Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

If there was ever a time to discover whether or not she was the Avatar, master of all elements, it’d be now.

But, she felt her knees smack on the ground, Mai was not the Avatar, which meant that horrible, high-pitched animal-howl came from her.

Awful couldn't begin to describe the thing that'd just flopped out of the barrel so hard that tiny cubes of ice shattered into shards that began to rapidly melt from the downpour. It was an understatement of the grotesque corpse—please don't be a corpse—that was sprawled out beneath her fingers. There was the faintest flicker of light from the sky as she turned Zuko's body over, revealing rings of purple and black and blue and red and even green drawn up across his skin. All of it drowned the bluish hue across his lips.

"Oh fuck," she heard Aang shout. Or maybe he was sobbing. She couldn't tell over the sounds of water bulleting from above and a pained wheezing sound. It came from her. "Fuck—fuck! Zuko! Zuko, can you hear m—"

Footsteps pounded over to them. June let out a sharp hiss. “What the fu—”

Mai heard her own voice cut through coldly. "Help me get him onto the bison."

It wasn't a split second later when Aang scrambled for Zuko's legs—there were so many bruises, cuts, blood, new and old crusted over—and she hooked her hands under his armpits. Together they lifted him up—he was alarmingly light, his bones emaciated and his right arm looked like it was facing the other direction—and clambered onto the bison.

Lightning flashed. The moon poked its head out of a grey cloud and peered down at them curiously. With its help, Mai saw how black the right side of his face was; swollen to the point she couldn't distinguish any part of the eye, even his sole eyebrow. Blood was everywhere, obstructed both nostrils and was even in his mouth, leaking down from both corners. Red streaked down to his chin all the way down to his chest. The bone in his arm felt like it was sloshing under her fingers and she remembered with a shudder that it had looked wrong. Was that broken, too?

Carefully, they gently set him down on the saddle. Aang used his airbending to pounce all the way across until he landed on Appa's head. "Yip-yip!" he shouted. It was the harshest she'd ever heard him with the beast.

Her shadow draped over Zuko's prone form. He didn't stir once even as the bison lifted off. It flew at a speed that made her stomach churn, or maybe it was the smell—Zuko or Appa, she had a terrible feeling that it was the former. There was a stench that made her think of death and sickness, like that time she was forced to visit her grandfather on his deathbed. She'd only touched his face once, cold and papery, and couldn't help but feel the similarities as she pushed Zuko's hair out of his face. His hairline was saturated in blood, trickling down in thick trails.

His scar was one of the things she loved most about him, how it made him refreshingly distinct from other Fire Nation people. Zuko would lament that the scar was a mark of shame, but she thought it was a sign of his courage. His strength. She always believed that he looked lovely with it.

It was the only thing she could recognize from him, just barely.

Mai pressed two fingers against his neck to check for a pulse. She lowered her head until her ear hovered above his lips. Nothing.

“Is he breathing?” Aang said over the rain. He looked at her from over his shoulder, face blurry from fog and rain.

“I can’t find a pulse.” She shifted, her stomach bubbling in dread as she realized what she had to do. Grabbing his chin with one hand, she squeezed his cheeks and she used her other hand to pry his mouth wider. Some weeks after Tom-Tom was born, Michi had forced her to hold him while she went to the bathroom, and Mai had stood alone in the middle of the mall. Stiff, her hands stuffed in an infant’s squishy underarms, and a full diaper that she couldn't lean further away from despite her best efforts. Zuko’s mouth tasted worse than a full diaper smelled.

As she came up for air, her throat stung. Animals must have found a way to crawl into that barrel and spill their business all over him because the sharp, acrid stink of urine and feces crawled up her nostrils and into her esophagus. She really hoped she wasn’t tasting piss right now as she pinched his nose and sealed her mouth over his again. 

His lips were still blue.

A slap broke the rhythm of the rainfall. Aang swiveled his head at a neck breaking speed, eyes growing wide as saucers. Air pumped in and out of Mai's chest wildly, her arm outstretched and her hand stinging. It could have been the rainwater dripping from her bangs and spilling into her eyes for all she cared as she watched Zuko's unchanging lax face.

"Wake up, you jerk," she heard herself say, a gutted knife in her chords.

“Try chest compressions!” Aang called, as the bison took a nausea-inducing dip sideways.

Hair got into her mouth. Mai spat it out and laced her fingers over the center of Zuko’s chest. She’d taken classes on this during survival training back in the academy. Her teacher had drilled CPR into them for over a week, even having them hum an old Fire Nation song to match the timing of their hands pumping against the dummy's chest. Azula and Ty Lee had done it with little problem; Mai, however, had hated the idea of putting her mouth over a total strangers. Or plastic dummy. She didn't think she would have ever ended up in this situation, with her shoulders burning up to the base of her neck and her ears pounding as she tried to breathe into her ex-boyfriend's lungs. His chest felt weird, like something had come unraveled and dangerously close to the precipice of collapse. Slashed, purple-black skin was the only thing keeping her hands from sinking in and she felt a bone give in just as a sickening crack startled both of them—

Both, as in Mai and Zuko. Mai watched with wide eyes as Zuko moaned thickly and fluttered his eyelids. His scarred one squinted up at her, a thin slit of liquid gold surrounded in a pool of bright scarlet. 

His neck was littered with handprints. His attacker must have strangled him so bad it affected his eyes. Or maybe it was because of the shiner on his good eye. Her eyes jumped across the map of injuries across his body, a geography made up of violence and malice. It occurred to her then that he was naked, his hip almost as swollen as his eye. Mai shrugged off her coat and blanketed it over him. Goosebumps sprouted across her skin, even under the flimsy cover of her sweater. A cloud dissipated when it hit the moon and its blue-white light shone over him, highlighting every crevice of his beaten body. A lump swelled in her throat.

Recognition lit up in his eyes, a smile trembling across his battered face. “Mai…” he slurred, bringing up a mangled hand to cup her cheek.

Wind blew her hair in her face, pushing it into inky swirls painted across the sky. He was always running warm, a firebender’s innate ability to run like a furnace. It was great during winter, selfishly melding her body against his to steal the warmth for herself, and Zuko always let her with a goofy, lopsided smile.

When she felt his fingers against her cheek, it was colder than the wind.

“Hang on tight, Appa’s landing fast!” was the only warning Mai got before there was a hair-raising descent that almost had her regurgitating her breakfast and lunch. She held onto Zuko, nails digging crescent into his injured flesh. She might have reopened a cut or two. He let out a small whimpering sound not unlike a wounded polar bear dog, but didn’t let go of her cheek.

