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When Zuko was a prince, he learnt many things. When Zuko was royalty, there was emphasis on how he sits, how he looks, how he talks, how he breathes. Things that out on his ship didn’t matter.
Growing up royalty, Zuko had learnt how to firebend. Firebending was never something Zuko was good at, having not shown sparks until he was six years old, he was already a failure to his father.
But, as he had learnt and was learning on the deck of his ship, not everyone responded well to the same type of teaching. Where Azula thrived under the harsh stares of tutors, the impatient demands of you have one more chance to get it right or I will no longer teach you, and the violence that followed if a mistake was made, Zuko faltered.
Azula, as uncle had told him, likely wouldn’t respond well to Zuko’s method of training. Firebending with the crew, practising katas slowly and methodically until he was sure of his steps and breathing.
She wouldn’t respond to all the unorthodox methods Zuko has used to train, but Zuko thrived in it, so that’s all that matters, Uncle had told him.
“Everyone is different,” Iroh had said to him when Zuko was trying to summon a flame for the first time since his father had set his own son’s face alight. “And anyone who thinks someone cannot become an incredible firebender simply because he is not particularly good at the traditional ways of teaching is an imbecile.”
Zuko hadn’t entirely believed those words at the time but he had grasped onto them none the less.
Ozai had banished him, never to return, and all Zuko had to show for it was permanent disfigurement. Iroh’s words gave him a goal, something to live for and so he held onto it with both hands.
As Zuko gets healthier and is finally able to sustain a flame for longer than just a few seconds, the next problem arises. With the sight in his left eye mangled beyond repair, he realises that he will have to re-learn how to fight from scratch.
Going back to basics makes Zuko feel entirely inadequate, embarrassed and ashamed.
“I'm the prin-” Zuko had yelled one day, after failing, again to see anything coming from his left side, flinching at Kazuo’s flames and nearly losing his balance on the completely flat ground because his eye was so entirely useless. He didn’t even have the excuse of rough seas. It was entirely flat.
He cuts himself off abruptly, the left side of his face is burning, searing like the flesh is actively melting off his face.
He’s not a prince. Ozai revoked him of the title and sometimes, in the beginning, it would hit him like a komodo rhino and leave him breathless.
Kazuo watches him carefully and Zuko can practically see the cogs turning in his head. With no formal education, Kazuo’s textbook smarts are little to none, but time had taught him that Kazuo has a heart made of gold and more emotional intelligence than Zuko could ever hope to achieve.
Kazuo falls back into a bending stance, a small, hesitant smile on his lips. “Another round, Captain?”
(At the time, Zuko hadn’t really understood Kazuo’s motives, but two years on, Zuko understood them perfectly. Zuko wasn't a prince, but he was their captain. It was an alternate title, another goal to focus on. He hadn’t been a good prince, but Kazuo was giving him the chance to prove he was a good captain.
And Zuko had never been one to give up.)
It's Sato who comes up with the blindfold idea.
It's just over a year into Zuko’s exile and slowly, somehow his entire crew had become involved in getting Zuko back to, and stronger than he was before his catastrophic injury.
Iroh is been grinning, off at the sidelines, drinking tea as Sato offers the tattered and torn sheet to Zuko. Sato is a huge, hulking figure who has the strength to lift both Lieutenant Jee and Iroh onto his shoulders without breaking a sweat.
“Your hearing is incredible sir,” Sato tries to explain and Jee, shirtless and sweaty from his and Zuko’s sparing, comes to stand close enough to hear the conversation. “It might be useful to learn to use it too it’s full potential. Maybe, fighting when relying on your hearing will help you improve?” Sato sounds unsure, and it’s possible that Zuko still unnerves him a little, which is fair and understandable but still makes old anger boil beneath his skin. he takes a deep breath, remembers Iroh’s words.
In through the nose, out through the mouth. Ozai doesn’t love him but that doesn’t matter. Iroh is his family, and nothing else matters.
“Let’s try it,” Zuko says. He’s nervous, he realises as he ties the cloth over his eyes, trying to ignore the way he can’t feel the fabric on the left side of his face where the tissue has been too damaged.
He stands there for a moment before he slowly moves into one of the basic stances. “Would you help me, Sato?” Zuko asks, and he tries to hide the surprise at his own words. He wants the crew to like him, more than respect him and he doesn’t know what to do or how to feel about that revelation.
He can feel Iroh’s smirk from the sidelines and Zuko curses Angi to all the hells. He’s probably planned this somehow, that Zuko would loosen up and let people in, let people become his friends.
“Of course,” Sato says and Zuko immediately backtracks, pulling down the right side of his blindfold down so he can see him. “It’s not an order,” he says. “Only if you want to.”
Now Zuko can actually see Iroh grinning like a madman in the background, Zuko vaguely wants to puke.
Sato is a nice man and for whatever bizarre reason, the thought that he might actually hate Zuko is utterly horrifying.
Sato is staring at him now, eyes wide and a smile creeping onto his face and it takes Zuko a long second to realise that his piss poor attempt at not being an asshole worked.
“Two against one?” Jee calls from behind him as Zuko pulls the blindfold back up.
“No holding back,” Zuko encourages.
(By the end of the week, Zuko can take every crew member on without seeing a single thing.)
