Chapter Text
“What were you thinking??” Katara demanded, taking Zuko roughly by the elbow and tugging his arm into her lap.
He cringed, his breath hissing between his teeth as Katara examined the forked red burns that traveled up his forearm.
It had worked. Uncle’s technique to redirect lightning had worked.
Well, nearly. The sudden influx of power, siphoned from Azula when he put himself between her and the Avatar, had almost knocked him off of his feet. He’d managed to channel it through his body, missing his heart, but it had scattered as he released it, burning his arm and hand and sending a whole troop of Dai Li agents scrambling for cover.
Sloppy. He’d have to practice more.
But it had worked.
He’d protected the Avatar from Azula. Aang, in his full Avatar state, had cleared the way out of the caves, taking them to safety.
Uncle had covered their escape. Last Zuko had seen him, he’d been surrounded by Dai Li agents.
Katara’s healing water quickly soothed the burns on his arm, so he couldn’t even blame his sudden tears on the pain.
“How did you do that?” Aang folded into an eager cross-legged heap in front of him in the bison’s saddle. “Can you teach me? Are you going to teach me firebending??”
The kid’s eyes were bright and hopeful. Agni, Ba Sing Se had just fallen to his sister, and Uncle was her captive, and they’d barely escaped with their lives, and the Avatar was most focused on his firebending lessons? They needed to run. They needed to hide.
“So are you, like, on our side now?” Sokka asked, eyeing him skeptically from the other side of the bison.
“I…” Zuko trailed off.
…fuck. Zuko had just branded himself a traitor. He’d saved the Avatar from Azula and helped him escape.
He was completely and entirely fucked.
…Uncle was probably very proud of him.
That did not make him any less fucked.
—
They rendezvoused with a fleet of water tribe warriors. Those warriors all treated Zuko with well-earned skepticism, but their demeanor toward him softened once he helped them commandeer a fire nation cruiser. It wasn’t like he could make his rebellion any worse than he already had.
For several weeks they dodged in and out of Fire Nation waters, keeping to themselves, and trying to formulate a new plan.
And every morning, Zuko trained the Avatar in firebending.
He had a million opportunities to second guess his decision. Sometimes, his heart would race in his chest for no reason. Sometimes, he would think about what he’d done and feel a thick crawling sensation of dread in his stomach. His nightmares, his constant companions since the day he’d been banished, were more…pointed how. The words his father spoke to him more vile, the punishments he inflicted more cruel.
He burst awake from one such nightmare in a cold sweat, swinging violently at something he could barely see but sensed in the corner of his scarred eye.
“Spirits, Zuko. It’s me.”
Firm hands caught his arm, folding it back against his chest, which heaved as he gasped for air. He squeezed his eyes shut, banishing the lingering remnants of imagined pain. It always felt so real, in his head when he dreamt.
Katara held his arm against his chest, reaching for his other hand. He wanted to shake her off, embarrassment at her seeing him like this making his gut twist uncomfortably. But her touch was so gentle. It was helping.
“Breathe,” she said. “You’re safe here.”
He laughed. A hysterical sound. He doubted he would ever be safe again.
But his breaths calmed. His heartbeat slowed. He relaxed. Though, collapsed may have been more accurate. He felt like he’d just run ten miles. Like he hadn’t slept a wink.
Katara let go of him. Zuko only just stopped himself from reaching for her and drawing her back in.
“Are you ok?” She asked. “I heard you thrashing around. I didn’t want you to hurt yourself.”
Zuko nodded.
“Yeah. I’m ok,” he forced the words out from his rough, dry throat.
Katara produced a water skin and he drank.
“I…” Katara started to speak, but hesitated.
The sleeping cabin was lit by a single lantern near the door. Katara's face, covered in alternating light and shadow as the ship tilted with the waves, took on a strange, otherworldly cast.
Beautiful. Beautiful and real. Beautiful in a way that breathed, rather than the sharp perfection that permeated the fire nation court.
“I know you’re giving up a lot,” she said. “Being here with us. Helping us the way you have.”
Zuko swallowed hard against the panic that threatened to rise in his throat again.
“What I’m trying to say is…” Katara trailed off again.
Then she threw her arms around his neck. Stunned, Zuko caught her mostly by reflex, his arms wrapping firm around her waist. Her warmth against him steadied him. Her body a soothing weight against his chest.
“Thank you,” she said.
