#Pakku is going through every stage of grief at once

[musings-by-certified-bi]

Zuko of course ends up being permanently shuffled along to where ever the kids are. The women of course would not have let this group of strangers (especially armed, controlling men) near their children anyways, but Zuko acts as a perfect deterrent, since even if you like kids you probably don't want to hang out with the shouty walking teenage angst that is Zuko. The men never realize that keeping him with the kids is the perfect excuse to keep him out of any meetings, and away from any actual questions of how he got there. After all it's not like the men are inclined to include him in the hero fantasy they believe of themselves.

So he's elbowed into being called something else and is waved away as a child from another village they took in. Pakku doesn't even seem to notice how he resembles the exact missing boy Iroh asked the white lotus to keep an eye out for, because he's too busy giving Kanna reasons to finally snap and end him. His attempts at reconciliation are not going well, especially not after he told of her grand kids without masking his annoyance at Sokka's... everything.

Most of the men stay in the rebuilt walls of wolf cove, with a few stragglers leaving to reach out to the other tribes. When the men arrive, the women are well into prepping for winter and while men means more hunters, it also means more mouths making comments on the food. More clothes that need repair (and wearers with no respect for the labor that takes). More interruptions when the storyteller is speaking and not the curious interruptions of the children (including more recently a certain teen) nor the rude interruptions of an indignant prince who somehow chafed less because for all his disrespect he never laughed at them for being silly little girls who couldn't get the details right to simple tales, never mind this is the version their tribe had told for generations and held dear. It means more than a few of the married women without kids get rudely hit on, with the excuse being the lack of betrothal necklaces, followed up by snide comments at their husbands' ability to provide... the same husbands that actually went to fight in the war for their tribe's future.

In little and big ways autonomy from the women was taken away bit by bit. And the children kept asking why. Why not fight back, demand respect? After all the oldest among them know that their fathers didn't act like this, all of them remember Sokka, and even the prince treated them like people (he just happened to be an ass to a lot of people). How do you tell children for all the talk of sister tribes, that this was nothing more than an occupation? Sure one with seemingly good intentions on the surface, but doesn't that just make it worse?

During all this Zuko is sitting in his corner doing chores, with at least one child hanging off him. He of course is baffled at why the same women who had no trouble putting him in his place aren't doing the same now. Until finally one of the women simply asks (after the children are in bed) how that would work. The men are better armed, more trained, not inclined to listen, and it's not like they can leave their home just as winter hits. And suddenly Zuko is reminded of all the times he was told to pick his battles. Every insult Uncle took, every slight at his mother, every time his sister laughed at someone doubting her. Of course he still isn't any good at keeping his mouth shut, and he doesn't agree but he gets it the point she's making. He also is less inclined to try and start arguments once winter hits and Agni is barely present. He learns the hard way how one determines when the day starts during months of dark. The answer is being pushed out of bed by a surprisingly strong old lady, as to not be in Kanna's hut when Pakku swings by.

Eventually Agni returns and Pakku and some of the men leave. The women are unimpressed when no one says why. Clearly something is happening given he got mail before hand. Zuko mentions the comet and a few realizations occur. The most pressing is that this probably means some sort of escalation of the war (hopefully the end of it, but that's a hope that's been shrinking for decades). The other realization is that their fire hazard is going to be extra fiery and despite the amount of times men have walked in on Zuko heating water or giving of steam, somehow they haven't noticed he can fire bend and it's probably best to keep it that way. Which starts the debate of where to put him. Quite a few different suggestions are made but eventually it's decided they'll just leave him in Kanna's hut since Pakku isn't around to try and swing by. There are several close calls during this, but the children come through. They aren't willing to loose their personal heater. Zuko is not apart of the debate and doesn't realize his bending is a secret. Just his origin.

As spring truly arrives the tension finally burst. Hakoda arrives home with his children, his crew and (ugh) Pakku, to find the new wall has had a chunk fire bended out of it, at least 3 northerners knocked out, a water bender dueling a fire bending teen (he assumed the teen Pakku mentioned was... a water tribe teenager and not a clearly trained fire bender) with the children lobbing snow balls and rocks at the fight.. and surprisingly not aiming at the fire bender. He finally gets the fight broken up, asking what in the world is going on. To which Kanna replies that the fire prince was kindly letting their northern guests know that their welcome had worn itself out.

Hi ! prompt idea : What if Zuko was armed during the first episode and was stranded with the water tribe while the avatar left with Katara and Sokka, Iroh on his trail for white lotus reasons.

Oh we are going to have us some FUN with "stranded with the water tribe", say no more.

---

Zuko was dripping, and steaming, and staring down two dozen women and their gaggle of small children, plus that old not-the-Avatar crone from earlier. They were all cowering away from him. Which was--

Good. It was good. If they were cowering, then they hadn’t noticed how steam was not flames. He wasn’t sure he could make flames, not after the arctic water he’d landed in, with that last sight of the Avatar glowing; not after surfacing under the ice pack, after swimming, after kicking slamming breaking through and his ship was gone and there was only ocean all around and

and he’d made it back to this pathetic little camp of the Southern Water Tribe, because that was the only place he knew for sure would have shelter, and he wasn’t going to die just because they were all staring at him, even if felt like he would.

Even if the old not-the-Avatar woman could probably take him, right now. But she didn’t know that.

Zuko pulled himself up, taller than her by at least a few inches, and blew steam from his nose.

“I am commandeering one of your huts,” he said. And added, because Uncle said even a prince should be gracious: “You may choose which one.”

---

She choose her own.

...The only one without children that flames might scar, or younger women to catch a soldier’s interests.

