The avatar had escaped, half their men were showing signs of hypothermia, and Zuko was never meant to know.

Iroh had hoped he wouldn't have to tell him. At least not now, not when the time wasn't right. The world wasn't stable enough to accept the truth yet. Zuko wasn't stable enough to accept the truth yet— it was too risky. He wasn't yet open to enough of the world's truths. If Zuko couldn't yet look past his father's rule to brand and banish himself, how could he hope to extend sympathy further?

Iroh couldn't hinge the survival of dragons on his single, wayward nephew.

(Not yet.)

So few dragons were left in the world. Ran and Shaw, his two masters. The bones scattered, at the bottom of the sea or between layers of limestone. The ashes still imbedded in the soil, somewhere. Old gouge marks, old charred bits of earth. Scaled armor, becoming dusty in a hidden crevice of a veteran old enough to keep hiding.

The eggs now resting, superheated and far too fragile still, cradled between Zuko's frozen hands.

"Uncle...?"

The world had never made anything easy. But for once, Iroh wished the spirits were just the slightest bit more gentle on him. Deceptively relaxed, he smiled calmly at his prince. "Yes, nephew?" It wasn't working, but not for the reasons Iroh expected. Zuko didn't even seem to note his tone. Nor his posture. His nephew's entire focus was hyper fixated, it seemed, on the precious cargo Iroh had carefully sectioned away within the Wani.

Please don't take this the wrong way. Not when those lives are in your hands. He may have hidden them, from his nephew. He may have hidden them from Ozai, and Azula, and the entire fire nation— but he could not keep hiding this from Zuko, not on their one, tiny ship—

Zuko slowly looked up at him. His face was blown open and vulnerable. The gold of his eyes were barely a thin, almost glowing ring around his engorged pupils. "They're— they're alive, Uncle."

The egg pulsed in Zuko's hands. Iroh could see it. He could feel it, when the air surrounding it wavered with heat. The crackling, hardened magma eggshell seemed to flare hotter with every second Zuko held it. His nephew couldn't seem able to stop himself from pulling it closer and closer to himself. Until the egg was tucked under his shin, his entire body curling around it protectively.

(If he wasn't so focused on Zuko, he might have noted how it seemed to react to his nephew's touch.)

Iroh barely even heard his nephew's words. His face alone, even his scarred eye stretched as wide as it still could, was near feverishly bright with almost awed recognition. "They're alive," he whispered again. Iroh blinked as he dropped to the ground, the egg still delicately held in his cupped hands. Zuko was infinitely, confusingly gentle. Gentle in a way he hadn't managed to see again, not since Ursa vanished from the palace.

(A way he had missed. Back when Lu Ten was alive, Zuko's face was unmarred, the fountains full of life, and Ursa's smile still radiated around every corner. When they had a resemblance of something happy.)

Zuko brushed shaking fingers against the ragged top of the egg with a transfixed expression. "...They're so young."

"They're not even hatchlings," Iroh admitted. He was, for the first time, not sure where to start. Maybe it should have been less of a surprise than it was, but he was honestly taken aback by how strongly the sight of the eggs made Zuko react. As if the moment he had touched them, something unnamed and inexhaustible had snapped into place in his head. "...what are you doing, nephew?"

Zuko's head snapped up. For a long moment his nephew looked shocked. As if he had only just noticed Iroh was still there. "I—" the egg hissed with heat and Zuko's hands snapped away from it, the boy avoiding Iroh's eyes as he wiped sweat off onto his pants in a frantic motion. "I— They're— I wasn't, I didn't mean to find them. I didn't know, I swear on my honor–"

Iroh breathed in deeply. It was only meant to stifle the sudden stir of embers in his chest, flaring brightly white-hot at the stutter of insecurity still, even three years later, in his nephew's voice. (Zuko still caught it, as he always did. Iroh cursed himself when he went quiet, and still, and hoped it didn't show on his face.) All that silence, and you settle for that? Iroh raised an eyebrow.

