Chapter Text
In the deeper parts of the Earth Kingdom, a lonely traveller crosses the barren land on an ostrich horse. He sways in the saddle beneath a merciless sun, worn clothes stained by dust and sweat. His thumb strokes the edge of a small blade, two times a gift and once rejected. He doesn’t want to think about it, but his mind never seems to quiet these days.
He’s so tired. It follows him like a shadow, like hands that grips his shoulders and drags him down, like fog that bleeds into his eyes and fills his skull. Through the heat, the thirst and the hunger, it’s there, and he doesn’t know what to do with it. He doesn’t want to think about it.
Zuko does what he’s always done; he keeps going. There isn’t much of a choice for someone who was lucky to be born — you really can’t do anything unless you’re prepared to do it against the odds. He’d gotten used fairly quickly. Even so, it was getting harder by the day to keep going. He’d always thought that sometime, in the end, it would pay off. There would come a time after the fight, grueling work rewarded by rest and recognition. An end, or at least a respite, or an upturn of some sort. He still clung desperately to that idea. Losing sight of it felt like death.
He knows where he’s going, but he doesn’t know what he’ll do once he gets there. He has run back and forth around the problem like a trapped rat, and he doesn’t want to think about it. But his mind won’t quiet, and he can’t help the hesitation sneaking past his defences. In his distractions he accidentally presses too hard and draws blood on the knife.
Why would he want you back home, except to lock you up where you can no longer embarrass him?
Azula always lies. There was still time. There was still a chance. He could still find a way.
If only he wasn’t so awfully tired.
The day crawls past in a hot, fly-buzzing haze. Time is marked only by the rapidly dwindling contents of his waterskin, and then suddenly the sun is setting, and he wakes from his stupor to look for a place to make camp.
He goes to bed hungry, and he doesn’t fall asleep fast enough. Memories creep out of the ground around him and no matter how he tosses and turns he can’t escape them, can’t shut them out. His mind wanders back over and over again, like an animal hitting its head against the bars of its cage, and the longer it goes on the more desperate he becomes. The more desperate he becomes, the worse it gets.
How can he be so tired and still unable to fall asleep? He grinds his teeth and turns again, tries to bury his face in his arms. It doesn’t help. He’s at the meeting again. No.
He turns. He’s talking to his uncle. No.
He groans, turns. The tiles of the arena floor are hot against his palms. Cold sweat sends sharp chills across his back. He squeezes his eyes shut so tight it burns. No.
Even the blanket of dull fatigue cannot suffocate the anger that flares up and breaks the surface. He buries his fingers into his short hair, eyes wide and breath coming in short, violent throes. Useless. Useless kid. Useless head. Shut up, make it shut up.
You will learn respect.
What has he been doing all this time? It doesn't feel like learning respect; it feels wrong, unfair. Does that mean he failed? There’s too much moving in his head to see clearly anymore; he can't wrap his head around the uncomfortable suspicion that creeps upon him like panic. A gut feeling whispers that even if he could, the answer would not solve his problems.
Once he finally does drift off, he dreams.
Zuko wakes up tired. The first sliver of sun snakes its bright tendrils across the horizon and sting his eyes like a gleeful malicious thing. He just sits for a moment, blinking, wondering if he should get up at all, before the ostrich horse nudges him beak-to-face and Zuko stumbles to his feet.
He drinks the last of his water and looks to the east. The information is still fresh. For anyone traversing this rocky, barren part of the Earth Kingdom, there is a string of small villages and farmsteads that runs along the dry steppe and then winds through the mountain range to finally peter out at the edge of the greater desert. These points are the only places travelers might replenish their stores for miles, making them essential stops for anyone traveling east. And Zuko knows who else is travelling east.
The next stop on the trail should be only a mile or so away, and while Zuko can’t be sure of where exactly they’ve stopped, he has a pretty good hunch. Say what you will about his rate of success, but nobody has more actual experience finding the Avatar than he does.
The noisy ostrich horse is left behind, tied in a patch of shade. With broadswords tightly secured not to rattle, and the depressively light backpack slung over his shoulders, Zuko begins to stalk eastwards.
