Chapter Text
Housekeeping notes: All ages are ATLA consistent, but this is canon divergent and all characters are 18+ for scenes involving erotic activities.
Mood: “Same Mistake” by James Blunt
**
The greatest fleet the Fire Nation had ever put to sea sliced through the icy waters of the North Pole. Firebenders were stationed at the bow of each ship, night and day, with spotters stationed aloft with spyglasses pressed to their faces with trembling hands. The monstrous glaciers of the northern seas could gut even the toughest steel ship if there was an unlucky hit, and half a dozen ships had already been sent to the ocean’s depths without even setting eyes on a single waterbender.
In the city of Agna Qel’a, the icebergs were called Tui’s Masterpieces, each one a heart-stopping work of beauty. The Fire Nation soldiers had words for them as well – many of them, actually. All of them foul.
Day and night gouts of flame punched out from firebenders, trying to soften ice to the point where the ships could pass through safely.
Usually it worked.
On Admiral Zhao’s ship, his commanders sat around a table, wrapped tightly in heavy robes and cloaks and still shivering. The rank and file soldiers huddled against each other and looked forward to the battle – at least then there would be enough fire to keep everyone warm.
“This is madness,” hissed Captain Akio into his cup. The ship steward had made the decision to augment warm drinks with even warmer firewhiskey, and his efforts at staving off hypothermia were having a bit too much effect. “It’s wintertime. We’re attacking the North Pole in winter – there are four hours of daylight! Their benders will have an advantage over ours for twenty hours a day! If the attack was postponed until summer—”
“Captain Akio, perhaps it would be best to retire to your cabin.” Iroh’s eyes glimmered in the torchlight as he quietly sipped his own, entirely unadulterated, tea. The steward had only had to suffer through one lecture from General Iroh about ruining the balance of his tea to never add firewhiskey again. “Admiral Zhao has the support of the Fire Lord himself for this assault. To question the wisdom of the Fire Lord… that is the mark of a distinctly unwise man.”
The meaning was plain. Captain Akio gulped, and was ushered downstairs by a few other men. The generals who remained exchanged slanted glances, but said nothing.
The fleet sailed onwards.
**
Two days later, a messenger hawk practically fell from the sky and onto the deck. It croaked quietly in misery when a soldier scooped it up, its wings fluttering from exhaustion, feathers tipped in frost. The urgency that had driven the bird to fly beyond reason was immediately clear when the scroll was untied from its leg and slipped free from the oilcloth that had protected it from the elements – the wax seal of the head Fire Sage gleamed in the dying sunlight.
**
“Dead.” Admiral Zhao stared at the scroll. The almost habitual smirk was gone from his face, and his expression was almost slack from the shock. “The Fire Lord is dead?”
Impossible. Unthinkable. Ozai was a strong, vital man who was barely in his forties, the fruit of Azulon’s late second marriage, born twenty-eight years after his elder brother, and barely seven years on the throne. His reign should’ve lasted another six decades. Instead, he was dead.
“This can’t be happening!” Zhao howled, not one temperamentally suited to accepting disappointing news with any particular grace, and he had been Ozai’s favored tool since the moment the sacred flame had been first placed in his topknot, their shared viciousness finding a true partner. There had even been rumors that Zhao had been in the running to be considered a fitting partner for Princess Azula – Zhao himself had a thin line of royal blood running through his own veins, albeit tracing back to a distaff line, and through a royal daughter rather than a son, but still. His prospects had been, up until ten minutes ago, almost equal to his ambitions.
“Zhao.” The voice that cracked through the room lacked any of the deference that had previously marked it, any of the careful handling, and every eye in the room turned with shock to its source. Iroh had raised himself to his full height, and there was none of the genial elder, fussy about his tea and his comforts, right now. His expression was as cold as the waters that surrounded them, and the authority in his voice left no doubts – this was the Dragon of the West, the prince of a nation, who was speaking. “Turn the fleet around.”
Zhao’s face went almost grey. “What?” he hissed. “We are a day at most from sight of the walls, from the possibility of breaking the Water Tribe forever! The Fire Lord himself has approved our sacred mission! We will not—”
“Ozai is dead.” Iroh’s voice was flat, ruthless. “The throne is empty until the Fire Sages crown his successor, and Ozai died without naming his successor. The crown prince is lost, and our nation lacks the voice of command.” His lip curled. “This invasion is postponed until new orders are given. We sail for Caldera City now. Move the entire command staff to the fastest ship. The ships that can keep pace will serve as the escorts. Every other ship is to return to port in the Earth Kingdom, to support troops—”
“You do not have the authority to give orders,” snapped Zhao, rallying himself. “Lacking a Fire Lord, we must follow his last commands, and as his supreme named commander, I—”
“You, Zhao, are a man inciting insurrection against the highest ranking royal left alive, and therefore by extension the sacred royal bloodline.” Iroh never dropped his gaze. “Guards. Arrest him.”
There was a long hesitation in the room as everyone froze, waiting to see where the pendulum would swing.
One guard stepped forward to grab Zhao’s hands, and an unspoken sigh of relief ran through the room as the rest leaped immediately to follow. A decision had been made, and the others could fall in line behind it and not have to strain to work through the legal intricacies of this profoundly problematic moment.
