Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The first time the boy walks into the front door of Sokka’s job, Sokka is bored out of his mind.

The boy wears a cap and a facemask that doesn’t hide the blue, arrow-shaped tattoo on his forehead very well. He has on baggy jeans and a huge, pale-yellow hoodie that must be sweltering in the warm summer heat but doesn’t seem to bother the boy in the least. Sokka can see more blue arrows peeking out from under the hoodie sleeves when the guy puts his hands on the desk that Sokka is currently sitting at.

Sokka tries his best not to stare at the odd tattoos, since he knows by now that it’s best to mind his own business. He’s even got some ink of his own—a tribal pattern around his bicep—but then again, his is cultural. He has no idea what those blue arrows could be other than a bad decision made while wasted. Then again, who is he to judge? He doesn’t know the guy.

“Can you help me?” Nameless-arrow-guy asks. “I need to speak to Shan.”

Sokka raises an eyebrow. “I’m not a secretary.”

Arrow Guy looks confused. “But you’re sitting at the front desk.”

Sokka supposes that Arrow Guy has a point, but he’s still a little miffed. He sighs and lifts a stack of papers. “I’m organizing. We’re disgustingly not very digital yet, so all of our blueprints that haven’t been completely finalized have to be filed so we can get to them.”

Phoenix King Ozai always claims that Ba Sing Se is the central hub of technological innovation. Sokka privately thinks that Phoenix King Ozai needs to upgrade his filing system before he starts spreading propaganda like that, since it makes innovating a million times harder and a much longer process when it takes three hours to find the blueprint with the calculations that you’re looking for. Then again, it would probably mean more taxes for him to pay for a digital filing system, so maybe he’s good just with the paperwork.

(a slower system is all that sokka can ask for, now that ozai has won)

Shan, the man that Arrow Guy wants to talk to, is the head engineer and Sokka’s boss. He’s a major inventor employed by the government to work on whatever pleases the Phoenix King. Sokka is one of several assistants—he just happens to be on paperwork duty right now.

“Well, even though you’re not a secretary, can you still tell me where Shan is? I need to talk to him.”

“Far door on your right,” Sokka sighs after a moment of consideration. He may be stubborn, but Arrow Guy really was pretty polite.

The guy breaks out into a huge grin. “Really? Thanks! My name’s Aang, by the way.” For some reason, immediately after introducing himself, his facial expression freezes for a moment. It’s so fleeting that Sokka almost thinks he’s imagining it, but it’s definitely there.

Weird.

“Sokka,” he introduces, deciding to just ignore the weird behavior in favor of his curiosity. “What do you need with Shan? Government have another project for us? Because I can pass it on if it’s just a document or something.”

“Uh, no,” the guy grins again, a little awkward. “It’s kind of something that I need to see him in person for. Nice meeting you, though!”

Arrow Guy is down the hallway and in Shan’s office before Sokka can respond.

“Nice talking to you, too,” he finally mutters at the closed door, then grabs the file that he needs and marches back towards his own office space, which he shares with two other coworkers where they bounce ideas off each other until something sticks. Sokka tends to either work on making calculations or trying to create proof-of-concepts with prototypes. At one point in time, he used to help with writing the blueprints, but it turns out that he really, really sucks at them. So now he does pretty much anything else.

It’s not the worst job, really. There’s just an uncomfortable tightness in his chest every time he remembers what his work is being used for that he forces himself to ignore. He has to make a living, somehow. He’s been on the streets before.

He doesn’t see Aang leave, buried in his work as he is. He only goes out to the front one more time that afternoon, several hours later. The door to Shan’s office is still closed, but Sokka figures that he must be long gone. He can’t help but feel a little bit disappointed that he didn’t get the chance to say goodbye, despite having only met the guy for a few moments.

Oh, well. More likely than not, he’s never going to see Aang again.

That evening, Sokka walks home, as he always does. He’d get back faster by bus, but it’s too expensive to afford with what the government pays him as an engineering assistant. He barely makes enough to keep making payments on his apartment. The walk really isn’t that long, anyway; it’s about half an hour, and he can always plug in his earbuds and listen to music while he dances down the street like a moron as he walks down the streets. He’s always had a talent for ignoring the baffled looks that strangers give him as he goes by.

