The awakening:

"The lily blooms for those who would enjoy her perfume."

"But the scent of freesias is sweeter," Iroh replied. Out of the corner of his eye, he noticed Zuko, who had been leaning against the wall in a disgruntled fashion, bend forward to sniff a freesia from the flower display.

"The fragrance of chrysanthemums fills the air."

"But the aroma of the geranium is…"

"Oh, for fuck's sake!" Zuko grumbled under his breath, rolling his eyes.

The passphrase exchange had been quite lengthy, but Iroh had finally proven his identity and had been admitted entrance. Their transport over the desert was arranged.

It was so hot and Iroh felt so thirsty.

"Are you sure you won't let me initiate you, nephew?" Iroh asked quietly.

The way he always had to leave Zuko out of these meetings made him uneasy. Zuko always waited outside where he was told, but still. There was a deep well of worry inside Iroh. It whispered that one day he was going to look up and his nephew wouldn't be there.

"I'm sure," Zuko said. "I have no desire to talk about smelly flowers until the end of time."

"We change our passphrases periodically to retain secrecy. It's not always flowers."

He idly wondered what Zuko would call the White Lotus if he couldn't refer to them as the Flower Friends.

"No thanks, Uncle."

"Just consider it again. One day we may need to pass secrets to each other over a distance."

Zuko was still adamant against joining the Flower Friends. Iroh hoped he'd change his mind eventually, but he didn't want to start a squabble in a small space.

"We are hiding together in the same crate," Zuko said, as he fidgeted. "I'd love a little more distance between us, to be honest. It's so cramped here."

It was cramped. Cramped and confining. Iroh's arms were getting pins and needles. He was sore all over. He was thirsty, so thirsty. The heat was terrible, almost as bad as the Fire Nation in the peak of summer. There were some metal clanging sounds, but that didn't make any sense. Suddenly, a ship's distress horn cut through the air. What was a ship doing so far out in the desert…

Iroh woke with a start in the brig of one of Azula's vessels. He was being taken back to the capitol in chains. In a moment of disorientation, he looked around the stark cell. Zuko was not with him. Though it was not unexpected, his heart still sank every time.

Much to Iroh's astonishment, he could hear two familiar voices in the hallway. Two people he thought would never be found on the princess's fleet of ships were haranguing a guard.

"Tell the Fire Lord that justice is coming for him," an icy voice instructed.

"Your name is justice?" came the baffled guard's response.

"No! Fool, it's a metaphor." Pakku huffed, clearly unimpressed that his one-liner hadn't gone down as he planned.

"Huh?"

"He means," Jeong Jeong said, "that eventually the Fire Lord will have to pay for all the harm he has done, spreading devastation and misery to every corner of the world—"

"Ah!" the guard interrupted what would have been a long speech. "You're here for revenge."

"Yes," Pakku said. "Revenge. Glad you're up to speed. Give us the keys now, like a good lad."

Iroh could hear the unmistakable sound of ice forming and cracking, followed quickly by a jangling of metal.

"I am not here for vengeance," Jeong Jeong said in a lamenting tone. "Revenge would only perpetuate the cycle of violence and lead to more senseless destruction from this burning curse that threatens to tear our entire nation asunder and consume the whole world…"

"It's pretty much revenge for me," Pakku cut in abruptly. "You could say…revenge is a dish best served cold."

"Ah, I get it! Cold because you're a waterbender." The guard sounded so proud to have made the connection.

"I mourn for our nation," Jeong Jeong muttered, snapping out of his tragic lament.

This was Jeong Jeong's fairly common reaction to interactions with Fire Nation youth. Iroh could almost hear the shaking of his head through the door.

Before Iroh knew it, his two old friends were standing there, ready to take him away.

-0-

Everyone had agreed that it was better if their Grand Lotus was free. Their society needed to regroup and strategise. They may have to come out into the open and finally oppose the Fire Lord on the battlefield. Pakku might get a chance to do some heroics in front of Kanna, and then she'd see he really was serious about changing for the better. She could hardly refuse him if he saved the world.

Or maybe he could die valiantly and heroically in front of her. Then she would weep over him and feel terrible about rebuffing him again.

No, that was foolish.

Pakku didn't want to die.

He'd never get to kiss Kanna again if he died.

Maybe he could just be sufficiently injured. Injured enough that Kanna would feel for him, and take him into her igloo and nurse him back to health, but not too injured that it would prevent kissing her.

Kanna hadn't melted into his arms when he'd shown up at the South. She had frowned, put her hands on her hips, and then put him to work rebuilding the fractured villages that made up their sister tribe. The almost total ruin of their sister tribe had shocked Pakku, but Kanna had just sniffed angrily.

"Well, what did you northerners expect after you abandoned us to be picked off for a hundred years?"

"In fairness, Kanna, you surely can't blame the whole hundred years on me."

"Never your fault, is it?" Kanna had asked, eyebrow raised sceptically and derision dripping from her tone.

