Chapter Text
Zuko wakes up in pain, the taste of failure on his tongue. Failure, it turns out, tastes a lot like he’s only a few seconds away from vomiting. His head aches, and when he opens his eyes the light stabs viciously at his corneas. He heaves himself to the side and begins to retch. His stomach is fortunately empty, so he spits out bitter bile and saliva flavoured with his own inadequacy.
He can hear people speaking.
Unfortunately, he immediately recognizes the loudest voice as Zhao’s.
“... the great Zhao, who darkened the moon. They will call me Zhao the Conqueror!” he’s raving, exactly like a military leader who is about to do something foolish in an attempt for personal glory.
He feels very cold, and kind of numb. And surprised to be alive, because the Avatar and his friends should have left Zuko to die, and for some reason they didn’t. It makes no sense, but other people frequently don’t make any sense.
“--Zhao the Moon-Slayer, Zhao the Invincible!” And then there’s a sudden, horrible shrieking noise, and Zhao starts shouting “Get it off!”
Whatever it was, Zuko hopes it bit him.
Zuko tries to sit up, and can’t, because there’s a rope stopping him. Squinting at the knots, he tries to pry them apart, but his vision lurches when he moves, like his inner ear can’t keep up with the nauseating motion of the world swaying like he’s drunk. Ugh, concussions suck. He breathes fire onto the knot, and fortunately his bending isn’t suffering. Wait, what did Zhao mean about being called the moon-slayer? The moon is a celestial body. Is Zhao insane? And what was that garbage about being invincible?
The Venn Diagram of military leaders calling themselves ‘Conqueror’ and military coups of established kingdoms is basically just a big flaming circle. Does his father know that Zhao is this... ambitious?
Sitting up makes his ribs flare with sharp, stabbing pains, and Zuko does his best to breathe slowly and not pay attention to any of that. Pain isn’t important. The ground rumbles dangerously underneath Zuko, and he hears more voices, more arguing.
“... won't hurt just the Water Tribe.” the Avatar is saying. His voice sounds weird. Almost... worried? “It will hurt everyone, including you. Without the moon, everything would fall out of balance. You have no idea what kind of chaos that would unleash on the world.”
Then Uncle’s voice says, “He is right, Zhao.”
Oh, no.
Zuko struggles to his feet. The ground keeps moving, and-- it’s not the ground, it’s a giant saddle, on the back of an even bigger animal. The avatar’s bison. Where are they? He doesn’t feel cold, or wind, but after all that time spent marching through a blizzard, he wouldn’t.
“... General Iroh, why am I not surprised to discover your treachery?” Zhao says, and Zuko can hear the smile in his voice.
Zuko jumps down to the ground and breaks into a run. He has to squint his eyes to stop the world from spinning, but that’s fine. That’s what Piandao trained him to fight blindfolded for, after all. He doesn’t have his dao but he doesn’t have time to look for them, not when Zhao and Uncle are facing off.
Uncle, who thinks of Zuko as a son.
“I'm no traitor, Zhao,” Uncle is saying. They aren’t far, now, Zuko sees Uncle standing next to the Avatar. Zuko angles himself to approach Zhao on the other side.
“The Fire Nation needs the moon, too; we all depend on the balance. Whatever you do to that spirit I'll unleash on you ten-fold. Let it go, now!” Uncle shouts.
Zuko hears a splash, and he knows Uncle is going to let his guard down, thinking he’s won. Zhao knows, too, which is why when Zhao releases a fireblast at the pool in the oasis, Zuko is standing in the way.
He deflects the blast and returns one, aiming for Zhao’s face.
Zhao’s expression is one of mixed shock and fury. “You-- you’re alive?” He snarls.
Zuko sneers at him. “You tried to have me killed.” As assassination attempts went, it was both insulting and amateurish. Zuko has been defending his place in the succession ever since Ozai ascended to the throne and he had a place in the succession to defend. Azula had come much closer to killing him than Zhao.
Zhao grins, looking smug. “Yes, I did.”
