Dragon Eats its Tail

More than anything else, it was the eyes that caught her attention.

The labor had been long and hard. Ursa was sure that she had entreated the spirits for plenty over the hours it took to birth her son, pleading for it to be over, for them both to survive, or at least the child.

In hindsight, she wished she could remember the exact words she'd used.

She was so exhausted that at first that she didn't register that her baby wasn't wailing like a newborn should, or the wide eyed look on the midwife as she attended to the child. There was murmuring and shuffling, and someone left the room. It was only after what felt like an age that she finally managed to raise her head and look up.

Her baby hadn't been swaddled yet, as they should have been, but when her gaze focused any protest about it died on her lips. There, held carefully in the arms of the attending Fire Sage, was her son.

He had a tail.

 A wiry little tail, covered in yellow-gold scales with a tuft of hair on the end. The Fire Sage didn't seem to know what to do with him.

"Give him to me." She gasped, and thankfully did not have to argue. Son in her arms, she could see the other odd things too -- like the little nubs on his forehead, or his gold, unblinking eyes.

It is known that the royal family have golden eyes because they are blessed by Agni himself. But Ursa's son's eyes were not just golden, they glowed, in the way an animal's eyes reflected firelight on a dark night.

It was unnerving, and she met that gaze for a long moment before deciding that it didn't matter, because it was her son. Whatever this was, she could deal with. She cradled her the child close, accepting after a time, the blanket the boy was meant to be swaddled in and the help of careful hands to make her more presentable, too exhausted to do it herself.

The door slid open and she made an effort to prop herself up -- but no. It was not Ozai, but another Fire Sage. Older, one who took a look at her newborn son and met the baby's gaze not with shock, but with consideration. The two conferred for some time as she held her son against her chest, willing strength back into herself as much as it would come.

"Give a new mother some peace of mind and share your thoughts?" She said wryly. He voice came out hoarse and one of the nurses immediately moved to pour her some water. The Fire Sages both startled and bowed deep. It was the older one who spoke.

"This is a phenomena that has not happened for many years." She said without raising her head, "But I believe it to be auspicious indeed. A blessing from Agni himself."

This did not need to be elaborated on. She could feel the poke of horns against her chest where she held her boy against it.

Outsiders would claim that the Fire Nation were disrespectful to the spirits. Not true.

Spirits in the Fire Nation were not so much revered as they were acknowledged. They existed, and you left them alone. Things like prayers and deference were asking for attention, which with spirits usually ended up meaning trouble -- and spirits didn't tend to be respectful of humans in return. The Fire Sages dealt with problems as they came; they did the rituals that kept volcanoes quiet and rivers appeased, and to the common man gave the advice to stay out of it when the subject of the supernatural came up. Not superstition, exactly, just pragmatism.

Things were different when it came to great spirits though. Different for the nobility, too; rather obviously, in this case. Fire Sages divined the will of Agni and the Fire Lord enacted it. No staying out of this one.

The sages looked up, only to somehow bow deeper as the door was opened again and a pair of servants announced, "Prince Ozai."

Ursa inclined her own head but glanced up through her eyelashes. His face was severe, unhappy. His son, his heir, born in the middle of a moonless night. If he wanted to claim it as one, it might be called a bad omen -- but he hadn't gotten a proper look at the child's eyes yet, either.

"Agni has gifted you a son." The elder Fire Sage intoned, "And we believe has personally blessed him in a way that has not been seen in over one hundred years."

And Ozai finally looked at his son, locked eyes with him, and his expression was the most perplexed she had ever seen it. A spirit's attention was a variable that was impossible to plan for, and he seemed -- shrewd as he was -- to be unsure about whether or not that was a threat to him.

(That uncertainty prevented a tearful argument about tossing babies off of palace walls. It wouldn't do to so obviously spurn a spirit, and certainly not in front of the sages.)

It was around this point that her son finally started crying like a newborn should. Perhaps she should have taken that as a sign of things to come.

The blessing changed things, and it didn’t.

Zuko loved turtleducks, but had to be taught that they did not especially like being stalked. He learned to sit very, very still, enough for them to crawl into his lap. He'd sit still and listen to his mother tell stories, too -- practically the only times she could get him to. Sometimes he'd reach a hand up to rub at one horn (which did grow, slowly) and ask if she knew any stories about Agni.

She didn't, really. And wasn't that something odd? There was the occasional tale where he featured as a vision, a single play she could remember where he had a speaking role, but her childhood stories had been about fire nation heroes, not their great spirit. And when she went looking the stories were, well…

Agni is the greatest of the spirits and directs us all to be as charitable as He, who puts his fire in the sky and shares it with those of lesser nations each day…

Not exactly exiting, even if Zuko did listen to them very seriously. She mostly stuck to the stories that had dragons in them and hoped they were enough.

He met his sister -- born on a hot summer afternoon. An easy, normal birth, and looked at her with adoring eyes. He still did, four years later when she came tearing through the halls with a fire in her hand. Those sharp eyes had jealousy in them, yes, but pride too.

It caused problems though, for the elder child, the one supposedly blessed by Agni himself to be unable to so much as throw a spark. That was when training with swords began, at the insistence of Ursa and, to her surprise, Iroh, who had always looked at her son as though he was some kind of puzzle to be solved. She didn't like that look much, but she tolerated it, because it was better than her husband who seemed to have less patience with him (and her) each passing day. Zuko noticed and tried very hard to make those swords something his father could be proud of. To all of the adults, it was already a forgone conclusion that they would never be.

Then he was seven, and he did have fire -- pale, flickering, he had to focus on it really hard to get it to stay, but it was there. Things really only got worse after that.

Tutors were not kind to him. He struggled, and they would tell him that he was squandering Agni's blessing, or maybe even relying too much on it and not working hard enough himself. But Zuko did work hard; he had to, he was struggling with techniques that his younger sister had already mastered. And now that he had his own fire, that meant that Azula had suddenly decided him worth using hers on, and she started coming up with her own little mind games to boot.

Father encouraged those. And she could have friends. Zuko was told in no uncertain terms that he couldn't waste time with those until he had mastered everything his younger sister had. Given that she had a year on him and was a faster learner it just… Wasn't happening. So he didn't have those -- instead he spent time with this mother, with his uncle and cousin when they were around, but mostly by himself. On the rare occasion he did play with the girls Azula had picked for herself, it was always on her terms which he found were not often the best for him.

(Mai and Tai Lee were nice outside of that, so it could have been worse).

So, he found his fun in other ways. His favorite game was figuring out how to hide when people came looking for him -- a fun joke when it was a servant or his mother, a necessity when it was his sister, and his father never seemed to come looking for him at all. The tail made balancing in high places easy, and there was something exhilarating in running over roof tiles and being in places where no one expected someone to be.

Less exhilarating when his sister pushed him off the roof and sneered that she thought Agni was supposed to protect him. That broken wrist led him to his other hobby, though, which was books.

That was one he had to keep secret, because books were flammable and Azula was Azula, but he tried. There were a lot of books in the palace -- small libraries, personal caches in private rooms, long rows of scrolls down in the offices where the clerks did their research and compiled their reports. Anything he could find. Sometimes it was his mother's gardening books and theater scrolls, sometimes it was long novels where people kissed at the end (which were weird), and sometimes it was reports on what villages were giving to the war effort.

Knowing things was valuable -- or rather, not knowing things was what often got him into trouble. He might not know his katas as well as he should, and nothing Azula did would ever be in any book, but knowing what plants were poisonous, or what village had a blight in their rice crop this year? Could come in useful, and was still interesting if it didn’t. All that was still secondary to what he was really after, though, and that was stories about Agni.

Mostly he looked because by the time he was nine, everything was horrible and he just couldn't figure out what he was doing wrong. Everyone told him he was blessed by Agni himself but he couldn't figure out why. Why would the great spirit bother with someone who couldn't do anything right at all? But all the stories were 'Agni did his duty with the utmost honor, and none of the other spirits had any at all.' Zuko tried to be like that, he really did, but it wasn't enough.

He got a knife that said Never Give Up. And so came his first two heists.

Well, the first could hardly be considered a heist, but there was a cabinet in a oft forgotten corner of the library that had glass doors and a lock on it. Not a real lock, just a latch that needed a key, more meant to indicate that you weren't supposed to look inside without asking more than actually preventing it. It could be undone by sliding something stiff through the gap and jiggling, which was exactly what he did, after coming in through the window in the middle of the night. It was all brittle old scrolls, and the overarching theme seemed to be correspondence from Fire Sages. It was all terribly dry, but Zuko read it anyways, losing sleep as he cupped a fire in one hand and read --

…Traveled past Mt.Makapu and felt the fire beneath my feet. Their earthbenders surely feel stirring as well, but it would be a gesture of goodwill on our part to send someone who might help settle the mountain…

He'd looked that up the next afternoon and quietly filed away the that there were volcanoes in the Earth Kingdom, too. One of those things he was sure everyone else knew, that he didn't, and would make him look like a fool for asking. Buoyed by that he went back the next night:

…As for the Avatar, she is only one woman. And yes, the Fire Lord is only one man, but he is at least obligated to carry out the will of Agni, while the Avatar might neglect it in favor of other spirits…

They were old if they were talking about the Avatar as someone who was still around. And a she. The only Avatar Zuko had ever heard of was Roku, and that guy was a traitor, so whatever was going on here, it was good it happened before then.

He didn't go back every night, knowing whatever would happen to him if he was caught wouldn't be good, but he slowly worked his way through every scroll. It was the very last one that had him most exited of all:

…Hidden isn't lost, and there are other ways to teach those lessons. Personally I would argue that Agni would even approve of hiding the old tales. He would never hide his own nature, but I can imagine he'd certainly be pleased if someone else did it for him. It would leave him free from fault, after all…

And Zuko didn't know what all that meant, besides the fact that somewhere there were stories about Agni that he hadn't heard. Maybe there really was some secret reason Agni had decided to give him a tail, and as for old stories being hidden, he was pretty sure he knew where to start looking.

The second heist was a proper one. Planned, at least in the sense that Zuko knew it was going to happen before he tried to do it.

The royal family went to the Fire Sage's temple, perched on the lip of the caldera, every summer solstice. Ostensibly the ceremony was for the Fire Sages to tell the Fire Lord what Agni's will was so that he could enact it. In reality, he got sat in front of a crowd with his mother and sister and got told that their grandfather was doing a very good job and that nothing needed to change. His grandfather didn't even come, but he was a little busy running a country. His father did, but he always disappeared off to some other room -- Zuko might not be the best at politics but even he realized that was probably him getting updated on what was really going on.

But he was ten, and that only mattered to him in the most abstract way. What was really important to him was the fact that the Fire Sage's temple was on top of the Dragonbone Catabombs, and that was where they kept things like old stories that they had decided needed hiding.

The hardest part was actually getting out of the rooms they had been given for the night without anyone noticing. He'd done his best to map good hiding places on the way in, and guards didn't really expect the people they were looking after to go sneaking out.

Honestly, he would have told someone that the security in the Catacombs was sorely lacking if that wouldn't implicate him in the fact that he had snuck in. Maybe he could leave a letter?

Creep into one of the few public rooms, let out a slow breath and dim the torches. Climb a shelf and follow it to the back wall. Wait for the guard to the less accessible areas to walk by, then silently jump down and dart in. It even got easier as he went. Further back was less guards and less light. Eventually there was no light at all, just twisting tunnels through volcanic rock.

(He was a little oblivious to the fact that even if he was seen, no one was actually going to stop him. The royal family was allowed to be there).

He knew roughly where he was going, or at least he did if the Catacombs used the same organizational system as the royal library. They were just… So much bigger. And the stuff on spirits was in a side room, and the shelf that should have had stuff on Agni was… Mostly empty. He almost snarled at it -- stupid. If they're hiding things then of course they're not where they're supposed to be.