She'd reminded him of Sokka then. Pakku hoped Sokka hadn't inherited his tendency to say "whoosh" when he was relaying stories from Kanna as well. Pakku loved Kanna, but some of Sokka's habits were just plain annoying.

Pakku rebuilt their igloos and the retaining walls, fished an extravagantly large supply from the oceans to feed them all. He'd built connecting tunnels and pathways to the other scattered villages, and created defences there as well. He'd sent word north that their passage had been a safe one. Sometime later, Yugoda and a team of healers had arrived.

Yugoda got a much warmer welcome than Pakku had. Kanna hugged her old friend. The two of them would stay up late, catching up on lost time, drinking ice-wine. They cackled like witches, sharing stories about the shenanigans of their grandchildren. Yugoda had been quickly forgiven for not helping out the South for one hundred years.

"Oh, Kanna, I just wish I knew you had been down here all this time," she'd said simply, when Kanna had asked why she had come now.

And that was that. All was forgiven.

It didn't seem fair.

Pakku tried to copy Yugoda's answer when the subject came up again. Kanna was clearly still furious that he had "never come looking for her". Truthfully he had, but Pakku had been too prideful to admit this in the middle of their argument. It felt too much like grovelling. It brought up too many bad memories.

He remembered it clearly though. He'd been young and in love and an idiot. After he'd given her the betrothal necklace, they had started being intimate together. It was against the rules, but Kanna had wanted to, and Pakku hadn't protested. He had, in fact, done the opposite of protesting. She'd come to the house he was building for them. Several rooms were already finished, and Kanna wanted to try them all. One day, she mentioned children. Pakku remembered wishing that they had a boy, so he could teach his son to be a master bender like his papa.

"But I'm sure you'd love having a daughter too?" Kanna had asked.

The real answer was "not as much", but Pakku had known this answer would get him kicked out of the furs. He had paused. This had been a mistake. Kanna had seemed to read the uneasy silence and knew exactly what he was thinking. She'd pulled herself out of the furs.

"I'm going," she'd said snippily, and left.

He'd assumed she meant going back to her parents' house. He remembered thinking dismissively that she was just having a "women's emotional time" the morning she'd disappeared.

Then he'd found her note, asking him to come find her if he changed his mind. Pakku hadn't wanted to acknowledge her foolishness. He wasn't changing his mind. Girls weren't equal to boys. Girls were girls and boys were boys, and that's just how it was. Pakku certainly hadn't wanted to leave his home and run away into the unknown. No, he'd decided. He was going to wait for Kanna to change her mind and come back to him.

He'd assumed she wouldn't get too far. The world was harsh and cold and she had been a gentle girl back then. He was sure she would come back remorseful after a terrible time on the ice fields. Then he would take her in and warm her up and they would leave all this stupidity behind them.

His resolve didn't last.

He'd worried about her, all alone on the ice. He had set out to find her, but he had dithered long enough for Kanna to disappear without a trace. He had searched hopefully, then searched anxiously, then searched the heartbroken, forlorn search of a desperate man battling the slowly dawning horror occurring in his brain that anything can happen on the ice. There were polar geese and glaciers and frostbite and orcas … and Kanna had been all alone.

He'd blamed himself. Girls were too weak to manage on the ice. They were delicate and needed to be protected, but he had let his wounded pride get in the way of doing his duty by Kanna. He was meant to have looked after her, even when she was having her contrary female moods. He should have looked the minute he knew she was gone.

Their fight was probably his fault too somehow because he was no good with girls and always said the wrong things, and all his mates had joked that it was a miracle she'd agreed to marry him in the first place. He was a master bender who'd lost his girl to the ice – that's how bad he was with girls.

He'd never find anyone who'd want to marry him again.

Frozen hell, he'd never want to marry anyone else.

So he had not given up. (Though he had decided that this was why it was better if he and Kanna just had sons, because females were an inexplicable mystery and he would never understand them. If he was in charge of raising one, he was sure he would screw it up somehow.)

As time passed, he even stopped caring about the sons. The fight was stupid and all he had needed was for Kanna to come home. He would have had a thousand daughters with her if that's what she wanted. He would have just…built a second home to escape to when their moon-time all came upon them at once. He was a brave warrior, but he wasn't dealing with a thousand hormonal teenage girls all at once. He would be the worst person for this role.

It's not like it would have been unheard of. His own father used to "go hunting" for a week when his sister was in her moods. Pakku had decided that's what he would also have to do.

For three weeks out of four, he would have done his best to be a good papa to his small army of hormonal girls, and for the other week, he'd provide them with a mountain of meat and leave… and surely that was a fair compromise. He and Kanna could have had one son and a thousand daughters, and he would have been content. (He would have cried and grovelled all of this by that point, if he'd found Kanna on the ice fields).

