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There is a moment where he thinks that he will shake apart, right there on the stones of the courtyard. He feels the tainted energy of Azula’s last shot coursing through his veins, poison as it arcs out from his fingers.
Isn’t it fitting?
Scarred by his father, come back home to be killed by his sister.
If Zuko wasn’t so sure he was dying, he would laugh.
As it is, he strains to reach the blue fire that shoots towards Katara. She’s supposed to live. She has people who need her.
His hand falls, limp, to the ground.
On the ground of his ancestral home, Zuko fights to breathe.
He wakes to coolness sapping the pain, just a little bit.
“Thank you, Katara.” Every word hurts.
“I think I’m the one who should be thanking you.”
Why? Why should he be thanked for anything?
The light is fading over Caldera City, and Zuko forces himself to stand. His clothes are in tatters around his chest, and every breath burns his lungs, and he can feel where the fingertips of his right hand ache from redirecting the lightning.
But still he stands.
“Zuko, what- lie back down, you’re-” Katara’s eyes are wide and filled with tears of relief and panic, her hair dripping onto her tunic.
“I’m fine, Katara. It’s okay.” He is absurdly thankful that Toph isn’t there, because she would know that he’s lying, that every inhale feels like glass down his throat, that his head is spinning like a planet knocked from orbit. Then he feels guilty for being thankful.
Is anyone left?
“You are so far from okay that Appa couldn’t fly you there,” Katara hisses, hands on his arms. Her normally steady fingers are shaking. “Tui and La, Zuko, you…”
“It’s alright,” he murmurs, awkwardly rubbing her back. It strikes him then, more fiercely than ever, how they are all children in this war. How his friends, child soldiers all, might be dead.
Compared to that, his wound is nothing.
Compared to that, he is nothing.
And then he hears the telltale drone, and the warship lands in the center of the courtyard, Aang standing on the deck.
There is a split second when no one moves.
And then Aang, shirtless, pants tattered, hands singed, but alivealive alive leaps down and sprints over. There is weariness in his eyes that Zuko has never seen, but his grin splits his face as he tackles Katara, almost sending her to the ground as he hugs her. She returns the hug just as fiercely, leaving Zuko unsupported and swaying slightly on his feet.
Then Suki and Toph support Sokka as he hobbles out, and even though they are all bloodied and Sokka’s leg is clearly broken, Zuko feels the vise around his heart unclench for the first time in hours. In days. In years.
They’re okay.
His family is okay.
Then Katara and Sokka are hugging, and Suki is lugging down a limp form from the cabin, and-
Zuko’s heart skips a beat.
He reels back, breath coming fast in his chest as he shakes, arms out in front of him (not in a stance, never in a stance, just to block a blow, because the Fire Lord would tolerate weakness and cowardice, but not disrespect).
“Zuko, whoa, hey-”
“Easy, Sparky, your heart’s way too fast-”
Azula’s screams have tapered off to overwhelmed sobs.
The words fall on ears stuffed with koala-sheep wool. His vision is tunneling, and then, and then, and then-
And then Ozai’s golden eyes open, and lock onto Zuko’s.
He sneers and opens his mouth-
And Suki clamps her hand over the Phoenix King’s lips, easy as breathing.
“I think that’s enough out of you.” Her voice is almost cheery.
Then Sokka is stepping in front of him, grabbing his shoulder with one hand while Toph supports him on his other side.
“Breathe, Zuko. In and out, come on. You can do it.” He rubs his arm a little, up and down, a smooth rhythm that he ties his breath to, like an anchor in a stormy sea. The greyness at the edges of his vision fades, his heartbeat slowing down. He exhales a puff of hot air.
“He can’t hurt you anymore. I took his bending away.”
“You… you what?” Zuko gasps out, turning towards Aang. He pushes the pain away. Pushes everything away.
“I took his bending away,” the little monk repeats, gray eyes so serious. “I learned it from a lion turtle.”
Zuko rubs at his forehead with one shaking hand.
“I… of course you did.”
Aang’s eyes drift from Zuko’s hand down to his tunic… and widen.
“Wind and ocean, Zuko, what happened ?”
Zuko looks down at himself, at the massive starburst of gnarled red flesh on his chest.
“Oh. Azula happened.”
“How are you even upright?” Aang looks worried, so worried, and if Zuko wasn’t so tired, he would have seen that same concern mirrored in the eyes of his friends.
Zuko shrugs.
“It… it doesn’t really hurt anymore.”
He feels strangely cold.
Toph’s eyes widen.
“Guys, his heartbeat’s weird, he’s going to-”
Zuko’s eyelids flutter, vision graying out at the edges like burning paper, as he falls. He thinks he feels gentle hands as he goes.
