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Zuko begins to think Anzu speaks as much with her hands as she does with her mouth. He can tell when she’s finished and when she’s just temporarily trailed off by their placement - with her arms crossed or her hands on her hips. Her tone can be judged by how much flourish the movement has - a quick fluttering of her fingers when she’s excited. Overly projected movements when she’s being dramatic or humorous.
He learns to watch her hands as much as he listens to her words. And then he learns to watch her feet because apparently if her hands are full she’ll move her feet and if that’s not an indication she’s from the Colonies in the Earth Kingdom he doesn’t know what is.
She’s from one of the southern-most towns built in Fire Nation territory on Earth Kingdom land. Ethnically, she’s Fire, but culturally? There’s only so much influence two and a half generations of imperialists can change from across the ocean. Sozin conquered one? Maybe two? Cities before he focused on his genocide of the Air Nomads. Azulon rarely left the Caldera, let alone the Fire Nation itself. Ozai’s reign was only just beginning.
She knows more about Earth Kingdom line dances than she does Fire Nation instruments. Knows more about badgermoles than komodo rhinos.
Objectively she’s spent the majority of her life in the Fire Nation, but she grew up Earth Kingdom and she will never get over the way a continent of firebenders will build houses out of wood (pretty, flammable) instead of stone or clay (well-insulated, nonflammable).
Anzu’s hair is choppy and frayed and she only keeps part of it pulled up in something vaguely resembling a bumpkin’s attempt at a top-knot, but it doesn’t even really work because her ends are so uneven half of it falls back into her face anyway. But it’s as dark as his own and soft.
Not silky, like Mother’s, like Father’s and Azula’s-
-like his own, before he lost access to that conditioner that made it smell like Mother’s favorite flower because it was technically her’s-
-but fuzzy like kittenpuppy and if he learned that from idly tangling his fingers in it that one time he’d been too tired and she’d carried him to bed that’s between him and himself. Because there’s no way she realized he was petting her, right? She. She would’ve said something. Because that would’ve been weird.
It was. Weird. But Prince Zuko had been so tired. And so cute. And Anzu’s seen him idly pet the one messenger hawk they have and it’s the only time he hasn’t had to work his body to exhaustion to calm himself.
She’s been on a mission to find him a proper stim toy since.
Nothing’s worked quite as well as something-vaguely-fluffy-and-pet-able.
Anzu’s eyes are a burnt umber that shine gold in the sun and melt into chocolate in the dark. They’re wide and expressive and her lashes are short, which Zuko didn’t think would ever be a thing he noticed until she spends all day squinting in the sun and shading her eyes and he realizes he’s never had to do that-
-Agni has blessed his people with naturally long lashes so he doesn’t blind them-
-and Anzu looks ridiculous with one hand on her hip and one hand on her head like she’s scouting ahead for absolutely nothing because they’re on a ship. They’re always on a ship. Zuko, specifically, cannot leave the ship. On a technicality.
Banished from the Fire Nation also means banished from Fire Nation colonies.
She knows a couple ports that are willing to ignore technicalities. She still writes her friends and family in the colonies. She doesn’t tell them she’s sailing with a banished prince. There’s ignoring and then there’s blatantly disobeying and they can dock, reload, leave, but she knows if they tried to stay things wouldn’t end well.
His Highness’ pride, tween arrogance, loyalty (read: desperation for daddy to love him) wouldn’t allow for the cultural mix he would need to escape into obscurity. It’s the main reason she doesn’t bring it up to his uncle.
As for her eyes, Your Highness, if she could get her hands on some proper kohl to line her lids she would look so riDIcULouS. Seriously, there are so many things the Earth Kingdom does better.
Yeong Jin doesn’t speak with his hands, he deflects. Zuko begins to associate “Yeong Jin” with “a lazy wave”. It’s an art form, really. Or maybe just his form in general.
He’s constantly posing, Zuko realizes. Displaying himself in a way for people Anzu to appreciate like he practices in a mirror. Daily. Hourly. Posing and preening and being a peacock-lion on a regular basis like his only concern in life is being pretty.
He only cares to be pretty for Anzu, sweet naive little prince. When you’re a non-bender from Fire Nation nobility, being pretty is your only selling point.
Literally.
Marriage is a contract that is supposed to be mutually beneficial to both parties. And Yeong Jin has never cared much if he does anything that benefits his family. Is that why he’s chasing a rough-and-tumble hillbilly from the colonies? As a rich boy’s petty revenge against overly strict parents?
No, brat, he’s chasing Anzu because she can deadlift him with one hand.
(He’d thought she was a rich kid, too, like him. ‘Acting out’. And then she’d opened her mouth and that spirits-awful accent had come out and he’d been smitten.)
Zuko thinks Yeong Jin’s hair isn’t as soft as Anzu’s. Thinks. Because he’s never touched it. Has no plans to touch it.
