Chapter Text
It is a Monday morning when Iroh, Dragon of the West, has the distinct pleasure of watching his nephew get run over by a pretty girl.
Well, run over is perhaps the incorrect term; it’s more the girl outright collides with him, too busy looking over her shoulder at something. Just like Zuko actually!
They both hit the ground hard, Iroh taking a smooth step to the right to avoid any limbs landing in a way that might trip him up and certainly not so he can appreciate this event from a better vantage point.
“You should watch where you are going, Prince Zuko. Luckily, it appears you have not marked the beautiful lady’s face!” He says it jovially, meaning every word because the girl is a pretty little thing. A pretty little thing that is the exact same age as his nephew, come to think of it! “My, you haven’t sprained your ankle, have you, my dear?” He winks at her, hoping (perhaps against hope) that the girl will click on while his steaming nephew is still face down on the street. Zuko’d come off worse from the collision, ending up half underneath the girl who looks up at him with wide grey eyes that crinkle beneath the force of a cheery smile.
“Oh, yes, my ankle does feel something funny,” she says, lifting her boot clad calf into the air, as if to inspect it. “Not sure I dare take my boot off to look though.” And she grins back at him, shooting a quick look Zuko’s way before she winks in return. Oh ho! A fellow tease!
It is about this time that Zuko works his way free of the girl’s weight, shoving her off to a side and, true to form, she gives an overly dramatic whine, half reaching for the ankle she has suspended in the air but halting as if the motion pains her. It is rather marvellous how she manages to make her eyes water ever so slightly, brows puckering beneath the crimson fabric of her headband.
“You should watch where you’re going!” Zuko shouts, planting both hands on the ground and springing to his feet. He’s no worse off from the collision but, being in full armour, it would have been a bout of terrible bad luck for him to be injured. And while Zuko’s luck is something horrible, even his isn’t that petty.
On the ground, the young lady pouts up at his nephew, sniffing theatrically and pawing ever so gently at the corner of her eye, as if wiping away a tear, and Iroh watches Zuko falter ever so slightly.
The trap is baited.
“Prince Zuko,” Iroh says, keeping his tone somewhere between stern and disappointed, careful to keep any serious upset from his voice and leaving it closer to a ‘I can’t believe you don’t like my latest tea flavour’ than anything paternal. That’s a powder keg he doesn’t wish to set off. After near three years at sea now, he’s perfected the tone and that’s evident in the way Zuko’s shoulders sag, head tipping back as if praying to Agni for patience he would have to cultivate, not wait to receive. All the while, the young lady remains on the floor, limbs loose and pout still plastered on her lips.
“Are you okay.” It’s not really a question and Iroh is quite certain his nephew would sooner allow his molars to leave his mouth than those words, but out they come regardless. And the young lady goes for a gentle nod that turns into a genuine wince, palm rising from her eye to press against her cloth covered forehead.
“You have a hard head. I don’t suppose you’ll help me up?” she asks, holding out one dainty, gloved hand that Zuko inspects as if it’s the latest lacklustre slop the cook has tried to pass as food when they’re down to the last dregs of their rations. His beloved nephew is learning though, for Iroh needs to say nothing to prompt him; Zuko clasps the girl’s hand and hauls her up. And, in a masterful display of theatrics better suited for the Ember Island Production Team than a side street in a market, the girl allows her previously ‘injured’ ankle to give way so that she can fall into his nephew again, leaving Zuko no other choice but to catch her, least they end up sprawled across the ground. Again.
Normally a showing such as this comes with an admissions fee!
“Can you stay on your feet for five seconds!” Zuko snarls, not quite pushing the girl off him, but he’s certainly far too rough in making sure she’s got her footing. Iroh can spot Jee at the nearby fruit stall who looks just as invested in the girl’s antics as Iroh himself. Not once has her hand wandered for a pocket, searching for a coin purse during then entire fiasco; the little lady either has a slight of hand greater than Iroh’s eyes can catch, or perhaps it is exactly as Iroh hopes it is. A young lady playing up for a cute boy’s attention. And his nephew is a cute boy, no matter how much he may try to deny it, self-conscious of that damned scar of his. If Agni doesn’t rake Ozai across the coals for that one, then Iroh swears he shall do it himself. The hairstyle… well, that is truly tragic, but there’s little Iroh had been able to do to dissuaded Zuko of that.
“On my foot, maybe,” the girl quips back while stressing the singular word, balancing on her ‘good leg’, the other raised off the ground just enough to indicate she doesn’t fancy putting weight down on it. Which Iroh would have fallen for had he not seen the actual impact and knows full well her leg hadn’t been hurt in any which way. Her eyes flicker over his nephew’s form, lingering on his shoulders. “I don’t suppose you’d help me to the tea house, would you?”