“Shit, shit, turtle-seal shit, ” Katara hisses as she dives down to the ground, hands already coated in glowing water from the skin at her side.
“What happened?” Toph is already kneeling down at Zuko’s side, hands to the ground as she focuses on his heartbeat, his breathing.
“Azula shot him full of lightning, is what happened,” Katara growls. There is something frantic in the movement of her hands along Zuko’s chest and stomach, Sokka thinks, faster and more panicked than her healing usually is. “And I was an idiot and believed him when he said he was fine.” She laughs, slightly hysterically. “As if anyone could be fine after being shot full of lightning.”
“Wait, wait, wait,” Sokka says, waving his arms in the air. He’s no longer supported by Toph, but he can’t bring himself to care as he stares down at the red tissue, bubbling with eschars and bleeding. He’s seen wounds like those: not from lightning, but from the fists of Fire Nation troops, on arms and faces and legs in Earth Kingdom infirmaries. He’s seen what they do to people.
He knows that survival isn’t common.
“I thought that Zuko could redirect lightning. Wasn’t that how he escaped on the Day of Black Sun?” Sokka continues.
“He didn’t fully redirect it, he couldn’t, I-” Katara’s voice breaks as her hands continue to ghost over Zuko’s chest. His face is slack, and so very pale.
“It was my fault.” Her voice is so quiet that, if the courtyard weren’t silent, no one would have heard. Suki has stuffed Aang’s old headband into Ozai’s mouth and is holding one of Zuko’s hands. Her lips are moving. Sokka thinks she might be praying.
“What do you mean, Katara?” Toph’s voice is as unyielding as the stone she bends. Sokka watches as she taps her hand against the stone. It takes him a moment to realize that she’s tracking Zuko’s heartbeat, and that it’s far too irregular.
“He… Azula saw me. During the Agni Kai,” she whispers, voice full of tears. “And she shot lightning at me. Zuko… Zuko jumped in front of it. He saved me.”
Zuko, who jumped in front of Combustion Man rather than let him hurt Aang.
Zuko, who went into an ice-cold freezer on the slim chance it would save his friends.
Zuko, who has stopped breathing.
For a split second, nobody reacts.
Then Katara is crying out and moving her hands rapidly, and Toph is slapping Zuko’s face, and Sokka is begging for him to please wake up, please, you’re my brother, I can’t do this without you-
Until Aang roughly pushes Suki out of the way, positions himself with one hand on Zuko’s throat and the other just above his mouth, and begins to bend.
“Wh-what are you doing?” Katara gasps out.
Aang’s jaw is set. He’s never done this before, has only heard about it once from Gyatso, but he doesn’t have a choice.
“I’m buying you time.” He doesn’t look up, doesn’t open his eyes as he sways back and forth to a steady, even beat. The same beat to which Zuko’s chest is now rising and falling.
To her credit, Katara doesn’t hesitate for more than a beat before her palms are water-coated and glowing again. Her eyes are clenched shut as she focuses, harder than Aang has ever known her to focus for a healing, and he knows from his late-night conversations with her about bending that she is concentrating on the damage in Zuko’s chest, feeling where to blood and bone and muscle is out of alignment and urging the water to sink in and pull things back into shape.
“What’s wrong with him?” Sokka’s voice is cracking like old pottery.
“His lungs are burned: he was probably st-stifling his breathing so we didn’t notice, until he just… couldn’t take a deep enough breath. The lightning missed his heart, but it- it got into his lungs and hurt his diaphragm and the muscles he needs to breathe.”
“Can you fix it?” Toph’s voice is thick. Aang has never seen her cry before.
“I… I don’t know. I don’t know if I have enough training, I only had one lesson in the Northern Water Tribe-”
“You have to,” Aang murmurs, swaying from side to side in time with the air he is bending. Zuko’s chest rises, and falls, and rises.
“What?”
“You have to. We don’t know where the healers in the Caldera are, or if they’d even be willing to treat Zuko before he’s crowned. You’re the only one who can fix it. I… I can’t keep this up forever.” Aang opens his eyes, still swaying, still bending, and looks at Katara. “You have to. ”
“I…” But Katara already knows what she needs to do. She closes her eyes, and sends a silent prayer to the Moon Spirit. To Yue.
Please. I know it’s not the full moon. I know he did horrible things. But he has done so many good things since. He’s my family. He saved me.
Please let me save him.
She feels a tug on her power, and the water under her hands glows brighter.
She feels every molecule of water in Zuko’s veins, feels the very strands of muscle that are scorched out of alignment, feels the damage in his lungs like crumpled parchment.
