Chapter Text
The poison had been simple, nightshade berries crushed by Ursa’s own expert hand into a jam-like paste to be spread over Fire Lord Azulon’s supper. Ursa had once been a herbalist, in a land of sunny fields and friendly faces, but that life had been taken and her skills all but forgotten by everyone but her.
Fire Lord Azulon died alone in his chambers, slumped over his half-finished meal in an undignified heap, and by then, Ursa was long gone. Whispers saw her racing through the gardens, no more than a fleeting shadow, two little ones following close behind her, but many wrote the sighting off as rumour, just like so many supposed sightings in the following years, folklore written into the Fire Nation’s history. Four royals, the most sacred and protected in society, disappearing in a single night, one to death and three to shadow. Gossip was bound to run rampant, stories created of little ghosts in the countryside, wandering spirits, a prince, a princess, a lady to be, the true facts of the case as hard to grasp as sand.
The following inquiry, ordered by a fresh-faced new Fire Lord with rage for a tongue, was immediate and carried out only by Ozai’s most trusted. A series of events were deduced, quietly, and the Fire Lord denied them, loudly. He knew what happened. His late father was murdered by an unknown assailant, and his wife and two young children were kidnapped, presumed dead. Foul play was suspected from an external source, perhaps the overambitious Earth Kingdom in the east, and rumour ran rampant through the caldera. Rumours of foul play ran rampant amongst the servants, too, but they suspected the assailant may have been someone a little closer to home, had heard shouting that night, seen the children with bruises beneath their sleeves, knew a father willing to do anything for the throne.
Fire Lord Ozai made it clear what happened to those who gossiped. There were several executions, and then silence fell over the caldera. It was not spoken about.
Only three knew the true series of events from that night;
Sunset, Prince Ozai requested he replace his brother as Crown Prince. Fire Lord Azulon, outraged by the suggestion, sought to punish his son in a manner fitting his tone. A brother for a brother. A son for a son.
Twilight, Princess Ursa, always too clever, heard of the threat to her little boy’s life. She took a chance. She made a deal.
Dusk, Fire Lord Azulon suppered in his chambers. Deadly nightshade entered his system and paralysed his nerve endings. He died within a single degree of the sun.
Nightfall, in the pitch black, Princess Ursa knew what had to be done. This was the deal she agreed to, the deal that burned around her. But she hesitated. Then, in the flickering darkness, she took a stand.
She refused to abandon her children to the fire.
Zuko had woken from nightmares with a start to see his mother’s anxious face, quick to shush him when he went to ask what was going on and quietly ushering him out of bed. She held his hand too tightly, looked both ways on every corner as they made their way to Azula’s chambers, and Zuko was tired and scared and confused, but he didn’t dare make a noise.
Azula woke quicker than he had, golden eyes pin-point sharp within moments. She hesitated in ways Zuko didn’t, didn't even think to, but with no words spoken, the three shared something that night, and Azula listened.
Like that, silent and unanswered, the three left the palace.
By dawn, it was like they were nothing but hauntings, long gone, the only trace of them an uncomfortable shiver and a whisper from the dark corners that something was once here. Fire Lord Ozai sent soldiers to scour every inch of the Fire Nation, desperate to be reunited with his dear, dear family, basking in the outpouring of support upon being crowned under such tragic circumstances, but nothing was found.
Sunrise, and Ursa, Zuko and Azula found themselves by a small pond in the slopes of the caldera’s outskirts. It was the first time their mother let them stop, and Zuko’s legs were aching, near collapsing beneath him as he scooped up the cool water and washed his face. The pond reminded him a little of the turtleduck pond in the palace gardens. He was tired. He wanted to go home.
His mother’s hands were red as she handed them changes of clothes. Jam stains, she said when Azula picked up on it. Zuko hadn’t noticed.
“What’s going on?” Azula hissed, as immediate as if she’d just been woken up and not as if they’d already been travelling for hours in silence. The fact she’d held her tongue this long was a miracle, Zuko thought bitterly.
“Get dressed,” was all their mother said, tone cold as she led by example, pulling on cheap, faded clothes. Zuko didn’t even know where she got these, and he eyed them warily. All he wanted was to go back to bed, to close his eyes and wake up with all of this having been just another nightmare. He didn’t know what was going on, but he knew there was something wrong with his mother, saw it in the rigid set of her shoulders no matter how many steps from the palace they took. Something terrible had happened, and Father wasn’t here and that meant something, and Zuko couldn't help but think it was to do with him, that he'd done something wrong. The thought sat unflinching in his chest like a stone.
But he trusted Mother, and tugged the clothes on, ignoring how they itched as he dropped his old silk shirt to the ground.
Azula wasn’t so trusting.
“Tell us what’s going on first,” she demanded, and even though she was so tiny, only nine years old, she still seemed to look down on their mother.
“Young lady, I said get dressed,” Mother’s tone was quiet, almost a growl, and Zuko felt himself fall into a familiar tension at the impatience sitting in her glare. This... This was all wrong. He wasn’t supposed to feel like this with her, but she was acting off and he knew something terrible had happened and Azula wouldn’t stop pushing.
He was scared.
He was scared and he needed his mother to comfort him, but she didn’t have time for that. Not anymore.
