Archive of Our Own

Zuko is just minding his own business, in his private office, enjoying a steaming cup of coffee—Uncle forgive him—while viciously correcting his Minister of Agriculture’s work when Pim steps into his office with look number 3.32 on her face.

Zuko narrows his eyes at her. “What have you done now,” he says.

Pim looks down her nose at him with a singular raised eyebrow because she has the facial expression collection of an old man. “Nothing, my Lord,” she says, which makes Zuko immediately wonder then who has because Pim never lies but she does omit truths for entertainment. “I’m here to give you the finished contract.”

Zuko frowns. “What contract?”

Pim—presumed assistant by the public, actual bodyguard—dumps a stack of paper on his desk and then takes a precise step to the left. Zuko frowns harder.

“Careful, my Lord, your face might freeze that way,” Pim says.

“How many times have I told you to call me Zuko,” he says, sighing.

“1,334 times, my Lord,” she says.

Zuko reads the first page. Then he reads the second page and the third and the fourth—“Fucking excuse me?” he says, his voice hitting a register it hadn’t seen since he was thirteen years old and yelling about the Avatar.

She levels look 2.345—two infinitesimal brow twitches—which roughly translates to scandalized glee. “You’re excused, my Lord,” she says primly.

He looks at the paperwork again. “Am I—am I dreaming?” he says. “Am I finally having the stress-induced heart attack Sokka keeps telling me I’m going to have—”

Pim gives him look 1.0—one of the very first he’d catalogued three years ago when she started working for him after Suki returned home, the one that said you are so morbidly fascinating, I’d love to study you under a microscope—and says, “My Lord, you signed this contract yourself a week ago.”

“But I didn’t actually read it,” Zuko bursts out, removing his spectacles—all that fucking late night paperwork is aging him—to pinch the bridge of his nose with his fingers.

Pim’s nostrils flare. “You didn’t—”

“I trusted Uncle’s decision-making! I thought it was—” Zuko cuts himself off, but it’s too late, Pim can practically read his mind at this point in their relationship.

“Did you think—” she starts.

“No?” Zuko tries and then when Pim opens her mouth again, he says, flailing, “No, do not say it, it was bad enough imagining it the first time.”

Pim’s lips spasm. “You imagined—”

“Shhh,” Zuko hisses. Okay, yes, he had—completely misunderstood and thought Uncle wanted to marry Chief Hakoda, but in his defense, High Court syntax is very vague!

Pim actually places a hand over her mouth, which for someone who likes to pretend she has zero emotion is—well, it says things about Zuko’s dignity that he doesn’t want to think about. Zuko collapses into his chair, the back of his head thunking against the head rest. “I signed off on an arranged marriage to Sokka,” he says faintly.

“You did,” Pim agrees.

Zuko sits up so fast he almost falls out of his chair. “I signed off on an arranged marriage to Sokka, and he agreed,” Zuko says, pawing through the paperwork to look at Sokka’s terrible signature—it looks like a five year old signed it. Sokka and Suki had broken up a year ago, and everyone was still waiting for them to get back together so how the fuck did this even happen.

“That he did, my Lord,” Pim says with a quirked eyebrow that articulates my Fire Lord has not changed his clothes in two days because he has been living in his office.

“Pim, I told you I’d change my clothes tonight, I just have a lot of work to do,” he says because he hasn’t slept in two days either or even really eaten—didn’t he have that soup this morning that someone dropped off?—and then he realizes that there are half a dozen dishes stacked around the perimeter of his desk and they’re all full of cold food with one or two bites missing from each dish.

“I believe you, my Lord,” she says.

Zuko glares. “No, you don’t.”

She gives a delicate cough.  “In any case, I think you should sleep before you sign anything else,” she says, shooting a calculated look at his coffee because she’s been on a campaign to make him stop drinking it after the sun sets. “You might sign the Fire Nation over to Master Toph Beifong.”

Zuko blinks. “Do you think she’d take it?”

“No, my Lord,” Pim says, her voice as dry as the Si Wong Desert.

“Ugh,” Zuko says, sinking down into his chair again because his limbs feel like noodles. He presses his fingers into the hinge of his jaw where it aches from clenching it all day. “I honestly thought I was making Uncle happy,” he says, a little miserable.

“I know, my Lord,” Pim says. Then she says, quietly, “Have you ever considered he wants the same happiness for you?”

Zuko looks up at the ceiling, eyes prickling with exhaustion. “He’s done too much for me,” he says finally because it’s easier than saying that he thinks he doesn’t deserve that kind of happiness, not really, not after what he and his family have done to the world.

Pim doesn’t say anything, and he looks up to see her finishing his coffee. His mouth drops open. “Hey! Get your own, that was a special and rare gift from—” Zuko stops, slowly turning red.

“From Sokka?” Pim says, deadpan. “That he sends you weekly because you like it so much?”

“Yes,” Zuko says weakly.

Pim looks at him with considerable pity. “I do not know how you thought that Chief Hakoda of the Southern Water Tribe would want to marry Prince Iroh, Dragon of the West.”

Zuko’s mouth works. “It’s—it was a--a complicated and uh, complex—situation and—” He looks back down at Sokka’s scribble of a signature—Sokka said yes(??)—and then turns his nose up at Pim. “I don’t have to defend myself to you.”

“Of course, my Lord,” Pim says with facial expression 1.0.

Zuko sighs.

#

The truth was Uncle had lulled him into a false sense of security—visiting for a whole two weeks! teaching the kitchen to make his favorite Earth Kingdom desserts! serving him coffee and only looking a little betrayed!—and so he hadn’t realized Uncle was ambushing him with a potential marriage contract until it was too late.

“One has a request to make of the Fire Lord,” Uncle said in perfect High Court, pushing a stack of paper in front of Zuko’s dessert plate.

Zuko froze in the middle of taking a bite of his egg custard tart, blinking, his cheeks stuffed with pastry like a lemur-bat. “What?” he said, getting crumbs everywhere.

Uncle looked like he was experiencing several difficult emotions at once before finally settling on the same expression Mother used to have when Zuko had returned home covered in mud from pretending to be a turtleduck. "Finish chewing, nephew," he suggested.

Zuko squinted down at the first page and its tiny print, making out the words "marriage" and "Chief Hakoda" and then—this was where he started seriously considering throwing himself out of the window—he saw the word “Iroh.” "Oh," he said dumbly, getting more crumbs on the table, and then, "Oh."

Uncle gave him a pointed look. Zuko finished chewing and swallowed--which was difficult because his mouth was suddenly very dry-- and then looked at his coffee, which he had cheerfully drunk without any sense of being led into a trap. Once again, Zuko was outmaneuvered by the Dragon of the West.

Zuko looked back up at Uncle with what Sokka liked to call his “big, wounded deer-rabbit” eyes, which his uncle ignored with the ease of long practice.

“One would be pleased if one considered a marriage contract between one of the Southern Water Tribe and one of the Fire Nation,” Uncle said in High Court and that was when Zuko fully realized this wasn’t a joke, and he was actually going to have to do—something about this.

“One would uh, consider this…request?” Zuko said, voice going up at the end because his High Court still sucked even after all these years of constantly negotiating contracts with Fire Nation nobility.

“One is grateful for one’s consideration,” Uncle said, long-suffering.

“One is wondering—wondering how--” Zuko opened and closed his mouth several times but could not think of any more words. “How?” he said plaintively. 

“One must seize happiness where one can,” Uncle said. “One of the Fire Nation has long been companions with one of the Southern Water Tribe; this one of the Fire Nation has also long held feelings for—"

“One has?” Zuko blurted out because when had Uncle had time to develop feelings when he lived in the Earth Kingdom and Chief Hakoda lived at the South Pole?!

Uncle breathed out in such a controlled way that it could not be called a sigh, but Zuko knew that it secretly was. “One of the Fire Nation has long exchanged letters and gifts with one of the Southern Water Tribe.”

“Gifts?” Zuko said weakly.

“This one of the Fire Nation has received hand-carved hair pieces and jewelry, among other objects; and this one of the Fire Nation has gifted that one of the Southern Water Tribe with specially-made knives and Fire Nation delicacies,” Uncle said, taking a fortifying sip of tea.

“But isn’t—isn’t that one of the Fire Nation so much older?” Zuko said, unable to help himself.

Iroh frowned. “The difference in ages between this one of the Fire Nation and that one of the Southern Water Tribe is trivial.”

Zuko stared at him. “But—this one of the Fire Nation is so much more…experienced?” Zuko said finally.

“One needn’t be ashamed; one’s body is one’s own, and if that one of the Southern Water Tribe has said anything to the contrary, this one of the Fire Nation will have a necessary conversation with that one of the Southern Water Tribe,” Uncle said, severe.

“What is one—” Zuko started to say and then felt his face flame because High Court had ten million different words for every concept, and he had used the seventh meaning for experience instead of the third and now he was discussing his Uncle’s sex life.  “Of course not, that one of the Southern Water Tribe has uh, the utmost respect for this one—that one?—of the Fire Nation,” he said hurriedly.

“One also needn’t be embarrassed of any questions one might have. If one wishes for advice, one will—of course—provide any necessary answers,” Uncle said.

“No, no, that won’t be—necessary,” Zuko said in a highly strained voice, fisting his hands in his hair. After all, now that he thought about it, he didn’t actually have any idea how old Chief Hakoda was—maybe he had a very nice skin care routine. Zuko tried to think about his Uncle and Chief Hakoda interacting in any way beyond small talk—long walks on the beach? Uncle pouring Chief Hakoda’s favorite tea? Chief Hakoda…holding his Uncle’s hand?—aaaand that was as far as Zuko could bring himself in imagining his Uncle’s love life.

“This one of the Fire Nation has long loved that one of the Southern Water Tribe,” Uncle said, interrupting Zuko’s increasing consideration of the open window. “What is the obstacle?”

Zuko looked at his Uncle’s solemn face and immediately felt intense shame for not taking his Uncle’s request seriously. After everything Uncle had done for him—years and years of unconditional care even when Zuko had been furious and mean and unloveable—and Zuko was treating Uncle’s feelings like a joke. If this would make Uncle happy, then he would support him.

Even if that meant that Zuko himself could never have the person he wanted.

It didn’t matter anyway—this marriage contract was only the period to the sentence of Sokka not loving him back. Zuko inhaled, a deep aching hurt traveling from his stomach to his throat to his mouth, and when he exhaled, he could still taste it on his tongue. Uncle waited, as consistent and patient as a river. “This endeavor has my blessing,” Zuko said finally.

Uncle beamed. “That is wonderful,” he said. “I am so happy.”

Zuko made himself smile back; his Uncle’s happiness was so painful and so satisfying. “Well, if that’s all,” Zuko started to say.

“Oh, but we must discuss the dowry!” Uncle protested.

Zuko made the sound of a pygmy-puma hacking up a hairball. “You can send whatever you want,” Zuko said quickly. “I’ve uh—I’ve gotta go?”

“But you have to—”

“Um, I think I hear Minister Hassaku calling me?” Zuko said and when Uncle opened his mouth again, Zuko turned toward the door and said loudly, “Yes, Minister Hassaku? You wanted to discuss rice yields? I would love to!” before high-tailing it out of there. He trusted Uncle to know his own worth, but he did not trust himself to keep it together one moment longer.

To that end, he walked to the hawk roosting tower for both privacy to have an emotional meltdown and also to send a message.

Dear prospective cousins, Katara and Sokka, Zuko wrote after silently screaming and confessing his feelings to the birds for thirty minutes. I am writing to congratulate you on your father’s behalf—I hope that—and here, Zuko paused because of course Uncle as a step-father would be excellent, and he wished to extol his Uncle’s many virtues. But he also found himself confoundingly jealous on two fronts—the Sokka front, of course, but also Uncle was his father-figure, Sokka and Katara already had one good dad and Zuko did not want to share—and he sat back and looked at Hawky, who was impatiently waiting to take his message back to Sokka. “What would you do?” he asked Hawky. Hawky looked at him judgmentally and then hopped toward the open window. “Okay, fine, I get your point,” Zuko said, and finished his letter with I hope that we can celebrate together soon and then signed off.

After further consideration, he added a post-script that requested more of that prune alcohol that always knocked him on his ass because he was going to need it to get through the wedding planning.

#

Zuko takes a sip of the weird prune alcohol Sokka had sent him and considers his current state of affairs—that is to say, his unplanned engagement to Sokka and also the fact that Ty Lee had chi-blocked him into submission for “party time” with her and Mai.

“I have work to do,” he had tried as Ty Lee flipped him over her shoulder and carried him from his office.

Mai snorted. “You’re the Fire Lord,” she pointed out. “You’ll always have work to do.”

“You never have fun with us anymore,” Ty Lee said sadly.

“Well,” Zuko said, considering the backs of Ty Lee’s legs. “I don’t have a choice now.”

“That’s true!” Ty Lee had said, sounding more cheerful.

Now he lies propped on Mai’s couch, Ty Lee perched on his knees, while Mai adjusts the gramophone to play something in the new ryukoka style that Advisor Yabuki keeps trying to play for him. Ty Lee had lit like fifteen torches by hand so that Mai’s sitting room glows warmly, insulating them from the late night darkness. Ty Lee also poured two snifter glasses of the horrible but very effective prune alcohol—Mai had refused, instead drinking something golden that Zuko also wished he was drinking—and has instituted a rule that Zuko has to drink every time he talks about work.

Needless to say, Zuko is getting very drunk.

“What game should we play?” Ty Lee says, clapping her hands together.

“The paperwork game,” Zuko suggests.

“Drink!” Ty Lee says in a sing-song voice, and Zuko sadly consumes more prune alcohol. “I’m starting to think you actually like prunes.”

“No, he just likes Sokka,” Mai says, dismissive, from where she’s packing the dragon-shaped pipe Zuko had given her for her birthday.

“I do not like Sokka,” Zuko lies, sticking out his lower lip in what he would have called an intimidating scowl but what Sokka called pouting. Mai raises her eyebrows at him.

“No, you looove Sokka,” Ty Lee says, pink-cheeked and grinning.

“Shut up,” Zuko says, scowling.

“What’s the problem?” Ty Lee says, bouncing a little on his knees. Eh, it’s not like he can feel them right now anyway. “You guys are engaged now, aren’t you?”

Mai kicks up her legs on her desk, smoking the Earth Kingdom grass she had Toph send her. “By complete accident,” Mai says, blowing smoke-rings. “You didn’t think Zuko actually used his words to verbally communicate his feelings to another person, did you?”

“That’s very hypocritical of you, Mai,” Zuko says primly.

Ty Lee puts a thoughtful finger against her lips. “I thought maybe Sokka did,” she admits.

Mai gives the tiniest smirk. “He’s even worse. In fact, Zuko—”

“I thought we were going to play a game,” Zuko says quickly before Mai can destroy whatever dignity he has left.

