Chapter Text
"Are we there yet?" Sokka asks for what must be the fifteenth time in as many minutes.
"Almost," Aang replies again, just as calm as every other time.
Momo chitters and adjusts his position in Zuko's lap. Zuko carefully moves his fingers out of the lemur’s biting range, having learned his lesson.
“Where are we going, exactly?” he asks as casually as he can. He feels as if he’s walking on eggshells, unsure yet of his place in this group and how hard he can push. He has their trust and their willingness to give him a chance, but he still has to remind himself that these are not yet the friends he knows.
Aang turns and sends a small smile over his shoulder. “I was thinking we could stop on a town on the coast! You’re…” Here he pauses, unsure, but then goes on as if he had never stopped. “You’re new to the group, so basically what we do is stop in towns and help out if they need us!”
“We also need supplies,” Sokka adds.
“And we should keep an eye out for an earthbending teacher, too,” Katara suggests.
Aang turns to her. “Oh, I was just gonna go back to Omashu and ask Bumi!”
Katara and Sokka share a long glance, and Zuko thinks back to when he had met Bumi, at the White Lotus camp. The old man is a world-renowned earthbender, and had clearly thought high of Aang’s abilities, but Zuko knows for a fact he had never taught Aang, not before.
No, there was another earthbender, a small, loud girl who mocked freely and punched hard, and who cared so deeply about her friends she would drop everything for them. A girl who had sat with him before anyone else would and listened to him rant about his father and his sister and his life and who had called him an idiot and punched him in the shoulder and somehow made him feel like someone had finally heard him.
When he makes his decision, Zuko doesn’t consider the big picture, he doesn’t do it in order to maintain the necessary parts of the original timeline or anything grand like that. He simply misses his friend Toph.
“Are you sure about Omashu?” he asks.
Aang turns to him, and Katara and Sokka do as well. “Who better than King Bumi to teach me earthbending?” Aang asks. “Also, we were friends, back - before.”
Zuko feels really, really bad now. But - “Well, I mean.” He racks his brain, trying to think of an explanation that didn’t involve any future knowledge. How did they meet Toph the first time around? “There’s - in Gaoling there’s an earthbending competition for the top earthbender in the Earth Kingdom, maybe someone from there?”
Aang doesn’t look convinced but Sokka contemplates it. “Someone who knows their stuff and isn’t crazy would be good…”
Aang frowns, eyes narrowed. “Bumi is my friend. I want him as my teacher. He’ll come with us if I ask, he’s my friend too.”
Sokka looks like he wants to retort, but Katara jumps in. “We don’t have to decide now. We still have to stop and pick up supplies.”
Sokka nods and turns to Zuko. “Tell us more about that earthbending ring when we land.”
Zuko nods. He’d hesitated to intrude in the discussion, fearing he would overstep, so he’s pleased that Sokka seems to be willing to consider his suggestion. He feels a little bad trying to deny Aang the chance to train with his old friend, but he also, selfishly, wants to see Toph again. Besides, this doesn’t mean they can’t stop by for a visit.
Aang is silent as Appa flies on, still looking unhappy. It’s clear he’s still determined to train with Bumi. Zuko hopes he’d be able to convince Aang to give Toph a chance, at least. The little earthbender is the perfect addition to the group, and even if she doesn’t have the same closeness with him as she had in his time, he hopes she’ll be close with the others once again.
They really are a powerful team, all together, and he wants to do all he can to bring them together again.
Sokka leans back against the saddle wall, looking bored, then suddenly brightens and hurries to Zuko’s side. He leans in close, and Zuko leans back instinctively, but inwardly he doesn’t mind too much.
“Hey, you got any secret military knowledge we should know about?”
“Sokka! You can’t just ask that,” Katara admonishes, but she turns her attention to him as well.
“I was banished,” Zuko reminds both of them. “They didn’t really tell me much of anything.”
“Okay, sure, but we literally know nothing,” Sokka retorts.
“Don’t push him,” Aang calls back from his seat. “He’s doing a lot by just being here. We’ve been doing fine so far.”
“I guess, but -” Sokka’s face twists. “I don’t really want to end up fighting them again so soon after -”
He breaks off into tense silence and Zuko shifts. He would have had no problem spilling his father’s plans, but he truly knows nothing of the Fire Nation’s movements, considering he’d been left completely out of the loop, and last time around he’d been adrift on the raft.
