Chapter Text
When Yue is fifteen, a Fire Nation prince comes looking for the avatar.
The ship waves a white flag and her father is terrified but he does not attack first. His advisors argue against it, they urge him to make the first move, to drive them away just like his grandfather did one hundred years ago. He remembers what happens to those who attack the Fire Nation first. What they receive, they give back tenfold.
Master Pakku does not argue for battle. He sits there, stern face in a frown, and does not join his voice into the call for blood. There’s so much happening that there’s not a lot of room to notice what people aren’t doing, but no one pays Yue any mind, and so she has the attention to spare. She’s not sure what to make of it. She would have thought that more than anyone else, he’d encourage an attack, and she’s not sure what to make of his silence, if there’s anything to make of it at all.
They’re expecting a delegation, a procession, or even just a fireball to their face. Instead they get a boy her age with a golden flame in his hair. He walks ahead of everyone, an old man a half step behind him, and they all defer to him. He sweeps his gaze over their warriors and she can read his derision in tightening of his face before he smooths it back out again. She wants to say that he’s underestimating them, but there are a dozen firebenders at his back and maybe he’s not.
“Chief Arnook,” the prince greets respectfully. He knows her father’s name, but her father doesn’t know his, and Yue looks at the prince sharply before she can think not to.
Most concerningly, she doesn’t see anyone else give him that look. She might be able to just chalk it up to them being better at controlling their expressions than she is, but she’s sat in on a lot of council meetings with the elders. She knows that’s not true.
They’ve been cut off from the world for a eighty years. They should be ignorant about each other. Yet the prince knows her father’s name.
The prince makes a motion as if to extend a hand, palm up, before looking around at all her people and pulling it back. She thinks that maybe he was going to shake her father’s hand, except that doesn’t exactly make sense, with the way his hand had been tilted towards the sky.
He says he just wants to talk to a few people and look at some records. He will not raise a hand against anyone who does not first raise their hand against him, and his people will do the same. Her father doesn’t want to agree, is certain it’s a trick or a trap. But he’s let the Fire Nation into their home and they could melt away the very ground beneath their feet, so he agrees.
Yue is warned to stay away. Her father increases her guard around her whenever she walks about the city. She’s supposed to stay in her room not being noticed until the Fire Nation leaves.
She listens for about a day.
There are Fire Nation people in her city! There’s a prince in her city! They haven’t yet attacked them, so she thinks that maybe they’re not going to, and this is the most exciting thing that’s ever been brought to their shore. She’s not going to miss it all by hiding in her room.
She sneaks out and finds the Fire Nation prince in the library, pouring over a scroll so old that only regular oiling keeps it from cracking. He’s alone, his one guard standing outside the entrance to the library.
He has less supervision while he’s in city full of his enemies then she does walking about her own home.
The scar across his face looks painful, especially with the way his eyes are narrowed. Her fingers twitch with the urge to smooth the scowl from his features, but of course that’s a ridiculous thought. She waits, but he does nothing but read. It’s not like he wanted him to be doing anything else, of course, since this is exactly what he’d promised he was here to do, but there’s only so much time she can spend staring at his bend head. She’s about to retreat back to her room when he says, “Are you just going to stand there watching me?”
Yue startles, thinks about running, but what is she running from really? A boy reading a scroll. She steps out from behind the shelves, edging closer. “Hello. I am Princess Yue.”
He looks up and his lips twitch up at the corners, the first almost-nice expression she’s seen from him. “I remember you from when I arrived. That explains why I haven’t seen you since. I am Prince Zuko of the Fire Nation, son of Fire Lord Ozai and Fire Lady Ursa.” She doesn’t know what her face looks like, but it earns her a real, actual smile. “But you can just call me Zuko.”
“Then you may call me Yue, Zuko,” she returns.
She’s on a first name basis with a Fire Nation prince. That’s not something she ever thought she’d say.
She sits next to him, looking at the scroll he’s been working on, and she frowns. It’s written in High Northern. “You can read that?”
“Better than I speak it,” he says dryly. For some reason the knowledge he can speak her family’s language is more startling than knowing he can read it. “I don’t suppose you want to help?”
What else has she to do? Her father won’t let her go to council meetings. He just expects her to sit in her room.
“Yes,” she says, pulling it closer, and tries not to feel a flush of warmth at the surprised glance he sends her. “What are you looking for?”
She inwardly cringes and nearly taking her question back, because he’s looking for the avatar, of course, the one that hasn’t been seen in over a hundred years. Except he sends her a measured, weighing glance that for a moment almost reminds her of her father before he says, “Dragons.”