In the short time it takes him to find their camp, the soft light of early morning has grown stark and bright, promising yet another mercilessly hot day. First he hears an echoing peal of laughter from somewhere far ahead, cut short by the distance. Ever so carefully he moves closer, crouched behind clusters of jutting stone and mounds of parched dirt. Between criss crossing from cover to cover, he catches sight of them. There’s a fourth one now, a short person with Earth Kingdom attire. More than that he can't tell from this distance. Nonetheless, it is not very difficult to figure out what manner of companion the newcomer must be; the Avatar needs his Earthbending teacher.
Zuko's back hits a boulder and he slides down to sitting, eyes closed and listening to the fragmented words that break loose from the din and make their way to him. He makes out words like ”route” and ”time”, and once, ”Ba Sing Se”. Mostly though it’s cheery banter, and he’s too tired to listen, and the sounds soon melt together.
This is where he’s meant to sneak off and up as close as he can, attack with everything he’s got and try to wrench a victory from abysmal odds, never once backing down. You really can’t do anything unless you’re prepared to do it against the odds. This is who he is. This is how he fights.
He does not rise.
Why has he come here? He knows he can’t win this fight. Not now, not like this. He’d had his chances, some better and some worse, and he’d lost them. So why is he still here?
Because he has nowhere else to go. And now that he is here, he cannot go any further.
He listens to the ruckus of the people — of the child that holds his salvation — just a few yards away, and they might as well be on the other side of the continent for all he can reach them. No matter how he twists and turns it in his head, he can not see a way to make it out of here with the Avatar in tow. Before, that would not have stopped him from trying, but now there is something else that holds him down. That stabs him in the back.
Even if he did bring the Avatar home now, would that be enough? Would everything really go back to how it was? Or is that just what he tells himself.
He groans and rips his fingers through his hair. Idiot. Stupid fucking idiot. Once, if just once he could…
Suddenly he realizes what it is he is thinking. He cannot defeat the Avatar. He cannot. Even if he could, it would not matter. Zhao had been right: if his father really did want him back, he would've let him return by now.
Between the weight that slams into his chest and the cold sweat that breaks out over his body, he has to admit that once all is said and done, it is awfully simple. Awfully simple, and entirely impossible to grasp.
He sits paralyzed while the camp is being packed up, loaded onto the bison, and he hears them take off. A great muffled swoosh marks their departure, and the following silence is the worst Zuko has ever known.
He does not know how long he sits there for. Just like that time has stopped mattering, and he doesn’t know what to make of it. He doesn’t know what to make of anything. Everything had changed and left him behind, and there was no way back. What does he do then? What the hell will he do now?
He’s so tired. His back and legs have begun to ache. He should get up, but frankly he sees no point. And so he doesn’t.
─── ⋆⋅☼⋅⋆ ───
“I’m sorry, what?” Sokka deadpans
Aang stares at Toph. “Why didn’t you say something?” he asks.
The girl shrugs. “I thought he would come out and attack us on his own, I was ready, and then he didn’t. So I thought, well, let’s just go without rousing his suspicion. Whoever is following us, he doesn’t know that we know.”
“You say it was a man?” Katara asks.
“I think so. Medium build. He listened to us for a good while without moving a muscle. Ring any bells?”
“One,” Aang mutters.
“That’s impossible,” Sokka snorts. “How the hell would he have managed to come all the way here?”
“Are you saying that the guy with an uncanny ability to find us can’t possibly have found us?” Katara mocks.
“All I’m saying is,” Sokka puts his hands in the air, “there are a lot of other scum out there. It doesn’t have to be prince stupid-face.”
“I think Toph made a smart move, actually,” Aang says contemplatively. “We know someone is following us, now we can confront them on our own terms.”
“So you say we go back?” Sokka asks surprised.
There is silence for a moment while everyone considers their options. Finally Katara shrugs. “Better now than later. We never know what troubles might surprise us down the road — better to deal with this one before he has a chance to choose his moment.”
Everyone slowly nods to the good sense of the argument, and like that it’s settled.
─── ⋆⋅☼⋅⋆ ───
The water hole barely deserves the name. It is a puddle of mud his ostrich horse slurps from, and Zuko grimaces at the idea of boiling this slop for drink or dying of thirst. As usual, there isn’t much of a choice.
For fear of running into the Avatar he has taken a round about way from the village. It’s not like he has money to spend anyway, and by the time he makes it to the next village the Avatar will be long gone. Maybe then he could make a longer stop, beg for work, or something.