“An excellent choice!” Iroh enthuses before Zuko can so much as open his mouth. “We we’re just heading there ourselves!” They were not heading there, had in fact determined they were going the opposite way. That is to say, Zuko has determined that. But now it is two against one and, no matter how grumpy he is, Zuko won’t be able to buck his moral compass enough to ignore a request from a girl he has ‘injured’. The poor boy just doesn’t have it in him. Were he back home right now, and at his very much courtable age, the girls would have run rings around his flustered form.
But just because he cannot find it in himself to deny the girl, doesn’t mean that Zuko cannot make his opinion of this sudden detour known.
He whirls on Iroh, a furious scowl on his face and he looks but a second from vocalising his disagreement — only for the young lady to clasp his wrist in her hand and peer up at his nephew from her lesser height. It’s not quite a pleading look, the girl appears to have too much respect in herself for that. But she certainly wears some expression that is perhaps a less helpless cousin of begging – imploring, perhaps. Those big grey eyes certainly help her cause.
Zuko’s mouth snaps shut with an audible clang.
“One cup of tea,” Zuko seethes, his eyes neither locked upon Iroh or the young lady, but instead staring into the distance like he’ll set the two of them on fire through willpower alone if he so much as glances at them, so he’s refraining. “One cup of tea and then we are leaving!” He makes to spin on his heels and storm toward the stall in question, only for the girl at his side to wince, a little whine of distress crawling up from her throat like the sudden motion has jostled her (not at all) bad ankle. With a snarl, Zuko quickly faces her, ducks slightly to wrap his arms around her thighs, and then holsters her over his shoulder to thunder onto the tea shop.
The young lady meets Iroh’s eyes from where she’s half hanging behind Zuko’s head and theatrically fans herself. Yes, stopping at this port was an excellent idea; Iroh approves of this young lady, that’s for sure! Iroh fires a quick look over his shoulder to see how Jee is taking this, but the Lieutenant is half-sprawled over the fruit stall with his head buried in his arms, his shoulders shaking with helpless laughter, and it has Iroh grinning. What a marvellous place this little outpost is turning out to be!
The tea shop is far from Iroh’s usual standard (the standard he’d procured within the Fire Nation’s comforting, familiar terrain), but he has not been able to visit an establishment as great as the one in the Fire Nation’s capital for three years now. As long as the tea is brewed well and the company is good, then Iroh is satisfied. And oh, is the company good! The young lady, who introduces herself as Aanya, is all smiles and is a perfectly respectable young lady, and Iroh tells her such.
“You only think that because she likes tea,” Zuko scoffs from beside him, his arms folded, his face twisted with a scowl, and his tea untouched. Honestly, where has Iroh gone wrong in their three-year journey that the boy does not have an appreciation for the finer things in life? Yes, Zuko has thrown his all into this task of his (one doomed from the start, not that the boy would ever admit to that), but does that really mean he cannot pause to enjoy life’s delicacies?
“I’ve always enjoyed tea,” Aanya confirms, taking a long, slow sip. The white steam wafts up and around her face, curling over her rosy cheeks and fluttering up past the crimson headband that starts just as her eyebrows stop. Long, dark hair falls in silken strands, smoothly contained in a half-up, half-down style that is far from the fashion back home. This is an outpost for the warship, Iroh acknowledges with a heavy sigh, one that has young Aanya looking at him curiously but not commenting. It is hardly the girl’s fault that she’s been born out here, that she lives away from the Fire Nation. If life were as it should be, the young woman wouldn’t even be a blip on Zuko’s radar. Yet, that is not the world they live in; they are approaching the centurion anniversary of the war, a quarter of the world’s benders have been wiped from the face of the earth, and Prince Zuko is child banished by a father too cruel to see the advantage of kindness.
“My personal favourite is jasmine,” Iroh confines, allowing none of his deep thoughts to show upon his face, more interested in steering Zuko as close to a little romance as he can. The boy is sixteen and wholly focused upon his quest to capture a being that has not been sighted for over a hundred years— if he does not take the time to slow down and enjoy the possibility of relationships with other people, he will grow old alone and unaccomplished. Iroh is determined to ensure this is not the case.
Starting with their beautiful company here!
“Ah, I am probably going to come off as quite unadventurous, but my favourite is oolong,” Aanya admits, a pleased little smile as she flicks her gaze curiously to Zuko, no doubt waiting for Iroh’s nephew to chip in with his favourite flavour. Alas, Zuko is the kind of boy who believes in practicality over all else; the boy drinks nothing but water because he does not have the time nor need to sit and procure a batch of delicious tea. It is still something Iroh is working on with him.
