The sparring had halted only because Raven saw no excuse for the oily, sooty veneer atop Zuko's deck, and after tolerating the state of her sleeves, one little papercut of a remark from the prince sent her storming off down below to freshen up.
No one had tried to stop her. Zuko stood there without worry. It was all clearly performative; he could tell when she was really mad.
Still wished he hadn't said it, though.
One of Zuko's firebenders rolled his shoulder, flexed his fingers, and did a frankly great job of indirectly and politely asking why the prince was standing around like a dingus.
"Prince Zuko... shall we wait for her?"
Zuko, shirtless and faintly steaming, snapped around so fast the man took a stance. "Things have been complicated. Raven being here is weird!" he barked. "I'll be fine. Worry about your own bending."
The firebenders instantly found each other fascinating.
Iroh, however, could endure ten full Zukosworth of ill-temper. "Mm. Complicated, yes," he said. "Though I thought Lady Raven seemed somewhat distracted as well."
Zuko grabbed a towel from a peg and brushed it over the back of his neck. "She's fine," he said gruffly, much lower than before. "Firebending's just… weird right now. Like I said."
Iroh just tilted his head with his smile faltering ever so slightly.
His nephew's lips scrunched up, but he breathed out, wiping away the last bit of grit his fire wouldn't boil.
"She thinks she has to be perfect…"
"Her bending is extraordinary for her age, just like yours!" Iroh didn't quite scoff, but he reeled back all the same.
"Not her bending," Zuko quickly said, glancing around like she might be lurking.
Iroh wasn't following.
"It's personal, okay?!" the prince suddenly barked, and threw up his hands. "Back off!"
The towel fluttered down behind him for emphasis.
"We'll talk later," Iroh agreed.
Zuko felt the distinct urge to grab his uncle's face and physically drag it down out of that stupid smile. He almost wanted to also drag the old man back into the topic just to spite him for thinking that would just work… again.
Like it was all so easy, Iroh sagely insisted, "Well, about her bending. She is a natural at shaping fire with breath alone. I am sure you have witnessed it plenty of times?"
The boy just stomped over to stare off the deck with his arms crossed, shot Iroh a sharp look, and held the gaze for a bespoke duration of menace before cranking seaward again.
"There are techniques that begin there," Iroh's eyes twinkled, utterly ignoring the aura of brooding lashing its shadowy tendrils his way. "I would be delighted to share them with her." He let the sea speak for a breath. "Of course, I will require a replacement for my authentic Ba Sing Se-made decorative porcelain soup bowl first."
Iroh folded his hands into his sleeves and waited patiently for his nephew to explode.
"It's just a bowl," Zuko said flatly, but whipped around. "You're not serious."
"Her father, I suspect, has several for her to choose from," the madman said with complete confidence.
A gust of wind rolled over the cruiser. It carried salt, a frigid cut, and something else, something faintly ugly and familiar from farther north.
Iroh's gaze drifted toward the sea. "I have also seen ash residue in the water," he murmured, "and an Arzayan-marked barrel floating past not long ago. I think we must be drawing close to Lord Arza's fleet."
That took the last shred of fight out of Zuko.
He drew a deep breath through his nose and let it out in a line of simmering frustration. "Great," he muttered. "So now I get to find out whether they'll open fire the moment we get close... or whether Raven's father decides to kill us anyway just for being part of the royal family once he knows Father covered for Azula."
Iroh nodded like that was a minor scheduling inconvenience. "I will offer him my best jasmine tea. It may smooth things over."
Zuko shot him a look.
"What?" Iroh asked.
"He seemed like he hated you almost as much as he mistakenly hated me last time."
Iroh's brows rose. "We have had our disagreements."
Zuko opened his mouth, but…
Something had caught up to him, sudden and hard as if a hook had been jerked through the back of his mind. He did not speak. He just stared past the deck, past the sea, straight through whatever he had been looking at.
Iroh's smile faded first into curiosity, then concern. "Prince Zuko?"
Zuko didn't answer.
He took one step sideways, then another, as if his knees had abruptly become an unreliable ally. He reached the gunwale and sat down hard on the edge of the deck. Both palms came up over his face. He bowed forward, teeth clenched so tightly the cords in his neck stood out, and let out a long seething breath through his teeth.
