Chapter Text
Zuko started running at the first roar. When the cloudless clifftop developed a dragon-filled lightning storm, he ran faster. He reached the cave just in time to find a wall of moving red scales blocking his way into the tunnel. And they kept blocking his way. For awhile, while he bounced on his heels and his new burns stung from sweat and the adrenaline made everything seem to move even slower. Dragons were really, really,
really, really,
really long.
Finally, finally, its tufted tail slipped past. Zuko leaned into the tunnel, and called down.
“Excuse me. Is my sister with you?”
The red dragon, after a slithering-scrapping pause where it was presumably turning its whole body around, stuck its head back into the tunnel below. And let it thump-drop against the stone as it stared up at him. It looked… tired, maybe?
“Is… that a no?”
It raised one whisker and pointed, laconically, further up the tunnel.
“Okay. Uh. Thanks?”
The dragon slid back out of sight. Zuko started climbing. It got steeper and steeper, until he was scrabble-climbing in a way that probably wasn’t the best for his new injuries, or the newer bruises he was acquiring on his knees. And then it got steeper, and he was sliding back down almost as fast as he was climbing up, but almost meant he would still make it if he just kept trying—
There was a huff behind him. And then a very large blue nose was under his legs, pushing him up and out the last few feet into the sunlight.
He would have said thanks, but his sister was kneeling in the center of some weird walkway and she was crying, so he hit the ground running instead.
“Azula! Are you all right?” He stopped short of touching her, but well within big-brother-fretting distance.
She did not look all right, but she didn’t not look all right. She was a little singed at the edges, and her hair was a wind-blown staticy mess he wasn’t going to comment on because he might have lost his fear of death but he hadn’t lost his fear of sisters, but he didn’t see anything seriously wrong. She was taking in shaky breaths, and hugging a bag with two suspiciously dragon-egg-sized lumps inside. Which was another thing he wasn’t going to touch, just more metaphorically.
“Are you hurt?” he asked, which was a less complicated question than are you all right. ”We should go before anyone realizes we’re—”
The Avatar landed next to him. Because of course he did.
秋
Aang had done some wooshy air-assisted running up the ridiculously long staircase, which maybe he shouldn’t have, because now Sifu Iroh was pretty far down the steps behind him and Zuko was slipping into a bending stance in front of him. Which, pro: maybe Zuko had his bending back! Seeing dragons should have been good for that, right? But, con: maybe Zuko had his bending back. And Aang was right next to him and Azula, and the last time that had happened had been in Ba Sing Se. Which had, um. Not gone the greatest.
Zuko was slipping into a defensive stance. And Azula still hadn’t gotten up.
Aang settled into a loose defensive stance of his own. Just in case. “You, uh. You don’t look so good.”
“Which of us?” Zuko asked, frowning.
Aang’s gaze flicked between them. “Uh.”
Azula laughed. It was a short, sharp sound, and maybe not actually due to anything funny. Even though she was grinning at him now, like he’d made the best joke, or she was going to eat him. Or both.
Aang shifted towards a more fleeing-ready stance. “Did the dragons give you eggs?”
Her smile dropped into an affronted scowl. “No, I took them.”
“Right,” he said, drawing the sound out.
He could hear Iroh on the stairs behind them, coming closer and closer. And he was apparently in shouting range.
“Zuko!”
秋
Zuko shifted his stance towards Iroh, even though Avatar Aang was closer, and felt himself tense up in exactly the way he shouldn’t before a fight. His heart was doing a thing in his chest, beating so fast it made it hard to breathe, and it was weird that even with how bad it felt it was still better than before Uncle had dethroned him and held him down and made Katara fix him. He didn’t like it, this actual physical feeling that Uncle had been right. It made him sick in a way he couldn’t get out, it was inside him, and he couldn’t be thinking of this right now because Unc— Because Iroh was almost up the stairs, and Shaw still had her head poking out of a tunnel watching them all, and Iroh killed dragons.
“Stop,” Zuko shouted, and… and Uncle did, he stopped on the steps, his hands raised like he was trying to soothe an animal or hug a nephew or—
“Stop,” Zuko said again, drawing himself up. If he could stand between Azula’s fire and a guard at the Boiling Rock, he could stand between Iroh and the dragons here. “You can’t do this.”
“Zuko—” Uncle started.
“They’re not animals, they’re not some symbol of power for you to kill, they’re people. They’re firebenders. Like—” like us, except not like him, not anymore. “They’re our people. Sozin was wrong to start the hunts, and Azulon was wrong to let them continue. You have a chance to stop it, you’re the Fire Lord now—”
“Wait,” Avatar Aang said, “you think Iroh came to kill them?”
“He has before,” Zuko said.
“Oh,” the Avatar smiled, like he was relieved, and dropped his defensive stance entirely, “No he hasn’t! That’s just what he told everyone so they’d leave the Masters alone. We just came to dance!”
“To dance,” Zuko echoed.
“Yeah, like Azula.” The boy grimaced. “…Maybe not exactly like Azula.”
“Don’t be jealous,” Azula said. And she was still kneeling there, still hugging her eggs, and Zuko was getting a little more worried about how much of that lightning had hit her. But he couldn’t actually focus on that right now, because the Avatar was still here and Iroh was still there and he had to keep looking between them, because it was getting harder to remember where he was, because there was a rising white noise in his ears that sounded a lot like going numb.