His apartment is on the third floor of the complex. He’s got a bedroom and a small living space that’s connected to an even smaller kitchen. It’s nothing fancy, but it does exist in the Middle Ring, and he’s grateful to live in a safe area. Honestly, it’s a little run down—the paint on the walls really needs to be redone, and the landlord always takes forever to respond to any of the complaints he puts in, but it’s worth it.

Before his work in engineering, he and his sister barely scraped by in the Lower Ring. They’d lived on the streets, both working odd jobs in order to make enough for their next meal. Then, of course, his sister was identified by Dai Li agents as a water bender, and they were both pulled to the Middle Ring for her to learn healing and work in a hospital. Sokka knows that the agents only wanted his sister, but her cooperation was necessary—so Sokka got moved along with her, as a show of ‘faith’ towards change.

As if both he and Katara wouldn’t mysteriously disappear as soon as they show any signs of dissenting the rule of Phoenix King Ozai.

He was lucky that the move to the Middle Ring allowed his own skills to be noticed. Without his sister’s waterbending, he’d still be dirt poor in the Lower Ring, trying to find work as a shop assistant so he could feed his baby sister. He’d likely end up starving himself trying to keep her safe and healthy.

So having an apartment now? Worth the few inconveniences.

As soon as he gets inside, he tosses his keys in the bowl on the kitchen counter that he keeps them in—he would lose them if he tried to keep them anywhere else—and pulls the tie out of his hair. It immediately falls into his eyes, so he pushes it behind his ears and collapses down onto one of the pillows at the low table in his little living space. A few strands fall back into his face. He blows a puff of air at them. They settle right back where they were, so he elects to ignore them.

He flips open his laptop and turns on a news stream—he can’t afford a TV, but his computer has always been enough for him.

He turns the volume up loud enough to hear it eight feet away in his kitchen and starts poking through his fridge, desperate to find something for dinner.

Tui and La, he really needs to go food shopping soon. His fridge is practically empty.

Thankfully, he still has a frozen noodle entre in his freezer, and some ground beef meat that he can cook in a frying pan and dump in the noodles. It’s not really very good food, and he may suck at cooking and live half off of rice, noodles, and frozen entrees, but at least he can cook himself some meat to go with it.

Now that he can afford meat, he tries to have it with every meal.

The announcer on the news filters in as he sticks his frozen meal in the microwave and starts heating oil in a pan. He kind of hates microwaved noodles, since they have a weird texture, but he’ll survive.

“—group of dissenters from outside the wall recently on the move. They had been cutting off merchants, trying to stifle trade in this unwavering city, and effectively preventing the very people they claimed to protect from the trade that they need to survive,” a feminine voice is saying.

Sokka scoffs to himself. The dissenters were likely cutting off weapons convos and military supplies from Fire Nation outposts. None of what was being delivered would have been for the people—it’s all propaganda from the Upper Ring meant to try and turn the people away from the dissenters that still manage to oppose the Phoenix King. It’s a joke.

The meat sizzles as he puts it into the pan on the oil, and he jumps back to avoid being splattered. He learned after the first time he got hot oil splashed on his arm.

The only reason he listens to the news at all is because his dad is part of the dissenters that are fighting outside the wall. He left with a group of soldiers originally from the Southern Water Tribes, the same group that moved to Ba Sing Se before Sokka was born and the Fire Nation had fully taken over Ba Sing Se. He had left as soon as he could trust that Sokka was old enough to care for his sister.

Sometimes, Sokka is mad that his father left him in charge of his sister. They were tossed out of the small apartment that had been promised to them by the owner only a few weeks after his father left. He’s mad that his father didn’t realize that would happen in the complete apathy of the Lower Ring, and mad that he didn’t get to go to fight with his father.

But what his dad does is important, Sokka knows, and he’s so proud of him. He loves that his father is fighting for their freedom and knows that he had to leave Sokka and Katara in order to do it. He just hopes that his father comes back one day.

“Thankfully, Commander Zhao has apprehended the group of criminals, and they are now in Dai Li custody,” the woman continues, and Sokka freezes.