Azula tried one more time. “It’s Grandfather, isn't it?” Her golden eyes were narrowed, a predator. Zuko remembered her words from earlier. Father’s going to kill you, said so cheerfully. Azula always lies.
That short sentence had an effect on Mother. She recoiled from it, fingers dancing over her own red palms, thin lips parted. Once, this expression would have become soft, the shock that came first before maternal affection, like when Zuko would tell her that Azula had burned him. Zuko expected that warmth, but it didn’t come. Mother’s shock morphed into a coldness so blank even Azula blinked in confusion.
“Everything has changed,” she said, voice like ice. “Your grandfather is dead, your father is Fire Lord, and we can never be the people we were. From now on, we trust only one another. I know you two have always had your differences, but now, your very survival depends on your ability to protect each other.”
Azula flicked a disgusted look to Zuko, who stood frozen in his ill-fitting clothes.
“We are fugitives now,” Mother said, and Zuko’s stomach rolled in horror. “Traitors to the crown. Enemies of the Fire Nation. The only way we can escape is to shed the people we used to be. There is no longer any Zuko and there is no longer any Azula. You need to let them go completely.”
Grandfather was dead. Father was Fire Lord. Zuko's heart raced, thrumming against his ribs as he tried to figure out what this meant, how this could have happened. He’d never been fond of Grandfather. The man was old and his stare was mean when Zuko stumbled through his katas before him, but to hear he had died? To have it said so casually? Was he supposed to mourn? Something crumpled in Zuko’s chest like a ball of paper and he felt sick. Grandfather had been old, and mean, but he had also been their last line of defence against Father, the only person in the palace with more power than him. Even Mother couldn’t stand against Father, and Uncle, for his kindness and insistence on making Zuko sit with him for tea, was never home.
Father was Fire Lord now.
Zuko suddenly knew exactly how much danger they were in.
“What did we do?” Zuko asked, voice barely a whisper, his mother’s words looping themselves in an awful chorus.
No longer any Zuko. But if Zuko wasn’t Zuko, then who could he possibly be? A ghost, an empty shell, a hopeless wanderer, a death. What had they done that was so bad? Was Father angry? But Zuko hadn’t been doing any worse in his classes than normal, and that didn’t explain why Azula was here. Perfect, prodigy Azula. Zuko couldn’t help his bitterness. Even the thought of her name made him ache. No longer any Azula.
“Honestly, Zuzu,” Azula huffed, “can’t you see? Father is the reason we had to run in the first place. You were supposed to die tonight, and it was only a matter of time before you,” a petulant look to their mother, “caught Father’s rage and wound up being disposed of. You two ought to have disappeared like this years ago. But me?” She sounded angry now, and Zuko could practically see her mind ticking away, figuring something out, snarling at the unfairness of it all. “You’ve ruined me, Mother. He'll think I was part of this now you’ve dragged me away. I was great, I was perfect, and I could have been the perfect princess, but you’ve torn that all from me.”
And then Azula went quiet. “I underestimated your hatred for me.”
“No,” Mother snapped, sudden and demanding to be heard as she kneeled before Azula, placing her hands on Azula’s shoulders. She looked so small like that, in the morning light. “That palace was killing us all. We were cursed the moment we stepped foot in there. You're so clever, Azula,” her tone turned soft, like it used to be, and she brushed a loose strand of Azula’s hair behind her ear. “You know all this. You’ve known since I woke you up and you still came with me. You're clever enough to know it was only a matter of time for you too.”
Zuko was struggling to breathe, trying so desperately to run through his exercises and still only managing pathetic, choked gasps. Information was being given so casually but these were words Zuko had never heard spoken. You were supposed to die tonight. Father is the reason we had to run in the first place. What had Zuko done wrong?
“You want to do this like a perfect princess? Fine,” Mother said, and the softness vanished. She got to her feet again, eyes cool, metallic. She wasn’t just looking at Azula.
“Let’s think logically. You can’t go back now. You said it yourself; your father would never trust you again. We’re stuck together and we need to disappear before anyone catches up. You can’t survive on your own out here. You need me, and you need each other.”
Zuko watched his little sister, the cogs of her brain whirring. Love each other to survive, that was the condition. And Zuko didn’t understand any of this, didn’t understand why his life at the palace had suddenly been yanked so violently from him, didn’t understand the rough feel of his clothes or the cold edge to his mother that had never been there before. But he understood one thing, and that was that they were in danger. They were in terrible danger, and the only ones they could trust were the three people here beside the pond that wasn't the turtleduck pond. They might not like it, but it was the three of them now against the entire world. Zuko didn’t always get on with Azula, but knowing she was in the same predicament as him now, knowing she was always, first and foremost, his little sister, he couldn’t help but want to stand closer to her.
He wasn’t going to let anyone harm his mother or sister. Before Agni, he swore he’d protect them with his life. Boiled down to that simple fact, and the intricacies of his and Azula’s relationship suddenly didn’t matter.
And Azula was looking at Zuko differently to how she had ever done before. It was indignant, subtle, but Zuko saw it. In her sharp gaze was the same promise.