The uniforms of common soldiers had long favored full face covering, so no one knew that the guard who had moved first to follow General Iroh’s order had a burn scar that covered the whole left of his face, and that their ship carried two princes of the royal house.
Zhao snarled and fought as the cuffs were tightened on his wrist. “You fucking disgrace!” he screamed at Iroh. “Ozai was a fool to let you live, even for the pleasure of seeing you skulk around on your belly! I will not allow you to destroy this offensive – I challenge you to an Agni Kai!”
It should’ve been a warning for Zhao when a small, cold, satisfied smile curled the corner of Iroh’s mouth.
“I accept.”
**
What remained of Admiral Zhao was thrown into the polar sea, without ceremony. The officers nearly fell over themselves in their eagerness to execute General Iroh’s orders to the letter, having been very clearly reminded of the perils of questioning the command structure.
The greatest fleet the Fire Nation had ever assembled broke into a hundred different directions, throwing cartloads of coal into the engines and speeding as fast as they dared through the glacier fields as they rushed to return to the Earth Kingdom continent and put their orders in motion. Hundreds of scrolls, marked with the insignia of Prince Iroh were readied to be handed to the commanders of the land assaults.
Behind them, the walls of Agna Qel’a stood, the Avatar remaining safely sheltered as an entire city slowly relaxed, unaware why their impending destruction had suddenly hesitated, then turned and fled into the horizon, taking their black snow with them.
**
Zuko’s face was too distinctive. In the hours when he wasn’t in full armor, blending in with the other soldiers on duty, he stayed huddled in a small closet off of the auxiliary engine, compressed in among discarded parts, broken tools, and extra pots of engine grease. Talking with Iroh was a risk that he had only dared a few times, so primarily he stayed here, eating the food that he grabbed from the galley, wiping himself down with stolen rags so that he didn’t smell too badly, pissing in a pot and reminding himself to be grateful that the reek from the engine room covered up the scent of his occupation of the closet.
He hadn’t cried for his father. He knew that he should’ve, but when he’d wept at the news that his mother was gone, never to return, his father had beaten him personally rather than leave it to one of Zuko’s tutors, and now his eyes remained stubbornly dry.
In the three years of his exile, Zuko had considered many possibilities. Perhaps he would never find the Avatar. Perhaps he would find the Avatar, and be killed in a glorious combat as he attempted to subdue the elderly coward. After he’d actually met the Avatar, he’d had to consider other possibilities – that Zhao would steal his prize, leaving him disgraced and hopeless, sailing the sea endlessly with Uncle until eventually all that remained were their cursed ghosts. Or that the Avatar’s disgusting lemur would bite him, and he would die of infection, his dishonor and disgrace forcing him to roam the spirit world, unable to find peace.
It had never occurred to him that his father could possibly just die. Even now, it felt profoundly unreal to Zuko that his father wasn’t down in the palace, waiting for him to return.
But he was gone. Zuko didn’t know how – the letter from the Fire Sage had been extremely to the point, and Iroh had pointed out that the how didn’t exactly matter at the moment, just the fact of his death and the seismic shift that this represented in Fire Nation policies. The noble houses would be scrambling, trying to figure out how to act, who to support, how to flaunt their mourning appropriately. All the fires in the palace would be extinguished, all the gold draped in black, as they waited. His father’s body was apparently being preserved, somehow, though Zuko’s stomach twisted at the thought of how they were trying to do that in a tropical climate. But the new Fire Lord needed to be the one to light the pyre, so the embalmers were probably beside themselves.
Zuko tried to picture his father – there had been good moments in his childhood, he knew. Days on Ember Island when his father had been more relaxed than at the palace, times when he had lifted Zuko up onto his shoulder, moments when Zuko had felt cared for, safe. He knew this intellectually.
Instead, all he could think about was the hardness of stone under his hands and knees when he had knelt in front of his father and begged. He remembered the feeling of his father touching his face in the instant before the flame had lit up and burned him. He could still hear his father’s words in his ears – Suffering will be your teacher.
They hadn’t realized how right he’d been in that moment. Because now it didn’t matter what Zuko did – if he caught the Avatar, if he died trying, if he just stayed in this closet forever – his father could never forgive him now.
**
Zhao’s fleet had been the pride of the Fire Nation, with the newest and fastest ships forming the core of the command. On those ships, their powerful engines pushed to the breaking point by frantic engineers, not needing to slow down to accommodate older models, a journey that would normally have taken months was accomplished in six weeks.
They made harbor, and Iroh was the first one off the gangplank, not even waiting for the ship to be fully secured. Zuko followed immediately behind him, still masked and hidden. He was grateful for his terrible helmet as he stepped onto the dock, the smells and sounds of home surrounding him for the first time since he was thirteen. It was a relief that the mask hid his reaction, because he knew that there was no princely dignity to him at that moment – just twisted grief and raw emotion.
It wasn’t really fair – he hadn’t shed a single tear for his father, but he could feel the wetness on his cheeks at the sound of dockworkers screaming at each other in Fire Nation accents, familiar tropical birds winging overhead and hoping for a scrap of food to steal, and the smell of street food somewhere in the distance. Even though he hadn’t earned this return, hadn’t redeemed himself even a bit, Zuko was pathetically grateful that he’d gotten this.