Iroh moved at once. "Zuko?" he said, softer now. "Does something hurt?"
Just a shake of his head.
Iroh came nearer and crouched slightly beside him.
For a long moment Zuko only breathed through his fingers as he dragged them down his face, and Iroh let him take his time.
Finally, Zuko said into his hands, "Uncle... back then."
Iroh waited again.
Zuko's fingers stopped at his chin, then rose back up to cover his mouth in shame. "He..." He swallowed. "I thought he meant Raven." Another swallow, drier and worse. "He thought I meant Ashaaaa…" the poor boy trailed off in an ever hoarser croak.
Iroh went still.
Zuko finally looked up, horrified all over again by the shape of it. "I thought he was just crazy, but…" One hand opened, a finger at a time, and he looked frustrated that there weren't enough to count to that angry. "Ah... he was really, really mad," he said in dire realization.
Iroh's face did something complicated and terrible.
"Oh, dear," he said quietly.
Zuko stared at the deck. "I said she had it coming." His voice cracked into a horrible little laugh that wasn't laughter. "Uncle, I… like, called her a little twerp and complained she was in the way… aaaaagh…" His fingers dug into his own hair. "He thought I meant ASHAAAA…"
Iroh stared up into the sky for a moment, searching for the most interesting clouds to remark upon, but despite the fun twisty-looking one, it just wasn't going to be enough to escape.
"Well," he said carefully. "That would explain why Zhao seemed to think you were being... very brazen."
Zuko made a sound somewhere between a groan and wanting to jump overboard.
Iroh sucked air through his teeth. "How unfortunate."
Zuko dropped both hands and glared at him in disbelief. "That's it? Unfortunate?!"
"It is," Iroh said. "And jasmine tea will not, I fear, be enough."
Zuko barked one broken laugh. "You think? He's not going to ask questions."
"But we have Lady Raven to send ahead of us!"
Zuko pressed both palms to his eyes again. "Great. I sure hope he doesn't recognize my ship. He's so going to! Agh! This is such a disaster! This is impossible! Me and my stupid mouth!"
"If we put her at the very front, right on the prow…" Iroh pondered, turning about to try looking for clouds again, and the spirally one was starting to get pretty intriguing!
Zuko let out another crazed little laugh. Iroh joined him. It lasted only a few breaths, before they quietly looked at each other like they were dead royalty walking.
Iroh patted Zuko's shoulder. "We will simply need extreme care."
"Preparing our wills."
"Prince Zuko..."
As Iroh kept his eye on the sky, Zuko stood, sauntered up to him, and let his shadow hang over his uncle's face. "What are you even looking at?" he demanded, like it even mattered.
"Hm," Iroh murmured after a moment. "Very interesting cloud."
Zuko didn't move. "Are you trying to annoy me?"
"Truly! Look!" Iroh pointed. "I wonder if such spectacles are common in the cold northern seas?"
Zuko sighed like a martyr and finally looked up. The sky was bright blue, and most clouds were dull grey and very vague, but there was one white trail poking out of the wider bulk. It shined from reflecting so much sun, and it seemed to move faster than the uniform drift of the rest.
"Weird," Zuko breathed.
And he squinted at the pale twisting band half-hidden in the grey haze, almost serpentine in the way it curved.
Iroh cheerfully suggested. "Looks a bit like a dragon, doesn't it?"
Then both of them caught rapid sparking glints—too fast to make sense of, like a cloud somehow had sharp, glassy edges.
Zuko's whole body tightened.
"Uncle," he said sharply.
"I see it…" Iroh trailed off, then went wide-eyed, instantly taking a bending stance.
There was no warning shout. No honorable declaration. Only the instant when both men understood:
They were under attack!
"Everyone! From above!" Zuko barked, already sliding his metal-soled boots into place and setting his posture beside Iroh.
A glittering shape punched out of the cloud almost directly above them, enormous and screaming through the air with enough speed that the eye could only really understand it a heartbeat too late. Zuko wasn't sure what it was, but he knew it was bad.
Uncle and nephew bent. Twin blasts burst up—narrow, weakened by haste, but they struck home. A burst of glittering, intensely steaming ice shot down at them in a vicious cone, blasting apart around them, and the whole deck vanished in misty fog as it peppered the metal deck in an ear-splitting racket.