Please don’t be dad, he thinks desperately. Please don’t be dad, please don’t be dad, please…

“All prisoners were identified as from the western Earth Kingdom provinces,” the announcer continues, and Sokka releases a breath he hadn’t know that he’d been holding. “Two were earthbenders amd the others—”

Sokka tunes out the rest as he finishes making his meal, internally hoping that his father has survived the hope for their freedom another day.

Over the next few weeks, Aang comes in almost every day. He’ll go seek Sokka out if he’s not in the front when Aang comes in, opening doors and asking around until he finds him. He always stops to talk to Sokka for a few minutes, rambling about anything and everything and yet nothing at the same time. Sokka knows the guy’s favorite animal, that he loves heights, and that he is apparently really good at Pai Sho. At the same time, Sokka has no idea what Aang is doing around, if he works, or even if his tattoos have any meaning.

The guy is incredible at deflecting, but at the same time, he seems so innocent. He somehow projects the impression that whatever he may or may not be hiding is inconsequential anyway.

Spirits, Sokka doesn’t even know if Aang is a bender.

Still, he can’t help but like the guy. Normally he gives in to his suspicion of people—one can never be too careful in this city—but Aang is just so charming and seems so genuinely kind that he can’t help it. So he trusts Aang, despite the fact that he effectively knows nothing about him. Or maybe he doesn’t trust Aang, because he can’t imagine a being in a situation where he would be forced to, but he is certainly fond of him.

A few days after this conclusion is the last day that Aang shows up to his work. When he walks in the door, the first thing that Sokka notices is that he looks uncharacteristically serious.

Sokka is in the front again, organizing papers. “Boss is in the back,” he says as Aang approaches.

Aang shakes his head. “I’m not here for him today, actually,” he says. “I’m here for you.”

“Me?” Sokka puts his papers down, deciding to actually dedicate himself to the conversation.

“Yeah,” Aang nods earnestly. “You seem like a pretty good guy, Sokka. I think your talents could be used in…better places than this, I guess you could say.”

Sokka raises his eyebrows at the phrasing. Even an insinuation that his work does something amoral or wrong could be disastrous. Living in the Lower Ring has led Sokka to know how dangerous speaking out against the Phoenix King can be.

“Really?” he asks, voice carefully neutral.

Aang nods. “Yeah. And while you’re at it, you should take the day off tomorrow.”

Sokka has no idea what taking the day off has to do with his talents. The change in subject catches him off guard.

“What?”

“Take the day off,” Aang says seriously. He digs into his pocket and pulls out a small object, which he sets onto the counter with a small click. “You don’t need to bother taking the time to call in, just stay home.”

Aang slides the object across the counter, and Sokka picks it up curiously. It’s a Pai Sho tile, hand painted with a pretty white lotus. Sokka looks quizzically at Aang, not comprehending.

“Take off,” Aang repeats again. “And if you ever need anything, I’d recommend the Jasmine Dragon and a game of Pai Sho. You’d be great at it, I think.”

“Thanks?” Sokka tries. He recognizes the Jasmine Dragon as a Tea Shop on the upper side of the Middle Ring, but nothing else that Aang is saying makes sense to him. Why take off? Sokka sucks at Pai Sho, and Aang already knows this. Sokka told him that the last week, when they were talking about their favorite games. It feels like they’re somehow having different conversations.

Aang nods anyway, then steps back, hands in the pockets of his jeans. “Just think about it,” he says, and then he’s gone.

Sokka spends a minute or so looking at the chipped paint on the lotus tile, contemplating. Finally, he pockets it and gets back to work.

He listens to Aang’s advice. He doesn’t know why he does it, but he does. He doesn’t call in sick, he just turns off his alarm before bed and sleeps straight through the start of his shift and until noon.

He wakes up to eight texts, five missed calls, and his phone already ringing with a sixth one. It must have been the sound that finally woke him up.

When he answers, Katara’s frantic voice filters through shitty speakers. “Sokka? Sokka, please tell me t’s you. I’ve been worried sick.”

