Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

Hugs were amazing and Sokka was, henceforth, never not doing them.

“Can’t breathe, Sokka,” Suki said, totally proving that she could breathe, and that Sokka was not hugging her anywhere near tightly enough. The following squeak and tap out against his back was much more convincing, but… no, he could do better. The sudden shift of weight and she was slipping out of his hold and grabbing one of his arms and then he was staring up at her smile from the floor was much more convincing. 

“I missed you,” he said.

“I gathered that,” she said, and offered him a hand up. The hand up was followed by a hug. Which, it turned out, felt even better when she initiated. “It’s so good to see you,” she said, soft and low by his ear, like speaking any louder might scare this whole prison extraction off. 

He had, of course, already hugged his dad. His dad who was alive and here and fully capable of making Sokka’s ribs creak. One of the sweetest sounds known to man.

Captain Izumi had tried⁠—was trying⁠—to herd them off to the relative safety of the Warden’s office. Which was an extremely questionable safety to begin with, and Sokka was much harder to herd now that his dad was standing by his shoulder, arms crossed, staring down any Fire Nation-y person who came too close. There would be no more physically dragging him off, not unless the captain wanted a very physical fight. Sokka was existing in a bubble of Skeptical Dad Protection, and it was the most wonderful feeling ever. 

“This area is not safe,” the captain had said. She was clearly speaking as someone who had spent the past year in places that could be called safe. Sokka could not relate. 

“I’m not saying that if we don’t see Zuko get arrested and immediately take him into custody ourselves then somehow he’s going to slip out of it,” Sokka said, “but I am definitely saying that.” 

It was just this feeling he had.

“My orders⁠—”

“Are to protect me,” Sokka said. “Yes, I got that. I can even sort of appreciate it, though I admit the whole ‘surrounded by forces who were loyal to Ozai three months ago’ thing does not feel as protectiony as I think you’re going for. Counter offer: can we watch from up there?”

He pointed up, to the walkway overlooking the gondola platform. Nice and out of the direct fight. 

The captain closed her eyes and took in a breath and let it out in a counting-to-ten-in-her-head way, then led them up. Another win for compromise. 

This was why Sokka was in the perfect position to see Zuko and his prison posse reaching the landing. There were less prisoners with them then there had been, but still way more than Sokka was comfortable with, because hardened criminal backup. The guards had them vastly outnumbered, but Zuko had Azula and pokey girl and knife-throwy-girl, which were a mini army unto themselves. 

…Or would have been, if either of the Fire siblings was actually using their flames. Azula was mostly just strolling through the center of their fight, occasionally taking down any guard who dared attack her, looking bored. Zuko was… using swords? He wasn’t the only person down there with them, but Fire Prince Lord firebender Zuko was using swords.

He was using two swords.

He was using two swords a lot better than Sokka could use one.

(It wasn’t hard to get two swords off the guards they’d beaten on the way here. It was hard to get two with matching weights and the distinctive shape of his own dao, left back on the balloon. Zuko was feeling exceptionally sloppy in his swordsmanship.)

Hakoda watched the landing being flooded by guards, those who’d already been stationed there joined by those being called back from every corner of the prison. The teenagers were good, but the same could not be said of every prisoner with them. They would be overrun before long, especially if they continued to avoid killing. 

The Fire Princess’ words came, unbidden, to the back of his mind: As long as my dear, sincere brother is alive and free, we’ll tear ourselves apart. 

“How much do you trust this new Fire Lord?” Hakoda asked his son, trying to speak low enough that their escort couldn’t overhear.

Sokka… hesitated.

“He helped train Aang,” he said, after that delay. “He’s been with us for months, he helped plan Ozai’s defeat, he fought to free Ba Sing Se. I trust that he wants to end the war, and he’s not out to backstab us. Is this really the time to talk about it?” 

With two-thirds of Fire Lord Iroh’s rivals for the throne about to come under the man’s control, it was exactly the time. Possibly the only time. 

