#zuko needs a stable adult figure and a good support system

[evienyx]

I was looking back through some of Muffin's older posts in the Hama Adopts Zuko AU (which has always been my fav), and I found your 'Mother' drabble thing, and I wanted to know if you could maybe write a little bit more in that AU? Like, it doesn't even need to be accurate, you don't even have to do it, it'd just... be amazing if you did. Thanks!

Ahhh ok I haven’t checked up on the Mother Hama AU (by @muffinlance) in a while, but I guess we can go for it. Be warned, though: I will be taking a lot of liberties. It’s very hard for me to just WRITE in someone else’s AU. 

All right, this is going from this addition to the AU.

- - -

Zuko didn’t remember the names of the travelers anymore. Especially the ones that went down into the caves. It hurt less that way.

Still, no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t seem to erase the first ones from his mind. 

Their names were Nen and Rai, newly-married husband and wife. Zuko was pretty sure that Rai meant ‘trust’ in some old language. That really made the whole thing, better, didn’t it?

Zuko remembered the day vividly.

He wasn’t sure how long ago it was, but he had been shorter. He had looked out the window one evening and watched, his heart pounding, as Mother Hama guided the two back, her hands crossed in front of her, her skirt swaying, and her smile serene, as if nothing was wrong with the world.

Zuko knew that was a lie, but these two travelers didn’t.

He was sweating when he fell asleep that night.

The next morning, he was awake at the crack of dawn. The travelers must not be firebenders, or they were really tired, because they kept sleeping. 

Mother Hama was awake, of course.

She eyed him when he walked in that morning before smiling and asking him kindly to set the table for two extra. He took out three plates. 

“No, no, my Little Fire,” she said, her smile unwavering. “Four plates. Two for our guests, one for me, one for you.”

Zuko hesitated before pulling out a fourth plate.

He set the table quickly. He was filling the water jug when footsteps came from the floor above, and then from the creaky stairs. The travelers strolled in, hand-in-hand, looking very well rested and very in love.

“I never caught your names, dearies,” Mother Hama said as the three of them sat down and Zuko finished filling the water jug before moving toward the table.

“I’m Rai, and this is my husband Nen,” the woman said, her fingers still intertwined with the other’s. 

“We’re technically on our honeymoon,” the man, Nen, put in, smiling softly as he stared at his wife. “We wanted to see the whole Fire Nation before we settled down to start a family.”

Hama smiled and engaged them in pleasant conversation as Zuko circled the table to fill the water cups.

“And who is this fine young man?”

Zuko didn’t realize they were talking to him for a moment until his eyes accidentally met Nen’s.

He couldn’t answer. His tongue was heavy and his throat was clogged, and then Mother Hama was speaking.

“That’s just my young son,” she replied, her chapped lips pulling out into a smile that would have looked fond to anyone but him. “He doesn’t talk much, I’m afraid. Shy, the poor dear, and often too sick.”

“Is he all right?” Rai asked, and the concern lacing her words was something he hadn’t heard in a long while.

Hama waved her hand. “He’s perfectly fine. A bit strange, I’ll admit, but he couldn’t hurt a fly. A wonderful help around here in my age, as well. He’s a lovely boy, he just... won’t talk to a single person. He’ll barely say a word to me.” She sighed, and it might have sounded sad and defeated to someone else. “It hurts, but I love him more than anything. I wouldn’t trade him for anything.”

That was true, though probably not for the reasons these travelers thought.

Rai turned and looked up at him, her sparkling eyes meeting his as she placed a soft hand on top of his own. “Your mother is very lucky to have you.”

Zuko’s eyes were wide, and he nodded, finished filling the cups, and hustled off to put the jug down and avoid the conversation.

After breakfast, Mother Hama sighed and stood up, announcing that she was going to the marketplace.

“I’ll just be grabbing some things for dinner.”

Rai and Nen both jumped to accompany her. Zuko wished he could learn how she enamored herself to people so easily.

He finished his chores quickly while they gone. He spent the hours until they returned, after he was done, curled up in the corner in his room. He wasn’t sure if he was shaking or not. He wasn’t cold. It was summer.

That night, when Mother Hama was cooking dinner, Rai and Nen were inside their room, organizing their things and talking, and Zuko peeked inside. 

Nen was the one who noticed him, and he gestured the teenager inside with a warm smile.

“Hey, kid,” Nen said, his eyes crinkling in the way that only new love could bring. “What’s up?”

This was his chance. It was the full moon. If it hadn’t been, maybe he wouldn’t have bothered, but it was a full moon. He knew what that meant, regardless of how daft Mother Hama thought he was.