There were a few scrolls though, and as he cupped a fire in one hand and rolled one open he couldn't help but grin in excitement.

This is the tale of how Agni granted us the cold fire. It started, and that was a great sign. He'd seen Azula experimenting with the forms, she was good but lightning was the firebending form, and if Zuko could figure it out first, then maybe…

He curled over the scroll and read on.

Once there was young man who lived by humble means. One day an aged old swordswoman appeared on his doorstep and asked for hospitality, and though the man did not have much, he offered all he had -- they shared a meal of rice and radish and rested by the hearth. In the morning the swordswoman thanked the man for his hospitality, and as way of payment gave him her sword.

"I am too old to swing it any longer." She claimed, "It may be of better use to you." Before leaving and continuing on her way.

It was a fine blade, if as old as it's wielder had been. At first the man considered selling it -- even as it was, the weapon would feed him for more than a year. But he considered it, and realized that if he made the blade appear new, it might fetch a price that could feed him for many to come. Replacing the hilt was a simple task, and he spared some of his meager coin for a guard as well. It was when he came to the blade that he had a realization.

Selling the sword might feed him for a time, but if he used it, he might feed himself for the rest of his life. So he sharpened the sword on a grindstone, then a whetstone, and even went so far so far as to borrow the fine oilstone that the butcher kept for his bonding knifes. That sword was serviceable, but the man was not satisfied -- for if he finally had something fine he was going to make it as sharp as he could. So he sharpened the blade with cotton, and on the sleeve of his one satin shirt, and when that still wasn't enough he spent his last coin on a strip of fine silk. Even then, he wasn't satisfied, so he sharpened the blade on the wispiest of cobwebs. So proud was he of his work that he named the blade: Lightning.

It was then that another swordswoman came into town, this one younger than the first and when she saw the man in town she eyed his blade with envy, for it was the sharpest she had ever seen. Feeling confident in her skill, she challenged the man to an honorable duel, where the winner would claim the other's sword. The man hesitated to accept, but to refuse was to have his honor tarnished -- what man would walk about with a blade he didn't know how to use?

But in truth the man didn't know how to use the blade. He had spent all his time sharpening it and had never learned a single technique. He prayed to Agni that the sharpness of the blade would be enough to see him through. And so Agni did come to witness the battle, but he did not interfere until after the first strikes were thrown. The swordswoman, expecting a skilled opponent, feinted, but the man who was inexperienced in battle flinched back and swung his sword about wildly.

So sharp was his sword that it cut not into only his opponent, but the very air itself. He won the battle in one strike, but at the cost of the village around him.

Agni watched this and judged. The man had come by the sword fairly, and had done the work to sharpen it, but until he could responsibly wield what he had made, he would only hurt those around him. And so Agni chose not to steal his sword, but instead the strikes themselves, to be given to only those who had the focus to wield them properly.

Though it is known that those strikes, having originated from a sword, seek the metal from which they were born. Even those who Agni blesses with the gift may find their strikes drawn away from their target and towards a blade.

Zuko squinted at the story. Frowned. It was more interesting than the normal stuff he'd read with Agni in it, but it was… Weird. Was he supposed to think about lightning-bending as more of a sword technique than a firebending one? But it was bending! And what was that bit at the end about Agni stealing? Why not say he took them? Stealing wasn't honorable. Maybe the story was just nonsense.

(Why was it in the Catacombs, then?)

And as much as he wanted to poke through the rest, he knew he couldn't hang around for too long without someone realizing he was gone. And if someone found him here well…

He tempted fate a lot for someone who often suffered the consequences, but the reward was too low for the risk. Besides, there was always next year, and he could try and find the actual stories he was looking for that time.

Next year he turned eleven, and everything went wrong.

(His father would tell him that he was lucky to be born, and then sneer that the only reason he'd survived was because Agni had shown him pity. His mother was gone. He didn't think about the fact that he didn't go back to the temple on the solstice until the date was long past).

He didn't go back when he was twelve, either. And at thirteen…

He wanted to be a good prince, he did. That meant he needed to know things. And his uncle agreed, so he sat in on the war meeting.

Zuko wasn't sure what honor was, really, but he knew it didn't involve sending a bunch of new recruits to die on purpose. And he said so.

All Ozai had to say of his son was that if Agni was still protecting him, he would not have burned.

Every time Zuko woke up, he wished that he that he hadn't.

Sleeping was at least a gamble -- it might (would probably) be a nightmare but sometimes it was heavy and dreamless. Better than the alternative, because being awake meant being in pain. Meant feeling wrong. Meant remembering why he was in a tiny metal room that seemed to tilt back and forth.

Actually, he didn't know that part. He remembered the war room, the begging, the fire, the lesson he was supposed to learn, and nothing in between that and where he was now. Wherever that was.

He didn't like being awake because there was something wrong with every single one of senses. He couldn't see out of one eye, he was pretty sure, and the other one refused to focus even as faces swam in and out of vision above him. His tongue tasted like metal, his throat was raw, there was a ringing in one ear so loud that it drowned out any sound coming from that direction. Everything was too hot, except for the one part of him that was burning.

Sleeping was preferable, so he eagerly drank whatever was put in front of his lips in the hope it would get him there.

He had no idea how long that lasted, really. But he could feel the sun, and he could tell it had risen at set more than a few times by the time he was lucid enough to open his eyes and recognize that one of the faces that sat by his side was his Uncle Iroh.

Zuko blinked one eye and carefully did not so much as twitch the other. He could tell by now that it was wrapped tight with something rough and uncomfortable, but he wasn't sure that it being exposed to the air would be any better.

"Uncle?" His voice sounded raspier than he remembered. Like he'd been screaming.

"Ah, my nephew. It is good to see you awake."

Zuko stared for a long moment, uncomprehending. Why was Uncle even here? Didn't he have better things to be doing?

…Where was here? That question might answer itself.

"Uncle, where are we?"

"Ah." Iroh inclined his head, "That is a bit of a tale."

Zuko tended to find his Uncle's circular way of speaking confusing at the best of times. Right now, head and body aching, he just found it annoying.

"Then tell it!" He snapped, and wished he hadn't because moving his mouth that much had pulled on his wound, which stung. Grimacing at the pain stung, too.

"Well…" The old man hummed, "How much do you remember?"

Nothing substantial after the Agni Kai. Zuko wished he remembered less.

"Does it matter?"

Iroh's lips twitched down just enough to be noticeable, and for some reason that had Zuko's heart pounding. Because--

Oh Agni, he was being disrespectful, wasn't he? He was proving right away that he hadn't learned his lesson. Would Uncle be merciful? He couldn't fight right now -- he couldn't even stand. Every muscle in his body froze as Iroh moved… but he didn't raise a hand to Zuko, he only folded his fingers together to rest over his stomach.

"I suppose not." His uncle agreed, "But it is not happy news, you may wish to recover more before you hear it."

It took a long moment for Zuko to unclench his jaw enough to speak again, and the newly subdued tone had Uncle's lips pulling down even further.

"I want to know."

Uncle nodded, and Zuko couldn't help but notice that he wasn't really looking at him as he spoke.

"Currently, we are headed east, out of Fire Nation waters." He heaved a long sigh, "Your -- Fire Lord Ozai has declared you banished until such a time as you find and capture the Avatar."

Banished? Avatar? The freezing feeling in his veins came back at full force, sending his head spinning. He wasn't breathing right, which he was only able to recognize because he'd being doing breath control drills for years. He wasn't even really aware of the aborted movement Uncle made towards him and the way he reared back on instinct.

Banished. Couldn't go home. Would be killed if he tried. And his way back was the Avatar who hadn't been seen in 100 years, who everyone assumed had abandoned the world for good (out of shame, according the rare mention Zuko could remember reading). How was he supposed to find him? How was he supposed to go home? Was it even possible? His father wouldn't --

No, his father wouldn't. He was blessed by Agni himself, so maybe this -- bad as it was -- was how it was supposed to be. His father trusted him to do something impossible because he was the only one who could. He would find the Avatar, and capture him, and go home and finally have done something worth being proud of. Something big enough to make up for all his failures before.

His senses came back to him, a little piecemeal, and he realized that the light in the cabin had gone out. Had he done that? He'd never been able to take control of a flame so easily before, much less on accident. Uncle was still there, outlined in shadow enough that he couldn't make out his expression. There was no reason for Uncle to have come out here with him, unless…

Zuko balled the thin blanket that had been laid over him tight in his fist. Uncle had been the one who had brought him into that war council. He was responsible for him -- for the things that he said. If he was here that meant he must have been banished, too. Guilt crawled up his throat.

It was his fault Uncle couldn't go home. The only way he could make it up to him…

"Okay." Because what else could he say, at this point? "So let's find the Avatar."

It was several more days before Zuko felt like he was capable of sitting up, and in all that time he never got a moment alone. When he wasn't asleep, Uncle was there, and if not him then the ship's doctor. Someone was always fussing over him -- trying to get him to drink tea, cleaning his wound, or changing out bandages, and always with this pinched expression like he was deserving of pity.

It wasn't long  before he couldn't take it. He was still a prince, banished or not, and while he might not know where he stood with his Uncle, he was free to snap at the ship's doctor (a man with a wrinkled face and a salt-and-pepper mustache) that he could take care of himself. The man had bowed and backed away, with a wry twist to his lips, and said, "If his Highness is well enough to tell me he can care for himself, then he can."

Zuko couldn't decide if he was more angry at the obvious sarcasm or thankful that he was finally alone. It wasn't worth pursing the man for it either way.

Now he finally had a moment to just sit and think, before quickly realizing that he didn't really want to.

He pushed himself up instead, fighting through the dizziness without worrying hands to push him back down. It eventually passed, and he took a careful breath. In, and out, and the pointedly did not look at the lantern on the back wall, because last time he had his heart had gone into his throat and Uncle had tried touching him again to try and calm him down.

Something felt weird. Unbalanced. A weight that had always been there was gone.

Part of that was his hair. He'd recognized that it had been shaved from the difference in texture not long after waking up the first time. The anger over that had already died down to a simmer. Long hair was a sign of a good firebender, of someone with honor. If it hadn't been shaved it to deal with his burn, he would have done it because he'd lost his Agni Kai anyways.

(He'd never managed to grow out his hair too long at the palace. If he didn't scorch the ends of it himself, Azula would.)

The other part…

He tentatively reached a hand up, ghosting over the rough material of the bandage over his eye and to his horn. They had grown as he'd gotten older, and were about as long as one of his fingers now, with the occasional branch like the antlers of a deer-hound.

His right horn was like that. His left --

He bit back a whimper as he touched the bandage over the stump that remained with too much pressure, sending pain shooting down his skull. When had that happened? The Agni Kai?

Those were something given to him by a great spirit, a sign that even if no one else wanted him that Agni did.

Was.

Was broken now. He'd messed up so badly that not even Agni --

Crying hurt, and he was horribly, selfishly glad that he had managed not to do it until he was alone, aware of how pathetic he must look and sound. It lasted until the sun had sunk low enough in the sky that a beam of sunlight angled directly through the porthole in his room and washed it out in dull orange. The warmth had him pulling himself back together in pieces -- taking in big gasping breaths, wiping at his good eye, and mechanically unwinding the bandage around the other so he could clean the burn he'd just dirtied. It hurt, and he let it hurt, because it was what he deserved.

With the bandage off, Zuko could tell that the vision in his burned eye wasn't what it once was. If he closed his right one all he could see was the orange light that had painted every surface of the room.