“Dragons?” she repeats, so surprised by his answer that all thoughts of the avatar leave her. “We don’t have dragons.”
“You did,” he answers, before his lips pull back into a grin that’s almost rueful and still isn’t anything like the cruel smiles her minders used to warn her about. “At least I think you did.”
“It’s cold here,” she points out, as if it’s not obvious, as if they’re not literally surrounded by ice and snow on all sides.
He raises his one eyebrow. “Is it?”
She opens her mouth, then closes it, slowly looking him up and down.
Zuko isn’t wearing a coat.
Some of his crew had been when they came ashore, but he hadn’t been. Neither had his uncle, or the captain of his ship, and neither is the guard she’d seen outside. She grew up here and she’s as used to the cold as anyone can be, and she still has to wear several thick layers to walk around comfortably. They’re Fire Nation. Where they’re from, they don’t even have snow. “Isn’t it?”
He breathes in, holding it, and she sees his nostrils flare as he breathes out again. The wave of heat hits her and she’s too warm as the air steams around her, a bead of swear rolling from her neck down her back. She looks up, worried he’ll have damaged the walls, but they’re perfectly intact.
“If you carry a fire inside of you, what do you have to fear from the cold?” he asks. He holds his hand out to her, palm up. She shouldn’t do this. Her father would be furious.
She peels off her glove and ghosts her fingertips over his. He’s not wearing gloves, and it’s much warmer in the library than outside, but heat leads to condensation which leads to damage for the scrolls and books kept inside it. The library isn’t like their homes. It’s never kept below freezing.
His hands should be cold. But his fingers press into hers, his callouses like sparks against her skin.
She’s nearly holding hands with a Fire Nation prince. She tells herself that the warmth crawling up her cheeks is because of the sudden heat.
Every day she meets Zuko in the library, easily sneaking past the guard that doesn’t consider her capable of sneaking in the first place. There’s lingering awkwardness and nervousness, not just from her but him too. He scowls and glares when he’s frustrated, sometimes he even yells, but he never calls for fire, never raises his hands against her or even the books. He just stomps around the library and complains about how no one recorded anything useful.
At first, she and Zuko only discuss only the contents of the old scrolls. She asks questions, just like she had the first day, then more when he doesn’t get mad at her, when he doesn’t tell her to sit still and be quiet.
Yugoda told her once that the true measure of a man was how he acted when he was angry. Zuko is angry often, frustrated at the lack of answers in their scrolls. He never takes that anger out on her.
Her father is talking of arranging her marriage soon. Hahn is at the top of his list.
Hahn is a good warrior and a sore loser. He’s broken several spears in his anger. Yue doesn’t know how to bring this up to her father in a way he’ll understand.
“Why are you so sure dragons were here anyway?” she asks in an attempt to distract herself from her own thoughts. “I’m sure someone would have noticed them around. If they had, they would have written it down. It’s pretty notable.”
Yue is used to seeing him angry and amused but this is the first time she’s seen him guilty. It would probably be alarming to her if it made any sense at all.
The upside to no one listening to her speak is that it’s taught her the value of silence. She folds her hands in front of her and waits.
It doesn’t take long. He turns from her and starts pacing, steam rising off his shoulder blades. “You’ll think I’m crazy.”
He sailed right to their city with a single ship even though the last time the Fire Nation came to the North more dead returned than living. He told her father he’s looking for the avatar, who everyone knows is gone. Except he’s actually looking for dragons in the North Pole, something almost more unlikely to be here than the avatar.
And Yue’s been here the whole time. Helping him.
“No more crazy than I am,” she says and maybe it’s even true. She was touched by the Moon. Maybe it made her different too.
She wonders if Tui loved Agni. The koi may circle each other in their pond, but the moon and the sun circle each other too.
Zuko throws her a dubious look, but then he says, “They were invisible.”
“Invisible,” she repeats, trying not to sound like she thinks that’s ridiculous, even though it is. Dragons can’t turn invisible. They’re – they’re dragons.
“How many dragons has anyone ever seen?” he asks. “Legends talks of dragons ruling the skies and leaving man to rule the earth, of how there were enough of them to block out the sun and cut off our bending if we angered them. Yet for hundreds of years, almost no one has seen them. Maybe they’re all gone. Maybe something terrible happened. Or maybe they’re where they’ve always been doing what they’ve always done. It’s not like most dragons got involved with humans, even in the spirit tales.”
He's actually starting to make sense. Maybe she is insane. “Then what are we looking for? If they were here and invisible.” A disturbing thought occurs to her. “Do you think they’re here now?”