 “Ooh, let’s play the king’s game,” Ty Lee says, eyes sparkling.

“We don’t have enough people,” Zuko says because he hates the king’s game.

“We’ll just take turns,” Ty Lee says. “I elect Mai as the king!”

“You can’t just elect someone—” Zuko starts to say.

“Zuko, did you really think your uncle wanted to marry Chief Hakoda?” Mai says immediately.

“Hey, that’s a question, not an order,” Zuko says, wishing he could cross his arms in order to sulk more thoroughly.

“Zuko, I order you to answer the question,” Mai says easily, settling herself on the other end of the couch and passing the pipe to Ty Lee.

“Ugh,” Zuko says very quietly.

Ty Lee squeals. “They would have been such a cute old people couple!” she says, which makes Zuko die a little on the inside because he knows for a fact that Chief Hakoda is a dad Ty Lee would like to fuck.

“High Court is confusing!” Zuko says when Mai continues to laugh at him with her eyes. Ty Lee pats him on the cheek, and he contemplates biting her.

“I can chi-block your face, Zuko,” Ty Lee says tenderly. Zuko sticks out his tongue at her.

“Ty Lee, I require fruit tarts,” Mai tells her.

“Egg custard tarts too?” Ty Lee says, jumping to her feet. Zuko knew she loved him.

“Fine,” Mai says, imperiously waving a hand. Ty Lee kisses Mai on the tip of her nose before immediately cartwheeling into the corridor to avoid retaliation. Mai narrows her eyes at Zuko instead.

 “What?” Zuko says, narrowing his eyes back.

“Shouldn’t you be happier?” Mai says bluntly.

“What do you mean?” Zuko says.

“You’re like, formally engaged to the love of your life,” Mai says. “What’s your damage, Zuko?”

Zuko makes a face because he doesn’t want to talk about how Sokka’s probably still deeply and irrevocably in love with Suki and how Zuko was a fucking idiot for signing a piece of paper that let everyone know that he wants to be with Sokka forever and ever.

“He signed a marriage contract,” Mai says.

Zuko actually does pout this time. “It was probably on accident.”

“How do you sign a marriage contract on accident?” Mai says, taking a drag from her pipe. “Wouldn’t you have to read—you didn’t read it, did you.”

“I trusted Uncle to do what he thought was best,” Zuko says for the second time, putting his nose in the air to signal dignity and regal judgment.

“You’re so dumb, Zuko,” Mai says but she comes and kneels next to him to let him smoke her pipe anyway.

By the time Ty Lee returns, things have devolved into Mai holding his face in her hands and declaring, “If he breaks your heart, I’ll introduce him to all of my knives,” and Zuko is so touched by this that he reaches up to hold her face in solidarity.

“Are we beating up Sokka,” Ty Lee says way too cheerfully, setting the tarts down on the little table next to the couch.

“Only if he hurts Zuko,” Mai says seriously, her delicately flushed cheeks the only sign of how much alcohol she had actually drunk. Zuko loves her so much in that moment that it puts pressure on his stomach and makes him kind of want to throw up.

Zuko is used to being left by the people he loves best: his mother, his father, his sister. But Mai has never left him. Even after they broke up—Zuko’s massive trust issues, her difficulty with being emotionally available—Mai had doggedly worked to remain his best friend. Ironically, it was that which finally allowed Zuko to fully trust that she wouldn’t leave him. “But I love him,” Zuko says sadly.

“I know,” Mai tells him, patting him once on the cheek before returning to the other side of the couch to land half on top of Ty Lee.

Ty Lee tangles all of their legs together, which is comforting and sad all at the same time because Zuko knows in some other brighter timeline, Azula would be with them, lying next to him and complaining about the quality of the prune alcohol while also drinking the rest of them under the table. Instead, after deeply hurting everyone she loves, she is in the slow process of recovering from severe emotional illness and has a permanent guard to prevent her from hurting someone else or herself.

“You’re being sad about Azula again,” Ty Lee says, kicking his leg and also being totally hypocritical because he knows how emotionally wrecked Ty Lee is over Azula. “Stop it, this is supposed to be fun.”

“What else am I supposed to think about,” he grumbles. “The fact that Sokka hasn’t come to see me in a year?”

“He’s just busy being Chief-in-Training,” Ty Lee says, kicking his leg again. “You haven’t gone to see him either.”

“He used to make time to see me,” he says, sitting up—yes, chi unblocked!—so he can better win this argument and also avoid being kicked. “He hasn’t been to any of this year’s So-your-Fire-Lord-was-almost-assassinated-again workshops!”

Mai stares at him with incredible disgust.

“Hey, Sokka’s the one who came up with it,” Zuko says, crossing his arms; Suki leads them, and Ty Lee is totally teacher’s pet.

“Have you ever considered that as the future Chief of his tribe, he’s just as busy as you are?” Ty Lee says in a reasonable tone.

“But he didn’t even come to my birthday party,” Zuko says, flopping back onto the couch.

“You don’t even like having a party for your birthday,” Mai points out. Zuko sniffs, feeling embarrassingly like he might cry—which, like, he has definitely drunk way too much—and Mai sighs. “Well, unlike you, Sokka is Mr. Plan, and he’s not going to sign a document without reading it.”

Ty Lee gasps. “You didn’t read your own marriage contract?” she says and then cackles loudly.

Zuko tries to kick her, but she is too fast and somehow he ends up with an egg custard tart in his mouth. “Mmmpfflp,” he argues.

“I know, but Sokka is actually super responsible,” Ty Lee says. “He’s not going to do something he doesn’t want to do.”

Zuko swallows. “But he hasn’t even sent me a letter about—about—” Zuko flounders.

“Well, have you sent him a letter?” Ty Lee inquires and jumps up to do something to Mai’s liquor cabinet.

“No,” Mai answers for him and then takes a closer look at Zuko’s face. “Well, he sent a stupid letter,” she concludes. Zuko sulks.

“Okay, try this,” Ty Lee says, handing Zuko a glass of…something. “And eat another tart, the chef told me you haven’t been finishing any of your meals.”

“This is…actually good,” Zuko says, blinking in surprise after trying the incredibly dubious drink Ty Lee was making for all of them. “Hey wait, weren’t we playing a game?”

“You hate the king’s game,” Mai points out.

“It’s not as much fun when you’re the actual Fire Lord,” Zuko agrees, taking another drag from the pipe when it gets passed around to him. “Do you—do you think Sokka actually likes me?”

Mai looks at him for a long time. “He would be an idiot if he didn’t,” she says and Ty Lee is nodding firmly. Zuko smiles foolishly.

“I love you guys,” he says earnestly.

“You are so high, Zuko,” Ty Lee says lovingly. “Also, it’s my turn as king!”

The rest of the night deteriorates into name-calling and floor-brawling with Mai as referee—Ty Lee had informed him that he is automatically disqualified from being king, citing his Fire Lordness—but it’s still the most fun Zuko’s had in a really long time.

#

Zuko spends the next two days feeling good—too good, actually, it’s weird and uncomfortable and makes him feel kind of nauseous? Which is probably why he’s almost relieved when someone tries to assassinate him again.

Pim is off-duty, the other guards are incapacitated, and Zuko tries to take the fight to the roof but he trips over his spirits-damned robe and falls out of his window instead. This draws Pim’s attention—her rooms are immediately underneath Zuko’s—and she jumps out of her window onto the roof to successfully defend him from the assassin until the assassin decides to cut and run.

“My dignity is broken,” Zuko says when Pim comes to visit him later in the infirmary because Zuko broke his fucking arm because he tripped over his fucking robe.

“You never had any dignity to begin with, my Lord,” Pim says kindly.

Zuko groans.

When Zuko is finally able to liberate himself from the infirmary for breakfast, he finds Toph, Suki, Aang, Katara, and—Zuko’s poor stressed heart—Sokka, already serving themselves at his table on the veranda. Zuko’s place setting has this morning’s notes and his reading spectacles, and he sits down with a goofy smile on his face that’s probably at least partially due to the painkillers he’s been prescribed.

“Zuko!” they chorus and okay, maybe he’s also kind of delighted to see his friends.

“Hi,” he says, face burning from all of the attention and also the vulnerability of experiencing happiness in front of other people.

“Look, as much as I enjoy the ritual of our Zuko-almost-got-assassinated-again visits,” Toph says, shaking her chopsticks at him, “you know you can just like, invite us for breakfast without the attempted murder, right? Like, I know you miss us a lot, but this is a little much.”

“Toph!” Katara says. “Stop joking around, this is serious.”

“You know he’s just doing it for the attention,” Toph says, shrugging.

“It’s true,” Zuko agrees. “I don’t get enough attention as the Fire Lord.”

“Aw, Zuko, if you needed more attention, you just had to let us know, you little drama queen, you,” Sokka coos through a bulging mouthful of meat.

“Ew, Sokka,” Katara says, flicking a fleck of stray meat off her nose.

Zuko puts on his spectacles and ignores Sokka’s guffaws. “Well, it’s not like Pim tells you every time I almost get assassinated,” Zuko says, frowning down at Minister Hassaku’s notes. “You’d be here like, every month.”

“What?” Sokka says, spitting out his mouthful of meat, but no one even seems to notice because they’re too busy staring at him.

“What?” Zuko says, looking back.

“How—how many attempts have there been?” Aang says, looking horrified.

“This year?” Zuko says, thoughtful. “….nine, maybe?”

“Twelve, my Lord,” Pim says, dropping off more notes with Minister Hassaku’s handwriting. Zuko smothers a sigh.

“But it’s only spring,” Aang says.

“The New Ozai Society has been particularly persistent,” Zuko admits.

“Why didn’t you tell us?” Sokka says, voice rising.

Zuko shrugs. “There’s not anything you can really do,” he says. “It’d just worry you for no reason.”

Sokka looks outraged, mouth opening and closing with no words coming out.

“Pim, I thought—as your consultant—you were going to keep me informed about any security breaches,” Suki says, her elbows on the table, chin propped on her hands in prime interrogation position.

“My Lord ordered me to prioritize only the major security breaches,” Pim says, monotone, but slanting look 1.45—I told you so—at Zuko before swiping his coffee out of his hands. “My Lord, the physician said no coffee while taking the prescribed pain medications.”

“Coffee is life,” Zuko says sadly.

“And that’s another thing,” Sokka says, pointing at Pim. “How come you tell Suki and not me about the assassination attempts? I’m the plan guy!”

“You gave him a caffeine addiction,” Pim says severely. “Suki used to be Head of Security.”

“Which is how I know small security breaches lead to big security breaches,” Suki says in a singsong voice, which is disconcerting because her mouth is smiling but her eyebrows are angry.

Katara pours Zuko an herbal tea that smells like cabbage. Zuko frowns at her. “Hydration, Zuko,” Katara says warningly.

“You also haven’t come to any of the workshops in like, a year, Sokka,” Toph points out.

“Well, excuse me for living at the South Pole,” Sokka says, crossing his arms.

“You’re excused,” Toph says sweetly.

“What’s the New Ozai Society upset about now?” Aang says, expertly interrupting before Toph can escalate to literally burying Sokka in the ground, and then Aang steals Zuko’s teacup. “Katara, this tea is good!” he adds because he’s a suck-up.

“What aren’t they upset about?” Zuko says, leaning back in his chair. “We’re still paying reparations almost ten years after the war, we’ve decreased weapons production again to give that funding to the public schools, the engagement—"

Sokka spits out his water, and Katara shields herself and no one else from the splash zone. Aang looks at her, betrayed. “Every water bender for themselves,” she tells him. “Also, you’re dripping on the table.”

“But the engagement was a total accident!” Sokka says loudly. “Someone who will remain nameless glued two pieces of paper together as a joke—”

“I was trying to cheer you up!” Aang protests

“—because this nameless person,” Sokka says, glaring at Aang, “is an incurable troublemaker.”

“Says the fellow troublemaker,” Katara coughs and then when Sokka transfers his glare to her, she says, “Who said that? Sokka, I think that tiny tree over there is talking about you.”

“An accident?” Zuko says weakly, feeling his vision start to blur at the edges.

“Totally an accident!” Sokka says, waving his arms wildly. “If I had known, I wouldn’t have signed it! I wouldn’t marry you in a million years!” Sokka yelps because Katara has elbowed him in the ribs. “I mean, uh, you’re perfectly nice, but—”

Zuko had forgotten it was possible to feel this crushed.

“—you’re my friend? And the Fire Lord? It’d be weird, that’s all I’m saying!”

Zuko turns big, wounded deer-rabbit eyes on Pim.

“His Lordship thought it was a marriage contract between Prince Iroh and Chief Hakoda of the Southern Water Tribe,” Pim says immediately because Zuko forgot that asking Pim for help always came at the cost of his dignity. There is absolute silence as everyone processes this until Toph starts laughing so hard that juice comes out of her nose.

“But how?” Sokka says, bewildered.

Zuko buries his face in his hands.

“It was the High Court, wasn’t it,” Suki says because she was there when Zuko accidentally implied Lord Ichi had sexual relations with a Komodo rhino in the middle of livestock negotiations.

“Yes, it was,” Pim says while subtly positioning herself near the only exit point in the veranda.

Zuko glares at her, and she raises a single eyebrow to remind him that if he runs away now, Sokka may actually start to guess Zuko is secretly stupidly in love with him. Spirits, Zuko was such a fool for getting his hopes up in the first place—Sokka loving him back was a dumb childish dream that he should have put away with all the others: his mother staying with him at the palace once he found her again, his father telling him what a good leader he is, Azula’s full emotional recovery—

“Why—why would you sign off on that, Zuko?” Katara says.

“It seemed important to Uncle,” Zuko says miserably.

“And what about my dad?” Katara says, frowning. “While he is older, he’s still considered one of the most eligible bachelors by the rest of the Southern Water Tribe—Sokka held a poll last winter—and he has a right to choose—"

“I thought they were in love, okay!” Zuko says and tries to throw up his hands before remembering that one of his arms is broken.

“That’s so sweet, Zuko,” Aang says earnestly. “There’s no age limit on love! And Bumi says that your sex drive doesn’t go away as you get older, but like to be honest, he was being kind of redundant because I had just walked in on him and—”

Sokka claps a hand over Aang’s mouth. “Someone please pass me the brain bleach,” he says faintly.

“I could knock you out a little,” Toph offers.

“….no thank you, Toph,” Sokka says.

“Actually, can I take you up on that, Toph?” Zuko says.

“Sure,” Toph says cheerfully.

Katara pinches the bridge of her nose. “Zuko, no, you have enough injuries, please just drink your tea,” she says.

“Well,” Sokka says, removing his hand from Aang’s mouth, “I guess that explains the letter Zuko sent me.”