He was was angry about that, too, but some detached part of him actually felt almost a little better. Not about the his eye, exactly, but the fact that the sunlight was the only thing he could see through it. The slow realization that he was still alive, and that meant he hadn't been abandoned.

He'd come across plenty of philosophy about spirits, his interests being what they were, and while the Fire Sages advised leaving them alone, they also said that the great spirits, as a rule, were too big to care about individuals. Agni was everyone's sun, La was everyone's ocean, and they would burn and drown their chosen benders as easily as anyone else. He'd thought he'd been the exception. Apparently not anymore.

But.

Zuko was alive. He still had fire in him, even if the idea of using it made him feel nauseous. He still had a chance to fix this -- fix everything. Figuring out what Agni wanted from him and getting his favor back was about as big of a task as find and capture the Avatar. But he could do it. He had to.

He took a final shuddering breath and made to replace the gauze and bandages with clean ones.

All he had to do was figure out where to start.

Uncle was in his room again, and since Zuko was able to sit up had decided that he was well enough for tea and pai sho.

He didn't want tea, and he definitely didn't want to play pai sho, but he didn't have anything else to do so he couldn't say no. He had gone right up against the edge of being disrespectful last time without being punished. He wouldn't risk that again. 

That didn't mean he enjoyed it though. Sure, he'd liked trying to puzzle out a way to beat Uncle when he was a kid, but now he had more important things on his mind.

"Uncle." He hazarded asking, because the old man had seemed quite content to play in silence, "What are we doing?"

Iroh raised an eyebrow and considered the board for a long moment, as though he hadn't even heard Zuko's question. The desire to ask again sat heavy in his chest, but Zuko bring himself to repeat the words. It felt like ages before Uncle slid a rock tile forward.

"We're playing pai sho." He said, as though that was an answer.

"That's not what I meant!" He snapped, and then carefully took a breath and leaned back. "I mean… Where are we going? On the ship."

Uncle stroked his beard, looking totally unbothered by the outburst.

"For the moment we are heading to the closest colony so we can properly supply ourselves. After that, I believe it is up to you, Prince Zuko."

Yeah, there was no way he was going to be focusing on pai sho now. He wanted to ask why, but the answer was obvious if he took a moment to think about it, wasn't it? Spirit-touched. The only one with half a chance to find the Avatar, and that was if it was what Agni wanted from him. He swallowed down the urge to proclaim this all unfair.

"Well…" He slid forward a tile pretty much at random, "You went on a spirit quest or something, right? Do you have any ideas?"

Iroh hummed.

"The journey matters as much as the goal, and I have already gone on plenty of my own."

A proverb. Useless

Zuko's heart sank. So it was going to be like it was in the palace -- if he wanted to know anything important, he was going to have to figure it out himself.

He huffed and ran through what he knew. The Avatar cycle was just that, and the next one was meant to be air -- but the next avatar had never appeared, so either the cycle had broken (which was not an option Zuko could entertain) or they had gone into hiding. His starting place was figuring out if the Air Nomads had figured out who the avatar even was before they'd been defeated.

"Western air temple." He said, only explaining when his uncle tilted his head and said, "Oh?"

"The next Avatar was supposed to be air. They'd have been preparing for it. If anyone knows who the avatar is supposed to be, it would have been them."

"Well, no harm in looking, hm?" Iroh slid a piece of his own forward and captured one of Zuko's. He was pretty sure that he'd lost, not that he cared, "I'll make sure to let the helmsman know."

Zuko said, "Good." And nothing else after.

He made it a few more days before he gave in to the antsy feeling underneath his skin.

Zuko was well aware of the fact that he wasn't supposed to be walking around yet. That was made obvious by the way he couldn't quite stand up straight, or take more than a few steps without his breath starting to come in too hard, or the way he was just… Sweaty all the time. But his Uncle had brought up a valuable point, probably without realizing.

He was on a ship. A ship with a helmsman -- a ship with a crew.

Who were they, and why were they here?

Not knowing things was what got him in trouble. So, he had to know.

(Not knowing who he'd be fighting in that Agni Kai --)

Uncle caught him nearly right away the first time, but easily convinced himself that Zuko just needed some time on deck in the sun. His plan had been to sit and listen to the crew talk  (a trick learned in the palace, even if he usually wasn't patient enough to do it. No one would tell him what was going on, but the servants would tell each other and he hoped this crew would work the same) but the old man decided to join him which had anyone who saw them on deck falling respectfully silent. Uncle greeted a few of them (The highest rank after the two of them was a greying lieutenant named Jee, the helmsman an elderly man named Kyo, the doctor, he finally learned, was named Chema and apparently doubled as the ship's cook, which was a little alarming, in retrospect. They all seemed to have known Uncle before this.) but for the most part left them to their own devices.

Part of those devices were the occasional sidelong glance at Zuko, who did not squirm at the attention. Because he was used to being stared at. The horns and tail tended cause even the most demure servant to stare at him for a little too long. He was used to it, he was, but that didn't stop shame and anger from bubbling into his chest every time he noticed it happening. Because they might have been looking at the tail he had curled around his legs where he kneeled on the deck, or they could have been looking at the fact that one of his horns was broken and half his face was wrapped up in stark white bandages.

He'd never gotten angry at people staring at him before. Not like this. And that turned out to be it's own problem.

"Nephew." His Uncle started after some time where they had otherwise been left alone, "If you are feeling up to it, perhaps you could try meditating. It's a lovely afternoon."

"I--" His stomach clenched at the idea, but he knew it wasn't feasible to just not bend. He'd have to, eventually. He wasn't sure how long he'd lost after the Agni Kai, but with how far behind he already was… Uncle had a point about him getting back to it as soon as possible.  "I'll do it in my room. Alone."

It was his fire. It would be fine.

He bit his tongue at being helped back to his room, and very nearly snarled at his Uncle to leave after found a candle for him. He did, eventually, but only after significant puttering about and muttering about breathing. As if he didn't already know.

He stared at the candle. Reached out a hand. Held it there.

He'd always struggled to call up a flame before, had never quite managed to get himself angry enough. The things he was angry at always felt… Petty. Even after his mom was gone, he couldn't bring himself to be angry enough at her to match anything close to Azula's fire.

Things were different now. Now he was certain it would be so easy to call up a flame.

So he did.

Given that he was trying to light a candle, the situation really only called for a spark. Not the foot tall wave of fire that erupted from his hand -- the flame that grew taller and hotter before immediately snuffing itself out as Zuko yelped and jerked backwards, heart pounding and vision swimming.

The sight of fire cupped in a hand, even if it was his --

He didn't get sick, but it was a close thing. Breathing to calm himself down was the same as breathing to control his inner fire, so he had that going for him at least.

And anyways, wasn't this good? His fire was strong now, or at least average. Better than it had been. He just had to get it under control. Which meant not being afraid of it. Which meant not thinking about it.

…The lantern that lit his room had gone out again.

Sometimes firebenders would meditate without the candle. He might stick to that for a while.

Getting time unsupervised was difficult, even though he was healed enough to walk around on his own. More than. Zuko could make it all the way to the deck of the ship and back to his room without falling over, even though he was dizzy.

Uncle didn't seem to agree with him and as much as the attention was getting on his nerves he didn't dare demand him to stop. Could he command his Uncle to do things? It had been allowed in the palace, to an extent, because he was the crown prince. Banished prince still probably outranked General, but how did it stand up to abdicated prince? Did that matter, when everyone else on the ship seemed to be loyal to Iroh and not him?

That was the trouble with not knowing things. Now that he could move around on his own he set about changing that.

If the only time he could do that was the middle of the night, when his Uncle didn't insist on tailing him, that was the old man's fault.

He quickly learned that going shoe-less was the quietest way to get around, and mentally noted the places with the poorest lighting and most climbable walls for future reference.

He also learned that the ship's engineer might scream if she saw a reflective golden eye at the end of the hall in the middle of the night, and that if he got back to his room fast enough everyone would assume she had gone too long without sleep instead of blaming him.

The crew seemed small. The crew that hung around at night, doubly so. They didn't talk much, but Zuko learned a bit. Curse words, mostly, but he once hid behind a door for nearly an hour as two of the crewman on the ghost watch had a hushed argument about the colors of the sky. One said that the sky being red at sunrise meant Agni was warning them about bad weather, the other said that was only true if the wind was coming in from the same direction. Zuko knew that the Fire Sages had a whole system for guessing the weather, but more importantly had to consider the idea that the stories he hadn't been able to find in the palace might not have been so hidden everywhere else.

He wasn't a kid, he wasn't going to ask for stories about Agni anymore. But he kept it in mind.

As for his main goal, he finally got a chance when Uncle proclaimed that the crew was having a music night. He asked Zuko to sit in and Zuko didn't lie when he said he'd rather stay in his room, and he didn't glower when his Uncle gave him this unbearably sad look, if only because that would have pulled on his wound and hurt. He waited until he heard the sound of tuning instruments before slipping across the hall.

Uncle's room was already cluttered. Zuko spotted no less than three teapots stashed around the place, and the middle of the room was dominated by the pai sho board that the old man dragged around the ship. Zuko grimaced at that and stepped around so that he could dig through the desk.

The first thing he grabbed was a paper that looked like it had been crumpled up and then smoothed out again. A notice of banishment. His banishment. Until he captured the Avatar, just like Uncle had told him.

He couldn't find Uncle's banishment, but if it had been him he would have burnt it the first time he saw it. As it was he held his own writ of punishment in his hands and let it crumple again. It would be easy to let it flare up. He wanted to, it would have been easy to, the feeling itched just under his skin. The paper would flake away into ash, and then the skin would start to bubble and blister --

Zuko dropped the paper and slammed the drawer shut, taking an uneven breath.

He was just… Covering his tracks. If he burnt it, Uncle would know he'd been in here. That was all.

The rest of his search was kind of a bust. Mostly, he found letters about pai sho. Receipts for the purchase of the ship and the meager supplies they had been allowed to leave the Fire Nation with. Nothing about the crew.

Had Uncle bought the ship? It was a small one, and from what he could see it was old, too, but that didn't mean it was cheap. Well within the means of a retired general, he guessed, but…

Zuko was begrudgingly glad Uncle had the resources for this, and more than a little upset he had to use them at all. This was his fault. Father shouldn't have punished Iroh for his mistake.

He skimmed through another letter about rare tea varieties before abandoning his Uncle's room to head to the bridge, only having to stop to wait out a dizzy spell a few times.

He'd mapped the boat out enough by now to know how to get there without being seen, but even on music night the room was manned with a lookout. A lookout who wasn't paying all that much attention to what was going on behind her.

There was a big metal cabinet bolted to the back wall that Zuko suspected held the information about the crew he was looking for. He crept along the back wall and slowly, slowly, grabbed the handle of a drawer and pulled it open.

Metal squealed. Loudly.

The sound of metal rubbing up against metal made Technically-an-Ensign Teruko's skin crawl. It was unfortunately common on the Wani.

Someone with proper military training would have swung around to see who was getting into the files. Teruko did not have military training. She didn't even have naval training. When she heard the sound of someone trying to look at their information she grit her teeth and ducked her head into her shoulders until it stopped. Then she turned around.

There was a shoeless boy with a tail, a horn, and a face full of bandages staring at her with one shiny gold eye.

"Hi." Technically-an-Ensign Teruko said before her brain caught up to her and she winced. Because this was the prince she had heard so much about, the boy she had glimpsed sitting on deck half-hiding behind the Dragon of the West. 'Hi' was not generally the way you greeted spirits. Or princes. Not even banished ones. Not even ones who were sneaking around behind you in their bedclothes.

When Teruko had admitted to the old general that she had a little bit of experience with spirits, she didn't think this was how it would come into play.

"Hi." The prince said back, looking rather liked a cornered animal. That might have been a little rude to think, actually.