Uncle finally gets it together and blasts Zhao with a wave of fire so hot the flames are white, and then Zhao and his soldiers start to fight back.
“You deserved to die, traitor!” Zhao shouts. “Did you think no one would discover your betrayal? You're the Blue Spirit, an enemy of the Fire Nation! You freed the Avatar!”
“You gave me no choice!” Zuko shouts, and then Zhao blasts him again, before retreating back towards the pool of water. Zuko advances, dodging the waterbender’s ice as she and the Avatar hold off the other soldiers.
Zhao tries to kick at Zuko, but then falls over as something flies out of the air and hits him in the back of the head. Zuko blasts Zhao again, pressing the advantage, snarling as Zhao rolls out the way and regains his feet.
He’s going to exhaust himself if he keeps this up, but he can’t let Zhao go. Not again. He’d promised to show no mercy if they met again after their Agni Kai, and Zuko had backed down, thinking Zhao would act with honour. No more chances. No more leniency.
“You’re a disgrace!” Zhao hisses at him. “A pathetic, mewling coward who should never have been born. I laughed when I watched you burn---”
As if any of that is new information, Zuko scoffs. As if he didn’t already know Zhao was a piece of shit. “And you still couldn’t defeat me. What does that make you, Zhao, when you were judged before Agni as less worthy than me ?”
Zhao’s face twists up in rage, and then he turns his face away from Zuko, looking down at the koi pond, and blasts it with a burst of flame so hot that Zuko has to avert his eyes.
Someone shouts “No!”
And then.
The world heaves and goes abruptly dark. Everything is black, until Zhao lights a flame in his hand, and even then the firelight seems thin and wan.
Zuko looks up but can’t see the moon any more, can’t see the stars. Only an eerie, unending blackness.
Zhao gloats. “Your water tribe friends will soon be forced to realise the might of--” He drops to a knee, suddenly, clutching at his head. Behind him, Zuko can see a white-haired girl in a fancy blue dress, holding a bloody club.
She raises the club again, expression serene, and Zhao turns just in time to deflect the weapon, grabbing the front of her dress and dragging her towards him. He backhands her, sharply, then drags her in front of him, still smiling.
The girl looks... furious. Furious and sad, because there are tears dripping down her face and she keeps fighting Zhao, trying to break his hold, until he unsheaths a dagger and holds it to her neck.
The Avatar and his friends have made short work of the soldiers. Zuko doesn’t bother to look-- if they’re lucky, the Avatar is still a pacifist and won’t have actually killed them, but Zuko isn’t particularly concerned either way. Not when he has a score to settle.
“There’s no hope now,” the girl says, more tears dripping down her face. “You monster, do you know what you’ve done?”
Zhao shrugs, still smiling at Zuko over the girl’s shoulder. “I’ve taken away the waterbenders power.”
The Avatar, looking up at the sky, whispers, “No, you didn’t.”
The waterbender jumps into the pool and clutches a small, still form to her chest. It looks like a koi fish, but Zuko... isn’t certain why that’s important.
The Water Tribe boy says, “Can you heal it?” and the waterbender starts to glow.
And then the entire world explodes with light .
Zuko slams his eyes shut, wincing at the flare of searing pain, and then the air temperature drops below freezing.
Well below freezing. He can feel the cold in his lungs as he inhales. His skin goes abruptly numb with the chill, and when he opens his eyes again there is a glowing blue-white spirit standing next to the avatar.
The avatar takes a step forward, and the spirit... wraps around him, glowing ominously. Zuko has no flaming idea what it going on, but he knows it’s extremely bad.
The avatar-spirit amalgamation swells, turning into a sea dragon.
“You hurt the wrong fish,” the girl in Zhao’s arms says, sounding viciously pleased. “My people can still use our bending. But you hurt La, the Ocean spirit .” She doesn’t say, you colossal fucking idiot, but the insult is very clearly implied.
The avatar-dragon roars and leaps into the air, headed... away.