The palace should’ve been a place of quiet, grief, and dignity – instead it was a madhouse. Three months without a Fire Lord and the knives had all come out. Azula had pushed to be crowned in the absence of any of the other preeminent candidates, but the Fire Sages had formed a solid block of resistance. Second and third cousins had suddenly come pouring in from the outlying districts, all eager to press their potential claims. Being the great-grandchild of a Fire Lord’s sister suddenly didn’t seem like such an impediment to the throne when the only visible direct scion was a fifteen-year-old girl, even one who the firebending prodigy of her generation.
The closer they’d come to home, the faster the messenger hawks could fly in and out, and the letters had been frequent. Azula had already fought three public Agni Kais against eager cousins, but even those victories had failed to coalesce enough of the nobles behind her – her triumphs had been distinctly bloody, a decision that Azula had probably intended to intimidate those who opposed her, but had instead just strengthened the resistance, as everyone was distinctly leery when presented with evidence of just how vicious she could be, and more than a few people had hesitations at the prospect of Azula being given supreme governing power. The Fire Sages were well aware that they were first in line for her retribution at the indignity of being denied, and had dug in. Iroh had been sending daily letters to all involved, including Azula, promising that he would set the Fire Lord flame insignia directly into her topknot himself, but she simply had to practice patience.
Patience, Zuko recalled, had never been one of her better traits.
And, as it turned out, honesty was not a virtue that Iroh was in the mood to exercise.
**
The Fire Sage held out the sacred flame insignia. Azula knelt down, her richly embroidered coronation robes spilling around her – the seamstresses had outdone themselves, having had an unusually long amount of time to prepare for the event. Gold thread had been laid in so thickly that the robes would probably have stood up by themselves.
The flame insignia passed hands. The entire court held its breath, waiting for what would happen next. Above them, the sun hit its zenith, felt in the hearts of every firebender present, and the sun caught the sacred piece of metal, held in the hands of a decorated general, the elder son of a past Fire Lord, a prince long denied his destiny.
Azula looked up sharply, realizing the danger in the delay, and a slow gasp escaped the whole court as one as Iroh lifted the flame insignia up – up, not down. Not down to his niece’s waiting hair, gleaming black in the sun, but up to his own greying head.
Iroh pushed the flame insignia into his own topknot, and raised his hands above his head. He wore the robes of a general, and the contrast was deliberate – Azula looked like a little girl playing dress-up, and he looked like an adult, a tried and tested leader.
Azula had never had a shot. Even she realized that as her honor guard closed ranks tightly around her, the spears that were distinctly un-ceremonial lightly scraping against her back. Rage twisted her face, and blue sparks erupted from her hands and scorched her robes, but she stayed on her knees, and dropped her head in frustrated submission.
Behind Iroh, Zuko just stared. Until that moment, it truly hadn’t occurred to him that Iroh had intended anything other than a dramatic reveal of the returned prince, a crowning of the rightful heir.
Again, better that he was still masked. His expression was no better than Azula’s, but no sparks for him. Instead he felt empty, smothered, like a candle snuffed out.
Uncle had followed him for three years in their banishment, always deferring to Zuko, his only complaints primarily revolving around tea, shopping trips, and Zuko’s training habits. It had never occurred to Zuko that his uncle still harbored any personal ambitions, and like so many other times in his life, Zuko had learned his mistake in the harshest possible way.
**
The Fire Sages and the court in general were euphoric at the turn of events. It took long minutes for the cheering to die down – even the chief Fire Sage showed a distinct lack of any kind of decorum in the moment. When things eventually quieted, that was when Iroh – Fire Lord Iroh – turned and removed Zuko’s helmet with his own hands, and then the gasps at his presence rippled through the courtyard. It would’ve been more gratifying if anyone had raised the question of why Iroh had taken the throne if the crown prince had been standing two feet behind him the whole time, but no one had. Instead there had been smiles and pleased clapping when Iroh formally reaffirmed Zuko’s position as crown prince – now Iroh’s named heir, with Azula second in line.
Azula made a sound at that which reminded Zuko of what a cat sounded like right before it was forced into a bath, but there weren’t a lot of options at that moment, so instead the two of them ended up flanking their uncle in a show of royal unity as Iroh led the way to Ozai’s pyre to complete the ceremony.
The embalmers had reached the limits of their craft after the first month. Heavy cloths soaked in foul-smelling chemicals draped over the body now, and when they were ceremonially pulled back, almost everyone took an instinctual step back at the decay and rot that had already set in, but none of the royals moved an inch. Iroh’s eyes were narrowed, his face an expressionless mask as he looked down at the ragged corpse of his younger brother. Azula’s face was now the picture of filial obedience as she immediately began gaming out and planning her best next move, pivoting away from this loss and scheming anew.
And Zuko just stared, because even with the rotting flesh and the reek, he could see that it was all true – his father was dead. Really, truly dead.
A sudden illness, they’d been told. Unexpected and vicious in how swiftly Ozai had been reduced from a powerful man in his prime to a wasted wreck, dead a mere two days after the shocking onset of his illness.
