"What was it that kid said? Yee-haw? Hup-hup? Wah-hoo? Uh… Yip-yip?"

The bison gave a mighty groan… and splashed into the water.

Sokka leaned back, both completely vindicated and disappointed in a corner of his soul he hadn't known existed. "...I knew it couldn't fly."

"Maybe he's still tired?" his dear sweet sister, ever the optimist, was looking as disappointed as he felt. "It's still faster than a canoe, at least."

But not as fast as a Fire Navy ship. They watched their target disappear over the horizon ahead.

The bison kept swimming.

%%%

Two Days Later

The Avatar was on the roof of the lookout tower. The Avatar was on the roof of the lookout tower, and he wouldn't come down.

Zuko kept going through the motions of the Tiger-Crane form, and did his best to ignore Uncle. He'd had three years of practice.

Uncle did his best to not be ignored. He also had three years of practice.

"Prince Zuko, I cannot help but feel you are distracted from your training. Perhaps a break—"

"I don't need a break! I need the Avatar to not be on the roof of the lookout tower!"

"Breath control, Prince Zuko," Uncle scolded. His eyes trailed upwards. "And he is still captured. Technically."

"Only until we get in sight of land! Or… or until he starves up there!" Zuko transitioned from hawk-crane takes minnow-wasp to gesticulating wildly. Though not a traditional firebending form, it still involved rather a lot of flames. "I can't bring my father a dead Avatar, he'd just send me out for the new one!"

"Don't worry, he won't starve. I have made sure the crew is leaving food out for him. He has been surprisingly polite in his gratitude, if a bit distant." Uncle chuckled.

"Stop doing that! No, not the chuckling, the leaving food! How are we ever going to get him down if he has everything he needs up there?"

Uncle stroked his beard. This was always a sign that Zuko wouldn't like whatever he said next. "Perhaps you could talk him down?"

It was a ridiculous idea, and Zuko gave Uncle a scowl for even suggesting it.

"Zuko." And there was Uncle's serious voice. Which meant Zuko was going to like whatever this was even less. "I cannot help but notice that your Avatar has only demonstrated one form of bending in his escape attempts."

"He's clearly conserving his strength, Uncle. We're in the middle of the ocean."

"A clever strategy." He was stroking his beard. Again. "Would it not, perhaps, have been even more clever to have used waterbending? He could have easily escaped us back in the icepack."

"He's trying to get us to let down our guard! By… by pretending not to be the Avatar! He already has his air master tattoos, so he knows we know he's an airbender. Any other bending form would give him away."

"Very clever, yes. So clever, in fact, that I wonder how you will demonstrate to your father that this is, indeed, the Avatar. All he must do is stick to his strategy, and those at court may confuse him for a simple airbender. An exceptional rarity to be sure, perhaps one of a kind, but not what is in the terms of your return."

"Then we'll make him angry. He's young; if we provoke him enough, we should be able to induce the Avatar state."

"Hmm. So your plan is to make the Avatar reveal its full powers in a fit of rage. Aboard our small ship first, of course, because we must test your theory. And later, in the middle of the Fire Nation. Perhaps in your father's throne room?"

Zuko really, really didn't want to hear this. "Uncle."

"I wonder how you will do this. It must be with some trigger you can control; something that we can expect to consistently work, both when we test it and when we demonstrate in the Fire Lord's court..."

"...Uncle."

"Perhaps you should talk to him after all, nephew!"

"Uncle!"

%%%

Aang was trapped on a roof. It… wasn't so bad. It wasn't so good, but… it could be worse? They could be starving him. Or throwing fireballs again; they'd done that a lot the first day. But there was this really good spot in the middle of the roof where if he just sat down and tucked his knees up to his chest, they couldn't hit him at all, and…

...And he missed Appa. And Monk Gyatso. And his new Water Tribes friends. Well, friend. Katara had been so nice (and pretty) and nice, and it would have been really fun to go all the way to the North Pole together—they could have visited Kyoshi and Whale Tail and everywhere! But her brother was kind of mean. And Gran-Gran's stares had been intense, like she knew exactly what he was thinking everytime he looked at Katara and maybe-blushed-a-little. And the rest of the Tribe… well, they'd kicked him out. Not that there'd been many of them to do the kicking.

Since when was the Southern Water Tribe so small? It was summer, so maybe the men were all out hunting. And most of the women had gone with. And most of the children too, couldn't leave them behind. They'd just left a few people to tend camp, and that's where Aang had ended up.

It… couldn't really have been a hundred years, could it?

Aang sat in the middle of the roof. And tucked his knees to his chest. And didn't get hit by any fireballs, not that anyone was throwing them right now.