And Zuko held her a little tighter, burying his face in her shoulder.
—
All the reasons Zuko could formulate to second guess his choices melted away once he saw what was happening to his own people.
The war was supposed to share the Fire Nation’s greatness with the world. That was what every tutor Zuko had ever learned from had taught.
What he saw among his people wasn’t greatness.
He’d seen firsthand how the nations they invaded suffered. He’d seen villages terrorized by thugs masquerading as soldiers. He’d seen refugees scrambling for survival in the lowest ring of Ba Sing Se.
But…some of the Fire Nation’s citizens were suffering just as much.
Aang infiltrated a school, and Zuko learned firsthand the insane propaganda that was being taught to Fire Nation kids. They visited a town on a river that had been ruined by a factory upstream, poisoning its water and making its people sick. Even that village that was being terrorized by that bloodbending old woman. Sure the woman had been water tribe, not fire nation, but would she have become the monster she was if she hadn’t been torn from her home and held in inhumane conditions for so many years?
The only people this war was benefiting was the royal family. The royal family and the nobles that were profiting from it.
It made Zuko seethe with anger.
So when plans were laid for the invasion, Zuko gave them everything he knew.
—
The night before the invasion, Aang finally slept. He’d been having nightmares for days, but that final night, he actually slept peacefully.
It was the rest of them who struggled.
Zuko awoke from his own tortured dreams with a gasp. Their campfire had burned low. The sky was dark and the stars were bright. He sat up and pressed his hands over his eyes, trying to wait out the racing of his heartbeat.
Toph was encased in her usual earth tent, but he could hear her shifting restlessly. Sokka had curled into a tight little ball, asleep but tense, his breath not quite steady even as he slept.
And just as Zuko was preparing to lay back down, Katara burst awake, half upright even before she seemed fully conscious, a cry on her lips that she quickly swallowed. An instinct to keep quiet that made Zuko ache.
She took a few gasping breaths, and put her head down on her knees and burst into tears.
He went to her.
“Katara?”
She startled violently, hands instantly raised to defend herself. But when she saw him reach for her she fell into his arms. She was still trying to stifle her cries, and she pressed her face into his chest to muffle them.
“It was my dad,” she said. “My dad and Sokka. They killed them the same way they killed my mom and I know it’s not real but…”
Zuko held her a little closer against his chest. Agni, he felt like such a fool. In his nightmares, he was always the one being hurt. In hers, it was the people she loved.
He didn’t let her go, even as her breaths evened out. Even as he tried to get her to lie back down on her bedroll (the invasion was tomorrow they all needed sleep), she didn’t let him release her. Her hands made tight fists around the collar of his shirt.
So he lay down next to her, hoping against hope that maybe the proximity would soothe them both.
They fell asleep.
—
They awoke still clinging to one another, pressed together on Katara’s narrow bedroll. Zuko didn’t quite know what to say, and it seemed Katara didn’t either. They got up quickly and avoided each others’ eyes.
The rest of the invasion force arrived right on schedule. Zuko watched them gather with a nervousness that bordered on nausea. What was this ragtag group of rebels supposed to do that would defeat the entire Fire Nation army?
The plan was good, he reminded himself. The new war machines they planned to use were brilliant. It would work. The Avatar’s little gang was a ragtag group of rebels too and they’d been a thorn in the Fire Nation’s side for months.
It would work.
Staring out over the assembled boats, Katara stepped up next to him.
They were both dressed to fight. Katara in protective water tribe leathers, a flask of water at her hip. Zuko outfitted in pieces of armor that he’d scavenged from the ship they’d stolen so many weeks ago.
…There was a part of him that wanted to beg her not to fight today. He knew it was absurd. Katara was quite possibly the strongest waterbender he’d ever met. But they were marching on the Fire Nation palace. None of them would be safe until it was taken. He hated the thought of putting her in so much danger.
Tentatively, he reached for her hand.
She took it. She stayed turned out toward the water, but her gaze drifted down toward their hands.
“Be safe,” she said. “Ok?”
“Yeah,” he said. “You too.”
He looked over at her. She’d come up on his left side so he had to turn to be able to see her properly. She looked at him, a nervous, caring ache in her eyes.
It was hard to say which one of them moved first.
He liked to think that they did it together.
They leaned into each other and their lips met.
It was one kiss. Soft, and all too brief. Still, it made Zuko’s heart thunder in his chest.