“Not in the slightest! Oolong tea can have grassy and flowery tones and spicy or toasty aromas— it is a wonderful choice to make when selecting a personal favourite.”
“This is a waste of time,” Zuko growls, rolling his eyes skywards and Iroh notices the exact moment the young woman’s eyes take on an almost predatory gleam. No, perhaps that is not the right adjective to use, as that does her a disservice. It is perhaps more apt to say that Aanya spots an opportunity to speak further with Zuko, grey eyes flashes.
“How would you spend your time then, Prince Zuko?” she asks, head tipping slightly to a side so her dark hair falls across one shoulder. She goes so far as to plant on elbow upon the table, delicately balancing her cheek atop her closed fist, utterly fixated on Zuko as she awaits his answer and Iroh can feel the air around his nephew grow warmer as he becomes more embarrassed by the rapt attention he is receiving. Ah, when Iroh was that age, he would have done a multitude of mortifying things to be the centre of a pretty girl’s attention!
“I have better things to do than the sit around drink tea!” At his bellow, the fire warming some of the teapots at the counter erupts with his fury and two servers flinch back in surprise. It’s enough of a display that Iroh makes a low, little hum in the back of his throat. No words need to be spoken, but the disapproval is enough for Zuko’s shoulders to tense and his face to redden. Fortunately, Aanya doesn’t seem phased by the display of power. If anything, she leans further forwards in interest.
“You’re a firebender, aren’t you? How do you do it?”
“Firebend? Firebenders use their chi as a source for their bending, control come from the breath, as well as our anger,” Zuko answers, parroting the same drivel that Iroh himself has been taught in the capital. It had taken him years of independent research and spiritual enlightenment to see the truth for what it is; that firebending is life itself.
And yet, it doesn’t take young Aanya a moment to proclaim, “now that doesn’t sound right.”
“Excuse me?!”
“I’m aware there’s been near a century of warfare, but there was peace in the past,” Aanya continues, completely ignoring Zuko’s enraged interruption, sipping daintily at her tea and firing a charming little smile at the two of them. “According to the small collection of ancient scrolls I’ve been able to uncover, firebending is life itself. All things die if they become too cold. Firebending cannot just be fuelled by anger— I refuse to believe that.”
“And what makes a backwater peasant like you an expert on firebending?” Zuko seethes, his face twisted in an approximation of offended rage, having risen to his feet to lean over the table, an intimidating wall of Fire-Nation cataphract and steaming pale skin.
Amused, Iroh takes another gentle drink of his tea and wishes Jee was here to see the young lady rile Zuko up more. Then he’d have someone to share amused glances with.
“Well, I wouldn’t say expert, but I know a little bit! I’ve managed to teach myself this,” the girl says with a wide grin, producing her gloved hand, palm up, and then a pretty little flame flares to life above it. Iroh’s eyebrows shoot up and he even stops drinking his tea for a moment, watching that little fire sparkle and burn. There’s no anger to it, no rage or fury. It’s just a warm little fire— the exact same feel to it as the last dragons’ flames had held. He doesn’t speak, doesn’t say anything as Zuko splutters wordlessly beside him and Aanya twitches her fingers to allow the flame to rise slowly but surely. For proclaiming she’s teaching herself, she has exceptional control over that tiny little fire that she allows to spiral up into a miniature tornado, one she snuffs out by closing her palm.
“I have alright control with flames, but actually applying them to combat is something I’ve never been taught,” she says with a longing sigh, resting her cheek upon her hand again, turning soft eyes back on Zuko with a smile as warm as her little golden flame had been.
Of course, Zuko misses this pleasant look entirely, choosing to erupt over this new batch of information.
“You haven’t been trained?! That’s outrageous! It’s one less soldier for the Fire Nation and one man— or woman! A man or woman can make all the difference in battle!”
“I’m not really one for warfare,” the girl muses, batting her other hand through the air, as if she can dismiss a hundred years of war from the conversation with the motion alone. “So I’m not too fussed.”
“Nonsense. Get up, I’ll show you how to throw a punch and then we are going straight to the nearest recruitment station.” Zuko surges to his feet, snatches up Aanya’s free hand and hauls her to her feet. It is indeed a good thing that the young woman was pretending to be injured, for Iroh’s nephew makes no attempt to account for her ‘injured ankle’ as he turfs her out of the tearoom.
Iroh collects the poor girl’s half-finished tea and gives chase at an amiable pace.