"Um." Said Teruko, "Do you need help with anything. Sir?"

"…No." Said Prince Zuko.

And. Well.

"Okay." Said Technically-an-Ensign Teruko. He was a prince so she wasn't going to stop him from doing… Whatever this was. And if he needed something he would just command it, right? "I'll just. Get back to… Looking out?"

"…You do that." Replied the prince. So she turned around and dutifully did not comment on the shuffling of papers behind her.

Pretending like she didn't see anything was just as respectful as bowing, right?

So Zuko's suspicions had been partly correct. About half the crew had military (not naval) records that had them working for Uncle in some way or another. The other half didn't have records at all. Like this tiny ship was their first station. Like they were people that Uncle had just picked up somewhere.

He was pretty sure the woman who was at the front of the bridge poorly pretending he didn't exist was in the latter group.

He couldn't fathom why. But what was important was the fact that, yes, everyone on this ship was here because Uncle wanted them to be.

The trouble Zuko often ran into once he had the facts was that he rarely knew what to do with them. But at least he knew. At least he wouldn't embarrass himself.

The ensign didn't turn back around as he closed the drawer to a screech of metal, but she did duck into her shoulders again. Zuko stared at her for a long moment, unsure of what he should do.

"…Don't say anything about this." Is what he settled on saying, before darting back down the hall and heading to his room.

(Technically-an-Ensign Teruko would not talk about this situation in particular, but she would wholeheartedly agree with the rest of the crew that the prince walked as quietly as a spirit. Because he was part spirit, obviously).

Other than impromptu sneaking around, being on a tiny ship was horribly boring for boy with an injury.

He couldn't -- wouldn't -- was working on firebending, but getting frustrated with that only made his control worse. He could do slow movements with his dao (one of his few belongings that had made it on board), but not much more, and it wasn't like he was going to practice that in front of the crew anyways. A good firebender wouldn't have to bother with weapons -- not that he was one, but it was the principle of the thing.

So he spent of a lot of time scowling, not playing pai sho, and thinking about the avatar.

They had to be in hiding, right? They were scared of the Fire Nation -- as they should be, after what Roku had done. So scared that they were hiding from all the other nations as well, just so they wouldn't be found. That meant something, probably. Zuko picked at the idea for ages and couldn't figure out what.

There was a sort of distraction when they finally arrived at that little colony port Uncle had told him about. Namely that he very nearly got into an argument about whether or not he could leave the ship.

Uncle had said that he was free to join them, if he felt he could make it, in a way that probably wasn't meant to be patronizing but which absolutely was. Zuko hated the idea of being helped around town more than he hated being bored so he wound up leaning over the front railing and continuing to glare at the frankly shoddy harbor. At least until some of the sailors of other ships started noticing him and sending him glances and he just didn't want to deal with that. So he didn't.

Meditating that afternoon didn't go very well, either.

They stayed the night, unfortunately, and the next morning everyone on the crew seemed to be moving exceptionally slowly.

(Uncle had asked him if he was in a hurry as if it was some kind of joke, and Zuko had all but hissed back that yes, he was, actually).

…The ocean was just as boring as it ever was. Uncle still didn't think he was well enough to try katas. He did finally at least believe him capable of walking around on his own, if it was the short distance between the deck and his room.

Zuko did not go back to his room. Zuko went hunting for a distraction.

He found one in the mess hall, where ships cook-and-coincidental-doctor Chema appeared to be fixing up a late lunch for their late start. For some reason there was a single place set like someone was going to eat, but there was no food in the bowl, and no one in the room but Zuko and the cook.

He stalked over to the kitchen and glanced around for an explanation, but no, all the other bowls and utensils were in place waiting for someone in the crew to come use them. The ones on the table were perfectly clean, too, so it wasn't like someone had already eaten and just left it there.

Chema spotted him out of the corner of his eye and startled, which Zuko thought was a little unfair. He was wearing shoes, he hadn't even tried to be sneaky!

"Your highness." Said the chef, who gave an awkward little bow that was probably not deep enough to be polite. Zuko would let it slide considering the man was currently wielding a wok of ungainly size. "Lunch'll be ready in a few."

Zuko just nodded and turned away to go investigate the table setting again. It wasn't like it was terribly interesting, but there was some mystery to it, and he was bored.

…The bowl was maybe one of the nicer ones? It didn't have any chips taken out of it or anything.

Chema glanced back for a moment, catching Zuko's yelled across the room, "An offering from you would probably mean a lot more than it would from anyone else, y'know. Considering." And Zuko's mind ran blank.

"This is an offering." He repeated, and tried not to make it sound like a question because that would be like admitting he didn't already know.

"Yeah it's -- eh." The chef wiggled one hand, "You leave a place for La when you sail out of a port in case he wants to sit in. S'posed to make him like the crew."

A Zuko who wasn't at all interested in spirits would have scoffed at the idea. This Zuko glanced warily at the bowl, and when he got his food a few minutes later surreptitiously scraped a bit of his rice into  it. He hadn't really had the appetite to eat full meals recently, anyways, and it wasn't like it could hurt.

He wondered if he was wrong to do it when a few hours later he heard all sorts of commotion from the deck through the bulkhead. When he pushed his door open it was to find his Uncle with his hand already raised to knock. He didn't look particularly alarmed, at least.

"Ah, Prince Zuko. If you'd like to come up on deck there's something quite interesting you might like to see."

Not seeing a point to arguing, and genuinely interesd in whatever it was, Zuko trailed after his Uncle up the stairs.

The air was humid and heavy with the smell of a storm. It was dark outside, but it was dim in the corridors of the ship so Zuko's eye didn't have to adjust, exactly. He just didn't quite believe what he was seeing.

On the edges of the deck and the railings were tiny balls of purple-blue light. There was a sort of movement to them as they wobbled and pulsed.

Most of the crew was on deck watching with the same wide-eyes that Zuko was. Some of them looked… A little less enthused.

Zuko kept his good ear toward the group as he crept towards the railing. Uncle was asking about this so he didn't have to.

"Why, Lieutenant Jee, you look like this is something to be worried about." There was a moment of silence. Zuko assumed that the Lieutenant made a face of some kind, because Iroh continued, "Would you enlighten an old man on the problem?"

"…Not a problem, sir." Jee said tersely, "Just superstition."

"I've found that superstition tends to have some root in fact." Zuko could practically hear Uncle stroking his beard, "I would still be interested to hear, regardless."

Jee was a professional man who did not sigh at those who outranked him, but the fact that he wanted to still showed through in his voice.

"…The way I understand it, sir, is that this sort of thing is Agni trying to send a message. A… Warning that the voyage is going to be eventful."

"Well." Said Uncle, "Given our goal we could only hope so, hm?"

Zuko didn't look back at them, though he had to assume most of the crew was looking at him. Because this was a warning from Agni, and he was…

Well, he was relieved. If Agni saw fit to warn them, that meant he was paying attention, and Zuko hadn't gotten personal attention like that from a spirit since the day he was born. He had his chance to fix things and he was going to take it.

Not wanting to face the crew, he instead reached out to the railing, fingers brushing one of the dim balls of light that was wandering the ship.

He could bend it, he realized sharply. It wasn't like fire, but it wasn't not like fire either. He let it roll into his hand -- up close he could see that it almost had spindly little legs that flickered in and out of sight. But they weren't legs, exactly. They were like lighting.

Zuko knew his control had been bad recently, but in the moment he didn't think about that at all. He looked at the ball of light in his hand, the message from Agni, and he breathed. It didn't flare with it like a candle might have, but Zuko could still feel it like it was one. It almost had a pulse to it, a fluttery heartbeat that slowed in time to Zuko's breaths.

Breathe in, breathe out. Let the ball of light go. It rolled off of his hand and back onto the edge of the railing, dancing up and down it for a few more minutes before all of the lights started to dim and fade away.

That night when he went to his room, Zuko didn't light a candle, but he did turn to the lantern that was on his wall, to the candle already inside.

He breathed in, and the fire banked up. Breathed out and it shrank.If he really focused he could feel a sort of heartbeat here, too.

Zuko let the candle go, and the fire stayed lit.

He didn't have his start, but he did have something.

Of all things, Zuko couldn't believe he was having trouble with his hair.

It had been shaved off, except for the phoenix tail, and tradition dictated that he kept it shaved until he regained his honor. Upkeeping it shouldn't have been a big deal at all; Zuko had never done it before, sure, but he was certain he could do it.

It would have been a lot easier to figure out if only he could stand to look at himself in the mirror.

(He didn't want to talk about the first time he'd tried. Uncle had found him hyperventilating on the floor, palms cut with shards of broken glass. He didn't wonder what the scar looked like anymore, but that was really only a bad thing as far as his nightmares were concerned).

Back in the palace servants were always the ones who took care of his hair -- washing it, drying it, trimming off the burnt ends. He could, conceivably, command someone on the ship to do it for him. Banished or not, he was the prince, and it would be an honor to be asked, but the idea of having anyone close to him made his heart beat too fast, and if they were going to shave his head they were going to have to put hands near his face and that-- Well, it wasn't happening.

So Zuko made the attempt, even though he had never done it before, and even though he didn't have a mirror. He was pretty confident it didn't look good even without seeing it, because every time he ran a hand over his head he found a new patch of scraggly uncut hair and had to grumble and go back for it. He didn't expect them to be an issue, but his horns got in the way too. The long one curled back just enough that fitting his hand under it was a pain, and the -- the short one stung and ached and made him flinch if he so much as brushed his hand against it.

That led to a lot of little nicks and cuts, and head wounds tended to bleed a lot so his room sort of looked like a nightmare when he was finished. Or as finished as he was going to get. He walked out the door, self consciously brushed a hand over the back of his head and found another missed spot and growled because he had to go back and do it again. 

He did have another option. He could just not style his hair at all. Wear it down, like some peasant in the earth kingdom might do. If the point was to prove that he didn't have honor, the effect was much the same.

With it being over a week before they reached the western air temple Zuko was still stuck with far too much time to sit and think. Firebending was still relegated to breath exercises and pre-lit candles. Dao practice was still slow movements in his tiny bedroom. Avatar thoughts stalled on "maybe he's hiding in the Northern Water Tribes or Ba Sing Se" and when he proposed the idea to Uncle, the old man had frowned thoughtfully and said that he believed if the Avatar was hiding among people, their identity likely wasn't known to them, else they would have no peace from people trying to convince them to fight.

Stuck on that front, his thoughts circled back to his hair. He already knew he wouldn't cut it, because it wasn't like he was giving up. His actions would show that just as well as his hair would.  But would letting it grow be seen as disrespect? As him not acknowledging the lost Agni Kai? Didn't the broken horn already show that he was out of Agni's favor enough? Spirits, the only reason he knew the tradition to shave after a loss to the Fire Lord was because of an old theater scroll he'd once read about a disgraced mercenary, it wasn't like anyone had told him about it.

In the end, his plan turned out to be inaction. He took down the phoenix tail, didn't touch his hair at all, except to wash it, and he waited. He listened to see if the crew would talk about it when they knew he wasn't there (they didn't, they wondered what had happened to him and Zuko had to stop listening in). He pointedly glanced at Uncle who would raise an eyebrow at him, not seeming to know what he was looking for. No one made a single comment about it where he could hear them, and little by little his hair started to grow.

(And would keep growing, even after his broken horn had healed enough that it didn't hurt to touch anymore. Even looking back, Zuko would never pin that as his first small act of rebellion).

The place was upside down.

Zuko blinked and squinted at the buildings, trying not to tilt his head too obviously, because Uncle and a good portion of the crew had trekked up with them. He didn't want them to look at him any more than they already did.

Up here, the air was so thin that some of the non-benders on the crew were a little short of breath, and even Uncle's fire looked a little thinner than normal.