Zuko wet his lips and glanced at the two travelers, who were now looking at him with slight concern.

“Are you all right?” Rai asked, stepping toward him and putting a hand on his shoulder. “Need me to get your mother or-”

Zuko cut her off by kicking the door closed behind him and grabbing the woman by the shoulders. She let out a strangled gasp and her husband took a small step toward the two of them, but Zuko spoke before either of them could say anything.

“You need to get out of here. Now. Before night. The... Mother Hama, she... she’s like a witch, she has this... this power, where she controls you and you can’t do anything and then she takes you. She takes everyone, you need to leave or she’ll take you too. She does it on the full moon, and that’s tonight. You need to go now. While she’s cooking. Say you’re going out and run. Please.” He realized he was crying now, his knuckles white as he gripped Rai’s shirt. “Please, you need to go. Please, please, oh, Agni, please go.”

There were reassurances murmured to him as he fell to the ground, trembling, desperately trying to stop the tears coming down his cheeks.

He heard murmurs of reassurances above him. A hand rubbing circles on his back. Then, Mother Hama’s voice came up the stairs, calling the three of them for dinner.

“We’ll go to dinner, and then we’ll go to the authorities, all right? We’ll come back for you, and they’ll arrest her, and you can... you can come with us, all right? We’ll cut our honeymoon short and bring you back to our hometown. You’ll be safe, I promise,” Rai was saying. Then, with set faces, she and Nen set out to eat. Zuko gathered his bearings and followed a few minutes later.

Rai and Nen went out under the pretense of sending a letter to their family before the post office closed for the night. Hama gave them a smile, and one to Zuko as he washed the dishes, before she disappeared into her room. She didn’t come out. Zuko finished the dishes and went up to his room for the last time. He put his head down and fell asleep without even meaning to.

When he woke up the next morning, bright and early, he heard a commotion downstairs. Mother Hama was yelling. For the first time in a long time, a smile lit up his features.

He ran through the hallways and down the steps two-at-a-time, desperate to watch as Mother Hama was taken away forever-

Before he rounded the corner and saw her cursing loudly, clutching her foot, a pot sitting overturned a few feet away.

“Oh, Tui and La, you stupid pot, just... just slipping out of my fingers.”

The smile fell from Zuko’s lips as if it had never existed in the first place.

Hama looked up, saw Zuko, and the scowl faded from her features the same way his smile had faded from his own.

“Good morning, Little Fire,” she said, smiling softly at him. She pat his head. “Our guests left early this morning. They asked me to thank you, though, for helping them.”

His chest was hollow. 

He did his chores that day.

He cleaned the guest room.

Rai and Nen’s things were still there.

He watched as Mother Hama packed the things away into a bag, the tag on the side labeling it ‘For Thrift Market.’

A few days later, after the full moon was gone, Hama told him to go down to the caves and feed the new prisoners.

Zuko had never gone down alone. He knew that he could never release them. He’d tried before, going down alone and letting them go.

It never worked.

Zuko crossed the cave slowly. His steps echoed against the stone walls. The ceiling sent the sound of his shoes right back at him.

He turned to where the newest prisoners were, and stopped, nearly choking on his air. He knew this had happened, but seeing it was worse.

There were a few random people he didn’t know, and then there, chained next to each other, were Rai and Nen.

Rai was the one who noticed him. She let out a strangled gasp and started forward as if trying to get to him before her chains pulled her back and stopped her.

Nen saw him next, and a small smile broke out. His smile was stained slightly red with blood.

“Kid, you’re here,” he said, sounding more relieved than anyone probably had ever in the history of ever. “We’re free.”

Zuko’s voice didn’t want to work now. He stepped forward and reached out with the food to one of the other prisoners. He watched Nen’s smile falter out of the corner of his eye. He fed all of them, including Rai and Nen. As he made to leave, Nen spoke again.

“Kid-?”

Zuko blinked back tears, hot ones that burned his eyes, and looked at the couple.

“I’m sorry,” he said, and his voice broke halfway through. 

He was gone, and his footsteps echoed through the cave as he ran. His tears fell in rhythm with them.

Zuko didn’t remember the names of the travelers anymore.

Most of the people down there glared at him when he walked in.

The ones he had tried to warn didn’t, even if he was the one who got them down here in the first place.

Rai and Nen didn’t.

Mother Hama didn’t.

Zuko tears barely fell anymore, and when they did, it was only when he was in the caves, when his footsteps could match them, or in his room, at night, when it was raining and his tears could match the pitter-patter of the water hitting the roof, sliding down his window, and disappearing into the night.