When he catches up to Zuko, he finds the boy at the docks, not far from where their own ship resides. The two of them are facing out to sea, Zuko standing strong and firm as he gestures with his arms the proper motion to the most basic of firebending moves; a forward punch. Iroh approaches slowly, unwilling to draw too much attention when Zuko has actually taken the initiative. Yes, it is over a perceived slight against a young bender who could have potentially joined the army, but as things stand, Zuko is reaching out to another within his age group! That alone makes this worth standing and watching.
Slinking over, Iroh slowly lowers himself so that he is sitting on the dock, legs folded beneath him, close enough to redirect any fires going where they shouldn’t, but far enough away to give the illusion of privacy. If this just so happens to put him in the zone of proximity that allows him to hear every word spoken, well, all the better for it!
“—fuel the fire in your sternum, exhale as you punch forward, and allow your chi to become fire,” Zuko demands, exhibiting a well-practised punch; the fire roars out over the ocean, the waves beneath sizzling where they’ve risen too high and gotten too close to the flames. Aanya nods her head, drawing her arm back and slowly moving it forward to mirror Zuko’s gesture; it’s a carefully controlled motion, one that Iroh can tell the young woman already knows with how she impedes the action, jolting her elbow at the last second before turning her gaze upon Zuko. While Iroh cannot see her face from this angle, he can guess she is attempting to employ puppy-dog eyes upon his nephew. Given Zuko’s weakness for cute things… there is every chance it will work.
“Can you walk me through the motion again please?”
Zuko huffs, smoke coiling out from his nostrils but he tempers himself fairly well, once again reciting the motions, demonstrating (this time without the fire) and then awaits Aanya’s attempt. This time, because he’s looking for it, Iroh can see the shift in Aanya’s muscles as she aborts a well-practised gesture, producing a dreadful punch that, if he weren’t in the company of a female, would have Zuko swearing up a storm.
“I think I might need a more hands on approach, where should my hand end up?”
“Your entire arm should be extended!” Zuko snaps, grasping the wrist that Aanya has offered up and pulling it back so her muscles bunch, before snapping it out to end in an extended punch. With the slight height difference between them, it’s easy enough for Aanya to slip slightly in front of Zuko, so that her back is to his chest and, before he can mention it, Aanya is already turning to look back at him with a smile.
“And what should the other side of my body be doing? I’m assuming my other arm doesn’t’ just flop about?” Zuko huffs an aggravated sigh but obliges, wrapping his palm around the girl’s wrist and walking her through the correct movements of a punch and Iroh has to stuff his knuckles into his mouth in order to not burst into hysterical laughter. What he wouldn’t give for one of those snapshot painters right now— this is a picture that should be captured right now! It is like something out of a romance novel: the dashing prince standing just behind; the coy young woman all but wrapped up within his arms and the sun steadily rising before them. Ah, they truly are just missing the sunset. Yet, the young lady has masterfully orchestrated this to keep close contact with Zuko, to continue her flirty behaviour with him. Ah, if only his nephew didn’t have such a thick skull, then he would have caught on to this by now.
Maybe it is for the best they are not in the capital— no doubt Zuko would have been tricked into marriage by now if events had been different.
“Now let your chi flow!” Zuko shouts, utterly oblivious that he’s so very close to the young lady’s ear. “Punch out!”
“Okay!” Aanya chirps, pulling her fist back, punching it forwards and—
And Iroh leans back from the blistering heat that scorches across the ocean, the vicious hiss of seawater instantly evaporating piercing through the air. He’s on his feet a moment later as Zuko takes a startled, a stunned step back from the young woman who has just unleashed an inferno much akin to Azula’s fire-punch.
Aanya has turned on her heel, a happy grin on her face as she peers up at Zuko, flexing the tiny, gloved fist that had just produced an uncomfortably overpowered fire punch. Why on earth no one has taught her before—
“How has nobody taught you any firebending yet?!” Zuko roars, flicking a whip of flame down at the ocean in his anger, that same sizzling sound snapping at the surface. “With that kind of power for your first punch—” Zuko cuts himself off with a furious growl, stalking away to pace up and down the dock, looking more and more mutinous. Iroh knows exactly what is going through the poor boy’s mind; why is the young lady so gifted when he, a prince of the Fire Nation, has struggled with every firebending form that he has been presented with?
“I haven’t actively been looking for a teacher,” Aanya admits, pouting now and clearly aware she’s made some kind of misstep. Perhaps she put her full force into the punch in order to try and showcase how well Zuko has taught her? The poor dear could not have been aware of Zuko’s own struggles, could probably not have even guessed given the vicious confidence that Zuko presents himself to the world with.
