Chapter Text
Zuko is fourteen years old when the realization finally sets in.
He’s been banished for over a year now, the first anniversary having already come and gone. Zuko hasn’t been home since he was thirteen, and the promise of his return has diminished from a bright flame into a dying ember.
There has been no sign, not a single hint, of the Avatar in the one year, two months, and nine days of Zuko’s quest to find him.
Zuko sits himself down in his dark room, the same one with one solitary porthole, only allowing hints and whispers of Agni’s light to seep through. The one that sometimes leaves him feeling trapped and breathless if he stares at the walls for too long. The room that doesn’t feel like his at all.
Zuko sits down on his bed and stares at the Airbender scrolls in front of him. The star-maps and the sea-charts that he has long ago memorized. Zuko sits there and finally lets the realization that’s been burning at the back of his mind, sear itself fully across his brain.
He is not going home.
Because the Avatar is long ago dead.
His father set him on an impossible task.
Because father does not want Zuko back.
Father has sent him on a fool’s errand, one that Zuko was always destined to fail.
Zuko’s vision goes blurry and hot, his chest feels too tight. And the left side of his face burns and burns and burns. Like it did on that day, one year, two months, and ten days ago.
Zuko lets out a shout of rage and pain as he rips the scroll in front of him in two. His fingers singeing the parchment, and his tears staining the ink. But Zuko doesn’t care, because these things are as useless to him now, as they were the day he found them.
Because the Avatar is dead.
Zuko will not find anything of him but bone and ash.
Zuko gets up on wobbly legs that do not want to hold the weight of his realization, and stumbles over to his desk. He swipes all of his supplies and study materials to the side, letting them clatter noisily to the floor.
Zuko opens up a drawer and pulls out his knife. He unsheathes it, looks at the words engraved on the side. ‘Never give up without a fight,’ it says, reflecting Zuko’s tear-streaked face back at him.
Will Uncle be disappointed in him, for giving up?
Or will Uncle be relieved that Zuko has finally realized what everyone else knew from the start?
Uncle has always had the option of going home. But he has chosen to follow Zuko into the unknown instead. Even when he must have known it was a pointless effort all along.
Zuko hopes Uncle will follow him in this, too.
Zuko pulls the end of his phoenix tail up- the tail that is attached to a starkly shaved head, the hair that has renounced him as royalty, that marks him as banished. As if the mark on his face was not proof enough.
Zuko pulls up his hair and takes his knife that says never to give up, and he slices through his phoenix tail, and it feels very much, in every sense, like giving up.
Zuko walks out to the deck that night, head freshly shorn and strides far less purposeful, and watches as the crew falls silent, as they look upon his bald head and take in what it truly means.
Uncle is there in an instant, he looks worried, he looks tired.
How long has Uncle looked so tired?
Uncle lifts his left-hand to squeeze Zuko’s shoulder. His other carefully, slowly, comes up to cup the side of Zuko’s face. His fingers tracing over the shriveled shell of Zuko’s ruined ear.
“Are you sure, my nephew?” Uncle whispers, and Zuko closes his eyes. Hating himself for ever thinking Uncle could be anything but kind to him.
“Yes,” Zuko chokes out, voice a horrible, constricted thing. He turns away from his Uncle, faces the crew instead. “We will no-longer be searching for the Avatar,” he tells them, forcing himself to stand straight, to face them fully. “You may leave and be reassigned to another post, or you may continue here on the Wani.”
Zuko takes a breath, lets it out in a puff of smoke. “We are no longer a vessel of the Fire Nation under the rulership of Fire Lord Ozai. From here on, we are nationless… A peaceful ship with no destination in sight.”
Zuko pauses, takes in the faces of his crew under the light of the stars and the moon. He does not feel the warmth or hope of the sun, which only shines for mere hours a day, down in the summers of The South, so far away from home.
“Is that understood?” he asks, his voice finally losing the last of its luster. He feels hallowed out and cold, Zuko wants nothing more than to drink some tea with Uncle and move on from this terrible, treacherous day.
“Yes, sir,” and “understood, sir,” and “yes, Prince Zuko,” come the subdued replies from the crew.
Zuko turns away from them, clenches his hands into fists as he calls over his shoulder. “‘Zuko’ will be just fine,” he swallows hard, hopes they can’t hear it in his voice. “I am no-longer a prince.”
And with that, Zuko has renounced his place as the Fire Lord’s son.