Her skin stung as though it was being punctured by her daggers as they plummeted down. Appa landed hard, sparking tremors across the earth. Ahead of them less than five feet was the bright, glowing sign of Republic City Hospital, the backdrop of lit-up buildings blinking behind it as if unimpressed by their abrupt arrival.

Mai, who had buried her face into the crook of Zuko’s neck, lifted her head. Her chest dripped from blood-tinted vomit Zuko must have let out on the way down. She scowled at him, until she saw that blank, lifeless glaze coming across his lidded eyes.

“Get his shoulders this time,” Mai said as she grabbed hold of his feet. She grimaced at the sticky film of sweat and blood caked on his legs. They looked like marks from a leather whip, like the one June had been carrying in the bar.

Oh, shit. June.

The bounty hunter’s name left her mind as soon as it’d entered when Aang grabbed Zuko’s shoulders and they gently climbed down a furry tail. “Help!” Aang called out. “Help, our friend’s hurt. Please!”

They had run into the building, its harsh fluorescent lighting assaulting her eyes. There were nurses in the hallway. One, a Water Tribe woman with a thick braid and pale green scrubs, jolted to action. She slammed the door and it hawked out a stretcher. Three more nurses rushed towards the unlikely duo, instructing them to set him down on the gurney.

“It’s Zuko,” Aang said as he backed away, watching with wet eyes as a nurse flung Mai’s jacket off and prodded at him as a herd rimmed around him in a half circle. “The boy who’s been missing for a week—we found him in the middle of some old field, Mai gave him CPR but I don’t know if he’s breathing—”

“Vitals are low,” a male nurse interrupted, waving a flashlight over Zuko’s eye. An oxygen mask was strapped to his mouth. “Pupils are fixed and dilated, fresh blood in the nares. Contusions heaviest around his neck, possible skull fracture...”

“We need to get him into Trauma Four, stat, he’s losing blood…”

Both Mai and Aang flinched when they fastened a neck brace around him. The Water Tribe nurse put a kind hand on Aang’s shoulder. “We’ll take it from here,” she said. “Is there anyone I can call for you?”

“Do you have a shower?” Mai asked, her spine rigid-straight and her stomach in knots. She must have reeked of homelessness, tracking mud, vomit and pink rainwater all across the clean, pristine floor. She was ready to wash the entire day off. Wash that image of Zuko spilling out of the barrel out of her head.

The nurse started, blinking at Mai as if she just realized she’d been standing there the whole time with Aang. A false smile and she was gone; she told them to go to the reception area and followed after the other nurses and doctors as Zuko was wheeled away until they turned the corner. He was gone.

And so was Mai’s lunch.

Aang’s, too. He gagged into his hand and Mai darted to the closest trashcan. She was on her hands and knees in seconds and retched until her stomach heaved with something close to a sob. She heard Aang sniffling behind her, muffled as the miasma of vomit clouded over them. Zuko was tortured. Beaten. Strangled. She’d seen burns and pus and even terrible brown stains criss-crossing with the blood. Green too, maybe gangrene like she'd heard in true crime podcasts. Hospital lighting was horrible. It showed so much more than the moonlight could.

Optimism wasn’t something she believed in like Ty Lee. That had been stamped out of her since she was old enough to crawl, since Michi and Ukano gave the orders to act as the ideal, acceptable daughter they were forced to keep. They had hoped for a son, especially a firebender, and even though it was something they lamented about in her earshot, she never hoped to be born with fire in her chi. She never even hoped to grow a dick like Michi wanted.

But she’d been hoping Zuko would be found alive. That it was like in her horror movies or mystery novels. Starved, some bruises, and maybe a nosebleed. Not… all of that. What else was there? Where was all that blood coming from? It couldn’t have been just his legs.

More tears came out of her. They bled into her lips. Her skin burned from them. Crying made her feel gross. It made it all real. She hadn’t cried since she was a toddler. Michi always complained that she used to be an ugly crier.

“That asshole better not die,” Mai said lowly. And then she sobbed into her own vomit, like a child.

“We need to call Iroh,” Aang said over his own gutted weeping, tears freely tracking salt down his cheeks. His palms looked damp from blood and dirt. He crawled over to her and pressed his head against her shoulder. She let him.

They were still crying when security found them.

"Order for Shen!"

Iroh cleared off the table and set the dishes down on the cart. The dinner rush was usually one of his favorite parts of the day, it excited him viscerally, bringing him into a trance that smelled of tea, laughter and baked goods. It delighted his customers and terrified all of his employees, hilariously, as they watched him brew tea faster than he could conjure lightning from his fingertips.

But now he only felt hollowed out, as though someone had taken a spoon and shoveled out his intestines until he was left as a shriveled old man. He pushed the cart into the kitchen and gave it to his dishwasher. He avoided the other man’s sympathetic eye and went back out with the enthusiasm of a moth-snail. 

Lady Shen’s order was the usual lychee green bubble tea and castella cake. A very nice young girl; in her second year of university, a good family, and a bright head on her shoulders. She was studying architecture and often brought her friends from school to the shop. 

Not even a sweet-mannered girl like her could make him smile as he set down her cup and plate. “Here you are, Miss Shen.”

“Oh, thank you, General,” Shen said, her smile faltering at his crestfallen disposition.

“Iroh is fine.” It was always General, even after he insisted people call him by his name. It was close to his mother’s name, after all, may her soul be at peace.

“Right,” she took a sip and looked back at him. There was an awful, pitying edge that took over her freckled smile and accompanied a familiar head tilt many of his customers had been giving him lately. He already knew deep in his gut what she was about to say. “How have you been, Iroh?”

On the outside, Iroh sighed through his nose and replied with a lame “fine” as he turned away to attend to a table of older women waiting for their refills. Hearing his own name hurt, especially in that tone. It was like Lu Ten all over again, when people would turn their heads and mourn on his behalf at the tragic loss his family had faced, the injustice of it. Lu Ten was a brilliant young man with a blossoming future that had been unfairly nipped. His only child, reduced to ashes in a jar resting over his fireplace, alongside his wife. 

Anger always came so easily to his nephew. It had driven his employees mad, subjected to the rage of a hurt young boy rejected by his own father. But with time, the anger dulled until Ursa’s return to his nephew’s life.

A cold chill blew into the room, followed by laughter. Despite the rapidly growing rain and frigid temperature outside, customers were still trickling into the shop.

Iroh resisted rubbing his eyes, still heavy from the very little sleep he'd gotten last night. He picked up the teacup and the matching pot he'd lovingly handpicked that time he and Zuko went out to a flea market by the park. He smiled as he pictured the boy's eye roll while he poured a steaming cup of ginseng tea for Lady Feng.