She takes that water, the water in his blood, his muscles, and pulls.
It might have taken seconds. It might have taken years.
But Aang stops moving his hands and grins shakily, and Zuko’s chest continues to steadily rise and fall.
Thank you, Yue.
Soon, they’ll have to get up, to move Zuko to a proper infirmary and get him bandaged. They’ll have to get Ozai into a prison cell, guarded by people they trust, get Azula under care.
For now, though, they curl up around Zuko, careful of his wound, and weep with relief.
The first thing Zuko smells is clean linen and saltwater.
There are warm sheets around him, a body pressed close to his side, something wrapped around his chest. For a moment, everything is calm and safe.
Then he remembers.
The Caldera. Azula, his baby sister, rictus grin plastered onto her face as she laughed. Katara, fear in her eyes. Lightning scorching through him, burning his lungs, his fingers.
Pain.
Zuko’s eyes snap open as he arches up from the bed. Immediately, there is searing pain across his chest, although nowhere near the agony he remembers.
“Whoa, easy, easy.” Soft words, the smell of saltwater and steel. Hands supporting him as he sinks back onto the cushions behind him.
“Sokka.” His voice sounds so raw.
“Yeah, it’s me, it’s me.” Sokka’s hand comes up to cup his healthy cheek, and Zuko, tired, in pain, finds himself leaning into the touch.
“I… what happened?”
“You…” Sokka, the self-pronounced plan guy, always talkative, always ready with a quip, is at a loss for words. He’s… crying?
“Oh… don’t…” Zuko raises his arm and hesitantly pats Sokka on the shoulder, every movement pained. It works, though, because Sokka lets out a laugh, if a slightly watery one.
“Why are you comforting me? Tui and La, Zuko, you…”
“I’m okay,” Zuko manages. Anything to get that look off his friend’s face, as if he’ll shatter before his eyes.
“You’re such a liar, ” the water tribe boy hisses, eyes scrunched shut. Before he can continue, Zuko hears a door open. Immediately, he tenses. He shouldn’t be here, wherever he is, he needs to get out, to lick his wounds in some corner in peace, to leave everyone be.
“Wind and ocean, lie back down. ” His limbs relax.
“Katara.”
The healer’s face appears in his vision, just a little blurry.
“Why are you awake?” she snaps, “why is he awake?”
Sokka puts up his hands in mock surrender.
“Don’t look at me. Sunshine here woke up on his own.”
Zuko turns his head to the right and takes in his surroundings as best he can. He’s in a lush room all in crimson and red, like land just before the sun sets. He knows these rooms.
“Sparky’s awake?” Toph’s voice, as loud and brash as always. There is so much noise, so many people, and Zuko feels his pained breaths get closer and closer together.
“What’s wrong, Zuko?” Suki’s voice, so quiet and gentle, feels like glass.
“Too- too-”
“Too much?”
Zuko nods as best he can.
“Okay, guys, quiet down a little. Let him get his bearings, yeah?”
He hears curtains being drawn, and the light dims. His friends’ voices quiet to a whisper. Something is unwrapped around his chest, and he feels coolness like a balm along his wound. After a few minutes, his breath comes just a little bit easier, and the sparking livewire of pain has been tamped down to something manageable.
“Better?”
“Yes,” he manages. “Thank you.”
“You want to sit up a little?” He nods, and his friends prop him up with pillows, gently, so gently.
As soon as he’s settled, Toph plops down on his other side, and he notices that Sokka must have been curled up next to him while he was unconscious.
“So, Sparky. Wanna tell us why you kept your mouth shut about how shit you were feeling?”
“I… I felt fine.”
“I don’t even need Toph’s creepy lie-detecting skills to tell me that’s turtle-seal shit,” Sokka says, crossing his arms. His leg’s in a neatly bound cast, but he doesn’t seem to be in pain, thank Agni.
Zuko’s hands snarl together. The burns on the fingers of his right hand are healed and bandaged in clean, white cloth.
“Do… do we really have to talk about this right now?”
“Yup,” Toph says, popping the last letter and reclining on the pillows. Suki and Aang perch at the end of the bed, while Katara sits on the side, ready to heal once more if needed.
“I… I didn’t want to bother you,” he murmurs, staring down at his hands.
For a moment, nobody speaks.
Then Toph punches his arm, Katara throws up her hands in frustration, and Sokka rolls his eyes and groans, all at once.
“Are you fucking kidding? You got shot full of spirits-blessed lightning, and you didn’t want to bother us?” Katara’s clearly upset, and Zuko cringes, remembering a time when every word she threw at him was barbed, every look an accusation.
“I- sorry.”
She puts her head in her hands, and Sokka gently rubs her back. It takes Zuko a second to realize that she’s laughing.