He'd searched for her until a terrible storm closed in. It would have been hard for a battle-worn warrior to survive, let alone a non-bending girl. Still, he'd wanted to go out searching afterwards, but his own mother had looked at him with the saddest eyes and sat him down by the fire. She'd put an ice-wine in his hands and said what everyone was thinking.

"She's not there anymore, lad. But she's with the spirits now. And there'd be no more hurt or pain."

Pakku drank steadily for many months, had several bouts of drunkenly destroying the house he had built for her, and then slowly repairing it, just in case. Their half-finished home became a shrine to what might have been. So he had finished it, moved into it, and sat with his misery ever since.

He'd lost the love of his life to the ice because she'd foolishly thought girls were as capable as boys. He'd resolved to never let that happen to another young girl. He'd remind them of their place, and in doing so keep them safe. He'd resolved to never love anything or anyone as intensely as he had loved Kanna ever again.

These resolutions he had kept.

But it had seemed sad and foolish and pathetic now with Kanna standing alive and well in front of him, hands on her hips and a cross look on her face. He hadn't wanted to say, "I cried into my ice-wine every night for a least ten years over you!"

No, Yugoda's answer was by far a lot more dignified.

"Well, I had no idea you were here. If I had known you were here, and you were living in this lamentable and degrading condition, I would have set sail immediately."

"So, you have come now only to help me?" Kanna had said, and fluttered her eyelashes.

In hindsight, he should have known this was a trap. He was always walking into these with Kanna.

"Oh yes. To help you, I would do anything."

He was very awkward about expressing his feelings, but for Kanna, he was really trying. Some of the other healers thought his devotion to her was sweet. One of them had even helped him write a poem for her. Women were meant to like poems.

He had pulled it from his pocket and began:

"Kanna, my love for you is deeper than the oceans

My devotion stronger than the tides,

You give me so many emotions…"

"Let me stop you right there," Kanna had said, holding up her hand.

He had been momentarily relieved. He was terrible at poetry. However, this relief did not last long. She was angry at him again.

"So you are saying that you, Master Pakku, a man and master bender of the North who is close friends with the chief, had the means, strength and ability to help the Southern Water Tribe. Instead, you idly allowed the South to be decimated over many decades. However, you've come riding along on your high-polardog now to save the day because I still give you…emotions?"

"Eeerrrrr…"

"We endured raid after raid. We saw all our waterbenders dragged away. My daughter—" Her voice had cracked and she had harshly turned away from him, inhaling deeply. It had sounded almost like she was choking back a sob.

He had wanted to comfort her, but he'd had no idea how.

When she'd turned back, there was an implacable tundra in her eyes. "We saw our city crumble. We had to scramble to survive. I wrote to you every full moon for ten years! Yet, despite the hundreds of requests for help we sent your way…we received nothing. No, worse than nothing! Sometimes these requests were followed by a Fire Nation raid!"

"But I never got your—"

"And you are only here now, not because it was the right thing to do, but because you hoped I would fall into your arms again?"

He had hoped that. Kanna had seen right through him. There had been no way to salvage the conversation. He had tried anyway, but pointing out that he had never gotten her letters hadn't helped. He'd tried back-tracking frantically and asking what he could do to make it up to her.

"You can start by doing things because it is the right thing to do, not because you think there is a reward in it for you," she had said flatly, and stomped away from him.

Pakku, who was trying much harder to listen to the women around him, had taken her words to heart.

Her words were why he was storming this Fire Nation ship in the middle of the night. Rescuing Iroh needed skill and finesse. It would require the element of surprise and a master waterbender. They could use the full moon and the cover of darkness. They could play into all the unspoken, unconscious fears of the Fire Nation: the dark, the cold, the possibility of gigantic, spirit blob-monsters.

It was a dangerous mission. Pakku thought of all the men he had trained. All younger than him. All with more to live for. Taking the risk himself was the right thing to do. Kanna had softened towards him when she found out what he had to do. She'd wished him luck sincerely when he'd bidden her farewell. And she'd finally told him why she'd left so abruptly.

Pakku was going to have to live with that.

Well, at least it explained why he had felt so grandfatherly towards Katara. Perhaps a part of him had somehow known.

Pakku had been willing to go alone, yet one firebending master and High Lotus had been exceptionally bad-tempered and obstinate about accompanying him.

Pakku had never met anyone, not in his entire life, who was grumpier about being a master bender than Jeong Jeong. If Pakku never heard the phrase burning curse again, it would be too soon. Pakku had his own emotional turmoil to be getting on with. He didn't have the time or the inclination to deal with the firebender's inconvenient and ongoing and extremely vocal existential crisis.

On the night of the full moon, a team of agents and the eternally belligerent Jeong Jeong had helped him subdue everyone aboard the ship and break into the brig. Pakku had planned for lots of obstacles, but he had not foreseen that the biggest obstacle in Operation: Rescue Iroh would be Iroh himself.

