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"Trust me, Zuko," Katara says. "It's not going to be much of a match."

And it isn't.

When Kara bends snow to lift Zuko into the air and then throw him against the icy ground, he doesn't rise. 

Sokka would argue that it's fair to leave somebody to freeze to death if he was trying to kill you—and he does argue it, when Aang protests their leaving. But Aang's a twelve-year-old pacifist, and Zuko looks really unconscious, so Sokka gives in when Aang says, "If we leave him, he'll die."

"Well, let me tie him up at least," Sokka says, and he complains as he trudges over to the snowpile that Zuko is buried under. Aang's naivete is going to get them killed someday. It won't, because Sokka will intervene, but still. Sokka reminds himself again that the kid is twelve and afraid, which is a far cry from Sokka's own sixteen and afraid. Sokka sometimes wants to let himself put his head between his knees and hyperventilate, just for the hell of it, so if Sokka's feeling that, how must Aang feel? He reminds himself of that every time he wants to shout at the kid. Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn't. This time he doesn't shout, and he shoves snow away from the crown prince of the Fire Nation, and he restricts himself to minor grumbling. All of that is cut short when he realizes that Zuko isn't breathing.

Sokka takes Zuko's wrist—no pulse. As loathe as he is to get any closer to Zuko than that, he puts his hand to Zuko's neck, too, two fingers on the pulse point under Zuko's chin. Nothing.

Sokka's baby sister is fourteen. She has just killed a man. Not for the first time in his life, Sokka is consumed with hatred for the Fire Nation. Zuko is facedown, his bruised and scarred face and whatever final expression he'd made in death hidden from Sokka. That doesn't stop Sokka from wanting to take Zuko by the front of his snow-damp shirt and shake him. Look, he wants to say, Look what you made her do! How could you do that to her!

When Sokka looks at Katara, there's no judgment in him. It still saddens him when he can tell that she already knows. He will never forget her face just then. There will be more of this. They will have to do more killing to survive this war. Sokka knows—he'd been more than willing to shoulder that "moral burden" himself, even if Aang wasn't. But it's still a sharp and bitter blade in his chest to see Katara looking like that.

This is her first kill, but it won't be her last. She's got to know that by now. Sokka tilts his head towards Aang without breaking eye contact with Katara. Go on, he tries to say with his eyes. Tell Aang what the reality of the situation is.

"Aang," Katara says, "Zuko is—I—"

She doesn't get to finish her sentence. Zuko's body bursts into flames. Sokka leaps back from the sudden blaze—nothing is ever simple with the Fire Nation, why—and then, just as suddenly as the fire had roared into existence, it finished its—its cremation, fuck—leaving nothing but a Zuko-sized pile of ash. Sokka stares at it, because what.

Sokka isn't sure when Aang left Appa, but he's there, all of a sudden, shifting through the ashes like he's looking for something.

"Aang, buddy," Sokka says. Has their resident airbender finally lost it? Is this a cultural thing Sokka just isn't getting? "What're you doing?"

Aang gets his hands on whatever he's looking for.

"Oh, wow," Aang says. "I didn't know Zuko's a phoenix. They're really rare! Do you think he knew?"

"Zuko's a what," Sokka says.

Aang stands up, and Sokka can see a baby bird cupped in his hands. The little chick, under a light dusting of ash, has feathers the color of a sunset.

"We really do need to hurry," Aang says instead of explaining himself. He wanders away from the ashes and toward Katara, who can only stare at him. Sokka watches as Aang deposits the shivering chick in Katara's hands, telling her that phoenixes are not well-suited for cold weather and that he needs to be kept warm. 

Sokka rises from his panic-induced sprawl in the snow and walks toward Katara, too, noticing that the chick cowers away when Katara's mittened hand tries to pet it. She holds it gently to her chest and her wild eyes catch Sokka's gaze.

Sokka shrugs helplessly. He doesn't know any more than she does at this point. 