Why did they build it upside down?

His gaze wandered to where his Uncle was looking up at the temples that had been carved under the cliff and stroking his beard.

"I'm not sure how anyone got up there without flying." Lieutenant Jee was saying, face pinched in consternation like it was most of the time Zuko looked at him.

"There must have been a way at some point." Uncle replied placidly, "The air temples were known to be quite hospitable to guests."

Also. He did not say, an invading army must have been able to get up there somehow. Zuko didn't quite pick up on that bit yet.

Zuko glowered and turned back to the cliff. What were they talking about 'no way up?' Sure, some rocks might have fallen since this place was last occupied, but he could find a way up with only one eye. Which was exactly what he was doing, not that anyone asked.

A glance at the crew was enough to tell him that none of them had spotted it, or if they had they weren't making any effort to climb it. He huffed a sigh and no one noticed, because he did that a lot, and even though it had only been a few weeks the crew was well aware that he needed them to hear something he'd likely be yelling it.

He didn't have time for this. He was a prince. A leader. And he saw the path. So the logical thing to do was go first and let everyone else follow his example.

From the ground, the experience was a little harrowing. See, no one in the crew knew Zuko all too well. Not even Iroh, for all that he wished he did, because he'd only stopped by the palace for visits instead of living there full time before everything had gone bad. Not of single one of them thought that the thirteen year old prince who had only just started walking again was going to make a go at climbing the cliffs.

Their mistake, obviously.

When Iroh realized he had lost sight of Zuko  his first thought was that maybe his nephew had gotten frustrated and moved away to vent his anger. (This happened more than the crew realized, but Iroh's room was across from his nephew's so he got a pretty clear picture). But no, a glance down the path they'd taken showed no fuming teenager. The thing that alerted him to the problem was actually the clatter of falling pebbles.

He'd looked up the cliffs when they had arrived, because he was a general and knew an advantageous position when he saw one, but there was no one holding it so he didn't pay it too much mind. From a tactician's point of view, having someone capable of scaling an impenetrable defense was quite the boon. From an Uncle's, though…

"Prince Zuko…" He said, too weakly to be heard, because his half-blind nephew was high enough up a sheer cliff that falling would most certainly kill him and it wouldn't do him any good to startle the boy now.

Iroh had heard palace rumors of the boy's penchant for getting into places he shouldn't have been able to, but rooftops and libraries were much different from air temple cliffs. On the one hand, he seemed to be handling himself quite well, pulling himself up by way of a crack that couldn't have been wider than his fingernails.

(The fact that no one on the Wani had remembered to trim them, and that they were now rather like claws may have helped things along).

On the other, Iroh had also heard many a rumor of Zuko winding up with broken bones, the cause of which he would not admit. So.

"Prince Zuko!" He called a little louder. His nephew paused, leaning his weight on an outcrop and turning to glower down at them, showing no concern for his precarious position.

"Why are you all still down there?" Zuko shouted back, sounding somewhere between irritated and genuinely confused. It did not occur to the people bellow, quite yet, that the words weren't meant to mock them, but instead stemmed from the prince's own inferiority-complex. After all, Zuko would reason to himself, If I can do it, I'm sure anyone can.

Iroh, for all his talk about wisdom, took a long moment to decide the best course of action. To acknowledge the precariousness of the situation might make Zuko less confident, might make him falter, and that would only put him in more danger. He cleared his throat.

"Some of us have weary old bones. Scout for a way up for those of us with arthritis, would you?"

Iroh did not have arthritis. Lieutenant Jee did, a bit, in his left hand. If asked, it was really acting up in this cool mountain air.

Zuko didn't ask. He might have nodded, though it was hard to tell from this distance. He also, possibly, mumbled something that sounded like "bunch of rabbit-mice." Whatever the case, he turned and continued his increasingly improbable ascent. Culminating when he jumped for a window on the bottom (top?) floor of a building, caught the ledge, and pulled himself through.

No one on the crew said a word, quite possibly because none of them were quite sure what to make of the situation in the first place. Their retired general spoke up for them with as weary of a sigh as they'd ever heard from him.

"We ought to try and meet him half-way, hm?" It was phrased as a polite suggestion. It didn't sound like one.

They did not meet him half-way. Zuko got distracted.

For one thing, the moment he was through the window and out of sight, Zuko collapsed to the floor, panting. That would have been a hard climb before he got hurt, and he wasn't fully recovered yet. He was sure they were all gossiping about how sloppy the climb had been, how foolish he was to have not brought a rope.

Several minutes of quiet gasping for air later, once his head stopped spinning so badly, Zuko peered out the window to find that the crew and his uncle had scattered up and down the available cliff space to search for a way up. But none of them had even tried to follow him, he could feel superior about that, at least.

Once he got to his feet, Zuko hugged the wall, subconsciously silencing his steps as he made his way down the hall he'd fallen into.

The temple was surprisingly intact, for what it was. Zuko supposed that being made of stone and up in cool, dry air probably had a lot to do with it -- anything in the fire nation that got to be this old only did so because it was well cared for, but here there was still the remnants of paint on the walls when no one had been to the place in 100 years.

(Or at least 50 years, give or take. Zuko knew that Sozin had left regiments stationed to watch each air temple to catch any stragglers who came back and he knew that at some point Azulon had determined the Air Nomad threat well and truly eradicated and called the forces back to worry about more important things. He kind of doubted that they had done any upkeep in all that time, though)

Tension coiled in his chest as he moved. He knew he was alone, that this place was abandoned, but he couldn't quite make himself believe it. Even deep in the cliffs, something about the way this place was built had wind pulling at Zuko's clothes and chilling his fingers. It would have been an easy fix, for any firebender but him. At least it wasn't dark. All the windows in the stone let in light, too, which Zuko desperately felt like he needed right now.

He had no idea of the function of most of the rooms he peered into. Most of them were tiny and empty, whatever was inside not having stood the test of time as well as stone had. 

Some of them had scorch marks, all over the ground and up the walls. It shouldn't have been surprising. The tight feeling in Zuko's chest spread down to his stomach, regardless.

At the very least, it didn't seem like he was going to have to scale any more cliffs. Now that he was inside, all of the buildings appeared to be connected by tunnels and staircases, and as Zuko climbed one of them (slowly -- the thing had no railing and he couldn't afford a dizzy spell right now) a glance off the edge told him that the crew had found a tunnel entrance that was closer to ground level and were making their own go at reaching it. Zuko climbed on and left them to it.

He didn't really know what he was looking for to be honest. Did the air nomads even keep records? Have libraries? If they did, was there any of it left? He dared to hope when he glanced into a room and saw shelves, only for those hopes to go plummeting soon as he realized it had probably been meant to store food, not scrolls.

In this room there were statues of Air Nomads, in that room a fountain (still flowing, to his surprise). One atrium appeared to be set up like a giant Pai Sho board, and Zuko resolved to hide it from his Uncle as best he could. The scorch marks were ever-present, and without consciously doing so Zuko started navigating to where they were the thickest.

He was surprised to find a door still in tact, much less one made of metal. It was huge, and black with old soot, and Zuko honestly wasn't sure how he was going to get it open, until he spotted the smaller door built into it to allow foot traffic. Even that required a good bit of kicking and shaking to loosen rusty hinges, and when he pulled it open --

Zuko didn't quite register what he was looking at, at first. The door had opened up to a pavilion, one with huge windows cut out to perfectly illuminate the scattered shapes on the ground. They were many shapes and sizes, most were white or yellowish, but some were charred black.

Bones. Enough to cover the room wall to wall, high enough to reach his calves, scattered haphazardly like someone had just tossed them across the floor with no regard for where they were going to go.

He took a half step back involuntarily, feeling dizzy in a way that felt totally different than what was caused by his injury. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he was thankful that these were so old that there was no longer a smell.

 Zuko had assumed that he hadn't seen any bodies because the Fire Nation had done the honorable thing and put them to rest after their battle. This… Was not that. Zuko didn't know what this was. Why…?

The Fire Nation would have cremated their own dead of course, so these must have been Air Nomads. But this…

They must have been especially dishonorable enemies, Zuko decided. Everyone knew the Nomads were tricky, and these ones were probably especially bad --

There was the occasional skull scattered with the bones. Zuko's gaze locked on one that looked especially small.

There was more than one like it. Some of those were charred black, too.

Zuko was not going to be sick now, but it might come later.

The Air Nomads were all benders. Which meant that they didn't really have non-combatants. But still, they were so -- so small.

(Zuko was reminded very suddenly of Azula, who would grab a turtleduck and laugh as she burned it. Who didn't care that it was to small to defend itself against her).

But. But what were they supposed to do. Let the airbenders grow up and then kill them?

Not kill them at all! A very loud part of his mind argued. Try and raise them to be loyal to the Fire Nation or something, not kill them.

But everyone knew that air was flighty. That it couldn't be loyal like fire could. That the whole of the nomads were a lost cause.

But.

But nothing. There was no point for him to think about this. It was already done, the Air Nomads were gone, and their bones were all piled together in a mass grave in a room he couldn't make himself look away from.

Zuko only managed to tear himself away when the sounds of the crew filtered their way up to him. They must have finally managed to find a path.

He slammed the door closed and stalked away from it. Later, when his Uncle found him and requested him to rest, he refused. How could he possibly rest in the same place as that?

It was Helmsman Kyo who finally found something useful, not that he did a terribly good job of announcing it. Two days into their search Zuko found the man leaning on a wall, peering sidelong at an old looking scroll.

"Helmsman." Zuko asked, good eye twitching, "What is that?"

"A scroll. Sir?" Responded Kyo, lazily, like he wasn't holding the biggest lead anyone had found so far.

"Where did you find it?" Asked Zuko, failing entirely at regulating his volume. Helmsman Kyo raised one fuzzy eyebrow.

"…In the room with all the scrolls, sir."

Technically-an-Ensign Teruko would later swear that the shouting that followed was loud enough to send rocks shaking lose from the cliffs. It did get Zuko what he wanted though, which was led to a room that was probably once a library.

The remains painted an obvious picture. Just  about two thirds of the scroll racks were blackened charcoal, or else burnt away entirely, but those closest to those the shelves that were undamaged had been toppled over and pushed away, as though blown by a great wind. Someone had lit a fire and didn't come back to make sure the job was finished.

At least there were no skeletons in here.

This room, too, had the remains of murals painted on the wall, and while the scrolls were of vital importance Zuko couldn't help but find his attention drawn to the one on the wall opposite the windows. It must have been amazing to see when it had been new. It was still beautiful now, and Zuko half suspected the reason it hadn't been defaced more was  because of how well done Agni was in it.

The whole picture was a circle, the top half formed by  the dragon Agni (whose rainbow scales had been worn and faded to dull oranges and browns) and the bottom by black and white fish of Tui and La (La was on the bottom of that pair so as to complete the border of the circle with Agni, or so Zuko assumed. The bottom half of the mural was so covered with soot that Agni's sister wasn't visible anymore). All that was beautiful and well done, but it wasn't what drew Zuko's gaze, it was everything inside that circle that made him curious.

There were figures done in simple, flowing linework in each of the cardinal directions -- a some kind of hooved creature in the East, what looked to be a woman in the North, a cat of some kind in the west, and a man with wings in the south. Zuko knew instinctively that these were the spirits of the winds, same as the sun and the moon.

He… Hadn't known there were wind spirits. It made sense, he supposed. Every element had them, he'd just never thought about it. Never been taught it, even though he'd learned about Tui and La, and about how the Earth Kingdom didn't have one spirit, but as many lesser spirits as there were grains of sand (And indeed, the center of the mural was filled with all manner of creatures, mostly too faded to be distinct from one another anymore). With the Air Nomads gone, his tutors must not have found it very important, but it suddenly felt very important now.