Pakku had never been good at persuasion. He'd never needed to be. Mastering waterbending at a young age meant that he could let his waterwhips do the talking for him.

Still, he thought it shouldn't be this hard to convince someone to leave a prison cell! This was the second time he had needed this skill. He had not gotten any better at it with the passage of time.

"Thank you so much for dropping in, old friends, but I am perfectly comfortable here," Iroh said mildly, with a pass of his hands around the cell. The sound of his chains jangling was disconcertingly cheerful, much like Iroh himself.

"You have manacles on your wrists," Pakku stated bluntly.

"I've become accustomed to them."

Jeong Jeong clicked his tongue and stared at Iroh for a long moment. "I certainly hope you are not being this stubborn because you are hoping you will be locked in the round tower—"

"What's the round tower?" Pakku cut in.

"The prison closest to the capital," Jeong Jeong snapped, clearly impatient with Pakku for not knowing, with Iroh for not going, and with life in general. "I think our friend is stupidly planning on waiting there in case his foolish boy comes looking for him."

Iroh shifted and looked slightly embarrassed.

"You always were a fool when it came to that boy," Jeong Jeong said. "You are letting your sentimentality blind you."

"I need to know he is alright."

"He's alright enough to betray you, Iroh," Pakku said flatly.

The boy had obviously thrown his uncle under the ice-barge. That was why Iroh was here, and he was not.

"He wouldn't," Iroh corrected, clearly not liking anyone speaking ill of his nephew. He turned to Jeong Jeong. "I need to speak with him."

"Why don't you simply send him messages in our code," Jeong Jeong suggested evenly, like he thought Iroh had become slow witted during his imprisonment. "It's never been cracked. That would be much safer."

"I never trained him in our code." Iroh confessed, definitely sounding embarrassed now.

"Did you get my last missive after I met him, when I said it should be one of your top priorities?"

"Zuko can be…stubborn," Iroh said, and smiled fondly like this was something he liked about his nephew.

Had Iroh actually encouraged that spectacular level of stubbornness in the lad? Pakku was sure he would have never been so indulgent if he had been with Kanna to raise… he was sure his imaginary son and a thousand daughters would have minded him much better. They would have respected their elders and never been so bull-shark headed.

Iroh's nephew was beyond bull-shark headed. He was a disaster boy who never listened to anyone with the good sense enough to tell him to get out of the way of oncoming disaster. No, Zuko was the sort of idiot child who would stand on the ice-fields, smirking while bleeding profusely and swaying on his feet, and saying "Is that your best shot?" to Kuruk, who was easily three times his size, and had small children of his own and occasionally expressed consternation about repeatedly beating up a mouthy teenager. Then Kuruk would look askance at Pakku, as if to say, "Do I really have to hit him again, sir? Shouldn't we just wait five seconds?"

Pakku didn't think that boy had ever needed any encouragement on the stubbornness front. Next to him, Jeong Jeong was frowning in agreement. Iroh became aware of Jeong Jeong and Pakku's identical frowns, and had the good sense to go slightly red.

"He doesn't like being told what to do," Iroh explained. "He doesn't always cooperate."

"He did as I said, and I only needed to be honest with him," Jeong Jeong said bluntly, casting aspersions on Iroh's style of … Pakku didn't know if it could be called parenting. Teenage-herding? Vaguely trying to usher an unpredictable youngster in the right direction seemed more apt.

"He also obeyed me," Pakku chimed in.

"You broke his wrist and used the threat of execution to make him obey," Iroh said, and there was a coldness to his stare. "Threats make people very cooperative."

Pakku met Iroh's gaze. The temperature felt like it was dropping by several degrees. There was something ferocious behind Iroh's eyes that he kept carefully reined in behind a veneer of amiability, but Pakku caught a glimpse of it. As they had travelled through the outer islands, Pakku had overheard people in the Fire Nation gossiping that it would be a mistake to encage and enrage a dragon. Pakku suddenly understood why Iroh had been so respected as a military leader, why the name the Dragon of the West was still spoken with a mix of fear and awe.

Iroh was angry at him. Perhaps Pakku should have been worried, but he was old and cantankerous and defensive. He didn't like being judged by a man who, while he may have been a famed general in control of thousands, had been completely unable to wrangle one teenager into eating his vegetables, minding his manners and learning his lessons.

Even so, Iroh was still right about one thing. Threats made people cooperative…

They needed to get their ungrateful Grand Lotus off the ship for their escape plan to work. It would be stupid to threaten an enraged dragon, but there was nothing else for it. In for a snowball, in for an iceberg. Iroh was already furious at him and Pakku had already dug this far down.

"Iroh, if you don't come now, I will take the rare white dragon bush tea we brought for you to celebrate your freedom and I will soak it all…in seawater," Pakku threatened.

"You wouldn't! That tea is almost priceless!"

"I won't even try to drink it. I'll just splash seawater all over it." Pakku used his bending to rock the ship and enhance his point.

