torn across Suki’s village.

The princess and her companions had left no dead when they had defeated the Kyoshi Warriors but that was where the similarities between her and her brother had ended. The prince had been largely indifferent to the Kyoshi Warriors – they were just an obstacle in the way of his goal – but the princess’s attitude was far worse than cruel indifference, she took great pleasure in causing pain and suffering.

She fought viciously, her goal total domination. The fact that all of the Kyoshi Warriors had survived, as much as it smarted Suki’s pride to admit, was a testament more to the fact that the Princess couldn’t have enjoyed their suffering if they were gone than to their skill. The Kyoshi Warriors were fierce but they lacked experience fighting against people as vicious and calculating as the Fire Princess and her two deadly companions. Their defeat was humiliating, terrifying, but not wholly unexpected.

The princess’s actions afterwards had been. Suki had expected to die, perhaps even be tortured for information about the Earth Kingdom before being put down as an enemy to the Fire Nation. The princess had other plans. She’d singled her out, separated her from the other girls, and refused to leave her alone even once she was placed in the Boiling Rock. And she’d taken great pride in telling her the latest about the war.

She had been the one to tell her Ba Sing Se had fallen. Suki had staunchly held back angry tears as the princess had regaled her in every detail, had come dangerously close to snapping when the princess had described, with relish, the look of bewildered betrayal on the Earth King’s face when he had realized he had welcomed snakes into his home.

Suki hadn’t been surprised when the princess had mentioned the return of her brother – she had known first-hand that the prince was a beast, even if he hadn’t come close to the terror that was his sister, so of course he had been biding his time in the Earth Kingdom capital, just waiting for the moment to strike and return to his rightful place in the Fire Nation capital, a shining beacon for the future of the Fire Nation. She had, however, not known what to make of the way the princess had spoken of him. The princess was good at hiding her thoughts, of projecting only cocksure confidence and boastful gloating, whenever she was around but Suki had gotten good at reading between the lines.

The princess had incredible control but at the end of the day, she was still just a child alpha, preening and proudful and absolutely sure a beta like Suki couldn’t put up any real challenge against her. Suki had dealt with her sort before and even if she hadn’t been able to do what she most wanted – which was to break out of her cell and remind the other girl very thoroughly that even though she had defeated Suki, she had hardly left the battle-field unscathed – she could still use the princess to gleam information just as much as the other girl tried to get from her.

And she had. Suki had learned that the princess wielded her confidence like a shield, her intelligence like a sword but she was overly arrogant and, although she tried to mask it, overly prideful in her abilities and too-sure of her position in the Fire Nation line. Whatever had happened to get her brother banished, it had been obvious the princess didn’t fear the same and she used her father’s name left and right, confident that whatever bond they had was fierce and unyielding.

Because of that, Suki had thought Azula would have considered the prince returning a direct threat to her power. She would have thought the return of the Crown Prince would have soured the princess but she had seemed smug when she unceremoniously announced it to Suki. Suki knew she had a hand in it, the princess had relished every detail of what had transpired in the caverns – and how hard it had been for Suki to keep control when she had callously announced the end of the Avatar, only her steadfast faith in Aang and the others had kept her from strangling the princess – but it had still been the prince who had supposedly struck down the Avatar and won his place back home.

 Azula couldn’t have done that for him anymore than she could have taken the victory purely on her own. She had not seemed the type to be content with only partial victory, even if that victory was bringing down the great walls of Ba Sing Se with an almost completely bloodless coup.

Suki had thought, at the time, that perhaps what had most pleased the princess was that she had cemented herself firmly to her brother without losing her father’s confidences. It had been a great political move, to bring back an exiled heir without earning the ire of the man who had ordered him gone, and perhaps Azula had thought her brother would owe her for giving him back his throne. Suki was sure that had been part of it, but it couldn’t have been all of it. Azula had been the favored heir for three years, guaranteed to take the throne as long as her brother was forbidden to so much as tread the waters around the Fire Nation, and she didn’t seem to relish in sharing anything.

Suki had thought, then, that Azula must have known something the rest of the world didn’t. She had thought that, perhaps, the throne had already been promised to Azula. It was common enough knowledge that the Dragon of the West, for all his prowess, had been snubbed at his father’s deathbed because of his lack of heir. Added on top of that was the well-known fact that the Crown Prince was a beta.

 Azula was the only alpha heir; had they been born to the Earth Kingdom, it would have been well within her rights to claim the throne over her beta brother, younger or not. Suki knew that the Fire Nation was not as steadfast about the social responsibilities between alphas, betas, and omegas but surely an alpha was still a more desired heir to a people so obsessed with violence and brutality.

But if that had been the case, it would have been announced when both royal children were back. There would be no reason to keep it quiet and even in prison, Suki would certainly have caught wind of something that significant.

The other odd part was how Azula talked about the prince. She had a possessive, almost proudful way of talking about him. It had reminded Suki of how she had overheard some alphas in the Earth Kingdom talk about omega family members. Or how others talked about pets. As though they were something to be owned and trained. And that made no sense at all. The prince was the elder, for one, and highly capable in his own right. He may not have had the overwhelming, monstrous abilities of his sister, but he was incredibly gifted in his own right. Had he been actively trying to defeat the Kyoshi Warriors rather than simply trying to blow past them in pursuit of Aang, Suki was sure they would have ended up in far worse condition than they had been left in.

And he had been the one to finally put an end to the Avatar, hadn’t he? At least, that’s what the Fire Nation had thought although Suki had never let go of her stubborn hope that Aang had survived. There was no reason for Azula to view him like that, as though she owned him in some way or as though she was responsible for any of his accomplishments. There had to have been something between the two siblings Suki didn’t know, some information or secret that would explain the contradictions in the princess’s behavior. Suki had devoted herself to find out what it was, but just when she had thought of several promising ways to rile some answers from the princess, she stopped visiting.

Suki hadn’t known why, at first. Chances were, the Fire Lord had ordered a lockdown on the information. It was not good for a prison, particularly one full of the most dangerous anti-Fire Nation prisoners, to get wind of any weakness in the system. But nothing can be kept back forever and eventually rumors and stories of a massive invasion started circulating in. Suki had been absolutely ecstatic at hearing about the return of the Avatar, so much so that she had hardly cared that the invasion had failed. Aang really had been bidding his time, and more importantly, he and Sokka and Katara and Toph had all managed to escape once more. It didn’t matter that they couldn’t find and defeat the Fire Lord, it was enough that they were still out there to fight another day.

And then the other information had hit and Suki understood why Azula had not come to visit. There would have been no reason for the other girl not to flaunt the Fire Nation’s victory over the invasion force – especially when they had managed to capture a good chunk of the Earth Kingdom rebellion and practically every Sea Wolf from the Southern Water fleet. Even with the Avatar fully back in the scheme of things, it had been a shattering victory for the Fire Nation. Another glorious gem of military might for them to add to their crown.

The defection of the crowned heir, however, was not. No matter how much the Fire Nation tried to suppress and spin the fact that the heir had left, there was nothing they could do curb the tide of rumors that surrounded the abrupt announcement that the Crown Prince had become one of the most wanted persons in the world, second only to Aang himself. 

Suki had, of course, wondered what had caused the prince to leave. Speculative possibilities ranging from the mundane to the ludicrous about why had dominated the prison’s gossip network, so even if it hadn’t already been on her mind it would have been impossible to avoid. Most of the prisoners had thought the prince, long disavowed as the less powerful heir, had grown sick of his sister’s power and, unable to weed her out, had seen his chance to break away during the invasion and had taken it.

Many of them thought he was bidding his time, hoping that the Avatar and his father would finish each other off and leave him the heir to the entire kingdom. It was logical and not outside the realm of possibilities – surely it had been less ridiculous than one wild theory she had heard that had claimed the prince had fallen in love with some Water Tribe or Earth Kingdom girl and ran off to work in a shop – but Suki had never been able to get herself to believe it.

Azula had never been named heir in all the years her brother had been in exile. The Crown Prince had been publicly welcomed back with parades in his honor; he had been set at his father’s right-hand side. Even before he was welcomed back, the fierce loyalty the prince had to the Fire Nation was well known. If the prince hadn’t openly rebelled even once during his years’ long exile – when he had a ship full of loyal soldiers and his esteemed general uncle by his side – why would he have done so alone after being welcomed back so openly?

No, Suki hadn’t thought jealousy had caused the split. It was more likely that, having discovered the truth of Aang’s death – or more accurately, the distinctive lack of it – the prince had fled before his father’s wrath could reach him. Suki didn’t know if the prince was a liar – he had definitely been very forthright with his intentions when he had come to her island – but the princess definitely was.

