Chapter Text
Look, Sokka didn’t like to call himself a pessimist, but he was also a fairly logical guy. Which was to say, with the way that his recent membership of the Southern Water Tribe’s council was shaping up, he was pretty fucking pessimistic. A Debbie Downer, if you would. A Negative Nancy.
Katara had taken up chiding him for it. In all honesty, Sokka knew he was overreacting to a degree, that the majority of all his stress was his own fault, that this was a byproduct of holing up inside of the strategy room for sometimes days on end, no food or sunlight, just his yellowed parchment paper scroll and red-inked maps, the window bleak, the stacked-up crockery.
It was crazy. Sokka, stupid and sixteen, thought it’d get easier once the war ended, but, well — it’d maybe gotten worse.
There was all this stuff to manage; politics, foreign relations, budgeting, economics, etcetera, etcetera, and obviously he had to worry over the goddamn Spirits’ Festival, too.
But today wasn’t that bad of a day. The fish were coming in by the netful, and the women were laughing, the children were mingling — Southern and Northern tribes united through games of freeze tag — while the men pulled boats out of the ice and clapped each others’ shoulders. The scent of pre-prepared jams and root teas caught on the wind and wafted between the huts. The market stands arranged themselves into a miniature bazaar.
Sokka was stuck gutting squishy minnows.
“Gran-Gran,” he laughed, humorlessly, “are you sure I need to do this. Like sure. Like no one else can help but me. Like super-duper positively extra-certain sure.” The sarcasm was a familiarity, but Sokka wasn’t putting nearly as much sincerity into the complaint as he did for literally everything else.
He kind of did need the distraction. These days, everyone knew he was driving himself neurotic with all the work he put on his plate, and he’d been practically kicked out of the Council’s establishment as a sort of forced break. His dad had said, go help your sister with decorations. Katara had said, I don’t need YOUR help. You don’t have an eye for this, help Gran-Gran instead. Gran-Gran had said, well, thank Tui, I needed an assistant.
Sokka was beginning to understand why no one else had taken the job.
“If you can find someone willing to trade places with you, I’ll gladly let you off the hook,” his grandmother hummed, her eyebrow raising in a telling, mischievous arch.
Sokka sighed theatrically. “I hate this. I’m going to smell like—fish—for like, weeks. This is gonna sabotage my plans.” He tossed his accumulated fish bones into the bucket next to the countertop, and absently wiped his slimy hand onto his pant leg, then gagged once he realized his pants were slimy.
“What plans, young man? There’s no way you’re getting up to any official Water Tribe business, your father would have your head.” Gran-Gran’s gutting speed was considerably more advanced than Sokka’s, and he ogled her warily.
Sokka rolled his eyes. “Ah, my head. Executed for the crime of wanting to be helpful, woe is me.”
Gran-Gran shot him a pointed look. “You know it’s more than that.”
“Yeah,” muttered Sokka. “I do.” He sighed, then shook himself, uprighted his shoulders and tried to stop sulking. Bad Sokka. Dad said to be more positive. Katara said to stop wimping out. Quit it, my dude. “But that’s not what I meant. Obviously my plans are to woo beautiful girls from the Northern tribe, and smelling like fish is not gonna impress the ladies.”
Gran-Gran barked out a laugh, and smacked her elbow against Sokka’s forearm. “Well, if she doesn’t want you smelling like fish, she doesn’t deserve you when you smell like roses.”
Sokka considered this. “You make an excellent point, Gran-Gran. I can’t argue with that.” Their conversation lulled into comfortable silence, and Sokka began picking at the glimmering minnow scales again, grumbling to himself half-heartedly.
Whatever. At least he’d contribute to the coming days’ dinners, delicious stews made annually by his grandmother, thick with tempered sea brine and mellow spices. He’d snatch up Katara’s unfinished bowls with the defense of his own labor, claiming ownership on the gutted fish. It’d be like old times, in a sense. He swallowed down the small lump of something in his throat.
He didn’t like to think about it too much, but it had been roughly a month since the war ended. After he and Katara had returned home — one last trip off Appa’s back — they’d been rapidly swept into the public affairs of the Northern and Southern water tribes. There had been talks of reintegration and merging their populations, and within the Southern tribe’s intimate discussions, strings of vaguely tense disagreement had drawn taut.