“We’re not a part of the Fire Nation,” Zuko says to them one day, two years into his exile and a few days after Zuko had gotten into a fight with a few Fire Nation soldiers and proceeded to accidentally liberate a small town.
They’re all wearing Earth Kingdom clothing, mismatched greens moulded into something that keeps them warm and comfortable while out at sea. If anything they look closer to pirates.
Jee thinks about the Earth Kingdom people’s smiling faces as they helped drive the Fire Nation troops from the area, thinks of how happy he and his crew felt and thinks about how they haven’t flown a Fire Nation flag from the ship for months.
He doesn’t regret a second of it.
“Technically, I have no authority over any of you,” Zuko continues.
They’re stopped at a port at one of the Fire Nation colonies. It’s a nice town, quiet and a good place to settle down as any. Jee picks up on what Zuko is getting at a second later and the sudden sadness that strikes him is overwhelming.
The last two years have changed them all. It’s opened Jee’s eyes up to the true nature of his Fire Lord, opened his eyes up the world as a whole and taught him that anyone who can set his own child’s face on fire is not someone Jee wants anyone to do with.
Jee isn’t sure when wariness became respect and respect moulded into friendship, but it did. And if Zuko was really sending them off, Jee isn't sure what he’d do with himself.
“I have... enjoyed my time with all of you and I would even go as far to say that we were friends,” Zuko’s words stutter a little at that, as though saying it out loud he has made a grave mistake, but Jee can tell he means it all the same.
Jee looks at Iroh, and his lips are pressed into a thin line, but his eyes are light - sad but proud. This was Zuko’s decision then. It’s incredibly hard to fathom that the boy in front of him was once the selfish crown prince, that this boy, full of love and determination, was once just the bratty son of a tyrant.
“If you wish to leave, you are more then welcome to.”
There is silence among the crew, but Zuko meets all their gazes one by one. He wants this for them, then. He’s giving them choice to choose their own life, something no one’s ever bothered to ask them before but Jee knows his answer long before he opens his mouth to reply.
Jirou is the one who beats them all to it. He steps forward, lanky but heavily built frame making him the second tallest next to Sato.
“Captain,” Jirou says. “With all due respect, I don't wish to be anywhere but with you and this crew.”
Jee steps forward, grinning. With what Jee has seen - watching Zuko flounder the last few years, finding his footing and balance and sense of purpose and his self all over again all because of the actions of one unforgiving madman, seeing the Earth Kingdom people desperately trying to survive in their war-torn world of poverty and suffering and how Zuko was determined to actually do something about it - Jee has nothing but respect for the young, brave man before him.
Jee’s been through plenty of commanding officers in his life and he doubts he’ll ever meet someone like Zuko ever again.
“We’re all fugitives now,” Jee says, making sure to meet Zuko’s eyes, to tell him that he means it. “But frankly, I wouldn’t want to do it with anyone else.”
Kazuo darts forward, embracing Zuko a messy, limb-tangled hug, and for the first time in a long time, Jee sees Zuko smile.
(In another two years, Jee will look at his crew as they work the tides like they've been doing it their whole life, as Iroh watches them all carefully, like an overbearing father, look on as Zuko gives orders with clarity and ease and wonder when they stopped being friends and became family.)
Teaching Zuko the breath of fire was one of the stupidest things Iroh could say he’s ever done. Zuko had picked it up like a fish to water, which was exactly the problem.
Zuko swims around their anchored vessel, as though the black, icy, potentially murderous water means nothing.
Iroh found himself impressed and horrified at the same time as Zuko’s stamina appeared to be beyond Iroh’s comprehension. Zuko had been taking up Iroh’s own personal firebending techniques based on years of watching other elements quicker than he’d ever picked up any of the traditional firebending moves, and the breath of fire was one of them.
As well as firebending with swords, which was simply outrages in the eyes of traditional firebending.
Jirou watches Zuko over the edge of the bow of the ship. This is Zuko’s record for how long he has been able to hold his breath for, and Iroh can see it’s making Jirou, who's counting for him, a little uncomfortable.
Iroh joins him at the railing and risks looking down. Thankfully, Zuko emerges almost as soon as Iroh takes a look.
Jiroh sends him a quick glance and then turns back to Zuko.
“He’s going to be one of the most powerful people in this world. He’s going to achieve something great,” Jirou says. It’s not a question, but a statement and Iroh can’t help but agree.
It’ll be different from all of Zuko’s forefathers, Zuko isn’t about raw power that holds destruction in its wake.
Zuko’s power comes in how he holds his form a little like an airbender, how his fire is less violent and pounds out of Zuko's fists with a certain calmness to it. How he can fight just as efficiently without bending, and even incorporate his bending into forms that are not meant for bending at all.
Zuko is powerful in that he can very well be a raging fire and as silent as the night. That he can swim through freezing water, navigate with nothing but the stars and empathise with people who used to be his enemy. How he can fight with his eyes closed.
Iroh watches as Zuko climbs the ladder back up the side of the boat, and can’t wait to introduce him to the White Lotus, and he can not wait to see what wonderful things he will achieve, now Zuko sees what Iroh sees.
Iroh meanders over to Zuko as a rich clean billow of flames pour out of Zuko’s nose as he warms himself and thinks how ironic it is, that Ozai’s downfall will likely be because he couldn’t see his own son’s potential and thought this ragtag group of fugitives wouldn’t last the year out on the open seas.
An imbecile, Iroh thinks.