"How can a member of the White Lotus say something so horrible?"

Iroh came with them.

-0-

Aang couldn't sleep. The hollow and painful ache in his back was keeping him awake.

Well, it wasn't only that – if he was being honest with himself.

Being shot with lightning was really painful, but more painful and disturbing than the lightning wound between his shoulders was a cold realisation. If Aang had just stayed and listened to the guru, he could have mastered the Avatar State. Then everything that had happened in the catacombs would have gone differently.

Aang had nearly opened the final chakra. He'd been so close, but he'd chosen Katara over mastering the Avatar State. Now the chance to control it, to never again accidentally hurt someone with it, to use it to save the world …that chance was gone forever.

Aang thought he was going to do whatever it took to master the Avatar State. But when Guru Pathik talked about giving Katara up, he remembered the monks saying Gyasto had to leave him all alone if he was ever going to become a good Avatar.

Aang hated being alone.

The price was too high and he didn't want to pay it.

So, instead, he paid with Ba Sing Se lost to the Fire Nation. He'd paid with failing the world. He'd paid with losing his friend.

Aang had probably gotten Zuko killed.

Sure, no one was saying it, and no one was blaming him… but he remembered what Sokka had said about why Azula had never told anyone about finding Zuko alive. He remembered how Katara's voice had broken, how she had turned away and been unable to look at him when she talked about how she had to choose between them and she had to leave their friend behind.

They didn't need to say it. Aang blamed himself anyway.

Guilt squirmed in his guts. He had actually wanted this not too long ago. He didn't want Zuko to be hurt. He'd never wanted that. But he had wanted the other boy…not around. He had wanted Katara all to himself. He had wanted her to choose him over Zuko.

To Aang's eternal shame, she had. She hadn't chosen him because she loved him like a boyfriend, but she'd chosen him because he was the Avatar and he was meant to save the world.

Aang wasn't even a very good Avatar.

World-failing, friend-killing Aang: the worst Avatar ever! That was how he was going to be remembered.

Avatar Kyoshi might have wished to be remembered differently too. She could have said that she only broke apart continents to make her own private island one time, and she never intended to kill anyone. But Aang was beginning to understand that Avatars were never judged by their intentions, only on their results.

Aang always tried to be optimistic, but even he had to admit his results weren't that great.

-0-

Toph wasn't a softie, thank you very much. She didn't go in for these healing herbs, sponge baths and let me kiss your boo boos better.

Pah!

Toph always thought that needing help meant you were weak, but now she realised that she'd been wrong. Aang needed help, not because he was weak, but because he'd been shot by a psychotic gremlin!

So now Toph was tending Aang and helping Katara. Toph always carried her own weight. She'd always thought it better if everyone carried their own weight. Then she realised that Katara was carrying approximately eighty-four dudes worth of weight. Toph didn't want her shouldering all that alone.

Toph had surprised herself with just how much she wanted to help them. Katara didn't even need to ask her – she'd volunteered! She'd volunteered because Katara obviously needed somebody to help her and Zuko wasn't here, and the Water Tribe men were incredibly hopeless on the "helping Katara" front.

Katara shouldn't get used to it. Toph certainly wasn't going to make a habit of volunteering to help. But it was weird seeing Sugar without Spice, and Katara was so sad and angry lately. She was always snapping at her dad, and Toph liked Daddy Muscles. It wasn't his fault that everything had gone sideways in Ba Sing Se. Still, it wasn't Katara's fault either. Katara had just lost her favourite person, and Toph was trying to take her mind off it. Even Sokka hadn't known what to do or say, aside from trying to be "optimistic". It didn't suit him at all. Not knowing what had happened to their grumpiest friend was hard on everyone.

Sokka had completely backed away from his murderingly-murderous-psychotic-gremlin-sister theory. He now said anything could have happened and Zuko would have easily ninja-sliced out of that situation. Toph could tell he was lying. She normally loved to say, "I can tell you're lying" in a singsong voice, but for once she refrained.

There was no point dwelling on things she couldn't do anything to change. She concentrated on the things she could do something about, and right now that was Aang.

There was something really wrong with Aang lately. It was more than just being shot by lightning and his persistent bad mood. (Though, obviously, neither of those two things helped.) Toph straight away noticed that he felt weirdly hot. At first Katara assumed he had a fever. She was worried about infection, but Toph knew it was something else. She could just tell.

"Whatever is wrong with him," Toph said, "it's not something normal like a fever. It's something real weird."

Aang got a bit anxious when she loudly declared this. To be fair to him, her tone wasn't exactly what anyone would call reassuring. His anxiety was understandable.

"What do you think is wrong with me?" he asked.

"I dunno how to say it, Twinkletoes, but you're hot like Zuko was."

The past tense in that sentence hurt everyone in the room.