World peace was one thing. What was best for the Southern Water Tribe, possibly another. Hakoda tensed as the escapees were pushed back by the newest wave of guards, now on the defensive instead of the offensive. 

Doesn’t a divided Fire Nation sound wonderful?

His son had hesitated. Hakoda did, too.

Suki did not. 

“I’m getting a full pardon, right?” she asked.

“Right,” his son replied, distracted by the sight below.

Which was the point Suki nodded to herself, and vaulted the rail.

“Wait, no, wrong⁠—”

“⁠—Wrong!” someone was shouting, but Zuko was a little distracted by his sister, who was starting to get irritated⁠—

“They’re just earwig-flies, Zuko. If you’d let me swat them, we’d be out of here with all your new turtleducklings.”

“No murder,” he repeated, standing between her and a guard who’d looked mortality in the eye and found it to be a teenage girl. Behind her, the Kyoshi Warrior dropped directly down on another guard about to attack them. This saved Zuko from having to defend that one, too.  “Please, La⁠— Azula.”

“Good save,” Azula said.

“I’m not doing it for you,” Suki said.

“That’s fine,” Azula said, with a roll of her eyes. “I wasn’t talking to you.”

Suki entered the fray, filling in gaps where playwrights, desk officers, and their other non-combatant subversives were having trouble. (Chit Sang was not having trouble. Chit Sang picked up a guard, and used them as a battering ram against a line of others. This allowed their group to take two collective steps closer to their goal.)

The Boiling Rock was one of the Fire Nation’s most well funded prisons, and its remote location meant that every single shift lived on base and was available for backup. This was, of course, detailed in the Warden’s plan, in the unlikely event of his other anti-escape measures failing. The guards weren’t limited by numbers, but by how many of them could fit on the landing at one time.

A lot. It was a lot. Ty Lee wasn’t as bouncy as she’d been at the start. Mai might even run out of knives. Zuko honestly still felt pretty good, better than he had during his Agni Kai, but he recognized that his own health was a low bar to reach.

“Would you rather be locked away again?” Azula asked.

“Yes,” he answered, and got back to not killing his people.

His people did not share the sentiment. 

The Water Tribe ambassador was trying to throw himself over the railing. Captain Izumi had caught one of his arms; his father had gotten the other. On this, at least, they were agreed.

If the chief had let her do her job earlier, hadn’t looked ready to fight over bringing the ambassador to safety, his son wouldn’t be trying to crack open his own head on the metal plating below. If the ambassador had allowed himself and his group to be led away from the fight, his girlfriend wouldn’t have been here to make the leap look easy.

If Captain Izumi had exerted better control over the situation, had wrangled her charges better, they would all be tucked away safe right now. She’d failed.

She’d failed Azulon, who had been in good health when she went to sleep on a night years ago. She’d failed Ozai, who had scoffed at the idea of needing something so trite as trained and loyal guards to watch his back in the field. She’d failed Azula, who had laughed when she’d knelt to re-swear her oaths. Laughed, and sent her away, and Izumi had chosen to interpret that as get out of my sight and keep doing your job instead of you’re banished like all the rest. She’d failed Zuko.

She kept failing Zuko.

Arms full of a squirming teenager, she didn’t even see the moment it happened. Only the immediate aftermath: the flames dispersed by wind rather than the block of a royal firebender. The prince falling backwards, a hand coming up to his shoulder, his neck, and then recoiling from the touch as if⁠— 

As if burned.

She couldn’t see how bad it was, from here. All she had to go by was his brief shout, a choked-off thing like a child who’d had too much practice.

The prince was down. 

His sister stepped forward.

Azula was back to Plan A.

“So you like burning people,” she asked, conversationally. “It’s so nice to share hobbies.”

Zuzu had been a Dum-Dum and forgotten his own fire was out: he’d tried to block instead of dodge. Good to know he hadn’t been lying about not being able to defend against her own flames; it let her strangle one of those niggling little voices in her head, the one that said he lies he lies he’s afraid of you like all the rest he lies. She pushed a pillow onto it and held it down as she took another step, and batted away the guard’s frantic flames, and lit a little blue candlelight over her finger that would slice through his armour, peel this offensive snail-roach from its shell for her to squish and salt and burn⁠—

“Azula, no!”