Hakoda and Katara weren’t particularly for it, but they were more willing to look into the idea than Sokka and Bato were, and there were several nights where Sokka had had to excuse himself from their dinner table to irately pace around the water’s edge.
He knew he was sometimes being dramatic, but he couldn’t help it. He had this secret fear that the Northern presence in the South would, through the decades, creep into Southern tribe culture and eventually manage to erase it from existence in the first place. It was definitely paranoia, but he was sixteen and his world had turned bottom-up this past year and a half, and he was sick of change.
Give me a break, he thought, suddenly very interested in the beady fish eyes rolling about in front of him. I’m not cut out for this. Any of this.
He was just thinking the quiet had stretched out too long, before there was a scuffling outside and a brief pause of motion, before Katara slammed the door open, loudly, and snapped Sokka out of his spiraling self-deprecation.
“Woah. Hey, what’s up?” Sokka put down his knife and turned his attention to his sister, eyes a little wide.
She was panting, braids gone messy, her lips still bitten pink by the cold. Even Gran-Gran went still, alarmed by the outburst and immediately reaching for concern.
“Sokka,” she rasped, “there’s a Fire Nation ship on the horizon.”
“Okay?” Sokka replied, confused. “The… war’s over, it’s not hostile. Sure, trade is off right now, but I’m sure no one’s attacking us.”
Katara shook her head, urgently, like there was just something that Sokka couldn’t grasp. “No. You don’t get it. It’s… sinking.”
Prince Zuko was on the lam.
A flash, a bang, a dead advisor; two weeks ago his glass of water had been poisoned and, to some miracle, it hadn’t been him who hit the floor frothing at the mouth. While troubling, it wasn’t unexpected — opposition to the crown was no surprise, especially considering all the turmoil within the Fire Nation as of late.
Rebellions, attempts at coup d’etats, it went on. His uncle had said it would die out in the coming months, but even the Dragon of the West wasn’t confident in his words. The Fire Nation had never seen this sort of political instability, at least, not within the last hundred years, and Zuko — seventeen, frantic — took the brunt of the general unhappiness.
Most of it was not really that bad. Zuko wasn’t weak by any means; he’d hit back, he’d hit hard, he’d delivered speeches to cheering crowds. The civilians liked him, as much as they could. When he roamed his streets, he’d pass candy out to small children and help the elderly with their errands, and they would all look up, shocked, stunned, afflicted with disbelieving awe that manifested into shy smiles — endeared blushing. He wanted to be a good leader, someone merciful and trustworthy; he wanted to be magical, symbolic, he wanted to be the things his father wasn’t.
He had the assassination attempts under control, until they got worse.
Four days ago, there had been an arrow shot into Zuko’s balcony at the Royal Palace and because, only because, Mai had made him laugh, he’d ducked his head and the arrow had grazed his right cheek instead of taking him cleanly out.
There was a note attached to it, which they’d hastily read after scrambling inside and locking the doors. Find a new King, it read, don’t coronate this Prince or we won’t miss the next time.
Zuko, as he always did, tried to take it in stride. He really did. But there was something wrong about this near-death, there was something that struck cold fear in his heart in a way that the others didn’t: the whole population thought he was away at the Earth Kingdom.
He was supposed to have been travelling that day, to negotiate trade and rebuilding efforts with the Earth Kingdom leaders, but there’d been a delay in the ships.
Zuko stayed home.
No one knew that he stayed home. No one knew except for the palace staff and Zuko’s close friends, and those, he would admit, were a meager number.
Which led him to the big, chilling question: Who the hell tried to kill him?
He didn’t have time to come up with an answer. Before he knew it, Uncle Iroh was boarding him onto a ship and telling him to sail to a small branch of the White Lotus, southeast of Kyoshi Island. He’d said they’d keep him safe there, until Iroh and his colleagues could figure out what was happening in the underground, and that under no circumstances should Zuko tell anyone where he was. In essence, the past few days had been a startling, blue, terrifying blur, where all Zuko could do was order guards around and ignore the voice in his head telling him to pray. He could’ve been getting cabin fever. He had no one to talk to, and felt relatively alone.