The fish was a spirit? Zuko feels his heart lurch as he realises what that means. The stupid koi pond fish were spirits . The moon spirit and ocean spirit... and Zhao hadn’t been speaking in metaphor or proverbs, he’d literally tried to kill the moon.
Sneering, Zhao wraps a hand around the girl’s throat, choking her into silence.
“Are you insane?” Zuko shouts, incredulously. “We’re an island nation, Zhao! We depend on the ocean-- and on the tides-- to sustain our people! We have a naval fleet outside the walls, did you not think about what would happen to them if--”
But of course Zhao didn’t think about it. He hadn’t cared. That’s how military minds think, isn’t it? Why not throw away the lives of tens of thousands of loyal soldiers, if it meant securing a more permanent victory? They were just soldiers, and this wasn’t even the entire fleet. He’d consider it acceptable casualties if it meant permanently removing the waterbending ability from the world.
Zuko feels sick.
“We will adapt,” Zhao says dismissively.
--
The moon is grieving.
La has been wounded, and it is Tui’s fault. Tui’s fault, for convincing his soul-partner to abandon the spirit world, Tui’s fault, for trusting in humans to keep their mortal-forms safe. Tui’s fault, for not paying attention to mortal concerns, for ignoring the prayers of Tui’s spirit-humans.
Tui’s fault, for not dying himself.
The moon is grieving, and the bridge-between-worlds is full of pain and horror at the unexpected perfidy of capricious, selfish, heartless men.
The ocean churns in agony, the waters turned red. Red, like the blood on La’s fragile, vulnerable mortal flesh.
The moon will have vengeance.
Tui and the bridge-between-worlds ascend to the sky and howl their pain into the air. Tui shows the spirit-humans the correct way to push and pull, shows them that the moon and ocean were only ever halves of the same whole. On La’s surface, the flimsy metal shells crumble and shatter in brittle shards.
It’s not enough. Tui is not angry, Tui is enraged. They had been together, and they have been betrayed. La was betrayed. Betrayed by the very mortals who sailed upon her waters, who ate of her bounty, who delved in her depths and prayed for her blessing. La had not claimed any spirit-humans, but she had given the mortals freely of her gifts, had cradled them and fed them and sent her spirit-creatures to comfort the dying, to escort the fortune-blessed that they might live. La had loved them, had trusted them, and was now bleeding in mortal form, weak and powerless, betrayed by her very own.
La is dying, and Tui will be alone.
Tui pulls the flame-hearted to the surface and holds them still, freezes them in ice. He wants them to suffer, wants them to live in anguish. Tui wants to destroy them all, so slowly and excruciatingly that they will spend every moment praying for death.
Tui wants them to feel his pain.
--
They’re stuck in an uneasy stalemate, with the Avatar and his friends not willing to hurt the girl, and Zhao not willing to let her go, and Zuko not willing to let her get caught in the crossfire.
And Zhao, the incompetent, honourless bastard, hurt the wrong fish . Not that killing the moon would have been any less disastrous. Zuko can’t imagine a world without the tides, can’t imagine the ecological effects of what Zhao tried to do. Even the economy of the Fire Nation is dependent on fishing. The colonies can’t feed themselves without it. And Zhao-- Zhao tried to kill the ocean. Zhao may yet succeed in killing the ocean. Zuko can’t wrap his mind around just how colossally epic of a disaster this is going to be. He instead focuses on the here-and-now, on Zhao and his water tribe hostage.
Zuko isn’t watching Zhao’s face, just his shoulders. He wants to know when Zhao decides to kill the girl anyway, because he’ll figure it out eventually, that there’s no way out of this. He’s outnumbered, up against superior benders, and trapped in an enemy stronghold with no more soldiers to back him up. Zhao will eventually be defeated, but he’ll kill as many as he can before he goes down.
And the world is doomed, anyways. Zhao killed the ocean and angered the moon. Zuko, at least, has only ever managed to incite fury in other mortals. Well, mortals and also whatever the Avatar is.
