Chapter Text
A child in green holds up her hand and immediately blurts her question. “Master Zuko, what kind of seeds are we planting today?”
Zuko- dressed in red-brown russet, as he always is these days- spins around to address her. “We’re planting sunflowers. They know where the sun is, and we can tell because they’ll bend around to face it.”
“Like me!” a boy in red exclaims across the room.
“Exactly,” Zuko says with enthusiasm he doesn’t need to force, not even a little. “Some people- firebenders, but other people too- can feel an inner flame inside them that keeps track of the sun. It’s very useful for telling time, and completely useless for sleeping in past sunrise.”
With a giggle, the children resume digging in the rich soil of the academy garden. Zuko walks around, supervising. He breaks up a minor dirt-flinging tussle that springs up in the corner (“save it for earthbending ball!”). He helps a girl in bright red silk break up the clumps in her dirt with synchronized stomps of their feet.
With earthbending.
/
It’s been five years since Fire Lord Iroh rose to the throne. Four-and-a-half years since Zuko reclaimed the title of prince, on the condition that he be inserted late in the line of succession, behind both his uncle and his sister. He’ll take the Fire Lord’s crown if tragedy strikes, but his flame has always burned differently from theirs. Iroh offered him an old crown, worn by Sozin before he became Fire Lord, but Zuko refused it.
Instead, he’s recovered his mother’s crumpled hairpiece and bent it into a shape appropriate for his station. He keeps it in a metal safe he designed himself. He doesn’t wear it in his top-knot, most days.
Zuko’s sought other ways to serve his country.
Four years ago, he and Toph presented the leaders of their respective nations with a proposal. King Kuei and Uncle Iroh had deliberated long and hard about paying reparations to the earthbenders in the Fire Nation colonies, punished for decades for the gift of their bending. In their petition, Zuko and Toph suggested founding a premier academy for earthbending, bankrolled by the Fire Nation and set in the colonies, open to any earthbender who wished to learn. The two men- world leaders, kings of fearsome nations- took a look at Toph and Zuko- completely united in their stubbornness- and agreed at once.
Three-and-a-half years back, once they’d negotiated the land rights and built out the necessary facilities, Toph and Zuko declared they’d teach everyone they could . They’d never prejudge anyone’s potential because of their age or gender or health or national background. The crowds came, and they hired a whole team of earthbending masters to help out and never turned any student away...
Which is how they ended up with a ton of little kids sent to school by earthbending parents, too young to do anything themselves just yet.
“We’re definitely too young to have this many babies,” Toph grumbled.
Zuko had just laughed and improvised a whole new set of lessons for them, writing to an old teacher in Ba Sing Se’s Lower Ring for advice. That’s how he came to teach pottery and gardening, alongside the classic earthbending. Then it turned out most kids adore plunging their hands into wet dirt and clay, and he had trouble getting them to quit and move onto regular earthbending when the time came. He let them stay, and older students started to join in the fun, even non-earthbender adults who wanted to support friends and relatives in their training. Who wanted to understand.
(The Fire Lord comes on occasion. He leaves behind the crown and all titles but “Uncle,” and he sits quietly at his desk and pours all his focus into forming little jars and pinch pots. Zuko promises they’ll make a teacup, next time.)
/
Two-and-a-half years ago, Zuko was bending the last of the clay off the ceiling- why did it always end up on the ceiling?- when he heard a snuffle coming from the supply closet.
“Hae-won? What’s wrong?”
“It’s my ninth birthday,” she said, face buried in her knees.
“I want to say ‘happy birthday,’ but-” he wrinkles up his brow- “I think I’m missing something.”
“I still can’t bend, which means I’m never going to bend.” She turned red-rimmed eyes up at him. “But all my friends are here, but I don’t like art or flowers, and I don’t want to be useless.”
Zuko took a moment to untangle that painfully familiar train of thought. “...Do you like swords?”
That’s how Master Piandao got dragged out of his idyllic manor in the countryside and into running the advanced martial arts classes, open even to non-benders. With all the mixed-race families in the colonies, other children inevitably became firebenders, which is how Zuko got Uncle to push Master Jeong Jeong back into service.
(Zuko substitutes for them both when needed. For firebending classes, he dredges up the katas from his own childhood, tells old legends about sun and life, and bends sand onto the little fires that inevitably break out. When he’s really at his wits’ end, he assigns everyone quiet meditation practice over candles and tries to shut down the whining: “The Fire Lord would tell you to do the same thing if he were here! I mean, not as an order, just as friendly advice, but still...”)
(In time, he formalizes the meditation classes and opens them to earthbenders, upon learning other schools put breathing exercises at the start of their earthbending curricula. Toph grumbled for days before admitting air could have any connection to earthbending. It was a matter of spite- “Master” Yu wasted seven years of her life on pretty much nothing but breathing exercises.)
Five years after Iroh becomes the Fire Lord, Zuko’s days are chaos. New kids always start off scared of him- he looks older than he is, with a permanent frown seared into half his face- and he can’t blame them. But then they meet Toph, Piandao, and Jeong Jeong, and they find out about the three flavors of creeping crystal that Zuko grows in his office just to comfort crying children, and they decide he’s actually the least scary of the lot. As a result, he spends most of his days surrounded by the youngest children in the school, half his size with double the knack for trouble.