Aang hops back up on Appa, and Sokka and Katara follow him up. Aang looks over his shoulder from his seated position, Appa's reigns clutched tightly in his small hands.

"Katara?" he says. "Try not to kill him again. Please. Most people don't come back from that. Avatars and phoenixes, but not most people. Okay? You got really lucky this time."

Aang's smiling, but it's pained, forced, maybe even a little miserable somehow. Sokka doesn't like seeing a look like that on Aang's face, so he looks away. There's a lot of weight behind that forced smile. It makes Sokka's stomach curdle with guilt, even though he's got nothing to be guilty for. Katara doesn't either. Stupid airbenders and their stupid pacifism and moral superiority—but even Sokka's mental complaints don't have any heat to them, and he doesn't say anything.

Katara stares down at the bird in her hands for a moment.

"I'll be careful," she says.

Aang commands Appa to take off with his typical, Yip yip! A weighty silence follows. Sokka's sitting next to Yue, who's as prim and proper on the back of a flying bison as only the princess of the Northern Water Tribe could be, and Sokka resists the urge to lay his head on her shoulder and rest. 

"Is that thing really Zuko?" Sokka says after a few more moments of silence.

"Yep," Aang says.

"So—he's immortal?" Sokka says.

"When he dies, he gets reborn," Aang says.

That doesn't really answer my question, Sokka thinks.

"I wonder what came first," Yue says, "the bird or the boy?"

Sokka blinks at her. He'd never really thought of Zuko as a boy. Like, okay, he knew Zuko was a guy, but boy felt too young or too innocent for the shouty asshole who kept trying to capture the avatar. Even if that asshole was Sokka's age and not grown grown.

"Zuko is the bird," Aang says, "but his mom probably gave birth to a normal-looking kid, if that's what you're asking."

"Can I hold him?" Yue asks Katara.

"Sure," Katara says, though her tone of voice says, I'm not sure why you'd want to.

Katara is incredibly gentle and careful, though, as she passes bird-Zuko to Yue, who accepts the tiny chick with equally gentle and careful hands.

"He weighs so little," Yue says.

"Did you know bird bones are hollow?" Sokka says, and Yue's smile says, Yes, I did know that, but I'm humoring you. Sokka feels heat creep into his cheeks and looks away with embarrassment. He looks back when Yue nudges his shoulder.

"Do you want to see?" she says. She moves her cupped hands a little bit away from her and Sokka peers down at bird-Zuko, who trembles under his gaze. The first thing that Sokka notices is that the bird's eyes are bright gold. It had been an unnerving color on Zuko's human face, but for a bird that's already painted in sun-colors, the gold eyes doesn't seem so out of place. The crown prince of the Fire Nation is really a bird the size of a fist, if not a little smaller. Wild.

Sokka pokes at it with his finger.

Bird-Zuko cheeps and flinches away wildly, wings flapping in alarm, and Yue brings him closer to her, her cupped hands held over her chest like maybe the warmth of her body will calm him.

"Be nice," she chides Sokka. 

Sokka might shoot a small glare at bird-Zuko for getting so close to Yue, but really, watching Yue gently hold the baby bird, all he can feel is tenderness toward her, and he wants nothing more than to kiss her. She's so kind and good, even to an enemy. He's only known her for a few days, but he wants her, wants to tell her maybe he could love her, ask her if maybe she could someday love him too.

A strange look comes over Yue's face. When she sways, Sokka readily steadies her. He pulls her into his arms when she doesn't protest.

"Are you feeling alright?" he says.

He has just enough awareness to note in the back of his mind that Katara lunged immediately for the chick in Yue's hands when Yue started looking faint, and out of the corner of his eye Sokka sees Katara tuck the bird in her coat. That's checked off his mental list as something he doesn't need to concern himself with; it's taken care of. Yue, on the other hand...

"Something is wrong," Yue says.