The cold of the mist was striking, so sheer it stole breath, but thankfully the hail shards were angry but reduced to a stinging barrage instead of a skull cracking death sentence by their quick action. Iroh hid under his sleeves, ducking and sputtering, but Zuko was shirtless and cried out as it bit his skin all over.
Men shouted all over the cruiser, grabbing spears and looking around in confusion.
Zuko swept flames, pushing back the biting vapor, coughing once. "Who is attacking us?!"
"The Avatar's bison!" one of the firebenders cried from the far side of the deck, staring upward and pointing like a bit of a jackass instead of taking a bending stance.
Zuko rounded on him instantly. "Idiot! Stop gawking!"
Another glint flashed above, already close.
Zuko barely had time to plant his stance before the attack would have split the dumbfounded firebender in half. He drove both hands forward with a blast of fire so violent it kicked his own ever-longer hair back from his face. A wicked sharp blade of ice glanced off, just barely, shearing off a bit of armor at the man's shoulder as it slammed into the deck, sending him stumbling onto his ass with a yelp.
The deck lurched under the impact.
Everyone just stared for a stupid, risky second. The shattered remains of the ice were buried several feet into the iron plated deck, twisting and shredding metal with stomach-turning force.
Looking back up, Zuko expected to see a sky bison, but instead he couldn't quite make sense of what he saw.
"A… dragon?" Iroh blurted.
But bursting from the vague, misty white head with glittering icy fangs was Appa! The bison dove straight at them, the mist trailing behind and whipping around four fang-like blades of ice as if he took the dragon's mouth alone with him. Then two shot down like nocked arrows.
"Move!" Iroh shouted, no longer remotely calm.
He blew one completely out of the air with a perfect fireblast—Zuko struck the other, and it cracked, and shattered into flakes and mist on impact. But it was better than punching another hole in his deck, even if everyone was coughing and wheezing again.
Men shouted and failed to form up as they went this way and that, having little training to thwart attacks from directly above, while Zuko and Iroh dashed for the relative shelter of the control tower walls. The other firebenders joined in, sweeping flames to clear the deck of biting fog again before it swallowed every inch of black iron, though the deck was still bitterly frosted over.
In the last few yards, Appa bobbed as he dropped into a quick and reckless landing, just falling the last couple feet to BOOM! on the deck with a thunder that threw back cloaks and scattered loose gear.
Aang landed first off his glider in a sliding step, staff already in hand. He took a step forward, still searching for the best target. "Where's...?!" he started.
"You rotten invaders!" Katara raged through mist, landing in a trail of mist that instantly forged new gleaming blades of deadly ice, symmetrical around her again like the teeth of a giant maw she dared to stand right inside.
She swept a hand forward, leaning back into a low stance. The teeth yawned wider.
"You kidnappers!"
Zuko actually froze.
"Murderers!" Katara's voice cracked across the deck with a fury so total it made men flinch and pause. "By the spirits, if you hurt her, I'll make you ALL PAY!"
Aang, his stance failing, blinked at her. "Uh... whoa, Katara... chill..."
Sokka scrambled down last, spear in hand, boots skidding only slightly—he was very good on slippery ice. At least his spearhead was ahead of the other two. He glanced with wide eyes at Katara, who was sucking in air like she was about to breathe fire too, like why not? She just keeps making up powers anyway.
Finally having a target, the spearmen and other benders formed up and faced them, advancing more bravely than they had any right to.
"Raven's… uh… er, hey… I'm Zuko, and…" Prince Zuko tried, utterly flustered, knowing Raven liked that water tribe girl, but he was very confused about what to say and shocked by how much stronger she was than he'd ever realized.
"Is that the same girl…?" Iroh whispered out of the corner of his mouth, ready to bend but obviously not wanting to. "She's amazing!"
"Stop getting impressed!" Zuko nearly shrieked.
Expecting an attack, and not sure why the two royals by the door looked like a couple bickering idiots, Katara's perhaps a bit murderous focus flickered.
"Uh… h-hi" she said flatly, then suddenly went back to wild-eyed. "Where's Raven?!" she snapped. "You took her! Give me back my friend, you monster!"
Seeing the Icewolf-style fangs angling towards Prince Zuko like a snake about to strike faster than the eye can see, the firebenders behind the three stepped in and attacked.