Zhao’s fingers tense and Zuko throws himself forward, shoving the girl to the side and slamming his hand into Zhao’s elbow. It’s not quite the chi-blocking technique Ty Lee had demonstrated for him when he was younger, but it’s close enough to get inside Zhao’s reach and then they’re grappling for the blade and Zhao drives his knee into Zuko’s side--
He whites out from the pain, no air in his lungs to scream. Collapses.
Someone catches Zuko as he falls, and he’s staring into wide, sky-blue eyes as Zhao drives the dagger into Zuko’s back.
It’s a very sharp dagger. It barely even hurts. Zuko struggles to hold his weight, not wanting to crush the girl underneath him. He lifts up his head and tries to roll to the side, but before he can move, Zhao jerks the blade out and stabs again. This time, it slides between his ribs, and Zuko feels something inside of him break.
The dagger isn’t particularly long, but it’s long enough to go all the way through him and into the girl’s neck. She’s making soft, choking noises, her hands trying to staunch the flow of blood.
Zuko tries to stay still. Still, so that the blade doesn’t come out. He just has to not move, because if he moves off of her and pulls out the dagger, then she’ll bleed out, and if he moves closer he’ll hurt her worse, and all he has to do is stay completely, perfectly immobile, and then the waterbender can heal her.
He whispers, “Breathe, it’s okay,” and tries to ignore the taste of blood on his lips. Behind him, Iroh screams something inaudible and there’s the sound of frenzied fighting.
Zuko locks his muscles and breathes and doesn’t move at all . He’s weak, and his muscles want to shake and tremble, but he can’t. He’s the only thing keeping her alive, he has to stay still.
He hopes the waterbender shows up soon. He shouldn’t have called her a peasant. Maybe if he’d been a little bit less patronising, she’d help him too.
Silence, except for the harsh panting of his breath and the girls’s wet, choking noises.
A hand touches his shoulder, and his Uncle says, “Prince Zuko...” He sounds upset. He’s probably upset. Being stabbed all the way through the chest isn’t the sort of injury people come back from. Neither is having your neck cut, but Northern Waterbenders are supposed to have some incredible healing powers.
Spirits, Zhao had almost erased magical healing from the world. How many people who could have been saved would have died? The Fire Nation should have been studying them, trying to adapt their bending methods.
“Yue!” someone shouts.
Zuko’s arms are starting to tremble. Uncle sounds like he’s trying not to cry, matching his breathing to Zuko's not-quite-proper breath control. He isn't doing anything, just... petting Zuko’s hair. It feels kind of nice. Another, less gentle hand drags at Zuko’s shoulder, forcing him to roll to the side.
Zuko groans and hates himself for failure, as he sees the sudden fountain of blood from the girl’s neck. The water tribe boy is trying to put pressure on the girl’s wound, but blood keeps spurting between his fingers. She isn’t choking now, she’s drowning, drowning in her own blood.
It’s too late, Zuko realises. The waterbender might be able to heal her, but the waterbender isn’t here.
Lying on his side is... not comfortable, and he can’t roll onto his back-- or his front-- because of the dagger. There's a solid eight inches of steel jutting out of his sternum.
Zuko blinks and watches a water tribe peasant try desperately to save a girl’s life.
--
The bridge-between-worlds is consumed with misery. Tui, lost in his grief, lets the spirit-housed-in-mortal-flesh channel his sorrow and anguish and torment into something approaching madness. They are a storm of violence, they are the deep-dark of space, they are the ocean between stars. They are Agni’s searing light, divested of its warmth. They are merciless and cold, they are uncaring, they are what remains when the life-giving, mortal-loving, impartial and undiscriminating mother-of-many half is savagely torn away from the whole.
They hurt her.
They hurt her because they wanted to hurt him, and Tui is merciless, savage in his despair. La lies wounded and dying, gasping her last feeble breaths, trapped in a mortal shell that Tui convinced her was safe.
La lies broken and defeated, suffers the end of her immortal life, and Tui...