"Iroh!" Pao called. A phone was shoved against his ear. "You might want to hear this."

In seconds, people gasped as porcelain shattered and tea splattered all across the floor.

For once in his life, Iroh didn’t bewail the loss of lovingly made tea as he stepped over shards and a pool of pale yellow liquid and ran into pouring rain. Distantly he might have heard somebody complaining about their drinks, but it did not stop him as he grabbed his keys from his pocket and unlocked the car door.

Tires squealed on the pavement as his car peeled off the curb and into the main road, and he swerved left.

There was a bite mark on the patient’s neck.

It spread down to his nipple, to his coxal bone, thighs that were slathered in blood and a clear liquid between them. His wrists and ankles had matching injuries, scraped skin and soft tissue damage. He must have been held down by something like metal or rope for long durations. The pillows came away with blood every time his head moved. Pus weakly leaked out of the open wounds, like the soles of his feet and insides of his thighs. As though someone had taken an open flame and barbecued it over the skin. There was even an odd bulge underneath his abdomen, prodding shyly. He was more lesions than skin.

“We’ll need to take a rectal temperature, he’s hypothermic," she said, her voice muffled by the face mask.

Another nurse murmured beside her, “We can’t do that if he’s in risk of cardiac failure—”

“We stabilized it,” Ashuna said, taking the thermometer and gesturing for the nurse standing beside the boy’s shoulder to help turn him over on his side. “Gently, now. Careful with the arm, we'll need to set it in a second—”

When he was finally sideways they all took a collective breath. The nurses who didn’t get a good angle leaned over to see what everybody was staring at. Resignation sagged her shoulders down, her stomach roiling between defeat and rage. The bulge already told her everything she needed to know, but there was always the delaying of the inevitable, the stagnant hope.

After careful poking and prodding, her suspicions were confirmed. She grabbed the telephone. “Nurse Ashuna, OR Three… I need a rape kit.”

They put her clothes in the laundry.

Aang had left to grab food from the cafeteria. Neither of them had eaten in hours and right now Mai’s stomach was gurgling unhappily. At a volume Michi would vocally disapprove of.

She shifted in her chair, her clothes crinkling. They’d given her scrubs she could borrow while her clothes were being washed. Ty Lee was already on her way with pieces from her closet that she would have preferred. Mai didn’t think she could stomach wearing the set, vomit free or not. Not after…

There was a girl sniffling in the corner. Mai glanced at her from under her fringe. Most of her light brown hair covered her face, her wrinkled jacket hid most of her curled-up figure. It was hard to tell whether she was Mai’s age. She felt violently old right now, as if she'd aged overnight and her brittle bones woke up in the body of a sixteen-year-old. She needed fresh air.

The rain hadn’t cleared, but now it weaned down to a persistent trickle. It misted over the city, the sky now dyed a dark blue with a glint of the moon's eye floating through the clouds. She stood underneath the archway of the hospital’s entrance, leaning against the wall. Folding her arms over her chest to warm herself from the chill, she spotted uniformed police officers, nurses and the detectives Mai had spoken to days ago huddled nearby. They spoke in hushed tones and Mai silently slunk closer, half-hidden by the large potted plants.

“...the governor’s daughter and that airbending prodigy brought him down by that bison,” a nurse said. “He had several facial injuries and was bleeding all over. We suspect he might be suffering from a concussion based on all the fresh blood coming out from the crown.”

“Was he conscious,” asked Detective Jee.

“Barely. We heard him mumbling that girl’s name and he passed out on the way to the operating room. Poor thing couldn’t breathe through his nose with all that blood in the way. Nurse Ashuna and her team are currently examining him.”

There was no follow up response, because in seconds a dull grey car splashed into a parked ambulance and skidded to a sloppy stop. There were curses and shouts as the herd stumbled back to prevent from being drenched. They were only half-successful. A long, terrible silence passed as the car spat out Iroh and the old man paused for barely five seconds. His eyes zeroed in on the entrance.

A brave paramedic approached the former general as the old man jerked forward as if there was no other purpose. “General Iroh?” He went ignored as Iroh stalked through them. “Please! Calm down, sir!”

Iroh shoved him away despite the other’s vain attempts to blockade him from the entrance. Mai ducked inside before any of them could see her, although she didn’t think she was successful as seconds later Iroh bulldozed the staff. Officers and nurses lapped at his feet, calling his name.

At the end of the waiting room were a set of double doors where a young, scrawny attendant stood. Iroh fixed him with a dark, predatory stare. Mai vividly remembered now why people dubbed him as the Dragon of the West, as she hung partially behind a corner.

The attendant trembled as he wordlessly opened one of the doors and held it there, a silent invitation. Iroh didn’t even acknowledge the young boy as he strode past him with the gait of a military leader marching ahead of his troops. He only stopped once and turned his head halfway, an eyebrow pointedly arched at the attendant.

“OR Three,” he stammered out. “Down the hall, two left turns.”

Iroh made a beeline as he heard footsteps frantically stagger after him. He didn’t care. He could only conjure enough rage to glare at the imbeciles keeping him from reaching his destination. Father would have been proud, though that was a loaded statement that did not sit too long with him as he turned the final left and barged through the door like it was made of air.

Blue. It covered the doctors and nurses head to toe, faces partially hidden by masks and goggles. There was a steel grey color that almost disappeared into the blue, a brief flash twinkling under the fluorescent lights. His eyes pulled to the stark red-and-purple-and-black spot among the blue gowns and caps. He watched on in horror as a nurse shaved the last of Zuko’s black hair, revealing open gashes oozing ichor and pus.

Iroh hadn’t realized his hands were pressed against the glass that separated him from his nephew. There was no word he could use to describe the vomit-inducing sickness he felt as he stared. The other half of his face was so swollen he would have mistook it for a very spoiled grapefruit. Angry tears and bruises spread across the boy’s body, his ribs looked sunken in, and there was a tray at the foot of the operating table he laid on. It was speckled in clumps of dark red blood. Were those his innards?

“Zuko…” he heard himself say, vision blurring. Someone’s hand pressed against his back, and he bowed his head low enough that they couldn’t see the tears finally spill and drip onto the floor. 

Iroh handled that better than Mai thought he would have.

Shock was a demon of a drug, she figured, as she scratched her scalp. Even with clean clothes the hospital had given her, she still felt dirty. A quick inspection of her nails only confirmed that there was still dirt wedged underneath. When she was little she used to pick at her nails and bite them raw, until her mother had made her stop by oiling them in petroleum jelly. It was one of the other things she and Zuko shared, an ugly habit of nail-biting. He never told her how his parents made him stop.

