Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The boy stirs as they reach the gates, fists tightening around his furs for support. His little eyes blink open, but they're glazed over; foggy with a lack of proper consciousness and clarity. He's more properly conscious than he has been in days though. Perhaps he can sense that their journey is close to an end. Perhaps from the change in the ocean waves or perhaps in Pakku himself.

It has been a long time spent away from home, for one who so rarely leaves. He could not stay his hand on such a matter of urgency, no matter how much he already misses home. (He worries how the boy will cope, so far from home with no way back. But he is young and children are resiliant. In time he will forget much of what he is missing. Whether that is a blessing or a curse-only Tui knows.)

As the gates open and their boat is rushed in the boys head shifts, slowly like he's too tired (or in pain) to move well. Pakku recognizes one of the men on the gates; a young man who he had taught once. He knows his father. The man's family will be hearing of the strange boy Pakku brought back from outside the walls this night, he's sure. His student had never been very good at keeping things to himself, always gossiping with the other boys.
No matter. The many people come to watch his arrival ensure half the tribe will know of the newcomer come sundown.

"I'm going to Yugoda's," Pakku tells one of the guards on duty as he hops off the boat. "Send for Arnook. I must speak with him."

"What happened?" Yugoda demands, the second she lays eyes on the boy.

Pakku hands the boy over without a second thought both because he knows better than to cross Yugoda, and because he would much rather leave the child and the healing in her hands. Both children and healing are somewhat, beyond him. He knows enough to get by and no more

"I've been treating the burn," Pakku tells her. "He had a fever but it's been gone for some days. he hasn't been lucid since the injury."

Yugoda doesn't respond, but he knows she's memorizing each detail just as she is the wound in front of her eyes. Sterile water pours into her grasp and the child whimpers and flinches back; arms too weak to properly shield his face. It would have been better if he had stayed asleep.

Arnook arrives as Yugoda is finishing her treatment, mouth open to say something. He falls silent when he sees the child, unconscious as Yugoda bandages his wound. (He had been too frightened to treat. He worked himself into a panic, screaming and crying and begging until they had sedated him. It was better, that way. he is too young a child to be so scared.)

Yugoda leaves the room when her work is done, in the pretense of grabbing more medicine. (It is really to give them the feeling of privacy, even if none of their conversation is truly private from her.)

"This is why you left."

"His own father burned him, Arnook," Pakku says carefully. "Because he wasn't a bender. He thinks him dead. "

Arnook is not a cruel man, Pakku knows, but he made a promise to protect this child and he will not let his word be undone. The boy is Yue's age. He can only hope the father in Arnook can see past the fire nation in the boy.

"A child?" Arnook's voice cracks. "You went and brought back a child? How did you even find him? What were you thinking?"

"I promised to keep him safe. You know I do not make promises lightly. I will care for the boy," Pakku says, because there is no one else. "There won't be any problems, will there?"

"No, I think not," Arnook says unsteadily. "You have never been one for children, old friend. Are you sure about this?"

"I must."

Chapter Text

There is a boy inside the city walls, the people say. A boy from the outside. Master Pakku's illegitimate son, people whisper to each other, when they think themselves alone.

Everyone knows Master Pakku has broken the unspoken rule to never leave the northern waters several times before. It is not unthinkable to them, that he might have a woman wherever he's visiting. Though not any less scandalous, to have a child, unmarried, to a woman who is not even tribe. But these are just rumors, and nobody can prove anything yet, so it remains unspoken publicly and whispered in private.

Yue hears this from the palace staff. The woman who cook and clean and teach her what her mother cannot. Her father's most trusted warriors and council and the young soldiers who come in and out of the castle; even the men gossip. They gossip wildly, in fact, though most of it is quite rubbish given that it mostly comes from the younger soldiers who, quite frankly, tend to be idiots.

Yue has learned how to overhear these things with nobody noticing, because nobody will ever tell her anything. No matter how important it might be for her to know, or how old she gets. She is too young, too delicate, too frail to learn the truth. To know what is going on inside her home or outside it.

So. There is a boy who might be Pakku's son. Who didn't come from the tribe. And nobody will tell her a thing about him.

If he were really Master Pakku's son, she thinks, Father would have told her.

"Mama?"

The hand in his hair stops as he stirs awake. A heavy cloudy feeling in his head keeping his eyes from opening. His eyes throbs like there's a weight pressed down on it, and his face tingles all over. He can't really feel it.

"Don't move," someone distinctly not his mother says, and a hand presses gently on his shoulder, keeping him still. "How are you feeling?"

He feels a little like the time he fell ill, when he was so little he can barely remember it. These aren't his sheets, he realizes, and the air smells different. He wants his mother.

"Am I in the infirmary?" He asks.

It hurts, to talk. He can't think straight. Mama was just here, wasn't she? Where did she go?

"I'm the healer, Yugoda-" the woman says voice muffled, so he can't hear the next bit. "You need to eat, little one. You must be-"

Then there's a hand on his forehead that isn't his mother's. Something presses against his lips strange unlike metal, and a salty unfamiliar flavor reaches his tongue. He turns his head away the next time it touches his lips. He wants his mother. Where is she? Where is he?