She sounds terrified, breathless, and a little bit like she might have been crying. Sokka forces himself to sit up, suddenly feeling a lot more awake than when he answered the phone. He’s concerned, worried that something horrible has happened to her while he was asleep.

“Wait, what?” he asks. “Are you in trouble? Did something happen? I just woke up.”

“You just—” Katara cuts off. “You slept in? Spirits, Sokka.” Now she just sounds exasperated.

“Sorry?”

“Check the news, then text me,” she tells him and hangs up.

The news has Sokka floored. That morning, there had been a huge fire at his work. Explosive. His boss was missing, and so were all of his coworkers that had been working that morning, presumed dead. Before the explosion, a virus had wiped their entire database out. Nothing had been recovered.

Sokka hadn’t ever officially called out of work. He was included in the list of people present during the explosion. No wonder Katara had been so panicked. She had probably thought he was dead until he picked up the phone.

It was only by the spirits’ grace that he wasn’t.

Not the spirits’, he realizes, glancing over to the Pai Sho tile that sits on his bedside table.

Aang’s.

Sokka’s head is buzzing, full of questions as he rolls out of bed to get ready for the day and—do what, he doesn’t know. There’s apparently not job waiting for him to go to, not when it literally exploded. According to the news, it had to have been foul play; there’s no other way that his whole job would have gone up in flames in under five minutes. If he had been there, it’s pretty much certain that he would have died.

Did Aang know that was going to happen?

How else would he have been able to warn Sokka to stay home? Was he behind it all, or did he just have intel? What was he even doing all the time?

Sokka showers, scrubbing shampoo into his hair in frustration as he tries to make sense of his jumbled thoughts. Aang had been so kind and positive all the time; he somehow couldn’t imagine the guy literally blowing up a building, especially considering that people likely died in the explosion. He supposes that he can’t really know everything about a guy he only had a dozen or so conversations with, and it’s definitely true that some people are really good at lying and putting on different faces. Still, his instincts are telling him that he’s not wrong about this. Aang seemed so genuine.

At the same time, he remembers the second to last time that Aang had walked into his work; the last time he’d met with Shan. Sokka recalls that he’d had a little USB in his hand when he’d came in.

He hadn’t thought anything of it at the time—honestly, he’d barely even noticed it—but now he thinks about the fact that he hadn’t seen the USB in Aang’s hand when he’d waved to Sokka on the way out. Maybe it had just been in Aang’s pocket.

What if it hadn’t?

What if it had contained the virus that had wiped out all of their digital files?

Sokka curses as he gets shampoo in his eyes, too focused on his thoughts to be careful, and is forced to rinse his eyes out under the spray. He wrenches the water off as soon as he washes the shampoo from his hair and dries off.

He grabs a t-shirt and a pair of sweats instead of one of his usual work outfits, since he figures that he’s not going out anywhere today.

What is he going to do?

Text Katara back now that he’s finished digesting his apparent death, he supposes.

Good thing I slept in, he texts her, and a minute later his phone is ringing again. Maybe a reminder that Sokka had almost died wasn’t exactly the right move.

“I was so terrified that you were dead,” Katara says in lieu of a greeting.

Definitely too much of a sore spot. Sokka sighs. “I’m sorry that I worried you, but I really am glad that I stayed in today,” he says. “Guess I’m out of a job, though.”

“You’re not just out of a job, Sokka,” Katara insists. “You’re currently presumed dead. If you show back up, what are people going to assume about you? Think, Sokka. Do you really believe that people will accept that you just happened to skip work, unplanned, on the day that the place goes up in flames? Even though it’s a coincidence, you know that the Dai Li wouldn’t risk possible treason like that! You’ll be arrested. It doesn’t matter that you had nothing to do with it; you’ll be taken in anyway. I’ll never see you again.”

As Katara rants, Sokka begins to understand that he might be well and truly fucked. “There’s nothing linking me to it,” he protests, but he knows that she’s right.

“They’ll call it circumstantial,” Katara shoots back. “You know better than to give the Dai Li the benefit of the doubt.”

He does know better.

What is he going to do?

“I’ll be on the run for the rest of my life if this doesn’t get cleared up,” he realizes.