(Kind of wants to because it’s super shiny and always looks styled even when they’ve been out on the ship’s deck all day.)
Zuko also thinks Yeong Jin’s hair would be colder? Somehow? If that’s even a thing? Like a fresh-out-of-the-bath coolness that may have something to do with how shiny-clean it always looks. It’s a shiny-clean black that reflects the light where Anzu’s is a warm, fuzzy black that swallows it whole.
It’s the same brand of product that Fire Lady Ursa used (and Prince Zuko sometimes ‘borrowed’), but neither the prince nor Yeong Jin know this.
Zuko has an off-hand thought, just a little niggling at the back of his mind, that Yeong Jin’s eyes are an odd color for a Fire Nation citizen.
Storm gray, flint gray, gray as the spirits-cursed ship he’s been living on for the past year and a half. Maybe that’s why he doesn’t like him.
That’s not true.
Zuko likes Yeong Jin, but not nearly as much as he likes Anzu Uncle. Yeong Jin is in his own category and Zuko doesn’t know how to process him. Because how do you interact with someone who doesn’t particularly like you, but doesn’t ignore you or go out of their way to be cruel?
His eyes are gray on gray on gray and someday, three years after His Highness’ banishment, half a year after he finds the Avatar, months after Ozai’s defeat when he finally has a moment to process the likely death of his crew in the North Pole-
Prince Zuko will think back and realize he’s only ever seen such gray eyes on an airbender.
And Yeong Jin knows the prince has no idea how to handle him. He thinks it’s because of his wit and charm (and flatters himself with the thought that he’s Prince Zuko’s Great Bisexual Awakening).
Really it’s because the prince has never had someone outside of someone who loves him like his uncle and his mother, who expects nothing from him, gets nothing from him, and is perfectly fine with him existing all the same.
Zuko has no idea what to do with Koan. The man doesn’t speak with his body at all unless it’s to move his head to a new spot.
Anzu acts as a translator more often than not, adding words where Koan skimps out, filling his silences with her fluttering hands. They grew up together. They know how the other thinks. Sometimes Zuko looks at them and wonders if they’re siblings, despite looking nothing alike, but no. They get along too well. There’s playful ribbing and affectionate violence, but they don’t have that level of rivalry he associates with his own sister.
He’s not a bender.
Zuko doesn’t believe that.
Because even he, with all his insecurities and twisted belief that he’s not a good bender-
-just because he’s not Azula levels of good, but that doesn’t count because she’s a prodigy and gets all the encouragement and praise Father has never given him-
-Koan’s stance is as rooted as any good bender Zuko has ever seen.
The term is “solid”.
Solid as the earth.
There are three options for earthbenders born in the Colonies - the coal prisons out on the sea, or escape to Earth Kingdom territory.
Or hide, to stay with your family. (To stay with your best friend, your partner-in-shenanigans, your soul sister whose Earth Kingdom mother had thought the world of her until she’d started bending fire.)
Where Yeong Jin is shades of gray, Koan is shades of brown.
His hair is the color of dark oak, a color Zuko associates with polished but well-worn floorboards and rafters in a summer house on an island he hasn’t been to since he was small. Smaller.
Koan is huge, all broad muscles and long legs.
Sometimes even Yeong Jin has to crane his head up to look at him and Zuko tries. So hard. Not to snicker. But they both hear him every time and for a second his heart stops and he almost scowls-
-but then Yeong Jin pouts and tosses his (perfectly styled, as always) hair and Koan runs a hand through those good-memory-oak-color curls and smiles at him and there’s that dimple he didn’t even know those actually existed because no one in his family smiles enough to show if they have dimples and if Uncle does they are covered by his ridiculous beard-
He gets his curls from his mother.
He gets his dimple from his father.
He wouldn’t give either of them up for the world.
(But maybe for Anzu.)
The thing about Koan that makes Zuko uncomfortable is his ability to hold his gaze.
His eyes are brown and warm and it’s like they never change color even when the light hits them different. They’re dark and shaded by long lashes. They’re almost always half-lidded in a way Anzu says makes him look sleepy, but Zuko thinks he looks. Comfy. Like nothing in the world could bother him, could change him from the course he has set for himself. Steady.
Zuko doesn’t know what to do with those steady eyes holding him in place when all Zuko wants to do is move.
And it feels, in the beginning, like being a bird trapped in a cage. Like being a disappointment next to a prodigy.
But Koan guides his hands through the sword forms with the dual dao and eventually it begins to feel like being a welcoming fire in a hearth’s protective embrace.
He doesn’t fear fire. Not the way he should.
He knew the guiding candlelight of Anzu’s inner fire before he knew the raging wildfire of the Fire Nation’s army.
To him, fire is a warm home and a warm meal.
The resistance taught him this isn’t a healthy mindset for earthbenders to have.
And for some, if you don’t hate the Fire Nation as a whole, you have no place in the Earth Kingdom.