"I didn't mean hot in the I'm-so-sexy-I-give-disaster-boys-like-Jet-their-bisexual-awakening type hot," Toph clarified, trying to joke and breeze past that hurt moment. "The other hot. It feels like you're a firebender now."

"But I can't be!" Aang sounded alarmed and irate. His heart was thumping loudly. "I mean, there's no way."

"This is just a guess, but maybe whatever Zuko did, it flicked your firebending switch, or whatever. You always could firebend…maybe he just gave your firebending a shove forward," she said with a shrug.

"I don't have bending switches!"

"No one is saying you do," Katara said, trying to calm him down.

"I'm saying it," Toph said bluntly.

"I don't want any more scary bending coming out of me that I can't control!" Aang yelled.

The flames on the wall sconce rose higher with his temper, just to prove Toph's point for her. Aang looked at the flames in dismay.

"That could have been the wind," Katara said after a long pause. She was always trying to make it better for Aang, even now.

"Right, the wind," he agreed uncertainly.

"But it wasn't," Toph felt compelled to point out.

"Maybe it was," Aang snapped back, preferring to live in soft, squishy denial rather than face hard reality. "Maybe you're wrong and I just have a fever."

"Yeah, but you actually don't!" Toph was getting frustrated now. She didn't see how denying the bleeding obvious was helping anyone. "I'm right. Just see if I'm not."

She left the room of delusions.

So what if she sometimes wanted to help people now?

It would be much better, all round, if those same people wanted to help themselves!

-0-

A crack of lightning woke Hakoda up with a start.

The storm was one of the worst he had ever seen. They had strayed into the waters near a Fire Nation outpost south of Full Moon Bay. All Fire Nation waters, colonies included, were currently beset by a seemingly endless typhoon. Even the straits near their far-flung outposts and territories had been treacherous since the siege of the North.

Hakoda was not a superstitious man, but it did seem like the Ocean Spirit had a huge grudge against the Fire Nation. The storms were La's way of saying, "Screw this nation and every scrap of land they claim."

The ship was lurching wildly. Hakoda went to check on the children, in case they needed reassurance. He found Sokka and Toph sound asleep, and Aang tossing restlessly. Katara's bed was empty.

Panic rushed through him.

He scrambled about the ship searching for her. He found her trying to wrangle the bison onto the top deck in the middle of a storm. Appa, showing much more common sense than his daughter, was very reluctant to be wrangled stormwards.

Hakoda remembered when a terrible illness had swept through their tribe during the winter after Kya's death. Still grieving, he'd had to be both mother and father to his frightened and sick children. He'd had to provide for them during a blizzard, sponge their foreheads, and clean them up when they had soiled themselves. For two whole weeks, he had barely slept. He had dedicated himself entirely to his family and pulled them through the crisis. He thought that was the hardest test of fatherhood he'd ever faced, until this night.

Tonight, he was trying to make his fifteen-year-old daughter see reason. Reasoning with a teenage girl in the middle of a typhoon – this was the real test of fatherhood.

Tui and La, he was failing at it.

Katara knew they were closer to Ba Sing Se than they'd been in a while. She stood in the rain and yelled at him that she was a capable waterbender. She would be back in the morning.

"No! It is too dangerous Katara! I can't lose you kids again!"

He took her pack of supplies and threw them back down the stairs into the safety of the ship. He hoped his daughter would follow her belongings. This was not his proudest moment in the fatherhood test, to be sure.

"You didn't lose us," she muttered darkly. "You left us."

"Katara, please understand, I can't let you go and put yourself in harm's way, especially when there's no point to it. You keep saying 'you just need to know what happened'. The city has fallen. That's what happened! There's nothing there but death and destruction now. There's no point in going back."

He wasn't touching the you-left-us conversation bomb. He could already tell that conversation was going to explode in his face even more than this one was exploding.

"The point is to get our friend back!"

"I will not have you risk your life for a firebender!"

"His name is Zuko!" she snapped, like him getting the firebender's name wrong was the whole point of their argument.

Hakoda wished it was. Names were easy.

"I'm sure Zuko will be very glad to go back to his people," he said. "His sister led the invasion. He'll be fine. He's with his family now."

This was clearly the wrong thing to say.

"His family are awful!" Katara wailed.

True. She'd get no argument from Hakoda on that one.

"Why is it so important for you to go back for a firebender?" he asked.

He realised he didn't actually know that much about Zuko. He should probably find out more, given that both his children seemed inexplicably fond of the firebender. (The Fire Lord's only son. Tui and La have mercy!)

Bato had described a disgruntled bundle of pointy elbows and dangerous knees, with a bad attitude and even worse language. Hakoda knew a great deal about Fire Lord Ozai's tactics. He had heard much about the lightning princess. But no one had talked much about the banished prince until recently. Even then, it was mostly to make cannibalistic jokes at the Water Tribe's expense.

This annoyed Hakoda.

Everyone thought they were cannibals because of this kid!