“Then what—”
“Aanya!”
The call has all three of them pausing, turning slowly to look upon the new face.
It’s a young man. A touch shorter than Zuko with a rather shaggy mane of dark brown hair, the boy is dressed in a set of ragtag armour that can barely be classified as such: his shirt is red; his trousers dark blue and his tanned skin and brown eyes gives no indication to his nation of origin. What is clear is that he knows Aanya, for he comes striding down the dock with purpose, one hand slowly reaching back towards the handle of a blade that rests just over his shoulder. It has Iroh tensing, has Zuko tensing at such obvious aggression.
Aanya, it seems, is unbothered. She happily turns on heel and goes bounding over to the man, throwing her arms around him in an overly enthusiastic greeting and Iroh doesn’t miss the way the young man’s arms wrap tight around her waist, the way his eyes narrows as he looks them both over before concluding that Zuko is the biggest threat; the glare intensifies something fierce. Ah, perhaps Aanya is not as single as Iroh first thought? Or perhaps the young man is an interested party and wishes to make his claim known? Regardless, Iroh will leave this to Zuko to handle. It will do him some good— maybe he will even come out of this with some new friends!
“What the hell are you doing here with two firebenders?”
Or maybe not.
“Excuse me?” Zuko snarls, striding forward and so caught up in this recent development that he still hasn’t clicked on to Aanya having faked her ankle injury.
Aanya wiggles her way out of the newcomer’s hold, bouncing back over before she comes to a stop just before Zuko, grinning up at him and seemingly unbothered in the face of his blank-faced rage. Instead, she bows, a proper Fire Nation bow, the kind that’s only taught in the homeland, the kind that is used all the time in the capital. It startled Zuko— certainly, it startles Iroh.
Aanya rises from the bow, smile still on her face as she grabs one of Zuko’s hands and holds it between her own. “Thank you very much for teaching me how to throw a proper fire-punch. I’ll make sure to think of you whenever I use it!” And then she bounces forwards, closes that little bit of space between them, and plants a sweet kiss upon his nephew’s cheek.
Both Zuko and the new-comer’s face go red, though they are for understandably different reasons.
“Aanya!”
“Yes, Jet?”
“You shouldn’t be fraternising with, with those people!” This Jet points an accusing finger towards Zuko, his cheeks scarlet with offense, his gaze on Aanya as he states, “We have a mission here!”
A mission?
Aanya exhales, her body almost folding in on itself as she deflates, the over-exaggeration of it all seeming to annoy the boy before her even more as he goes on to announce that everyone’s ready and they’ve been waiting for her signal, but she disappeared into the little port-town and hadn’t surfaced again, so they’d all gone looking for her. The whole thing is setting Iroh’s teeth on edge, and he rises, stepping closes to Zuko, hands loose and ready to bend if required.
The young man doesn’t stop because he’s run out of things to say, but because Aanya has risen onto her tiptoes and pinches his lips together.
“Hush, Jet. I’ve got this! No worries.”
And then the girl is gone.
No, she’s not gone, but she’s vacated the spot she was in previously, the spot she’d been standing like a normal human being. Instead, she appears to have jumped onto the nearest, tallest surface (the watch-tower, some fifty feet from where they’d previously been and nearly seventy feet in the air) which she is now precariously balanced upon.
A stone is settling in Iroh’s stomach, a heavy, chillingly cold thing that presses down hard.
Surely not. Surely—
Aanya whistles, the sound piercing and far beyond what a normal human could produce, enhanced by something Iroh daren’t not put a name to, not out loud, not if it pushes Zuko into falling off the edge of what little sanity he’s managed to hold onto these past three years.
The girl (for Iroh can see given the sudden distance between them) has her hand half-cupped, half-curled around her mouth and then, when she shouts, it travels through the air far further than it should.
“Attention Fire Nation personal. You have exactly one minute to evacuate your ships before they are sunk!”
There’s a moment of still silence, a quiet so heavy it suffocates, pressing down on Iroh’s chest far harder than any absence of sound has a right to. Up on the watchtower, Aanya cocks her head to a side, her whole body following the motion so that she’s hanging precariously to a side, enough that it’s making Iroh worry.
“Oh. This is Avatar Aanya announcing.” There’s another still pause, then— “Your minute has started, by the way.”
With a roar of animalistic rage, Zuko suddenly surges forwards, punching up towards the tower and, if it were any other situation, Iroh might have been proud of how strong the flame he’s produced is. But this not any other situation.