“No.” His surety should be comforting, but instead it’s just confusing. If they’re invisible, then how does he know? It’s not like he or his men have been out looking for them, and they couldn’t sneak away even if they wanted to. Everyone is watching them. They haven’t left the city. “I’m just – sometimes where someone has been can tell you where they’re going.”
“Like the avatar?” she asks. They don’t get much news out here, but they get enough. Zuko needs to find the avatar. But he’s not looking for him. She’d think that he’s just decided it’s an impossible task, except he’s doing a different impossible task instead.
He nods, his lips pulling back slightly into something that’s almost a smile. She thought that this reminder would make him upset, but it’s done just the opposite and she doesn’t understand. She wants to understand. “Like the avatar.” He hesitates, then continues, “The Western Air Temple is in the mountains north of where I grew up. I went their first.”
Over the next few days, Zuko tells her of his home as they go through every scroll that Yue thinks might help. He talks about his family, and speaks of the Fire Nation and its people with a tenderness she’d always been told his people weren’t capable of. He talks of the ship he’s been living on for the past two years, his uncle and his crew and all the places he’s traveled. He tells her all about the four Air Nomad temples, something no one has seen in a century.
“You’ve been to every corner of the world,” she says, longing and envy coloring her voice.
“Almost,” he says, and there’s a strange look across his face. Sometimes he looks his age, but often he appears much older. The way his frown is tugging at his mouth reminding Yue of her father. “You’ve never been anywhere but here?”
“I’ve never even left the city,” she says, trying not to sound as resentful as she feels. Even the accounts of the mountains in the scrolls they’re reading sound foreign to her. “Father says it’s too dangerous and I’m not strong enough.”
“Do you want to?” he asks.
She glares and shoves his shoulder. He’s so solid that he doesn’t budge an inch, until he seems to notice what she’s trying to do. Then he leans to the side and dramatically pinwheels his arms, as if he’s trying to keep his balance. “Oh, knock it off. Of course I do!”
He quiets, and she’s about to change the subject when he asks, “Can you keep a secret?”
Yue raises an eyebrow then gestures between them. Obviously she can keep a secret.
“Right,” he says, a grin flickering across his face before it settles back into a frown. “Do you trust me?”
Her breath catches in her throat. Does she trust him? The Prince of the Fire Nation, the next in the line for the throne that’s done so many terrible things not only to her people, but all people.
Zuko, who tells her stories and bends warmth around her and always listens when she speaks.
“I trust you,” she says and almost isn’t surprised to find that she means it.
He holds his hands in front of him, cupped as if he’s holding water, and flames jump to life between his palms. Her heartbeat kicks up and her palms sweat, but as soon as she stamps down on her initial fear, she notices something. This fire looks – different.
It’s not orange or yellow. Or, at least it isn’t not just orange and yellow, instead it’s a rainbow of color, the flames streaked with green and purple and blue. She steps closer in spite of herself, and Zuko lifts the flames up so they’re at eye level. “Don’t panic. I won’t hurt you.”
“I know,” she says. If she thought he’d hurt her, then she wouldn’t be here.
He breathes in, his chest expanding, then blows the multicolored fire into her face.
She flinches, but doesn’t step back, even as she tries to think of some explanation to give her father for the burns on her face. But the fire hits her skin and it doesn’t burn. It’s hot, but hot like tea drunk a little too quickly, something she can feel sliding down her throat but nothing that harms her.
Then she’s hot all over and she’s not standing in the library in her home, but at the bow of a ship. The sun beats down hot and searing along her back, but even though she can feel the intensity of it, she can tell that it won’t burn her. The sun burns even in the North, but she knows, somehow, that she doesn’t have to worry about that.
The ocean is glittering in all the places where it's not a deep blue, a color she’s never seen the ocean be before, like the water is made of silver and sapphires. Birds cry out as the make their way across the sky and the boat is steady beneath her, somehow, barely rocking side to side even as it propels itself through the sea.
Triangular fins cut through the sea to their left, a pod of some sort of fish she’s never seen before cresting out of the waves and making a shrieking noise that almost sounds like a laugh before it disappears beneath the water, only to come up again and repeat the sound. The men around her rush to the side of the boat, yelling out and waving, as if these fish at their friends. She grips the railing, her mouth pulling back into a smile, and she wants to shout too but she can’t force her mouth to make those sounds.
She glances down and then looks again. Her hands are pale. They’re pale, and too large, but they’re hers, somehow.
“A beautiful sight, isn’t it nephew?” She turns her head to see General Iroh, the way his eyes crinkle in the corner with fondness reminding her of how her father used to look at her before her mother died.
