Chapter Text
A conversation between Sokka and Toph, circa that morning:
“I just have this feeling that everything is about to go wrong.”
“You had that yesterday, Ambassador Snoozles.”
“And everything did. Or were you at a different coronation-turned-civil-war-declaration than I was?”
“Go get your dad, Sokka. And your non-moon girlfriend.”
So now here Sokka was, stepping off a royal cruiser into the shadow of the Boiling Rock’s caldera.
“This way, Ambassador,” Captain Izumi said, as if there were more than one way up from the docks. He wondered if she knew his name, or if in her head she was finishing every Ambassador with Snoozles.
Sokka wanted Katara here at his side, but there’d already been some scuffles in the capital between people who supported Iroh and people who didn’t, and she was out helping to heal bruises and tempers. Showing them that Team Avatar was about more than ripping their firebendy-souls out of their still-living bodies and usurping their hereditary monarchs (twice). Katara was pretty good at the whole rallying-people-to-the-side-of-good thing, and Toph was with her in case things rallied the other way, and Iroh was meeting with his nobles and generals in his own rallying way with Aang by his side being twelve and goofy and hopefully less terrifying than rumors alleged.
Damage control, in other words.
So Sokka was here alone. Just a quick in-and-out to pick up his dad and Suki, then back to the palace. He had the current Fire Lord’s full support, and a team of royal guards Iroh trusted, and there was no reason to think that anything was about to go terribly horribly wrong.
The bad feeling had not gone away. Scientifically speaking, it was already one for one.
秋
Hakoda’s new cell left nothing to the imagination. It was only him, his handcuffs, and a chair bolted to the floor. It wasn’t a room you held someone in for long; wasn’t a room that cared where its resident was going next, or if they were comfortable on their way.
The light through the keyhole was blotted out; the knob turned; the hinges did not creak. Hakoda knew more about the Warden’s obsessive maintenance schedule than he’d ever desired. He stood, tense and readied for whatever came. He didn’t have a bad feeling about this. He didn’t need to: nothing good would come for him when that door opened.
It opened on Suki, spinning a guard’s key ring around her finger.
“Jailbreak,” she said, and her smirk told him everything he needed to know about how fast and deep his son would have fallen for this girl.
Outside the cell, he felt old. Four other teenagers waited for him with varying degrees of indifference; five, with Suki. It was entirely clear that getting him out had been her idea, and only her idea.
“Is it really a jailbreak if you’re all being pardoned?” a girl he recognized from her royal portraits stated more than asked. Her Former Majesty Azula, short had she reigned, stood slightly apart from the group.
Hakoda swept his eyes over the rest of the children, then raised an eyebrow at her. “Pardoned at knife point?”
The Fire Princess scoffed. The boy at knife point shrugged.
His Former Majesty Zuko was neither as regal nor as well fed as his own portraits had implied. The royal painter had clearly left out a few circumstances. Whatever they were, they’d done nothing to convince the boy that he was a mere mortal like the rest of them; even with Mai’s blade to his throat, he seemed blithely unconcerned for his safety. Hakoda was, as always, unimpressed by the Fire Nation royal family.
“Let’s get going,” Suki said, “before any guards show up.”
Which was, of course, when the guards showed up.
秋
There was a war balloon on the upper landing. A little one, looking a lot like the kind Sokka had helped the Mechanist design, but with just enough visible differences to make Sokka veer towards it—
Captain Izumi didn’t say anything. She just stopped walking and stood there, like a particularly animate pillar, exhibiting the same scathingly professional air with which she always handled Team Avatar. At least she’d been acting like this since the beginning; it was the people who’d started after the Agni Kai—or worse, after yesterday’s little speech—that worried Sokka.
Worried him the most, anyway. Anyone who’d dedicated their lives to serving Ozai worried Sokka rather a lot on principle, and no, Iroh’s insistence that the royal guard was sworn to the Fire Lord, not a Fire Lord, didn’t help. It sure hadn’t helped Zuko.
Captain Izumi kept up her pointedly polite waiting. Sokka un-veered, away from one of the last remaining war balloons, the only one he’d been in range of putting his hands on without being in the middle of a life-and-death battle in a flame-soaked sky.
One of their guards was exchanging pleasantries and paperwork with the guards up here. The prison guard looked things over and then flashed a signal fire over his head, staccato flares of flame from an upraised palm. Someone across the big scary lake signaled back, and the heavy steel cables began to move.
So consolation prize: free gondola ride.
Besides, he could poke at the war balloon on their way out. His dad would like that.
秋
“He owes me—” the voice of one guard said, as they rounded a corner into the dead end corridor in which the holding cells lay.
“You are never getting that money back,” the other said. “I don’t know why you think you are ever getting that money back.”
“But it’s payday and he owes me—”
And then they were fully in the corridor, fully in view, and both guardswomen stopped. Mai tightened her grip on the knife.
“Hi,” Zuko said, with a little wave. “I’m a hostage.”