It was technically possible that the prince had concocted the story about the death of the Avatar to win his favor back, but the idea hadn’t quite sat well with Suki. More likely, the prince had thought he’d ended Aang and had been just as shocked as the rest of the world when the Avatar had revealed himself once more and had escaped before either his father or Aang could get to him.

It was what made the most sense, even if Suki had her misgivings. The prince had hardly seemed the sort to run away but what else besides fear would have sent him scurrying back from the home he had fought so viciously to return to? A change of heart was incredibly unlikely.

Or at least, that’s what Suki had thought before a suspiciously short guard had been unceremoniously shoved into her cell and upended her entire world view.

The relief she had felt at seeing any friendly face – let alone Sokka’s  - for the first time in months had been amazing but she had hardly had time to fully grasp it before a commotion had broken out in front of her cell. Sokka had left before he could give her even a single clear answer and Suki hadn’t hesitated to peer into the small slot in her cell door to try and gleam ones for herself.

Watching the struggle between what looked like two guards had been odd but it hadn’t taken long for Suki to realize what had happened. Sokka had left a lookout to cover for them – or rather the lookout had left themselves to cover as they must have been the one to push Sokka into her cell – and they had been forced to act when the evening guard had come. Most prisoners didn’t have many visits to  their actual cells but Azula had ensured Suki always underwent spontaneous checks even when the princess herself could not come to oversee them.

Suki hadn’t been able to tell who the other false guard was. The exposed skin peeking out from the slightly ill-fitting uniform was too pale to be Katara’s and they were too tall to be either Aang or Toph. It must have been another stray they had picked up, probably between the fall of Ba Sing Se and the present. There must have been at least a few people willing to join the Avatar, especially after the impressive, albeit thwarted, invasion. Whoever it was, they had obviously been trained well in hand to hand, their stance firm and movements graceful.

Suki had winced in sympathy when Sokka had been forced to join in. Suki knew him well enough to know that he must have absolutely hated to hurt his friend, no matter how necessary it was, and she understood his hesitation. Still, it was good that whoever he’d brought with him had taken the initiative and pretended to attack him. Arresting them would help Sokka seal his loyalty with the guard present.

Except, Sokka hadn’t made any effort to arrest the other figure and Suki had winced as the fake guard threw Sokka against the wall. That had to hurt something awful and for a half a moment, Suki worried that maybe they had somehow stumbled on another fake guard. Sokka certainly had that sort of luck.

But that couldn’t have been it either. Whatever Sokka’s faults, he did not waver in a true fight. He had to know the fake guard or he’d be fighting for his life, she had been sure of that. The other figure had to be an ally to make Sokka hesitate.

If he had waited any longer, the true guard would get suspicious though. He needed to make a show of arresting his friend – any plan Sokka could make would be dead in the water if the prison went into lockdown over a renegade guard. The only way they could move forward was with the arrest of whoever the figure was; Sokka had to have know that.

Yet he had made no move to stop them and Suki had been dumbfounded as other guards, undoubtedly drawn to the sound of the commotion, had come barreling down the hallway as a massive man yanked the figure off of Sokka.

Sokka had hardly moved when the fake guard was brought low and Suki couldn’t have prevented the stab of annoyance she felt at his face. Even half hidden under his hastily put on helmet, Suki had recognized that face. That was his stupid I’m-a-male-alpha-and-I’ll-protect-all-the-defenseless-ladies face and she had really thought she had beaten it out of his skull. Obviously, she hadn’t and sympathy for the other figure – a girl, probably if Sokka was being dumb about them – had flooded her as she watched the massive guard wrench their arms back.

Pity which had fled as quickly as it had come when the guard turned the figure away from Sokka, inadvertently facing them towards Suki’s cell. A helmet had still covered the figure’s head but Suki could clearly make out flashing golden eyes, one forcibly narrowed by deeply scarred skin. 

Suki would have known those eyes anywhere and they didn’t belong to any Earth Kingdom girl sympathetic to the Avatar’s cause.

Those were the same eyes that had set her home alight with no hesitation.

That had been the prince of the Fire Nation, the former crowned heir, and Suki had had no damned clue what he had been doing with Sokka, of all people. 

Sokka had not come back to her cell after they had taken the prince away and Suki hadn’t expected him too. It would have been far too risky. Unfortunately, that meant she had been unable to get any answers as to why exactly the prince was with him. Or why Sokka was suddenly so protective of him, the boy who he would have gladly smacked upside the head with his boomerang the last time she had seen him. Multiple times, with force.

Thoughts on why and how had consumed her as she waited for her chance. The prince hadn’t fled, like she and most others had thought, he had defected. There was no chance of anything else. Sokka wouldn’t have risked working with the other boy unless he was absolutely certain he would be no threat to Aang or any of the others, even factoring in whatever weird thing was happening between the two of them. And it couldn’t have been a defection because he wanted sole power over the world like his father or sister – none of the others would have risked working with the prince unless it was clear he wanted to end the war.

But why did he want to end the war? He had certainly never been the peaceful, pacifist sort before. And she hardly doubted that he had firmly grasped the horrors his people were inflicting on the world – if he hadn’t figured that out during his exile, there was no way he would have learned the lesson in the center of the Fire Nation.

For a moment, she had thought it possible that he had defected before the fall of Ba Sing Se and had only returned as a double agent of a sort but she had quickly dismissed the notion. That was Fire Nation thinking and, while she was certain the prince had some training in deceit and double-dealing, there was no way Aang or any of the others would have approved that sort of plan.

Being found out as a spy in the middle of the Fire Nation would have been an instantaneous death sentence. There was no way they would have risked putting an ally in that sort of long-term position without access to any help. Even if it was a former enemy.

He must have joined them after the failed invasion – or perhaps during it – but that still circled back to the original question. Why would the Crown Prince of a nation on the verge of winning a hundred years’ war suddenly defect to the other side?

Suki had not come close to any answer that night and she had gone to bed on her ratty mat with the question burning on her mind and it had been the first thing she had thought of when she awoke in the morning.

She had decided she would confront the prince in the courtyard. A fellow prisoner would be easier to address than a guard, provided that the prince was matriculated into the general population and not kept in seclusion until the Fire Lord could be told. She had been certain she could get answers out of him; she didn’t have to worry about being nice to him about it, the way she might have felt if she confronted Sokka first. And she hadn’t been above outright threatening him. Especially if his reasons for joining their side were less than ideal.

Suki hadn’t ended up having to search out the prince at all; she had barely begun swabbing a mildewy mop across the steel floor when the prince had appeared, his own mop in hand. Even though she had expected to be close to him at some point, her body had instinctively tensed the moment he fell into place beside her, remembering not so long ago fights and the sting of superheated blasts too close to her skin. But the prince didn’t try to attack her; physically or verbally, and the silence was a spiritsend.

It had been a golden chance to get answers from him; the boy – because without the protection of his Fire Nation armor or the added height of his thick leather boots she could see that he really was just a boy, hardly older than she was and that had just been another deeply disconcerting thought to add to all the others she had been forced to confront since she had realized Sokka was working with the prince – was awkward, obviously uncomfortable, and oddly not hostile. Had she not highly doubted any Fire Nation royal capable of it, she would have thought he was feeling guilty for what he had done to her home.

Most likely, he had felt awkward because they were suddenly on the same side. She would have been able to use that to glean whatever information she wanted from the boy, had Sokka not chosen that moment to loudly descend the steps.

He had looked oddly flustered as he glanced between the two of them. Flustered and obviously worried that Suki and the prince would begin fighting at any moment. She hadn’t been able to keep herself from pointing out that the former prince and her had already met and had been torn between incredulousness and dark amusement that the prince had looked so surprised.

Of course he hadn’t remembered her. Kyoshi Island had probably been one of many places he had tried to burn to the ground in his quest for the Avatar. She hadn’t even been able to bring herself to be truly angry when the prince had awkwardly offered an unsure apology. Especially when both boys had been looking at her as though she was a rabid sabertooth moose lion about to maul the prince. Honestly, she was perfectly capable of behaving herself and, with the arrival of Sokka dressed up as a guard, it hadn’t been the time to start interrogating the prince, no matter how much she distrusted his presence.

They hadn’t been talking for long before Chit Sang’s massive form had loomed over them but she had been surprised at how easily the former prince had fit in. He had crouched down by her without hesitation, even though his body had been tense and he had been obviously uneasy as though expecting an attack, and his attention had been absolute. He had kept his eyes away from her but he never spoke over them or acted as though their thoughts were lesser.

It was the exact opposite of how Azula had spoken to anyone in Suki’s presence and, had their escape plans not required her full attention, she would have allowed herself to ponder how exactly a prince had learned modesty. He had certainly been chock-full of arrogance as he had burned her home.