Iroh didn’t hesitate, and the fires lit up before them – the rotting stench quickly replaced by the crackling of burning flesh, overlaid with the sickly sweetness of spiced wood and perfumes that the staff had tucked in to try to mitigate what had happened. Powders and chemicals had been tucked all around, coloring the flames and making them ripple in a way that was meant to mimic what dragon fire had looked like.
Before they had killed all the dragons.
It seemed, at that moment, incredibly appropriate to what was happening.
**
There was a feast. Of course there was a feast.
It lasted for hours, Iroh circling the room, greeting each guest by name, renewing old acquaintances, identifying old allies and old enemies, determining who was useful, spreading favor and quiet threats like oil across troubled waters, every movement and action calculated to show everyone that he was in charge.
Zuko’s old room had been hastily opened for him. None of the clothing still hanging in his closets had fit, and there had been a veritable avalanche of servants and tailors into the room as everyone scrambled to dress him properly for the first formal occasion of Fire Lord Iroh’s reign.
Because he and Azula weren’t dressed in their armor, or the formal robes of the adults that they had both been wearing for years now. Instead Zuko found himself in a tunic embroidered with dragons, fine boots, fine trousers, and the short overrobe of someone not quite yet at adulthood. Azula was dressed in a long gown – the kind perfect for a teenager’s debut in society. As they sat on either side of their uncle, everything about them emphasized that they were children – not yet to be trusted with command, or rule.
Zuko heard later that Azula had burned half the furnishings in her room when she had been shown the dress. The only indication hours later of her rage was the expression in her eyes that, for anyone who knew her well, promised death at some later point. But at the table she smiled sweetly at him and welcomed him home.
“ZuZu, please let me know if there’s anything I can do to help you settle in. You’ve been gone for so long, after all. I don’t want you to get lost in the palace.”
Her words were as sharp as a set of knives, and he bit his tongue and nodded.
He waited until later, after the feast was done, to slip to Uncle’s rooms.
Father’s rooms, actually. The rooms of the Fire Lord. Now Uncle’s.
The first hints of daylight were already at the window. Zuko stepped inside and was shocked at how bare it seemed – all signs of his father’s tenure had already been stripped away, along with most of the furnishings. The bed was simpler than he remembered, and the heavy chairs had been replaced by soft seating cushions, and a fine, if battered, Pai Sho board.
Fire Lord Iroh was brewing his own tea, and he smiled as Zuko walked in. Clearly he’d been waiting.
Zuko asked, of course.
Why he’d been passed over. Why Uncle had taken the crown when he’d said that it would come to Zuko.
“It will come to you, Prince Zuko,” Uncle insisted, sipping his tea. “Upon my death, you will be Fire Lord, just as your destiny has always been.”
A long drink, a longer silence, and Uncle’s eyes darkened in the grey dawn light.
“And there are things that must be done, and it is better that I be the one to take the blame.”
**
Zuko, and the rest of the Fire Nation, did not have to wait long to find out what those things were.
Fire Lord Iroh ordered all troops to hold their positions, with no more offensive actions taken, no matter what plans and preparations had been put into place.
Then he appointed dozens of newly minted ambassadors – some were impressive, like the old sword-master Piandao, but most were middle-functionaries or elderly firebending instructors who had lived quiet, unremarkable lives up until they were scooped out of obscurity by Fire Lord Iroh’s command. Those ambassadors scattered throughout the conquered territories of the Earth Nation, and everywhere they went, the Fire Nation lost territory.
They called it negotiation. They boasted of agreed-on payments of gold, promises of favorable trade conditions, loud honors and tribute made to the Fire Nation, but the results were shiploads of soldiers sailing south to Fire Nation ports, leaving territories in control of Earth Kingdom masters. Omashu, the most glittering jewel captured in a generation, was handed back to the control of King Bumi. Earthbenders and partisans were released from prison, villages were abandoned to the cheers and shouts of their occupants, and the greatest army in the world simply… left.
Left, and then disappeared. Because as soon as those ships made harbor, armor and weapons were collected, and soldiers were decommissioned and sent home. Munitions factories were shuttered, their round the clock workers sent out into the fields to resume cultivation. The taxes and tributes of gold from the Earth Kingdom were converted almost immediately into pensions for the returning soldiers. Older ships were sent to the scrapyards, newer ships ordered to patrol Fire Nation waters and no further.
It was Piandao who ceded the colonies completely – negotiated to be shared spaces where all peoples from any nation could settle, with elected councils to make decisions. The Fire Nation received taxes and trades, but the red flags were pulled down into heaps of fabric, and in return for scraps the Fire Nation had been committed to protection agreements.
For a century.
Within two years, the colors on the maps that Zuko pored over had returned almost entirely to how they had looked at the beginning of Sozin’s rule, once you ignored the pathetic fictions of “tribute” and “protection.”
Fire Lord Iroh had taken the hard-won gains of a century of spilled Fire Nation blood and treasure and just… thrown them away.
The nobles, stripped of their governorships, should’ve been apocalyptic. Yet they returned to their home estates with only the most performative grumbling. The general peasantry should’ve been revolting continuously, yet they seemed utterly content with their fields and their pensions, gleefully putting Earth Kingdom gold into work fixing roofs, funding wedding feasts, and paving roads.