"I felt it, too," Aang says from up front.

Yue tells them all of the circumstances of her birth, and the way the moon spirit saved her as a baby. Sokka hangs onto every word. He doesn't know it yet, but he'll be glad, later, that he spends so much time now watching her speak, memorizing every smooth line of her face. He doesn't know it, but they're running out of time.

It's not until later, after Yue has died in Sokka's arms and the moon spirit has been restored and the city defended and the Fire Nation fleet drowned under the weight of Aang's avatar state, after Yue's father assigns them each a room or two to stay in for the night, that Sokka remembers Zuko at all.

It isn't even until he has knocked on door to Katara's room, which adjoins the room he's sharing with Aang, and he opens the door to see Katara trying to coax the little bird into drinking water she has left for him in a small bowl of ice.

"Oh," he says.

"Sokka," Katara says, looking up at him in the doorway. Her brow creases, and her eyes soften. "Are you okay?"

"I'm fine," Sokka says, because he Does Not Want to Talk About It. "Whatcha got there?"

"I don't have anything to feed him, so I'm trying to get him to drink more," Katara says, "but he won't listen to me."

"Hold on," Sokka says. He leaves and returns with the plate that bore the remains of their weary midnight dinner. He'd forced himself to eat some of it but ultimately couldn't stomach the rest, and he'd left it on the bedside table and stared at his hands, trying not to imagine Yue holding them one more time.

Katara frowns at Sokka's half-eaten dinner before accepting it and putting it down in front of bird-Zuko.

"Eat something," she commands. "You need to keep up your strength."

Sokka wonders if she should maybe be a little more polite, but that's not really her style, and Zuko doesn't deserve it anyway. The bird tilts its head warily at the offered food before pecking hesitantly at one of the sea prunes. He eats the tiny piece in his beak and waits a moment. Sokka wonders what for. Then bird-Zuko starts pecking at the sea prune more fervently. 

"Hey," Sokka says, excited despite himself, "I think he likes it!"

Katara grumbles something at him about how much effort she'd wasted with the extra water, but she still looks relieved.

"We probably should've given him to his uncle at the Oasis," Katara says once the bird is asleep in one of her coats that she's draped over her bedside table.

"We were a little preoccupied at the time," Sokka says, "but you're probably right. Think that guy is still around?"

"Probably not," Katara says.

She's right. When they ask around in the morning, the old man has vanished.

"Don't suppose we could leave him here," Sokka says.

"Didn't you hear Aang?" Katara says. "Phoenixes aren't suited for cold weather."

"I know," Sokka says, but he doesn't push it any further. So they're gonna raise an enemy bird. Fine. Another little animal friend for Aang. The kid'll be thrilled. Momo maybe not so much.

Azula kneels before her father's flaming throne and waits for him to speak. He doesn't make her wait for long. That was always Zuko's game, the one where father made him kneel for hours and hours and waited to see when he'd tremble. Azula's not as annoying as Zuko, so she'd never had his aching knees. 

Part of Father's news is not surprising—her uncle had come back from the war too soft; of course he has betrayed them. He had never seemed trustworthy. Azula knows Father never liked him. She'd known which way the winds were blowing, so she aligned herself with that, too, and told herself her Uncle's wary eyes when he looked her way did not hurt at all. Soon they hadn't; she'd sneered back at him, the fool doting on her older brother. Uncle Iroh's "kindness" had only made Zuko weaker. Zuko would never learn, never get stronger. If Uncle Iroh was doing it on purpose he was needlessly cruel; if he was doing it on accident then he was a fool. Either way, Azula didn't need such a man near her. It was better that he held himself at a distance from her. She tried to show Zuko that their uncle only made Zuko weaker in their father's eyes, but she'd been too late; her older brother imprinted on their uncle like a baby bird, and clung to him in the absence of their mother. Azula sneered at them both.

Father commands her to hunt their uncle down. Readily and happily done. Azula will prove herself.