“What letter?” Katara says, watching Zuko like an eagle-hawk as he drinks the tea.

“Dear prospective cousins, Katara and Sokka,” Sokka intones, twirling an imaginary mustache.

Katara gasps and then starts snickering. “Why didn’t you tell me?”

“I just assumed Zuko sent it after getting high with Mai and Ty Lee,” Sokka says, shrugging.

“This tea is disgusting,” Zuko says loudly.

“Well, it’s nutrient-dense with calming properties,” Katara says. “I brought it just for you.”

“Is it full of poison?” Zuko says hopefully because this whole morning has been an exercise in emotional ignominy.

“Hey, don’t even joke about that,” Sokka says, suddenly serious. “Pim told us the assassin managed to get into your private rooms this time.”

Zuko downs the last of the tea because it’s too hard to continue looking at Sokka’s deeply concerned face with the confirmation that Sokka doesn’t actually love him. “I guess even highly incompetent assassins can improve with practice,” Zuko says finally. “Is it weird that I’m actually kind of proud of them?”

“Yes, why don’t you tell them that on their quarterly performance review,” Sokka says.

Zuko frowns. “I wouldn’t even know how to contact them—”

“I was being sarcastic!” Sokka says, smacking his hand to his forehead. “How can you be so—so—”

“Blasé?” Aang suggests. “Flippant? Insouciant?”

“All of the above!” Sokka says. “Are you taking this seriously at all?”

“Well,” Zuko says slowly. “It’s actually a lot less stressful than when my father and sister were trying to kill me? Like, it’s just nice that my family isn’t involved.”

Everyone stares at him in silence.

“What?” Zuko says. “What’d I say?”

“Is that—is that really your stress baseline?” Katara says faintly.

“Yes?” Zuko says and then looks at Pim for the correct way to respond, but she is too busy exchanging coded facial expressions with Suki.

“That’s it, I’m staying here until all of the people currently trying to kill you are caught,” Sokka declares.

“That may…take a while,” Zuko says, counting up the number of suspects on his fingers and then his toes.

“I don’t care how long it takes,” Sokka says, frowning. “This is unacceptable. Also, don’t think I haven’t noticed you haven’t eaten anything since sitting down.”

 Zuko is shaking his head. “Sokka, absolutely not. I can’t have you be their new target.” He takes a controlled breath, ignoring how he aches with a carefully repressed longing. “We need to call off the engagement.”  

“What? No,” Sokka says, looking confused. Zuko feels his heart jump into his throat for a brief moment and then Sokka adds, “It’ll be part of the bait to draw the assassins out!”

Spirits, Ozai was right, Zuko really doesn’t learn. “Look, even if your safety wasn’t the foremost priority—which it is—what about your responsibilities at the South Pole?” he says.

“Oh, don’t worry about it,” Sokka says, waving a hand. “Dad and Katara kind of…decided I needed to go on vacation anyway, so Dad delegated all of it before I left.”

Zuko stares at him. “This is how you want to spend your vacation?” he says.

“Uh, yes?” Sokka says, like it’s obvious that he should want to spend his time solving assassination plots and pretending to be engaged. “Hey, eat your rice.”

Zuko opens his mouth to argue, but Toph says, “I call securing the perimeter!”

And after that, breakfast deteriorates into a cacophony of arguments as Sokka tries to talk to Pim about security while Pim reminds Toph of Fire Nation building regulations while Aang and Katara throw noble names back and forth rapid-fire with Suki as referee. Pim and Zuko had already decided on Plan 4.5 in dealing with the apprehension of the would-be assassin(s), but it…probably wouldn’t hurt to have everyone else help with the ongoing and long-term security problems.

Zuko sighs and eats his rice.

#

“I really think you should return home,” Zuko says to Sokka for the thousandth time as they walk to Caldera University from the food market where Sokka had insisted on sampling every single stall.

 “Geez, Zuko, you’re worrying too much,” Sokka says, popping fireflakes into his mouth and throwing his arm around Zuko’s shoulders. “If you’re not careful, I’m gonna start to think you don’t actually want me here.” Sokka looks at him with big, sad blue eyes, and Zuko actually—literally feels his heart melt, which is vaguely concerning because his heart never fully recovered from being shot through with lightning.

“Of course I want you here,” Zuko says helplessly.

“That’s what I thought,” Sokka says, squeezing Zuko tighter into his side. “Fiancé.”

“Do you have to keep saying it like that,” Zuko says faintly as Sokka drags him inside the university for a lecture on mechanical engineering.

“Yep,” Sokka chirps before unsubtly looking around for assassins with Zuko’s face practically tucked into Sokka’s neck. Spirits, Sokka smells so fucking good—cedarwood, orange blossom, vetiver—and Zuko refuses to look at Pim because his knees feel kind of shaky and Pim would know.  

The problem is that Sokka is clearly having the time of his life.

Zuko doesn’t give a fuck about mechanical engineering, but Sokka is furiously taking notes in between drilling the professor with questions so rigorous that by the end of the three-hour lecture, the professor looks emotionally broken and also in love and has to hold onto his lectern for emotional support.

“That’s—how did we never think of that?” the professor says. “So simple, so efficient—”

“I know, right,” Sokka says, smirking. “Boom, 110% increase in effectiveness.”

“And the liveloads—" one of the teaching assistants starts, breathless, wide-eyed.

“—are accounted for by the flibiter,” Sokka says, self-satisfied, and Zuko has no idea what he just said—flibbitenr? Flibbitegig? Fliberocci?—but the architecture of his smile is a revelation and Zuko is so embarrassingly affected.

After that, Zuko has to hustle Sokka out of the lecture hall because the professor and his two teaching assistants look ready to eat Sokka alive in order to fully absorb his secret power(s). “Oh, come on,” Sokka complains, as Zuko steers him down the street to his favorite little noodle soup place. “We were just getting to the good part!”

“Yeah, the good part where they get your expertise for free,” Zuko retorts, kneading his fingers a little into Sokka’s broad shoulders, just to—just to feel the warmth, the lack of give in finely sculpted musculature. “You gotta charge for that shit.”

“You think I’m an expert?” Sokka says, twisting his upper body around like a demented owl-cat and beaming goofily.

“Mlmph?” Zuko says, forgetting how to form words with how suddenly close Sokka’s face is to his.

“Yes,” Pim translates in such a pitch-perfect imitation that for a very weird moment Zuko wonders if Pim can steal voices.

“That’s really creepy,” Sokka says.

“I do my best,” Pim says, toneless, but directs facial expression 3.32 at Zuko in a very clear sign that dinner is going to be an exercise in mortification.

The noodle soup shop is always difficult for Zuko to find, mostly because it’s literally a hole in the wall that Azula found on her quest to find the most perfect noodle. It’s located in an unremarkable alley with a red curtain draped over the entrance, no signage, and a very, very long line of people winding around the block.

Nozi—the owner—hangs out of the window above the shop. “Hey, where’s Miss Anger Problems?” she says.

“At home,” Zuko says grimly because he can’t say that at this very moment Azula is probably choosing to make the thousandth iteration of a macaroni-art Ozai with her art counselor; Azula gives every single one to Zuko—they range from horrifyingly perfect likenesses to actual defacement—and he is starting to become legitimately worried that he will have to eventually dedicate an entire room to them. Azula has zero natural talent in the fine arts, and her first attempt is still his favorite because she tried so fucking hard for months and it still looks like a three-year-old made it. He remembers Azula at three: horrendous temper tantrums, unremitting clinginess.

“Aw,” Nozi says. “Last time she literally threatened to have my shop reconstructed in the dead of night, and she still hasn’t followed through.”

“But you don’t want her to reconstruct it,” Zuko says.

“I know!” Nozi says, flailing. “That’s the game!”

Zuko doesn’t pretend to understand their dynamic, but he thinks it’s good for Azula to have a friend; even if friendship to Azula currently means writing anonymous and furious food reviews to the local newspaper.

“Your sister comes here?” Sokka says, looking like he’s about to have an aneurysm. “To this shithole?”

“Hey!” Nozi says, but Zuko ignores her because the entirety of her acquaintance with Azula has been a pissing match over renovation with Nozi refusing to even accept money for new and unchipped bowls.

Zuko shrugs. “She says Nozi serves the best noodles in the city.”

Sokka stares at him. “She did not.”

“Well, okay, she mostly seethes in silence, but she eats like three bowls of it at a time,” Zuko admits.

“…wow,” Sokka says.

“Just come in, Okem will seat you,” Nozi says, cheerful, while everyone else in line glares up at her.

Okem does not seat them at Zuko and Azula’s usual table—which is tiny and crammed next to the hot stove where Nozi cooks—but at a slightly larger table underneath a tiny series of lit torches. Sokka’s legs are almost bunched up to his chin, and Zuko and Pim—who are exactly the same height—aren’t faring much better.

“It is ridiculously hot in here,” Sokka says, fanning himself and looking longingly at the only window in the shop, which is small and level to Zuko and Azula’s usual table.

“The steam-powered fan was the one thing I backed Azula on,” Zuko says mournfully. “But Nozi refused.”

“Professor Xong’s got some interesting ideas about steam power,” Sokka says, perking up. Before receiving notice of the assassination attempt, Sokka had parked himself at Ba Sing Se University to terrorize the professors. “Less…interesting ideas about cuisine.”

“You ate the beetle-hornets, didn’t you,” Pim says.

“I have a natural curiosity,” Sokka says sadly.

Pim looks directly at Zuko, the corners of her mouth curling up.

“No,” Zuko says immediately.

Pim opens her mouth.

“No,” Zuko says.

Pim closes her mouth.

“But now I want to know,” Sokka says, resting his chin on his interlaced fingers, elbows propped on the table.

“It would be a shame to disappoint your guest,” Pim says.

“Yeah,” Sokka says, smug. “Not just your guest! Your fiancé.”

“Ugh,” Zuko says very quietly.

#

Two years ago, Zuko had decided it would be prudent to take a tour of the Earth Kingdom to speak with all of the notable officials in order to update the Fire Nation’s plan for long-term reparations, among many other topics related to foreign affairs. He took a small retinue and felt it was a sign of all the progress the Fire Nation had made that he could leave his uncle as regent without public concern that the Dragon of the West would conduct a coup.

The morning after they arrived in Ba Sing Se, Pim walked into Zuko’s room to find him being very sick over the rim of the window.

“I’ll get the physician,” Pim said immediately because Zuko had been poisoned enough times by political assassins to have an entire protocol for it.

“Don’t worry, it’s just food poisoning,” Zuko said, looking absolutely wrecked.

Pim stilled, narrowing her eyes. “What did you eat?”

Zuko narrowed his eyes back, which wasn’t very threatening because he looked like a baby polar bear dog. “…I don’t want to tell you.”

Pim actually pinched the bridge of her nose with her fingers. “Tell me you didn’t.”

“I didn’t?” Zuko said, clearly lying.

“I told you multiple times before dinner that under no circumstance should you eat the beetle-hornets,” Pim said. “I told you in horrifying and uncomfortable detail what happens to the non-locals that eat beetle-hornets. And what did you do? You immediately ate the beetle-hornets!”

“They were just so excited about our arrival!” Zuko burst out. “I thought they would feel—extremely negatively about us being there? Which obviously makes complete sense, but—they were just so—so earnest about feeding me, and asking me all my opinions about Earth Kingdom food, and they were just so nice…”

Pim stared at him, appalled. “My Lord.”

“They can never know, Pim,” Zuko said severely, clinging to a clothing stand for balance. “At this point, I would rather die than offend them.”

Pim let out one of those long, controlled sighs that she had seen Prince Iroh use many times in Fire Lord Zuko’s presence. “...you could have at least used a trash can,” Pim said.

“But then the servants would know that I got sick from their food,” Zuko said, gesturing wildly with his hands and almost falling face-first on the floor.

“So you just…vomited out of the window without looking to see if anyone was down there?” Pim said.

“I did hear someone scream, ‘my cabbages’” Zuko admitted.

Pim then leaned out the window to see an abandoned cabbage cart that had indeed been unfortunate collateral damage to international negotiations. “Here’s what’s going to happen,” Pim said after a long while of contemplating her life. “We are going to switch rooms with the Earth Kingdom official that Master Katara always complains about, and then you will never eat beetle-hornets again, no matter how nice people are to you.”

“…I need to puke,” Zuko said finally.

Pim looked down at the cabbage cart again. “Well,” she said. “You can’t make it any worse.”

Later, General Fong and the cabbage merchant got into a hugely embarrassing slap fight in the street, and it was honestly difficult to tell what pained General Fong more: his participation in a slap fight in the first place or his losing said slap fight. Either way, the King still likes to bring it up—hand on chin, looking out into the faraway distance, as if it has just occurred to him—whenever General Fong is making an ass of himself, which is frequently.

#

“…that’s why Fong tried to beat up the cabbage guy?” Sokka says in gleeful disbelief.

“You can never tell anyone,” Zuko says, emphatic.

“I would never,” Sokka scoffs, but Zuko raises his eyebrow because Sokka is one of the most incurable gossips he has ever met. “Hey, I’m not gonna rat you out to the Earth Kingdom nobility. Especially not like, about puke cabbages.”

Zuko is trying to kick Sokka under the table on principle when Okem arrives with plates of food: tiny dumplings, cold piles of noodles, small and very precisely cut pieces of fish.

“But we didn’t order yet,” Sokka says, frowning.

“You’ll eat what Nozi gives you,” Okem says, so completely lacking in emotion that it sounds like he’s dying on the inside. Sokka opens his mouth, squints, and then shuts his mouth. Okem produces a metal teapot and three tiny cups and pours them boiling hot chrysanthemum tea. Then he trudges off to the next table.

“Is he okay?” Sokka says, turning to Zuko.

“Azula thinks he’s been resurrected from the dead and then possessed by a vengeful spirit,” Zuko says.

“Really?” Sokka says.

“Well, that’s what she says when Okem makes her drink calming tea,” Zuko says, sipping his tea. He wrinkles his nose because it’s over-steeped but also because he hates that he can tell it’s over-steeped.

Sokka gives Zuko a look that he can’t exactly classify but looks similar enough to Pim’s version 1.0 that Zuko feels he can safely ignore it. Zuko lifts a bit of raw, fatty fish with his chopsticks but before he can bring it to his mouth, Sokka whisper-yells, “Zuko, no!” and grabs him by the wrist.

“What?” Zuko says, blinking. Sokka’s palm is callused and warm, and his fingers are so—long and elegant and easily encircle his wrist. Zuko bites his lip.

“What if it’s poisoned?” Sokka says, his eyes darting to where Nozi is stirring soup in a giant metal vat on the stove. “Maybe I should test it—”

“No!” Zuko says, trying to yank his arm away, but Sokka is a lot stronger than he remembers. “Absolutely not, Pim—”

“It’s not poisoned, Sokka,” Pim says, raising her eyebrows at Zuko’s bright red and distressed face. “I was watching the whole time.”