Aang was still gone, possibly lost on his way to the cafeteria or vending machine. Mai discreetly followed Iroh and a Water Tribe woman. Her eyes narrowed; she looked vaguely familiar, her silver hair in a very Water Tribe hairstyle with thick braids and a bun, eyes a greyish teal color. She must be from the Northern Tribe, there weren’t many Southern Water Tribe healers coming into the cities anymore.

“He’s out of surgery,” the Water Tribe doctor said. “We have him on an IV and antibiotics to fight off the infections in his wounds. There were a few that, if he hadn’t been found when he was, might have resulted in sepsis.”

Mai shut her eyes. She heard Iroh inhale deeply before he spoke in a quiet, measured voice that nearly wavered. “His feet were burned?”

“They’re fresh,” she quickly said. “No more than a day, possibly less if I’m being honest. It will only take two more healing sessions for my bending to prevent any scarring. Unfortunately I can’t say the same for the ones on his back. And thighs…”

That didn’t sound good. Mai opened her eyes and scrunched her brows. There was always something when it came to Zuko. A silver lining that she was growing fucking tired of. He won a game against Azula but came back the next day with a broken leg. He survived a car accident but ended up with a third of his face disfigured. He was alive but on the brink of death. The doctor let out a heavy sigh before she said something that turned Mai’s blood to ice.

“There’s no easy way to say this, but we found evidence of severe sexual assault on your nephew,” she said. “I was told he came in with a mild case of hypothermia and acute blood loss. One of my nurses found a bulge in his stomach and tried to check his rectal temperature; that's when she found the obstruction that was causing it all.”

There was a long, chilling silence.

“A what?” Iroh asked. Mai imagined slapping him for his stupidity. Maybe it was wrong, but she didn’t like how genuinely confused he sounded in lieu of horrified. She’d consumed so much true crime that she had a sinking feeling where this was headed.

“I am sorry to say that we found more than one. My team was called in specifically to perform a rape exam. We had to move quickly because it was only a matter of time before he went into shock from a possible hemorrhage. It was during surgery when I saw what they were. A toilet brush and a stone.”

It was a minute before Iroh spoke again, and it gave Mai pause. “Zuko is not homosexual.”

Mai blinked. Her lashes tried to clump together and she blinked again. Even the doctor had to stare.

“Um,” she said, and did a thing with her face. Even Mai wouldn’t have known how to respond to that. “Iroh, that’s not—”

“I know how that sounds,” Iroh said. “I would love him regardless of his sexual orientation, but Zuko has never shown any interest in men. Not even that Freedom Fighter boy he fought with years ago. I just… I do not understand, Dr. Yagoda. My nephew would never seek the comfort of a man for it to escalate to… to that.”

Too bad Toph wasn’t here to bury the old fool alive. Mai could admit to being biased against Iroh; he just wasn’t remarkable to her in any way, an old fool who let his younger brother take nearly all of his inheritance away. But right now she could skewer him with her knives.

To Dr. Yagoda's credit, she carefully moved on and explained all of Zuko’s injuries to the old man, maybe as punishment for the homosexuality comment. Mai wouldn’t have known the difference. She felt her back slide down the wall and listened.

It all seemed to come like a tidal wave. Climbing higher and higher towards the sky until it dropped down and tumbled into its victims offhandedly. There was not a doubt in her mind that this doctor must have delivered this kind of news a thousand times, if her team was the one called in for rape exams. 

Their x-rays confirmed that there was a toilet brush and stone lodged in his rectum, anal avulsions that were stitched and would require him to take stool softeners. Most of the bruises that weren’t from somebody’s mouth came from blunt force trauma. A dislocated shoulder, broken ribs, his hipbone had been fractured. Glass shards were found in his head and it was a miracle he hadn’t suffered a worse hemorrhage. A concussion was more likely. His fingers would take weeks to heal. There was scarring in his throat. Burns that came from a hot tool branded across his hips, thighs and legs.

“I understand that this is a lot,” Yagoda said. No fucking shit, lady. “And I’m sorry to have dumped this on you so abruptly, but you are the only guardian of his on file. His mother is back in the picture?”

“We do not have a formal arrangement,” Iroh rasped. His back was turned, but Mai saw the trembling in his hands, the shock of it hitting him. She tasted salt. “I’d like to see him now, please.”

“Of course.” Yagoda tentatively clasped his shoulder and turned him the other way. “It’s right this way. We can bring you a cot if you need to lay down…”

Mai watched them leave as she whispered empty condolences to him. She sat there, staring at the wall with an empty gaze that started to burn. She felt something wet on her cheeks. She licked her lips and her tongue came back with that salt taste again. She hadn't even realized she stood up and dashed down the hall.

Aang came around the corner, a paper bag in his hand. "Sorry. I didn’t think I’d be so long,” he said, rifling through the bag until he pulled out a can of coffee. “I got lost on the way and ran into the hallway where the little kids were. Thought they could use a laugh since they’re, um, dying. Anyways, I got you a…”

He trailed off then when he finally looked at her. He saw the tears and stared at Mai in worry, brows knitting. "What’s wrong?"

Maybe sometime in the future, Mai would come to regret the way she'd just blurted it out. Especially to Zuko's best friend, one of the very few genuine people she knew. Cold, blunt. Like Azula.

"Zuko was raped."

He reeled back, as though he'd been slapped. Grey eyes widened. "W-What?"

A smile ripped across her face; it made her feel inhuman. "He was raped," Mai repeated. "Zuko was… they found anal laceration and scarring and a lot of other stuff all across his genitals. That’s why he was losing so much blood. Some bastard took a stone and a toilet brush to shove it all the way in him. He was raped to… to near death."

She thought the cruelest thing she’d done was cover for Azula when she almost got in trouble for pushing Zuko off a tree. He wore a cast for an entire month and he still gifted her a firelily when she made first in the ranks as a markswoman. 

But none of that meant anything now as she harshly stared at Aang collapsing on the floor, like a puppet cut from its strings. Bile came out of him as his whole body heaved. She listened to him sobbing and hated him for it just as she hated Tom-Tom for crying when he was colic. It wasn’t Aang’s fault that her parents were terrible people. It wasn't his fault that Zuko had gotten kidnapped and tortured to near death. It was nobody's fault that the rapist had been born and chose to rape a random teenager. But the rapist wasn’t here and Aang was, making him an unfairly easy target.

