The sound that woke Zuko was small, but just enough.
Not cannon-fire. Not a shouted report. Not a sudden warship ramming his cruiser in half in the dead of night. Just a thin, delicate little tink-tink-crash from beyond the safety of bed, just outside the door that shouldn't be ajar.
His hand slapped down harder than would be welcome where Raven should have been, even before his eyes snapped open, and it instantly twisted his guts.
He came up with hard breath, anxious sweat, and a desperate need for a dry pillow, but he put that last bit aside. The stirred, still-slightly-warm sheets beside him were dragged mostly off the bed, very much like Raven had gotten her foot caught and hopped around like an idiot for a while before she escaped them halfway to the door.
The cooler air as they sailed north was welcome in his sorry state, and he let his fine silken pajama pants cover for proper high-status garb. He also got his esteemed foot briefly caught by the princely bedspread on the other side of the royal mattress.
"Please let it be something dumb…" escaped his slightly dry mouth as he hopped on bare feet to exit the cabin.
Zuko hated how fast the panic built the instant Raven was out of sight, and he yanked the door open way too carelessly for the potential of lurking assassins.
Hovering eerily barefoot in the dark like a regular Arzaya, Raven stood in the corridor outside, staring blankly down, which after squinting, Zuko could see she was, in fact, touching the steely floor.
Zuko stopped so hard he nearly pulled something. He glanced down, where something was broken, and back up to meet her gaze. Swallowing to clear the rasp, he failed to speak and just raised his eyebrows for an explanation.
Raven's sleeping robes had fallen down one shoulder. She tugged them briefly, and they pathetically fell slightly lower than before. Something wet was splashed up them, and her chestnut hair was outrageously stuck up and back like a frayed rope. At her feet Zuko finally clocked the steaming ruin of shattered porcelain and noodles spread over the corridor floor in a slick of disappointment. She looked up at him with huge, miserable hazel-green eyes and quietly, adorably croaked:
"I didn' mean to drop my noodle..."
Zuko just stared.
The relief hit him all at once, so fierce and ridiculous it made his knees weak. Not spirits. Not murder. Not a fire. Not Raven bleeding out in the hall. Just... soup. His shoulder slapped against the cabin door, searching for the stability of the hull, and he stumbled a whole foot back inside his room without meaning to before scrambling back to standing.
She had the saddest little moist sheen in her gaze, not even moved to laugh at his sleepy involuntary clowncraft.
He breathed out through his nose, long and steadying. "You dropped your..."
"My noodle," she repeated, her register uncharacteristically high, and trembling like every promise in the hemisphere had been broken. "Went kitchen," she sighed, still impossibly timid for the madbender, who apparently also dropped her articles, prepositions, and plurals in a catastrophic mess somewhere further down the corridor.
On inspection, there were, very clearly, several noodles. Not just the one.
Zuko pressed the heel of one hand to his scar. "I see."
Raven was just frozen there, like she'd lost sight of her dad in the shopping district and was about to start bawling uncontrollably. The girl who struck fire from every jab and thrust, who threatened kings, princes, and dark gods, and who genuinely had the lethality of a battle-hardened elite firebender while still in her teens… was overwhelmed by soup. It struck Zuko that without anger to steer her, Raven was freakishly cute.
"What… do?" she meekly pleaded, just making it worse.
He had absolutely no idea what to do with that other than be charmed. He used to know. He was trying to remember how they were together when things were good. It felt dangerous to hope it would stay that way, though, so it was a mix of warmth and knots of anxiety he'd just have to live with for the time being.
So he did the only thing that occurred to him and reached into the cabin, taking the furthest reach of the sheets that were pulled towards the hall like they were making a break for it, and awkwardly bundled them up, almost like he was embarrassingly inept at such a simple task as cleaning a spill.
But first, Zuko stepped carefully forward over the shards, took her by the wrist, and guided her back into his cabin.
She followed eagerly, like he'd lit her fuse. No protest. No snap. No sarcastic little jab. He even tugged her thin robe back up, taking over to account for her recent inability to wear clothes correctly, and she just let him. It untied a few more knots, that was for certain.
"Stay," he muttered, already turning back toward the mess.
Raven hovered briefly just inside the doorway like she expected a scolding, until he glanced back with a tired but real smile, and she was free to sulk in a place of her choosing.