“Oh,” Sokka says, abruptly letting go of Zuko’s wrist. “Good.”

Zuko has to take several calming breaths due to the acute emotional whiplash—Sokka’s hand! On his wrist! Sokka volunteering to eat poisoned food!—before he can eat a tiny dumpling, but Sokka is already in the process of sucking up half of the food on the table.

“Tui and La, this is so fucking good,” Sokka says, holding out his cup to Zuko because he’s a baby and complains that any tea temperature above lukewarm burns his mouth. “When’s the noodle soup?”

Zuko absorbs heat from Sokka’s cup until it’s no longer steaming and then hands it back. “Nozi saves the best for last,” Zuko says.

“I think—I think I’m experiencing actual spiritual enlightenment?” Sokka says when Okem sets down new plates of clams, steamed turtle-crabs, and grilled unagi of such tenderness that Zuko is regularly willing to fight Azula over who gets the last one.

Nozi delivers the ceramic carafe of incredibly expensive plum liquor to their table personally.

“No, Nozi, this is too much,” Zuko argues even as she’s efficiently pouring liquor into bowls.

“Nothing’s too much for my Fire Lord’s—” and here she mouths the word engagement before clapping her hands together and beaming.

Zuko sighs. “Azula told you,” he says, resigned. Zuko had thus far managed to stop Sokka from pushing forward with a formal proclamation (“You don’t want the assassins to think you’re ashamed of me, do you?”), but it was only a matter of time before gossip infiltrated the whole of the Capital City—Sokka’s secondary plan. The advisors were already up Zuko’s ass about it, and he honestly didn’t know how to explain that the entire engagement was a horrible mistake, but it was a horrible mistake they were going with because Sokka had a plan to catch the assassin with it—and Zuko had negative ability to say no to Sokka.

“Of course!” Nozi says. “She wants to replace my stove as a wedding gift to you.”

“And how is that a wedding gift to me?” Zuko says, long-suffering.

“She says the decrepit and actively-rusting appearance of my stove offends her pure and virginal eyes,” Nozi says. “But…I guess that means more noodles for you? In the end?”

Zuko looks at Nozi with all of the bleakness he feels in his soul.

“I’ll get you more grilled unagi,” she says soothingly, patting his shoulder. “You like grilled unagi.”

“Thanks,” he says pathetically.

“You look like you need this,” Sokka advises, passing him a bowl of plum liquor.

Zuko hasn’t drank alcohol in public in years because he hasn’t wanted to let down his guard for a variety of reasons: assassins, sloppy behavior, public officials of other nations thinking he’s irresponsible and immature. But Sokka and Pim are there, there’s no one here to impress, and they wouldn’t let him embarrass himself in front of the rest of the noodle soup shop. “All right,” Zuko says, starting to smile, cupping the bowl in his palm.

“That’s the spirit,” Sokka says, slapping him on the back. “Hah! Literally. I’m so punny.”

“You’re something,” Zuko agrees, pressing his smile against the lip of the bowl and then drinking all the plum liquor at once.

As Okem serves course after course of little dishes, Sokka regales them with all of the new research that Ba Sing Se University is producing. “It’s really crucial research,” Sokka says. “Like, because of all the brainwashing the Dai Li did, there was a real need to figure out how to treat the victims. The Dai Li had never even tried to reverse it, those fascist assholes, so Kuei ordered the university to start conducting research on mental and emotional health. And like, of course Katara was all over it because of the potential new application for water-bending healing.”

Sokka drinks more lukewarm tea because he refused any liquor, citing having to be alert for assassins, and Pim doesn’t drink on-duty, so Zuko has had the difficult job of picking up the slack for all of them so Nozi doesn’t give them her patented sad fire-ferret eyes.

“Yeah, we’ve started implementing some of their new protocols in the Fire Nation as well,” Zuko says, nodding. “Caldera University has been uh, feeling competitive to say the least.”

Sokka snorts. “No wonder they want to steal me from the Earth Kingdom,” he says smugly.

“You don’t even work for the Earth Kingdom,” Zuko points out.

“They don’t know that,” Sokka says, dismissive, but something has changed in the sharpness of his mouth, and he looks unhappier than he did an immediate two seconds ago—Zuko wants to rewind time, which makes him wonder if Aang could like, discover the secrets of time-bending from that giant turtle lion and then teach it to him. …Spirits, he’s drunk.

“Here, you can have the rest of the egg custard tarts,” Zuko says earnestly.

“But you love the egg custard tarts,” Sokka says, clutching his left pectoral muscle because he’s so touched.

“I love you more,” Zuko starts to say, but Pim kicks him under the table before he can finish that sentence and once Zuko is finished inwardly howling in agony, he looks at Pim in abject gratitude.

Okem serves them their last course: giant chipped bowls of steaming-hot noodle soup. The broth is a deep golden-brown and in it languishes bundles of knobbly hand-made noodles, succulent cuts of pork shoulder, a soft-boiled egg leaking yolk into silky broth.

“I—actually don’t think I can finish this?” Sokka says, looking like he’s about to cry. “Who am I?”

“I believe in you,” Zuko says, probably too sincerely because Sokka turns a little red.

Sokka takes his first bite of meat, and he closes his eyes and makes the most sexual sound that Zuko has ever heard and Zuko himself has actually engaged in sex with another human being. Pim shoves another bowl of liquor into Zuko’s hand, and Zuko drinks it to distract himself from the feeling of deeply wound tension in his shoulders, his chest, his stomach. “This is my new favorite restaurant,” Sokka says, fervent. “I can’t believe I live so far away.”

“You’ll just have to come back then,” Zuko says, helplessly smiling.

“I honestly never thought I would say this in my entire life,” Sokka says. “Or like, in my children’s life or their children’s life or their children’s life—”

“Sokka,” Zuko says.

“--but Azula has good taste,” Sokka finishes.

“Good taste has never been her problem,” Zuko agrees.

Sokka’s smile turns rueful. “We’ve all suffered from the war, huh.”

“Uncle says it’s far easier to break a porcelain vase than it is to repair it,” Zuko says, absorbing some of the heat from Sokka’s soup bowl. “It’s going to take generations to repair all the damage my family has caused.”

“Which is why you have to take care of yourself,” Sokka says, unironically shaking his finger at him. “You are not allowed to have a stroke, Katara said so.”

“Sokka, I’m fine,” Zuko says, dumping half the bowl of chili oil into his soup.

“He’s not fine,” Pim says, dumping the other half of chili oil into her soup.

Zuko glares at her.

“We are absolutely going to discuss this in more detail,” Sokka says, stern. “After I finish this fucking amazing soup because it needs my full attention.”

Zuko knows he’s fucked (but also very drunk) because he is searingly jealous of soup for having Sokka’s full attention.

Zuko cannot finish his own soup, so Pim heroically finishes it for him because Sokka refuses to touch it on the basis that the broth is actually bright red with spice. After Zuko spends way too much time arguing with Nozi because she won’t let him pay, they walk back to the palace, Sokka’s arm wrapped around Zuko’s shoulders because he can’t walk in a straight line. “Wow, how much did you drink,” Sokka says, laughing.

“All of it,” Zuko says despairingly.

“You’ve really gotta eat more, man,” Sokka says. “I can feel your ribs.”

“Rude,” Zuko says.

“True,” Pim corrects.

Zuko goes heavy on purpose so Sokka staggers almost into the stone gutter, but this is followed by immediate regret when Sokka very easily hoists him into his arms to carry him past the guards and into the side entrance of the palace.

“This is humiliating,” Zuko mutters, even though he’s the one who wrapped his arms around Sokka’s neck.

Sokka and Pim ignore him.

After Pim completes all security protocols related to the Fire Lord’s personal rooms—Sokka holding him in the corridor the entire time—Sokka dumps Zuko on the bed and sticks his nose in all the same crevices that Pim had already checked.

“You’re not going to find anything if Pim didn’t,” Zuko remarks, rolling himself to the edge of the bed because he’s finding it difficult to coordinate his limbs. All of the tiny torches in his rooms have already been lit, the warm glow of the flames acting as bulwark against the evening darkness.

“No harm in double-checking,” Sokka says sternly into the bottom of Zuko’s wardrobe, scrabbling among the shoes.

Zuko finally gets his feet underneath him, feeling exceedingly proud of himself, and then wobbles over to his vanity table. Sokka hangs himself bodily out of Zuko’s window, apparently taking detailed notes of each balustrade. Zuko himself makes several attempts to seat himself on the low vanity stool. “Well, everything looks okay,” Sokka says suspiciously, reeling himself back into the room. “But you know, it’s nighttime so: dark. Who let you have windows anyway?”

“The person who built the palace?” Zuko suggests.

Sokka gives him a flat look, and Zuko laughs. “Also, I put you on the bed for a reason,” Sokka says, coming to stand behind Zuko, now visible in the enormous vanity mirror. “You can’t even sit up straight.”

“I have to take down my hair,” Zuko argues because he has accidentally slept in the headpiece before and it is a highly stabby experience.

“You’re so needy,” Sokka says, but Zuko can tell from his tone that he’s just pretending to complain.

Zuko sticks his tongue out for concentration reasons and very slowly lifts the headpiece from his head—and then immediately drops it on the ground.

“Wow,” Sokka says.

“It’s slippery,” Zuko complains.

“Title of your next speech,” Sokka says immediately.

“Stop trying to name my speeches,” Zuko says.

“No,” Sokka says. “Also, I’m definitely telling Pim that you dropped centuries of tradition on the—"

Zuko carefully removes the pin from his hair, which comes down all at once, and Sokka doesn’t finish his sentence.

Zuko reflexively looks up to meet Sokka’s eyes in the mirror, and Sokka—delicately lit by torch light, his face flushed, his eyes dark—is looking at Zuko with an expression of such reverent tenderness that Zuko’s cheeks burn. He wants to look over his shoulder to see who Sokka is really looking at because this—this can’t possibly be meant for him, Sokka must be thinking of Suki, of something so intensely private and intimate that Zuko is deeply embarrassed to have witnessed it at all. “Sokka?” he says, trying not to sound lost.

“Your hair got long,” Sokka says, a little hoarsely.

“Well, that’s what hair does,” Zuko says and then wants to kick himself.

Sokka laughs, dragging a hand over his face. “It wasn’t a criticism, Zuko.” Sokka bends to pick up the headpiece from the floor and lays it carefully on the vanity table. “Come on, time for all good little Fire Lords to go to bed.”

“You think I’m good?” Zuko says, too quickly, and he can’t fucking believe himself, he’s a disgrace.

Sokka’s mouth is parted in surprise. “Of course I do,” he says after a moment, and it’s that moment of hesitation that makes Zuko’s heart squeeze terribly in his chest.

“You don’t have to lie to me,” Zuko says. “I can take it.” He can’t take it. His soft and vulnerable insides are already shriveling up in anticipated shame and hurt, the internal muscle memory of his childhood.

Sokka stills, brows drawing together—Zuko has seen him with that exact look in strategy sessions with his father. “Zuko, where is this coming from?”

Zuko is sorry he ever opened his dumb, drunk mouth.

But Sokka crosses his arms, implacable, and Zuko knows he isn’t getting out of this. “It’s just--you haven’t come to see me,” Zuko says, voice small. “You’ve—you traveled to Gaoling to see Toph, you went to the Northern Air Temple with Aang and Katara, you stayed with Suki for a week—”

Sokka exhales, and his face and shoulders sag.

“It just—it just made me think that maybe you—thought I was doing a bad job? As Fire Lord? Or maybe you didn’t—” Zuko cuts himself off because the thought of admitting to Sokka that he worried Sokka didn’t like him anymore makes him want to curl up on the floor and die.

“No,” Sokka says, shaking his head, “no, no, come here.”

“But—”

“Seriously, come here,” Sokka says, wiggling his fingers at Zuko.

Zuko creeps close enough for Sokka to envelope him with his arms, and Zuko wonders how he always forgets that Sokka gives the best hugs. Sokka’s arms are snug around Zuko, the best kind of pressure, anxiety-relieving, and he just wants Sokka to hold him forever. Sokka has an inch or two on Zuko in height—which Sokka never lets him forget—but it does allow Zuko to more easily bury his face in Sokka’s neck. “So we’re gonna talk about this, but you have to promise to lie down,” Sokka says into Zuko’s hair. “No escaping for paperwork—”

Zuko immediately tenses all over. “Fuck. Minister Hassaku wants me to—”

“Minister Hassaku can wait until tomorrow,” Sokka says firmly.

“But tomorrow I need to consider Minister Jao’s school reform proposal,” Zuko says miserably. “Then I have to attend five separate meetings about rice fields and animal husbandry and then I have to attend to all of the international correspondence—”

At this, Sokka puts his hands on Zuko’s shoulders to direct him far enough away—oh no, Sokka is no longer holding him—to look him in the eyes. “Zuko,” Sokka says. “I want you to really hear me when I say this: you will never catch up. There will always be paperwork to do.”

Zuko feels as if Sokka slapped him. “That’s not—”

“No, listen to me,” Sokka says, shaking him a little. “You will never catch up, and that’s okay because your current workload is meant for like, ten people.”

“I’m just not working hard enough,” Zuko mutters, looking away from Sokka’s insistent face.

“You’re missing the point,” Sokka says. “Literally no human could finish your workload, even if they stopped eating and sleeping and using the bathroom for ten years.”

“But I can’t let them down,” Zuko says, distressed. “They’re all relying on me to lead them, to navigate the—the—” Zuko can’t think of the words because he’s too tired and upset, so he makes a flailing gesture as a language substitute.

“Let me introduce you to some new vocabulary terms,” Sokka says. “Healthy work boundaries.”

Zuko makes a face. “You got that from Katara, didn’t you.” He considers this further. “Wait a second, aren’t you the one who was just forced on vacation—”

“Shh,” Sokka says, shoving his finger against Zuko’s lips. “Do what I say, not what I do.” Then he sighs at Zuko’s increasing droopiness and exhausted noodle limbs. “Come on, time to lie down.”

Sokka has to help Zuko out of his formal robes and shoes and then into a silk sleep robe; then he undoes his own shoes and kicks them off before settling himself and Zuko into bed, snuggling Zuko against his side. Zuko knows this isn’t special because Aang likes to use Sokka as his own personal piece of long-suffering furniture, but Zuko still feels so safe and warm with Sokka’s arm wrapped tightly around him.

Sokka pats Zuko’s stomach—which, Zuko can’t remember the last time he ate so much—and says, “See, no escaping to look at rice field statistics.”

Zuko feels a knee-jerk jolt of alarm that locks up his shoulders.