"And what of Zuko, Father?" Azula asks once it's clear that she is permitted to speak.

Father waves a careless hand.

"He was lost during the seige of the North," he says. "It was Iroh's last communiqué to me before he turned traitor."

Azula holds herself as still as she always does. Her brother is dead. Her uncle is a traitor. Azula knows which way the wind is blowing. She always knows. 

The Fire Lord sees Azula smile at the news. She makes sure that he sees.

"I expect it was the cold that finally finished the job," he says. It's spoken like an absentminded thought.

It is an odd thing to say. Azula does not react to it. But she does not forget. When she next inhales, regular and steady and normal, she stokes her inner fire, lets her breath warm herself up a little more.

The last letter that Ozai receives from Iroh describes Iroh's attempts to search for Zuko in the North Pole, and that the searches had been futile; Iroh believed Zuko to be dead, after a "noble" and "brave" attempt to invade the Northern Water Tribe's stronghold on his own. There is a brief moment where he considers that Iroh is trying to trick him. But why would Iroh risk writing at all, if he was truly on the run with a living Zuko? No, he would just flee. This is a man consumed by grief and guilt notifying the Fire Nation of the loss of their crown prince. Iroh truly believes that Zuko is dead.

This is not the first time that Ozai's son has died.

At fifteen, Ozai's dalliance with a servant girl resulted in a pregnancy. It was not the first time it had happened, but this particular pregnancy was the first time that Fire Lord Azulon had called him in for a private audience in the throne room, and had forced him to "take responsibility." Their conversation had essentially boiled down to Ozai's father raising an eyebrow, and saying—though much more formally—Oh, you want to make a habit of this? Well, now you'll have to deal with it.

Rather than sending the servant girl away, as Ozai had done with the others, Azulon forced Ozai to use his own funds—his royal stipend and winnings from recreational firebending tournaments—to house, feed, and otherwise care for the pregnant girl and the child she would inevitably bear. Ozai drew the line at housing the girl's parents: they would continue to live in whatever not-poverty he assumed they lived in as servants, though he did not forbid her from seeing them. She was Ozai's age, and this was her first child, so her mother came to stay with her during her pregnancy, which Ozai noticed during the visits that Azulon mandated. Oh, Azulon didn't take so much interest as to set up a schedule, but he'd been clear enough, that time in the throne room when they spoke, that this would not just cost Ozai money, it would also cost him time.

The girl bore him a son. Ozai was out drinking with friends from his firebending school the night of the birth, with strict orders to his staff not to disturb him, so he didn't find out until the next morning. He made his way to the dwelling and said, snappish because of his hangover, that he did not care what she named the boy, as long as she didn't pick something ridiculous. She lowered her eyes, her hands carefully holding their infant son, and named him Koji.

Everything about the situation was infuriating. Iroh teased him about it once and then promptly forgot all about it. Azulon made one visit with Ozai to see the bastard boy, and Ozai's teenage fatherhood delighted Azulon to no end, up until he became annoyed with the baby crying in its mother's arms and left, never to return, though he would continue to force Ozai to visit.

The one consolation was that at least the boy was a firebender. At age two, he lit a candle from across the room; while no one could get him to replicate the feat, Ozai could tell, holding the boy in his arms in the visit immediately after, that there was a spark of fire in him. He could be trained when he grew older, Ozai supposed. He could serve as a palace guard, or a soldier. A bodyguard, perhaps, for when Ozai had trueborn children, in the time before his trueborn children were old enough to fight for themselves.

When the boy was four years old, around the time of Ozai's nineteenth birthday, the boy took ill. One of the palace healers attended to him, but he did not recover; Ozai was informed that his bastard son was dying, and so he made the obligatory visit to the girl's house, and he sat stiffly while she wept over the feverish child. There was no one but them and the doctor; the girl's parents had both passed away by then.