His stomach growled.

"Avatar?"

Aang scrunched up as small as possible. That voice-that-sounded-like-it-had-yelled-until-it-tore was really distinctive. And also the most likely person on board to do the fireballing. Even when Prince Zuko was just practicing on deck—which he did a lot, wow, didn't he have anything better to do?—it seemed like all of his stray fire came straight towards Aang.

"I know you're up there, Avatar. Obviously. Or you wouldn't be on the roof of my lookout tower."

He, ah… he didn't sound any happier about that today than he had yesterday, or the day before. He sounded like he was standing on the walkway below, in front of the windows to the bridge. Which was already way too close for Aang's comfort.

"Look, I brought you food."

Aang did not look. "Thank you, Prince Zuko. Uh, you can just leave it there. I'll get it later."

"Or you could come get it now."

"Or I could get it later."

"Or… Avatar, you cannot live on top of my lookout tower." He had a way of saying it, like this particular location was somehow super offensive, and anywhere else on deck would have been better. Since he could fireball Aang from anywhere else, maybe he did think that.

"Why not? The view is pretty great," Aang said.

"You—!"

Wow, Aang could actually hear him doing meditative breaths.

And then he couldn't hear him.

And then he heard a soft thud, and when he turned Zuko was on the roof, how did he even climb up here so fast, was he part ninja?

Aang leapt to his feet and held his hands up and felt the winds around him. The ship had been skirting the edge of a storm since morning, and the winds wanted to move, wanted to push and shove and rage. The smell of rain on the wind and the cold lashes of air over his bare arms were familiar, too familiar, even though that storm was a hundred years ago. Opposite him, the fire prince shifted into a battle stance. It was kind of ruined by the plate of food in his hand. For a second he looked… really baffled to still be holding it. Aang sort of felt the same. Also Zuko wasn't wearing his armor, which was… strange? He looked like an actual human being instead of a tireless fireball launcher.

"Thanks for carrying it up," Aang said. "You can just leave it there."

It was hard to read Zuko's expression. Which—kind of made Aang feel bad, because it wasn't Zuko's fault that half his face was burned into a scowl. But the perma-angry-look was always there and always on, so it was hard not to be a little scared of him, especially when it matched the rest of his personality so well. Maybe if the other half had been smiling it would have evened out, but right now it was just… neutral. And neutral + scowl = still really unhappy looking.

"If you blow me off this roof, Avatar, I'll…" he didn't finish that sentence. Since it would have ended with 'die horribly', Aang couldn't really blame him. "Look. I'm going to… hand you the food. And we're going to talk. Because you can't live on the roof of my lookout tower." He was really stuck on that point. "You have my word that I will not attack you while we… parley."

"That's a really fancy word for 'talk on the roof of your lookout tower.' "

The prince let out a breath through his nose and it was on fire. But he didn't attack.

Aang's stomach grumbled again. He took the plate. And then he sat in one corner of the roof and the prince sort of paced on the other side, while Aang shoveled food in his mouth and made sure to track him with his eyes and only blink when he really had to. The prince had said they were going to talk, but he wasn't really doing a lot of talking. Aang got them started.

"Are you vegetarians?"

"What? No."

"Then why have all my meals been?"

"Because you're an air nomad. ...Aren't you?"

"Yeah. Umm. But I thought no one had seen an air nomad in a hundred years?"

"I've studied your people, Avatar. I've been hunting you for three years."

"Wow. That's… awhile. How old are you?"

"That's none of your concern. You just… you can't—"

"Live on the roof of your lookout tower?" Aang guessed.

Zuko slashed his hands down and they were very on fire, and whatever conversation he'd had going in his head wasn't the same one Aang had been having. "Can you even use the other elements?"

"No. Umm. Why did you think I could, anyway?"

"Because you said you were the Avatar!"

"You were shouting about the Avatar before I said that, though. Before I was even in the village."

"I saw the light. Don't play dumb."

Aang suddenly saw the opportunity to play dumb. "You mean the flares from the ship? Yeah. That was… oops. We didn't think the booby traps would still be active."

"The other light! The one before that."

"Oh," Aang said, drawing the sound out. "You mean the spirit thing."

"The spirit thing," Zuko repeated flatly. His hands hung at his sides. And weren't on fire, for once.

"Yeah. It, uh… are we really in the South Pole? Because I was close to here, but then the spirit thing happened, and… I kind of showed up?"

"Because of a spirit thing." The fire prince really got hung up on things, sometimes.

Aang nodded sagely. "Airbenders are very closely connected to the spirit world. Spirit things happen. You must have learned all about it in your studies, right?"