Chit Sang’s appearance had been worrying enough to temporarily dispel her ponderings about the contradiction that was the former Fire Prince. Suki had known of the man vaguely, a massive firebender who was regularly singled out by the guards wanting to make an impression on how “tough” they were. He had never been the sort to cause trouble for Suki, though, not like some of the preening alphas who thought a petite beta like Suki would curb their prison-born boredom – teaching those idiots better had been well worth the days of solitary confinement she’d earned - and she hadn’t known much about him.

She hadn’t trusted him at all, but she also knew it was better to try and keep him close than to let a potential risk walk away knowing Sokka wasn’t actually a Fire Nation guard. And he at least seemed sincere in his desire to escape with them and even if Suki couldn’t trust him having their backs, she could trust that he was just miserable enough in the prison to want to seize any possibility of freedom. He hadn’t provided much in the way of good inspiration but at least his appearance had sparked some creativity out of Sokka. She couldn’t say she had fully followed his plan of using a cooler, at least not at first, but at least it had been a plan.

One that had nearly been derailed as quickly as it had been started by Chit Sang’s refusal to go back into a cooler and whatever the hell problem Sokka had with the former prince doing it. Had Sokka not tried valiantly to get Chit Sang to volunteer for cooler duty, she would have thought it distrust that kept him from allowing the other boy the chance to commandeer a cooler. But there was no way Sokka would trust a complete stranger over an ally, no matter how unlikely the ally. And Sokka’s tone hadn’t conveyed distrust; rather, each one of his arguments had rang with the same tone he’d used against Suki during their crossing of the Serpent’s Pass.

Sokka hadn’t been acting as though he distrusted the prince, he had been acting protective. Not even just the standard big brother-style protectiveness Suki had seen him employ with Katara, Aang, and Toph. It had been the same disproportionate overprotectiveness that Suki had been subjected to because his sort of girlfriend had sacrificed her life and turned into the moon spirit.

And judging from how quickly the other boy became defensive, how fast his anger flashed as he spat words at Sokka, Suki had doubted it had been the first time he had dealt with overprotective Sokka.

What on earth could have caused that? Suki had understood where Sokka had been coming from when his loss of Yue had turned into a fear of losing her. They were both girls that he had cared a great deal about and even though he had made great strides in his sexist views of girls, he had still been an alpha raised to view himself as primarily a protector of omegas and beta girls. It had made sense for his instincts to go into overdrive around Suki, even though it had been completely unnecessary and she had been quick to – gently, that time – correct him.

But the former prince was not some damsel in distress. He was a boy, for one, and Suki had highly doubted that his beta orientation would have been enough to spark Sokka’s alpha protectiveness alone. She had seen him around the others and he rarely went that crazy even over his own sister. Mostly because Katara would lay him flat for trying and everyone knew it but Suki was certain the Fire Prince would have done the exact same thing. He was definitely more than capable of it and Suki had been positive he was considering doing it then and there, in that little alcove by the stairs, consequences be damned.

She wouldn’t have even blamed him if he had turned physical. Suki had happily laid Sokka flat when he had first tried his nonsense with her and even though they had become close – not quite just friends, not quite yet something more – she would not have hesitated to put him in his place had he tried it with her again. She had been grudgingly impressed, actually, that the prince hadn’t resorted to violence as Sokka continually insisted for Chit Sang to go to the coolers.

It had been odd, watching the two fight heatedly with no regards to their small audience and she had felt a strange sense of camaraderie with Chit Sang. It had been rather like watching old couples fight back home and that had been the strangest feeling of them all. There was an intimacy to Sokka and the prince, to the way they fought, to the way Sokka tried so hard to protect the other boy and the way the prince fought back. Like they’d known and worked with each for way longer than Suki knew could have been possible, and like they’d fought this fight before even though she knew their fights in the past had been far more physical and definitely hadn’t revolved around the former Fire Nation royal’s wellbeing, of all things.

She hadn’t been able to figure out what the big deal was. Chit Sang had acted like the coolers were torture – and she was sure they were. As a nonbender, she couldn’t say she had ever experienced what it was like to be kept from one’s element but she knew from hearing the horror stories from earthbenders that prolonged deprivation was like the loss of a sense or even a limb. She had to imagine, as much as she disliked them, that it was even worse for firebenders as they were the only ones who drew the element from inside themselves instead of the world around them.

Even then, the former prince had been at the forefront of a hundred-year war. He had lived on a ship for three years, chasing spirit tales; he had gone to the ends of the world and back. Suki may not have known how to feel about the boy but she did know that he would not have lived to be even fifteen if he were not capable of surviving in a cooler for a few hours.

Especially if he had been telling the truth and actually had taken a swim in the North Pole. Those waters were cold and dangerous enough that even the northern Water Tribe took great care not to actually end up in the frigid waves. If the prince had actually swum in them and been able to make a valiant effort in catching the Avatar in the middle of a full-blown siege, the cooler would have been nothing more than child’s play.

That revelation had taken Suki’s attention from the argument, briefly, but it had returned full forth by the prince’s final words. She had no idea what Sokka could have possibly promised the Fire Nation prince that was so powerful that the entire fight had been beaten out of the other boy at just a reminder, but it must have been big. Sokka was hardly one to apologize but he did so at the mere mention of his promise.

It had been just another layer of the sheer weirdness that had become Suki’s life. Part of her, a large part that remembered the smell of burning timber and the fearful screams of the people she had devoted her life to protect, had wanted to ignore it. Whatever was happening between the prince and Sokka wasn’t her business, regardless of her relationship with Sokka and the sudden, uneasy truce she held with the prince. But she had seen the stiffness in Sokka’s body as he left and she could literally feel the other boy’s anger and distress.

It was odd, how firebenders could literally heat up the air around them with their anger. She had gotten accustomed to it in the weeks she had been at the prison but those had all been from relatively weak or average benders, nothing more than flashes of irritation spiking in the air quickly smothered before any guard could accuse them of bending. The former prince, however, was not a weak or average bender and the heat rolling off of him had felt hot enough to scorch Suki’s skin if she brushed against him.

It had almost been like the panicky feeling of distress that would roll off omega children back home when they were frightened and not yet adept at keeping their emotions out of their scent. Which was ridiculous because the prince’s natural scent was so faint Suki couldn’t even place it over the general musk of the prison. That hadn’t mattered though, her mind had made the connection and Suki had never been able to ignore someone in distress; apparently former enemies were no exception to odd bouts of protectiveness.

She had thought it was fairly likely that she would regret her decision but that had never stopped her before. She had called out his name, wary and cautious, just far enough away from him that if he reacted violently, she would have time to step away from a fist or burst of flames.

His reaction had been explosive, but not violent. She had begun realizing, even then, that violence did not come as naturally to the prince as she had thought it had. He reacted more with bitter words than fiery flames, another strange aspect that marked him different from his younger sister. Perhaps it had been that lack of violence that had gotten her to continue, perhaps it was that, whether or not she understood it, she recognized the sort of all-consuming, bitter anger that had filled the prince.

No one born and raised on Kyoshi Island had been stupid enough to believe her and the warriors were incapable because of their sex and but she had encountered it enough on the mainland and from the few visitors who had shown up without knowledge of their tradition to recognize it. She’d had no idea how a beta boy had ever become personally accustomed to that sort of anger, the kind that made someone feel small or helpless even when they knew they were fully capable, the kind that almost never had a satisfying output because no matter how much one released the anger, it was unlikely they would change the mind of the person.

Sokka had been the rare exception, an alpha boy who realized his mistakes and apologized. Most didn’t; it had never stopped Suki from shattering their pride in a single well-executed swoop that always left them flat on their backs in the dirt but it was far less satisfying when the jerk in question just blew it off. Suki had grown up knowing that and somehow, for some reason, the prince must have as well.

She couldn’t help but feel a kindred spirit with him, even though she knew it couldn’t exactly be the same. Perhaps, it stemmed from an inferiority complex directed towards his younger sister. Perhaps, even though the Fire Nation showed no outward, public preference between orientations and allowed all three equal opportunity in the army, there was an implicit, private alpha-bias that had shaped his anger.

She hadn’t known, then, how close she had come to striking at the truth when she had compared Zuko’s heated anger to the scent of distressed omegas, how closely she had brushed the truth when she had figured it had something to do with his orientation – she could freely admit she had been clouded by her own biases. Omegas weren’t forbidden from the sacred ranks of the Kyoshi Warriors but they rarely joined and she knew, firsthand, how much harder Tani, the lone omega of Suki’s generation, had to train to gain the same muscle mass and strength of her beta and alpha counterparts. It hadn’t occurred to her, at the time, that Zuko could have been that naturally powerful and also an omega.

Even if, in hindsight, that explained so much about their resident idiot and his overreaction towards Zuko.