The roads, admittedly, Zuko had to agree about. They’d gotten rather terrible over the years of Ozai and Azulon’s rules. While Iroh seemed determined to block Zuko from involvement in any international affairs, he had at least given him a small portfolio of domestic areas to oversee, and Zuko had spent months instigating the repaving efforts.
Better roads meant better trade, meant easier travel, meant a happy population.
And a happy population meant that it was ever easier for Fire Lord Iroh to destroy the legacy he’d received from his younger brother and call it a victory.
**
At the beginning of the third year of his reign, Fire Lord Iroh turned his attention to the marriages of his heirs.
Azula was eighteen, beautiful, dangerous, and cripplingly bored. She’d been offered domestic responsibilities early, like Zuko, but had found overseeing the domestic production of badger-llama wool or cultivation of flax for linen to be cripplingly boring, and after complaints had been raised about career bureaucrats suffering third-degree burns, she had been moved over to overseeing the overhaul of the education system. That had lasted a week. When someone suggested that she would be an excellent figurehead for Fire Lord Iroh’s attempts to standardize business licenses, she had left the palace entirely and installed herself at Ember Island, where rumors of extremely wild parties filtered back.
Zuko had ended up handling the wool, the flax, and the business licenses. Iroh gave the education system to one of his Pai Sho friends, and Zuko was relieved that he hadn’t had to handle that one.
When the subject of her marriage had been raised, Azula had bestirred herself to return, and had entered into negotiations with a spark of her old interest and energy. Iroh gave her parameters, of course – a member of the Fire Nation nobility would be preferred, with wealth and an excellent lineage. As this described most of the men who she had apparently been flirting with on Ember Island during the last few years, it had seemed safe enough.
The groom she chose revealed that the Fire Lord should’ve been a bit more specific with his requirements, because Azula produced Mai’s five-year-old brother, newly potty-trained and with just enough motor control to scribble an approximation of his name onto the betrothal agreement, with the wedding scheduled for thirteen years in the future.
A summer wedding, Mai’s ambitious mother cooed. Zuko realized, looking at her, that Mai’s parents had fully given up on their hopes of tying their daughter to him. A mere two years after the last, and most decisive breakup between Zuko and Mai.
Zuko had long since realized that most of Azula’s actions were focused on preparing the way for her own eventual succession to the Fire Throne. Her lavish parties had made her extremely popular with the nobles of their own age, who were far more impressed by that than Zuko’s social anxiety and mastery of the flax harvest. Which, in fairness, had turned out to be more complicated than he had expected. Lack of cultivation for almost thirty years had resulted in the near-extinction of two varieties of Fire Nation linen. Very few people appreciated that when Zuko brought the subject up.
Mai had particularly hated it, in fact. The fight that had finally ended their on-again-deeply-off-again relationship had begun when Zuko had underestimated exactly how serious Mai had been when she told him that she never wanted to hear him say the words “domestic fabric production” ever again.
**
At the conclusion of Azula’s betrothal celebrations (held in early afternoon, in deference to the groom’s early bedtime), all eyes turned to the nineteen-year-old crown prince. All expectations were that one of the beauties of the court was about to be lifted above all others – and, as many ambitious mothers sternly reminded their daughters, wealth and power beyond imagination was more than enough incentive to overlook a bit of facial scarring and the lingering stench of dishonor.
Zuko himself waited apathetically to be handed a list of women to escort around the gardens and select from. Exchanging glances with the noblewomen his age, and seeing their cold assessment of him, he considered whether Azula had had the right idea all along. Revolting, certainly. But she had bought herself thirteen more years before she had to submit to a marriage, which Zuko had to admit had a certain attraction to it rather than being sold off to stud like a well-pedigreed, if personally unpalatable, badger-llama.
As it turned out, however, the Fire Lord had other plans for him.
**
While the Earth Kingdom had been locked in near-constant land battles with the Fire Nation for a century, peace envoys had been welcomed into courts, and both sides had been almost equally eager to be fully rid of each other when they’d reached the negotiation tables.
The Water Tribes, however, had lost almost the entirety of its southern sister, and had proven far more suspicious of Fire Lord Iroh’s intentions than the Earth Kingdoms. In the first months of Iroh’s reign the North had come out of isolation, a political marriage between the two tribes bringing the North fully into the war. Chief Hagoda’s fleet, augmented with Northern waterbenders, began making steady inroads on Fire Nation ships. They had no interest in delegations, or overtures, or peace offers – instead, the Water Tribe’s demands were clear – they wanted the Fire Nation out of their waters.
Permanently.
From ironclad warships to trade vessels, it was soon clear that only a madman flew a Fire Nation flag in Water Tribe waters. To most, that had seemed the end of it – after all, who cared about a few primitive communities scraping out an existence on the edge of the world?
That is, until Water Tribe ships began arriving in Earth Kingdom ports with barrels of high-grade oil, newly discovered in the South.
Fire Nation factories were no longer producing munitions, but the return of its far-flung population of soldiers had opened a vast market for goods of every kind, and many of the factories were ready to start producing those items – with the correct resources, of course. Resources that the Water Tribe made extremely clear that they were not going to sell to anyone planning on traveling to the Fire Nation. After the first trader’s ship carrying Water Tribe oil to the Fire Nation was sunk by a ship of waterbenders, everyone else realized that they were quite serious.