He wheezed again and raised his head. Mai’s eyes widened.

Mai might not have been the Avatar, but Aang was. All of the blue arrows inked across his body glowed whiter than the moon until it reached his eyes. Wind whipped from all around them.

Fuck, she eloquently thought before she ducked into random room as a tornado began to burst in the middle of the hallway.

While the Avatar State raged on, Iroh and Yagoda stepped into Zuko’s room.

Room 101 was a very clean smelling room. Naked beige walls hugged them all around, a single window facing across the door with the curtains partially drawn, lamp casting a butter yellow glow. His shoulders relaxed when he heard the steady beeping of the monitor at Zuko’s bedside. It meant his boy was still alive, still fighting.

It felt so much like the night he was burned.

Iroh approached the bed and he was awashed in a strange sense of deja vu. Lu Ten had died in his sleep, warm and comfortable in a hospital bed like this one. The night Zuko had come to live with him, he’d slept for over two days straight with thick bandages over his eye.

Just like that night, Zuko’s head was wrapped in gauze. All of his hair had been shaved off, rendering him bald as young Aang—who, by the sounds of loud banging and screaming outside, must have just revealed himself as the Avatar. (One problem at a time.) The swelling in his black eye had receded a little from what he saw before, no doubt the work of Yagoda’s waterbending.

Despite the numerous marks across the border of his skin, he looked peaceful. Iroh leaned down and kissed his forehead. Zuko’s skin felt so cold against his lips, and to be sure, Iroh cupped the side of his mottled face. Not icy as the frozen tundra, but unusually cold for a firebender. He wondered if Zuko could even produce a flame right now if he wanted to, when he awoke.

“Is he in any pain?” he had to ask.

“We have him on sedatives,” Yagoda assured, coming to the other side to adjust the sling strapped across his nephew’s shoulder. His wrists were also covered in bandages. The blanket hid the rest of his injuries. “It’ll take some time, but in a couple weeks all he’ll need is over-the-counter stuff for the occasional migraine.”

Iroh swallowed a bout of tears. “Migraines?”

Yagoda almost winced. “We’ll have to ask him when he wakes up, but I suspect from the glass I found in his scalp that he took more than one blow to the head. He had a seizure during the rape exam and we had to act quickly.”

He inclined his head, his thumb stroking Zuko’s brow bone. There was an ugly cut there, his skin feeling the rough, raised texture. At least that one didn’t need stitches. He frowned bitterly at the thought, as he stared at the binding on his nose and the teeth-shaped welts all across the lower half of his face. The rest were hidden underneath the neck brace he wore. Spirits, they found a bite mark on his nipple, not unlike an animal.

Iroh had grown up dreaming of destinies and spirits, something Ozai had mocked him for. Father was wary about those sorts of things, but his mother believed in their unexplained magic. When he was a child, Mother used to take him to the temples and read him each story engraved on the stone walls. When Lu Ten was old enough, Iroh and his wife had taken him. He cursed those spirits now, for allowing something so horrible to happen to his nephew. His nails bit crescents into his palms as he lifted the walls of his anger and allowed poisonous thoughts of his brother and the beast that laid a finger on Zuko.

“Oh,” Yagoda’s mild surprise broke Iroh out of his reverie. “He’s waking up.”

If it were possible, his eyes would have gotten whiplash at the speed they snapped to Zuko’s face. Iroh hadn’t even realized he’d been staring at the boy’s chest. He leaned in as his eyes fluttered, brow twitching, and the most beautiful pale gold eyes blinked up at him.

The lighting was dim, perhaps Yagoda had kept the concussion in mind as Zuko squinted. It was akin to the first time Iroh had met him after he was born. He’d been a premature baby, kept in an incubator for weeks until his lungs were strong enough to breathe on their own, a tiny bean-shaped thing wriggling underneath his blanket.

“Hi,” Iroh whispered, just like that day. He smiled down at him, eyes becoming hot.

Zuko made a little hum, his nose scrunching. He blinked again, eyes focusing on Iroh. They flickered to the side of his face and underneath he became a plank of wood.

Weariness evaporated into pale-faced terror, his sclera a bright red. Iroh wondered if that was the result of the strangling or head trauma. He leaned back, frowning as his stomach sank. “Zuko?”

Zuko's eyes were wet, the heart monitor at his side slowly beeping rapidly. “Go away,” he finally said.

Iroh opened his mouth uselessly. “What?”

Yagoda came to the other side. “Zuko,” she said, “do you know where you are right now?”

“No more, I can’t take it,” his nephew went on, like he hadn’t heard her. “G-Go away…”

Frantic beeping followed the sniffling. Fat tears squeezed through tightly shut eyes and he squirmed. It didn’t matter when both Iroh and Yagoda assured him that he was safe, that whoever he was seeing wasn’t there, it all fell on deaf ears. His pleas were growing in volume and raised on octave. Iroh felt the hairs on the back of his neck raise. He wondered how Ozai could have burned such a face, if it meant to be stared at as though he was a vengeful spirit. Did Iroh look like his boy’s attacker? Was it a love quarrel gone catastrophically wrong?

Still, he tried, even if it was in vain. “Zuko,” he repeated. “It’s me—”

“No!” Zuko yelled, breathing erratically. He coughed, blood dribbling down his chin from it. Yagoda had mentioned his throat was shredded. Most likely from screaming and being penetrated with a foreign object.

A mass of floating water surrounded Zuko’s head, glimmering briefly as he quieted until his eyes slipped shut, lulled into a fitful slumber. It brought down a little more of the swelling in his right eye.

Silence descended on them. Iroh’s spine hunched, aged a thousand years within a handful of minutes. He whispered his apologies and heard Yagoda sigh.

“That happens,” she said simply, her clinical matter-of-fact oddly comforting. “Sometimes they wake up and not understand that they’re no longer in danger. Nothing you could have done would have calmed him.”

But he could try. He was always trying when it came to Zuko. It didn’t matter if Ozai had been the one to father him, Zuko was Iroh’s.

He took the offered tissue Yagoda handed him and wiped the wet tracks on Zuko’s face and the blood on the corners of his mouth where the water hadn’t washed it off. Growing up under the Fire Nation he didn’t learn much about the other disciplines of waterbending with the exception of how to combat it. One time when they were young cadets, he and Jeong-Jeong had snuck off during a field trip to the Northern Water Tribe and stumbled upon a young waterbender being patched up from a sprained ankle. He remembered being entranced as a woman no older than he’d been at the time gathered a glob of water and laid it over the wound for mere seconds before the male waterbender walked on his own two feet with no problem.