The thought of the raft reminds him of his sister, who’d been waiting at the other end. He wonders if she’d be sent after him again, but isn’t so sure. The Fire Nation truly believes he’s dead this time, or at least out of the picture, with nothing to tie him or his uncle to stopping the invasion.
Still, he thinks, he needs to tell them something. He thinks over everything he knows about the future and realizes there’s one huge Fire Nation objective he’s not sure they know about yet.
“Have you heard of Sozin’s Comet?” he asks, then immediately regrets it as Katara and Sokka wince in unison.
Aang’s shoulders tense. “I’ve heard of it,” he says. “Roku - Roku told me about it. And how it’s coming back. And how the Fire Nation is going to use it to end the war.”
“It was during the solstice,” Katara adds quietly when it’s clear Aang is done talking. “He told Aang he had to master all the elements by the end of the summer.”
“Wait, you were there too,” Sokka says. “You almost kept Aang from getting in the room.”
“Um -” Zuko looks away. “Sorry about that.”
Sokka, to his surprise, just shrugs. “You didn’t do a very good job.” His eyebrows draw together. “Wait, now that I think about it, Zhao locked you up too.”
Katara’s eyes widen. “I remember that too! He called you a traitor. I can’t believe we forgot.” She turns to him and offers a small smile. “Sorry about that. It would have made things easier back in the North.”
Zuko finds himself smiling back, heart warming. “It’s fine. You had other things on your mind.”
Aang turns fully in his seat to face them. He’s still clearly shaken up at the reminder of the comet, not to mention everything else that had been weighing on his mind, but his face is set in a determined expression. “Wait, what were you going to say about the comet?”
Zuko thinks for a second. He had meant to inform about the comet itself, but clearly he doesn’t need to. Well, there is one thing he can tell them, then. “Before the comet comes, there’s going to be an eclipse.”
“An eclipse?” Sokka echoes.
“The sun goes dark for a few minutes, and we lose the ability to firebend.”
The three reel back in shock. “You lose the ability to firebend? How do you know about this? How does no one else know about this?” Aang leaves his position on the saddle and scrambles to join the small circle around Zuko.
Zuko frowns, wondering how to phrase what he knows in a way they would believe him and not involve any future stuff. “It’s happened a couple times before. There was a book about it even, The Darkest Day in Fire Nation History , but it disappeared from the palace library all of a sudden one day. It’s the royal family’s best kept secret. Not even the rest of the Fire Nation is allowed to know, just us and a few generals. If word got out and the rest of the world found out…”
He trails off and the others look away. He knows they understand what would happen, but he also understands that they would not be entirely opposed to that outcome, not like he would. The barrier between him and his friends, one he’d thought was finally coming down, seems to return.
“Why are you telling us, then?” Katara asks quietly.
“If we do it right,” Zuko says, thinking fast. “If you let me help, we can end the war without hurting the Fire Nation. Just stopping the Fire Lord.” As he says it, he realizes it’s true. In the Northern Water Tribe, he’d mostly been focused on getting out and, later, saving Yue. Fixing the whole future had been more of an abstract concept. But, as he thinks it over, he realizes this could work. Sokka’s invasion had been effective, but also pretty much as bloodless as an invasion could be. It had only been stopped because Azula had learned about it. If he can keep Azula from finding out this time around, and have the added benefit of Sokka’s trust, he can get Aang to Ozai and leave the ordinary citizens out of it.
His three companions are staring at each other, clearly lost in their own thoughts.
“If we can end the war without hurting anyone,” Aang says eventually. “If we can get Ozai to stop… We have to try.”
Zuko winces inwardly, remembering an argument at a beach about what “stop” really meant, but pushes that thought aside. They can do this. They have an earlier warning now, and more time to plan. Maybe encountering Ozai during the eclipse really could stop the war without bloodshed. He doesn’t know, but he’s willing to try. If they can get this invasion to work this time around, they would keep the losses down on both sides. Maybe he really can change the future for the better.
Aang returns to his seat at the front, lost in thought, and the ride continues in silence. Zuko leans against the saddle and begins to make his own plans. They’re going to pull this off.
He’s sure of it.