“Okay, no, don’t do that,” Sokka says, pressing his thumb into the ball of Zuko’s shoulder to loosen it. Thank the spirits Katara healed his arm—it would have made completing paperwork much more difficult. “Relax, I’ll tell you a, uh—well, frankly, a terrible bedtime story.”

Zuko wrenches his shoulders back down, but his lower back remains rigid with tension. “All right,” Zuko says when he doesn’t think he’s going to get any more comfortable. “Go on.”

Sokka looks up at the ceiling, his face indecipherable. “It’s hard to know where to start,” he says finally. “All the stress and pressure of being the Chief-in-training—it was burning me out. I didn’t know how to enjoy it, it all just seemed so—so—"

“If you make a single mistake, the world will immediately end,” Zuko suggests, which is honestly how he feels most of the time as the leader of a nation that tried to desolate the rest of the world.

“…I was going to say over-whelming, but okay,” Sokka says. “We’re definitely pinning that for later, you know that, right?”

Zuko frowns.

“There, there,” Sokka says, patting his hair. “Wow, your hair is soft. Anyway, where was I?” Sokka’s fingers continue to softly pet his hair, and he doesn’t seem to have noticed. “Right, so my work habits sucked and Katara and Dad did an intervention—which was not fun at all, by the way—and then Suki also told me to get my shit together and then I uh, worked more, and now I’m here on a Vacay-vention.”

“What?” Zuko says, squinting at him.

“You know, vacation-intervention,” Sokka says, as if it’s obvious. “Intercation? In-vac?”

“No,” Zuko says firmly. “Banned.”

“Everyone’s a critic,” Sokka says. “Anyway, it’s all just been—a lot harder than I thought it would be. When we ended the war, everyone’s paths forward seemed so—simple and obvious. I wanted to be Chief, I wanted to be the kind of man my dad is, so it was like—why wasn’t I happy?”

“You didn’t tell me any of this,” Zuko says quietly.

Sokka doesn’t answer for a long time; his fingers in Zuko’s hair tighten, just a tiny bit. “I was so ashamed,” Sokka says finally in a low voice. “You’ve never once seriously considered turning your back on your responsibility to your people.”

“Sokka, that’s only because there’s no one else,” Zuko says. “Trust me, I would love to go on vacation for the rest of my life.”

Sokka snorts. “You’d get bored after like, a day.”

“Well, maybe I’d open one of those beach tourist shops,” Zuko says, mostly to make Sokka laugh. “Sell subpar seashells to the Earth Kingdom. Most of it’s landlocked, they don’t know any better.”

“Zuko, seashell grifter,” Sokka says, thoughtful. “Kind of has a nice ring to it. I could handle the money.”

“No way, you’d spend it all,” Zuko says. “I’m in charge of the books.”

“Fine, I’ll figure out how to make those tiny liquor glasses,” Sokka says. “You know what, I’ll even personalize them with names, people would love that.”

“If you say so,” Zuko says dubiously.

Sokka resumes stroking his hair, fingernails lightly pressing into his scalp, and Zuko goes boneless with pleasure. “The point is moot anyway because you’d never actually throw it all away to be a seashell grifter.”

“I’d probably teach swordsmanship if I wasn’t Fire Lord,” Zuko says, contemplative. “Firebending too.”

“Really?” Sokka says, sounding surprised. “I didn’t realize you’d thought about it.”

“Of course I’ve thought about it,” Zuko says, and it’s his turn to be surprised. “I’ve had like, at least thirty attempts on my life in the last year alone. Who wouldn’t?”

Pim keeps a little pinned paper in her office that currently says four days since last assassination attempt and she graphs them and runs statistical analyses—assassination attempts have decreased by 3.42 percent since the previous spring, which is exciting.

“I hate it when you make sense,” Sokka admits.

“Hey,” Zuko protests.

“Oh, it just means I’m not making sense,” Sokka says reassuringly.

“That doesn’t make it any better!”

“Well, it’s not my fault you claimed the group role of hot mess,” Sokka says. “Hah! I’m punny again.”

“I’m taking away your tiny liquor glass rights,” Zuko tells him.

“You do that,” Sokka says. “I’ll just start a rival tourist shop and run you out of business.”

Zuko rolls his eyes. “What do Katara and your dad think about all of this?”

“They just want me to be happy at this point,” Sokka sighs. “Like, honestly, Katara was up Dad’s ass for years about adapting emotional and mental health treatment for the tribe, but Dad was super reluctant at first because the research is so new. But then it became very clear that everyone’s suffering from the emotional effects of the war, so Katara’s been doing a lot of pilot testing.  Now they’re all about listening to your emotions and finding meaning in life and blah blah blah.”

“That doesn’t sound so bad,” Zuko says, amused.

“Well, it doesn’t really matter if I step down, seeing as how Katara’ll probably step right in and immediately excel,” Sokka says, a little more bitter than Zuko expects.

“Hey, no,” Zuko says, frowning. “Look, even if she was more suited to being Chief, it doesn’t necessarily mean she’s a better leader than you are.”

“How does it not mean that?” Sokka says, and Zuko’s chest hurts at the compressed pain in his voice.

“You have to look specifically at the context in which leadership happens,” Zuko explains. “Like, maybe Katara’s great at the day-to-day tasks and problems of being a leader of a community—but Sokka, it was your strategies that helped win us the war.  It’s your ability to negotiate trade that’s driving the Southern Water Tribe’s economic recovery. I mean, look at Azula: she’s a fucking prodigy, but there’s no way she could rule the Fire Nation in this time and place.”

“I don’t know how I feel about being compared to Azula,” Sokka says.

“You have so much talent, Sokka,” Zuko says, ignoring him. “You just have to figure out how you want to use it.”

Sokka lets out a slow breath into Zuko’s hair, which feels strange. “It’s just—you have to understand how much I respect you,” Sokka says, almost inaudible. “You don’t give up. You admit when you’re wrong. I don’t want to—fail you.”

“How would you fail me?” Zuko says.

“By not being the person you thought I was,” Sokka says, sounding a little wretched now.

“That would never happen,” Zuko says firmly.

“How do you know?” Sokka says in a small voice.

“Because you’re the best person I know,” Zuko says.

“Oh,” Sokka says, and Zuko can feel Sokka’s throat constrict, the tiny little shudder of his chest. Zuko lays his hand on Sokka’s breastbone and warms his palm so Sokka can feel the soothing heat. The little torchlights have all burned out, and the room is dark but Zuko is not afraid. Sokka rests his hand on the back of Zuko’s neck, and Zuko tucks his head more firmly underneath Sokka’s chin.

Zuko slides so easily into sleep that he wonders why it was so difficult before.

#

The next morning, Zuko sits in silence across the low table from his uncle, hungover as shit. Nothing has been said since Uncle first poured their tea. Zuko hunches over his cup, letting the steam infiltrate his sinuses.

“Once—very long ago—I had occasion to drink Admiral Zhao under the table,” his uncle says, and Zuko almost snorts tea up his nose. “His lieutenant stole his clothes and hid them. I saw much more of—"

“Uncle,” Zuko says, desperate. “Must you?”

Uncle shrugs.

Zuko rests his forehead gently on the table. It’s one of those spring days where sunlight pours in through the windows and the sky is a crisp blue, but the air is cold and thin. Zuko wears his winter robes; they smell like incense and the little orange citrus fruits that are popular in winter. He hasn’t finished reading Minister Hassaku’s small novel on rice yield statistics.

“Sorry, I’m late!” Sokka says, dropping down beside him, and Zuko almost jumps out of his skin. “Advisor Yabuki wanted to ask me what was going on with Ji because Ji apparently did not properly distribute the rough draft of the Southern Sea Economic Cooperation Zone trade agreement like they were supposed to? So then I had to go find Ji, who was not in their room, but in someone else’s room that shall remain nameless because that someone else is definitely married.” Sokka finally takes a breath. “Lady Nei,” he coughs and then clears his throat. “What, who said that? Anyway, everyone should be ready for the trade meeting in the afternoon.”

“Oh?” Uncle says. “I was under the impression that the Lady Nei and her husband had an arrangement.”

“Oh, that’s off,” Sokka says, waving a hand. “It’s spring, you know, and—"

Zuko squints at him. “What are you doing here?” he says.

“Oh, I’ve been having tea with your uncle in the mornings while you do Fire Lord stuff,” Sokka says cheerfully.

“Sokka is an excellent Pai Sho opponent,” Uncle agrees.

Zuko turns his squint on Uncle and feels irrationally betrayed.

“Be careful, nephew, your face might stick that way,” Uncle says, chuckling. “Sokka and I have been discussing the most recent assassination attempt in the hopes of narrowing down suspects.”

“In between catching up on court gossip, I’m sure,” Zuko says dryly.

“Hey, it’s basically the same thing,” Sokka says, pointing a finger at him.

“Yeah, okay,” Zuko says, sighing. “Thrill me.”

Sokka spends a not inconsiderable amount of time diagramming court politics with little tea candies until the table is completely covered, and Zuko is staring at the candy chaos in despair. “—anyway, there are a few inconsistencies that I’m not sure how to resolve, mostly involving an offshoot of the White Lotus,” Sokka finishes.

Zuko rubs his face with both hands, his head pounding. “Yeah, I have a meeting scheduled with Azula for tomorrow,” Zuko says. “You can bring your…candy diagram.”

Sokka makes a hideous face of confusion that resembles a pet fish Zuko used to have as a child. Well, at least until Azula developed the firm conviction that the fish yearned to be free from its glass cage and then released it into the ocean. Zuko didn’t have the heart to tell her that it was probably immediately eaten. “You—have actual strategy meetings with Azula?” Sokka says, blinking rapidly.

“Yes?” Zuko says. “Haven’t I told you this?”

“Yeah, but I thought that was just a euphemism for making sure she doesn’t commit mass murder,” Sokka says, holding out his tea cup. Zuko obediently absorbs some of the heat, ignoring his uncle’s knowing smile.

“No,” Zuko says. “Actually, I think having the role of adviser has really helped her.”

“Huh,” Sokka says. “Well, as long as you trust her.”

“Azula has proven herself trustworthy,” Uncle says, which hits Zuko unexpectedly like a punch to the gut; that Uncle thinks this, and would say so to someone outside of the family, makes Zuko feel shocked and jumbled, like an insect inside a jar that’s been shaken. ”She has spent the last three years working very hard to preserve Zuko’s leadership.”

“She’s probably—a large part of the reason I’m still alive,” Zuko admits.

“We are very fortunate that you have her,” Uncle says seriously. “I can only help so much when the nobles are still wary of a puppet king, beholden to the Dragon of the West.”

“That reminds me,” Sokka says, starting to frown. “I’ve been wanting to ask you something, Zuko.”

“You can always ask me anything, Sokka,” Zuko says, earnest.

“Then how come your mom isn’t here?” Sokka says. “Literally everyone else traveled here to help you deal with this.”

“Oh,” Zuko says, surprised. “That’s probably because I didn’t tell her about the assassination attempt.”

Sokka stares at him. “…you didn’t tell your mother that someone tried to kill you.”

“I mean,” Zuko says slowly. “I don’t usually tell her?”

Sokka stares at him more. “What the fuck, Zuko?” 

“She’s busy,” Zuko says defensively. “She has her own life. Besides, it’d be dangerous for her and Kiyi to visit. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if something happened to them because of me.”

Sokka turns to Uncle. “I don’t understand,” he says.

“With the fear of burning others, the fire will turn on itself,” Uncle says.

Sokka turns back to Zuko.

“She’s happy,” Zuko says mulishly. “I don’t want to bother her.”

“She’s your mom,” Sokka says bluntly. “You’re supposed to bother her.”

“Well, I don’t want to, okay?” Zuko says. “I’m fine. She’s fine. She doesn’t need to know.” Zuko looks down at his tea, which has gone cold. “Anyway, she doesn’t like coming back to the palace. Too many bad memories.”

“I can understand that,” Sokka says. “But you’re her son. I’m sure she’d want to know.”

“Yeah, well, she didn’t seem to care about that very much when she decided to forget I even existed,” Zuko says bitterly and then immediately winces. The situation with his mother has been what it is for years now, and he had promised himself many times that he would learn to accept it. Once again, he is failing. “I mean, she—she deserves to be happy. It’s not like there was anything she could have done anyway when my father—” his voice cuts out, and he feels a thickness of regurgitated grief and shame in his stomach, the back of his throat.

Sokka looks at him with an incredible sympathy, and Zuko fights the urge to cower away from it. “She also chose to remember you,” Sokka says.

“I know,” Zuko says, trying to smile. “Anyway, it’s fine. We’ll figure this out.”

Sokka is shaking his head. “No, it’s not fine,” he says. “It’s not fine that you’ve been suffering by yourself like this.”

Zuko feels his mouth tremble, and he bites his lip, hard.

“Sokka is correct, Zuko,” his uncle says gently. “An untreated wound only festers.”

Sokka lays a hand on Zuko’s wrist—large and warm and undemanding—and this is what undoes him. “It’s just—her choosing to remember isn’t enough,” Zuko says, feeling small and mean. “It doesn’t make up for her—making the choice to not be my mother.” Zuko swallows, his nose prickling, and he feels pressure at the back of his eyes. “Sometimes all I can think about is that I wasn’t a good enough son to be remembered,” he says.

Sokka looks horrified. “That’s not true,” he says.

“Not just me, but Azula too,” Zuko says, his mouth trembling again, and even sinking his teeth into his lower lip doesn’t stop it. “We both—failed. As her children.”

“No, Zuko,” Uncle says, shaking his head. “Ursa does not feel that way, I promise you.”

“But how do you know?” Zuko says, and tears spill over his cheeks and down his chin, into the collar of his robes. “The last thing she ever told me before she left was to never forget who I am, and then she—she decided to forget who she was. Who I am.”

“Ah, shit,” Sokka says, looking gutted, and pulls him into a crushing hug. It just makes Zuko cry harder, his hands clutching Sokka’s shoulders—he feels like an open wound, like his insides could tumble right out of his body, inflamed with an acidic and eroding hurt.

Uncle’s hand pushes Zuko’s sweaty hair back from his face and then cups the back of his neck like when he was small, makes shushing noises. “It’s okay, nephew,” he says. “You are safe.”

Zuko can’t breathe, just chokes into Sokka’s neck, making hurt noises like a wounded animal.

“The feelings that you are experiencing are natural,” Uncle says soothingly. “Let them flow through you like your breath.”

“I can’t,” Zuko says, taking little sips of air, his chest spasming, humiliated by being so unable to get himself under control.

“I know that you feel deeply hurt by this,” his uncle says. “I know you have been afraid.”