(A year from now, Zuko would overhear a man in a bar drunkenly proclaim that the reason the Fire Nation powered their ships with coal was because they couldn't trust the wind to favor them, and he wouldn't be able to make himself disagree).

How was he supposed to show respect to a spirit when he didn't even know its name?  The airbenders might be gone, but the wind itself still very much existed, and Zuko figured it must have a lot to be mad about.

He ordered the scrolls brought back to the ship -- the dry air had preserved them but had also left them terribly delicate, reading one would take hours, and he the longer he spent in the air temple the more it felt like he couldn't breathe right. Zuko didn't know if that was because of his own nerves or the thin air.

With those secured he should have felt free to leave. And he wanted to, but there was a room full of bones and a mural of a bunch of spirits that had him looking over his shoulder back towards the temple. The rest of the crew seemed eager enough to go, too. Actually, they hadn't looked too eager to come up here in the first place.

The night before they left, Zuko couldn't sleep. The way those bodies had been left was just wrong, enemy or not, and he was the prince of the people responsible for it. But he had no idea of what he was supposed to do to put them to rest respectfully. Air and Earth were opposing elements so burial probably wasn't the trick, and cremation seemed like it would be in poor taste. Maybe if he scattered the ashes to the winds…?

…Even with his flames burning hotter than they ever had, Zuko didn't think he'd be able to turn that many skeletons to ash on his own in one night. He could command the crew to help him, in theory, but what if they thought he was disrespecting past Fire Lords by doing what they hadn't? Would he be? Surely, surely, there was some reason no one had dealt with this before now.

Ugh. He hated not knowing things.

In the end he settled for something small. Zuko was adept enough at sneaking around the Wani that getting a bowl and leftover rice from the mess without being seen was easy. Getting it off the ship without letting it get soaked was a little harder. And the trip back up to the air temple in the dark wasn't exactly the easiest, either, but Zuko did it all.

The incense was something he'd found in his own trunk, no doubt something Uncle thought was calming. It was, all-in-all, kind of a pathetic offering.

Zuko was not aware of how lucky he was that air nomads didn't leave ghosts, and wind spirits didn't hold grudges.

Chema was not a man prone to making wild theories, but being on the Wani made it hard not to, sometimes.

When General Iroh (and he would keep using the title, no matter how much the man insisted that he was retired) had come to him, he'd looked as harried as Chema had ever seen him -- and Chema had seen him lead his men through some hard battles. The general had asked if he would be willing to leave his position -- a cushy thing, making food for boot camp trainees, meant to pad out his last years before retirement -- to help him with a delicate situation. He had been clear that he did not know how long the assignment would last, if it would ever end, and that it was not inherently dangerous, but could gain the opportunity to become so.

General Iroh was quite possibly the only superior officer that Chema had ever had any respect for, and he had never seen the man look quite so desperate, so he had said yes.

He had wondered why the General had been so keen to find him. He was a cook. Not generally the sort of person you go looking for first when handed a tough mission. All was made clear when he walked on board the Wani and was shown to their other guest of honor.

There was a funny thing about the way the Fire Nation army handled medical care. Most injuries were treated without any real fanfare, because war was war and these things were bound to happen.

Burns were different. Burns were questioned. If a non-bender showed up to the medical tents with one, it was a whole questioning process -- who did this do you, why did they do it, usually, who did you piss off? It was annoying, but manageable. If a firebender showed up with a burn, it was worse. They got the questioning, with an added layer of did you do this to yourself? Are you a bad enough bender to let someone else do this to you?

Firebenders that got burnt had it put on their records. If it was bad enough, or happened often enough, they could get punished -- bad work details, getting their pay docked, or if someone really didn't like you, you'd get moved somewhere with heavy combat to gain experience.

Chema was a cook, which meant that he happened to work in the one place in the army where people regularly got burns that had nothing to do with bending. Accidents happened. And after the first time he had to sit through an interrogation just for some burn cream, he decided that it wasn't worth the trouble and started keeping a stash of the stuff himself.

He didn't particularly make an effort to hide it. Soon enough, the rest of the kitchen staff knew him as the guy to go to if you wanted to avoid the medic's tent

That was all well and good, as long as it was for the kitchen staff. But some of the staff had friends in the ranks, and sometimes the infantry would get put on kitchen duty.

The first time a solider had found him on break, and shamefacedly asked for some burn cream and bandages, Chema had blinked, shrugged, and said alright. He didn't ask what had happened. Avoiding those kinds of questions was kind of the point, after all.

Chema worked for the Fire Lord's army for many years. He treated burns behind the backs of army doctors for most of them. He was not at all a medical professional, but it would not be a stretch to say that he had experience with burns.

When he was finally caught, they didn't know quite what to do with him. He wasn't disobeying orders, or committing treason, or really even doing anything particularly punishment worthy. It hadn't been for worth doing anything about for years, but there was some power struggle among the people above him, and somewhere along the way he was told that he had been undermining someone's authority and moved to the front lines.

The front lines at the time happened to be Ba Sing Se. They also suffered the same issues with health administration.

Chema's reputation had preceded him. Figuring that his punishment couldn't really get any worse, he kept doing what he'd been doing.

As it turned out, General Iroh was a much more hands on man than his past bosses had been. The general not only heard what was happening within the first week, but in fact planned an ambush and caught him red handed, treating a corporal for a painful, but ultimately minor burn. Chema had figured that if he was in trouble, he might as well finish the job, and finished wrapping the wound before turning to face the general.

General Iroh had only stroked his beard, raised an eyebrow, commented that it was a shame that his soldiers didn't feel like they could trust their wounds to be treated by their own doctors, and left without doing anything more.

Chema waited for the other shoe to drop for weeks, until the newest shipment of supplies arrived to the kitchens, and along with them a crate of everything someone could ask for to treat a burn wound and then some. Chema kept doing what he'd been doing, and the general never spoke of it again.

So, when Chema walked aboard the Wani, and into the room of the prince, who was fresh off of getting a burn on the worse end of what he'd seen men survive, he understood why the General had come to find him. He knew how to treat burns, and he knew how not to ask questions. And that was what he did.

Just because he didn't ask didn't mean he didn't have the questions, though. After all, the 13 year old prince of the Fire Nation was much different than an infantryman in the army. Why was he the one treating the prince instead of an actual doctor? Why was the prince banished? Why was he sent after some long gone spirit tale? Why did he act like any one of them might at any moment decide to push him overboard?

Why had the burn looked like a hand print before he'd scraped off the dead skin?

About halfway to the Northern Air Temple, he informed the prince that he should be fine to  leave the bandages off so long as he was careful about the cold and the salt in the air. When it was clear that Prince Zuko wasn't going to be careful in the least, Chema had just sighed to himself and dropped off a salve that might help keep the burn from blistering and splitting at his door the next morning.

The rest of the crew liked to talk about it amongst themselves, especially once the bandages came off -- had the prince somehow done that to himself? Had a spirit been involved, somehow? Something must have gone very bad somewhere for their spirit touched prince to have been banished, after all.

Chema didn't think it was a spirit. But, then, politics had never been his strong suit. Chema simply did what he'd been brought on board to do. He cooked, he kept an eye on the prince's burn, and he stayed quiet.

That didn't mean he wasn't thinking about it.

So the scrolls from the Western Air Temple didn't turn out to be all that useful. They were, annoyingly, interesting.

Zuko sincerely doubted there would ever be a universe where he needed to know that most sky bison's favorite treat was flowering alfalfa, considering the beasts were extinct, but he diligently read the scroll he'd brought back with him about their care anyways.

He really hoped no one asked why he'd wasted his time. The best justification that he could come up with was that the Avatar might know about sky bison, too. In truth… The illustrations were cute. Which, he was aware, was ridiculous.

All told, he hadn't gained very much from the western air temple at all. Two scrolls on bison care and behavior. Four on philosophy -- or at least that was what his best guess was -- that were too dense for him to understand, but were at least clearly not about the avatar (unless they were in code. He was still working at that). One about the ceremony of some spirit appeasing ritual that appeared to already be long forgotten even before--

Well, before. Zuko was coming to find that he measured a lot of things in befores and afters, these days.

One was filled with recipes for sweets that Zuko kind of wanted to try. The rest were too old or damaged to make out much of anything at all -- though hours spent piecing together shards of old , brittle paper from one scroll made it look like it was probably about child care. He might have been saving that for last -- only because it was tedious and pointless to read, and for no other reason that he was willing to think to hard about.

None of them were a lead on the Avatar. But that was fine, he shouldn't have expected this to be easy. He had three other air temples and an entire world to scour, and he would if that was what it took.

But before he could do that, Zuko unfortunately needed more supplies. Apparently even a crew as tiny as the Wani's ate through food fast enough to warrant stopping in a port between visiting two air temples. He tried not to let himself feel too guilty that the longer this took the more of his uncle's time and money he was wasting. It was a wasted emotion -- the only thing that would fix it was getting everyone back home.

He could not, unfortunately, get the ship to sail any faster, no matter how hard he stared at the back of the helmsman's head.

The first time Zuko's feet touched land after his Agni Kai was at a colonial village so new it hadn't yet been named. He stalked off the gangplank before anyone could stop him (and ignoring any calls to the contrary). He had no plan of where to go or what to do, but he wasn't sure how much longer he could stand to sit around on the Wani and pretend like it was accomplishing anything.

Not that being in town was much better -- people stared at him, as always, but this time he didn't know the reason. Was it the tail? The scar? They had to know who he was just based off of rumors alone, but had new of his banishment made it's way out here before he had?

The question answered itself soon enough in the form of a young looking man who walked out of a central building, saw Zuko on the street, paused to gape openly for a few moments, then shook himself and jogged over -- the first person in town who'd dared to approach him since he'd shown up.

"Your Highness." He bowed, but not as deeply as the servants back home might have. But then, this guy looked military, and Zuko didn't know his rank, and he had no idea how his banishment had affected his own, besides. He grit his teeth, and the man continued. "We've uh -- been expecting you…? A package from the palace arrived. If you have a place you'd like it brought…"

So whoever was in charge here hadn't expected him to show up, but someone had. Someone in the palace, which meant that it could really only be one of two people. Zuko swallowed the tangle of emotion that was crawling up his throat in favor of scowling.

"I'll pick it up myself. Is it there?" He nodded his chin at the building the man had come out of, a place that somehow managed to look simultaneously newly built and worn down, as though someone had already had to repair its walls more than once despite the fact that it couldn't have been more than a couple of years old.

"Yeah." The man cleared his throat, "I mean-- Yes. Sir. Let me show you the way."

Zuko silently picked out a number of problems as they walked rather than focus on what exactly he was going to pick up. The man's attitude with him was too lax, the people in town willing to ogle him too openly. Once they got inside the building, front and center on the back wall was news from the all over the Fire Nation, and front and center, between bounties for criminals, was the notice of his banishment.

So they definitely knew.

His package was apparently being kept in some back closet, and upon retrieval appeared to be primarily a stack of papers -- all tied together with a ribbon and topped with a royal seal. Azula's version of the seal, which sent the hopes he'd been trying not to let himself have sinking like a stone.

Back in the palace he'd made an effort to thank servants, if only because his mother had told him to. He probably should have said something, but his mouth was too dry and his throat was too tight. Instead he just tightened his grip on the papers, turned on his heel, and stalked right back outside.

There were still people out there, trying to get a glimpse of him, and he refused to acknowledge them, turning immediately into a blind alley, and then to assure he wasn't disturbed, stepped up some boxes onto the roof and went a few buildings over for good measure. By the time he decided on a good spot, the papers in his hands had been thoroughly crumpled. He tore off the ribbon and roughly straightened the note on top.