They burned their clothes and buried the ashes. Hands shaking so badly he had to clench them into fists, Zuko sat as his mother cut his hair, watching the black strands fall to the grass. To lose your topknot was to lose your honour, Zuko knew. He also knew that they were nameless now, and by that definition, they could not possess honour, or loyalty, or personhood in any form. They burned their shorn hair too, the smell acrid and hitting the back of Zuko’s throat even when they put miles between them and the pond. The breeze was cold on his neck, and he stayed close to Azula. She didn’t push him away. She didn’t say a thing.
They reached the coast just as the morning began in earnest, the nation that once belonged to them now waking up, oblivious to the chaos in the capital. They came to a long dock, full of large crates and larger ships, burly men lugging supplies and snapping when the children got underfoot, scowling at anyone who held eye contact too long. There was shouting and a hundred smells, most of them unpleasant, and the chaos terrified Zuko. He jumped at each loud noise; the toppling of barrels, the snap of rope, the crash of boots on stone.
Mother spoke lowly to a docker as Agni’s light bled over the haggard faces of the Fire Nation’s working class, and Zuko and Azula stood close together behind her, neither of them acknowledging the proximity. Zuko was surprised by how much comfort it gave him to feel Azula’s arm pressed against his, allowing him something reliable and warm and known against the hungry glares thrown their way. Eventually, Mother struck a deal with the man, passing a substantial handful of gold to him, a few coins for the transport, the rest for his discretion, and then they were rounded onto a boat, hidden behind looming crates of cured meat, the smell of salt nearly overpowering.
They were on that boat for almost a month, sailing out of Fire Nation waters and into the Mo Ce Sea. It was headed to the Colonies for trade, but the three royals alighted at Makapu Village, and Zuko had never been more grateful to feel land beneath his feet.
Weeks passed, and then months.
Permanence was a foreign concept. Zuko and Azula weren’t allowed to talk to anyone but each other, weren't allowed friends, weren’t allowed to relax. They learnt to always have an eye over their shoulder. Zuko carefully practised pickpocketing. Azula drilled their mother on herbalism. Mother was right; the two royal siblings needed each other to survive. When she said that, Zuko had thought she meant in a literal sense, and she probably did, but it was the nights that he truly needed saving from. He'd lie awake, tossing and turning, and he’d think of Zuko, and he’d think of the quickly growing list of fake names and stories he’d donned in only a few months. How much falseness could he ingest before he lost himself completely? Before he choked on it, and it all came back up again, ugly in the light of day?
It bothered Azula too. He knew it did. She built an entire personality around being a prodigy firebender and Father’s perfect daughter, and now that was all gone.
They silently faced off like that. Neither were sleeping and both were painfully aware of the other’s state. Some nights, Zuko would want to talk to his little sister, if only to fill the silence, but he’d stop himself. He loved Azula, he truly believed so. She had made his life a misery back home, but she was young, and he was starting to think that maybe his father hadn’t been a good influence on either of them, and on the run, he’d seen how her terrifying cunning could be used for good, had seen her in the market, how Azula had chatted sunnily to a stallholder, knocking her hip against the table while he was distracted by her charm and allowing Zuko to subtly catch the two apples that fell, storing them in his sleeve before anyone was any the wiser. They'd walked off giggling quietly and ate the apples in a side alley. They were soft, just the wrong side of ripe, and the juice was messy, but it was brilliant and Zuko had grinned at Azula, ridiculously pleased both because of their accomplishment and because it was theirs.
But then it turned awkward, because neither of them had any idea how to just be nice to each other.
But Zuko wanted to be nice. He wanted Azula to be safe. He wanted to protect her. She was his little sister. She always had been, and she needed him. Now, more than ever.
For months, they trod that awkward line, dependent on one another for survival and sanity but neither willing to take the final step, and all the while, Mother got worse. It was like she was sick, a wound inflicted upon her the night they left the palace, an infection spreading with each day. She worked her fingers bloody sewing seams or washing linens and it was never enough to feed them all. Zuko started picking up the slack as best he could, finding ways to make the food last longer, stitching their clothes to avoid buying new ones, pocketing a bar of soap from an oblivious stallholder instead of losing precious coins on it. Mother pretended not to notice. She didn’t approve, but said nothing and allowed Zuko’s help.
He couldn’t remember when it started to feel more like he was taking care of her than the other way around. One day, she stopped working, stopped planning their route, stopped pushing to move on from their latest town after being there too long. She stayed in bed for more hours of the day than she was out of it. She didn’t eat the food Zuko brought her.
Azula watched it all with cold dismissal, but Zuko wouldn’t give up on their mother. She's just under the weather, he said after Azula caught him having to wash Mother for the first time. I can take care of things for now, he said after another day unable to find work. No one wanted to hire a scrawny, eleven-year-old boy with messy hair and soft hands.
Azula had always been the smart one. When Mother had called Zuko to her one night, he’d felt nothing but joy, a shy hope in his chest surging forwards when she looked upon him with lucid eyes for the first time in weeks. He hadn’t second-guessed it for a moment. He spent the next few years wishing he had.
“My precious boy,” she whispered, cupping his face. Her smile was so sad. “You’re so good. So strong. You must take care of your little sister. You're the eldest. You have to take care of things. Do you understand?”
Zuko had frowned sheepishly. "I'm doing my best."