“Sokka—”

“It’s fine,” he interrupts, even though it is not fine. “I’ll figure it out.”

This apartment is under his name, so he won’t be able to keep living here. He’d be caught instantly. He’ll need to pack what he can and get out of here as soon as possible. Authorities could show up any moment to find him just sitting here, and then he’d be screwed.

He needs to figure out where to go from here. Where he’s going to stay and live from now on. He’ll have to be able to hide for as long as he possibly can.

He picks up the little Pai Sho tile.

“I’ve got an idea,” he says abruptly. “I’ll call you back later.”

He hangs up before she can say anything else and pockets the Pai Sho tile. His phone gets dumped in his pocket next, on mute to ignore the inevitable redial from Katara. He pulls the small, loose board at the foot of his bed up and puts all of his documents and cash into a backpack that he grabs from his closet, along with as many changes of clothes that he can fit, his laptop, and his chargers. He doesn’t know if he’ll have the chance to return, so he needs to pack some absolute essentials before he leaves. As many as he can carry. However, he doesn’t want to pack more than one bag, because the more he carries, the more noticeable he’ll be.

He’s out the door in under twenty minutes, mentally mourning all of the food in his fridge that’s going to bad if he can’t return to his apartment. Knowing that he probably won’t come back means sentencing all of his food to spoiling.

Still, he leaves without looking back.

The Jasmine Dragon is a very small but busy tea shop located on the nicer side of the Middle Ring. Sokka hasn’t really been before—he’s not much of a tea person—but he knows that his sister loves the place. He really, really hopes that it can somehow offer him more than tea and a game of Pai Sho.

Aang did say to go if he ever needed anything. He certainly needs a lot right now. Here’s hoping that losing his job and being on the run will be enough to secure some much-needed help.

The shop is fairly busy with the afternoon rush when he enters, full of people stopping for a cup of tea after lunch before they return to work. It’s surprisingly traditional inside, the servers dressed in robes rather than modern work polos and jeans, but it does lend to the aesthetic of the place. There are two servers who are currently delivering tea to tables, about college age, likely trying to work their way through Ba Sing Se University. At the counter is an older man, smiling at the customer that he is currently packaging tea leaves for.

Sokka waits his turn in line anxiously. There’s only two people in front of him, and both are quickly seated, but the wait is long enough that he almost turns tail and runs anyway. Only the knowledge that he doesn’t really have anywhere else to go keeps him in place.

Finally, it’s his turn, and the old man greets him with a smile.

“Welcome to the Jasmine Dragon,” he says. “Will you be seated, or did you want to purchase something to go?”

“Actually,” Sokka says, fumbling to extract the tile from his pocket. “I was hoping to speak to the owner about something?”

“You’re speaking to him!” the man laughs. “My name is Mushi. I own the Jasmine Dragon.”

“Oh, good,” Sokka says, relieved. “Do you, maybe, have a minute?”

Mushi’s eyes drop to Sokka’s hands, which keep messing with the tile that he holds. Mushi catches the eye of one of the two servers.

“Jin, could you come and work the counter for a few minutes?” he calls to her, then turns back to Sokka. He gestures towards the small half door that separates leads to behind the counter. “Why don’t you join me in the back?”

Sokka slips behind the counter to follow Mushi, holding the small door open behind him to allow Jin to take Mushi’s place and call the next customer forward with a bright smile. He hopes he isn’t making a mistake by isolating himself with this man.

The small room in the back that Sokka follows Mushi into seems to be a small office, containing only an old wooden desk with a little computer and two chairs in front of it. There are filing cabinets against one wall. Mushi gestures for him to sit in one of the two chairs as he lifts a glass teapot, currently half-filled with amber tea, exposing the unlit candle warmer underneath. With a flick of his finger, the wick lights, and he sets the teapot back down to allow the flame to begin to warm the tea. The movement causes Sokka to start, and he suddenly notices the dragon artwork hung on the walls. He sees the large red rug on the floor with gold threading, and he’s suddenly far more unsure about being here.