...Tui has left her alone.
--
Zuko tries to keep breathing, but the pain in his chest is-- getting worse, actually. The stabbing is probably not even the worst of it, because it feels like all of his ribs are broken and every breath feels like he’s being stabbed over and over again. His uncle is talking, but he can’t understand any of the words.
The girl is dying. Zuko had been trying to save her, but she’s dying. He should have known better, should have known he’d just screw things up. Everything Zuko tries to do ends in failure or disgrace. He shouldn’t be surprised, but he still feels so very disappointed.
Even his breath tastes like blood.
Dying is painful and slow. Zuko watches bitterly as the water tribe boy sobs and screams and rages.
The least he could have done, Zuko realises, as his Uncle tries to staunch the flow of blood from his chest, is to die properly, without taking some innocent water tribe girl with him. She hadn’t even been a waterbender. Zuko should have intervened sooner, should have kept Zhao’s attention on him, should have gotten her out of the fucking way. It figures, Zuko thinks bitterly, he can’t even try to save someone else’s life without screwing it up spectacularly: Azula was right, he’s a miserable fucking failure.
And they call him Zuko Sun-Blessed. Zuko, Prince of Agni’s Light. What the hell had been the point of Agni’s blessing, too late to stop Zuko from making a mistake, too late to prevent the worst moment of his life, too late to do anything other than draw more attention to his disgrace and make Zuko’s continued existence as miserable as possible. Zuko would have been better off dead on the arena floor, brains leaking out of his skull. It’s not as if he’s been doing anything other than-- than spreading his misery and despair on people who probably didn’t even deserve it.
Why is he alive?
The girl stops breathing, and the water tribe boy makes a horrible, wounded noise, filled with anguish.
“Breathe!” Uncle commands, and Zuko forces himself to inhale. It hurts. He doesn’t want to do it, would rather stop. But Uncle is clutching at Zuko’s hands, patting his face, murmuring soft words.
Zuko doesn’t deserve it. He doesn’t deserve any of it, not Uncle’s love or his every painful breath. He just doesn’t want to do it anymore. It’s too much.
The moon spirit returns, and the room fills with light. It’s not the same as Agni's sunshine, but Zuko can still feel the moon spirit's presence, a quieter, colder echo of Agni's warmth. Tui shines on his inner flame like an afterimage. The sun isn’t up, but the moon reflects its light, and Zuko has been touched by a great spirit once before.
I don’t want it, he tells Agni. I never wanted it.
The light fills him up, fills all the hollow and hurting places inside of him. Zuko lies bleeding on the ground, in excruciating pain and certain he is going to die... for the second time.
Finally, he understands.
Zuko may be blessed after all, because he is filled with the light of Agni’s blessing and he finally figures out its true purpose. He understands, now. He doesn’t have to keep it. He can give it away. There’s a flame inside him, and if his breath is his fire, then fire is breath. Breath is life. He’s held on to Agni’s light for three years, but he doesn’t want it, and now he knows what he has to do.
“Help me,” he mumbles, and Uncle tries to keep him still but Zuko pushes himself forward, reaches out towards the water tribe boy. “I can help,” he tries to say, but Uncle is in the way, trying to force him to lie down.
“She’s dead,” the water tribe boy says bleakly.
“I can--” Zuko reaches forward and grabs onto the material of her dress.
“What do you want?” the boy asks, staring down at the girl’s open, sightless eyes. “I told you, she’s dead.” He is kneeling on the ground, limp and listless.
Zuko pulls himself closer. The water tribe boy watches, but doesn’t try to interfere. Zuko opens his mouth to explain, but when he tries to speak, his mouth fills with blood and he chokes and gags on it. There’s no air, he’s running out of time. Iroh’s arms are around him, supporting him.
Gathering his inner flame, Zuko fills it with light. He pulls the girl’s body toward him, turning her onto her side, facing him. Gently cupping her face, he presses his lips to hers and breathes .
He gives her Agni’s blessing, and fills her with fire and breath and life .
--