But honestly, he wasn’t afraid of the whole death thing. That sounded insane, but the part that really scared him was what it would mean.
For so long, his people had lived underneath an imperialist, unforgiving dynasty; Zuko sat in his throne and he still suffered, so he couldn’t imagine the horrible truths behind those golden years of his, how they all scrabbled and fought tooth and nail.
If his enemies managed to kill him, there was no telling what kind of monster would take claim to the crown, and there was an unfortunately massive chance that all the carefully crafted progress Zuko had been trying to coordinate would go to complete, utter shit. He knew the types of people that were orchestrating this, even if not by name; the businessmen, the traders, the politicians and the bigshots. People that supported Ozai and only grew their filthy wealth from the Fire Nation’s colonialist pursuits. People that Zuko, when in power, would have most likely imprisoned for the rest of their miserable lives.
Yeah, it was no surprise they wanted to fucking shoot him.
He groaned into his hands. The seawater kept pleasantly spraying against his face as he leaned against the ship’s railing, and sometimes, he almost forgot what was waiting for him. He could see the island coast approaching and could not stop anxiously drumming his thumbs on his knuckles, and everything was going to pins and needles.
“Oi,” a crewmember called, snapping Zuko out of his thoughts, “Your Highness. We’re almost at port, so we should probably start getting ready to unload. Would you like help with your things?”
“Ah, sure. Thanks.” Zuko smiled and pushed himself off of the railing, going belowdeck to lift up his luggage. He hadn’t brought many things, having left in a frenzy, but he’d packed some items of sentiment and also his double-blades. His Pai Sho tile, a framed photograph of himself and his friends from their youth, the obvious essentials, a couple trinkets from his travels with the Avatar, and yes, a whetting stone and swords. What? There was no harm in trying to be prepared.
Zuko should’ve had his coronation this week, but, well, his schedule got all messed up. On account of, like, the murder attempts. It was strange, though, nearly surreal. A year ago, he was begging for his honor back and willing to die to prove a stupid point. He used to be so angry. A lot of the time, he still was, but now it was more of a vague, undefined quality, because his father was imprisoned and there was nowhere for the rage to properly go.
Zuko hauled his suitcase up the steps, and the sun had really never felt so good.
Maybe it all had been going too well. Maybe he was finding himself getting a bit too comfortable. Maybe he really should’ve been more on-guard, because then he would’ve avoided the inevitable: the tragic, predictable collapse, where every good thing he had imploded on itself.
It was fast. Blink-and-you-miss-it. Zuko squinted out at the horizon, finding the island where they were supposed to dock at, and consequently missed the crew behind him start to back out of the lower deck. He heard a second too late when they began to yell, and only turned around when he smelt smoke.
Huh, thought Zuko, that’s weird, and then something cracked, snapped, and he was fucked.
Fire burst at his back. He was lucky for that flame-resistance he had, because otherwise, he probably would’ve burnt into even more of a crisp than he already was. The force of the bomb — whatever it was — sent him flying forward on his face, and he could feel the fabric of his clothes singe a little.
What, he intelligently questioned. “Yisen! Wei Liu!” he shouted, his voice cutting desperately through the rising smoke. “Guys!”
The crew shouted back, muffled. “I’m here!” Yisen replied, but Zuko couldn’t pinpoint her location on the ship. Wei Liu did not say anything in return. Zuko belatedly realized that Wei Liu had been below deck, right by the bomb, when it all happened. Zuko’s heart almost stopped, but he didn’t have the time to process any of that; what he needed to do was get his men and women to safety, and get off the goddamn boat.
Unfortunately, the sail got screwed up, and they were going to drift past the correct island.
Pro: past the island was the Southern Water Tribe.
Con: past the island was the Southern Water Tribe.
Well, Zuko thought, a little bit hysterically, my crew is wounded, I’ve inhaled way too much smoke, and I am definitely about to crash my boat into the ice.
Sokka was out of that kitchen like a man on fire. He tripped, stumbled, somehow made his way to the shoreline, where apparently, hell was breaking loose.