Truthfully, he had never forbidden his children from making friends with firebenders – mostly because he didn't think he had to. It had never occurred to him to say, "Kids, if you find a lost firebender, don't pat it, feed it, and bring it on adventures with you." He was now regretting this oversight.

He believed in facing life as it really was, not as he'd like it to be. His son and daughter had made friends with a firebender. He had to live with that. He didn't understand this friendship at all, but that didn't mean it wasn't real. At least, from the sounds of things, the boy had a shred of decency in him. That was more than you could say for most firebenders.

"We need him," Katara said levelly after a long moment. "If Aang is ever going to learn firebending, he'll need a teacher."

She was trying to sound practical. She was trying to sound like Sokka.

"There's another reason, Katara," he said flatly. It was a logical reason, but it wasn't the real reason. It didn't explain why she was so frantic.

"He saved us, Aang and me. I thought Aang was dying, but Zuko did something. Then he stayed behind with his uncle to cover our exit, even though he knows full well how terrible his sister is." She exhaled slowly, like she was trying to steady herself. "I can't just leave him behind, Dad." Her eyes shone. "Maybe it's easy for you to leave people behind, but I can't."

Ah. They were getting to the crux of the issue. When he'd left two years ago, his children had taken it hard. At the time, he had worried more about Sokka, who had seemed so forlorn at being left behind when he was so desperate to prove himself a man. Katara had said she understood. But Hakoda now saw that understanding his choice didn't stop her from feeling angry. There was nothing for it but to let her be angry. She could let it out and he would listen.

"Katara," he said, pulling her close. "I left you and Sokka because I love you so much. I wanted a better world for you. But every night I would miss you both so much it would ache."

"We want a better world too. That's why we left the South." She hugged him back. "It was hard to leave, but we had to keep Aang safe. I'd do anything to protect the people who are important to me."

"I know exactly how that feels."

His heart was bursting with pride at all his children had done to help Aang, but the selfish part of him wished that they had stayed home with their grandmother and stayed out of the war. They were too young and too important to him, and he hated the fact that it was his children, his family, that was constantly in danger. He squeezed her tighter, as if a hug could keep her safe.

"I'm so glad you understand why I have to go back." Katara said into the hug.

What?

Go back?

He had never agreed to that!

He repressed his initial, churlish response. That could only lead to more shouting in the rain. Instead, he tried to be calm and reasonable.

"If you really wanted to do right by your firebe…your friend," he corrected, even though it meant he had to acknowledge the terrible and inconvenient friendship, "you would stay here."

His daughter jerked away from him. "How is abandoning a friend to the Fire Nation doing right by him, Dad?"

He could have pointed out that the boy was Fire Nation. He wasn't being abandoned to them. He was them. But he realised this would not be helpful. "You say he sacrificed himself to save you and Aang. Perhaps the best way to honour his sacrifice is to stay saved. It sounds like your friend wanted you and Aang to be safe."

Hakoda had no idea what a firebender would or wouldn't want, but he seemed to have guessed correctly, because Katara nodded sadly like she agreed. It finally looked like she was seeing reason. She just needed a little further nudge in the right direction. (Hopefully, that direction would be inside the ship where it was safe and warm.)

"Besides, Aang needs you too," he reminded her. "He was making some noises when I walked past. I think he might be in pain. He'll need you to heal him again soon."

This comment was not entirely true. It was more of a metaphorical shove, not a gentle nudge, but Hakoda knew it would work

"Oh, Aang!"

She ran past him and down the stairs to tend her friend.

Finally, reason had prevailed.

-0-

Zuko hated all the jokes about being eaten. Mentioning it was the surest path to upsetting him. It was the one jab that always made him rise to the bait, so Azula had teased him about it relentlessly on the ship and made many comments about his oh-so-precious Water Tribe peasants.

She was still mulling over what to do about them. But they hadn't shown any interest in snatching her brother, despite that moist hussy claiming to see him as family. Clearly, they cut their losses and ditched him. Azula teased him about that too. She needed to remind him of his loyalties. She was his family, not a group of filthy peasants. Zuko had to learn that, to them, he was forgettable and disposable. At least Azula had a use for him. It was a harsh lesson, but it was true and it was for his own good.

Their father had always been right. Trust was for fools. Zuko had always been a fool. Despite being clearly abandoned by them, he was very protective of his mangy, soggy peasants and loathed anyone saying bad things about them. Her digs about cannibalism had always gotten the most amusing reactions.

One morning, Azula loudly assumed the reason why Zuko wore such a big coat was because he was literally covered head-to-toe in bite marks. He got so annoyed with her that he took off all his layers to prove her wrong. Mai blushed the most hilarious shade of mortified scarlet and averted her eyes, but Ty Lee was the one to say what Azula was actually thinking.

"Zuko, what happened to you?"