The clarity of mind dully surprises him, but he doesn’t trust it to last. It has the edge of death throes to it. Better take advantage while he can, and whatever happens once it runs out he doesn’t really care. It’s an odd feeling, a new feeling, and he hasn’t decided what to think of it yet.
He unslings his backpack to take out the small pot just when he hears a rustle from behind. He turns, and there just a few yards away stands a boy. An awfully familiar boy.
This is how it happens. One moment you think you might’ve got it after all, the next everything comes crashing down around you.
For a moment they do nothing, recognition washing over both of them and settling into bewilderment. Then the muddy water explodes towards him and Zuko doesn’t need time to think that one over.
With the grace of a scrambling house cat he dives out of the way. The pot slams against the rock with a terrible clangour and Zuko casts about, makes a desperate grab for the ostrich horse’s reins — and earth bursts apart beneath his feet. One moment he’s getting water, the next he is sent flying, rolling, gasping and pushing himself away to avoid a stone the size of his head hurtling towards him.
Luckily Zuko’s never been one to be put out by getting tossed around. He rolls onto his feet and frantically locks his eyes on his mount again, but it’s been struck by screaming panic and breaks into a run. Zuko swears, but there is no time for any of it. Whips of mud water shoot forwards and Zuko stumbles back, two more boulders rip free from the earth and launch towards him and Zuko jumps, twists, fire erupting from his limbs in a desperate attempt to blunt the onslaught.
Even at his best this would’ve been a bad situation, and he is so far from his best he might as well be a different man. He dodges, fires, is hit by something and is sent stumbling, twists the momentum into another sweeping blow and fire roars to life in answer. They’ve got him terribly outmatched, and they know it. There is no breathing room in the onslaught that hammers and cracks at his defenses like a rabid dog snapping at his face, and all he can do is dodge, block, parry, lash out in despair.
He tries to take stock of just where they are, and is nearly decapitated by a flying sheath of ice zipping past. Before his feet even touch ground again a hail of spiky rocks shoot at him through the billows of gritty dust, and he twists out of the way, but not fast enough. A searing lance of pain stabs into his right side and he chokes, stumbles, turns and hurls a clumsy gout of flame at somewhere behind him.
They’re trying to kill him. They are going to kill him.
He coughs and limps backwards, fists up and staring wildly into the warping cloud of dirt, listening, waiting. Why did the Earthbender they picked up have to be so damned good? Just his luck to–
He hears a noise from behind and whirls about. The Avatar is standing there, staff raised at Zuko’s chest ready to strike. But he does not strike. He stares intently at Zuko, and Zuko stares back breathing hard, swaying on his feet. There’s noise from the gloom behind him — they’re closing in.
So this is it. Fists still up, Zuko stays standing. The sands of the desert are turning red from the molten color of the setting sun, the cloth at Zuko’s side is turning red from the wet blood welling up. He blinks, straining to keep his eyes on the Avatar. They would make their move, and he would be ready. It would not be enough, and they would strike him down. The fact of the matter hits him with sudden and terrible clarity, and looking into the Avatar’s face, really looking, Zuko actually sees him for the first time. The boy destined to carry the world’s burden has an ordinary face, with big grey eyes and cheeks round with the plumpness of a good childhood. He looks distraught, conflicted. He is the last thing Zuko will ever see.
There’s the sound of a shuffle and a crack behind him, and Zuko tenses, mind emptying, trained on nothing but whatever the next few seconds will unleash.
“Stop.” The clear voice that rings out catches him by surprise, and it takes him a moment to realize it’s the Avatar’s.
Another voice rises from behind him. “Aang, we talked about this. We’re finishing this now.”
“No, we aren’t.”
Zuko’s wide, disbelieving eyes watch as the Avatar walks up to him, walks past him, so close Zuko could reach out and grab him. He does not. He doesn’t move a muscle, and the boy passes him by, then steps in between Zuko and the other attackers.
“We are not taking any lives today.”
There is a moment of complete silence. Zuko stares out into the empty desert in front of him, pulse thundering in his ears, not daring to turn around. Then there is the sound of a heavy sigh and a crash as stone is dropped back onto the ground. “Fine.”
The Avatar’s clothes shuffle as he turns, and he speaks so close the hairs on Zuko’s neck stands on end:
“Leave.”
No further encouragement is needed. Away from the steppe, away from the trail, away from the Avatar, Zuko runs. Away, into the desert.