“I hope that you don’t mind oolong,” Mushi says as he settles into his chair. Either he doesn’t notice the apprehension that Sokka is sure shows plain on his face, or he’s ignoring it. Sokka isn’t sure which of those options he prefers. “I would not want to waste a perfectly good pot of tea. Now, while it heats, tell me what it is that you came here to talk about.”

Honestly, Sokka isn’t really sure where he wants to start. He just knows that Aang told him to come here, but not that this man could help him. He could be digging his own grave by talking to Mushi.

He sets the tile that he’s been fiddling with on the table without saying anything. Mushi picks it up.

“The white lotus tile. While usually a relatively weak piece, it does have the power to show who knocks at the garden gate.”

Sokka is instantly lost. He has no idea what to do with a senseless line like that. Mushi looks at him expectantly, like he’s waiting for a response, but Sokka is coming up with nothing.

“I…guess?” Sokka tries, which is not the correct response, if the old man’s expression is anything to go by.

Mushi pulls two small teacups closer to him. Holding the wide sleeve of his robe, he carefully pours tea for the both of them. He hands Sokka one of the cups, who takes it despite not really wanting anything to drink. He can’t really afford to be rude right now.

He watches Mushi take a sip from his own cup. “I’m not sure that I can help you if you don’t even know what you’re doing here.” The words sound terrifyingly final.

Sokka lurches forward instantly, not wanting the conversation to be over. As he does so, tea spills from the cup and onto his hand. He clenches his teeth and hisses, but ignores it and presses forward. He needs this help.

“You’re right,” he says. “I have no idea who you are or what I’m really doing here. But I need help—my work was literally blown up this morning, and the only reason I wasn’t there was because of some kid with weird tattoos that told me I should stay home. As soon as it gets out that I didn’t ever go in to work, I’ll get taken in. You know what the Dai Li are like; I won’t get another chance. Please.” He bows once, as well as he can while sitting down and cradling a cup of tea in his hand so that he doesn’t spill it on himself again.

Mushi looks contemplative. Sokka hopes he hasn’t screwed up his choices by practically advertising the fact that he doesn’t buy in to the Phoenix King’s propaganda, even if he hadn’t been the one to set off the explosion.

“Could you, by any chance, tell me the name of this boy who told you to stay home?” Mushi asks.

Sokka blinks. Out of all of the responses he may have expected after his plea, that hadn’t been one of them. “He said that his name was Aang,” Sokka says slowly.

A smile graces Mushi’s face, and Sokka feels hope.

“Tell me, Sokka, have you heard of the Order of the White Lotus?”

Sokka frowns. “No.”

“The Order is a group of very powerful benders who went underground around the time that Phoenix King Ozai was rising to full power. It was before he harnessed the power of Sozin’s comet to lay waste to the rest of the Earth Kingdom, when he was still known as Fire Lord Ozai. A few years previously, a man came to this city who rallied us. Together, an underground resistance was formed.”

Sokka takes a moment to process the amount of treason that just exited the mouth of the man in front of him. “Is your name even Mushi?” he demands. It’s all he can think to say.

Thankfully, the old man just laughs. “No. My name is not actually Mushi. But I cannot tell you what it truly is unless you agree to join us. We can help you; we can find you a place to live, and obtain a new identity for you no matter what you choose. But I would like to extend you a formal offer, on behalf of Aang and our society—would you like to join the resistance?”

Sokka doesn’t even have to think about it. “A secret underground resistance that opposes the tyrannical king who has taken everything from my family and the people I love? Count me in!”

Somehow, not-Mushi looks a bit sad at his words, even though he smiles indulgently at Sokka’s enthusiasm. “Alright, then. Come with me.”

Not-Mushi sets his tea down and rises, walking over to the wall behind his desk. He knocks on it several times, a twice-repeating pattern that Sokka takes to be some sort of code. As soon as he finishes, a portion of the wall slides down into the floor, revealing a set of stairs that lead down underground.

Sokka follows the old man down, squinting in the dark. As soon as they’re past the threshold, the wall takes its previous place again, plunging them into darkness that is only cut through when a flame ignites above the palm of the man in front of him.

“Your shop is a front for the underground?” he asks.

“It is. May I ask you your name, young man?”