Uncle moves closer, and Zuko inhales the familiar scents of jasmine tea and spices; he remembers being four-years-old, sitting on Uncle’s lap, crying because Ozai had shouted at him again about his bending, and Uncle reassuring him that Ozai’s anger wasn’t his fault, had nothing to do with him, and how safe Zuko had felt in that moment.

“I will never leave you,” his uncle says now, and Zuko feels an insulating relief, a little candle flame against the darkness. “I will always be here for you when you need me.”

Sokka holds him tighter, and the pressure and weight—like Sokka is literally holding him together--allows him to take a deeper breath.

“That’s it,” Uncle says. “Breathe out as slowly as you can. Do you remember the story I used to tell you about the little fire phoenix?”

“I always made you change the ending,” Zuko says, lifting himself up a little from Sokka’s shoulders to wipe his face with a small cloth. Sokka loosens his grip, his hands sliding from Zuko’s back to his upper arms, but doesn’t let go.

“You found it too sad,” Uncle agrees.

“What happened?” Sokka says.

“The fire phoenix experiences all the ways it’s possible to suffer and then as soon as it finds a little happiness, it dies,” Zuko says, still a little outraged after all these years.

Uncle chuckles. “It was meant to teach you to accept the past,” he says.

“Wow,” Sokka says. “Zuko has never accepted anything in his entire life.”

“Perhaps my goal was misguided,” Uncle agrees. “After all, this lack of acceptance is what has allowed Zuko to lead the Fire Nation into an era of peace and healing.”

At this, Zuko feels the ever-present knot of anxiety in stomach start to loosen. “Thank you, Uncle,” he says. “Your confidence means a lot to me.”

“You don’t have to talk to your mother about this,” Sokka says quietly. “But I think that you should.”

“I don’t want to hurt her,” Zuko says, taking the cup of water that Uncle hands him.

“You hurting instead isn’t an acceptable alternative,” Sokka says.

“I’ll think about it,” Zuko says grudgingly.

“Good,” Sokka says, taking his hands away, and Zuko immediately misses them. “Okay, hydrate and then naptime for the Fire Lord.”

Zuko stares at him. “I have morning meetings, Sokka,” he says.

“When was the last time you took a break?” Sokka says.

“Yesterday?” Zuko says. “When I went to dinner with you and Pim?”

Sokka snorts. “Before that.”

Zuko glares.

“That’s what I thought,” Sokka says, satisfied.

“Uncle—” Zuko starts.

“Naptime for the Fire Lord, indeed,” Uncle says cheerfully. “If you will not listen to me about taking good care of yourself, perhaps you will listen to your fiancé.”

Zuko would bet fair odds that Uncle knows that at this point, the engagement is a complete farce that will end the moment the assassin is apprehended, but he’s always been an incurable meddler. “I’m attending the afternoon meetings,” Zuko says firmly.

“Aang and Katara are attending the morning meetings, anyway,” Sokka says. “They’ll make sure nothing’s set on fire. Uh, either metaphorically or literally.”

“What are you going to do?” Zuko says, secretly hoping Sokka will offer to come lie down with him.

“I’m meeting with Suki, Toph, and Pim about security stuff,” Sokka says.

“Oh,” Zuko says and then hurriedly adds, “good,” to hide his disappointment, but Uncle isn’t fooled and is giving him one of those unbearable knowing looks. The disappointment is good, it reminds him that he absolutely cannot get used to Sokka’s presence, that Sokka does not actually return his feelings and will be going home as soon as this latest security problem has been solved.

“Speaking of, I should get going,” Sokka says, starting to stand. “But if you don’t sleep, Zuko, I’ll hear about it.”

“How would you even find out?” Zuko says, just to be contrary. “I could be catching up on paperwork, and you wouldn’t know the difference.”

“I have my ways,” Sokka says dramatically.

“Sokka is friendly with the cleaning staff,” Uncle says.

“Oh, fine, ruin the mystery,” Sokka says, pouting.

Uncle chuckles, and Zuko doesn’t even realize he’s smiling as Sokka leaves until Uncle says innocently, “How is the engagement proceeding?”

“…I’m going to bed,” Zuko says.

Uncle just laughs at him.

#

When Zuko had gone to his mother’s home village to find her, he had only taken Azula and Toph—Azula because she was holding information about their mother hostage, and Toph ostensibly to keep Azula secured but also because Zuko found it hilarious how enraged Azula got over Toph’s terrible knock-knock jokes.

“Knock knock,” Toph said, lying in the dirt.

Azula said nothing.

“Knock knock,” Toph said. “Knock knock knock knock knock—”

“What,” Azula hissed.

“You’re supposed to say who’s there,” Toph pointed out.

“Who’s there,” Azula ground out.

“Interrupting hippo cow,” Toph said.

“What?” Azula said. “That doesn’t even make any sense, why would an interrupting hipp—”

“Mooooo,” Toph yelled.

Azula actually looked at Zuko for support with the air of a wet cat-owl, and Zuko had had to walk off into the forest to ugly laugh.

In truth, Zuko hadn’t invited anyone else on this trip because all of them had terrible and painful experiences with Azula, and he didn’t want to force them to keep company with her. Toph had the least amount of Azula-related emotional baggage and was also the most qualified at restraining someone without hurting them. Finally, she was also the least likely to initiate an emotional discussion.

When Azula ran off after confronting their mother—who did not remember being their mother and who did not wear their mother’s face—Zuko felt that he should have known this would happen.

“I can try to find her with my seismic sense,” Toph offered after they had trudged back to their campsite to see no signs of Azula.

“Thanks,” Zuko said. “But I think I know where she is.”

Zuko had walked back through the forest and into the village and then back to their mother’s house. Azula was crouched in a tree, looking into the second-story window of their mother’s home. Zuko climbed up next to her to see that the window looked into Kiyi’s bedroom, and Ursa was reading her a story.

“Go away,” Azula said without looking at him.

Zuko settled onto the branch.

“If you don’t leave, I’ll kill you,” Azula said.

Zuko looked at her and did not leave.

“I hate you,” she said. “I hate you so much that I could die. I hate you so much that I’d rather kill you and languish in prison for the rest of my life than have you for a brother.”

“I’m not leaving,” Zuko said.

“Well, I’m certainly not returning as your prisoner,” she said. Azula hadn’t looked at him this entire time, her eyes fixed on Ursa, who was smiling but not at either of them. “If you don’t leave, I’ll hurt Mother. I’ll hurt her so much that she’ll never want to look at either of us again.”

“I’m still not leaving you,” Zuko said.

“You’ll never be the golden child,” Azula said. This was when he noticed that tears streamed silently down her face. “She’s moved on. She’s replaced you. She hates you, or she’d never have chosen to forget you even existed.”

“You can say whatever you want,” Zuko said. “You can’t make me leave. I’m staying right here.”

Azula’s face screwed up a little, her mouth trembling, but she didn’t wipe her face or make a sound. They stayed there for a long time—long past when Ursa snuffed the candles and left the room in darkness.

After that, Zuko scheduled Pai Sho games with Azula once a week—which he figured was a safe way for Azula to enjoy beating the shit out of him—but then it slowly shifted into strategy meetings because Azula couldn’t resist pointing out all the weak spots in his political game.

Now, of course, they meet several times a week because Azula’s brain is a brilliant and relentless hydraulic machine, and also because she’s developed a full-blown addiction to coffee. The full force of Azula’s intellect in combination with caffeine is honestly terrifying, but Pim says it’s reduced the odds of a coup by two hundred percent so Zuko will continue to suffer for his people.  

When Zuko and Sokka enter her sitting rooms, Azula sits at the already set-up Pai Sho board, surrounded by empty coffee cups and piles of notes.

Zuko sighs. “Have you eaten anything to go with the stroke-inducing amounts of coffee you’ve consumed?”

Azula looks at him like he’s an idiot. “Of course I have.”

Zuko turns to Sai—Azula’s maidservant—and says, “Could we get some food from the kitchen, please? Whatever the chef’s already made is fine.”

“Of course, my Lord,” Sai says and removes herself from the room.

Azula sighs loudly. “I’m not hungry.”

“I don’t care,” Zuko says, settling himself on the couch across from her. “If you want to play Sokka in Pai Sho, you’ll eat something.”

Azula frowns down at the board because she’s been heckling Zuko to let her play against Sokka ever since Sokka beat Uncle.

“Huh,” Sokka says, raising his eyebrows, but when Zuko raises his own eyebrow at him, Sokka just shakes his head and sits next to Zuko, their thighs almost touching. Zuko feels an acute warmth at their proximity and then immediately tells himself it means nothing—the engagement is going to end and then Sokka’s going to return to Suki and they’ll probably have like five perfect babies who are all prodigies with weapons and then they’ll have their own personal army to terrorize everyone with.

“Guest has the first move,” Azula says, waving a hand at the board.

“Hey, I never agreed to this,” Sokka says, putting up his hands.

Azula turns to Zuko, betrayed, and Zuko looks at Sokka with wide eyes. “Are you afraid?” Zuko asks earnestly.

Sokka looks unimpressed. “Zuko,” he says warningly.

“He’s too afraid to play me,” Azula says to Zuko in a confiding whisper.

“I know,” he whispers back. “A shame, really, considering he’d probably beat you.”

Azula and Sokka’s mouths both drop open in full offense, and Zuko smiles at them serenely.

“You’ve gotten mean in your old age,” Sokka accuses, even as he’s examining the board.

Zuko shrugs. “When you interact with Fire Nation nobles on a regular basis, you have to fight fire with fire sometimes.”

“But you still won’t let me emotionally crush Lord Razok,” Azula argues.

“Because your plan involves the collateral damage of half my nobles and a third of my ministers,” Zuko says for the thousandth time.

“It’s much more efficient!” Azula says. “If your nobles and ministers are stupid enough to take the bait, then they deserve the consequences.”

“Efficiency isn’t the only thing that matters, Azula,” Zuko says because he hopes that by saying it enough times, Azula will get it through her head that she doesn’t have to be the perfect weapon anymore. She only seems to get a handle on it when most inconvenient for Zuko; she vehemently opposes Plan 4.5. “No one deserves to be hurt, even if they make a mistake.”

“Ugh,” Azula says.

Sai arrives with leftovers from breakfast: dumplings, jook, grilled fish, soup. It’s Sokka’s move, and Azula is forced to wait while Sokka piles his plate with food—Zuko can practically hear her teeth grinding.

“Well, go on,” Sokka says to Azula, gesturing to the food dishes with a tilt of his head.

“You’re not in charge of me,” Azula says, raising her eyebrows.

“I guess we’re not finishing this game then,” Sokka says in a sing-song voice, and Azula looks like she would very much like to punch him in the face but instead takes a portion of grilled fish so small it wouldn’t feed a meadow vole. Zuko adds more fish to her plate, along with a little bowl of soup.

Azula looks at Zuko in disgust. “You’re such a hypocrite,” she says and then shoves the rest of the fish onto a plate—enough to feed a tigerdillo--and passes it to Zuko in a blatant show of pettiness. 

Zuko glares at her.

Sokka has a look of perplexed amusement on his face. “She’s got you there, Zuko,” Sokka says, moving a piece on the board.

“That’s a terrible move,” Zuko tells him.

“What? What do you mean—oh, haha, very funny,” Sokka says when Zuko laughs because everyone knows he’s the absolute worst at Pai Sho.

“I made a short-list of organizations and individuals that may have been responsible for the most recent assassination attempt,” Azula says, taking the tiniest bite of fish known to humankind.

“Oh, then can you give me—” Sokka starts to say.

“Bet you it’s the Suyen family,” Azula says to Zuko.

“No way, it’s the New Ozai Society again,” Zuko says. “They never learn.”

“You wanna put your money where your mouth is?” Azula says conversationally. “200 gold pieces.”

“Done,” Zuko says.

“Uhhh, how about we not place bets on Zuko’s life?” Sokka says, looking appalled.

Zuko and Azula look at him with uncomprehending faces.

“Okay, that’s creepy,” Sokka says, pointing at them. “Azula, where’s your list?”

Azula shoves a pile of paper across the table.

“Wow,” Sokka says, starting to read through it. “This is…a lot of people that want to kill you, Zuko.”

“Most of them actually have ties to each other,” Zuko explains. “It’s the people who still support Ozai.”

“It just means you’re doing something right,” Azula says, so casually that Zuko almost doesn’t even catch that Azula has just complimented him.

Zuko grins and starts to open his mouth.

“Not a word,” Azula says warningly.

Zuko closes his mouth.

“But the Gi Shen faction are from the Earth Kingdom,” Sokka says, frowning at the suspect list.

“Oh, they just want to destabilize the Fire Nation,” Zuko says, leaning back into the couch. “Nothing personal.”

“But—why?” Sokka says. “I assume they don’t want Ozai back on the throne.”

“Revenge?” Zuko says.

“Revenge,” Azula confirms.

Sokka sighs and sets the suspect list on the table. “It’s not that I don’t understand how they feel, you know?” Sokka says. “But starting another war won’t bring anything back that’s been lost.”

Zuko wishes he could bring back everything that was lost: besides the devastation of the Southern Water Tribe, the genocide of the Air Nomads is what Zuko thinks most about at night, when he’s lying awake and looking at the ceiling. There’s absolutely nothing he can do to even begin to atone for that, and it kills him.

“This list has at least one hundred names and motivations on it,” Sokka says, shifting to face Zuko. “How are you narrowing it down?”

Zuko turns to Azula, who pulls out another pile of paper, but this one is color-coded with complicated flow chart diagrams.

“Damn,” Sokka says, taking it. “This is…extensive.”

“This is nothing,” Azula drawls. “You should have seen when he got stabbed.”

“Azula,” Zuko barks because she had promised to keep that to herself.

“He should know what you’ve been through,” Azula says. “You had to use a cane for months.” Her voice is relaxed, but her hand shakes a little when she moves a piece on the board; he hadn’t realized she was still this upset about it.

Zuko winces because Sokka looks like he himself has been stabbed. “You what?” Sokka says.

“Well,” Zuko says and then doesn’t know how to finish.

“How could you not say anything?” Sokka says, and he actually looks close to tears. “How would you feel if one of us didn’t tell you something like that?”

Zuko cringes. “I just didn’t want to—impose,” he says weakly.

“Don’t feel too bad,” Azula says, saccharine sweet, because she had reamed Zuko a new asshole for the whole getting stabbed thing. “Mother knew about it and still didn’t come.”

 “Because I told her not to,” Zuko says, raising his voice a little because they’ve had this argument so many times.

“She should have come anyway,” Azula says stubbornly.

“She wanted to respect—” Zuko starts to say.

“Zuko, stop,” Sokka says, holding up a hand. “You know if you had told me, I would have come, right?” Sokka looks at him beseechingly. “I would have been here in a heartbeat.”

“It’s—Sokka, I know you would have,” Zuko says.