It had been strange, finding kinship with her former enemy; awkward to commiserate with the prince about something she had never expected him to understand, but it had happened. Suki had left that conversation with a lot of questions but also a budding trust. It was hard not to begin to trust someone over a shared experience – even if that shared experience was trying to give advice on how to handle an overprotective idiot – and, even if Suki hadn’t begun trusting Zuko as a person, she did begin trusting in his ability to enact the plan. After all, there were few motivations better than pure, simple spite.

She had felt completely certain, as she had watched Zuko stalk off to find Chit Sang once Sokka returned, that the boy would be just fine. Sokka, on the other hand, had very much not had that confidence and Suki had not wasted her chance to pounce on him the moment she had him alone. It had felt good to take some of her conflicting emotions out on Sokka and she hadn’t even needed to bother feeling guilty about it. Whatever was between the two boys, whatever lingering issues she personally had with the prince, Sokka had been in the wrong during their fight. He had been wrong in his treatment of the prince, wrong in the lack of confidence in his ability and Suki hadn’t been afraid to let him know that.

Zuko had come back with Chit Sang all too soon, in Suki’s opinion. She hadn’t even had the chance to really get any answers from Sokka before they were back and staging a fight. Sokka had gone ramrod straight during the “fight” and Suki had clenched his arm tight enough that she must have left a bruise but it had been necessary. She had no doubt Sokka would have run in if she hadn’t, would have forced Chit Sang away from Zuko before he summoned the necessary flames and ruined their chance at getting into the cooler. A regular fight would have earned Chit Sang and Zuko a day of solitary in their own cells; only fire bending got a prisoner sent to the coolers. 

So she had bruised him and Sokka had stayed in place as other guards had rushed in to break up the fight and drag both men away, Zuko to the coolers and Chit Sang to his own cell. It had been the perfect chance, with both their co-conspirators gone, to get some answers from Sokka but it only taken one look at the boy, one glance at the guilt and outright fear on his face, how bad of an idea that would have been. Instead, after a gentle pat on his arm to get his attention, Suki had listened as he distractedly whispered where and when to meet before disappearing back into the crowd of dispersing prisoners.

There had been two hours of time to waste before meeting at the blind spot. Suki had spent the time in her thoughts, hoping that she could make sense of the senseless ways Sokka acted around the prince, but she had come up with exactly nothing. By the time she had slipped out into the darkness outside the prison and snuck her way down to the shore, she had been no closer to figuring out the oddity.

She had been the first to arrive but Chit Sang had not been long after, guiding two people she had never met before and who certainly hadn’t been approved to join the prison break. She would have said something – even if she couldn’t turn them away, she hadn’t been about to let the obvious breach of trust go – but it was that moment, right on schedule, that a large metal monstrosity came barreling down the hill towards them.

Suki and Chit Sang had acted together to bring the cooler to a halt before it slipped into the boiling lake and it should have been a moment of triumph, them all standing at the shore with freedom at their fingertips. But there had been something wrong – something even more wrong – in the way the boys were acting. She had been able to feel it instantly without words and the feeling of wrongness had only been compounded when Zuko had approached her.  

He had explained quickly in a low, surprisingly calm voice. A new shipment of prisoners, the potential that Sokka’s father would be on it. She had listened and she had known, even before Zuko had begun giving her directions to the mountains the others were hidden in, that Sokka and Zuko were staying behind.

And that had been yet another confusing piece, hadn’t it? Suki had seen them fighting, had seen the frustration and the anger on the prince’s face, and yet with seemingly no question, Zuko had not only joined Sokka on this wild prison break but had planned on risking his own chance out on the vaguest possibility that they could rescue Sokka’s father. And he had done it without even talking to the other boy about it, which had become obvious by Sokka’s explosive reaction.

Suki had seen Sokka in a lot of ways. He had been angry and frustrated and embarrassed when she and her warriors had easily captured him and the others. He had been overconfident and ridiculously cavalier when he had come to their dojo; contrite and humble and somber when he asked for her to train him. He had been fierce and unyielding when the Fire Nation came; desperate, worried, scared and sad when they had met again at the train station and underwent the journey across the Serpent’s Pass. She had even seen him irritated and overprotective of the prince when they had fought about the cooler. But she had never seen him so angry that he had lost control. Sokka was a lot of things - sarcastic and goofy, intelligent and yet utterly lacking common sense and very little filter – but he was not cruel, never cruel.

His words to the prince had been cruel. Suki had no idea what sort of ghosts haunted Zuko’s past, but something had caused him to forsake his home, title, and family. Something in his past had caused him to be exiled by his own father for two years, something had caused him to understand discrimination at a level she never would have expected, something had caused the social awkwardness and the quick temper and the even quicker gaze that always seemed to lock onto the largest potential threat in every room he entered. And Suki would have bet decent money that it stemmed from the Fire Lord himself.

Sokka had to have known more about it than her. He had to know at least some of it, to cause him to act the way he did, and Suki had watched him throw it into Zuko’s face without even a thought.

Suki had never seen someone’s face turn so quickly. The red-hot anger had drained to shock but within a blink even that had disappeared. Zuko, who had been screaming loud enough that she had been half sure they would be caught by volume alone, had gone completely, deathly silent. Sokka, too, had suddenly looked drained; drained and horrified as though he had never once thought such words could come from him.

He had known, then, what kind of effect those words would have on Zuko. Suki had decided, then, when Zuko swung she would not stop him. Sokka would have earned it.

But Zuko hadn’t swung. He hadn’t yelled. He hadn’t even looked angry, in that moment. And his words, spoken so quietly she had to strain to hear them, were like ice.

And Sokka’s anger had frozen with them. It had been shocking, how quickly the fight had drained from the both of them. Sokka’s guilt, along with Zuko’s final words in the fight, had completely crushed his anger but Zuko’s had just disappeared. Suki hadn’t been able to tell if Sokka’s cruelty had shocked his anger out of him or if he had squashed it down far enough that it would never see the light of day again. She hadn’t been able to figure out which was worse, either, although she had known both were incredibly unhealthy.

Choosing to stay behind was ridiculously easy. Even if the boys had been in a good place, Suki would have chosen to stay. They – and how strange it had been to realize that Sokka and the former fire prince had become a ‘they’ in her mind – had risked everything for her and Suki had never been the type to stay behind and let others handle the risk for her. It was both her duty and her desire to stay behind and help them either rescue Sokka’s father or get their own selves out of the prison.

The decision was made even easier by the fact that the boys were not in a good place. Whether Zuko had temporarily displaced his anger for the sake of surviving the prison and intended to lash into Sokka once they were all free or whether he had smothered it completely, it had still been clear that he was far from happy. Suki had no idea what had caused the weird dynamic between the two, had even less knowledge on how she could possibly begin to help the fire prince, but she at least knew enough to tell that leaving them alone would have been nothing but a disaster.

Sneaking back into the prison had been a special sort of torture, only partially because she had known that, with every step away from the shore of the boiling lake and the cooler, she was giving up an almost sure-shot at her freedom and mostly because Zuko had gone absolutely, terrifyingly silent.

It hadn’t been like her and Sokka were chatting up the place – all three of them had been tense and quiet. One had to be quiet to sneak around a dangerous Fire Nation prison and Suki had highly doubted a single person would have been feeling chatty after giving up a chance for freedom just to embark on another dangerous mission.

Well, maybe Aang would have been chatty but the Avatar was far from the average person, even setting aside his ability to bend every element.

Any normal person would have been quiet but there was a clear difference between quiet and completely silent. No matter how lightly she and Sokka stepped, their footsteps couldn’t help but ring ever so gently across the metal floor – barely loud enough to be heard but certainly present to her sharp ears.

But Zuko’s steps made no sound, even in the shoddily made prison-issued shoes with their slightly weighted heels designed solely to make sound against the metal floor. Suki hadn’t known if he had special training to walk soundless or if it had been a personally acquired skill after several long years treading the metal floors of his ship but it had been clear that it wasn’t an unconscious habit. She had always heard his steps before and it had been disconcerting to learn that, at any time, he could have disappeared without anyone hearing him go.

Even more disconcerting had been learning how, with just that one skill, Zuko could have slipped out of the prison himself and left them behind. He had knowledge of Fire Nation waters, more than Sokka and her combined, and she had no doubt that he could have found his own way out of the Boiling Rock with the proper motivation.

Zuko had the ability and undoubtedly the knowledge to escape and leave them both behind. The fact that he had chosen to stay despite that had only made him even more of a giant question mark to Suki and the silent, nearly sleepless night she had spent in her cell had not made the enigma of the prince any clearer.

The morning had dawned bright and early. Suki had known the new day would not have lessened the odd tenseness between the two boys and she had tried to find at least one of them before they were all summoned to watch the arrival of the new prisoners. The rush of fellow prisoners combined with the fact that Suki slept in a different corridor of the prison made that impossible and she had been forced to watch the arrival of the new prisoners and the subsequent attempted show of force from the warden without them.