Zuko crouched, holding the wadded up sheet high, and slapped it atop the mess like a cat batting at something it disliked and didn't understand. Just pushing the one singular noodle around, he gave up within seconds, and just brushed the whole mess aside against the wall with a tinkle-tinkle and somehow turned the hem of both pant legs sticky and wet. Surely nobody would be oafish enough to trip over that, he figured with a sharp gaze like the shards and noodle would be thrown in the brig if they caused any more trouble. He stood princely tall again, elbows stuck out and lifted for no logical cause, and he stiffly sidled back into the cabin, keeping an eye on the wadded up mess like it might try to bolt.
Inside, he gently shut the door, and turned around to see that Raven had vanished.
Zuko blinked, eyes darting from the wardrobe, back to the bed, to the dresser, and finally down to the corner tucked behind it.
He found her.
She was on her haunches, arms tucked close, robes pooling around her feet, crunching determinedly into a rough dry ball of uncooked noodles the size of a fist that she must have had in her deep silky pockets.
Crick-crick-crunch.
He stared at her. Raven stared back around the lifeless noodle husk, upper lip with firm purchase. She paused for just a breath.
Crick-crunch-crunch.
Approaching like she was a wounded animal, Zuko managed, very carefully, "What… are you doing?"
Crick-crick-...
"Noodle."
"But Raven."
"Sleepy. Hungry."
"That is not soup."
Raven gulped, took a deep breath, and finally sounded almost sane. "I took three, I was extra careful." she said. "Didn't want to fill the bowl too high and spill, but…"
He put one hand over his mouth. Then the other. His chest rattled and throat tightened as he squeezed his eyes shut.
"Don't laugh!" she snapped, back to herself.
Zuko took two slow steps closer, more confident now.
"But you dropped noodle," he managed to say with a straight face, and he got down on his haunches beside her, all tucked in the corner with dry noodle balls in the dark like a completely normal couple.
"Someone will clean it," he said. "It's fine."
She squinted at him, suspicious.
"You're not mad I woke you up?" she cautiously tried, not quite sounding meek anymore.
"It's fine."
"And broke your bowl?"
Zuko frowned at that. "That wasn't my bowl, it's just a bowl."
She blinked. "It was the nicest one. Whose did I break?"
He considered the question. "Probably Uncle's?"
Raven thought about that too, and had a look like she had something she wanted to say, but the pull of noodle was stronger.
Crick-crick-crunch.
It took the better part of a minute, and he actually waited for her to swallow, the darling boy.
"I suck," she finally said.
"He'll get a replacement."
"But I suck."
He held out a hand. "Give it."
She hugged the uncooked noodle sphere closer to her chest, looking attacked, but suddenly eased. Her delicate hand slipped into her pocket. "Here," she said, totally serious, foisting a second noodle husk into his palm.
Zuko stared. "Uh… Raven."
"I got enough for you."
"That's not food."
"It's kinda good, actually…" she trailed off and winced, like she was expecting mockery.
He let out a long, long sigh, deflating and rising at once, to fall back carelessly on the bed on his back, hands wide and one gently clenching the fragile noodle ball.
She was looming above him, and looked offended. "Try it." And she just kept getting closer. She was atop him. There was no escape. She had a single curl of dry noodle stuck to her chin with a fleck of spittle, but she was still gorgeous.
He plucked it from her unmoving, ghostly visage, and silently placed it in his mouth.
Crick.
The weirdest, wide-eyed smile was flickering on her face as he chewed the tiny unflavored morsel. And it seemed she saw fit to reward him by changing her pinning, predatory posture to one where she straddled him in a rather enjoyable way, and then collapsed with her cheek to his shoulder.
"Zukoooo…" she moaned, almost crying in tone.
She watched as he awkwardly reached over her head, jostling her, but she held fast to her chosen cling.
Crick.
He snapped off a bit, and stuck it in his mouth, gazing at her half-lidded, and getting very sleepy again.
And she was back to pouting. "I love you so much…"
He wrapped an arm around her, and squeezed tight like he really, really wanted her there.
"I'm so sorry…" she barely croaked.
"I love you too. Now go to sleep, you noodle monkey…" he breathed out.
She let out a little chirp. It wasn't clear what it meant, but she did close her eyes.