“You have to,” Sokka says, his fingers digging into his own knees. “You have to know.”

“I just,” Zuko says helplessly. “I’m the Fire Lord. I know what I signed on for. This is my problem, not anyone else’s.”

“I feel like it becomes the world’s problem if you die and the whole Fire Nation descends into chaos,” Sokka says, his mouth a thin line.

Zuko looks at Azula, who raises her eyebrows at him—Azula has made it clear on multiple occasions that she does not want to be Fire Lord after watching Zuko exist as a tight knot of stress for approximately seven years. “All right,” Zuko says to both of them. “I get the point.”

“Do you?” Sokka says seriously and then before Zuko can respond, he says, “Okay, Azula, walk me through your charts.”

Zuko tries to loosen his shoulders and regulate his breathing; his heart is fluttering in his chest in a rhythm that doesn’t feel good. Sokka offers him a cup of hot tea without looking at him, focused on Azula’s notes and the Pai Sho board. Zuko takes it, letting the warmth seep into his cold hands, his heart rate starting to even out. Sometimes his heartbeat gets out of order when he’s stressed due to the injury he sustained during his Agni Kai with Azula, and he knows she hates herself for it. He adds a dumpling to Azula’s plate, and she makes a face at him. Sokka bullies her into eating it, and Zuko catches himself thinking about how nice this is, that he can have this, share Azula with someone else even if only a little.

 Of course, then it all goes to shit because Azula loses the game.

Azula stares down at the board in shock. “You beat me,” she says in a small voice.

“You were a difficult opponent,” Sokka offers. “It was a really good game.”

“No,” Azula says. “It wasn’t.”

Zuko can see where this is going and tries to shock her out of it. “Guess even you can’t win ‘em all…Zuzu.”

Azula’s mouth drops open. “Excuse me?” she says, incensed.

“You’re excused,” Zuko says sweetly.

“You don’t get to be proud of yourself,” Azula says. “It took you actual decades to figure that out. You’re a moron.”

“Whatever you say, Zuzu.”

Azula closes her eyes for a moment, and that’s when Zuko can see the fatigue in her face, the emotional strain that she’s under all the time, and his heart breaks for her.  “All right, great, get out now,” Azula says. “I have work to do.”

“Azula—” Zuko starts to say because he knows that’s code for obsessively replaying the game to see where she went wrong.

“Take my notes and go,” Azula snaps.

Zuko opens his mouth again, but Sokka puts a hand on his shoulder. “Let’s go,” Sokka says. “You can come back later.”

“No, he can’t,” Azula says, her face and her entire body strung tight and Zuko knows that the longer they stay, the more likely she’ll snap and cause damage that she’ll beat herself up about later.

“If you need me, you know where I am,” Zuko says evenly and then he lets Sokka lead him into the corridor and down the hall to his office.

Zuko lets out a deep, shuddering breath once the door closes, and Sokka puts his hands on Zuko’s shoulders. “What was that about?” Sokka says.

Zuko feels strangely vulnerable at the idea of revealing Azula’s weaknesses to Sokka, someone who legitimately has no reason to feel any sympathy for her—Zuko doesn’t like to mention Azula to Sokka because she still hasn’t apologized to him, and Zuko doesn’t want to hurt Sokka any further. But now Sokka is actually asking.

 “Ozai never accepted anything less than perfection,” Zuko says finally.

“Oh, Zuko,” Sokka says sadly.

Shortly after Zuko was coronated, when he was still cleaning house of all Ministers loyal to Ozai, Sokka and Katara found out from a group of resentful nobles how Zuko had received his—facial injury, and Zuko had been surprised by the blistering shame that overcame him when they confronted him, how he hadn’t even wanted them to look at him.

“Don’t feel sorry for me,” Zuko says stiffly.

“I don’t feel sorry for you, Zuko, geez,” Sokka says, jerking back a little, his hands coming to rest in the crooks of Zuko’s elbows.

“Then what is this?” Zuko says.

“Uh, me caring about you?” Sokka says, his brow furrowing.

“You caring about me,” Zuko repeats.

“Yes,” Sokka says, exasperated. “An arcane and mysterious concept, I know.”

“I just don’t—want to be too much,” Zuko admits.

“You’re the Fire Lord,” Sokka says nonsensically.

“And that means?” Zuko says.

“Of course you’re high maintenance,” Sokka says tenderly.

“…thank you so much,” Zuko says dryly.

Sokka keeps looking at him, his eyes so fucking blue and sincere, and Zuko realizes how close they are, if he just—went up on his toes a little, and leaned in, he could—no, he can’t, the last thing Zuko ever wants to do is put pressure on Sokka, especially when Sokka is currently obliged to pretend that they’re engaged.

Zuko’s chest hurts.

“Zuko,” Sokka starts and then stops.

“What?” Zuko says.

“Nothing,” Sokka says. “It’s—yeah.”

“Sokka—” Zuko starts to say.

“You’re doing a good job with Azula,” Sokka says abruptly, and Zuko wonders what he was really going to say. 

“I just feel like there’s more I could be doing,” Zuko says. “She still has really bad days.”

“So do you,” Sokka points out. “We’ve all been through some shit. I think she’s doing a lot better than you think she is.”

Zuko looks at him, unable to speak, because it means so much to hear Sokka say that.

“You’re so close to the situation, it’s hard to see it,” Sokka says. “But take it from someone who has the bird’s eye view: you can stop worrying so much.”

Zuko takes a shaky breath, lets it out. “What did I ever do without you?” he says.

“Let’s get you through the current crisis and never find out, okay?” Sokka says.

“Deal,” Zuko says, smiling at him.

Sokka smiles back, lifting a hand to smooth a loose lock of Zuko’s hair back from his face, his fingers lingering on Zuko’s jaw. Zuko stops breathing—his heart does one of those bad jerks and he fights the urge to cough. “Oh shit, it’s afternoon meeting time,” Sokka says, looking at the clock on Zuko’s wall and taking his hand away. “How much you wanna bet Ji didn’t do the reading?”

“That’s a sucker’s bet,” Zuko says feebly because his mind is still stuck on Sokka’s smile and his hand and the proximity between them.

“Well, and you’re a sucker,” Sokka points out, slinging his arm around Zuko’s shoulders to pull him toward the door.

As they walk down the corridor to the meeting—Sokka talking animatedly about international water boundaries and gesturing with his free hand—Zuko watches him and thinks to himself: he’s so pathetic. Zuko has had the opportunity to experience the headiness of Sokka’s constant and undivided attention, and he only wants more.

Because unfortunately, Sokka is completely correct on that front: Zuko is indeed a sucker.

#

When Zuko walks into his advisers engaging in a pygma-puma fight over his hypothetical engagement to Sokka, he wonders why he’s surprised that it’s all finally blown up in his face. Admittedly, Zuko has been lulled into a false sense of security due to not having met with any of his formal advisors in a week and also being forced to sleep and eat on a semi-regular basis, which are actually…clarifying experiences that he should probably be having more of.

Zuko has arrived late to this meeting on account of a pipe bursting in the kitchen and so is skulking in the back, steaming himself dry, when Adviser Shan says, “The engagement of the Fire Lord to someone of the Southern Water Tribe would be a completely unsuitable match.”

“How so?” Sokka says, far more politely than Zuko would ever have expected.

“You can’t tell me you would actually want to marry the Fire Lord,” Advisor Shan protests.  “It hasn’t even been a decade since the end of the war and—”

“Hey, I’m fully supportive,” Advisor Tora says. “What better way to ensure peace than a marriage alliance?”

“But then what does that mean for the Fire Lord line of inheritance?” Advisor Shan says.

“Is that really relevant?” Advisor Tora says. “Considering neither of them can bear children, adoption or a surrogate would be the most viable option in any case.”

Zuko is absolutely speechless.

“The public opinion on a hypothetical engagement between the Fire Lord and a future leader of the Southern Water Tribe is deeply mixed,” Advisor Kazu pipes up. “My assistant ran the polls.”

“You know, that’s better than I expected,” Advisor Tora says, thoughtful. “A few years ago, the public would have been completely against it.”

“Things are definitely changing,” Advisor Yabuki says. “Advisor Shan, your line of thinking is exceedingly insular—dare I even say small-minded?—and it would behoove you to—”

“Why am I the only one who consistently seems to care about the health and longevity of the Fire Nation?” Advisor Shan says hotly. “The Fire Lord would never lower himself by—"

“Okay!” Zuko says loudly, finally regaining his ability to speak and striding forward. Everyone’s eyes snap toward him (except for Toph, who is sleeping with her eyes open). Sokka and Suki are visibly dying on the inside, and Katara looks like she would quite like to murder Advisor Shan. “This is absolutely unacceptable. I expect my advisors to behave respectfully at all times--not gossip in meetings like school children.”

“If his Lordship would deign to update his council of advisors on the state of his marriage contract, perhaps we would not have to,” Advisor Shan says coolly.

Zuko winces because he had been very successful at avoiding discussing this with his advisors until this very moment due solely to Pim running interference in accordance with Plan 4.5.

“I do wish Prince Iroh had consulted with us before drawing up the contract,” Advisor Yabuki admits. “We could have had more time to prepare.”

“It was a flagrant break in protocol,” Advisor Shan says, nostrils flaring. “Yes, the elders in the family decide the match, but then they must discuss with the Fire Lord’s advisors before formalizing the marital agreement.”

“It’s true, this is an awkward position for us,” Advisor Tora agrees. “Especially when considering that the contracts have been signed but there has been no formal proclamation, it calls the validity of the entire engagement into question.”

“I disagree,” Advisor Kazu says. “I think the contracts are both necessary and sufficient, regardless of when it is announced.”

“Advisor Kazu, the real problem is that it appears as if the Fire Lord is ashamed of his betrothed,” Advisor Shan says. “Frankly, if his Lordship really respected the Southern Water Tribe, he would have already addressed this with us and with his people.”

“I am not ashamed of Sokka,” Zuko exclaims.

“Then stop acting like it, my Lord,” Advisor Shan says severely. “As it stands, you are only showing the public that he is good enough to bed but not enough to wed.”

Zuko feels like lightning has struck him: his vision whites out and fury lances through him so intensely that for a brief moment, he’s worried his spirit might actually separate from his body.

“I love Sokka, and I want to spend the rest of my life with him,” Zuko says in a low voice. “While I can understand that this entire process has not been ideal, there are multiple reasons we have not yet announced the engagement to the public. None of those reasons are that I don’t respect Sokka or the Southern Water Tribe.”

Then Zuko realizes what he’s just confessed in front of everyone, and he literally feels the blood drain from his face.

“I see,” Advisor Shan says, looking thoughtful, but Zuko can hardly hear him through the rushing in his ears. He’s too terrified to look at any of his friends, and he can feel that Aang is trying to lock eyes with him.  

“Zuko—” Sokka starts to say.

“Wow, I think Minister Hassaku is calling me?” Zuko says. “Hey, I think I need to step out, Minister Hassaku probably wants to uh, discuss the rice and uh—” Zuko fumbles with his chair, hands shaking, frantically avoiding any sort of eye contact, and then turns and almost runs out the door.

After strategically retreating to the turtle-duck pond, Zuko sits on the rock, and claws his hands into his hair, disrupting his headpiece, and groans in utter humiliation. His advisors had seen him at every level of non-functionality, including incredibly high on prescription pain killers, so while his behavior was not ideal, it also wasn’t…the worst they had seen from him.

But the fact that his friends had just watched him—he groans again, louder.

Then he hears a little clanking noise and opens his eyes just in time to see one of the turtle-ducks trying to steal his headpiece. “Hey, no,” he says, trying to grab it, but the turtle-duck pecks his fingers. “Ugh, fine, you can have it.” The turtle-duck opens its wing to let a little baby turtle-duck slide down to the ground before taking the headpiece and venturing back to the pond. “I guess this is a fair trade,” Zuko says, smiling goofily as he pets the little baby turtle-duck on its fluffy little head.

“I thought I’d find you here,” Sokka says.

Zuko—okay, he kind of screeches, which disturbs the baby turtle-duck and sends it waddling back to the pond.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you,” Sokka says, putting up his hands. Zuko tries not to clutch at his chest in emotional overwhelm. “Hey, did you know that turtle-duck has your crown thingy?”

Zuko stares at him

Sokka sighs. “So, I think we need to talk about what happened in there?”

“Nope,” Zuko says immediately. “I think it is completely conclusive and so therefore needs no further investigation.” He pauses and then adds, “I rest my case.”

“Zuko,” Sokka says gently, and Zuko fucking hates this, it’s all crumbling to ash around him and there’s nothing he can do to stop it. “Are you in love with me?”

Horrifyingly, Zuko can feel tears prick the backs of his eyes. He looks at the pond where he had spent so much time with his mother—Zuko thinks about how much he had loved her in those moments. He wonders why love always seems to hurt him so much. “And if I am?” he says finally, his voice hoarse. He turns to look at Sokka, who looks stricken. “Then what?”

Sokka lets out a shuddering breath. “So it’s true.”

“…you knew?” Zuko says, standing up.

“I—I suspected,” Sokka says, looking miserable. “And then—Azula confirmed.”

“She what?” Zuko says, staggering back a step, feeling like he had been cleaved in half—he had gotten complacent and trusted Azula too much, that was private and she knew it, fuck, he was such an idiot—

“I know, I know, but she was just trying to protect you,” Sokka says hurriedly, taking a step forward and immediately stopping when Zuko backs away. “She was worried I was taking emotional advantage of you.”

“She had no right,” Zuko says, his voice breaking. “When did this even happen?”

“I had some new thoughts about her suspect list, so I—met with her again” Sokka says and then in a rush, “I’m not saying that what she did was okay, but Zuko, she really cares about you, and she’s concerned—”

This is when Zuko catches a flicker of movement in the corner of his eye—he doesn’t think, just tackles Sokka to the ground to cover his body with his own, and then he feels a sharp pain in the back of his neck. He looks down at Sokka’s face, so well-loved by him. “Sokka,” he says, and then somehow time fast forwards and he’s on his back on the ground, and Sokka is saying, “—no, Zuko, stay with me, don’t close your eyes—”

“But I dn’t wnna give ‘zula th’gold,” Zuko says muzzily.

Sokka says something in a sharp tone that he can’t catch, but his hands are gentle on his face, and serenity pours over Zuko with the inexorability of the sea. He thinks about the fish that Azula freed, and he smiles at the wide expanse of ocean-blue sky overhead, feeling held by the earth and Sokka’s hands and the sun—and then he knows nothing.

#

Zuko wakes in the infirmary—he finds it depressing how easily he recognizes where he is—and then notices that Sokka is hunched over onto Zuko’s bed with his head pillowed on his arms, sleeping, his face parallel to Zuko’s hip. His eyes are rimmed with red, like he’s been crying recently, and there’s a little table with plates of untouched food. Zuko looks around, and there’s no one else in the room. Pim must be guarding the door on the other side.