To Fire Lord Iroh, the answer was clear – the Water Tribe had shown that they could be moved by a political marriage – after all, one high-status wedding and now the tribes seemed to moving in near-lockstep.
And the Fire Nation had a prince who needed a bride.
Piandao was sent to the North to enter into negotiations. How the elderly swordmaster talked his way through the icy gates of Agna Qel’a when all his predecessors had been sent to watery graves, no one knew, though the terrified sailors on the ship swore that he had stood on the bow of the ship, without fear, and shouted to the incoming ship of angry waterbenders that he was just a man looking for a worthy Pai Sho opponent.
Absolutely no one believed the sailors.
But Piandao was met by the greatest waterbending master of the North, and was the first Fire Nation citizen to step inside Agna Qel’a in two generations. When he sailed back to Caldera City and was feted in the manner of a conquering hero, he told the tales – he’d met with the chiefs of both tribes (the Southern Water Tribe fleet, fortuitously enough, being in the harbor), spoken with the Avatar (Zuko had ground his teeth so hard at hearing that that his jaw had ached for days), and entered into marital negotiations.
Somehow the man had established trust, and Master Pakku had supported his proposals. Princess Yue of the Northern tribe was betrothed to the Southern chief’s son, so that had been a bit of a stumbling block, but a Southern princess had been produced, and the marriage negotiated.
“They’ll have to drag her here at spear-point,” Zuko said to his uncle, when later they were sitting in a private room to hear Piandao’s less varnished description of the trip.
“She volunteered,” Piandao said. The two old men were already tucking in to tea and Pai Sho, with Zuko seated moodily in a corner. “Most of the tribe was arguing to continue fighting. Her father and brother were the loudest voices. But the Avatar spoke quite eloquently for peace, and Chief Arnook raised the possibility of dissolving the betrothal between the Southern boy and Princess Yue, and that was when the girl said that she would do it.”
“Is the betrothal so important for the Southern tribe?” asked Iroh, pondering the board.
“Apparently it was a love match. Quite scandalous, in fact. The groom had to defeat a Northern man in personal combat, as the Princess had had a prior betrothal. And then some ritual with a turtle-seal had to be conducted. But apparently the political alliance was actually the result of Master Pakku marrying Chief Hakoda’s mother, if you will believe it.”
“The princess must value her brother’s happiness very highly, then.” Iroh looked up Zuko with a raised eyebrow. “You must have questions, Prince Zuko. About your future bride.”
Zuko just scoffed. “What does it matter? Brave or cowardly, pretty or ugly, smart or stupid, we’re getting married. Why pretend that any other part of it matters?”
Iroh sighed, heavily. “That is not an attitude that promises a fruitful marriage.”
“She is pretty,” Piandao said. “And intelligent, and brave, and one of the strongest waterbenders of her generation. I spoke at length with young Katara, and found her to be both very thoughtful and extremely dedicated to making a permanent peace between our people.”
Piandao, being a dedicated diplomat, was careful not to mention a number of the more candid statements that the young waterbender had made, which had given him serious misgivings about the marriage to come. A delicate Southern bloom, this one was not. And he’d heard enough to realize that the Fire Sages would keel over with heart palpitations if they realized the extent of some of the cultural differences between the Fire Nation and the Water Tribes. In the interest of a lasting peace, he had made a few quiet changes himself during the negotiation process, making certain that the purity examinations that were standard for a Fire Nation royal bride were eliminated completely, before the initial document had even been produced.
It had been the bride’s brother whose sharp eyes had noted the marked out portions, and there had been a great deal of quiet discussion – which had been an improvement, since the revelation of the identity of the royal groom in question had prompted loud discussion, and a great deal of very negative commentary, from the bride and her brother, who had apparently had a number of rather unfortunate run-ins with Prince Zuko. The Avatar had again been a voice of reason, arguing that Prince Zuko was probably very sorry about everything that had happened, and had almost certainly nicer than they remembered.
A near-universal scoffing had met the Avatar’s words, and despite Piandao’s best efforts at presenting Prince Zuko in a positive light to his future bride, he had more than a few concerns about this potential match. Even his White Lotus counterpart, Pakku, had been openly disdainful, even as he’d recognized the importance of the match to help open the peace process, and by the time Piandao had gotten on the ship to return home, treaty in hand, the entire city had begun openly betting on whether the bride would make it to the marriage bed before the first time she iced her groom to the floor.
Small comfort had been that the Water Tribe had been adamant that the marriage would have to wait until the bride turned twenty, so at least there were two years for both partners to bring themselves fully to terms with the match.
**
Sitting in his bathtub that night, scrubbing out the hair that was still growing in following his uncle’s pointed suggestion that perhaps it was time to adopt a hairstyle more becoming of a prince in full favor of the throne, rather than one that had indicated his repentance, Zuko wondered, briefly, why the name “Katara” had sounded so familiar.
Had the Avatar’s waterbending girlfriend been named—
Well, something with a K, he remembered that much. And a bunch of consonants. He couldn’t be sure. He’d had much better things to worry about at the time then the name of some girl who kept just getting in the way, and had practically been a child. He remembered her struggles to control her own bending on the riverbank, and snorted loudly. Piandao had described his new fiancé as one of the strongest benders in the North, and that had absolutely not described the pathetic attempts to bend that he’d witnessed. She’d been at least thirteen, more than old enough to at least avoid hitting herself in the face. And there was no possible world where that little peasant had been a princess, even of the Water Tribe.