“I guess,” she says, her mouth moving without her permission and the voice that comes out of her mouth not her own. It’s Zuko’s voice, but younger, and more defensive than he’s ever sounded when speaking to her.
Then it’s gone and she’s back in her own body, standing in the library with Zuko right in front of her, his hands gripping her shoulders to stop her knees from buckling. “What was that?” she croaks, blinking rapidly. It suddenly seems dark in here after being under the sun at sea. “Can all firebenders do that?”
He shakes his head, slowly removing his hands and then dropping them back down to his side when she keeps herself upright. “No, a friend taught me. Please don’t tell anyone.”
“I won’t,” she promises, her mind already turning back to the memory he’d shared with her. “That was – thank you. I’ve lived on the edge of the ocean my whole life and I didn’t know it could look like that.”
“You could leave and see it for yourself,” he says as he leans into her, suddenly very close, just like he’d been when he’d blown that strange fire into her face. She doesn’t mind. She thinks that maybe she’s supposed to, but she doesn’t. “There are some pieces of the world I haven’t checked yet. You could explore them with me.”
“Sounds dangerous,” she says even as she can feel her pulse thrumming beneath her skin. She knows it’s not something that she can have, but it doesn’t make the thought any less exciting.
He shrugs. “Yeah. But isn’t staying here dangerous too?”
“How?” she asks, distracted, already imagining standing at the head of a ship for real, with Zuko by her side, with the sea spray on her face and the warmth on her skin. Her father doesn’t let her leave the city, he’ll never let her get on a ship, especially one run by a Fire Nation prince.
“Being forced to live a life you don’t want without the power to do anything about it seems a lot more dangerous to me,” he says quietly, like he’s not sure he’s allowed to speak the truth in the air between them.
She hasn’t said a single word about Hahn. She hasn’t spoke about her potential marriage or the way the counselors don’t listen to her or how hopeless she feels sometimes as the daughter of the chief that no one listens to. But Zuko is smart, she knows he’s smart because he’s spent weeks researching by his side. She shouldn’t be surprised that he’s noticed.
Yue grabs his wrist and squeezes, having to swallow twice before she can speak. He’s right and it terrifies her whenever she lets herself think about it. “My father would never allow it.”
He shrugs, looking very much his age just then, with the mischievous grin hovering around the corner of his mouth. Often he looks older, with his scowl and his scar and the dangerous way he holds himself. “Your father hasn’t noticed all the time you spend here with me. How long do you think it would take for him to notice you’re missing? Our ship could be long gone by then.”
It’s such a terrible idea. Such a terrible plan. Her father will be furious.
She leaves a note under her pillow, saying that she’ll be back, and she’s sorry, and she’ll be careful. She doesn’t know if her father will believe her when he reads the words she left, telling him that she’s leaving willingly, that she just wants to see the world a little farther than the iceberg she was born on. She’s worried about repercussions this will have for Zuko, but he just shrugs and says they’re already at war anyway. What’s her father going to do, declare war on them again?
There’s something not quite right with that logic, but she wants this too much to care.
Zuko announces to her father that he’s finished looking through the library and he thanks him for his hospitality. Her father lets her come for the official goodbyes between them and Yue tries to look like she did the first time, wary and a little frightened, and she thinks it works. She’s still nervous, but for an entirely different reason.
The Fire Nation ship will leave their shore at first light.
Zuko smuggles her onto his ship. She sneaks out like she always does, that hadn’t been the part that she’d doubted. Zuko is already waiting for her behind the library, which is where she’d thought everything would all fall apart. She hisses, “How did you get here without anyone noticing you?”
He grabs her hand, tugging her along after him as they move from one spot to the other. She can’t tell the difference between them, why at times he urges her forward and at others he pulls her back, but he had managed to get this far without getting caught so she just follows his lead. “Where there’s fire, there’s light, and where there’s light, there’s shadow.”
She’s grateful that he doesn’t wear a jacket just then, because when she reaches out and pinches his side it means he feels it. Depressingly, he doesn’t jump or react at all, instead just looking back at her with pouting lower lip. “That doesn’t mean anything to me.”
“I’m good at not being seen,” he answers, and then grabs her around the waist, pressing her against the side of the building and bracketing her body with his own. The chill of the air is gone suddenly, the warmth of his body enough to chase it all away.
He’s so solid. She’d known that, but it’s another thing to feel it, to feel that he’s just as firm against her as the wall to her back, to feel herself pressed between the nearly literal rock and hard place. “Do you usually have this many patrolmen?” he mutters.
“No,” she answers, “but we don’t usually have the Fire Nation here either. It makes people nervous, like maybe you might kidnap a princess or something.”