“Why, why are you sorry?” Her shoulders are shaking. And he can’t take it anymore, and says what he’s been thinking the whole time, from the moment he woke up to Katara healing him in the Caldera courtyard.
“It was my own fault anyway.”
Katara leaps from the end of the bed to stand over Zuko, and the banished prince is cringing, expecting a blow, a burn, a cut-
Arms, gentle, so gentle, wrap around him. The body that is pressed against his, still somehow careful of his wound, is shaking.
He made Katara cry.
Oh, shit.
“Hey, don’t-”
“You infuriating, self-sacrificing ass,” she whispers out. He can feel her tears on his shoulder. “You… you saved me. It wasn’t your fault. It was mine.”
“Katara, no-”
“But it was . If I hadn’t moved, if Azula hadn’t seen me, you wouldn’t have needed to cover for me, and you wouldn’t have, have gotten hurt.”
“It’s not your fault . You couldn’t have known what would happen,” Zuko says with as much force as he could muster.
“Then how is it yours?” Sokka’s voice is soft and warm. Zuko turns to stare blankly at him, Katara still clinging to him.
“I…”
“You just said that you couldn’t have known what would happen. And you saved Katara’s life,” Suki points out.
“We do need to talk about the self-sacrificing thing, though. Seriously,” Sokka’s words are joking, but his tone clearly isn’t.
Zuko sets his shoulders and stares down at the red sheets. Katara releases her grip, still staring at him with tears in her eyes. He isn’t sure of many things, but he’s sure of this.
“Better me than her.”
Nobody speaks.
Nobody moves.
He can hear the messenger hawks stretching their wings outside.
Then Sokka speaks, voice shaking.
“I hope you know how monumentally cruel what you just said was.”
Zuko’s head whips up. He feels dizzy, and it’s not all from the wound.
“Cruel?”
Sokka’s eyes, usually the warmth of a noon sky, are chips of ice.
“Yes. Cruel. After all these months, after us trying to hammer it out of your thick, jerkbender skull, you still think you’re less than us, don’t you? That you’re less worthy?”
Zuko opens his mouth to reply, to deny it, but Toph’s glare in his direction stops him.
Sokka nods.
“Yeah, that’s what I thought. Now, Toph, I want to ask Zuko some questions, and I want you to tell me if he’s lying.”
Zuko barks out a humorless laugh. It hurts his chest.
“What is this, an interrogation?”
Sokka shakes his head.
“I just think we need to clear the air about what we mean to each other. What you mean to us. So.”
He painstakingly moves himself to sit across from Zuko, waving off Aang’s offer of support.
“Do you think we like you less than anyone else in the group?”
Zuko shakes his head.
“Lie.” Toph’s voice has the slightest shake in it, a crack in the foundation.
“Do you think you still have to prove yourself?”
“...no,” he croaks.
“Lie.”
“Do you know how much we care about you?” Sokka’s steely tone is fracturing.
“I…” his voice breaks, and he closes both eyes, sightless and unscarred, “I would rather die than live with any of you gone.”
Toph’s voice is quiet, for once reflecting just how young she is. “Truth.”
“We don’t want you to die for us, Zuko,” Katara chokes out. She looks down at the covers, and Zuko can see her mother, Jet, all the people she has lost in her gaze. “We just want you. ”
Zuko’s hands are shaking.
“I don’t… I don’t get it.”
Suki meets his eyes.
“You were raised to think of love as something to be earned. But Phoenix King Prickface was a horrible person and a worse father. Love is supposed to be unconditional.” The stern Kyoshi warrior reaches out and grabs his hands. “And we do love you , Zuko. Wholly and unconditionally.”
“Truth.”
Tears stream down the left side of Zuko’s face.
“I’m… I’m sorry.”
“Tui and La, we’re not mad at you, Zuko.” Sokka rubs his hand over his face. “We were… we were scared. You don’t want to lose us. But we don’t want to lose you either. It-” He’s crying. Zuko doesn’t think he’s ever seen Sokka cry.
He grabs Zuko’s hands.
“You… you stopped breathing, Zuko. And I… I can’t… I…” His head sinks down onto Zuko’s hands as he bends over, like a penitent seeking absolution.
Sokka’s next words come out as a whisper. Everyone is crying now.
“I never want to see you like that again. I don’t want you to die for us. I just want you to stay.”
Zuko’s crying, his breath coming in ragged gasps.
“I’ll… I’ll try.”
They’ll have to talk more, later. Try to sort out the mess that is their little family, make sure Zuko knows by word and deed how much he means to them.
Now, they curl up around their friend and hold each other, needing nothing else.