“I know," Mother said. “It will get easier.”
The next morning, she was gone, her bed made, the last of their coins left in a pouch on the counter, enough for one last week of rent.
When Zuko asked around, no one had seen his mother but for a single fisherman, who looked sadly between the two children, both skinny and dirty like any other orphan in this war, and told them he’d seen her sitting on the riverbank before dawn, placing rocks in her pockets. Zuko hadn’t understood at first, and shockingly, neither did Azula, the horror of this something even her quick mind was a stranger to.
They never spoke about it, and never returned to that town.
Everything changed after that. Azula was independent and smart and so strong, but the truth of the matter remained; Zuko was the eldest. He was more likely to get work, and was expected to figure things out for them. He wanted to, would lose sleep thinking about his little sister having to face such things when he was perfectly willing to shoulder the burden, so he put himself in front of her and the cold reality of wartime. He didn’t know to be subtle at first, and she called him out on it, refused to be babied because he wasn’t much older than her and she could take care of herself. So Zuko got smarter, shielded her better, and took everything head on so she wouldn’t have to. They fell into a routine. They travelled from town to town, never staying in one place long enough to be known, and Zuko looked for work in each one. Sometimes, he’d earn enough to get them a room somewhere, always places with draughts and leaks, and despite years of indulgence and privilege, Zuko and Azula learned quickly to be pathetically grateful for it, because the alternative, when Zuko could only earn a few coppers or worse couldn’t find work at all, saw them on street corners and beneath overhangs, huddling together for warmth.
Zuko only made the money; Azula figured out when and how to spend it. This week they needed warmer clothes for the oncoming winter, so wouldn’t eat for two days. Next week they needed to pay rent, so would go around stealing boots left outside of temples, selling them to harrowed mothers with too many mouths to feed or children younger than they were already caring for their families.
Two coppers a piece; a fair price. They were specific about the people they scammed. Pride went both ways.
They worked that way, Zuko’s skills and adaptability paired with Azula’s quick schemes and intellect, but for an entire year, they hardly spoke to one another. Their relationship existed still as one of necessity, not love or fondness. They seemed to be keeping each other alive purely because they had no idea what else they were supposed to do, and it was lonely. It was agonisingly lonely, a circle of lack and ache and no one to speak to about the smaller things. What was loneliness when you couldn’t put food on the table? Zuko felt pathetic. He felt, for the first time in his life, just what it was to be truly weak. They were nothing. Orphans in a war, just like thousands of others. Poor, muddy faces and jutting ribs. Anger. Bitterness. Hunger. Again and again and again as bodies fell in distant, too-close lands and Azula never flinched.
He might as well be alone, Zuko would catch himself thinking. She might as well have died as well, or been left in the Fire Nation where she’d always been so fucking superior.
And then Azula got sick.
It seemed impossible. Azula never got sick. She was above even that. But they were hardly eating and they were always moving and it was hard to stay clean, and everyone around them was always doing just as miserably. Zuko knew sickness ran rampant in the areas they stayed, because it was cheap which meant it was dirty. He'd seen faces so much younger than their own fall to disease, babies coughing in cots and toddlers with perpetually runny noses, heard parents weeping through the night, and had grown so desensitised to it all that he’d wished only that they'd be quiet so he could sleep.
But this was his sister. This was... This was his baby sister, the only thing, the only thing he had left in the entire world, and he couldn't lose her.
They'd been staying in a small town when it happened, a river town. It seemed like a cruel joke; Zuko refused to lose another loved one at the water’s edge. He hadn’t been able to find work and they were staying amongst a pile of empty crates in one of the back alleys, managing to create a makeshift shelter from the wood that did little to protect them from the monsoons, but still, it was better than nothing, and they were lucky it was summer, the stifling heat bleeding into the nights that weren’t as cold as they could have been.
But summer brought disease. The family across the street from where Zuko and Azula were living got hit first. They had a little girl called Jia, no older than four, black hair always in little buns and a smile that took over her entire face the few times Zuko had seen her playing on the road, indulging her with questions about her dolls until her parents ushered her away from him with disapproving looks.
She'd been red-faced the last time he’d seen her, a sickly sheen to her skin, a yellowing to her eyes, not playing with her dolls but just... sitting there. That night, Zuko watched from their alleyway as Jia’s father emptied bucket after bucket of vomit into the street drain. She was dead by morning.
After that, the cases kept coming. They said the sickness was being carried from the insects that hovered around the river, basking in the summer heat. They said it happened every year. They said the closest healer was a day's walk away, and by then, most of the affected would be dead. That was if you could afford medicine to begin with, and even in the towns where Zuko had found work, he wouldn’t have been able to afford it.
By the time Azula got sick, Zuko knew the symptoms. Fever, headaches, nausea. She fought through it stubbornly, refusing to admit what they both knew, but seeing the shivers wrack through her body, this invisible force making his always strong sister suddenly so weak that she could do nothing but lie down despite her pride, despite her stubbornness, made something desperate and fierce rise in Zuko. It had to be bad to do this to Azula. It had to be horrific.