Zuko lets out a soft huff of air that might be a laugh before looking over his shoulder. Then they’re moving again, his hand once more in hers. They make it back to the docks like that, but then apparently his big plan involves getting into the water. She knows how to swim, but only because waterbenders can make pools inside for them to swim in, can bend in fresh water and bend out old water so it’s safe and clean and warm. She’s always been told she must never swim in ocean, that many people can survive for long enough to get out of the water if they happen to fall in, but she’s not one of them.
“I’ll die,” she says. “I’ll freeze to death and I’ll die.” She almost points out that he’ll freeze too, but then she realizes he probably won’t. His fire keeps him warm in the cold air, why wouldn’t it do the same in the freezing water?
“Do you really think I’d let you?” he asks. He pulls her pack off her shoulder and throws it across his chest, so the bulk of it is in front of him. “Get on my back. I’ll carry you there and you’ll be fine.”
“Zuko,” she starts, then shakes her head, trying to keep the pressure from building behind her eyes. She shouldn’t have gotten her hopes up. There’s no way to get her to his ship without someone noticing.
He stares at her for a long moment before slipping into the water, still holding her things. He floats there for a moment and Yue blinks, sure her eyes are betraying her, but – but there’s steam coming from the water.
Zuko lifts his hands and she sees fire under the water before they break the surface and he extinguishes it so it can’t be seen. “I’ll be tired, after. The fire has to be constantly fueled by own energy and the heat won’t last. But it’s not a long swim. You’ll be okay.”
He holds out a hand to her, like he has before. Taking his hand has never hurt her before, so she takes a deep breath and slips into the water.
It’s still cold enough to knock the breath from her lungs, but it’s not painful, she can still fee all her limbs. He pulls her close then turns his back to her, pulling her arms around in front of him. She crosses her arms over his chest so she doesn’t suffocate him and wraps her legs around his waist. Her thick furs make her heavy enough to sink in the water, but he doesn’t say anything about it. Instead he starts swimming, keeping his head above water to make sure her head stays above water and keeps his hands angled away from her even as she feels the way the water near them heat up, even as he’s a searing heat all on his own beneath her.
Yue tucks her face into his neck and tries to stay as still as possible as he crosses the ocean. She doesn’t realize part of his insane plan involves climbing the anchor chain until he’s already heaving them out of the water. She squeaks and the way his shoulder shake is definitely suppressed laughter. She’d hit him for it, except she really doesn’t them to fall.
His breathing is labored, but his movements are still smooth, that one thing the only way to tell that any of this has been a strain on him. They reach the top and he peeks over the edge of the boat. She can see at least two people, but they’re not facing them.
Yue expects him to put her down, but instead he pulls them over the side and runs, his footsteps silent. She could walk on her own and she almost points that out, except then they’re there. He pushes open the door and closes it behind them, finally sliding her back to stand on her own two feet.
Her first thought is that a prince’s room shouldn’t be so barren. It looks like it could belong to any stereotypical Fire Nation solider, this something that finally matches all the stories people have told her. But it’s large and mostly empty and doesn’t look much like Zuko at all.
“Here,” he says, dropping her pack and going over to his dresser. He pulls out a robe and then makes a face before grabbing one of the blankets off the edge of his bed and handing them to her. “Sorry, I don’t usually use towels.”
“You don’t use-” She cuts herself off as steam rises from his body, leaving his clothes just damp rather than soaked.
Zuko grins at her. “Change into that. I’ll dry your things when I get back.”
“Where are your going?” she asks, holding the robe and blanket away from her so she doesn’t get them wet.
“To get rid of the trail of water we left behind. Hopefully we’d dripped dried enough on the way up that it’s not too noticeable, but there’s no reason to invite questions we don’t want to answer,” he tells her before slipping out of the door.
She hadn’t thought of that.
Yue strips off her layers of clothes, laying them on the metal floor instead of the grass rug. The robe is thin and she pulls the blanket around her shoulders rather than drying off with it, trying to keep herself from shivering. She looks around, but the only thing here that seems to have any personality is the low table containing a half dozen golden candlesticks with an ornate red dragon mask mounted in front of it, just below a thin strip of window that lets her look out into the night sky.
They really did it. She’s made it onto Zuko’s ship and when dawn comes, they’re going to sail away from the only life she’s ever known. When Zuko returns, she’s grinning, and he mirrors it instantly, and the fluttering in her stomach is almost enough to distract her from the way Zuko looks a little like the people that get sent to Yagoda’s igloo.