"Where were you before that?"

"With the monks! But I—" ran away "—got separated from them."

"The monks. Where are they?"

"They're—" At the Southern Air Temple. But he couldn't tell Zuko that, if the world was really at war than maybe the Fire Nation would do something awful to them. "—uh, I'm not going to tell you?"

Zuko's shoulders slumped. It made him look about a million times more approachable, like the difference between a big raging tigerdillo and a sharp-toothed tigerdillo-kitten. "...Are you even the Avatar?"

Aang looked directly into his eyes, and smiled the same way he did when Gyatso asked who'd eaten the last pie. "No. No, I'm not."

For a second the prince just kind of stood there like a kicked tigerdillo-kitten. Then he started pacing again, and wow how was he not burning his sleeves with all that fire? "Why would you lie about that?"

"Why would you assume I was?"

"Because… ugh!" He sat down on the ledge of the tower. "So you lied about that, and you lied about the terms of your surrender. Anything else?"

Aang set his bowl down. He hadn't really finished but he didn't really want to. "I don't like lying. But I had to." He still had to. "You were going to hurt someone if I didn't say I was."

"I wasn't going to—" the prince took in a deep deep breath and let it out, and Aang saw steam rising above him. "I wasn't going to hurt anyone."

"Uh. You could have fooled me."

"That was the point. If people are scared enough, they don't fight, and then I don't have to hurt anyone." He sounded a lot like a teenager just then. An almost-normal teenager. Which was maybe why Aang said what he did next.

"Wow. So you're a vegetarian and a pacifist. We have so much in common!"

The fire prince dropped his head in his hands. "Shut up, airbender."

Airbender was a big improvement over Avatar.

"My name is Aang."

And he could not believe this was working.

%%%

Zuko couldn't believe this. No, he could. That was the problem. No—the problem was that he'd ever believed a twelve-year-old could be the Avatar. He'd embarrassed himself in front of his crew and his uncle, and by the end of the month somehow the entire fleet would know because they always did, everytime he thought he had a lead and it didn't turn out, and Uncle said he couldn't confiscate the men's letters but sometimes it was really tempting to just have a training accident on mail day.

"I knew you weren't him." He shouldn't have said that out loud, but he did anyway. Not that it mattered.

"You did?" the airbender sounded startled. Like he'd thought he was a believable Avatar, like anyone besides the Banished Prince would have ever made this mistake.

"You're too young, and you barely put up a fight, and what kind of Avatar just surrenders to the Fire Nation? Some beacon of hope you would be."

"...Yeah. Yeah, I guess I'd be… pretty bad at it. Umm. Sorry to get your hopes up."

"I didn't have my hopes up!"

"Sorry to make you angry?"

"I'm not angry!"

"Sorry you shout so much when you're not angry?" The stupid airbender was smiling, like he wasn't still trapped on a ship with the people who'd genocided his own. Though apparently Sozin hadn't been as thorough as he'd thought, if there was a whole enclave of monks and initiates hiding somewhere around here (and there had to be nuns, Zuko knew where little airbenders came from).

"I don't—" Zuko pinched the bridge of his nose. "Will you get down from here now?"

The boy froze. He was still smiling, but he didn't look so good under it. "...Are you going to try to lock me up again?"

It was… a valid question. And Zuko didn't really like the answer, even as he said it. "The only spare beds are in the holding cells."

The boy waved his hands in a no thank you, and there was a burst of wind. Not really focused. Just… a burst. "I think I'm fine up here. Airbenders like being out in the elements. And not in small metal cells with big locks."

"Airbender. You can't live up here. Don't make me starve you down." Zuko was trying to be reasonable, but he… knew how he sounded when he was reasonable. The monk-in-training looked terrified. So Zuko had gone from having the Avatar to scaring small children in the space of a conversation. This was… this was great. This was definitely how he'd expected his South Pole trip to go. "I could… uh. I could leave the door unlocked. If I have your word of honor that you will obey my orders as the commander of this vessel. And Lieutenant Jee's as captain. In fact, everyone here outranks you, you have to listen to all of them." He thought for a moment. "...Except Uncle."

No one should be ordered to play pai sho. No one.

The kid had a really good skeptical face. "How do I know you'll really leave it unlocked?"

"Because you'll have my word, airbender. Though if you break yours again, I'll lock you in for real. You are still my prisoner, is that clear? But I will allow you honorable parole if you give your word that you will remain on the ship. And behave. And not live on the roof of my lookout tower."