He sat beside her with a cloth soaked in cool water, pushing her sweaty hair from her forehead. Their little shelter had fresh air, at least, keeping the smell of sickness and death at bay, but Zuko kept picturing bugs landing on his sister’s sallow skin, poisoning her blood, eating her alive. He was so helpless, and for the first time in her life, Azula looked scared. For years, Zuko had giddily pictured what it would be like when his sister finally met her match, looked forward to the day that someone would take her down a peg, but this... this wasn’t what he wanted. Agni, this wasn’t what he wanted at all. It took seeing her like that, lying amongst rags and dirt, so skinny and frail, for him to realise how desperately he needed, wanted Azula to stay with him. They did this together. They had to.
He couldn’t lose her. He couldn’t bear it. He was supposed to protect her and he failed.
She was dying.
With every degree of the sun, she was dying.
Zuko had to fix this.
“There’s a healer in the next town over,” he said gently, pushing Azula up a little, letting her lean on his shoulder as he carefully held a bowl of broth to her lips. It was cold, and was made of old vegetables the stallholder was selling for cheap before he had to throw them out, but Zuko had given her his portion to get as many nutrients in as possible. She didn’t even fight the indignity of being fed by someone. Even just sitting up exhausted her.
“It’ll take two days in total, but that’s with breaks,” Zuko continued. “I can do it in one. I’ll leave in the morning and be back by nightfall, but you have to stay alive for me.” Her hair was greasy and smelled of sweat as it pushed against his chin, and Zuko’s throat tightened, voice breaking. “Please, Azula. Please fight. You have to make it, just until I get back. Please.”
Azula grumbled something, an awful sound coming from her throat, but she nodded once before hunching forward.
“'m gonna be sick," she croaked, and Zuko quickly grabbed the bucket for her, smoothing circles into her back as she retched. He could feel each knob of her spine beneath the coarse fabric of her shirt.
Zuko and Azula had never been protective of one another. He knew it was the kind of instinct siblings were supposed to have, but they’d been perpetually at each other’s throats. Even this past year with the two of them fighting for survival, protection was simply a necessary part of that. It wasn’t inherent. It wasn’t wanted. It wasn’t present where it didn’t have to be.
But in that moment, Azula was a ten-year-old girl and she was sick, and Zuko was her big brother, and past taking care of her, past getting her medicine and making sure she ate and offering her a bucket when she was sick, he also just wanted to hold her, wanted it so suddenly that it blindsided him. He wanted to wrap his arms around her and delight in the fact he was big enough to cover her entirely like that, to feel her weak but stubborn pulse thrum against him, to know she was alive and they were together and he would make that enough, he would make them okay, and when she was better he’d learn how to talk to her, would never be stupid enough to be lonely in her presence ever again.
The next morning, he woke with a start, almost too scared to reach over and place his fingers gently to Azula’s neck. She didn’t even flinch, but she was alive. Zuko made her drink as much water as he could and refused to let her leave any of what remained of the broth, even when she used her little energy to push the bowl away.
Seeing her lying there alone, skin and bone embraced by broken wooden crates and a torn blanket, shivering into herself, and having to walk away regardless was the hardest thing Zuko had ever done. Harder than leaving the Fire Nation, harder than realising the true insidious nature of his father after only weeks out in the world, harder than losing Mother.
He kept a brisk pace, and when stones got through the broken soles of his shoes, he ignored it, and when the sun beat down on him until his head felt like it was splitting, he ignored it, and when his stomach growled for something to fuel his deranged race for a healer, he ignored it. He thought, for the first time in a long time, about the palace, about Zuko and Azula, about the turtleduck pond and the exquisite dinners that were held where Zuko ate so much he couldn’t bear to take another bite, about exploring with Lu Ten and recreating plays with Azula, about those confounded pai sho games Uncle forced upon him.
Zuko had never been a child the way he was supposed to, he knew that. In the palace, he held too much fear, too much frustration, too much hurt to embody any classical definition of childish. But he had been secure. He hadn’t been safe, not from his father’s flames or his grandfather’s justice, but he’d been secure. He'd had a bed, a roof, as much food as he wanted. He'd had an entire room to himself, for Agni’s sake. At eleven, he’d had a thousand luxuries at his fingertips.
At twelve, his mother was dead and his sister was fading with every step he took.
He knew that this was the reality of his family’s war. He knew that the worst part of all of this was that Zuko was common. He was the majority. He was the normal story of a war waging a hundred years. A hundred years of orphans and poverty and sickness, of desperation and heartbreak and grief. He could not plead with the masses and have them weep over the tragedy of his circumstances, because they saw the same thing every day. He was nothing. He was not special, and it felt like a scream building deep in his chest, one that he couldn’t let go because he was in charge now. That was his mother’s curse to him before she abandoned them. He was in charge and he couldn’t falter because then he would lose everything.
So he swallowed it. He ignored it. He kept going.
He reached the next town just after noon and nearly collapsed against the well in his fervour to scoop as much water as he could into his mouth. It was lukewarm from sitting in the sun for a few hours, but it tasted like bliss, soothing away the worst part of his headache. It was the only break he gave himself before he was pushing himself up again.