“No one is allowed to come in here without my permission, not even Uncle,” he says, and she’s trying to focus on his words, but it’s difficult. Zuko is always pale, but right now his face looks bloodless. “You’ll be safe here, and it’ll only be for a day, until we’re passed all the villages so no one can report you being on the deck back to the city.” Waterbenders in wooden boats could possibly catch up to a Fire Nation ship, but only if they know which direction to go.
She nods then steps close enough to press the back of her hand to his forehead. It’s cool and clammy and Zuko has never felt anything but warm before. She yanks her hand back like he’s burned her, even though it’s just the opposite. “You’re hurt.”
“I’m fine,” he says, and he’s standing tall and steady. Her eyes narrow and she shoves at his chest. He has to move his foot backward to stop himself from falling over. “Yue!”
She’s shoved him before. He’s usually as unmovable as an iceberg. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m fine,” he repeats, but softer this time, like he’s trying to soothe her. It doesn’t work. “I’m just – tired. I’ll be fine after some sleep.”
“Go to bed,” she orders, then reaches out to rub the material of his sleeve between her fingers. It’s still damp. “Put on some dry clothes first.”
It only occurs to her after she’s done it that Zuko is a prince of the Fire Nation and likely hasn’t lived as she’s lived. He’s probably not used to being bossed around.
Except he just gives her that same lopsided grin and grabs her shoulders and gently steers her towards the bed pressed up against the wall. “You take the bed. I’ll sleep on the floor.”
“Princes don’t sleep on the floor!” she argues. Besides, the ship is metal. Zuko isn’t cold usually, but she thinks spending a night on the floor will leech the cold right out of him in the state that he’s in.
“Princesses don’t sleep on the floor either,” he says. “My chambers aren’t heated. That takes extra coal and we reserve it for those of us who aren’t benders and can get hurt by the chill.”
She shakes her head but he just opens a cabinet and pulls out a bedroll, one that looks like it’s used for travel. He pulls a small rug from in front of the candles to the middle of the room and then puts the bedroll on top of it, grabbing the smallest blanket from the bed even as he tugs her into sitting on the edge of the bed.
He’s putting himself between her and the door. It makes her eyes water and she rubs away her tears before they fall so that he doesn’t notice. “I don’t like you sleeping on the floor when you’re ill.”
“I’m not ill. I’ll be fine once the sun’s up,” he says then walks over to the bed and pulls back the covers as much as he can with her sitting on the edge, giving her a pointed look.
She gives in, standing just long enough get back into the bed and sliding beneath the covers. He tucks the comforter around her shoulders and she does her best not to be charmed by it and fails. “Goodnight Prince Zuko.”
“Goodnight Princess Yue,” he returns.
She turns on her side and closes her eyes. She hears the sound of Zuko stripping out of his clothes and tries not to think about it.
The bed is specious, one the luxuries of a prince even on a cramped ship. There’s more than enough room for two. If he slept beside her, then Yue wouldn’t have to worry about him getting cold.
It wouldn’t be proper, but running away with a foreign prince isn’t very proper either. If she thought for a moment that he’d accept, she’d offer, but she doesn’t think he would. Zuko seems very proper, in his on way.
Yue doesn’t manage to fall asleep until Zuko’s breathing evens and deepens, until she turns back around and sees him sleeping on his back, on the floor in the middle of his room, while she lies comfortable and warm in his bed.
Tui and La, she prays as sleep finally drags her under, let this work.
~
Zuko wakes up before she does and she’s only aware of it when he’s shaking her awake, his hands once more almost too warm to the touch. “Here,” he says as she’s still blinking herself out of sleep, his voice amused and fond, almost teasing. He puts an arm around her shoulders to lift her into an almost sitting position then pushes a metal bowl into her hands. Everything here is made of metal. She wonders if that’s because it’s something benders can’t burn or crack. “Eat it while it’s warm.”
By the time she’s blinked herself to awareness, he’s gone and she looks down to see the bowl is filled with steaming porridge. The light out of the window tells her that it’s barely dawn. Do Fire Nation people always get up this early? No wonder they’re so cranky.
She eats the porridge, set the bowl on the floor, and burrows back under the blankets to get some more sleep.
The next time she wakes up, the sun is properly high in the sky and for a moment she’s worried that they haven’t left and they’re still in the city, but she sees the sky moving out of the window. Of course, the large metal fire nation boat doesn’t rock nearly as much as her tribe’s light wooden boats, but she’s still surprised by how sturdy everything feels.
Yue pushes down the blankets and almost immediately dives back beneath them, hiding from the unexpected chill. Zuko hadn’t been kidding about how cold his room gets! It’s not nearly as cold as it would be outside but it’s not what she’s used to. They may be made of ice, but the buildings back home can easily be kept toasty warm and she’s never woken up cold before.