But a sprained ankle was different from the collection of breaks and sprains across his nephew’s body. They were talking about weeks of him staying in this hospital for further treatment. Yagoda was concerned about the trauma in his anus, as she suspected the objects cut out of him had been sawed inside and out of him repeatedly without mercy. A helpless animal devoured over and over by the ravenous predator. She said it was a miracle he didn’t require a colostomy.

“It’s an artificial anus,” Yagoda said when Iroh asked. She saw the anguish in his face and hurriedly tacked on, “I don’t think it would have ever come to that. He was brought to us in time. To be honest, I was more concerned about the damage the bristles had done.”

“You said his colon was affected?” Iroh’s throat needed water, funnily enough. He couldn’t remember when he last drank anything, even tea.

“He might feel constipated for a while,” Yagoda said, as each word sent another dagger through Iroh’s ears. “The perforations we found had gotten infected. They would have led to sepsis if it’d been another day. He’ll need to stay on paid meds for a while until his body defeats the infections. I’ve already gone ahead and made the rotations for nurses to administer each dose.”

He was grateful she didn’t add anything more about the severe abdominal pain Zuko would experience the second the medication wore off. His boy was strong, survived things Iroh wasn’t sure he would have (he’d never even experienced acne in his youth, for Yangchen’s sake!), but this wasn’t something Iroh could have ever imagined. A burn wound was one thing, but an intimate one…

The door burst open before he could finish that thought. He blinked mildly while Yagoda let out an impressive sailor curse as their two new additions nearly collided into each other like naughty children caught eavesdropping. He glanced at Zuko, who thankfully wasn’t roused from sleep at the detectives’ comical entrance.

Ming flipped her hair back into place. It was more voluminous than usual, reminiscent of a supermodel. Jee, on the other hand, was missing a sleeve and sported a black eye.

“So,” Ming began conversationally, as if they were making plans for dinner. “Aang is the Avatar.”

Iroh and Yagoda looked at each other. Then back at them. “Yes,” both said.

“You know he’s the Avatar,” Jee asked, only it wasn’t asked as a question.

“Yes.”

“And you didn’t think to warn us?!” the man whisper-shouted, mindful of the unconscious teenager in the room.

Iroh shrugged. “I didn’t know when you’d come.”

“I just found out about it,” Yagoda held up her palms in surrender.

Jee stared at them in wild-eyed incredulity. His bruise pulsed, as if attuned to his irritation. Perhaps he was due for a raise. Or a vacation at the least. “He just destroyed an entire wing of a burn unit.”

“I wouldn’t say he’s completely destroyed it,” Ming said. “Just… some light renovations are in order.”

Yagoda pinched the bridge of her nose. “Please tell me no one got hurt.”

“Aside from Jee and a couple of interns, no one was badly hurt,” Ming said, though her assurance was undercut by Jee’s grumbles. “How’s our victim?”

The change of subject was welcomed, though it stung when Iroh had to remember what had just transpired before the detectives barged in. Yagoda, bless her, spoke. “Sedated. He only woke up once a few minutes before you came in. Did you get a chance to look at the results from the rape exam?”

“Yes,” Jee answered. “Actually that’s why we came here.” He looked at Iroh and he had a feeling this was not headed somewhere good. “We need to speak with you. Doctor or no doctor, the choice is yours.”

Tense silence plagued the room for a long minute. Yagoda looked intrigued, while Iroh stared stone-faced at the impassive detectives. Ming’s eyes flickered to Zuko for a second.

Yogoda broke first. “Oh, alright,” she sighed. “It looks like I have new patients to attend to, anyways. Excuse me.”

She brushed past Ming and Jee and closed the door with a soft click. Her footsteps padded away and it left the three of them (Zuko did not count).

“We need you to finally be honest with us,” Jee said bluntly. “If there’s any chance we have of capturing this bastard, we need the whole story.”

There was a crack in Iroh’s statue-like facade, his brow furrowing in confusion. “I haven’t withheld anything,” he said.

“Maybe not, but you haven’t been forthcoming concerning the one thing that might connect Zuko’s assailant,” Ming chimed in. “His scar.”

Ah. Perhaps they found a possible connection from the rape exam. He doubted Ozai would sexually abuse his own son, then again he didn’t know his brother as well as he should have, even when he was a child. Iroh frowned, eyes narrowing. “What does his scar have to do with his assault?”

“The DNA results from the semen they found on Zuko have shown up as military personnel in the system,” Jee said. “We can’t access it because it’s protected by the Fire Nation government.”

Iroh’s frown deepened. That still did not explain what the scar had to do with this current mess. Ming answered it for him. “We might have a possible suspect we’d like to look more into,” she said. “Does the name Bujing ring any bells?”

Not a name he had heard of in three years, but his nephew did a very swell job of cursing it in the early days of living in the city. Almost as sinister and ruthless as his father, a man who Iroh once called a friendly colleague before Lu Ten’s passing. “You think Bujing was the one to scar my nephew?”

“He was fired from Fire Industries the day Zuko went missing,” Ming evaded the question entirely and stared at him in the eye. “A source told us that he was cursing out your brother and funnily enough your nephew. Which is strange since according to you, Ursa and the whole media, Zuko hasn’t been involved in anything with Fire Industries for three years.”

“So you tell us,” Jee added on, “how did Zuko lose his position in the family company? And why would Bujing be cursing about it now after being fired?”

That was an impressive leap, Iroh would acknowledge. And it made a lot of sense, especially if Bujing was fired for the incident that led to Zuko’s disownment. But to take drastic measures and snatch him on the street where anyone could have seen them seemed uncharacteristic of the man. 

He weighed his options. Telling them would invite the risk of drawing Ozai’s ire from the depths of the dark, empty cave he called his heart. He wasn’t sure exactly how, but he knew his brother had used all of the resources at his disposal to cover up the abuse he’d inflicted onto Zuko. Fire Nationals knew it wasn’t a secret that Ozai did not favor his firstborn son, and even though people most likely connected the dots of Zuko’s burn and Ozai disinheriting him, reputation was invaluable in the Fire Nation. Intertwined with ‘honor.’

“Alright,” Iroh conceded. “Alright, but you must be careful. I do not want my brother flying all the way down here and unfairly punishing my nephew for my loud mouth.”

They waited with bated breath. Here they were, about to hear one of the Fire Nation’s most coveted mysteries that’d been a hot topic for the past three years. Gossip magazines alleged that it was Zuko’s own foolishness that’d given him the scar, an attempt to woo his father. Some corners of the higher class whispered that Ozai had grown tired of the boy’s insolence, a spiteful ingrate whose firebending would never reach the heights of a master.