Zuko sat by her fire and determinedly started struggling out of his wet clothes and she was still in here with him--

Zuko pulled one of her animal pelts over himself, and finished fighting off his clothes. When he stuck his head back out, cheeks still reddened from what was obviously the cold, she dropped a parka on his head.

“Dry clothes, Your Highness,” she said.

The parka was much bigger than he was. He fell asleep hoping that the camp’s men were on a long, long hunting trip.

---

He woke up again. Kanna tucked her favorite ulu knife away, newly sharpened, and stopped contemplating the alternative.

---

“I am commandeering a ship,” he said.

The crone led him across the village, all twenty paces of it, to a row of canoes.

“Take whichever one you want,” she said. “Will you need help getting it to the water?”

Zuko looked at the canoes. Looked at the ocean. Watched a leopard seal, easily the size of the largest canoe, dozing just past the ice his own ship had broken through the day before. It was frozen again, a great icy arrow pointing from the waves to the village, snow already starting to cover it over.

Beyond was blue sky and gray ocean and white ice, floating in blocks like stepping stones, like boulders, like cliffsides.

There wasn’t even a hint of gray steel, or smoke. Or any land, besides what they were standing on.

He looked down at the canoes again. Somehow, they seemed even smaller.

“I, uh,” Zuko cleared his throat. “I’ll require supplies. Before I go.”

---

They... did not have supplies. Not extra ones. This didn’t stop them from trying to give him supplies, food and blankets and anything else he could think to ask for. But each blanket was a pelt hunted by someone’s grandfather, had been inked with images and stories by someone’s mother, was the favorite of someone’s husband or brother or uncle or cousin--

They couldn’t go to the nearest market to replace things, here.

And when they talked about food, about what they could spare, they kept sneaking glances to their children, who were sneaking glances at Zuko from the huts, sticking their heads just over the snowy ledges like their fur-trimmed hoods would hide them. Their mothers and aunts shooed them away, and they crept back, like barnacle-crabs. Zuko glared, and they disappeared.

“When are your men coming back?” he asked. “They’re hunting, aren’t they?”

Oh. So that was what they looked like, when they weren’t trying to hide their hate.

---

Zuko wrapped himself up in the same blanket that night. It was printed inside with fine lines and images, telling a story he didn’t know. He wondered whose favorite it was.

---

Kanna wondered how quickly he’d wake—if he’d wake—if she built the fire up with wet driftwood and tundra grass, if she had one of the younger girls boost up a child to plug the air hole, if she let the smoke draw its own blanket down over this fire child.

---

It was hard to know when to wake up, because the sun never set. So everyone was up before him, and they all had spears and clubs and—and nets, and trap lines, and snow googles with their single slat to protect the eyes from snow blindness. Zuko had seen those once, at the Ember Island Museum of Ethnography, where they’d gone when it was too rainy for anything more exciting.

Oh. They were going hunting.

“Give me that,” Zuko said, and took a spear.

The women looked at him. One of them adjusted her googles.

“I can hunt,” he scowled.

He did not, in fact, know how to hunt.

---

“Give me that,” the Fire Prince said, and Kanna almost, almost gave him her ulu. Humans, like most animals, had an artery in their legs that would bleed them quick enough.

She kept skinning the rabbit-mink one of the women had snared.

“I can help,” he said, with less grace than most of their toddlers. Likely with the skinning skills of a toddler, too. She wasn’t going to let their unwanted visitor ruin a perfectly good pelt.

“Chop the meat,” she said, and gave him a different knife. “It’s dinner.”

“...This is really sharp,” he said a moment later, looking at the knife with some surprise.

“Is it,” said Kanna.

---

Things the Fire Prince was convinced he could do: hunt (until he realized he couldn’t tell the tracks of a rabbit-mink from a leopard-rabbit apart); spear fish (at least he could dry himself); pack snow for an igloo (frustrated princes ran hot); ice fish (the prince was a problem that kept coming close to solving itself).

Things the Fire Prince could actually do: mince meat, increasingly finely; gather berries and herbs, once he stopped trying to crush them; dig roots, under toddler supervision; mend nets, after the intermediary step of learning to braid hair loopies.

“Can’t I take him ice fishing again?” asked one of the women, as she watched Prince Zuko put as much apparent concentration into braiding her daughter’s hair as his people had into exterminating hers.

“Wait,” said another woman, sitting up straight. “Wait wait wait. I just had an idea.”

---

Three words: Infinite. Hot. Water.

---

Summer was coming to an end. The sun actually set, now, and the night was getting longer, and colder. The salmon-otter nets were mended and ready. The smoking racks were still full of cod-lemmings. The children were all a little older, the women all a little more used to doing both halves of their tribes’ chores; a little more used to not watching the horizon, waiting for help to come.

The Fire Prince was staring at the canoes again.

“Are you actually going to try leaving in one of those?” Kanna asked.

“...No.”

“Come on, then; someone needs to watch the kids while the women are hunting.”

She didn’t leave him alone with them, of course. But she could have.

---

Elsewhere, the war continued.

The moon turned red, for a moment none could sleep through; they did not learn why.

The comet came and went, leaving their castaway prince laying on the beach, his breath fogging up into the night sky above him, as the energy crashed from his system as quickly as it had come. Above, lights began to dance in the sky; Zuko pulled his hood up, so none of those spirits—children, dead too soon—got any ideas about kicking his head off to be their ball.

The war had ended. The world didn’t feel any different; no one in the south would know until spring came again.

---

Suffice it to say, Sokka and Katara were not prepared for this particular homecoming.