Hope you learned your lesson, dum-dum.

She didn't sign it, but there was no doubt who it was from. Zuko took a deep breath and took a peek at what his sister had the first letter she'd decided to send. And then the second, and the third, and a quick skim through the rest showed that they were all identical, except for the names.

They were the letters sent to family members when their a soldier fell in battle, all of them the same -- served with honor as a member of the 41st division.

Zuko was growing familiar with the mixture of shame and anger weighing in his chest, but he'd never felt it so sharply as in this moment.

After everything, they'd still gone through with the plan. It was too big of a cost for them to have done it just to spite him -- but it couldn't have really been the best plan. It would have been better to --

Zuko caught himself and hissed out a breath so hot it steamed. He was doing it again. General Bujing was a well renowned general, and held in high esteem by his father --

Only, no matter how long and hard he sat there and thought about it, he couldn't convince himself that the plan was right. The letters in his hands -- those people, his people, had died because of it. His problem must have been speaking out of turn about it -- how he'd said it, not what he'd said. If he'd managed to hold his temper, then maybe they would have listened to him. But if these letters were meant to convince him that he'd been wrong about the plan? They only made him feel more certain that he hadn't been.

Instead of saving them, he'd gotten in a fight. He'd gotten banished. The 41st were dead because of him.

He stayed up on the roof until the sky grew dark, eyes glued to the letters. If Bujing wanted to view these people as expendable, then fine, but Zuko wouldn't.

 He would remember every name.

Iroh had many regrets in his life. He liked to imagine that was normal for a man his age -- what was undoubtedly not normal were the far reaching consequences those regrets would have on the Fire Nation, and so the entire world.

These days, many of those regrets boiled down to one fact: Iroh did not know his brother as well as he thought he did. When he did not return home from Ba Sing Se right away, he knew Ozai well enough to know he would do something, but did not think it would be extreme as it was.

He had no proof for what had happened to their father. No one did. In his eyes that only made it more suspicious.

"Was I supposed to let the country sit without a ruler while you were gone?" His brother had said the single time Iroh had spoken with him privately once he'd returned. Iroh had thought he'd known his brother well enough to know that arguing would be useless, and had instead set about trying to understand just how deeply he'd turn the courts and sages against him.

Ozai, was, of course, as clever as he was hungry for power. The only allies Iroh might have had were far off on their own campaigns in the Earth Kingdom, and any opportunity to gain more were potentially dangerous. It seemed that everyone reported everything back to the Fire Lord.

But Iroh hadn't especially want to rule, anyways, not after Ba Sing Se, and hands tied for trying, he'd wondered if the next best thing would be to influence the next Fire Lord to be better than his father. In many respects, Zuko already was. He showed a care towards others that Iroh could never recall seeing in his brother.

Iroh was also a blind fool. What he should have recognized as scorn for Zuko, he instead saw as the same sort of tough love that their own father had given them growing up.

When he took Zuko into that war council, he had warned Zuko not to talk but knew he likely would, anyways. He'd thought it would be a good lesson to his nephew about the dangers of speaking his mind freely in court. Even when it escalated to the point of an Agni Kai, he knew that General Bujing, while a ruthless man, would know better than to harm his prince.

In truth, he had been almost relieved when Ozai revealed it would be him fighting in the Agni Kai -- His brother had always been one for theatrics, and this would certainly be a lesson that Prince Zuko would never forget.

He was right, in a way.

Iroh hadn't truly believed his baby brother capable of such cruelty until it was too late. With the banishment the realization only grew worse; Ozai had given his own son a life threatening wound and planned to send him into the world support to speak of. Functionally, he was sending Zuko to die, and doing so in a way that would allow him to absolve himself of any responsibility for doing it.

Iroh was already one of Ozai's potential targets just because of the risk he posed to his place on the throne. Throwing his resources behind Zuko in an effort to make sure the boy survived would only be the beginning of what he owed his nephew.

Now, getting onto a month and a half into Zuko's banishment, Iroh had to admit he might not have known Zuko as well as he thought he did either. Not in the way he hadn't known his brother -- he could see clearly that even in anger Zuko avoided hurting anything other than people's feelings -- but simply in the sense that Zuko had grown when he hadn't been looking, and he didn't quite know how.

He sometimes saw flashes of the kind, curious child he remembered from before Ba Sing Se, the one who would chatter on about his passions for hours if given the chance. More often, his nephew was suspicious and angry -- his old interests being deemed wastes of time. Iroh couldn't help but wonder how much of that had been caused by the Agni Kai, and how much of it he had missed before.

How little he knew of Zuko's upbringing became especially apparent when it came to the boy's firebending. His nephew had decided that since his bandages had been removed that he was ready to jump back into practice. Iroh was hesitant, but after Zuko's display at the western air temple he decided that it might be better for everyone if the boy was given something to do. So, he acquiesced and allowed him to practice his katas cold.

Zuko was… Well, Iroh had to attribute some of the unsteadiness to injury and lack of practice. He was certainly military fit, but compared to the standards of imperial firebender there was something lacking-- if he was compared to his sister, who was no doubt one of the best benders in her generation, it was easy to understand where the rumors of his lack of bending prowess might have come from.

It was with that in mind that he asked Zuko to sit with him once he'd finished his sets. His nephew grimaced, but didn't argue, sitting next to him all stiff and straight backed like he was expecting to be reprimanded. Iroh, in that moment, wished very strongly that he had taken more of an interest in his nephews education. Zuko clearly knew he had done wrong -- Iroh could start helping him determine what had been done wrong when he was more steady on his feet. Instead, he hefted the tea kettle he had brought in one hand and held it out.

Zuko just looked baffled, even as he took the kettle and cradled it in his hands.

"If you wouldn't mind heating that up, I've got a nice oolong waiting to be poured." He smiled at Zuko's wrinkled eyebrows, "Think of it as an exercise in control."

Which it was, truly. To keep a flame steady and at the right temperature for the time it would take to brew a tea -- it wasn't that complicated, but it wasn't easy, either. Iroh kept the thoughts on the difficultly of the task to himself.

He had hoped that the small challenge would coax his nephew into bending again in a manner that was safe. Most firebenders would have made a small flame in their hand and held it under the pot; it would be a great success if Zuko managed a steady flame right now. Iroh had noticed his nephew's recently acquired fear of fire -- he wished that they had the time to work through it slowly, but feared that they may not have the luxury.

(He wondered if Ozai had realized what he'd set in motion by sending Prince Zuko searching for the Avatar, or if he had so little respect for the spirits that the chance of success had never even crossed his mind. It was practically a spirit tale waiting to be written. Zuko's birth was proof that the spirits were moving, and he had no doubt that they intended to move his nephew like a piece on their game board.)

Zuko did not call up a flame, he just took the kettle in both hands and stared at it with pursed lips and a single minded focus, as though he could heat the water through force of will alone.

Iroh almost, almost, said something, certain that there was some struggle going on in his nephew's mind that he wanted to try and help ease, but he held his tongue and waited for the angry outburst that would surely follow the frustration.

The outburst which never came. Minutes passed, and Iroh realized belatedly that there was steam hissing from the spout of the kettle. Which, yes, meant the blend he'd picked out was likely being heated too much -- but it was, in fact, being heated.

Bending heat without the fire… A trick like that might not seem like much, but it was more complicated than it seemed. In Iroh's own youth it was the sort of thing a noblewoman might do to show off how much control of her flame she had, and even that had fallen out of favor by the time he was a young man. Iroh was surprised that his nephew knew that technique at all-- at this point he was certain that any firebending not meant for combat was deemed frivolous by the court and even more so by the boy's father.

So that meant it was likely Zuko had taught himself, or else had figured it out instinctually just now in an effort to not have to make flame. He didn't even seem to be aware of how advanced a technique what he'd just done was.

 Zuko looked up at him, mouth a thin line, like he was still expecting to be told he was doing something wrong.Iroh was beginning to feel the creeping suspicion that something had gone disastrously wrong in his nephew's education.

The tea was awful and bitter, and totally worth this little discovery.

He continued to observe Zuko as he trained over the next few days, as his muscle memory returned and he gained some small amount of confidence.

(Zuko did not ask to move on to hot katas, and Iroh did not ask him to. Some things were still too soon).

But Zuko did not get that much better, still making enough mistakes in his intermediate sets that Iroh didn't see himself showing his nephew the advanced ones any time soon.

Something was off, so Iroh decided to test it.

"I'd like to show you breathing technique." He told Zuko after practice one day -- who grimaced at what he assumed to be a rehash of the basics, "You are familiar with the breath of fire?"

"Of course." Zuko said tersely, "That's beginner stuff."

Indeed, for some firebenders, breathing their element was sometimes something they had to suppress.

"This technique has a similar foundation, but it's application is a bit different. You let the heat pool inside yourself instead of breathing it out." He continued, ignoring his nephew's tone, "I find it quite useful for, say, drying oneself off, or keeping warm in cold weather."

As much as he rolled his eyes about it, Zuko did sit and listen to Iroh's explanation. And Iroh, carefully, never mentioned just how advanced the technique he was explaining truly was. Because he had started to notice something in the way Zuko trained -- if something was supposed to be simple, he would overthink it, would move awkwardly and mechanically, like it would be a crime if everything wasn't performed just so. If it was something meant to be difficult, he'd throw himself into it with everything he had -- too much, usually, like it could compensate for the things he didn't know.

Ultimately, Zuko was not a bad student at all, simply not a prodigy. But he was also strange. He were was a boy who struggled with anything more advanced than basic katas quickly picking up on a technique typically reserved for masters, and all because he had no idea how difficult it should be. Iroh could work with that.

Too little too late seemed to be a running theme in Iroh's life. His wife gone, his son dead, his nephew burned. It took him two years after Ba Sing Se to come to terms with how wrong his country was, and he was the fool who still thought he might change things from the inside -- could influence the next fire lord to be different.

He still had a chance. He only hoped the spirits would allow him the time to use it.

Zuko wished that he hadn't been so surprised to see people living in the northern air temple. It was one of those things that just made sense -- it was a perfectly serviceable, very defensible building that no one lived in anymore -- one of those things that Zuko was sure that everyone else had considered before they arrived except for him. At least, that was what it seemed like, because when he spotted what looked to be the smoke from a small fire and pointed it out, the strongest response he got was a muttered, "Huh" from Ensign Teruko.

"They could be airbenders!" Zuko had insisted, "The Avatar could be up there right now!"

Uncle cleared his throat.

"Perhaps, but I imagine if they don't want to speak with us they will simply fly away before we arrive."

The northern air temple was lower in altitude than its western counterpart, but far deeper in the mountains. It took the crew almost a full day of hiking and climbing to reach it after they had first spotted it. Zuko fully expected whoever it was to have fled before they arrived, but to his surprise, when they finally reached the steps to the temple there was a figure waiting for them at the top, standing so rigidly straight that he might have been mistaken for a fire nation military man from a distance.

Closer inspection revealed otherwise. The only thing Zuko knew about who air nomads were supposed to look was that they had tattoos, but the man was undeniably Earth, with a bushy mustache and beard and eyebrows missing chunks of hair. He was even wearing green -- a thick woolen overcoat to help with the cold air on the mountaintop, though it was noticeably stained with what looked like grease.

(Cold air that wasn't bothering Zuko, because he'd decided to take the opportunity to practice the breathing technique Uncle had taken the time to show him. It was still just about the only firebending he could do).

When they crested the staircase he bowed what was probably also an Earth Kingdom bow, and when he spoke there was an undeniable shake of nervousness to his voice.

"I'm so sorry to say that I wasn't expecting any visitors so soon. What ah -- what can I help you fine folks with?"