The young man, Jet, has already turned on the Fire Nation personal nearby, drawing his twin blades and throwing himself into combat, seemingly unbothered by the fact the girl claiming to be the Avatar is now facing down a fire-blast. He’s right not to worry.
Aanya springs from the watchtower, twisting her arms in a sweeping, circular motion and a blade of wind cuts through Zuko’s attack, forcibly parting it before her so that she might fall through the gap. It’s the most controlled fall that Iroh has ever seen. Given she is very evidently an airbender, that shouldn’t come as a surprise. No, what is the surprise is that an airbender had been gutsy enough to approach a Fire Nation port, that an airbender is brave enough to proclaim the title of Avatar before them.
And she must be, Iroh realises with dread—the girl had produced a fire punch and has now bent the air around them. Two out of four elements. Suddenly, it makes perfect sense why the young lady has not had anyone teach her firebending yet. No one who claims to be loyal to the Fire Nation would ever entertain such a prospect.
In the amount of time it has taken Iroh to consider this, Aanya has landed upon the dock, her gloves gone, exposing the vivid blue arrows that decorate the backs of her palms. Her fingers are quick to lace through the headband atop her brow, removing it an exposing a third arrow, matching in design.
Undoubtedly an airbender. Undoubtedly more than Zuko can handle— the young woman must be an exceptionally accomplished bender if she is willing to risk her life here and now, announcing herself in such a way.
And yet, for all that Iroh is worried about his nephew… he does not believe that Aanya will harm him. Not with how warmly she has treated Zuko while they sampled the teahouse, with how she had blatantly gone out of her way to flirt with him. Oh, no doubt Zuko will assume the woman had been taunting him, will rage and froth at the very thought of it. But Iroh had seen the young lady’s expression. There had been no maliciousness there.
“YOU!” Zuko bellows, louder than anything he has ever produced, his form steaming with pent up rage, his golden eyes narrowed but wild as he fixated on Aanya. “You’re the Avatar!? You’re a child!”
“I’m your age!” Aanya calls, somersaulting backwards to avoid Zuko’s opening blast of fire. As she falls back, she turns into a bastardised cartwheel rather than springing up and a whip of ocean water follows, putting out Zuko’s flames before they can damage the dock in any way.
Three elements and counting.
Zuko snarls, sending off a barrage of quick-fire punches. It’s clear the girl was telling the truth when she said she hadn’t been instructed in firebending; any firebender beyond a beginning would be capable of redirecting the flames, but Aanya opts for a mixture of air and water to smother the flames instead, though she makes it appear laughably easy. Each flick of her wrist, each shift of her foot, every breath she takes displays a clear mastery over her root element and her secondary.
Then, against all the writings that Iroh has read upon airbending culture, she goes on the offensive.
Aanya shoots forwards, quicker than Zuko could manage, quicker than a human could manage so she must be supplementing her movements with her bending, she’s in Zuko’s guard within moments, slipping behind his back, moving as he moves, always keeping just out of sight, just out of reach. When Zuko becomes frustrated and drops to the ground in that exemplary spinning kick, spraying fire out in a circular motion, Aanya leaps up into the air above him, not particularly high, but enough that the flames don’t touch her.
And then, when Zuko has stopped and righted himself, she drops back, plants a kiss to his startled cheek before he can react, and then she springs away.
Once again, Iroh’s knuckles find their way into his mouth, for a very similar reason as to when he last chewed upon them. Because… she’s playing with him. The flirty intention is still there, and she is most certainly not teasing.
Against all odds, the Avatar finds Prince Zuko of the Fire Nation attractive.
Iroh would pay good money to see the look on his brother’s face when this news reaches him. The thought is very quickly sobered by the acknowledgement that Ozai will be finding out about the Avatar’s continued existence.
“YOU—” Zuko splutters, cheeks beyond red now and edging towards a shade of plum, beginning to purple with rage. It’s as far as he gets into his acquisition though, for another voice calls out that ‘the minute is up’.
All around them, Fire Nation personal have come up onto the deck of their ships, some streaming down their gangplanks. Iroh knows it will not be because of the ultimatum they were given. No, they will have come because someone dares to claim the title of Avatar. A person who, if captured, will ensure the capturer lives beyond their wildest dreams upon the Fire Lord’s coin with his personal thanks. There are curious faces, eager faces, and not one of them has realised the very real danger their in.
Iroh includes himself within this number, because he too is not braced for what happens next.
Aanya snaps her hand forwards, the same punching motion that she had been restraining herself from performing with Zuko. Yet, her hand is open, her palm pushing forwards and the resulting wind blast sweeps both Iroh and Zuko from their feet and away from the dock, along with the scattering of down soldiers that her accomplice had taken care of.