Katara had undersold it. The Fire Nation ship wasn’t just sinking, it was almost sunk, and it was bad.
Smoke everywhere. Things were burning up so fast it was almost unbelievable, like a cheap magic trick or a play prop. The Fire Nation was still under a period of observation by the rest of the world, which meant trade wasn’t going properly, and besides, they never sent ships out so far south. They hadn’t been to Wolf’s Cove since — the raids, Sokka realized. The Fire Nation had never come down here peacefully within the past year.
And now there was a ship crashing and burning on their horizons.
Sokka was never good at predicting things, at battle strategies and hypothesizing. But for once, he wanted his sneaking hunch to be wrong, that this wasn’t related to any of the political activity happening in the Fire Nation’s innermost circles, that this was not, in fact, a result of the alleged attempts on a certain boy’s life that were supposed to be kept hush-hush but Sokka had found out about them anyway.
If that were true, well, then Sokka would be a little bit scared. But obviously it wasn’t true, and this was not a cause for panic, and Sokka could just take a canoe out and see what was going on.
Of course, all of that thought process occurred before a single, pale arm stuck out from the dark, opaque smoke, and Sokka’s hopes froze in his chest.
Sokka stopped breathing. Spirits.
“Sokka,” Katara said next to him, her voice strangled in quiet dread. “Sokka, that’s Zuko. That’s Zuko.”
Sokka swallowed hard.
It was Zuko. The ship kept coming closer and closer, and it hit him that it’d crash into the shoreline, but Katara was already on it — she slid a foot out and waterbended the ice to wrap around the bottom of the ship, and cushioned it from the impact.
By this point, half the water tribe had emerged from their huts and were watching the scene in diluted horror. Hakoda was already on it, ordering the men to climb up to the helm, but by that point, the whole thing was nearly under.
Sokka felt pretty useless. By the time he’d thought to actually move his jelly-turned legs and help, the older water tribe men had lifted the king-t0-be out and off of the deck, along with a suitcase he’d been carrying, and the crew followed suit. He found his dad in the crowd, then ran to him. Mostly, Sokka’s ears were ringing and he could hear nothing but the hot, rapid rush of his own blood.
Mostly, his heart was beating out of his chest.
“Dad, what—what’s happening?” Sokka’s words tumbled, flipped over themselves; they felt like marbles in his mouth, a tongue-twister. “Why did this…”
Hakoda placed a hand on Sokka’s shoulder and squeezed, watching as the yelling started and the stretchers started hurriedly being run in. “I don’t know, son,” he sighed, “but you should talk to your friend. He doesn’t look good. Get Katara to fix him up.”
Sokka, otherwise, would have claimed that they weren’t friends, not in the slightest, but this whole situation was so fucked, and he didn’t care. Hakoda was right in that Zuko looked like shit. He was standing, somehow, conversing tensely with an official from the Northern Water Tribe, and only when Sokka trudged over did he see how tired the other boy looked.
Tired wasn’t the right word. It was more like shell-shocked, exhausted, teenage fear locked up behind a brittle, royal arrogance.
He looked scared.
“Prince Zuko,” Sokka mumbled, but it didn’t leave his mouth right.
Zuko trailed off in his conversation. “Sokka. Uh. Hi.” The Northern official got the hint and bowed before leaving them. “You’re probably confused.” Zuko cringed.
“I sure am, man, what the hell? I mean, first off, are you okay? Second off, why are you here? Third off—” Sokka meant to get more of his questions in, but Zuko was already turning impossibly paler, and it felt like the right decision to snap his mouth shut and just worry.
Zuko took a breath, then started talking. If he wobbled on his feet, Sokka might have imagined it, because the other boy immediately uprighted himself and continued on like nothing happened. “First: I’m fine.” Debatable. “Second: Long story. I’m being… targeted. I was supposed to head to this place off the coast of the Kyoshi island, but then my. Ship exploded.” He paused here, as if still processing it, before uneasily answering again. “Third… uh, what was the question again?”
Sokka, immaturely, was about to interrogate the boy again, but he didn’t get the chance: Prince Zuko started hacking and coughing, and then, in one sudden, dramatic display, collapsed.