She hadn’t needed Sokka to know that the tall, darker-skinned prisoner who came out last was his father. Suki would have recognized the intelligent glint in his blue eyes anywhere – they shone with the same intense light as both his children’s. But even if she hadn’t known Sokka, she would have recognized Hakoda of the Water Tribe. His leadership and command were obvious in the way held he held himself – tall and proud even with his eyes lowered, his face set into an expression of calm defiance. She would have even been able to recognize, both from conversations about his home with Sokka and Kyoshi Island’s close proximity to the Southern Tribe, the beads that swung at the ends of his two braids.

She had felt comforted, for a moment, at the appearance of the man. Comforted and excited and even happy, that they had not given up their chance of freedom for nothing but a rumor. That excitement and happiness had given way to fear when Hakoda had gone against the warden only for that fear, in turn, to give way to elation when Hakoda, even forced on his knees in a sign of clear and reluctant submissiveness, had bested the warden and sent him sprawling in an embarrassing heap.

It was something Sokka absolutely would have done, without hesitation, and the similarity between Sokka and his father had comforted Suki far more than she would have expected. This was a good man and she had been happy that she had stayed with Sokka and Zuko, happy that she would be able to save this man and happy that she would be earning a fierce ally in the process.

That happiness, like most good things in the Fire Nation, had faded quickly after the warden, hardly having recovered from his humiliation, had angrily dismissed the new prisoners. She had finally caught sight of the boys – together, surprisingly – just in time to see that a guard had approached Sokka, a displeased expression clear on the bottom half of the face she had been able to see.

Suki had had no choice but to watch as the guard separated the two boys, sending Sokka down to the lower levels of the prison before another came to take Zuko who knew where. A not so small part of her had wanted to follow after one of them – it certainly hadn’t been a good sign that both had been carted off – but she had forced herself to act normal and stay behind in the courtyard. A good choice, it had been, as it hadn’t been long after Zuko’s tattered clothing had disappeared behind a corner that more guards had begun swooping through the courtyard, forcefully dispelling the prisoners back into their cells, undoubtedly a punishment from the warden.

She had worried; there was no use denying that. She had worried as she had paced between the corners of her tiny cell. The boys could handle themselves, Suki had been confident, but even knowing that Sokka and Zuko both had fought their ways out of tighter corners hadn’t been enough to stem the flow of dire what-ifs that had dominated her mind no matter how far down she had pushed them.

Suki would have freely admitted to the cry of relief that had escaped her lips when a soft knock had echoed through her door. Guards rarely, if ever, knocked on the massive cell doors – Suki had really only experienced it the few times the princess had deigned to visit Suki in her mockery of a bedroom and had needed to be announced by the guard – and only one ever knocked politely. The happiness she had felt at seeing Sokka’s bright blue eyes peer at her through the cell bars was near elation.

There hadn’t been time to act on that elation, no matter how much Suki’s mind had screamed at her to touch the other boy, to scan him and make sure he wasn’t injured. Time had quickly run out for them – Sokka had explained where he had gone and what Chit Sang had done for him as they had walked quickly to the upper courtyard, not even bothering to play pretend as they strode side by side – and they had needed to get to the others quickly.

It had been easy to catch sight of Zuko and Chief Hakoda standing stiffly next to each other, Zuko careful as ever to be just outside an arm’s distance – if Suki had had any time to spare, she might have marveled at how quickly she had become used to finding a certain pair of piercing golden eyes amidst of a sea of them. But there hadn’t been time for such thoughts, there hadn’t been time for anything except putting Sokka’s haphazard, daring plan into motion.

It had been a lucky break that Chit Sang had become just as good at spotting their group as Suki had; Chief Hakoda was undoubtedly skillful in many things but starting a prison riot was not one of them. It had taken Chit Sang mere moments, however, to get the newly assembled throng of prisoners rowdy and boisterous. Suki had taken a few precious seconds to marvel at the ease at which Chit Sang roused the crowed into a violent mob  alongside Zuko before Sokka had spurned them all into action.

She had raced through the crowd, at Sokka’s words, darting between flailing bodies and irate prison guards with practiced ease. Chief Hakoda had been slightly ahead of her, using his larger body to barrel through the throng while she twisted past them and a quick glance behind her had placed Sokka and Zuko together with Chit Sang none too far behind. Zuko’s face had been pinched with annoyance – whether at the crowding bodies around him or the tight hold Sokka kept on his arm, Suki hadn’t been sure.

She hadn’t had time to dwell on it - barely had they made it to the stairs when the warden’s loud, irate voice had pierced through the crowd, bringing with it a fresh wave of guards.

Suki hadn’t hesitated. With practiced motions, she had leapt over the new guards and up onto the upper court. Not a single guard had dared move as she had made quick work of securing the warden and it had taken only seconds for the rest of her group to get themselves together and meet her atop the courtyard.

The gondola had been mere yards away. Suki had really thought they were going to make it then - it wouldn’t have been the first wild escape Sokka had managed to pull off. Chit Sang had taken the warden from her and swung him over his shoulder as they had begun racing across the yard. They had nearly gotten to it – Chief Hakoda had even managed to tear open the door – when it had all come crashing down with a bright blue fire blast slamming into the gondola inches from him.

Suki had not been surprised to see Azula’s smirking face as she turned in unison with everyone. There was only one firebender with blue flames and Suki had been forced to become very familiar with them since her captivity. She had braced herself for more flames – Azula was not one to hesitate – but none had come.

Azula had been in a mocking mood; Suki had become accustomed to that sort of mood as well. The other girl liked to taunt; when she had a good catch, she liked to dig her nails in deep and draw blood before going for the kill. And a group like theirs, with two war leaders, one of the closest friends to the Avatar, and the former crowned prince certainly qualified as good catches.

Even knowing this, Suki had found herself blindsided by Azula’s words. She had found herself sucking in a breath at the girl’s casual cruelty as she directed it towards her brother. Suki shouldn’t have been so surprised by what the princess revealed – it explained so much, the prince’s orientation, and she had been an idiot not to realize. Sokka’s over-protection, Zuko’s odd understanding of sexism, Azula’s smug superiority. It had all come together when Azula spoke her deceptively soft, mocking words.

It had changed everything and yet nothing at all. Of course Sokka had gone overboard while faced with an omega royal – certainly Zuko, with his vicious tenacity and powerful firebending was the opposite of the soft-spoken, kind Yue Sokka had told her about, but that would have hardly mattered to Sokka’s instincts. Suki had tried to talk him down from the guilt he felt about losing Yue but she had always known that wasn’t something that just went away. He must have been determined not to fail Zuko.

It was stupid, pure alpha-nonsense, but Suki could see where it had come from. And she could, while faced with Azula’s obvious disdain for her omega brother, also understand Zuko’s odd reaction - a mixture of a nearly violent refusal to submit and reticent, bitter acceptance. Azula’s words had been beyond cruel – Suki’s understanding of Fire Nation dynamics was far less than her understanding of Earth Kingdom ones but she had been fairly certain that, no matter how equal it might have been between the orientations, calling an omega a whore because they were in the company of an alpha was just about one of the worst things one could say.

Suki had expected Zuko’s anger to flare up at his sister – his patience had been at the end of a very frayed rope to begin with dealing with Sokka – but he hadn’t. He had been calm, far calmer than Suki had thought the situation warranted anyway and far, far calmer than she would have been if an alpha had dared speak like that to her – and when he had begun responding to her, his voice had been steady and carrying.

It had been the steadiness in his voice that had grounded her from her thoughts. He must have had a plan, to speak so calmly, and so she hadn’t been all too surprised to see the motions of his hands, hidden behind his back and small enough to certainly be imperceptible to anyone in front of him. Sokka had caught on as well – Suki hadn’t been surprised by that either; he had had eyes almost exclusively for the prince since they had reached the upper courtyard and Suki knew his gaze had always bene sharp – and had lightly grazed against her in an unnecessary warning.

When Zuko had finally struck out, sending a tremendous wall of flames out across the courtyard to split their side from Azula’s, Suki had been ready. She had turned and sprinted into the gondola – she had hated leaving Zuko to deal with Azula but she had known, out of all of them, only Zuko stood a sizable chance of keeping the princess and her two lackeys at bay. It had been better for them to gain control of the gondola than to rush in to try and help him.

Chit Sang and the chief had had the same idea – although Suki had overheard the chief’s reluctance and the forceful way Sokka had responded to it – and she had ended up tense and ready to protect the gondola alongside the two men with the warden stuffed unceremoniously into the corner. There, her eyes had been torn between watching Sokka make his way towards the lever that controlled the gondola and Zuko fight with his sister.