“One moment, Zuzu, the adults are talking.”

“Please please please,” the snail-roach was saying, backpedalling until he was against the rail and the only way was down down to the rocks below her lovely cliffside view. There were burns on the man’s arms she didn’t remember giving him; clearly they had appeared because he should have them, he was right to have them, of course he had them. There was a hastily cleared space between them. How lovely it was when people gave her room: lessons were most instructive when they only needed to be delivered once.

“My brother said please,” she said, “just a moment ago. ‘Please don’t kill them.’ You really should have listened to him. I did.” 

Past tense.

“Please.”

“Azula.”

And there was Zuzu, getting between them, his new burn tracing raw and red from the arm he’d tried to disperse the flames with up to his shoulder, over his collar bone, speckle-spotted with little ember singes up the side of his neck until it could have been a continuation of father’s lesson. He was letting the arm hang useless. His swords were somewhere back on the ground, which was an entirely quaint way to face her. 

The guard behind him was taller, but trying hard not to look it.

“Going to say please again, Zuzu? He’s saying it quite enough for both of you.”

Zuko breathed out, then back in, like it would do anything for his absent flames. “I told you I’d stand between you if you choose to hurt someone.”

“That was supposed to be figurative, Zuko.”

Her brother furrowed his brow. “When am I ever figurative?”

She hated how much of a point that was.

“Fine. I hope you’re keeping track of your breadcrumbs, brother; they’ll eat and eat and eat until all that’s left to eat is you.”

It took longer for the guards to get up their nerve to attack again than it did for them to take her brother down. They still kept a respectful distance from her, of course. She quirked an eyebrow at Zuko as they pulled his arms behind him, even the burned one. He scowled back, as if she were the problem here. They were trying to force him to his knees. She wished them luck with that; her brother had said he was never kneeling for someone again and he was, as recently demonstrated, rather literal.

“Surrender,” the Warden said, calling down from the same supposed safety of that overlook that the Avatar’s friend was using.

“Stand down,” ordered another voice.

“This has gone on long enough,” Captain Izumi said. “The Royal Guard is taking command, Warden.”

She stepped away from the Water Tribe boy, whose father was not enough to stop him from jumping the rail.

“By all means,” the Warden graciously allowed, because his guards had only apprehended the prince and a handful of their escaping prisoners. The rest were still very much free. He did not watch his niece fighting with any particular feelings, of course; there was no favoritism here.

“Release him,” the captain continued, which was not at all the order the Warden expected to follow. 

“You can’t do this,” he said, and, “I won’t let you do this,” which were two different things, equally unenforceable. 

The captain was already issuing hand signals. Had been, since her first words. Her guards were already down the stairs; they shoved through his own and forced the prince’s release. The princess laughed, a sound that was overly loud in the ensuing silence. 

Two other Royal Guards gripped the Warden’s arms. Captain Izumi removed the gondola key from his neck. 

“I’ll die before letting this happen,” he said.

“Your protests will be noted in the official record,” she said. “I outrank you. Follow your orders, soldier.”

Captain Izumi was too old for jumping rails. She took the stairs.

Azula remained impressed with her brother’s aptitude for laying breadcrumb trails to treason.

Sokka had honestly felt safer when he was dropping into a fighting mess of prisoners and guards than when the lady who’d come here to guard him stepped down among them.

“This isn’t what your Fire Lord would want,” he said, probably drawing more attention to himself than he should.

“I have no orders for this,” she said, with her utmost formality. “In the absence of orders, it is the Royal Guard’s sworn duty to serve their nation to the best of their ability.”

Sokka was stunned speechless by the amount of civil disobedience she was construing into that sworn duty of hers.