Zuko puzzled over his wording for a long moment -- what did he mean so soon? -- before realizing that no one had responded. Uncle was looking at him. The crew was looking at him. They were expecting him to speak.

Which. Of course they were. This was his quest. But he wasn't prepared for this, he didn't know what to say. He never knew what to say! What if he messed up again, got them attacked, got himself punished--

"The - The Avatar." He forced out before the silence could grow any more awkward, "We're looking for the Avatar."

"…The Avatar?" The man repeated slowly. He blinked a few times, like he'd somehow just noticed Zuko for the first time. "…You're not with the war minister?"

"No?" Zuko responded without thinking, before cursing that he'd done it. It might have been good if this man thought they were with whichever minister he was talking about. He was clearly already afraid of the man, they could have just leveraged that… But then again Zuko had never been a very good liar. He crossed his arms. "We have our own agenda."

"…Right. The…Avatar?" It was like now that he'd started looking at Zuko, he couldn't look away, "I'm sorry, but I can't say I've say I've ever seen them."

Obviously. No one had seen the Avatar.

Zuko's lips twitched down, anxiety being swiftly replaced with irritation. He bit back a complaint about being patronized but his voice still had that edge that warned  the crew that he was about to start shouting.

"I wasn't asking that. What did you do with the stuff that was already here when you arrived?'

"Ah…" The man knitted his eyebrows together, "Tossed it in a closet? There wasn't much."

"Show us." Zuko demanded. Now the man finally hesitated -- but thank the spirits Uncle finally stepped in to save him.

"No harm in showing us a closet, hm? And while you do that, let's have a talk over a cup of tea."

"I-- We don't --"

"No worries!" Uncle stepped forward to guide the man by the elbow, "I brought my own pot."

…Zuko hadn't noticed, but he wouldn't be at all surprised to learn that uncle had hauled his own tea set up the mountains. The man kept sputtering but he let Uncle lead him inside without actually putting up a fight. The crew followed.

Any lingering theories Zuko might have had about the temple's new inhabitants being airbenders in disguise vanished as soon as they entered the first room. The place was a total mess, with enough piping scattered around the place to make it resemble the boiler room on the Wani.  Most of it was scattered around, waiting to be assembled, but some of them were already setup, loose joints hissing out steam.

The murals here would have been in much better shape than the one's he'd seen in the western air temple, had it not been for the holes that had been bored through the walls so the pipes could pass through. If they were somehow airbenders, they probably wouldn't deface their own temple like that.

Zuko caught movement in the corner of his bad eye and whipped around to look. There was a face peeking around a doorway at the end of the hall. A round, childish face -- they couldn't have been more than ten-- probably younger, if they were that short -- and they looked terrified. It did not make Zuko feel a weird unexplainable guilt. In fact, it was probably actually a good thing -- proof that the Fire Nation was winning the war.

(He also wouldn't lay awake at night, thinking about how it should be soldiers scared of seeing them, not kids.)

"Teo, could you ah…  Could you maybe head to the kitchen and start a pot for tea?" The man at the front as seen him too, and he sounded stressed about it.

"…Dad?" The boy responded with a shake to his voice, which answered why.

"It's alright." He replied in a way that didn't sound convincing at all, "They're just… Looking for the Avatar."

Teo opened his mouth. Closed it. Looked at where his dad was very obviously waving his hand for him to go and decided that he would. Zuko blinked as he pushed past the doorway on a chair with wheels.

Huh. Well, that… Wasn't his concern.

"Can we get a move on?" He snarled, and for once was actually listened to as the pace quickened. Problem was, it only got him nowhere faster.

Closet was an apt description for the room they were brought to. The room was one of those tiny cells like Zuko had seen at the southern air temple, and had been stacked full of stuff that he only half recognized -- moth eaten orange fabric piled into one corner, long staffs with wings attached, a huge mound of cracked leather that might have once been a bison saddle pushed up against the far wall. Most crucially, a single box of crumbling scrolls sat balanced on something that probably used to be furniture. They looked to be in even worse shape than the ones from the western temple; Zuko had suspicions they wouldn't be readable at all.

He hefted the box into his arms and turned to where the away crew had been oh-so helpfully waiting in the hall. He was half-expecting someone to object to him walking away with them, but looking for the man who led them there turned up nothing. As did…

"Where is my uncle." He glared at the crew, who didn't seem terribly concerned with the fact that the general was gone, nor with Zuko's question. He had to stare them down for a long few seconds before Leitentnat Jee said in his most deadpan voice, "I believe he's asking what the local war minister has been up to."

…And had made efforts to do so without him there. Ugh.

The realization sat heavy in Zuko's stomach.  He thrust the box into the arms of the nearest crew member just so he could clench his fists without breaking anything.

"Search the place," He commanded "I want to make sure they're not hiding anything."

They crew did not appear to take that order with any real sense of urgency. He stalked away from them, tail lashing, because he was going to start uselessly shouting at them again, otherwise.

Trouble was, the man who'd led them so far didn't seem to be lying when he'd said there wasn't much. Everything that might have been related to the air nomads (and thus the Avatar) had been pushed aside in favor of some mechanical project or another. None of them looked quite finished -- In fact Zuko decided to avoid the elevator all together -- but his search for stairs found him walking right in to what seemed to be some kind of living quarters, and as a consequence the place the rest of the inhabitants of the temple had been hiding. Whatever hushed whispers they'd been sharing died as soon as they entered the room.

No one greeted him. They just stared at him with wide eyes, bodies frozen in place. He was, unfortunately, used to that.

"Is there anywhere in this place that you haven't cleaned out?" He addressed his question to the oldest person in the room -- a middle aged woman in a faded green dress and apron -- but it was the youngest -- the boy in the wheelchair -- who responded.

"No one can get up to the tallest spires since we can't fly." His voice cracked, "'S too dangerous."

"Right." said Zuko, who turned to leave without further comment. He'd see about that. It was better than standing around here, at any rate.

(Later, when asked where Zuko had gone, Teo would have no idea why the whole crew shared a look when he explained what he'd said).

The northern air temple was no less labyrinthine than its western cousin, but it also had just as many windows, and it was significantly more climbable. With his new direction of up, his path became not simple but at least straightforward. Take stairs up as far as he could, and when he couldn't find any more, he pulled himself out of one window and into the next highest one. It was fairly obvious when he reached a room that hadn't been touched before, because it looked like it hadn't been swept clean in years. It probably hadn't. Zuko just quietly thanked the spirits he didn't find another room of bones and climbed on.

Zuko almost thought top of the first tower he scaled was completely empty. There was no furniture saved for a simple looking wooden box in the middle of the room, that, on closer inspection revealed itself to be an altar. The rounded walls had faded murals of what appeared to be those same wind spirits that he'd spied in the western air temple.

Zuko would not say he had been spooked, but once he realized what the room was, he didn't stay much longer.

He made his way down and set his sites on the next spire. The climb was much the same, if longer, because Zuko kept pausing to poke around rooms of charred furniture to look for a lead. Once he got high enough, even the burn damage stopped, like the soldiers hadn't even bothered to climb that far.

Zuko was sure he was supposed to be annoyed at their lack of thoroughness, but he couldn't bring himself to be. After all, if they'd made it this far, they might have destroyed what he was looking for.

The central-most tower was the tallest, and the staircase that took Zuko to the top was so narrow that it was a squeeze even for him. When it finally opened up, it was to the most decorated and in-tact room Zuko had seen in an air temple so far. The dome of the roof had been covered with a gradient of blue tiles, interspersed with the occasional bit of white. It looked like the night sky, and after a long moment of deliberation, Zuko realized that it was accurate, too, if the sky was being viewed  from much further north than he was used to.

More importantly, the room looked more or less untouched -- it had a rack filled with scrolls and a desk still scattered with papers like it had been abandoned days ago instead of years. There were more here than what he'd salvaged from the western temple, but a bit of careful skimming showed that they were much narrower in topic -- charts of stars and wind currents. Potentially useful, yes, but not to his mission. Knowing how his uncle got when talking to people, Zuko took the time to examine them all anyways.

More interesting, though, was what had been left out on the desk, weighed down with a stone that had been carved to look like a tigerdillo. It was a letter, ink so faded that it was difficult to read. Zuko didn't dare touch it as he leaned over to read it, afraid it would crumble apart under his hands.

Dearest Master Tsola,
 

It was lovely to hear from you, as always. You certainly know how much old folks like me like to be remembered every now and then.

As for your request, I don't see myself traveling so far these days, but certainly I have no issue teaching what I can should you managed to wrangle the children on a trip here. Certainly, it's long past time for me to take up an apprentice to pass on what I know. To that end I've sent some older charts along so you can see who shows any interest -- though I will grant that we may not have much luck. Such things didn't capture my attention until I was much older. As a young man I became interested in the stars from the stories I heard while traveling, so perhaps you'll get more interest sharing those instead.

The tale changes depending on who you ask, of course, but curiously enough the Fire nation and Water tribes both tend to agree that the stars were gifts to Tui. The gifter, of course, changes. I've spent many a summer in Agna Quel'a and heard many tellings of La's courting of the moon spirit. Each star is a gift from him in an attempt to woo her, though what each one represented changed with every year. I suppose that there are so many stars in the sky that every version could be true.

In the Fire Nation, Agni is the gifter, and each constellation a story in its own right -- for each one is some person or creature that he thought would make an interesting addition to her court. Whether Agni gave them because of his sister's supposed difficulty making friends, or because of the guilt he felt leaving her to watch over the night alone depends on who you ask. Perhaps my favorite is the story is the one for the constellation they've named the Storm Lady (we would know it as part of the North Arrow and part of the Mountain Jackal), who legend tells calmed a storm so fierce that it would have drowned her entire island with only the power of her voice.

It is quite interesting, actually, that nations of opposing elements have similar tales of the stars. Most people in the Earth Kingdom don’t seem to ascribe any particularly strong meaning to them, and a common story I've heard told is that the stars are gems that were scattered about by some local spirit or another to help people find their way in the world. But those who put some stock into old spirit tales tell a different story: The stars -- every last one of them -- are spirits of their own. They are those who chose to watch the world from afar, interested enough to keep an eye on humans, but not enough to get involved with our affairs. It may be the Earth Kingdom's own penchant for having so many spirits around that leads to the number being so high, but it's not that different from our own stories, no?

I suppose that--

The letter ended there, in the middle of a sentence, the last stroke trailing off like the writer had walked away in the middle of writing it. They probably had.

As little as there was, Zuko found himself reading it over and over again. A monk who was probably one hundred years dead, who had been writing to a friend, would have no reason to lie. But Zuko  had never heard any of this before.  He knew of the Storm Lady by name, knew those were the stars who's rising signaled the end of monsoon season, but he'd never heard why. Nearly everything he'd read about stars had been in the context of how they could be used to navigate, but if they were gifts from Agni weren't they kind of important? And was was that bit about leaving Tui alone to watch the night? He pretty clearly helped, the moon reflected the sun --

Although, there was such a thing as new moons…

Zuko stared at the paper for a long time without really seeing it. Maybe it was the ravings of a madman, or maybe they were just… Stories. Maybe it didn't hurt anything if the person who had wrote this had really heard them. What concerned Zuko was that he hadn't.

This letter was talking about these spirit stories like they were common knowledge. Like the writer had heard more than one version. Had Zuko just not been thorough enough in his search? Not looked the right places? It was already hard enough for him to figure out what people wanted from him, how was he supposed to guess at what Agni wanted when there was clearly so much he didn't know?

Nothing in the room told him a thing about the Avatar. None of it told him any more about Agni, either.

When Zuko left the air temple, early the next morning, it was with two boxes of scrolls and a looming feeling that he had a long road ahead of him.