“Where’s the healer?” Zuko demanded from the first passer-by he saw. She blinked at him in surprise and then wariness. He knew how he looked. His pants were muddied and his boots were falling apart, his sleeves fraying at the ends. Beneath that, he was small and gangly, an awkward age even without the lack of food, his hair falling in his eyes and brushing his shoulders, but his glare was a fiery gold and that was usually enough to make most people fearful. Zuko and Azula stayed in the Colonies as best they could, where questions on their appearance were less likely but they were still close enough to the Earth Kingdom to avoid heavy Fire Nation presence, but he was still used to good old-fashioned bullishness when he thought someone was about to voice their curiosity.
Thankfully, this woman just pointed a hesitant finger, indicating a small shack at the end of the street. It looked like an apothecary when Zuko stepped inside, with jars of every kind of herb lining the windows and shelves, a desk wedged into the corner of the room. Zuko felt small in the doorway, unsure, but it faded away the moment he saw a hunched old man behind the desk, spectacles nearly falling off his nose and eyes a harsh, sharp green.
Zuko rushed forward. “My sister. She's sick. I need medicine.”
The man looked down his nose at Zuko’s fingers on his desk, eyeing the dirt beneath his nails, and scowled.
“You’re going to have to be more specific, boy,” he said. “What are her symptoms?”
Zuko listed them quickly, as well as anything he’d heard from the townspeople that seemed to know the sickness better than he did, and the healer began to nod.
“Hmph, I should’ve known,” he uttered, before turning his back on Zuko and rooting through his many jars, finally placing one full of a green herb on the desk. “Artemisia. It's the best thing for it. Someone else might tell you cinchona bark is better, but you’d be wise to avoid those quacks. Much fewer side effects with artemisia. Just soak the herbs in cold water, wring them out, and have your sister ingest the juice thrice a day for three days.” The healer nodded once, leaning back from the desk, and Zuko blinked owlishly as he tried to remember all the information he’d just had dumped on him. He got the distinct impression the healer was trying to make him feel stupid, like he was mocking him, but Zuko was too desperate to get angry, reaching for the jar.
The healer snatched it away quickly.
“Ah, ah,” he scolded, “that’ll be a gold piece.”
Zuko blanched. He hadn’t even held a gold piece since he left the caldera. All he had on him were a few coppers and two silvers, and that was all their money.
He was about to try and barter with the man, offer him labour or beg to be allowed to pay him back, when the man’s expression turned mean.
“You can’t afford it, can you?” he sneered. “Of course you can’t. Look at you.”
Zuko realised two things at once.
The first, that this man was an asshole.
The second, that he didn’t have to grovel to save his sister. He didn’t even have to pay. A third option appeared to him in that moment, and he was much more open to it than he might have been before the healer opened his big mouth.
Zuko lunged across the desk, using his size and speed to yank the jar from the healer’s hands, his momentum pulling him back and making him tumble a few steps with the suddenness of it all. The healer stared at him with wide eyes, before all too familiar rage overtook him.
“Thief!" he bellowed. “Thief! Someone stop him!”
Zuko scurried from the shop, nearly skidding to the floor as he exploded onto the street, and he raced out of town before the nearby soldiers could even figure out what happened. He had the advantage of not being local. He could lose them long before he returned to Azula, and the thrill of some tiny justice, even if it was just spiting that hateful man, was enough to power Zuko as he ran, regardless of his aching stomach and throbbing head.
He didn’t know how long he ran for. He knew it was longer than he should’ve been able to, but by the time the sun started setting, the soldiers and healer’s enraged shouts were long behind him, and Zuko let himself slow down a bit. The green hills were starting to roll a little, like waves in the ocean, but he ignored it.
He had to get back to Azula. He had to.
When the town swam into view, Zuko took off running again, heart pounding not with anticipation but with terror. He knew the likelihood of Azula surviving the day. He knew the risk he took in leaving her alone. He imagined her there amongst the crates, tiny and lifeless. He wondered if she’d curse him for abandoning her just like Mother did, or if she would even care that he was gone.
But when Zuko crept down the alleyway, heart in his mouth and knuckles white around the jar of herbs, Azula was there, gasping in shallow breaths, eyes shut, but alive.
He did as the healer instructed, unpractised hands soaking and wringing the herbs, and a day later, Azula could sit up on her own, could keep down most of her meals, could glare at him again. He didn’t realise how much he’d missed it.
The day after that, the soldiers came.
“What’s with all the excitement?” Azula grumbled that morning, shielding her eyes from the nagging beam of sunlight that kept cutting through a crack in one of the crates. She was sat cross-legged, still entirely too pale and with an unbroken sheen of sweat covering her, her hair an absolute mess that she was still too tired to tame, which was reason for worry in and of itself, but she was sat up and making conversation, stubbornly attempting to do things alone again. Zuko gave her a soft smile, even if his nerves were fraying with every sudden shout that came from the town centre. Something was happening, and that always made Zuko and Azula assume the worst; that their father’s soldiers had caught up to them. This would be the worst possible time to get caught out. Zuko knew he had to be ready.
So when a soldier appeared at the mouth of their alleyway, Zuko was already up, weight pushed to the balls of his feet and glare murderous enough to scare the strongest of men. He stood between the soldier and his sister, and he vowed that he would not move. Father could send an army and Zuko would not budge. Not if it cost him Azula. Not ever again.
But then the soldier pointed at him, and called to his fellow soldiers nearby. “Here! He matches the thief’s description!”