“Thanks for jumping down,” Suki whispered to him, nudging his arm as they watched… this. Whatever this was. This was the prison guards trying to look to their Warden for guidance, but the Warden’s very vocal protests were getting quieter⁠—well, not quieter, but certainly further away⁠—as the captain’s men hauled him off down the hallway above to… somewhere. A cell? His office? The boiling lake of no-inconvenient-evidence? 

No, Sokka was not feeling his safest. 

At least he had Suki at his side. And possibly her friends. Ty Lee was standing with them, not with the royals. Mai wasn’t, but only because she was going around to the guards pinned to various railings, walls, and the ground to reclaim her knives. And he had his dad too, who was treating everyone but Suki and him to the same try me and see stare as he worked his way over to them.

“Dad, we need to do something.”

His dad set a hand on his shoulder, and didn’t do anything.

A civil war did sound good.

A Fire Lord who didn’t see his people as expendable resources sounded… not better, because Hakoda knew exactly how dangerous a leader could be when protecting his own. But it would certainly make the boy something different than the Fire Lords before him. Different might be worth risking.

Hakoda would not help the Fire Prince. But he wasn’t about to risk his own life, or his son’s, to help the Dragon of the West retain his throne.

The prison guards stood down. There wasn’t much choice, when any action they took could be construed as disobeying a superior officer; they might as well take the option that didn’t involve fighting the Fire Princess again. Or the Royal Guard.

“May I see your burn?” Captain Izumi asked.

“No,” Zuko said.

“…Do you have medical supplies?’‘

This was also a no. The captain ordered such supplies found. And food and water, enough for all the escapees. 

“You really think we’re staying here while you and your people stall with niceties?” the princess scoffed.

“I think you’re staying until your people are on the other side,” the captain said. “Those gondolas are slow.”

She wasn’t wrong.

The captain’s orders to retrieve supplies had involved no twitch of hand-signed subterfuge. She cleared the landing of any guard not her own, and set those that remained at a perimeter that gave the prisoners breathing room. She gave them the key to the gondola controls. She didn’t try to see his new burn again.

She seemed trustworthy. Zuko wanted to trust her. But he had people to protect who hadn’t stood back while Iroh challenged him, and he couldn’t, he physically couldn’t, looking at her and thinking trust made numbness creep up his fingertips and everything was so distant, she couldn’t ask this of him again, she couldn’t⁠— 

Azula poked his new burn.

“Ow,” he scowled, shooting her a glare.

“If you leave me alone to handle this,” she said, “I will handle it.”

He looked over their party. They’d have to drag a few unconscious ex-prisoners with them, but they hadn’t lost anyone. Mai was rearmed and Ty Lee and Suki were getting their wind back and the Water Tribe ambassador and his father were inexplicably here, which… was. A thing.

He pinched the bridge of his nose with his unburned hand, took in a breath, and focused on his burn because at least it was something that didn’t need anything from him. It wasn’t even that bad; just like a training burn, but… bigger. The guard had pulled his punch in that same wide-eyed moment when he and Zuko had both realized Zuko’s block was doing nothing. It had been one of those basic firebending moves to make your opponent react, to force them to deflect, a five year old could have turned those flames away⁠—

Zuko let out his breath. Slowly. 

“We won’t all fit in the first gondola,” he said. “I’ll wait here to guard the controls.”

In case it was a trap. In case this was another case of him misunderstanding the captain’s loyalties.

(He hadn’t misunderstood them at all; he’d just ignored the issue until the Fire Lord she was loyal to wasn’t him anymore.)

“Understood,” the captain said.

“Not alone, you’re not,” Azula said. “If I leave you then the dream moves on without you.”

He knew the feeling.

“Wow,” Ambassador Snoozles said. “You are really crazy, huh.”

“So?” the Fire siblings replied, in perfect deadpan unison.

The last prisoners were on the far landing, disembarking. The other gondola was here, empty and waiting. Azula and Mai and Ty Lee had stayed with him, which was two more people than he’d expected.

…Also Suki and Snoozles and Snoozles’ dad, which was still a thing.