She’s trying to convince herself to get up so she can get her clothes from her pack when she sees the clothes she’d been wearing yesterday folded at the edge of the bed, clean and dry. She’d expected they’d be crusted over with salt from the sea and whatever else was in the water besides, but when she darts out a hand to drag them beneath the covers, they’re soft in her hands. She holds them against her, waiting for them to warm up before she puts them on. She raises a sleeve to her face, inhaling deeply. It smells like a combination of something nutty with another scent that’s a little bit like but not quite woodsmoke.
For an instant she’s once more on Zuko’s back, clinging to him with her face pressed into his neck as he pulls them up the anchor chain.
It smells like Zuko. Considering he has to be one that cleaned them, she doesn’t know why that surprises her, but it does.
She gets dressed under the covers, waiting until she’s sweating before throwing the blanket off once more, except this time it comes as a relief. She can’t leave the room, so she starts poking around. If Zuko didn’t want her to touch something, he assumes that he would have told her, or even just moved it from his room so she wouldn’t have the opportunity.
The dao blades are a surprise. Most benders only use their element and she wonders for a moment if he uses them, but the several polishing cloth and sharpener beneath them tell her that he does. If they weren’t getting regular work, if they were just keepsakes, she doesn’t think he’d need those.
His drawers reveal the expected amount of clothing, except shoved at the very back of the middle one is several sets of all black clothing wrapped around a blue theater mask. There’s got to be a good story there. Next to it is a silk bag that by the weight she expects to be full of coins, but instead has several red glass shards.
Most interesting, and frustrating, is the large cabinet full of books and scrolls that she can’t read. She speaks the Common Tongue, like everyone does, as well as Northern and High Northern, and she’s even picked up a decent amount of Southern and a sprinkling of High Southern from the elders since studying ancient treaties is something that it’s acceptable for her to do, but this –
Zuko knows her language. She probably should have expected this, these books in various Earth Kingdom scripts and the Air Temple scrolls that she didn’t think even existed. The Water Tribe scripts are legible to her, even the journal with weird loopy lettering that speaks of people living in a swamp, but they mostly speak of a history she already knows.
More than anything else, there are Fire Nation books and scrolls, different letterings among them even though she couldn’t say what each of them mean.
When Zuko slips back into the room, she’s sitting on a cushion by the cabinet, halfway through the personal accounts of the swamp dwelling Water Tribesman that she’d think was someone’s idea of a practical joke if several things about it didn’t ring a little too true.
“Entertaining yourself, Princess?” Zuko asks, gently tugging the book out her hands and replacing it with another metal bowl of some sort of thick stew. “The food will gain some variety once we’re a little more south. It’s limited while we’re in places where hunting is difficult, just in case.”
The spiciness of the stew causes her to swallow it too quickly, but after the initial surprise she decides she doesn’t mind it, although her second bite is slightly more cautious. “Where did you get all that?”
“I stole it, mostly,” he says, and she pauses in eating to glare at him. He just shrugs. “Honestly, most people aren’t as accommodating of my using their library as your father was. I’ve been dying to get into several Earth Kingdom libraries for years, but short of invading, that’s not going to happen.”
That blue mask suddenly makes a lot more sense.
“I wish I could read the rest,” she says, looking at the pile longingly.
Zuko is quiet for a moment, then he says, “You could.”
“Will you teach me?” she asks. She’s a fast learner, and if he has time she won’t complain. “I can’t even tell the different alphabets apart.”
“No, I meant,” he starts, then cuts himself off. He forms his hands into the shape of a flame but it’s not the red and orange fire, it’s the multicolored one, the one that doesn’t burn. “Okay?”
She’s not exactly sure what he’s asking, but she trusts him, so she puts the bowl to the side and says, “Okay.”
He doesn’t blow the flames in her face like he did last time, instead reaching forward and cupping her face, pressing the flames into her skin. Again, they’re warm, a penetrating sort of heat that doesn’t burn her. It’s not a memory like last time, instead it’s barely flashes, sitting down and sitting still as ink stains tiny hands and a clumsy brush moves across the paper and the sun shines through an open window.
Then he pulls his hands back and Yue doesn’t understand she looks back at the cabinet and all names along the spines of all the books bound in red leather suddenly make sense to her, the characters as clear and obvious to her as if she grew up with them. “You,” she begins, but doesn’t know where to go from there.