It had been blinding, awe-inspiring even, to watch the two royals. Suki had seen her fair share  of firebending – she had even found herself fighting against both the royal children at separate times. She had thought she knew their strengths, thought she had already seen the heights their firebending could reach. She had been wrong. Whether the two had held back against non-firebenders – a distinct possibility what with Azula’s obsession with taunting and gloating and Zuko’s nice streak Suki had only barely begun to recognize – or their power had increased exponentially in the months Suki had been in prison, she didn’t know.

What she had known, what she had become aware of on that platform as she watched the two fight, trading ribbons and blasts of fire between each other as though engaged in a deathly dance, was that the two were on an entirely different level than she had ever expected.

She had known that the power of royal family was great – it would have to be, to hold control over a nation as obsessed with strength as the Fire Nation was for so many centuries – but it was one matter to know that their strength was formidable and to actually witness the power of a family that had born monsters capable of beating back volcanoes and level entire cities in a single breath.

It had been mesmerizing, beautiful in a macabre, terrifying way that had the breath catching in Suki’s throat and she had found herself watching Zuko, watching the way his lithe body twisted as he kept Azula’s flames as far from his body as he could and summoned his own to keep her at bay. She had been able to tell, no matter how powerful Zuko was, that he was slowly, surely losing ground.

He hadn’t been a match for his sister – not quite – and she had been able to tell he knew it. The knowledge hadn’t stopped him – Suki had been sure nothing but death would have been enough to stop Zuko – and Suki had been certain, even if Zuko was unable to fully defeat his sister, he would be able to keep her back until Sokka gained control of the lever.

But he hadn’t needed to. Azula had been stopped, not by Zuko’s fiery determination, but by pure shock.

Suki couldn’t have even blamed her. She had been shocked too, when she saw a glittering blade fly past Sokka’s crouched form to embed itself in the guard sneaking up behind him.

Mai had been a distant figure to Suki – she had fought the alpha, certainly, and she had been a silent shadow to Azula on most visits – but they had hardly interacted. Suki knew nothing about her apart from her viciousness and her fierce loyalty. Hadn’t even, in fact, known who the loyalty had truly belonged to. She had thought her Azula’s companion, through and through, not Zuko’s.

Judging from the way she had locked eyes with Zuko before both had looked at the third girl, bubbly, terrifying, annoying Ty Lee, perhaps it was not even the prince who held her loyalty, but someone else entirely.

Most of the rest of the fight had been a blur of action for Suki. She had listened, blindly, when Zuko had roared for them to take Ty Lee onto the gondola; she had fought her way through the guards willing to push on even after their princess had been waylaid by treachery. Even with the blur of fighting, even after making her way to the gondola, she had caught sight of Zuko breathing fire.

Suki was Earth Kingdom; even in faraway Kyoshi Island, they knew of the Dragon of the West and his deadly ability. The stories however, paled in comparison to the true terror.

Paled in comparison to the beauty, too, for there was a dreadful beauty in the prince as he unleashed the flames against their enemies, unleashed the terror born of a thousand stories, and stopped all the guards in their tracks. Suki had been mesmerized and then horror-stricken, when she realized that the gondola was well on its way and both Zuko and Hakoda were nowhere near close enough.

It had been heart stopping to watch them run, gut-wrenching, even with all her battle training, to watch them take a desperate leap of faith, and utterly relieving when their hands had caught with Chit Sang’s and Sokka’s.

That relief had been short lived. Mai had not made it – had not even tried to make it – and no matter that there was unforgiveable blood split between the Kyoshi Warriors and the two Fire Nation girls, Suki could not stop her heart from cracking as Ty Lee had collapsed onto the cold metal floor, her sobs the only sounds on the gondola.

A silence had fallen them, then. One that felt too disrespectful to break. Suki had heard Ty Lee’s words through her sobs, had seen the hurt, broken, lost look that had bloomed on Zuko’s face; she knew what mourning looked like.

Mai would not survive her treachery. She had bought them a chance at freedom at the cost of her own life; there were no words that could ease that pain.

Ty Lee had put herself together in startling time; by the time the gondola had made it to the other side, she was up once more, Zuko a shadow at her side. Still, no one had dared break the quiet that had fallen them and one by one, they had followed in silence as Ty Lee had led them to the Crown Princess’s airship, leaving the warden behind, silent, in the corner of the gondola for others to find and rescue.

If either Zuko or Ty Lee had any feelings about stealing the only way out of the Boiling Rock, neither showed it and they all made quick work of checking the ship over for any remaining people before the former prince had settled into the back of the ship to begin fueling it. Ty Lee took a place near him, still deathly silent.

He must have been tired, Suki had thought as she watched him blast small bursts of flames into the engine as they began ascending in the air. But nothing showed on his face. Suki had turned from him to take stock of the others. Chit Sang seemed unbothered, his eyes already roving the ship, likely looking for anything of value. If Ty Lee and Zuko’s reaction to Mai was unexpected from him, he didn’t show it. Neither did he show any sense of sympathy. Knowing how the prisons were, Suki did not necessarily blame him.

Hakoda’s face was unreadable to her; she did not know the Water Tribe’s chief as well as she knew his son or his daughter and he did not wear his emotions as readily as them. There was a shadow in his eyes as he glanced at the Fire Nation teens, but Suki could not read it. Suki did not think he disapproved of them - he seemed too practical of a man – but he did not look ready to comfort them either.

With a bit of trepidation, Suki had moved her gaze to Sokka. He looked, for lack of better words, gutted. Whether it had been the fight, Azula’s cruel words, his own stupidity – and he had been stupid, for his treatment of Zuko and once things were on solid ground for all of them, Suki would be addressing that before the boy did something worse and got a faceful of dragon flames for his trouble – or the display of raw emotion that had come from Ty Lee, Suki couldn’t say. Most likely a combination of all of it had left Sokka looking more lost than Suki had ever seen him, his eyes fully locked on the former prince but unwilling to go to him.

He would be no help either; his emotions were too conflicting, too raw, and Zuko’s own emotions about him had to be as well. One wrong word, one misstep in an attempt to comfort, and they would all be going down in a fiery deathtrap.

Suki had just escaped prison with the most unlikely group in the history of the world; she had not done that just to die in the end because of an alpha’s stupidity.

Which left her in the position she found herself in now, approaching the former Fire Prince and the noble who had once helped catch her on soft feet, trusting Sokka’s mess to his father and leaving Chit Sang to disappear in the ship, on the hunt for any valuables that caught his eye.

She knew Ty Lee and Zuko had talked, in low voices that had not carried, but she was surprised at how much better the girl already looked as she turned to her, her grey eyes bright in a way that did not threaten tears for the first time since Suki had thrown her into the gondola. Zuko, however, had tensed all over even before he had turned to her, obviously sensing her presence, and dread and wariness warred across his face.

“Um,” Suki was not a comforting person. Sokka at the Serpent Pass has been an exception, not the general rule. She had normally left that sort of thing to Tani back home– not because her friend had been the only omega, but because Tani knew all the words to say to comfort people.

The fact that she knew those words because she had been taught by the elder omegas on Kyoshi was not, in truth, lost to Suki, but she did not want to focus on that now. She would uncover the biases on her home when she was back on the island and could work on them, and focus on what problems lay in front of her now.

Like a former prince looking closer to murder at ever silent second that stretched between them.

“Hi!” It was Ty Lee, predictably, who broke the silence. Her voice was not as bubbly as Suki had learned to expect, but it was a remarkable effort. Suki was reluctantly impressed at how well the other girl could hide away her emotions; artifice without masks, a cheery grin hiding a broken heart.

“…Hello.” Zuko’s voice was much more lukewarm, no hiding his own hatred of having her here. But he was not yelling yet, and the flames he was releasing were obediently disappearing into the kiln before him rather than heading towards her face, so Suki knew it could have been worse.

“… I just wanted to make sure you were okay.” She admitted after a moment of waiting silence, gambling that the small amount of goodwill she’d built up with him would get across how she meant it.  Zuko tensed even further, a dark expression etching itself across his face.

“I’m fine.” Dismissive and angry was his tone and Suki held back a wince. Ty Lee, to the side, did not bother. “Go away.” He added, half turning from her.

“Zuko!” Ty Lee’s voice was admonishing.

“Please.” He added, although the word sounded half-strangled from the effort it took to be polite. It had sounded raspier too, as though it had raked over the hot coals of Zuko’s anger to escape him.

Suki had faced worse and she was not about to back down. She was not good at comforting, necessarily, but she knew how to get to the heart of a matter quickly. Zuko would probably appreciate some bluntness anyway. “No. You need to be checked in on, the both of you,” she glanced at Ty Lee as she added that, taking in the way her expression seemed to shutter momentarily before pushing on. “Not because you’re an omega or because I don’t trust you – “she glanced again at Ty Lee, making it clear that the girl was included in the second part “- but because you’ve both just been through something stressful and traumatic and I don’t trust any of those guys to actually be able to check on you without royally pissing you off.”