Cold terror dripped down his spine. Oh, he thought dumbly, and could do little else but fight wildly when more soldiers poured into the alley. He kicked and punched and scratched, honourless and without dignity, but there were too many of them, and they dragged him to the town centre. To his horror, two soldiers yanked Azula to her feet too, forcing her teetering form forward after her brother.
“Stop it! She's sick! Can't you see she’s sick?” Zuko yelled, thrashing against the group of soldiers that looked a little perplexed to be struggling so much with a malnourished twelve-year-old, but no one listened. It was like they didn’t even hear him.
“Unhand me,” Azula hissed, voice a weak rasp but burning with fury. For a moment, her and Zuko locked eyes. For the first time, he recognised what terror looked like on his sister. Terror not for herself, but for him.
Zuko knew what happened to thieves. Knew there was no budging for age or circumstance. The punishment was objective.
He had a choice, a fickle attempt to appear merciful. Either he could lose a hand, or be branded. Both were permanent and would say to anyone from that moment on that Zuko wasn’t someone who could be trusted. He'd never find work ever again. Him and Azula would starve, two more faceless orphans swallowed by the war. They probably wouldn’t even be buried, rotting together in a dirty alleyway a lifetime from the golden sun of their homeland. Father would win.
It was this bitter thought that fuelled Zuko suddenly, and he sunk his teeth into the nearest soldier. The man yelped and released Zuko’s arm long enough for him to tear away, falling to his knees and kicking up dirt with his haste to get up and get out.
He saw it, his escape. He'd outrun them just as he did last time, and he’d start again in another town just as they had a dozen times before.
But they still had Azula, and she was too weak to run. Zuko froze the moment he had the thought, heart thundering, before he turned to face her, immediately getting yanked back into custody, and saw his sister’s furious expression as his chance slipped away. What did you just do? Those golden eyes screamed. Are you stupid?
He didn’t feel stupid for it, even as he was marched towards the scowling healer and forced to his knees. A cold calm came over him, and when the time came, he chose the fire.
The entire town had gathered by that point, strange and familiar faces blurring together. Looks of pity, looks of fear, even looks of satisfaction at the prevailing of justice, but mostly, Zuko saw insouciance, passiveness, a hundred tired, hungry eyes just like his. He saw Jia’s family in the crowd. He knew they would not speak for him.
The brand of thieves was a crescent that wrapped around the left eye, starting at the temple and curling around to the eyebrow, and was a symbol known throughout the Earth Kingdom and the Colonies. The first time Zuko had seen someone with such a brand, a woman in the Earth Kingdom, he’d been confused as to why everyone on the street parted for her. In the Fire Nation, thieves were arrested and given a fair trial, or at least that’s what was supposed to happen. Zuko didn’t quite believe it anymore.
The woman with the brand had been begging for food, so thin her skin seemed almost translucent, and when she reached desperately towards someone, they slapped her away and spat in the dirt. Zuko realised quickly to identify these marks on confirmed criminals, to steer clear of those who wore them.
And now, a soldier grabbed him by the neck and slammed him down against a wall, cheek pressed into the brick, as another man approached him with a rod that curled into a crescent shape, the metal glowing red.
Somewhere, Azula was shouting, and for the first time in months, Zuko’s inner fire stirred. Mother had forbidden any sort of training the moment they left the caldera, and Zuko had been too scared to tempt fate. A life of barely surviving had weakened his chi to nothing but a spark, but it roared now, terrified for him, for what was about to happen at the hands of his own element.
Zuko shut his eyes hard and thought, desperately, of a happy memory, anything. Bizarrely, his mind showed him the pond, the smell of burning hair. He remembered his mother’s soft touch as she pulled a blade through his topknot, the sudden lightness as he felt it come away. She used to smell of the palace gardens, a hundred different blooming flowers, no trace of the sweat or old soap of the washrooms she worked at that clung to her in the last days.
For a pathetic, blinding moment, Zuko wanted his mother. It was all he could conjure and he trembled with it, chest heaving as he gasped breath after breath, the soldier’s grip on him as unrelenting as the rock he was pushed against. He wanted his mother. He wanted her to break from the crowd and demand to know what was happening. He wanted her to clean his scrapes and assure him that Azula was going to get better, that children got sick sometimes; it wasn’t the end of the world. He wanted her to work for them and come home with food. He didn't want to have to worry about keeping them alive. He wanted her to save them, to save him from the white-hot agony promised in the brand’s curve. You have to take care of things, she’d said, but Zuko was twelve and small and too quick to emotion, and he was scared. He was so scared, and no one was doing anything.
The crowd watched. The soldiers held him down. Even as Azula shouted and cursed, no one did anything. All he’d done was steal some herbs for his dying sister, and they were going to mutilate him for it. It was cruel and... and it was wrong and he was a child and he thought that was supposed to mean something. But it didn’t. Not here. Not even in the palace.
This past year, Zuko had learned a lot. He learned how to haggle, how to steal, how to trade. He learned how to make both money and food last as long as possible. He learned how to cook.
But this moment here, kneeling in the centre of a town he couldn’t even point out on a map, stomach aching from lack of food and a handful of his short, messy hair in a soldier’s fist, face pushed into the brick wall, Zuko learned his first real lesson from being out in the world.