No. Probably Katara was their version of Lee. There were dozens of Lees on the palace staff, necessitating the constant annoyance of clarification – take this scroll to Lee, he’d say. Which Lee?
Lee in the archives room.
There are three Lees in the archive room.
The short one.
The one with glasses?
Yes.
That one is the medium height one.
Just fucking deliver it. To whatever Lee you see, and they’ll fucking sort it out.
Undoubtedly this was just more of the same.
But he had two years before Water Tribe ships would deliver his bride. In the meantime, Piandao had agreed that Fire Nation ships would continue to stay to their own waters, and that the Avatar would remain totally unaccosted.
Not that he could’ve captured the Avatar anyway, even if he’d had the chance.
**
For all his internal smugness at the memory of the Water Tribe girl’s (Kally? Kamata? Wait, was it MoMo? He definitely remembered the Avatar yelling Momo a lot) pathetic bending, Zuko conducted all of his own bending practice in strict seclusion.
His fire was weak, sputtering, and even efforts that left his head pounding and his chest gasping for air could produce barely more flame than he had mustered at nine, a late-bloomer even then.
The old rage that had powered him felt like wet, discarded ash. Father was gone – there would never be forgiveness now, never the opportunity to see his father’s face light up with surprise, to prove that Zuko was a worthy son, a faithful child. Ozai’s ashes were years in the wind now, his spirit far away.
And what would he even have shown his father, anyway? The Avatar was lost in the North, probably mastering waterbending, and it didn’t even matter anyway, because the glorious war of three generations had been thrown away like a discarded toy, and the madness was that no one even seemed to care. The regular people were just delighted to have full market days again, and the nobles were vying to outdo each other with balls and galas that had been forbidden as undermining to the war effort for decades. All Iroh had really had to do was promise them that they could have parties again, and they’d discarded all honor and sacrifice in favor of formal dancing and canapes.
For three years Uncle had followed his direction without question, accompanying him across the globe, even up to the gates of the North in Zuko’s unerring quest to capture the Avatar and reclaim his honor. Everything had been certain back then, his goals clear. Then they’d come back – and nothing had been clear since. Uncle just stroked his beard when Zuko questioned his choices and told him that he would explain himself – eventually.
Zuko had even given up asking what Iroh was thinking. Nothing even seemed to matter. The throne that should’ve gone to him was gone – did it matter that Iroh had promised that he would inherit? Probably not. Azula had the right kind of betrothal, with a scion of one of the most respected and powerful noble houses in the country (admittedly, a scion who was only just learning to read, but that wasn’t the point). And what did Zuko have – a betrothal to some Water Tribe barbarian who promised nothing but a total pollution of the sacred royal bloodline. What would it matter if the baby had the bloodlines of Sozin and Roku flowing through its veins, if it was possible that its eyes would be blue?
Already Zuko could see the ripples through the court, the way the nobles looked from him to Azula. The small curls of their lips, the quiet sneers in their voices. His marriage was lesser, any children would be soiled. What did it matter how hard he worked every day, how many laws he refined, how much he administered, how much waste and corruption he ferreted out over hours spent folded over thick tomes and ledgers, checking and re-checking numbers. Azula could throw a dozen parties and sleep in until noon, and everyone suspected that she was the one being prepared for the throne.
And that was with everyone still in the dark about Zuko’s bending problem.
There was no doubt about the strength of Azula’s firebending. She did public exhibitions regularly, and people gasped to see her harness the power of lightning, to coil blue flames in her hands. The rich fruit of Ozai’s highly questioned marriage to Ursa, his wisdom now on display for all to see.
And Zuko practiced only in his private garden, where no one was allowed inside, not even Iroh. And the flames he produced didn’t even startle the turtle-ducks.
What did any of it even matter, then? And he felt the flame inside his chest snuff out a little more each day.
**
He was supposed to be exchanging letters with his betrothed. Uncle had been quite insistent about it, claiming that it was important that he get to know his intended bride. There had been a number of highly unwelcome metaphors about flowers, and gardening, and bees being drawn to honey, which Zuko had mostly endeavored to tune out. Then there had been a visit from the high Fire Sage, which had primarily been a long and very pointed lecture about not giving in to the distractions of the flesh, which Zuko had correctly interpreted as a scold about possible masturbation or sex.
Not that he did much of the former, or any of latter. Even when he’d been with Mai, they’d followed the rules. Now, the thought of losing what little bending he still had by breaking discipline was more than enough of a threat to keep his pants firmly buttoned, and his showers extremely cold.
Messenger hawks flatly refused to fly to the North Pole, so everything had to go by ship, by a highly circuitous route to avoid being sunk by waterbenders, then by private escort. Zuko felt slightly guilty about making the unlucky Captain Akio make a four-month round journey to deliver a first letter that was mainly descriptions of how hot Caldera City was, and polite inquiries about whether she liked flowers.