Aang wasn't simply free of his lingering milkroot crash. He was ready. Almost silent, his foot swept the icy deck, his glider staff grabbed air, and shot each flame back in the men's faces. They stumbled, masks taking the heat at least, and crashed over unceremoniously to a man—one even flipped over head first, right into a stacked coil of rope. The halfway-spared spearmen staggered, and by the time they had footing, one had Sokka's spear under his nose.
"Spear guy to spear guy, don't even try it, bud," Sokka threatened, actually pretty convincingly.
The man chose not to contest.
"Wait!" Zuko shouted, panicked. He took a step forward, hands up. "She's fine! Raven's fine!"
Katara's narrowing gaze mirrored the tightening icy bite. It was not comforting.
"It's true!" Iroh insisted. "Lady Raven is well! She is my nephew's honored betrothed!"
"Yeah RIGHT!" Katara snarled, the ice bite yawning again.
Sokka's favorite spear guy gave him a shrug like he agreed with his fellows. It really didn't look like a ploy.
"Katara? The Fire Nation jerks do look pretty confused!" Sokka yelled back.
Katara rounded on him for half a second. "So what?!"
Then the cabin door between Zuko and Iroh burst open with a deeply offended kick. Raven barged out, towel around her neck, mist rising from her mussed-up, ice peppered hair after she had just fixed it. She leered this way and that, looking for someone in particular in an impressive moment of hyperfixation.
Her hair, freshly redone not long ago, was wrecked again and full of metal splinters and bits of shattered ice. Her robes hung wrong. She was shivering furiously, cheeks flushed from cold and outrage, with one hand up over the top of her head like she had recently taken an unfair amount of frozen ship to the skull.
"Did that FUCKING MORON helmsman hit an ICEBERG or WHAT?!," she raged like she'd decided on shouting two decks down.
Then she saw Katara. Rage instantly vanished.
"Huh…?" They harmonized.
Her eyes flicked to Aang. To Sokka. To the floating ice fangs. Finally to Zuko and Iroh, who she'd completely missed, and who were now giving her please help eyes.
Raven blinked. "Katara? Guys?" she said, suddenly much smaller. "What... are you doing?"
Katara stared at her. "Raven!? Did you… break free?" she tried, like that would be less embarrassing.
Zuko and Iroh both shuffled up to her, tilting their heads with wide, crazy eyes.
"Tell her, Lady Raven!" Iroh hissed.
"Before she murders us!" Zuko insisted.
Raven threw up her hands. "Not a prisoner!" she squeaked.
The whole deck paused.
Katara stared. Her fangs shifted, then trembled, and then… clattered on the deck as the mist began to fade.
"Really?" she squeaked back.
Raven shook ice and metal flakes out of her hair. Ones that Katara put there…
"Please don't kill my fiancé!" Raven blurted. "He's innocent! I was the dumbass, it was me! I was wrong about everything!"
Silence.
Even Appa tilted his head like 'aaawk-waaaard…'
"He didn't kill your sister?" Sokka asked as he cautiously backed off of the man he had dead-to-rights, but gave him a look like 'I still got my eye on you, pal'.
"No!" Zuko shrieked, throwing up clenched fingers. "Grrah! That was MY sister!"
Aang took a sharp breath. "You killed your own sister?! That's even worse!"
"No it isn't, she's a fucking bitch!" Raven instantly butted in.
"Wha-?!" Katara tried, totally not following.
Zuko just glared at everyone for a moment, before declaring, "I didn't kill ANYBODY! MY sister killed HER sister! Gah! This is so annoying! I HATE her!"
The recovered, now standing spearman muttered, "Ohhhhhh," in the tone of a man learning far too much all at once. "I was confused too."
"Shut up, you buffoon!" Raven snapped at him.
Everyone just kinda stood around. There just wasn't any kind of backup plan for hanging out and catching up, it hadn't been on the table. When Aang finally gave something of a wary leer at Zuko, however, the prince seemed to recall their last meetings.
"Also, I don't wanna capture you anymore!" he nearly begged.
Aang nodded. "Ah, okay. Cool! So uh…" He stood up out of his stance, with a hand on the back of his neck, and a doofy smile. "What's… ah… Raven… an' everybodyyyy UP tooo? These daaays?"