“Yes, Maya, it was mean of her to insult your pot. But no, that’s not an excuse to bend it up her nose!”
/
Zuko spends his days working with young children (and Toph, who can’t resist regularly demolishing chunks of their building on dares from their students). It’s why he meditates most mornings, every time the sun and his inner flame conspire to wake him up too early.
Those mornings, he breaks off a shard of fire-flake-flecked creeping crystal, laces up his dancing shoes, and hikes up the nearby mountain. It’s set deep in what used to be the Earth Kingdom mainland, nowhere near the ocean and thus nothing like an island if you keep your eyes open. On the other hand, it’s a live volcano, a fact that Zuko and only Zuko counts as a plus.
He closes his eyes and breathes, in and out. He feels the magma’s currents deep below, flowing up and down again.
It feels like home.
This place is full of tension and ambiguities, like all the colonies are. It’s officially Fire Nation. It’s kind of Earth Kingdom, too. There’s constant friction, no thanks to the people who try to classify it one way or the other, and if Zuko’s reading the tea leaves right, it’ll probably end up breaking off into its own country entirely. It’s a self-contradictory teapot forever threatening to boil over, and though he and Toph try to avoid the politics they keep opening their big mouths and falling right in.
This place is bubbling over with tension, with tension and potential and hope.
Zuko sits on the volcano, legs draped over the lily-studded edge of the caldera, finally approaching peace.
/
Sometimes, the school holds expert demonstrations.
The first- Azula’s lightning exhibition- sparked endless behind-the-scenes drama (“We have a whole closet of dummies; what do you mean you have to shoot lightning at a human target?”). And that’s how they discovered, two years back, that Zuko could redirect lightning if he was wearing enough conductive armor. It clocked in as the most-attended event they’ve ever had. Azula’s Crown Princess of the Fire Nation now, respected around the world for her gleeful demolition of Father’s old policies, but that record’s what she boasts most about when Zuko’s around.
Katara drew crowds too, with a demonstration of waterbending techniques that could be re-interpreted for bending fire or sand. Aang led a masterclass on meditation that no one complained about, not even the preschoolers who whine every time Zuko suggests a breathing exercise. The Avatar’s just blessed like that.
(Jet sent a letter last week, about maybe giving a lesson on hook swords. Zuko’s still figuring how to respond to that one.)
So they hold expert demos regularly. There’s nothing out of the ordinary about holding an exhibition of “Fire Nation-style Earthbending.” No reason for Zuko to fidget behind the curtains of their theater like a panicking kid, like an imposter at risk of being found out-
“Hey.” Toph swaggers up to him and jabs him in the arm. “Any reason your heart sounds like an angry volcano?”
Oh- he’s leaning against a stone column. Of course she can tell.
“What kind of volcano would you prefer?”
“Right now? The happy dormant kind.”
He huffs out a laugh. “There’s no such thing as Fire Nation-style Earthbending. You know that, right?”
“Let’s review your routine.” She unfolds one finger at a time. “Metalbending.”
(During his opening speech, Zuko intends to metalbend his name on the ceiling, with such quiet, subtle movements nobody will notice until he points it out.)
“Disintegration.”
(As it turns out, he can turn pots to dust by glaring impressively at them.)
“The lousiest stances they’ve ever seen.”
(Zuko snorts, because they haven’t managed to settle this argument in five years. He still draws his forms from firebending. He’s going to go up against Toph with stances like dance, and he’s going to survive, and it should shock every other earthbender around.)
“After that,” she adds, “you’ll talk about that time you stopped a volcanic eruption by meditating at it, and for the finale you’re going to conduct electricity around the entire room-”
“As it turns out,” Zuko deadpans, “I know all this.”
“I don’t think you get it though,” she protests, throwing up her hands. “That’s all your stuff, that you came up with because of where you’re from and how you grew up. Ta-da! Fire Nation-style Earthbending.”
“I wasn’t trying to pioneer a new style,” he mutters in response. “I was just making stuff up.”
“That’s what being an inventor means, Ashhole.”
(Zuko misses the good old days of “Dusty.”)
“I appreciate the pep-talk,” he says. He considers swallowing down the next sentence but opts for honesty. “But the last time I went out in front of a crowd specifically to show off my earthbending, it didn’t...go so well.”
Toph’s expression shifts through confusion and concern before settling on something almost fond.
“If you freeze, it’ll be okay this time.”
“Really?”
She punches him on the shoulder- lovingly. “You’re not going out there alone. If something breaks, we fix it together.”
The lights go up onstage, and the audience breaks out cheering. It’s a huge crowd. Maybe enough to beat Azula’s record and bring her back for a second round.
Toph nudges Zuko again, and he inhales deep and passes the curtains right on cue. “Hi, everyone. I’d like to introduce Master Toph Beifong, the best earthbender in the world!”
Toph charges through the curtains a second later. “And this is Master Zuko, prince of the Fire Nation, an earthbender in the world!”
It’s been a running joke of theirs for years now, but he beams at her anyway.
“Earthbender.”
It’s one title that never gets old.