“Three years ago, my brother had finally let my nephew accompany him to a board meeting. It was supposed to be as any other meeting, horribly boring. As far as my understanding goes, Bujing had come up with a plan to cut expenses by firing an entire sector of factory workers so that they could divide the budget to a new location, right here in the city. Zuko passionately disagreed with this plan and spoke out, calling it a betrayal to the loyal workers who poured their blood and tears into the company. Zuko was right, you see? But you understand as well as I do that it was not his place to speak out. And there were dire consequences.”

“The scar,” Ming breathed. 

Iroh nodded gravely. “After Zuko’s outburst in the meeting, Ozai became very angry with him,” he said, as he imagined a roar of flames rising over his brother's seat, obscuring his outrage. “He said that Zuko’s challenge of a retired general and a longtime employee was an act of complete disrespect. And that he would be disciplined at home.”

Ming and Jee stared with twin, uncompromising expressions of horror as Iroh let the implications sit. Unfortunately that was the extent of what he knew, aside from delightful anecdotes Ozai had included, like Zuko’s cowardice and refusal to fight back like a man. “He could return home once he restores his honor,” Ozai had said, a sadistic mirth coloring his voice. “Or if he brings the Avatar home in chains.”

He was a very lucky man to be a continent away from Iroh, who had swallowed his fury down even though it was like inhaling rocks. Weeks of watching his nephew suffer, almost dying from an infection, crying for his mother in his sleep. And Iroh felt crueler, for allowing his nephew to believe he had been the problem.

“You believe that Bujing’s termination could have been related to Zuko’s outburst?” Iroh eventually asked. He sat heavily on the chair beside the bed and pulled himself closer to Zuko, adjusting the blanket.

“We’re trying to find that out,” Jee said quietly. His next words were preceded by hesitation, tentative. “I… I always thought Zuko got it from a training accident.”

Iroh eyed the scar, plastered in hickeys. “It was no accident.”

Mai had a lot of questions.

Namely what the fuck. She brushed out the knots in her hair until the bristles glided through silk again. Iroh had offered her the bathroom connected to Zuko’s room so that she could shower. Maybe it would finally wash down the entire week’s grime on her.

Her knives had stood in the way of a lamp trying to impale her in the head. There was a history lesson dedicated to the Avatars, most notably Yangchen, Szteo and Roku. She remembered wanting to doze off as her teacher gave an impassioned, overly dramatic speech about the Avatar State. Blah blah, the Avatar at their most powerful, blah blah, harnessing all the power from previous Avatars, blah blah, she sorely wished Azula was there to zap her with lightning.

Aang’s Avatar State… was something else entirely. From the time she’d gotten to know him, he was very much Zuko’s foil in everything. Docile, kind, easygoing, free as the air he could bend to his command and yet he chose to let it fly. Or something like that. Seeing the young, happy-go-lucky airbender roar with the centuries of voices before him still made her shiver in the shower. Was this how aftershocks felt like?

Mai put down the brush and inspected herself in the mirror. One positive thing about Aang going berserk was that the last of her mascara had finally flaked off her sharp cheekbones. She was an apparition of death under the light’s microscope, shadows that emphasized the sleek cut of her jaw and smooth, translucent skin. They clung underneath her eyes, although that could have also been her waterproof kohl that Ty Lee called magic. 

It was good enough, and at least the sweats they’d given her were a slate, blue-grey color that could pass as black to the naked eye. Wow, that was actually pretty optimistic of her. Ty Lee would be so proud.

Exiting the bathroom, she stepped back into the room and her gaze swept over it. It was about as ordinary as any private hospital room could be, with a big couch sitting nearby and plush, comfortable chair calling for Mai’s name directly adjacent to the bed. There was even an entertainment system set up, a TV and everything.

Zuko was in the center of it all, mummified with thick wrappings across his head and arms. A thick blanket cloaked his legs and the smell of antiseptics were getting stronger the closer she approached him. She sat in the plush chair that felt like heavens on her behind, after the week she had. Her phone vibrated like hornet-wasps. She unpocketed it and checked her messages. Another one from Ukano, pleading for them to talk it out, the thing she saw. Think of your brother, he said, he needs his father in his life!

Mai scowled at the screen until it dimmed to blackness. It wasn’t hard to notice the disparity between her and Tom-Tom after he was born. She compared it as a mutation between Zuko and Azula’s relationship, only Mai didn’t care to go to the same heights Zuko would for her parent’s approval. She’d lost that battle since the moment she tore out of Michi with nothing between her legs. 

But this was just infuriating, for Ukano to make a wild assumption that she cared at all for that stupid baby. An old boyfriend used to think it was off of her to feel so little about her own blood, but Mai had spent her life being clamped down to the submission under her parent’s eyes but Tom-Tom was free to track mud into the living room and laughed with.

She blocked his number and read Ty Lee’s messages. Thanks to Aang’s… outburst, for lack of a better term, the hospital was under lockdown with the exception of emergency personnel. Patients that weren’t on the brink of death were being redirected to nearby clinics at the huts in a Water Tribe street. All of which meant that Ty Lee couldn’t come in with Mai’s clothes until security gave the all-clear.

SHIT! Is Aang really the Avatar???

A series of emojis followed, Mai blinked lifelessly at it until she typed back. Yeah. That’s kind of my fault.

Bubbles floated. How????

She drummed her fingers on the armrest when she heard something rustling. Zuko was coming to, his eyelids flapping until honey-gold irises were looking at her. Out of habit, Mai’s hand slapped into his, the plastic thing on his thumb warm against her skin. He was hooked up to a lot of wires, translucent among bruise speckled skin. His skin felt so cold, she wondered if that was supposed to be normal. Or if he lost his bending. Was that even a thing?

Mai let out a breath through her nose. “You look terrible.”

It was the first thing that came to mind, and she could admit that wasn’t the best way to go about greeting your injured ex. But it didn’t seem to go out either ear because Zuko still wore that dazed expression, his eyes glassy.

A small, near indiscernible smile twitched across his lips, chapped beyond recognition. His half-lidded eyes brightened as he shifted, then stopped. Her eyes blinked in sympathy as Zuko grimaced. He must have agitated one of his injuries. 

“Don’t throw up on me again,” Mai warned, narrowing her eyes for effect. It worked; Zuko nodded as if he understood her, so maybe that meant he was lucid. Or really obedient when high on painkillers.