He was going to regret this. One look at the airbender's suddenly renewed grin, and he already regretted it. And the crew was going to think he was soft, and Uncle was going to smile that patronizing you didn't kick a puppy-kitten today, nephew, I'm so proud of you smile, and the little monk was probably going to sabotage the ship and leave them adrift on the polar seas or maybe just snuff their breath while they slept, because how else had an enclave of airbenders remained secret for a hundred years—

But at least he wasn't terrifying a twelve-year-old. At the moment.

"Well?" he snapped. "Do you accept?

"Yes sir, Commander Prince Zuko, sir."

...He regretted it.

%%%

The airbender was out on the deck, flitting between crew stations like a half-tame humming-ferret. He never quite got within arm's reach of the crew, but he would stop a few feet back and lean forward to see what they were doing like he was curious, like he'd really like to talk to them, like his kind weren't threatened with extinction from people dressed in exactly the same armor.

Zuko was unimpressed with the airbender's survival instincts. He did not share this thought with Uncle, for fear that Uncle might say something about his survival instincts. He just crossed his arms, and stood on his own spot on the deck, and kept a frowning watch over the boy.

"...Should I lock him in, Uncle?"

"You have already given your word you would not." Uncle was sitting down, setting up a pai sho game based on one of the letters from his friends. There were an alarming number of old people who liked to send pai sho games through the mail. If that was what getting old did to people's minds, Zuko was never going to do it. (He didn't share this thought with Uncle, either. Because it wasn't too hard to put together the no survival instincts means you won't have to worry about growing old joke on his own.)

"I know I did. But… do you think he's a threat?"

Uncle copied one of the moves in his letter, and frowned at the board. "Even the most timid mouse-rabbit will bite, if the cat-mongoose has him cornered."

That was one of the easier proverbs to parse. "So I made the right decision. He'd be more desperate if he was locked up."

"You did see how he fought the first time you tried, nephew."

...Yeah. He had. And he needed to run the crew through more drills, stricter drills, if they couldn't stop one small boy from rampaging all over the ship. At least Zuko had been able to steal the kid's glider back before he'd escaped.

(This would be a lot less complicated if he had escaped.)

(...But then Zuko would probably be chasing him across the world, still shouting about the Avatar. Agni, Zhao would have laughed himself into a coma.)

"Uh… can I help you?" a crewman asked. Apparently the airbender's hesitance to shove his face right into a firebender's had only lasted for a half an hour. He reminded Zuko of the turtleducks back home, but even they had been smart enough to fear fire.

"Uncle." Zuko swallowed, and lowered his voice. "Are Great-Grandfather's laws about airbenders still… enforced?"

Uncle's hand paused above the board. "It could be argued that Azulon rescinded them when he overturned the 32nd edict and replaced it with the 75th. There is no mention of airbenders in the new law."

Because it had been assumed they were all dead, neither of them said.

"And… we could argue that? If someone sees him?"

"You intend to keep the boy on board longer than the next port?" Uncle was staring at his game, and doing that completely neutral voice thing he did when he suspected Zuko was about to make the wrong choice.

"Until he's served his purpose," Zuko snapped.

"He is not the Avatar, nephew."

"I know that. But he's the closest I've come. The only air nomad anyone's seen in a hundred years. I could… question him. Study his bending style, for when I do fight the Avatar. And it would be prudent to keep him in the safety of our custody until then." Until his first reaction to seeing the pikesmen practicing wasn't running over to them. Agni, what did those monks teach their children? Clearly not history.

"Very wise, nephew," Uncle said. He was watching the boy instead of his gameboard, and Zuko had the feeling he was thinking the same thing Zuko was.

He didn't know how many of the regular Fire Nation troops even knew about the 75th edict. Most probably assumed that Sozin's orders were still in effect.

That airbenders were to be killed on sight.

"Boy! Get away from the catapult now or I will truss you up and demonstrate its operation!"

At least Lieutenant Jee would have someone else to scowl at, for a change.

"My name's Aang! What's y—?"

"DID I ASK YOUR NAME, BOY?"

...Though the lieutenant seemed to have an unhealthy amount of anger saved up for shipboard children.

%%%

"...We're never catching up, are we?" Sokka groaned, draping himself with situationally appropriate drama over the side of the saddle. It was Katara's turn at the reigns.

"Maybe Appa's feeling better now? You got some sleep last night, didn't you boy—yes you did. And I know you want to find your friend. Aang is waiting for us, and he's in trouble. Could you please, please go a little faster?" Katara was rubbing the giant bison's head like it was a baby penguin-otter. "Yip-yip."

The bison groaned. And surged. And flew.

Sokka clutched the side of the saddle and screamed, at a situationally appropriate volume.