Zuko seemed to take a minute to listen to her words, but the tenseness did not leave his frame. “Not because an omega?” he repeated, guarded, and Suki was glad that she had trusted her instincts.

“Definitely not.” She confirmed, and that was that. She did not feel the need to add any clarifications. It had never made her feel better, when someone would try to prove that they did not care that she was a girl warrior by listing all the strong women in their lives, as though strength in femininity was an exception rather than the rule. She could only imagine Zuko would have a similar reaction. “And my offer still stands that I’ll hold Sokka down when you punch him in the face.” She added, straight-faced. That startled a giggle from Ty Lee and even a brief snort from Zuko. Some of the tension leaked from the boy’s frame.

Or at least it had until he’d realized Ty Lee’s giggle had caught the attention of others in the room and he’d tensed all over again as Hakoda glanced at them. “Might not be just Sokka.” Zuko admitted, a somber bitterness back in his voice. Suki offered a nonchalant shrug.

“I took down the warden of the most secure prison in the Fire Nation. I’ll take the chief by surprise and you can punch him too.” That got her an almost smile. Even if Zuko wasn’t as monstrous as his sister, it seemed violence could still win his heart. Suki could admire that, in a way. As long as it wasn’t directed at anyone who didn’t deserve it.

“Seriously though,” Suki took the levity in Zuko’s expression as her chance. “You’ve been through a lot and I can’t imagine you slept at all in your cell. Are you okay?”

Zuko’s expression shuttered but there was barely any bite in his voice as he answered her. “I’m fine.”

Unfortunately for him, Ty Lee responded at the same time, “He’s exhausted.”

Suki had admired the Fire Nation girl’s strength before – mostly begrudgingly – but never more than she had in that moment as the other girl refused to back down from the sudden, fierce glare lobbied her way. “She’s nice, Zuko. She’s not going to attack you just because you admitted you were tired. And don’t even try that “I’m fine” nonsense with me, I know you. Your breathing’s been off this whole time!”

“My breathing’s fine!”

“Nuh-uh!”

“Yeah-h – urgh, I’m not doing this with you! I’m fine!”  Zuko’s words may have been convincing, had the next flame he’d tried to shoot into the awaiting kiln not sputtered into sparks before fully leaving his palm.

Suki knew not to panic, but not even she could fully beat down the sudden unease that swelled in her stomach. The feeling was not abated even as Zuko produced a proper blast.

“Your breathing? What’s wrong with your breathing?” Her tone was measured, controlled, and most importantly, quiet. The last thing they needed was an overbearing Sokka overhearing. Suki was mostly certain the boy had learned his lesson about underestimating the former prince, but a medical emergency would likely send him spiraling.

“Noth –“

“It’s like totally out of sync!”

“You’re exaggerating! It’s not like I’m dying!”

“Barely. I’m barely exaggerating, you’re not breathing right!”

“Is there anything we can do?” Suki broke in before the fight could turn ugly. They fought like siblings – proper siblings, not whatever messed up trauma-bond the Fire Nation royal siblings had that apparently caused them to try to literally kill each other – and it would have been cute had the situation not been what it was. Suki trusted Zuko enough to believe that if he was actively dying, he would say something, but improper breathing still did not sound particularly good. Firebending came from the breath, she had heard before, and Zuko had breathed flames. Could that have burned his lungs?

“It’s just from exhaustion. Barely anything. Ty Lee has always been dramatic.”

Ty Lee’s response to the latest shot at her was to stick her tongue out and loudly blow at the former prince, demonstrating her apparently healthy breathing. Suki, with all the grace born from training the younger girls back home, ignored the antics.

“Rest would help, then. Chit Sang could take over.” Suki knew her suggestion was dead in the water before she’d even finished saying it. Zuko’s face was easy to read and distrust was etched into every crevice; she did not even blame him. She’d trusted Chit Sang to offer his brute strength and he’d delivered, but she was not terribly fond of the idea of trusting him to know how to steer the airship they were in or even if he could or would bring them to the right place. “What else could we do then?”

“Zuko could stop being a stubborn jerk.” Ty Lee suggested, her cheerful tone remarkably convincing despite the sharpness of her words. Suki was positive Zuko would have been yelling, in other circumstances, and she wasn’t too happy that she couldn’t tell if his lack of volume was to keep Sokka and Chief Hakoda from overhearing or because he didn’t currently have the lung capacity.

Could lungs even burn from the inside?

“I’m not about to trust some prisoner we just met to steer us where we need to go, Ty Lee –“

“I’m not asking you to! Just letting go would help!”

Suki had no idea what “letting go” meant, but from the expression on Zuko’s face it was clear the meaning was not lost to him. He looked torn between further anger and sudden uncertainty.

“Letting go of what?” Suki questioned before the anger could win out. Zuko didn’t respond, so she turned her gaze to Ty Lee.

Ty Lee was glaring at Zuko, all the false cheer gone from her face. “Come on, Zuko.”

“Let it go, Ty Lee.” Zuko retorted. Another blast spluttered in his hand before he created another.

“I know you never, ever let go, but if they already know, what’s the harm!” Ty Lee was cajoling now. Suki was massively confused and quietly hoped that Hakoda was having more luck with his son than Suki was with the prince. Zuko wasn’t angry at her, but she was becoming increasingly more concerned for his general wellbeing.

“I just don’t want to right now!”

“You’ll feel better! I’ll go first!” Before Suki even knew what she was talking about, Ty Lee’s faint scent suddenly exploded and Suki’s face crumpled into confusion at the delicate, unfamiliar floral scent in the air.

And oh, did that explain a few things. And raised a few more questions. But Suki couldn’t focus on any of those.

Suki didn’t fully turn around, but risked a quick glance over her shoulder to gauge everyone’s reactions. Chit Sang, she was sure, wouldn’t have even cared if he had been in the room, but she was more worried about the Water Tribesmen’s reactions. Sokka, who had been in the middle of apparently getting his hair fluffed up by his father, was valiantly trying to keep the shock off his face and losing horribly and Hakoda’s eyes had widened. Suki caught his surprised eyes and gave a slight shake of his head. The older man’s expression had gone neutral at that but his hand had moved from Sokka’s head to his shoulder, keeping him firmly by his side.

Suki turned back to the Fire Nation nobles, certain that their pocket of quiet would not be disrupted yet.

 Zuko looked torn between concerned and mortified, his gaze shifting from Ty Lee to the Water Tribesmen behind Suki. If Ty Lee was worried about suddenly revealing her orientation to three alphas and a beta who had been her enemy less than an hour before she didn’t show it, her expression coaxing and earnest.

“See, easy! You’ll feel better! I do!”

Suki had many questions, but she decided to focus on the most pertinent. “Hiding your scent, it hurts you guys?” Scent masking was not something practiced on the island, nor anywhere she had experienced in the Earth Kingdom, apart from perfumes and scented oils, but she knew it was common enough amongst the Fire Nation. It was known that non-benders could do it so it was not a fire bending ability, but it was still considered far too Fire and unnecessary for anyone in the Earth Kingdom to adopt.

 As such, she had never much cared for how they did it but she had never once fathomed it hurt them.   

“It doesn’t hurt. It’s not even that big of a deal.” Zuko was quick to retort, his voice defensive.

Suki now knew enough to not take his word for it. She was partially convinced that Zuko could lose a limb and still call himself fine because he had three others. She turned to Ty Lee instead, an eyebrow raised in question.

The girl was quick to throw her former prince to the owl wolves. “It’s not actively harmful, but it can be really tiring long-term. Essentially to do it, you partially block your chi –“

“You block your chi to hide your scent?” Suki didn’t mean to interrupt or sound horrified, but she was certain something must have colored her tone. But could anyone blame her? Blocking one’s own chi was to purposely debilitate oneself and these two did it as though it was nothing. The whole Fire Nation treated it as though it was nothing.

“Only a little! And only on the surface! It’s like putting clothes on really, no lasting damage! But it requires a lot of concentration and control so people have to be trained really early on it and it can kind of feel like you’re weighed down; that’s why a lot of alphas don’t bother and most omegas who do it only do it when, like, they are fighting. Or when they smell really strong ‘cause it’s distracting to others and that’s really rude!”

Suki was trying very hard to keep her calm but she was inwardly reassessing every interaction she’d had with both Ty Lee and the former prince. If they fought like that while partially obscuring their own life energy she never wanted to face against them again. “I don’t mean to sound ignorant, but if requires that much control –“ she was not equipped to touch the ‘only a little chi blocking!’ part, “why bother?”

That earned her an incredulous look from both the nobles. “Well, it really wouldn’t be good to be caught by an enemy as an omega, would it, silly?” Ty Lee responded after a moment and Suki felt like an idiot.