Then, then she glows.
The airbending tattoos transcend from their vivid blue to something otherworldly, fluorescent light that reflects upon the ocean around them. The wind picks up, something violet and aggressive, the ocean frothing, each wave choppier, hungrier than the one before it. The Avatar (and she is the Avatar right now, there is no sign of the cheerful, flirty Aanya on her face) lifts her hands and the ocean swells with them. And when she brings them down, the waves devour.
There are no ships left.
All of them are gone, each and every one swallowed by the ocean upon the command of a girl smaller than Iroh, a girl who has kissed his nephew upon the cheek and gently sipped tea with a low table between them. Just… there were ships. A dozen, perhaps.
And now they are gone.
It’s a horrified kind of silence now, especially given the Avatar has yet to stop glowing, those featureless eyes peering both directly at Iroh and at everyone upon the dock.
“M-monster,” one soldier stutters, horror thick in his voice and the Avatar’s head swings around to face them.
“Your soldiers were given a minute more than all of the children of the Air Nomads.” When the Avatar speaks, it is not with her voice, but with the voices of thousands, of every Avatar that came before, each one that has watched the sins of the Fire Nation from the afterlife and found them wanting. Even Zuko seems to have forgotten his quest in the face of this, the truth of what he is hunting.
Aanya is a girl, a young woman who has been pleasant company. But she is the Avatar, and the Avatar is responsible for the balancing of the scales, for ensuring the world is equal.
Paradoxically, she too is the last air nomad. The last of her kind.
Both Iroh and Zuko have seen the Air Temples, they’ve both seen the skeletons.
There is no disputing what the girl says.
The glow dies, leaving Aanya standing upon the end of the dock, the ocean slowly beginning to surrender the odd section of the ships it has consumed, half of a table, a chair, Iroh’s Pai Sho board. He almost wants to snap out a laugh at the sight of it, though there is nothing to find funny among this.
Her grey eyes meet Zuko’s and, for all that she smiles, they’re sad.
“I’m sorry.”
There’s a groan and a beast (a flying bison, he will later realises) flies out from over town. Upon it’s saddle, four people reside: two teenagers from the Water Tribe; a preteen from the Earth Kingdom and Jet who leans over the balusters, tense with a hand reaching outwards.
Aanya springs up before the entire port can get their bearings, before Zuko can truly comprehend what has happened here, leaping higher than any human has the right to before she slips her hand into Jet’s.
Then they’re gone, flying out to sea, flying out of reach, and they have no ships to follow.
“—and Aanya here was dalliancing with the scarred one!”
Jet’s grumbling voice echoes through the air around them and Sokka watches as Aanya drums up her usual smile, elbowing the elder teen in the stomach with a huff before she proclaims even firebenders can be good looking. If this were the start of their journey, then Sokka might have believed her unaffected.
But it’s been three years now. Three years since Katara had her hissy fit and collapsed an iceberg egg and out popped the god damn Avatar. An Avatar that had freaked out once she’d taken a good look at Katara, demanded to know their ages, and then freaked out even more. Something about being three years too early, something about messing up the plotline, whatever that was supposed to mean. Even now, knowing with certainty that Aanya is the Avatar (even with two years of hijinks, of staying under the radar, of keeping quiet and sneaking across the world so Aanya can complete her training in peace without being hunted), it doesn’t make sense to him. Sokka’s starting to suspect it never will. All this magic and bending and spirit world stuff, none of it means anything to him. All Sokka has to do is come up with the plans, keep a sensible head on his shoulders, and hit any Fire Nation soldiers that get too close.
Yes, he also has other roles, including fighting in melee, but that’s not just him. That’s why Jet’s here; Aanya had reappeared at the South Pole almost half a year after her Katara-enforced hatching with the twig-chewing, sword-wielding idiot trailing after her and proclaimed she was taking Katara to the Northern Water Tribe to learn water bending.
Now, Sokka knows the look in Jet’s eyes; it’s someone who’s seen the light, someone who has found hope on the dying fields of belief. He follows Aanya like a dog does their master and it makes Sokka sick. And yeah, it might be a bit of his own dying crush speaking there, but the point remains. Jet’s job is to slice and dice and watch Aanya’s back; there’s a reason why they haven’t asked the eldest teen among them to be the one keeping a levelled head. There’s a reason it’s Sokka’s job and Sokka’s job alone: Toph’s too stubborn; Katara too righteous; Aanya too air-headed and the less said about Jet, the better.
“Oh, but he was so cute!” Aanya croons suddenly, hands intertwined with each other as she sways theatrically atop Appa’s saddle, utterly unbothered by the chill in the air. “Moody, definitely. But his voice? Oh, it was lovely!”