"Oh, Koji," she said, crying, holding herself, rocking back and forth, "Koji, Koji, please, stay with Mama, you'll be alright, don't go," and her cries dissolved into unintelligible sobs as the palace doctor bowed and departed, knowing there was nothing else to be done.

"For Agni's sake, shut up," Ozai snapped, and the girl knew better than to defy a prince, so she covered her mouth and stifled her sobs as best she could.

The boy stopped breathing shortly after that, and, after twitching a moment, he went still and his heart stopped. 

The girl broke out into a wail at that before biting her own fist to quiet herself. With her other hand, she reached for the boy, and Ozai rose, intending to send for another servant to collect the body. He would have it sent to one of the cremation sites the peasants use. A bastard would not have a royal pyre.

Ozai spun back around when the boy's body caught fire. The girl was not a firebender—he yanked her away from the body and shoved her behind him, preparing to extinguish the sudden blaze himself. It was not necessary: the flame extinguished on its own a moment later, leaving behind nothing but a pile of ash.

"What," the girl gasped, but Ozai ignored her, his inner flame flickering in a way that made him kneel by the ashes and sift through them. He found, in the center, a baby bird.

It was with a wild, reeling mind that he combed through his memories and his learning and recalled an old legend, thought to be nothing more than a myth. 

This, in his hands, was a phoenix chick.

Ozai had sired a phoenix.

He laughed. He couldn't help himself. He, Azulon's second son, had done what no one else had in at least a hundred years of their recorded history. Phoenixes were myths. But here one was, in his hands. It was his. 

"Koji?" the servant girl asked.

Ozai looked at her. She was reaching trembling hands out for the bird, confused and pained and hopeful, and he knocked her hands away. 

"My prince," she pleaded, shock tinging her every word, but he ignored her, and, after tucking the chick in one of his sleeves, he stepped out to call for the guards. 

He ignored her, too, as the guards hauled her away, as she screamed, "My son! My son, give him back! He has my son—you can't let him—Koji! Koji!"

To one remaining guard, he instructed to send for servants to clean the place, as his son had passed away, and the girl had gone mad. The guard nodded respectfully but sympathetically and hurried to carry out his orders. Ozai nodded to himself and then rushed as casually as possible back to his own chambers. The servant girl would be institutionalized before the sun rose. Ozai would have no interference with this. The phoenix's mysteries were to be uncovered by him and him alone.

That week, it was with as much subtlety as possible that he reread all the material the palace library had on phoenixes. He read about other mythical creatures, too, in order to make his interest less specific. The phoenix would be his secret weapon against the other nations—perhaps, if he allowed the treasonous thought any room in his mind, against his brother, and Ozai could seize the throne...or, if the opportune moment arose, Ozai could demonstrate the phoenix's power, and Azulon would see that his second-born child was the rightful heir, blessed by Agni with a phoenix son... 

Ozai read, and planned, and kept the bird in his chambers, sometimes in a gilded cage and sometimes in his sleeve or in his lap. He fed it foods that seemed appropriate for birds, certain leftovers he snuck from formal dinners or from snacks he had brought to his room. He took to feeding a few of the birds in the courtyard birdseed, which some of the servants found charming, he knew—not that he cared—and snuck some of the birdseed into his sleeve where the phoenix chick resided, or back to his room if he'd left it caged and covered there for the day.

It was one afternoon he was stroking the bird absentmindedly while reading such a text that there was a sudden cloud of feathers that disturbed his vision, and the weight in his lap was suddenly much heavier.

The bird had turned back into a boy.

And the boy was naked. 

Ozai regarded the first fact first with awe and the second with mild repulsion. He balanced the boy on his hip—more to make sure he didn't startle and try to run than anything else—sorted through a chest of his old belongings, and found a silk robe from when he was this boy's age—four, perhaps. The same age as when the boy had died. He dressed the boy in the robe, tied the sash around the boy's waist, and then sat the boy down in the desk chair. Ozai knelt before the chair so they were eye-to-eye and gripped the boy's shoulders.