Carefully, slowly, with the same, inner caution to avoid startling a cornered cat-owl, he relaxed his own stance. Zuko didn't look ready to do more than hold the egg at most. None of that frenzied anger and boundless, stubborn frustration. He was almost uncomfortably adoring every time his eyes inevitably latched back onto the egg in his lap. As if he just couldn't help himself, like a thirsty man seeing the ocean. "I'm sure you weren't," he agreed.

Zuko didn't quite tense, when Iroh slowly sat himself down beside him, but his shoulders hunched. His entire body, almost invisible to Iroh's trained eye, curled, near imperceivable, around the egg. Iroh did not comment on it. "Do you know what they are, Zuko?"

"Yes," Zuko replied immediately. It rushed out of him like a hiss of steam between broken pipes, sudden and heated. Like the knowledge had always been there. (Which was impossible, of course, Iroh was well aware of how dragons were taught of now, especially within his family; and yet–) He seemed to pause for a moment as if his own vehemence startled him before continuing. "Dragons." His head ducked. Just barely, just to slide his eyes out of Iroh's sight. "They're dragons, aren't they." It wasn't a question. At that point Iroh didn't expect one.

They aren't dead, he didn't accuse.

You hid them from me, he didn't accuse.

You're a liar and traitor, he didn't accuse.

"Are there– are there more?" Zuko asked quietly. His fingers pressed, just a little, until the edges of his nails were sickly pale and pressed white. "Uncle? Are there more, how many do you have, do you think we–" his voice cracked, words stifled as if the thought was treason itself. A dirty secret, in the dark—

Iroh took a startled step closer, mind racing, only to freeze at the way Zuko physically twitched. A clear jerk response, one Iroh worked to instill in his nephew. One meant to force his body out of the way of danger if his mind couldn't catch up in time. One he taught, one his nephew had just nearly used towards him, no, to get away from him– "No," He managed. "There aren't any more." Zuko did not move away, but Iroh did not come closer. He wasn't interested in finding out if the closest thing he had to a son was going to flinch away from him again.

Iroh fell silent. For once, a proverb didn't seem the right course of action. Not now, not when his nephew was showing a startling affinity he had never expected; for something he never expected.

(His Zuko had never shown the same sort of hot headed, scaled divinity the royal family harbored behind closed doors. The bark without the bite. No words followed with a lashing tongue of fire, no press of scaled skin. If his shoulder blades ever itched, Iroh had never seen his nephew reach to scratch. No unexplained toothaches, no aversion to shoes. Even Azula still flexed her fingers as if stretching her claws for a kill. Prodigy or not, even she could not fake having grown out of the growing pains just yet.)

"Why are they here," Zuko snapped, suddenly, curling further around the egg. His temperature rose dramatically enough for Iroh to not need to feel the sudden rolling heat himself, with how the eggs glowed. Steam hissed out the corners of Zuko's lips, only managing to further accent his frown. Iroh chanced another step forward, eyes widening as the dark, charcoaled eggshell cracked. A thin hairline of molten gold, trailing down from where Zuko's fingers still pressed searing hot and steaming against it. Zuko didn't even notice this time. He wasn't noticing the cracks either, even as more and more set the shell aglow. "We're— I'm banished, Uncle, they need heat! They need the sun, and we're still in—!"

Iroh laid a hand on Zuko's wrist, tugging gently. Just enough that his nephew stilled instead of snapped. "Nephew," he said carefully, "let the egg go." He got a look for it. One he was plenty used to already; a lovely, familiar mix of Are-you-joking and absolutely-not that in any other circumstance would have been funny if not for the way the egg seemed to melt a little under Zuko's subconscious bending— (A dragon's instinct can rival any human choice, he recalled, vaguely. With physical forms more spiritual than most, able to connect with a touch, to share, to influence–) "Zuko," he said more urgently, "stop!"

Maybe it was his tone, or the look on his face, or something else entirely— but Zuko put the egg down as if it had burnt him.

(Or, more likely, with the stricken look on his face– as if he had burnt it.)

"It started singing," he gasped. Iroh could see his fingers twitch. An aborted little reach, back towards the still smoldering egg. "They want to hatch."