“I don’t think it’ll work with the others since I’m not totally fluent,” he says, rubbing the back of his neck. “Well, maybe Lower Earth Kingdom, I’m pretty good at that, but only because Botan grew up on a border town and he slips into it all the time.”
“You don’t need to learn your languages yourself?” she asks, still reeling. Sharing memories was incredible enough, but with this – how can anyone compete with that, if the whole Fire Nation just needs a fireball to the face in order to learn something?
Except Zuko is shaking his head. “I told you, remember? Most people can’t do this. I had to learn the old fashioned way, like everyone else. Besides, even if we could, it wouldn’t a good idea. Kids need to learn things on their own. You have to use it, otherwise it probably won’t stick. Memories can only show you so much.” There are several things he’s not telling her, a few really obvious holes in that explanation, but she doesn’t push. She has plenty of time to pry into all of his secrets. There’s no need to rush. “Thank you,” she says, squeezing his wrist, and when he slips back outside she takes his words to heart and picks up one of the red books.
It’s old, like everything else in the cabinet, and written in Court Fire Nation instead of Common Fire Nation. It talks about dragons, written more like a collection of fairytales than anything resembling a historical account. For all she knows, maybe it is.
Zuko doesn’t come back until it’s night and she’s holding the book up to the window to make out the words by moonlight. “I have lanterns,” he says, teasing as he places a plate of cooked, salted fish next to her.
She’s too focused to feel hungry, but she starts eating anyway. “You don’t have matches.”
That gives him a pause and he snaps his fingers, a spark dancing from his fingertips to light the three different lanterns around the room. “We’ll get you a lighter. No one really uses matches. They’re too easy to put out.”
He gets dressed for bed and Yue focuses on the words in front of her even though she stops processing them.
Zuko crawls back onto his bedroll and mutters, “Is it a good book?”
She’s not sure if this is what he’s asking for, but she starts reading aloud, trying to speak with the same cadence as those that had read to her as a child.
When she looks up, Zuko is fast asleep.
~
The next morning, she walks out on Zuko’s arm. Several crew members do a double take when they see her, but they just stares and say nothing. No one comments until he helps her up the steps to the deck.
General Iroh sees her and immediately starts sputtering. The crew that had followed them up doesn’t seem to know if they’re allowed to laugh or not, but she thinks that may be more because of nerves than anything else.
“It appears we have a stowaway,” Zuko says, his mouth pulled down into a half scowl even though she can tell he’s amused. It throws her so much, so different from the Zuko she’s used to seeing, that for a moment she forgets what’s happening and just blinks at him.
“You can’t go around kidnapping princesses!” General Iroh roars, causing her to jump. Seeing him angry would frighten her if she didn’t have Zuko pressed up against her side.
“Of course not,” Zuko agrees, “it’s just the one.”
She’d expects him to sound teasing saying those words, if he was speaking to her, but instead he very nearly sounds derisive. Clearly things on Zuko’s ship are more complicated than she thought.
“You can’t do this,” he says, “if the Fire Lord find out-”
“This is my ship,” Zuko interrupts, as cold as the air around them, “I can do as I like. If my father finds out, then he either won’t care or he’ll see it as an opportunity. The Northern Tribes are safe as long as they remain uninvolved in the war and if I can lure them out by kidnapping their princess, then I just doing my duty as a Fire Nation prince.”
Yue frowns. Maybe that thought should frighten her, except she knows that’s not what Zuko’s doing, and it wouldn’t work anyway. She left her father a note and even if she hadn’t, he’d never risk the tribe for her sake. She pokes his side, forgetting that she doesn’t need to try and be felt through several layers of fur and leather, and jabbing him harder than she meant to. He looks down at her and raises his eyebrow.
She can feel the weight of everyone watching them and doesn’t let it bother her. She’s a princess. People either stare at her or ignore her. They never just look at her. This is something she’s used to.
“I agreed,” she says, stepping just slightly in front of Zuko without letting go of his arm, and suddenly the general’s eyes are on her. “He asked and I said yes. Don’t make me go back. Not yet.”
He looks between them and whatever he finds there causes his shoulders to slump. For the first time since she first saw him exiting the ship at Zuko’s side, he looks his age. “Prince Zuko is right. His word is final here.”
She’s going to stay. She’s really going to get to stay on this ship with Zuko as it sails around the world.
“What do you want to see first?” Zuko asks, looking down at her with a smile that softens his whole face, that makes her want to trace the places where his lips crease into his cheek.
“Surprise me,” she answers, and he laughs, loudly enough that it nearly covers his uncle’s angry muttering.
Judging by General Iroh and the crew’s reaction, they’re not used to hearing Zuko’s laughter.
She can fix that.