Ty Lee pointed at the small scar on his left shoulder and the faded marks of lacerations on his side. It looked like he'd been shot and at least lightly stabbed at some point during his banishment. Azula felt oddly incensed. No one should get to shoot or stab Zuko but her!

"Did you just point at my scars?" Zuko asked, incredulous and offended. He flushed, embarrassed at having revealed so much. He pulled his shirt hastily back on.

"No?"

"Gah, I can't believe you, Ty Lee. I'd expect that kind of insensitivity from those two" – he pointed at Azula and Mai (who had the gall to look vaguely annoyed) – "but not you!"

He avoided all of them the rest of the day.

Azula was not curious, and certainly not concerned! She wasn't looking for him. She wasn't wasting her time on him. But if Mai and Ty Lee had chosen to search for him, he had been unnaturally good at hiding from them. Still, it was a ship. There were only so many places he could be.

She wasn't worried.

Azula finally found him on the stern deck, around sunset. He was staring so intensely out at the horizon it looked like he was trying to set the ocean on fire with his eyeballs.

"I believe you now," she said. "The Northern Water Tribe didn't bite you. I'm going to assume it's because you'd be too skinny and gamey."

"Okay."

He wasn't going to say anything else to her, after she'd gone to the effort of finding him and saying something nice.

"Besides," she added, "practicality says they'd eat Uncle first. He'd feed more people."

That got the reaction she was after. Zuko stiffened and made a bitchface at her before he exhaled slowly. He was trying not to look pissed off and sound calm, but Azula saw right through that.

"Has his ship landed safely yet?" he asked.

"It will dock at the capitol in a few days."

Truthfully, she hadn't gotten a progress report from Uncle's ship in several days, and it was bothering her… but Zuko didn't need to know that.

He sighed heavily and dramatically, as if the weight of the ocean was pushing down on him. He didn't bother trying to hide the fact that he was worried about Uncle Fatso and missed his company. That wouldn't go over well with father.

Azula narrowed her eyes. "Don't go doing anything stupid like writing to him or trying to visit him when we get home. They really will get you for treason if you do that. Besides, there's not much point anyway. They say he's lost his marbles."

"You're lying."

"You're used to that by now, surely?" she said with a smile, concealing how troubled she'd been after she'd read the last hawk from the ship.

Apparently, the shock and magnitude of her crushing defeat coupled with Zuko's betrayal had sent his kookiness over the edge. It didn't sound right. His kookiness hadn't seemed crazy in Ba Sing Se. Uncle was many things, but he wasn't a fool. He was playing an angle, she was sure of it.

Father was pleased with her now, but if her "gift" went awry, if Uncle had a stratagem she hadn't foreseen, then father would be displeased … At least she could divert his displeasure to a more convenient target now.

She glanced at her brother, but he was looking at the horizon again. She wondered if he was looking for them.

He probably was.

Would Zuko have left their family and all the splendour of royal life for some damp wench and her moist associates, just on the flimsy promise of safety and care and not being hurt again?

Something in her guts twisted angrily. She slapped him upside the head a little too hard to be mistaken for the friendly sibling rough housing that she had seen from Ty Lee and her endless array of sisters.

"Ow! What the fuck was that for?"

"Don't swear!" Azula snapped. He knew how much his swearing annoyed her. He did it on purpose, she was sure of it. "And stop moping. You're so gloomy and depressing. You're more of a downer than a vegetarian at a Home Island Barbeque."

"Sorry I can't be more upbeat and jolly for you. I can just pretend the whole being banished for three years, and living as a refugee, and starving in the desert, and being a prisoner of war never happened then if it's more convenient for you."

He was using what Ty Lee had called his "customer service voice". (Flaming fireflakes, a member of the royal family had a customer service voice. The spirit of their grandmother, Her Most Royal Highness Fire Lady Ilah, Jewel of the Outer Islands, Dragon of the East, Wife of Azulon, Mother of Iroh and Ozai, was churning in her urn.)

Azula knew Zuko was being sarcastic, but that didn't stop her from responding as if he had been serious. "Yes, that would be much more convenient on the whole. We don't want to give Father any reason to doubt our story. So just act like you're happy."

"Acting happy won't stop father from hating me, you know."

Suddenly, Zuko sounded like he was the one warning her.

"Father doesn't hate you."

He actually snorted in disbelief. "You didn't read his reply to Chief Arnook."

She actually had. She knew it wouldn't have gone well for her brother… and the damp, sodden bastards had a reputation for barbaric cruelty. If Zuko had been tortured because of what Dad had said, it would explain why he was more bitter than sour-lemon sherbet lately.

She wanted to know something, but she didn't want to ask. Asking would look like she cared, and she couldn't be having that. She knew that people who had experienced torture became unpredictable. She didn't like unpredictable…that was all.

"What did they do to you… up there?" she asked.

"It's okay. You don't need to pretend you care Azula."

She didn't care!

How dare he insinuate such a thing!

-0-

Enormous thanks to Boogum who is the very best beta in the world!