This was the same boy as before. Not a thing had changed. His son blinked at him with wide golden eyes.

But the boy did not speak—had not called him his father, had not asked for his mother. None of the texts had been clear about the exact details of rebirth or reincarnation or whatever it was.

"Do you recognize me?" Ozai asked the boy.

The boy shook his head.

"I am your father," Ozai said. "Do you know what you are?"

The boy's face twisted with confusion.

"Your son?" he said uncertainly.

Ozai put the matter of the phoenix away. A child could not be trusted to keep a secret. Ozai would navigate this alone.

"You are a bastard," Ozai said.

"What's that?" the boy asked.

"It means you are not my heir," Ozai said. "You are illegitimate. Your mother was a servant. I am a prince. Do you understand?"

The boy nodded. Ozai wasn't truly sure how much he really got a grasp of, but it was good enough.

"Where's she?" the boy asked.

"She died," Ozai said. 

The lie came easily. He was already making his plans. The boy would be known as another of Ozai's bastards come out of the woodwork, and Ozai would make similar arrangements as before, except he would not be able to produce a mother, so he would hire a nursemaid. Azulon would not pay enough attention to care, as long as the bastard did not interfere at all with the line of succession, which the boy would not. And Ozai had been careful not to sire any new children since that last one, so it was clear that he had "learned his lesson.” Perhaps Azulon might think that Ozai meant even to replace his dead son with this new boy. Ozai did not care if Azulon found him sentimental. Ozai cared only that he could keep this phoenix and utilize whatever secret powers it had.

Azulon reacted with the anticipated indifference and disinterest, asking only, "And what is this one's name?"

Ozai had forgotten to name the boy, who was waiting back in Ozai's chambers, while Ozai had this audience with Azulon. But Ozai was quick-minded and did not falter.

"Yosuke," Ozai said.

Yosuke was a black-haired, bright-eyed thing that became fond of the nursemaid and worshipful of Ozai. He was obedient, quiet, and attentive. Ozai spent much more time with this boy than the last—when Ozai was not training his firebending, competing in recreational tournaments, studying old myths, or politicking, he was overseeing the boy's tutelage. The boy had been given the finest firebending tutor that Ozai's money would pay for, and the boy was doing his best.

By the time the boy turned six, the flaw was evident: the boy's best was not enough. He was fine, maybe even adept, but he was not the prodigy promised by his phoenix nature. Yosuke only became more anxious at Ozai's fury with his ordinary progress, and Ozai had to resort to disciplining him, with a hot hand to his arm or a twist to his wrist. This was not the weapon Ozai was promised. Ozai wanted results.

It was, perhaps, inevitable that the boy's consistent normalcy was enough of a failure that Ozai lost his temper and burned him to death. Regrettable, but inevitable. It was the day before Ozai turned thirty. The boy was fifteen, and Ozai acknowledged that he was skilled, and well-learned, and a good fighter—but it was not enough. And the way the boy would cower before Ozai's impatience with him just sent Ozai into a further rage every time.

The details of his death were not suspect—by the time the elaborate celebrations of Ozai's birthday were done, all traces of his bastard son were gone, and the palace historians were notified that it should be recorded that the boy had passed away.

Ozai kept the bird again; the bird turned into a boy again. Zuko was this next iteration. There were...complications. Ozai handled them.

When Ozai burned Zuko during the Agni Kai, when his son was thirteen, Ozai was much more careful. He would not unintentionally burn his son to death here and reveal the little bird that would come from the ashes in front of all of these people. Ozai pressed his hand over his son's eye and did a very controlled burn. Injure, not kill. Blind, maybe. But not kill.