His secretary, Lee, (yet another fucking Lee) had suggested that he ask questions. Unfortunately, Lee was even more single than Zuko, and between the two of them they had had very few ideas about what questions were good icebreakers with women. After the flower question had gotten zero traction (we don’t have many flowering plants in the North, so I guess my favorite flower is fireweed. It’s highly versatile, and can be boiled down for either a very effective fabric dye or eaten. Did you actually send someone two thousand miles to ask about my flower preferences? I hope you apologize to Akio when he comes back, because the man was bitten by a tiger-walrus while he was here, and nearly caught pneumonia. You need to rethink what you call a winter coat in the Fire Nation.), he had basically given the whole thing up.
After all, he’d thought morosely, he had the entire rest of his life to get to know the woman.
**
There were her apartments to decorate. He delegated that to the housekeeper, who gave him a long and deeply unimpressed look, which he ignored. After that, he ordered that all further preparations for either his wedding or the upkeep of his fiancé were to be directed to Lee, which resulted in the man nearly quitting a week later.
**
“Marriage is like a garden, Prince Zuko. You must prepare the soil most carefully—”
Zuko gestured to a servant to refill his glass, tapping almost frantically to indicate that he required a particularly heavy pour to survive this conversation.
**
Years to go became a year to go.
Then months.
Then weeks.
Then a fleet of Water Tribe ships, their wooden frames cutting through the waves with unnatural, waterbender-assisted speed, purple sails straining in the wind, were spotted, and there was no more time.
Zuko moved in a fog. Servants handed him robes that had been commissioned months before and that he didn’t even recognize. He put them on mechanically, and straightened his topknot. He’d been home for six years, twice as long as he’d sailed on his ship during his banishment, but he still couldn’t break the habit of handling his own personal needs, no matter how unbecoming it was in a prince.
Well, his wife probably wouldn’t find it strange, at least. Maybe. He wondered, briefly, and for actually the first time, if the Water Tribe even took baths, or if they just… fermented… in those heavy parkas of theirs.
Something must have shown in his expression, because Lee shoved an embarrassingly full glass of firewhiskey in his hand, and he drank it down with absolutely no appreciation for its age or quality, but it was enough to at least take the edge off as he walked down to the harbor and watched the lead ship slowly dock. Figures dressed in blue stood on the deck, their dark faces shuttered, even as servants rolled out long panels of silk and tossed flower petals everywhere in anticipation of the princess’s arrival. The court was arrayed in all their finery, and Fire Lord Iroh stood just behind Zuko’s left shoulder – an honor, really, indicating that he wanted Zuko to have all the glory in this moment.
Or all the blame when this when tits up, perhaps.
Somewhere behind him, he heard Azula’s sneering voice, Mai’s cold answer, and the loud whine of his sister’s seven-year-old betrothed, complaining that he needed to use the toilet, and the embroidery on his shirt was itching him, and were the waterbenders going to make ice? He’d heard they could make ice, and why weren’t they making some right now?
Then the gangplank was secured, and a single figure appeared and began walking down it.
Zuko stared up at her.
Piandao had told him that she was lovely, and Zuko had frankly assumed that he was lying. Akio had also said that she was quite pretty, but Zuko had suspected that the man was just trying to cheer him up, or possibly seeing if flattery would allow him to weasel out of another letter-carrying trip to the north.
They’d both been fucking liars, because she wasn’t lovely, or pretty, she was beautiful, with long, curling dark hair that fell all the way to her hips, and deep blue eyes that were startling against her smooth brown skin. She was distinctly curvy, but her long gown, fluttering in the breeze and made of lilacs and blues, was sleeveless, and he could see in her bare arms the firm muscles of a bender, and he imagined that her whole body was probably just as deceptively strong.
As she kept walking, looking at him and only him, her expression calm and focused, Zuko realized that she didn’t seem surprised about his scar. Certainly, Piandao or even Akio could’ve mentioned it to her. Could’ve drawn her a picture. Could’ve used extremely descriptive adjectives like horrific, stomach-churning, really something that takes a while to get used to.
But in a sudden rush, he realized that she wasn’t surprised because she’d seen it before. In the almost distressingly attractive woman walking toward him, who he was going to be expected to have sex with tonight (a thought that made him wish that Lee could give him a second firewhiskey immediately and then possibly look the other way while he put his head between his knees and just had a very small, private, deeply polite and royal nervous breakdown), he suddenly saw the shadows of a girl he’d met before.
Well, met was the wrong word.
He had threatened her. Attacked her. Yelled at her. Stalked her for the better part of a year, and across thousands of miles.
The same girl. The same fucking, irritating, stubborn, brain-meltingly inconvenient brat who half the villagers in the Earth Kingdom couldn’t decide was the Avatar’s girlfriend or possibly his babysitter was now the Southern Water Tribe princess that he’d been engaged to for two years.
Standing in front of the entirety of the Fire Nation court, and an entire boatful of scowling Water Tribe members, there were many ways that Zuko could’ve responded to this revelation.
He reflected on that later. Of all the better ways he could’ve reacted.
In that moment, seeing her, realizing what trap had just sprung closed around him, he snarled, “You,” as if he was sixteen again, facing a girl by a riverbank who refused to bend or budge as she kept the key to his returned honor from him.
“Blessings of Tui and La, Prince Zuko,” she said, not even pausing in her descent. “Have you missed me?”