The door opened and two nurses came in, one with a tray and the other empty-handed. The first one, a woman with dark hair and tawny eyes, smiled at Zuko. “Oh, good,” she exclaimed, “you’re awake.”

Zuko didn’t react at that, but if possible, he got colder when the male nurse came from behind the female nurse. Mai glanced down when she felt fingers tighten over her own. The heart monitor was going haywire, as Zuko’s pupils shrunk into pinpricks and he looked at her with growing panic. She was about to ask what was wrong when he suddenly sat up and started pushing her.

“Go,” he whispered. “Go.”

“Zuko,” Mai began, when he whipped around and glared savagely at the nurses.

“Get away from her!” Zuko shouted, voice gravelly from disuse.

Both nurses shared a look, horribly out of their depths. The male nurse held out his hands in a placating manner, as though he were calming a wild animal. “It’s alright,” he said in a gentle, cooing voice that would never work on Zuko, even if he wasn’t high on drugs.

It happened faster than Mai unsheathing her knives. There was the ear splitting sound of machines crashing to the floor, akin to a collision on the road. Zuko’s body lunged at her, a dot of dark red blood spreading on the bandages around his head. She gripped his shoulder from behind, hoping to ground him before he made things worse. He was screaming incoherently, angry tears burning marks down his cheeks.

It took five nurses to hold him down and sedate him until he was unconscious. Mai’s attempts had only made him press himself against her harder, as if his body alone could shield her. He was crying before he went down, mouthing one word at her:

“Run.”

“He’s resting comfortably now,” Yagoda said, as Iroh fought not to have a heart attack in the middle of the hallway. “We had to up the dosage a bit to keep him from spiraling every time a new person walks into the room.”

Iroh shut his eyes tightly. “He tore his stitches?”

“We repaired them in the OR,” she assured, putting a hand over his shoulder. It didn’t help. She said a lot of things that didn’t make him feel better.

They had laid out a cot for him in Zuko’s room, when they realized Iroh had no intention of leaving his nephew’s side for longer than an hour. Pao, his second-in-command, was going to take charge of the Jasmine Dragon for a month. Perhaps longer, knowing Zuko, if his recovery wasn’t as smooth sailing as the doctors planned out.

He caught Mai several times when he came out of the bathroom, sat at home in the chair and her hand atop Zuko’s. Three days had sloughed off since she and Aang found Zuko in that ice barrel, the cause of the hypothermia. The glossy sheen of her hair reflected off the soft light of the lamp, making her paler if that were possible.

“You can go home if you’d like,” he offered.

She was an unnervingly silent girl, sitting still in her seat. The only sign that she wasn’t a statue was the subtle blink of her black eyes. “Do you want me to leave?” she asked eventually. She made no move to stand up.

Iroh had had his reservations about the governor’s daughter. Azula’s best friend. He thought her strange and unusual, even for a girl born from the same nation. Pakku remarked, over sake and a game of Pai Sho, that she was like death personified. Iroh had said nothing in his defense when Gyatso chided the Northern Tribe man, but he privately agreed. Especially when he knew that she used to participate in Azula’s pranks against her brother. It confused him why Zuko liked her so much, but he smiled guilelessly every time she was in view, going as far as sleeping over at her house many nights in a row. Zuko smiled so rarely before Mai moved into the city, who was Iroh to complain?

“No,” Iroh said. Something unfolded in his shoulders. “No, you can stay. I will let your father know that you are staying the night… if you’d like to?”

Her eyes were overwhelmingly black, staring right through him not unlike a feline. She nodded and resumed watching Zuko. There was a glimpse of her stroking one of his bandaged fingers and he looked away, like he was intruding on a private, intimate moment.

“General Iroh?” a young nurse knocked. She worried her bottom lip as she looked over her shoulder. “Um, there are two police officers who would like to speak with you?”

Iroh frowned. That was strange. He would have assumed it’d take more time to find concrete evidence to arrest Bujing. He followed her out and inclined his head at the detectives waiting in the hallway. Something was wrong, he could sense immediately. Ming’s smile failed to match her eyes and Jee’s entire posture was stiff.

“Ah, Ming and Jee,” Iroh gave them a benign smile. “Why do I feel as if I just walked into a lion-sabertooth’s den?”

Ming’s face fell and sighed. “Something’s come up.” She crossed her hands behind her back. “We need to speak to Zuko… right away.”

Iroh hummed. “Zuko is on sedatives.”

Jee and Ming looked at each other and it was the former who told Iroh the story. Bujing’s next flight back to the Fire Nation was due in less than a week, and their captain wanted to make an arrest before he was gone completely. Making an arrest would be harder if Bujing wasn’t even on the same continent. There wasn’t evidence to even bring him down to the station. Zuko’s testimony was their best, and only, shot.

“You can be in the room with him,” Ming said once they were done. “And we promise to make this as easy and painless as possible for Zuko. Our unit has had a lot of experience with sexual assault survivors, and at most we only need him to identify Bujing in a photo lineup.”

Iroh felt his knuckles split. “My nephew hasn’t even been fully awake for twenty-four hours,” he said thickly. “Can this not wait?”

“He leaves in five days,” Jee muttered. “Zuko is kind of our only hope right now.”

And Iroh had thought fighting in active combat would have made him feel older than he was. But now his bones felt like they were made of stone, weighing him down and making him seem elderly. He was a traitor as he gave them his permission, trudging forward to deliver the bad news. All he had ever wanted was to do right by Zuko, to show him that Ozai did not deserve a son like him. And now here he was, forcing his boy to dredge traumatic memories so soon while he was still on powerful sedatives.

“Are you mad?” Yagoda’s stare was incredulous. “You can’t possibly be serious. We haven’t even gotten him a second MRI scan! He’s still at risk of a serious brain hemorrhage. Not to mention waking him by force could trigger a severe emergence delirium. If those pain meds wear off and he isn’t lucid enough, he may hurt himself more than he already is.”

“We’ll be quick,” Ming tried, but was harshly cut off.

“That’s what all you people say,” Yagoda narrowed her eyes. “I understand you have a job to do but so do I, and I am telling you right now that not only is this reckless, you’re basing it off a wild hunch!”

In another timeline, Iroh would have been swooned by the woman’s sheer ferocity. Her outrage shifted at Iroh and she gave him a disbelieving stare. He couldn’t bring himself to be offended. “And you’re okay with this?”

He was a pig-chicken, refusing to meet her gaze and saying nothing. Selfish, like his brother. He wanted to take Bujing by the hands and gouge the man’s eyes out, if he turned out to be the one who almost killed Zuko.

As the creases across Yagoda's face darkened, Iroh, once again, looked away.