“Zuko?” Katara breathed, her voice shaking. “If anything happens today-”
He took both her hands in his and held them hard.
“I’ll see you when it’s over,” he said.
She looked up at him. Her gaze hardened, determined.
She nodded.
He leaned in to kiss her again.
“Zuko!” Someone called.
He turned. One of the water tribe warriors, asking him to look over the outfitting on the stolen fire nation ship, to make sure it was as accurate as possible.
“Go,” Katara said. “I’ll see you when this is over.”
He gave her a small smile. Nodded. Went to work, feeling, finally, like nothing could go wrong.
—
Everything went so wrong so goddamn fast.
The approach went as well as it could. The underwater machines slipped under the gates of Azulon like they weren’t even there. The crawling tanks, caterpillar-like, climbed the ridges easily, closing on the palace just in time for the eclipse itself.
Zuko literally stumbled when the moon slipped fully in front of the sun. That inner warmth that always filled him? It just…vanished. He felt weak and shaky, like he’d just woken up from a long illness.
“You ok Sparks?” It was Toph that asked.
“I’m fine,” he choked the words out through gritted teeth and led the way.
Katara had stayed behind with the bulk of the invasion force, ready to help the wounded and hold the line there. The rest of them, Aang, Sokka, Toph, and himself, made their way into the tunnels below the palace.
His father wouldn’t stay in the palace on a day when he was so vulnerable. He was a man who only picked fights he was sure he could win. On a day when he couldn’t firebend, he would hide.
And Zuko led the Avatar straight to him.
They encountered Azula on the way, just as Zuko had expected. It was surprisingly easy for Sokka and Toph to lead her off course. Azula was underpowered right now too. She wouldn’t know what to do without her bending. Zuko and Aang pressed on.
It should have occurred to him that it was a trap.
Zuko let Aang and himself into the Fire Lord’s secret bunker through the escape entrance, and immediately came face to face with an entire platoon of troops.
Dao swords in hand, Zuko threw himself at the front line.
“Aang! Go!” He shouted.
Steel collided with steel. Two men dropped.
He risked a glance back at Aang. The kid hesitated.
“Get out of here!” Zuko pressed.
His moment of distraction earned him a deep cut on the back of his leg. It buckled under him.
Aang sent out a huge blast of air. The first line of soldiers buckled, giving Zuko time to stagger back to his feet. The blast also forced Aang back through the door, just as it closed between them.
Zuko settled into his stance as the soldiers surrounded him.
On a dais behind them sat his father, looking imperious and terrifyingly smug.
Zuko roared and attacked.
He wounded several of them before they managed to disarm him. It took three of them to subdue him and force him to his knees.
Then something hit him hard on the back of the head, and everything went gray, and then black.
—
He awoke in a heap on the floor of a cell.
He picked himself up gingerly, groaning. He could feel the hits and bruises from his fight clearly now. The wound in his leg felt especially sharp. His head pounded and ached with every move.
His inner flame was back. The eclipse was over.
“Zuko?” A familiar voice called softly.
“Uncle!”
Uncle Iroh was in the cell across from his. Zuko scrambled for the front of his cell, pressing himself against the bars, reaching. Uncle reached too, but they still couldn’t touch each other's hands.
Zuko fell back again, slumping against the bars, exhausted and in pain.
“Zuko,” Uncle said. “What’s going on out there?”
Zuko told him. About the invasion. About the trap he’d walked straight into with Aang. At least Aang had gotten away. Agni, he hoped Aang had gotten away.
When he was done, he looked back up at Uncle again, ashamed. But Uncle just gave him a soft smile.
“I’m proud of you, my boy,” Uncle said.
Zuko laughed. He’d failed to defeat his father. Clearly the invasion hadn’t taken the palace, or he’d have been freed by now. They’d all failed.
“Zuko,” Iroh pressed. “I’m proud of you.”
Tears pricked at Zuko’s eyes.
“It’s going to be ok, my boy,” Iroh soothed, mistaking his tears for sadness or fear.
And Zuko was afraid. He was his father’s prisoner, and after everything he’d done since Ba Sing Se, all of his nightmares were about to become reality.
But he also knew who his friends were. He knew them and had fought beside them. He’d spent the whole previous night in the arms of someone whose nightmares weren’t for herself, but for those she loved.
If Zuko knew anything about Katara, he knew she was already on her way.
.