Ozai had thought of killing the boy in private after the Agni Kai and making him new, but Zuko's life, in which everyone believed him to be a trueborn prince, was more public than the previous two boys' lives had been. There were portraits. Someone might recognize the young, new boy as the young-again version of Zuko. Ozai could pass the familiarity off as his own genes with a new bastard son, but... still. It was better not to risk it. Especially after he arrived in the room of his injured son, whose eye had been bandaged and was unconscious with fever, and found Iroh there. Ozai's accursed brother had taken an interest in seeing the boy heal, so Ozai couldn't kill him quietly; he banished Zuko and gave up on this incarnation as a failure. It would shame Zuko. And he'd be deprived of resources. Ozai knew, given some of Yosuke's habits and behaviors and Zuko's after him, that the reincarnations had—not memories, but maybe they could be called—vague impressions of past lives. The Agni Kai and banishment would teach not only Zuko but also whoever would come next to be more respectful.

Ozai took precautions, of course. He planted one or two spies on the ship that Iroh purchased for Zuko, and the spies watched him and reported back, at least to make sure Zuko didn't die. And reveal his phoenix nature upon death, though they didn't know that's what they were watching out for.

Ozai had a vague idea that maybe he would bring Zuko back and kill him at some point in order to retrain him and raise him up as a proper weapon—perhaps once Ozai had won the war, or when he was on the cusp of it. 

For now, Azula is the perfectly-honed weapon; Ozai leaves the throne room after instructing Azula to capture the traitor Iroh, and he knows that although it will challenge her, she will succeed. Zuko is a failure, and perhaps even a monster—certainly inhuman. Ozai is certain that he will never allow the phoenix to be more powerful than him. Ozai will be the Phoenix King. Not the boy. Not ever.

Certainly never, now that he is dead for good.

Ozai waits until he is in his chambers alone to smile. He is thrilled at the idea that Zuko drowned or froze to death at the North Pole. Although Ozai has no more chances of retraining a phoenix, he is now the first man who has killed one. He is the Phoenix King because he sired a phoenix; he is the Phoenix King because he conquered a phoenix. He has resoundingly proven that he is Agni's chosen. He is the Phoenix King twice over. Now all he has left to do is conquer the rest of the world.

And all this cannot overshadow the smaller joy of knowing he has once again won over his older brother. The phoenix's rebirth cycle finished because Iroh could not find Zuko's body—perhaps did not look hard enough, because he did not know that the phoenix chick would be waiting for him. Iroh had come home from the war after Zuko's position in the household had been made concrete; he never knew about the phoenix. Iroh assumed that Zuko had died, gave up on finding the body because he did not know its importance, and the phoenix chick likely died in the ocean or the snow. 

Victory, victory, victory. On all fronts.

Katara and Aang take care of the bird on their journey to the Earth Kingdom base. Sokka doesn't help. No, really. Maybe a few times, if only during the early stages where Katara's still trying to earn the bird's trust. Bird-Zuko takes to Aang like an otterpenguin to water, but he's still skittish of Katara for a long while. Sokka would bet a pair of socks it's because she killed him, but he doesn't voice this, even though he can tell that they're all three thinking the same thing. Sokka wonders if the bird likes Aang so much because Zuko had chased Aang for so long while he was still living, but since Zuko had been trying to deliver Aang to an unpleasant fate, Sokka bets bird-Zuko's trust of Aang is more to do with some sort of avatar spiritual stuff. 

Bird-Zuko flies for the first time in the confines of their rooms on the Water Tribe ship, and his tremulous leap into the air off a bed, the air catching under his wings and keeping him aloft as he chirped and soared throughout the room, brought a smile to even Sokka’s face. Hey, sue him. The chirping was cute. If human-teenager-Zuko was here, Sokka would never let him live it down.

They keep bird-Zuko secret from Pakku and the others. None of them discuss it—it's just what they do.

Probably a good thing, Sokka thinks in hindsight, because after they arrive at and settle into the Earth Kingdom base, the phoenix chick turns back into a boy.