She knew what could befall beta women and omegas should they end up on the wrong side of an enemy. She even knew, from rumors and hearsay, that Earth Kingdom soldiers were most likely to keep omegas as prisoners of war than any other Fire Nation orientation. Polite custom dictated that it was because it was unseemly to kill an omega, but Suki knew enough of the world to realize that not every omega was kept alive for such lofty reasons.

It shouldn’t have really surprised her, then, that omegas would choose what they considered a more honorable fate, and die as beta soldiers than be kept as omega prisoners. She was a little ashamed that it hadn’t occurred to her without asking. “Right. Sorry, that was a stupid question. But you don’t need to do it now, right? It’s not like omegas are always supposed to be scentless?” There had been a few omegas on the female side of the prison and none of them had bothered with the scent blocking. But it could have been a royal thing.

“Nope! The only other time is if you’re like, fresh out of a heat or something, ‘cause it’s pretty gross to be announcing that to everyone, you know?” Suki pretended not to see the way Zuko seemed to flinch at Ty Lee’s words just as much as she pretended to understand what the other girl saying.

 Scents were not hidden away in the Earth Kingdom – people were far more likely to use oils and perfumes to accentuate their natural scents, after all, not try to hide them – and it felt odd to consider any part of them gross but she figured that was not a cultural battle she would be winning anytime soon. “I never bother and since I know you guys are safe, I’m not going to. Zuko’s just weird like that. He’s always hiding his scent like he’s about to be attacked at any moment. It’s ridiculous and exhausting to be around sometimes.”

Ty Lee threw a pointed look at Zuko at that, who responded with another glare.

Suki decided to intervene before the staring could turn into another verbal spat. Asking more questions also had the added benefit of ensuring she did not have to consider the very plausible fact that Zuko might just constantly walk through the world believing that he could be attacked at any moment. “Well, how –“

“If I let my scent go, would you both please stop talking about this?” Zuko seemed to finally snap and Suki felt a little guilty at the obvious discomfort in her voice. Not enough to refuse to exploit it – she nodded along with Ty Lee without hesitation – but enough to consider the necessity of an apology once they were safely at the temple.

Zuko seemed too tired to actually argue and just a moment later, Suki was blinking back surprise at yet another new scent.

Ty Lee had a delicate scent, floral and bright like a Spring meadow, pleasant enough but not that much more noticeable than her masked scent. Zuko’s however –

It was floral as well, something similar to the silver lilies that dotted the southern tip of the Earth Kingdom, but fiery, as though the blossoms were set aflame. There was nothing delicate in the scent but neither was it anything close to pungent or unpleasant, the way other strong scents could be. It was the type of scent that most Earth Kingdom omegas would pay very good coin for.

The kind that would very much had attracted the worst kind of attention and Suki understood a little better why he might have thought it easier to stamp it down. A part of her was furious that such a thing was ever necessary.

She refused to be weird about it though; she wouldn’t be. Instead, she focused on the way Zuko’s shoulders seemed to ease, as though a weight had truly been lifted. She hadn’t even realized there still was tension in his body until it was gone.

But she wouldn’t be weird about it, even as she moved to partially obscure Sokka’s view of the former prince.

She had no idea if Zuko had ever released his scent around Sokka - Sokka certainly hadn’t endeared himself in any way that would have made Zuko feel safe – but she wouldn’t let him ruin the very little relaxation Zuko seemed willing to give himself.

“There you go! That’s better, right?” Ty Lee crooned; if she had been surprised by Zuko’s scent, she didn’t show it and Suki took that as a sign that her instincts had been correct about not showing her reaction.

“…Yeah.” Zuko’s response was quiet, reluctant, but at least it was real. He seemed a little unsure when he glanced at Suki, so she made sure to offer him a small, encouraging smile. “But don’t be weird about it! Everyone else got weird about it.”

So he had released his scent with the others. Yet another strike against the Fire Nation, that their former Crown Prince had evidently felt safer amongst his enemies than he had back home. Suki would store that in the back of her mind, ready to be unleased when it came time for the next battle and she needed righteous anger to push through the fight.

“Everyone else is stupid, then. I’ll help you punch them too.” Suki wished she could offer the boy more, wished she understood a little more about Fire Nation culture, about what poisonous words had been poured into his ear – his and Ty Lee’s and probably every other omega as well – that made him so fearful of losing control, so adept at hiding their true emotions, wished she understood a little bit more of how he experienced the world, so that she could know what words to offer that would help. But Suki only knew of her own experience and what she had gleamed from her limited interactions with him, so she focused on what she could offer.

Violence, perhaps, would not solve any of the issues Zuko faced, but it was a worthy promise for the smile, brief and small, it brought to his face.

Suki did not know much about the former Fire Prince, not yet, but as she took in his little smile and glanced around the room for all the reactions of the others – Chit Sang still had not reappeared and perhaps it was some survival instinct that kept him away rather than a search for valuables, but Sokka and Hakoda were still in the corner, making a valiant effort to appear nonchalant – she rather thought they were close to being friends, regardless of their history. And she was protective of her friends.  

For now, the peace would be kept. They were already in the mountains Zuko had told her about, close to where the others awaited them in the Western Air Temple. Ty Lee seemed content that Zuko was not overexerting himself and Suki would take her lead on that, and they would be safe soon.

Once they arrived, she would see firsthand how weird everyone acted, and perform her new duties as Zuko’s friend accordingly.

She resisted cracking her knuckles as she glanced over her shoulder to where Sokka still stood with his father, apparently smart enough to not approach Suki’s little group, but it was a near thing.

Sokka, sometimes, had a very punchable face, after all.   

Perhaps the others did as well.

Notes:

Um. Hello, GinnyRose here. It's been... several minutes. I'm sorry that's been so long and I really appreciate anyone who has still been reading and engaging with this story. In all honesty, I never meant to abandon this work but for a while, it had felt more like a labor than enjoyable writing and it took me a while to find my way back to it. I never meant for that to be three years, but I have a hard time coming back to things when it has been so long. A lot of things have also happened in my life. I moved across the country (again) and I also graduated from my second master's program; these changes have allowed me to have more time to get back into writing and while I have been writing other works, I really wanted to come back and try to finish this series now that I have more time. Probably some of my others as well, but this one is my current goal.

I am not going to make any promises that this will be updated again anytime soon, as those have historically not gone well for me. What I will say is that I am going to focus on actually plotting out and writing a good amount of the overarching story rather than focusing on it piece by piece, in the hopes that this works better for me, before posting again. My goal is to have this series completely finished by the end of the year, so there is a good chance you will not hear from me again until then. It may be slightly longer as well, but please know that I am actively working on it again, even if you see me post other works.

I hope you enjoyed Suki's POV, I found her kind of difficult to get a grasp on, but when I did it turned into a behemoth of a story, mainly because I needed to go through her POV for everything to feel like I had a proper grasp on her characterization and what she would think of Zuko and, to a smaller extent, Ty Lee. Hopefully, the length of this can be forgiven as a good refresher from the previous stories? I definitely enjoyed writing her once I got the hang of it and there is a good chance her POV will appear again in future stories in this series.

Ty Lee, too, was incredibly fun to add. I hope I did her character justice, toying the line between how observant she is, how well she hides her emotions, and how naturally cheerful she is. She is going to be both a boon to Zuko's social awareness in coming stories and a curse upon him, because she canonically and in this universe annoys the absolute hell out of him. They are basically siblings, in other words.

This was definitely the calm before the storm. Sokka may have learned his lesson, but Suki and Zuko don't know that, and they still have to deal with everyone else. That added with Zuko's canonical lack-of-self-preservation skills is going to ensure a bumpy transition to proper understanding. Suki may have been willing to compromise his health for his comfort, but others absolutely aren't. I look forward to writing that and other parts of this series.

Again, thank you to everyone who has kept with this story over the years and particularly to everyone who never gave up encouraging me to find my way back to it. I hope that you stick with me a little longer and I promise to try to update again before another three years pass.

Notes:

Thanks so much for reading! I'm sorry it's been such a long time but work switched my schedule and it's been an adjustment period. On a happier note, due to how I originally had this story outlined and how it ended up being, I already have a third of the next chapter written so it shouldn't be as long of a wait until the next update! This work is more of a filler between Boiling Rock and returning to the rest of the Gaang but I thought it was a good time to add some of Hakoda's (and next chapter Suki's) voices. I enjoyed writing in different POV, but I was a little nervous about Hakoda because I know a lot of you were thinking that he was going to be even worse than Sokka when it came to omegas but I honestly thought that, having lived in the tribe when it was larger and having been abroad for multiple years, Hakoda would have a more nuanced opinion on orientations than Sokka, who had been more or less left as the sole alpha and only warrior of the tribe for years. I hope you guys liked where it went anyway, and thank you again for reading!

Series this work belongs to:

• Part 5 of Zuko Omegaverse