Jet reaches out and hauls Aanya down onto the saddle again, even though she’s the only one among them who won’t suffer any damage from falling off the saddle… he thinks. She lands with an ‘oomph’ beside him, shamelessly huddling closer for warmth and, when just cuddling up to Jet doesn’t do it for her, uses her stupid airbending magic to forcibly shuffle a protesting Toph closer to her. Seemingly satisfied at last, Aanya snuggles further into the space between the two and Jet unashamedly throws his arm over Aanya’s shoulders so she can get closer. The smarmy arse grins at Sokka and Sokka grins back, hoping the amount of aggression he’s injected into the expression is as visible as it feels.
Oh, he can get on with Jet, when it’s needed. But they like to argue, they like to scrap with each other.
(It hadn’t been like that in the early days; in the early days, both of them had recognised the other had a crush on the flirty little airbender that Sokka’s sister had stumbled across. Those first few weeks had been ugly.)
“Nice voice, huh?” Toph says casually from where she’s half-smushed into Aanya’s armpit. “I can get behind that.” And Toph! That girl knows exactly what she’s doing, commenting on Aanya’s attraction to any other kind of boy outside of their little group. But, just because Sokka knows she’s doing it, just because Jet knows she’s doing it, it doesn’t stop them from biting.
“Please! Some angry Fire Nation pup is hardly worth your time!” Jet scoffs, waving his free hand dismissively through the air. And Sokka would love to continue down this line of conversation, he really would (if only because it’s something he and Jet agree on), but he has more pressing matters. And, given Katara is up front driving the great big sky beast, it falls on him to pull up the key point they’d been discussing while Aanya was out in the port town and Jet had gone off looking for her.
“Aanya… do you really think it was the right thing to do today?” Yes, Sokka had been the one to plan it, to scheme exactly how they were going to announce the Avatar was up and active, was ready to free the world for near a century of war… but it’d been Aanya who said she wanted to announce herself.
“…Do you mean with the ships today?”
“No, not that.” Sokka waves a dismissive hand through the air, even though part of insides recoil at the knowledge that Aanya would have undoubtedly killed people today. It’s not like Sokka himself hasn’t done so already; this is war. At least Aanya had given them a chance to leave their ships. It’s more of a curtesy than her own people had been given when the Fire Nation had committed genocide in order to prevent the rebirth of the Avatar.
And even then, that’d all been in vain, hadn’t it?
Still, part of him cringes at the knowledge the last airbender in the world has been forced to turn her back on the teachings of her people to participate in a war. Sokka pushes on, asking, “Just… do you really think it was the right idea to announce yourself to the world before you’ve learnt firebending? Wouldn’t it have been wiser to learn and then show up and kick Fire Lord ass?”
“I’ve already master waterbending and earthbending,” Aanya states, slapping one of her palms against Toph’s when the world’s greatest earthbender holds her own hand up in request for a high-five of acknowledgement. “And Guru Pathik has taught me how to utilise the Avatar state. To master firebending, I need a teacher. And there’s not a lot of people out there who’ll be willing to teach me now, is there? Rather than look for a needle in a haystack, it’s better I announce myself so that they may reach out to me as we fly around.”
Okay, that’s sound reasoning. Sokka’ll allow it.
A shiver sprints up his spine and he curses under his breath, trembling in the chill of the thin air. While is body may have gotten used to breathing up here, the cold still persists. Hey, Sokka may be of the Southern Water Tribe, but they’ve been staying in some pretty warm locations up until now. Some pretty weird ones as well—he tries not to think too much on the swamp where they’d spent three months while Katara and Aanya learned as much as they could from the local swampbenders. The less said about those three months, the better.
“Hey, did Sokka just shiver?” Toph asks, milk-white eyes slipping over in his general direction and Aanya makes a clicking noise with her tongue.
“Get over here, plan-boy, and join the snuggle pile. We’ll keep you warm~” You see, this is exactly why Sokka’s crush hasn’t died a horrific death yet. It’s like Aanya senses when he’s about to move on and she breaks out that wicked charm to reel him back in. “I think I’ve figured out the way to warm my body like firebenders do!”
“As long as you’re not about to burst into flames,” Jet grumbles, planting his head atop Aanya’s skull.
Now, Sokka would comment, he would make some witty retort, a quick quip.
But then Aaya does manage to start radiating heat, so Sokka joins the snuggle pile without further protest.
The last he recalls before dozing off is Aanya calling Katara over with the promise Appa can be trusted to fly solo for a few hours.