No one was coming to save him.
It was all on him now, just like Ursa said. He was the eldest, the big brother, and so he would have to be the one to save them. And in moments like this when he couldn’t, he would just have to be strong for his sister.
So when the brand kissed his skin, Zuko didn’t scream. When his skin began to sizzle and that smell hit the back of his throat, Zuko didn’t scream. When the soldier, confused at the resistance of firebender skin, pressed the brand harder against Zuko’s temple, Zuko didn’t scream.
He ground his teeth together so hard he thought they might crack, and as the pain roared through him, worse than anything he’d ever felt before, Zuko ignored it.
It felt like a lifetime passed before the soldier was satisfied with the mark. They dropped him in a heap, already talking over his head about going for a smoke break by the river, and the crowd dispersed just as quickly, life returning to normal as instantly as an elastic band snapping back into place. Distantly, Zuko heard Azula being released, her body thumping to the floor and wet coughs immediately wracking through her. Zuko wanted to reach for her, to ask if she was okay, but his face was still burning even though he knew the metal wasn’t touching him anymore. How could that be? He felt fire in every part of him, a constant burn. How was that fair?
“You could have run away,” Azula’s voice was suddenly in his ear, an angry hiss, but beneath that, he heard the waver, the slight slip into utter devastation. He wouldn’t have heard it a year ago.
“Why didn’t you run?”
“It’s not s’bad,” Zuko slurred, heaving himself into an upright position and near collapsing against the wall. He couldn’t open his left eye and his right was swimming with unshed tears, but there, kneeling before him, was Azula. Pale and messy but alive, and Zuko knew in an instant that it was all worth it.
She looked like she wanted to get him to move, but ultimately, she just sighed, her own exhaustion winning out. She sat beside him against the wall, before tentatively resting her head on his shoulder. Zuko immediately pressed his cheek to her hair. She still smelled sweaty and sick, and he knew it would disgust her but she was letting him see her like this anyway.
He let out a dry chuckle. “What a mess.”
“We’ll make it work,” Azula said, less reassuring and more stubborn, spiteful, and Zuko agreed completely.
“Yeah,” he said, “we will.”
They couldn’t stay in that town, and Azula began planning. Zuko could play the caretaker all he wanted, could step up as her brother for the first time and she would even let him, tentatively exploring this new dynamic where they needed each other – and hadn’t that been a humbling realisation for her? – but Zuko wouldn’t be able to save them every time. He hadn’t been able to save them today, and those soldiers had burned him for it.
Azula's body had betrayed her. She was sick, a fog in her brain and a looseness in her muscles, and she hadn’t been able to do anything as her brother was mutilated right in front of her.
She was quiet in the following days. Zuko didn’t want to move until he was sure the sickness had alleviated entirely, and Azula didn’t argue, insisting on cleaning Zuko’s burn because she knew he wouldn’t take care of it himself. It wouldn’t change anything; it was going to scar. The thought made her so angry she could hardly look at him. But their hesitation in this town gave her time, and Azula had plans.
The soldiers who branded her brother were inexperienced, which implied that they had to have a superior giving them orders from outside of town. Given the town’s status as occupied Fire Nation territory, it wasn’t surprising that it existed under a greater chain of command, more experienced soldiers ensuring civil obedience and prolonged success of the occupation without having to waste their skills so far from the homeland.
The footsoldiers of this town were low-ranking, and would say they were just following orders. Azula had seen their like a hundred times before and knew the fickle nature of that kind of loyalty. They would mess up. She watched them until it happened, and it happened quickly.
The soldiers smoked on the riverbank most days to gossip, and Azula was small enough to duck behind a wall and listen. Their gossip included throwaway mentions of their commanding officer, General Haoyu, who they complained was paranoid and constantly checking up on them in his letters, something the soldiers saw as unfair given the town’s lack of excitement.
Azula could concur that General Haoyu was thorough. She’d respected him back in the royal court. He didn’t take half-measures and operated zero tolerance of inadequacy of any kind, even if only through rumour. If he even for a moment suspected his soldiers of disobedience, he was likely to withdraw them from the town entirely and replace them with a different garrison.
They would return home dishonoured and shunned within the royal army. That could be worse than a death sentence in the Fire Nation. It was its own kind of branding.
That day, Azula sacrificed some of their money on parchment, ink and a brush. Her literacy alone would lift her of all suspicion. After all, she was nothing and no one now, a dirty, starving orphan girl. People would assume she couldn’t so much as write her name, let alone mimic military handwriting to pose as a concerned soldier reporting his comrades for embezzling taxes collected from the townspeople. From her eavesdropping on the riverbank, Azula had overheard that the man who pressed the brand to her brother’s skin was called Chen, and signed off as him with a small smile. Even if he denied sending the letter, General Haoyu was cynical and would think Chen was lying to avoid looking like he’d betrayed his friends. Chen might even get a promotion from it, but it was more likely an accident would befall him at the hands of his outraged comrades who would suddenly find themselves with nothing to lose.
It was surprisingly easy to attach her letter to a messenger hawk that night, and as she watched it soar through the clouds, Azula felt something settle inside her for the first time since they left the palace.
Yes, she thought, they would make this work.