Zuko was not a dragon. But he was not a dragon in the same way that Ursa was not a dragon, that Azula was not a dragon, that Iroh nor Ozai nor Azulon was a dragon. (A dragon's instinct, their connection, can be strong enough to last through most material boundaries.)

Gold, gold eyes turned his way, and Iroh wondered if age was beginning to render him blind.

Zuko breathed out, slowly, without even having to be reminded. Iroh felt a flicker of pride through the panic. His nephew really was such a level-headed boy, when he reminded himself to settle. "We can't hatch them here," He did not ask.

"No," Iroh agreed, solemn and serious, "We can't."

It really is terrible timing.

The eggs would be fine, of course. Even in the South Pole, the heat they gave off was untouched. Still nearly as intense as the day Ran and Shaw themselves had placed them into his arms. Like bits of eternal, inextinguishable fire. Pieces of the sun itself encapsulated in a thick shell like cooled magma. The world would sooner be burned than manage to cool them enough to kill. It was meant to be a safety mechanism, incubating the eggs in a state of stasis until the weather peaked enough for them to crack and melt open.

Iroh wasn't surprised what had worked for the dragons, for centuries, managed to backfire with his nephew. Three years was a long run, for Zuko not to have noticed.

(Iroh carefully did not think every time Zuko used to stray too close to his room, in the middle of the night– clearly driven awake by terror and still shaking with a cold sweat. But every time, without fail, it had been Iroh that would need to chase after him– because Zuko would reach his door, would hesitate, would shake his head as if to dismiss a voice in his head, a feeling, a thought–)

(Zuko had resolutely started avoiding Iroh's room after a few weeks. Iroh chose never to ask. Whatever had caused Zuko's aversion worked in his favor, even if it meant he had to work increasingly harder to find him in whatever dark crevice he tucked himself into.)

At least back in the Fire Nation, the extra aura of heat they gave off naturally was nigh unnoticeable when mixed with the usual weather. But there, in the poles— and with the stress already dense like a physical entity, wrapped choking and tight around Zuko's throat the moment he had seen the glow of the Avatar's awakening...

Well, there was a reason Zuko had caught Iroh.

Not even hyperfixation and trauma could keep his nephew from noticing too much too soon. Iroh was just glad they had lasted as long as they did, on their travels— years without reaching either pole, (years of no avatar,) and Zuko had never noticed a thing. Dragon eggs were so hardy they took very, very little maintenance.

Maybe Iroh had miscalculated. He knew his nephew well. Knew all the little ticks and signs of an impending explosion, or a sleepless night, or a day spent silent, in his own room. But the way Zuko was reacting was promising. The glint in his eyes, the hair-line tremble in his hands— maybe, if Iroh played his tiles correctly—

"Zuko," he started, slow and placating, "I am sorry for taking so long to tell you. But this mission is a perilous one, and the eggs of any creature were never meant to be exposed to war." Plant the seeds, to sow the tree. A decade or more would be a blink, to a dragon. However long it took, to ease Zuko off his path and towards something more productive–

The glint in those golden eyes shifted, and steadied. A foolish man would have relaxed. "You're absolutely right, Uncle." Iroh was not a foolish man. "If I capture the Avatar and return home, I can use my renewed status to provide a much safer place for the dragons to hatch properly–" His expression was so hopeful it hurt. Starved, with a new angle of desperation that made Iroh's insides twist horribly. "–We could return dragons to our culture! Imagine, wouldn't it be nice? Azula could finally have a friend she wouldn't hurt, and father..."

That expression was practically sparkling, in its naivety.

Iroh did his best not to let his smile looked pained. Sometimes it was infinitely harder, to be gentle. (He was not– they were not made to be gentle. Respect had dampened the burning itch, at the back of his throat. But he still meticulously trimmed his claws down every night, unsure how they always grew so quickly when living with Zuko compared to in the Palace.) "Zuko, It was Azulon himself who ordered the dragons killed." They were competition. An ally he couldn't keep, an opponent he couldn't afford.

"I— I'm sure if I can just speak with father, he will allow me to...! To..."