“You… didn’t kill a dragon,” he said, to Iroh.
Iroh was still on the stairs, still catching his breath from the run up. It must be nice to be able to take full breaths.
“No nephew,” he said. “I did not. I would not.”
“You only told me you did,” Zuko said.
“Zuko,” the Avatar said, “wait—”
Oh. He’d been moving, taking a step back, like he had some kind of plan for what came after that. He needed a plan for what came after that. If Iroh wasn’t here to kill the dragons, if he was just here to… what, dance with them? What did that even…?
If Iroh wasn’t here to hurt them, then the dragons were just more people who didn’t need Zuko’s help to be rescued. Which… meant he could just go. He took in a breath, and let it out, and worked on feeling his arms and legs and the pounding of his heart again. He dropped out of his stance. Stood up straight, and smoothed out his expression, and faced them like a former Fire Lord. He locked eyes with the Avatar.
“My sister and I were just leaving. What cause do you have to detain us? Or does the Avatar obey the Fire Lord’s orders?” He let his face twist into a sneer, like a former Fire Prince. “That would have been useful for my father to know.”
“I—I’m not trying to detain you,” Avatar Aang said, waving his hands. “I just said to wait…”
“Zuko, please,” Iroh said, “can we talk?”
“You can talk from there,” Azula snapped. Because yeah, Iroh’s foot had crept up another step, like he couldn’t physically stop himself from ignoring Zuko’s wishes—
(Like he cared so much he couldn’t stop himself from getting closer—)
Zuko didn’t answer. Which was the only answer he had in him to give.
“Zuko,” Iroh said. “Azula. You must realize what you started, when you left.”
Azula laughed. Whether about being included in Iroh’s words for once, or because her brother very much hadn’t realized the civil war he’d started until he’d had it spelled out for him, Zuko didn’t know.
“I know I am not… I have not been good, for either of you. There is so much more I could have, should have—” Uncle closed his eyes, and drew in a breath. “I am worried for you. For both of you. I think… you need help, even if it is too much to ask that you accept mine. There are other estates you could stay at, if you cannot bear to be in the palace; our family owns land all over the nation. You could go as far as you’d like, anywhere you’d like. But you need doctors, you need to heal, and I fear that if you continue this…”
He did not seem to know how to finish that thought, did not know what this was. To be fair, neither did Zuko. But Iroh wasn’t done talking.
“I know you did not mean to start a war, Zuko. I have had time to review your rulings, everything you did to stop the war, to bring peace to our people and the world. But there are people who want war, people in our own military and the other nations who will restart the hundred year war, others who would see us torn apart from the inside. There are those who would use you and your sister—”
“We’re leaving,” Zuko interrupted. “We’re not trying to start a civil war. I’m not going to lead people against you. We’re just… leaving.”
“That may not be a choice people give you,” Iroh said.
“How would that be any different than with you?” Zuko said.
Azula snorted. She was finally standing, almost lazily, making a show of her lack of concern. Avatar Aang was moving his gaze back and forth between them all, and very much looking like he didn’t want to be in the middle of this. Iroh was… not saying anything. For once.
“You didn’t tell me that dragons were still alive,” Zuko said. “Why not?”
Uncle stayed silent.
“Yeah,” Zuko said. “That’s how I feel about you, too.”
“If you come back,” Avatar Aang put in, hesitantly, “you can help rebuild. I know you care.”
He did care. He couldn’t care. “Are you going to stop us?”
“No,” the Avatar said.
Zuko nodded to him, as close to a bow as he could come. Then he turned his head back to Iroh.
“If you can’t trust me to make decisions away from your sight,” Zuko said, “how could you have ever trusted me as your heir? As Fire Lord? If you’re serious about… About anything. If you actually care. Then try trusting me, for once in your life, and maybe I’ll try trusting you again.”
“Zuko, please,” Iroh said, and he was creeping up the stairs again, he was almost to the top.
“You know what we have that you don’t?” Azula said, hooking her arm through Zuko’s, and grinning down at the Fire Lord. Zuko started to frown, because he didn’t know how dragon eggs were any help right now, even though that was the obvious answer—
“Long legs,” she said.
And then she was running towards the other tunnel, the one without a dragon head sticking out, and she was dragging him with her, and her laughter was bright as lightning.
Iroh raced the last distance up. He wasn’t fast enough. Shaw snaked out of her tunnel to settle on the walkway between them, and Azula and Zuko were in the other tunnel, which had been a pain to go up but on the way down was just a giant dragon-made slide, and—
Zuko was laughing too. Which probably wouldn’t make Uncle think he needed doctors any less, but he didn’t have to care what the Fire Lord thought anymore.
秋
Aang didn’t do anything to stop them. He didn’t want to stop them. Up here, between the dragon’s peaks, he could feel the wind tugging at him, and the way it tugged at his inner flame, too.
Fire was life. Air was freedom. But being the Avatar, that was duty. There was only one Avatar in the whole world, and he’d run away once, he couldn’t again. But maybe Zuko could. Aang didn’t think so, but maybe. As long as he didn’t get trapped in ice, it would probably be fine.
The blue dragon was standing in Iroh’s way, its body draped loosely over the walkway. But it wasn’t Iroh it was looking at. It lowered its head, and reached out a whisker towards him. She reached out a whisker towards him.
We will speak, Avatar, Sifu Shaw said, with a feeling in his mind like scruffing a cub.