Zuko carefully starts to sit up but accidentally jostles Sokka’s head, which causes Sokka to shoot awake, and he only relaxes when he logs that Zuko is still there. “Oh, good, you’re awake,” Sokka says.

“Hi?” Zuko tries, wondering if he could actually just fake amnesia of the several hours that he was last conscious.

“Pim told me about Plan 4.5,” Sokka says conversationally.

Zuko winces. “Oh,” he says.

“Oh?” Sokka repeats dangerously. “That’s all you have to say for yourself when you deliberately used yourself as bait to catch the assassin?”

“…did it work?” Zuko says.

Sokka pinches the bridge of his nose the same way Pim does when she has really truly had it up to here with Zuko. “Yes, they caught everyone involved,” Sokka says and then adds, “By the way, you and Azula were both wrong about who it was.”

“Then who was it?” Zuko asks, frowning.

“Red Lotus,” Sokka says grimly. “Which means you and Azula both owe me 200 gold pieces each.”

“Hey, we never agreed to—okay, fine,” Zuko says, holding up his hands at the look Sokka is giving him.

“You are actually going to give me a heart attack before I’m thirty,” Sokka says tightly. “That was absolutely the least cool thing you’ve ever done.”

“What about when I tried to capture the Avatar?” Zuko says, unable to help himself.

Sokka glares at him. “I’m glad you’re finding this funny because I already sent a letter to your mom with all of the relevant updates.”

Zuko has to admit that as payback, this is probably fair.

“Tui and La, Zuko, what were you thinking?” Sokka says, sounding genuinely angry.

“I was thinking this was the most efficient way to solve the problem,” Zuko says, even though that never works on him when Azula tries it.

“They poisoned you,” Sokka says, raising his voice, and Zuko cannot remember the last time he heard Sokka yell, it happens so rarely. “If Katara wasn’t here, you might have actually died!”

“Sorry,” Zuko mumbles after a second, but it doesn’t seem to be anywhere near adequate because Sokka just looks more upset.

“This really hurt me, Zuko,” Sokka says, looking directly into Zuko’s eyes; Zuko can see the tiredness in his face, the under-eye circles, the stubble that shows he hasn’t shaved. “It hurt everyone. Your uncle is worried sick about you. He’s sleeping right now for the first time in three days.”

Zuko’s shoulders curl up around his ears, and he feels lower than dirt.

“I care about you so much, and you take such shit care of yourself,” Sokka says, his voice breaking. “You have to stop treating yourself like you don’t matter.”

“I’m—I’m so sorry, Sokka,” Zuko says humbly, his hands clenching in his blankets. “I’m just—used to being by myself.”

“But that’s the thing, you’re not by yourself,” he says. “Like, even if we’re far away, we’re here for you. Spirits, Zuko, I write you literally every day!”

“It’s just—every day, I have to be on alert,” Zuko says haltingly. “I have to watch out all the time for people who want to kill me or people who want to screw me over politically, and there’s no break. Everything constantly feels like a high stakes transaction.”

“That’s why you need to start relying on the people you trust to do their jobs,” Sokka says. “The Fire Nation’s not going to immediately collapse if you don’t personally manage every single decision.”

Zuko opens his mouth, and Sokka holds up a hand. “I admit, that probably would have been a true statement a few years ago. But don’t you know you’re past that now?”

“All the murder attempts would suggest otherwise,” Zuko points out.

“Yeah, but that’s not an issue in your inner circle,” Sokka says. “I rigorously tested every single one of your ministers, as well as your advisors—and like, I hate Shan, but he’s very genuinely committed to your leadership.”

Zuko leans back against his pillows because he’s already fatigued and he’s only been awake approximately five minutes.

“Please, Zuko,” Sokka begs, actually genuinely begs, and Zuko can’t let him do that, it hurts too much.

“Yes, all right,” Zuko says. “I promise I’ll start delegating.”

“Good,” Sokka says. “Because I really want to stop worrying about you.” He considers this and then groans. “Geez, I really have joined the Constantly-Worrying-About-Zuko club.”

Zuko scrunches his face. “What?”

“Azula and your uncle apparently—uh, never mind,” Sokka says. “Trade secret.”

Zuko looks at him suspiciously, but Sokka mimes zipping his lips, locking it, and then throwing the key away. “Where is Azula?” Zuko says.

Sokka winces. “Azula got—kinda bad when she heard,” he admits. “But Katara helped.”

“Katara helped her?” Zuko says, his eyebrow jumping up his forehead.

“I apparently wasn’t the only one who went to go see her on my own,” Sokka says, his mouth quirking up a little, and then he turns serious. “Zuko, I wanted to—”

“Wow, I think I hear—” Zuko starts to say.

“If you say you hear Hassaku calling you, I am going to scream until Katara comes and performs hideous medical procedures on you,” Sokka says.

Zuko shuts up.

“We are going to talk about this whether you like it or not,” Sokka informs him and then proceeds to not talk and fumble in his pockets for something. “Aha,” he says finally and gently tosses a gold object into Zuko’s blanket-covered lap. He balances it on his knees: a bright gold hair-comb with the delicate hand-carvings that mark it as a betrothal hair-piece.

“Is this for Suki,” Zuko says dumbly.

“What?” Sokka says. “No! It’s for you, dumbass.”

Zuko squints at the hair-comb, he could have sworn they were little fans--

“They're flames intertwined with waves,” Sokka says, crossing his arms.

“If you did this after I got poisoned—” Zuko starts.

“No, I didn’t,” Sokka says, shaking his head. “I made this before I left home.”

Zuko sets the hair comb down to look at Sokka. “But what about Suki?”

“What about her?” Sokka says, looking baffled.

“What do you mean, what about her?” Zuko says, hands reflexively tightening around the hair-comb. “You love her!”

Sokka inhales sharply through his nose. “Ah, man, I’m an idiot,” he mutters to himself and then he clears his throat. “Suki’s my absolute best friend in the world, and I’ll always love her,” Sokka confirms and even with physically bracing himself—squaring his shoulders, tightening his stomach—Zuko still feels his eyes go wide with a shocked hurt that he tries and fails to tuck away. Sokka grimaces. “No, wait, let me explain, okay?”

Zuko waits because Sokka asked him to, but he’s just—so tired of being second-best.

“Look, Suki and I broke up mainly because the romantic juice just kind of ran out?” Sokka says. “But like, also partially because of the Ty Lee and Mai thing.”

“So you’re not—getting back together?” Zuko says, confused as to what Ty Lee and Mai have to do with anything.

“No,” Sokka says, his tone decisive.

“But everyone thinks you will,” Zuko argues.

Sokka winces. “I think that was—just you, Zuko,” he says.

“Excuse me?” Zuko says, flabbergasted.

“You see, everyone knows that, uh,” Sokka says, clears his throat again, “that you’re…in love with me?”

Zuko is absolutely getting ready to get up and hobble away regardless of the poor state of his physical health when Sokka grabs both of his wrists. “No, hold on—Suki told me, but I didn’t believe her,” Sokka says intensely. “I didn’t think you could love me.”

“Let go of me, Sokka,” Zuko says, wretched. “I’ve had enough—"

“Zuko, I love you,” Sokka says, fast, his eyes fixed on Zuko’s face with a painful intensity. “I’m so—I’m so fucking in love with you.” He’s breathing raggedly, his hands so tight on Zuko’s wrists that it hurts, but Zuko can hardly register it. “I was a huge fucking moron who didn’t even know my own feelings, so how could I know yours? I made that hair-comb for you without even considering what it meant, without even stopping to think why the idea of you wearing it made me so happy. I just—I just kept imagining you letting me put it in your hair, and--” his voice cuts out, and he just continues to look at Zuko.

“I don’t understand,” Zuko says in a small voice.

“I love you,” Sokka says again, as if he’s realizing it all over again, and then he laughs, a little breathlessly. “Do you remember the morning we sent you off to rest? I went to your room because I couldn’t help myself, I wanted to make sure you were actually sleeping. But when Pim let me in, you weren’t in your bed. I couldn’t find you anywhere. I was getting so panicked when I finally noticed that you were curled up on the floor by the window—in the middle of a sunbeam, like a pygmy-cat. You—you looked so peaceful.” He says this last sentence in a hushed voice, like he had witnessed something beautiful and transcendent.

The truth was Zuko had actually been trying to meditate and then had woken up several hours later in a surprised heap on the floor with back pain—and covered in a blanket that hadn’t been present when he fell asleep.

“Azula could immediately tell when I saw her,” Sokka says with a self-deprecating smile. “She told me if I hurt you, she would destroy me politically into teeny-tiny smithereens.” He turns thoughtful. “Then she told me to shit or get off the pot.”

“She did not,” Zuko says immediately.

“Okay, fine, I’m paraphrasing,” Sokka says. “She was right though.”

Zuko bites his lip, uncertain.

“Look at the back of the hair-comb,” Sokka says.

Zuko flips the hair-comb over to see that there’s something red inside a thick layer of clear resin.

“Do you remember the Fire Lily festival when there was a mass shortage of fire lilies?” Sokka says.

“When I was sick?” Zuko says.

After Zuko had found his mother and returned with Azula to the Palace, he had immediately contracted a terrible illness that caused masses of fluid to collect in his lungs. It had been so severe that Zuko himself wasn’t sure at certain moments if he was going to make it—and it had coincided with the annual Fire Lily festival. It was a ritual he had attended every year with his mother and his sister until his mother disappeared—and then he went by himself until he was banished.

“Yeah,” Sokka says. “You were so upset about missing it that we were all worried you were going to make yourself even worse.”

Zuko had also been distraught because the tradition was to pick the fire lily from the field by hand before carrying it to the altar for burning. The smoke would reach the sky with whatever wish had been burned along with it. Zuko had wished for most of his childhood that he would earn his father’s approval

“I had to go to three separate towns with your wish in my pocket before I found one,” Sokka says. “But what I didn’t tell you was that I also made a wish.”

“Really?” Zuko says in surprise.

“You were so sick,” Sokka says. “I just—felt so desperate for you to be okay. I kept part of the fire lily, which I know you’re not supposed to do, but I just—I don’t know, it felt like kind of a weird talisman. Like, as long as I held onto it, my wish would come true.”

“And here I thought you were the science guy,” Zuko says, rubbing his thumb over the smooth lacquer.

“Shh,” Sokka says, half-smiling. “Don’t tell anyone.”

“But why did you keep it all this time?” Zuko says.

“Someone has reliably informed me that they’ve had at least thirty attempts on their life in the past year alone,” Sokka says, wry, and then lets go of Zuko’s wrists to hold his hands. “I know you don’t believe this, Zuko, but you deserve to feel happy. And I mean real happiness where you feel safe and loved.” He takes a deep breath. “So the fire lily is my promise to you: to love you, to take care of you. If you’ll let me.”

“Sokka, you don’t understand,” Zuko says, trying not to cry. “I’ve loved you for so long. That’s all I’ve ever wanted.”

Sokka’s eyes look watery, and the tip of his nose is red. “Can I—can I give you the betrothal hair-comb?”

Zuko presses the hair-comb into Sokka’s hands. Sokka smiles at him, bright and heart-stopping, and leans forward to reverentially pin the hair-comb into Zuko's hair. Sokka’s face is so close to his, and Zuko’s face burns. “Ah, there we go,” Sokka says when he finishes. He lightly grips the back of Zuko’s neck with one hand and the other comes to rest on the curve of Zuko’s jaw. “Zuko, can I--may I kiss you?” he says.

Zuko can’t speak, can only nod, once, embarrassingly jerky. Sokka looks at him for a long moment, smiling a little, and Zuko’s starting to feel uncomfortably exposed when Sokka leans in and finally kisses him. Sokka’s mouth is warm and surprisingly soft, and Zuko feels his spine melt into his knees. When Sokka slips his tongue into Zuko’s mouth, he clutches hard at Sokka’s shoulders, over-whelmed. Zuko wants to be as close to Sokka as possible, skin touching skin, he wants to crawl inside Sokka and live tucked inside his heart so they never have to separate ever again.

When Sokka pulls back, it’s because Zuko is pretty much sagging in his arms from delirious happiness and also the after-effects of being poisoned. “Hey, no over-doing it,” Sokka chides. “Come on, slide down.” But Sokka still has to bodily move Zuko so Sokka can settle behind him, Zuko held in the cradle of his hips, their legs tangling together. Sokka pulls Zuko back against his chest, arms around his shoulders. “Wait, Zuko,” Sokka says after a moment, sounding nervous.

“What,” Zuko says, reaching up to pat at Sokka’s face. “Hey, no takebacks, you already gave me the hair-comb—”

“No, no, it’s not that,” Sokka says. “How would you feel if I…became a diplomat for the Southern Water Tribe?”

“Good?” Zuko says, confused.

“I mean, I kind of also wanted to study at one of the universities first? Maybe—all of them?” Sokka says.

“I’m sure they’d love to have you,” Zuko says sincerely.

“So what I mean is—I know we’re officially engaged now, but I uh,” Sokka says and then coughs. “I don’t really want to rule the Fire Nation? Or be the—Fire Gentleman? Or whatever you’d call it.”

“Oh, that’s fair,” Zuko says, patting his hand. “I don’t really want to rule the Fire Nation either sometimes.”

“Subpar seashells by the beach, huh,” Sokka says, sounding indulgent and warm. “I can’t believe you thought Suki and I were going to get back together. You know she’s sometimes involved with Mai and Ty Lee, right? Maybe more than sometimes, I’m not entirely sure.”

“…ah,” Zuko says because that explained a lot about the night he walked into Mai’s sitting rooms to find a pants-less Ty Lee and Suki in Mai’s favorite robe.

“You accidentally walked in on them, didn’t you,” Sokka says knowingly.

“They told me they were playing cards,” Zuko says weakly.

Sokka snickers. “Yeah, strip pig’s tail probably,” he says, but since he’s petting Zuko’s hair again, he’ll forgive him.

Zuko sighs, closing his eyes. “’m tired.”

“Go to sleep,” Sokka says. “I’ll still be here when you wake up.”

“Promise?” Zuko says fuzzily.

“I promise,” Sokka says, smoothing Zuko’s hair back from his face. “I’m not leaving. I’m with you as long as you need me.”

“Then I guess you'll be with me f’rever,” Zuko says, turning to bury his nose in Sokka’s collarbone; he can hear the small oof from Sokka as he accidentally jabs an elbow into his stomach.

“Forever sounds like a reasonable amount of time,” Sokka says, and Zuko can tell that he’s laughing at him, a little, but it also sounds like a promise.

“Good,” Zuko says.

He’s smiling as he falls asleep, safe and loved and happy.