“Sokka. Yours?”

“It is Iroh.”

Sokka doesn’t have time to process the fact that the man in front of him might be the vanished, thought-to-be-dead Dragon of the West before a voice filters up the stairs that he swears he recognizes.

“—don’t need to worry so much. I’m sure he’s got something figured out. That’s what he told you, isn’t it?”

Another voice responds. “Yeah, but what if he gets caught? I wouldn’t be able to deal with it!”

Then Sokka is pushing past Iroh as soon as he hits the floor, because he knows that he recognizes that voice. And sure enough, sitting on a ratty couch against a roughly-earthbent wall in this huge, underground cave is his sister, who is currently being comforted by a bald kid with tattoos wearing jeans and a yellow hoodie.

“Katara?” Sokka says, shocked. “Aang?”

They both look up at him, eyes wide.

Then Aang breaks into a grin. “Sokka!” he exclaims, jumping to his feet—he almost seems to float as he does. “I’m so glad that you made it!”

Sokka exhales, feeling excited and scared and fond and exasperated all at once. “You have a whole lot of explaining to do,” he says.

Sokka can’t wait to get started.

Chapter Text

The landlord of the apartments is not in when they arrive. It’s no matter; the Dai Li do not need anyone’s permission to go anywhere. The reality is that it is probably better that the landlord is out. If they had resisted, then they would have been taken in for reeducation.

He hates taking people in for reeducation.

One of the agents on his team picks the lock quickly. It would have been easy enough to kick it down, but stealth has always been the modus operandi of the Dai Li, and he does not plan on changing that any time soon. Staying invisible is one of his talents. Nothing good has ever come to him from losing his temper.

As expected, the apartment is dark, empty. He gestures twice, and the three agents he brought with them spread through the apartment, checking to make sure that no one remains inside. It’s unlikely, but people have attempted to get the drop on him before.

No one has ever succeeded, he is proud to say.

One of the agents exits the bedroom and nods at him; there is no one around. He strides inside, looking around. The place seems to be untouched. It is quite bare compared to what he himself grew up with, but the job that Sokka had held wasn’t enough to do much more than pay for a small apartment and some food, according to the report.

It is up to him to see if there was more to Sokka than meets the eye; if he was the one who had conspired to destroy the intellectual property of the Phoenix King. If he had committed treason.

Shan was a traitor, for sure. His apartment had been the first that his elite team had visited. It had been practically gutted already, everything of value removed from it and the engineer nowhere to be seen. Clearly he had not died in the explosion; he had rigged it, or had someone help him destroy the building, and escaped himself.

Sokka’s apartment was the last of the assistants that the Dai Li were visiting, in fact. Just to tie up loose ends; to make sure that no one had been conspiring with Shan to commit treason.

The apartment seems to be clear, however; nothing really seems to be out of place, and it is clear that no escape had been prepared. All of his belongings remained in the apartment.

He is about to give the signal to leave when something in the bedroom catches his eye—a loose board. He approaches and crouches down next to it. It looks like a hiding spot Sokka must have rigged upon obtaining the apartment; a place to hide belongings and items of value.

It’s empty.

The exit wasn’t planned, he realizes. It was hasty—nothing was removed ahead of time, so Sokka had grabbed everything that he could carry and fled.

Perhaps he had been involved in the explosion; perhaps not. It didn’t matter at this point. He had survived the explosion somehow, and he had fled as a result.

“He was here after the explosion,” Zuko says clearly as he rises to his feet, catching the attention of the Dai Li agents under his command. “He escaped. He cannot be allowed to go free.”

He exhales, and flames lick at his lips as he channels his frustration into his breath, forcing himself not to set the whole apartment on fire as a result of his frustration.

“Set the apartment under watch. I want to know if he’s stupid enough to return here now that he’s on the run. We have a better chance of catching him than Shan, and if he knew to run, then he knows enough to be useful to us.”

Zuko strides out of the apartment, fists clenched. He will dismantle the resistance.

Whatever it takes.

.

.

.

He ignores the voice in his head that whispers to him in his uncle’s words, telling him that there is another way.

He disappointed his father once. He cannot afford to do it again.