“Are you… coming with us?” he asked the older man, who seemed to know what to do with that question exactly as much as Zuko did.

“…No thank you,” the chief settled on, his arms crossed.

At least he was polite about it.

Mai was opening the gondola’s door. Ty Lee was looking up at the cables above, a wishful bounce in her step. Azula was leaning against the controls, casually threatening the royal guard stationed there with the little fire dancing over her hand. It was time to go.

“Wait,” Zuko said. “There’s one more thing.”

He looked at the Water Tribe ambassador as he said it. Snoozles did not look thrilled to be looked upon.

Inside the Warden’s office was a plate of refreshments, minus some kiwi-grapes. The Warden, cuffed to his own chair, guarded by Izumi’s people. And the prison ledger, with the names and recorded crimes of everyone here. Zuko took it under the Warden’s scowl, and held it out towards the Water Tribe boy.

“Could you give this to the Avatar? Please. Not to Uncle.”

Snoozles took it, and immediately started flipping through the heavy book with the same skepticism he’d once shown Zuko’s trade proposals. “Why?”

“There’s a lot of people here who shouldn’t be. More than are leaving with us. Critics of the war and my family. They’re not going to be a priority for Iroh; letting them out won’t help him rule.” Rather the opposite, actually. 

They hadn’t helped Zuko rule, and he hadn’t even thought about them. And no one had brought them to his attention; no one would have dared.

“If the Avatar asks for their release, he might listen.” 

(If the Avatar asked, Azula noted, then all the Avatar’s allies would know if the new Fire Lord didn’t listen. Breadcrumbs and breadcrumbs; did Zuzu even realize his pockets had holes?)

Zuko bowed. The tribesman did not bow back. But he held onto the book.

Mai plucked a pomegranate-grape from the Warden’s desk. “Bye, uncle,” she said. “Thanks for the refreshments.”

Sokka watched as Mai and Ty Lee and Azula and Zuko got on the gondola. So did Suki.

“Suki, what…?”

She leaned out the door and gave him a smile, but didn’t come back.

“Pardon,” he said, in a last ditch effort to make this day not end even worse. “You’re getting a pardon.”

“I just helped the rebel Fire Lords escape, Sokka. I just escaped. I’m not giving up my freedom for the promise of freedom. If he means this peace thing, have him release all my warriors, and send them home. Then I’ll meet with him. Until then, I’m with them.” She tilted her head towards a gondola full of very dangerous teenagers.

Azula obligingly lit a flame. Suki snorted.

“You can’t take yourself hostage!” Sokka protested.

“I think I just did.” She smiled. The expression dropped as she continued to look at him. She stepped off the gondola for a moment, just two quick steps, and then she was kissing him so briefly he didn’t have the chance to kiss her back. Her lips moved to his ear, her breath warm over his skin.

“You really want to leave those two unsupervised? I’ll be in touch. Mai and Ty Lee will protect me.”

“You can see why that wouldn’t reassure me,” he whispered back.

They’d had this conversation once before, under moonlight at the Serpent’s Pass. “I can take care of myself, remember? You can’t keep me away from every danger. I hear that kind of thinking got Mai’s boyfriend in trouble, too.”

“Who’s her boyfriend?” Sokka asked, curious. Curious became worried at her silent smirk. “Who’s her boyfriend?”

Suki was still grinning as she stepped back into the gondola. She blew him another kiss as the door closed.

From the landing, they could see the smoke of a Fire Nation ship leaving dock, and a red war balloon rising. 

Captain Izumi turned to her second, and bowed. 

The woman bowed back.

“Captain Izumi,” she said, “your actions have become erratic. Until such time as the Fire Lord reinstates you, I am forced to relieve you of command. In the name of Fire Lord Iroh, long may he reign, I place you under arrest for treason to the throne.”

Treason to the throne, not to the Fire Nation. Sokka knew the difference, now.

So did Captain Izumi. Of the two of them, it had taken her far longer to learn.