"To what? Destroy them in front of him?" And yourself, alongside them? Zuko flinched as if he had been struck. Iroh tried to pretend he hadn't felt his blood boil at the sight of it. All it took, nowadays, was a practiced flourish of pouring tea and an easy smile. Tucking his hands into his sleeves to hide how they crackled at the tips, how his fingers still flexed. (Maybe they weren't meant to "grow out of it". There was no growing out of their blood.) Iroh met Zuko's eyes evenly. "They cannot risk returning to the Fire Nation the way the world is now, Nephew." There is nowhere for them to go. "Home" is little more than a blasted hearth, full of old bones and tasteless ashes. There is less than cinders left of their people, our people.

It wasn't gentle reminding Zuko of their family's crimes. (Matricide, Patricide, Fratricide, Parricide, Familicide– just how much of their own blood was soaked into Fire Nation soil? How many crimes did it take, before his father had broken down? Sometimes Iroh wondered if his mother had ever seen what her chosen would become, what her species would become.) But neither would be allowing his nephew— nor the eggs— to return to a place just waiting to swallow them whole.

(The truth was but a pygmy-puma, maybe, but lying in wait to Zuko's hapless, clipped sparrowkeet wings? No, he was not about to let boldhold naivety and desperation be the end. Not even Zuko could sway him on this— he was not about to lose his honor to Ran and Shaw alongside the last of his family he could still salvage.)

Zuko had to know this. There was no way even he could deny it. No amount of perceived familial affection, even felt in desperate yearning and hazy pain, could make Zuko forget the Dragon's Decree.

(Years of blistered hands and sobbing pleas to help, to heal— Zuko had learned quickly never to ty and keep a pet. Especially after Ursa was gone. The fountain had never been left decrepit, but the turtle ducks inside had been gone by the time Iroh returned to the capital. He did not bother asking. It would only have hurt his already bloodied nephew.)

(He hadn't known how far Azula's depravity had spread. Like mold, like fungus growing on her perfect cheekbones— and Zuko had been left breathing in the rot with every pass. Lu Ten may have left him, but in the years that followed it was Iroh who had abandoned Zuko to the infection of the throne.)

His nephew was so quiet. Iroh watched him reach for the eggs again as if for comfort. their glow was still gently ebbing when he pulled them the slightest bit closer. Just enough to run the flat of his fingertips across their tops, touching each one with a slow reverence Iroh hadn't seen in him in— too long. Whatever it meant to him, he visibly calmed from it. Just the reminder that they were all there under his hands seemed to be a balm of sorts. "We can figure something out," he said. His voice, even without screaming, sounded raw. The words seemed almost to hurt him leaving his mouth and he curled in on himself as if shielding himself from a blow. "We just. We just have to catch the avatar first. The palace has lots of places to hide the eggs, and it'll be better than— better than on this ship. At least until I'm Firelord."

A thin, falsetto platitude. But Iroh had pressed enough. Too much, it seemed, judging from the sudden slope to Zuko's shoulders.

"Okay, Nephew," Iroh allowed, "Okay."

The Avatar was already long gone. His bison had vanished far into the distance already, carrying its charges. Iroh did not have to ask what Zuko wanted to do next, at the least. When was a different question. His nephew didn't look ready to actually leave Iroh's quarters yet. The pads of his fingers still lingered on the surface of the eggs, skin just barely flushing with heat at the contact.

Bright, unnatural gold eyes turned up to Iroh. He hadn't seen his nephew so visibly, openly lost in three years. Not since his scar was still raw.

Iroh was already on his feet. "I'll have our course adjusted," he reassured, and just to ease the hunch to his back, "guard the eggs for me." He doubted he actually needed to ask. Not with the way Zuko looked ready to lunge, lips pulled back off his teeth, when Iroh had first stumbled in on him finding his hoard. But at least this way he might feel a little less guilty of it.

Iroh closed the door firmly behind him and left down towards the bridge without hesitation.

Welcome to something i plotted like 5 years ago and only started writing on a whim last night! Great, welcome. unsure if ill continue this as a single fic or multiple, but it will have more to it. hope yall enjoyed, leave a comment!

find me on my tumblr, Leviathiane.