One of the guards lunged. Not for them, but for the wall; specifically, for the prison-wide alarm on the wall. Those were placed at quite regular intervals. Azula had always been tempted to pull one, but perfect princesses did not give in to such urges.
Suki moved to intercept, and the guard’s outstretched arm quickly became the pivot point that sent her arcing into the floor. Ty Lee followed in Suki’s shadow, and the second guard’s hand went limp before she could more than half-way draw her sword.
The prison alarm blared, loud and insistent and all around them. Guards and escapees alike turned to Azula.
She shrugged, and took her hand off the switch.
That had been exactly as satisfying as she’d always imagined.
秋
“What’s that noise?” Sokka asked, squishing his face against the gondola’s window, because Captain Izumi had made him close it, because for some reason she’d taken one look at him leaning out to stare at the boiling sulfuric lake of death far below and slid it shut almost on his nose. And latched it. And stood in front of the latch.
“Prison alarm,” she said, telling him nothing he couldn’t already infer. Because prison. And alarm.
She made some rapid hand signals, and the royal guard fell into a protective circle around him. Sokka was no longer allowed a window view. Or much of a view at all, besides the backs of his overly tall guards. Adults, and their desire to make decisions for him, continued to be awful.
The gondola continued its downward descent, which felt like a metaphor for this situation.
秋
Hakoda took the rear guard as they ran. He would have preferred point, because he was the adult here, but Suki and Ty Lee were already ruthlessly filling the position and hadn’t bothered to consult him. It wasn’t as if rear guard were less dangerous; he held the sword he’d stolen from those first guards ready as they came across more.
It always took the guards a moment to realize the situation, despite the Fire Prince’s… helpful contributions.
“I’m a hostage,” the boy waved again. “Would you mind stepping into that cell there, so they don’t kill me? Thanks. Uh, have a nice day.”
“I’m not related to you,” the Fire Princess said, after one such encounter. No one was holding a knife to her throat, but the threat against her brother was apparently enough to keep her in line. Perhaps there was some hope for their family.
“You pulled the big red switch,” the boy shot back, seemingly more offended by her words than by being dragged around by his neck.
“Someone was going to,” the girl sniffed. “Don’t I deserve nice things, Zuzu?”
Hakoda had long wondered if there was insanity in the line of Sozin. This was not how he’d expected to gain confirmation.
They broke out onto one of the open walkways overlooking the prison yard, with a clear view of their target.
“Gondola ahead,” Suki said, never losing her focus. “It’s touching down. We can do this.”
With two royal hostages, they could do a lot more than a prison break. But first they had to make it out.
秋
The Warden met the gondola at the landing, after having run faster than he had in twenty years. The Boiling Rock did not, as a general rule, inspire its inhabitants to sprint.
Their Highnesses’ guard was disembarking, well aware that a gondola could become a firetrap if the enemy numbers held firebenders. They were led by none other than Captain Izumi herself. This boded well for how her people would handle themselves, and poorly for the Warden’s chances of keeping this incident off any official reports. Worse: the way the guard had formed up around a figure in their center indicated a third VIP suddenly in their midst. For a moment, he was filled with cold dread that it was Fire Lord Iroh himself, who else would have accompanied the prince and princess, but the figure ensconced by the guards was too small for that.
“Hey! Let me see!”
Too young, as well. His guards ignored him, and the Warden followed suit.
“Warden,” the Captain said, “report.”
“A mere escape attempt,” he said, forcing his tone to the expected levels of disdain. “Never fear, today will not be the day my perfect record breaks. Their Highnesses will be perfectly safe—”
“What?” she snapped.
“They’re coming!” a guard shouted.
The time for posturing before his peers was later. For now, he turned to the guardsman on the controls.
“I want those gondolas parked at the midpoint and the controls locked. The rest of you, form up. No one escapes the Boiling Rock.”
秋
The guards they’d encountered on their way here had been spotty, startled; they’d been the people in their path already when the alarm had been pulled. What they met on the gondola landing was organized ranks of resistance between them and their target. Their target, which was even now headed back over the lake. Why send guards into the prison after them, when the only place that mattered was right here?
“We have your prince and princess,” Hakoda said, breaking the silence of the standoff. “If you care anything for them, you will stand aside.”
A woman with silvered hair took one step forward. “You’re under arrest, by order of Fire Lord Iroh,” she said, and it took Hakoda’s mind a long moment to process the words she’d spoken first.
“Prince Zuko. Princess Azula. You’re under arrest, by order of Fire Lord Iroh.”
Hakoda watched the value of their hostages plummet, much like his hopes for the situation.
秋
Sokka couldn’t see much past his stiflingly protective guards, couldn’t push his way past their stupid pointed armor, but he knew that voice—
“Dad!” he shouted.
But his father and his non-moon girlfriend and a whole lot of people he didn’t expect to find either here or with them were retreating back into the prison, down a narrow hall they could defend rather than the open landing where more and more guards were arriving.
“Dad!” Sokka shouted again.
But the alarm was blaring and guards were shouting and Azula was cackling, and his father had more important voices to listen for than one he’d never expected to hear at the Boiling Rock.