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muffinlance · 1 year

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I was wondering... Is there a Salvage headcanon where they did break Zuko's leg? If no one (including you ofc) ever did it, you can treat it as a prompt!!

So many angsty possibilities, and as much as I love and adore the original plot.... man, I'm so curious what would happen.

So what I’m hearing is that you like pain. Who am I to deny you?

(You can also read this on AO3.)

* * *

“Chief?” Aake repeated, kneeling over the still struggling boy. Pinning him down.

The prince wasn’t even fully lucid, and this was already his second escape attempt. He’d tried to firebend at Hakoda’s crew, with only his own fever to stop him. He was a child, by any reasonable standards; but a soldier, by his own nation’s, with the training to match. He was only going to get more dangerous. If the Fire Nation wanted to set the terms of this war, then be it on Ozai’s head.

“One,” Hakoda said. One leg had to be enough, to keep the young soldier down.

* * *

When Zuko’s fever broke, he had a black bruise around his wrist the size of a grown man’s hand, and a broken leg the storm hadn’t given him.

He had to get off this ship.

* * *

The prince knocked out two of Hakoda’s men. Sent another three to Healer Kustaa, with firebending that had thankfully been more concussive than blistering. Oh, and he’d managed to shove one of their tenders overboard. So now they were having to turn around to search for that, in the dark.

He’d half-way gotten himself overboard, too. It was anyone’s guess whether he’d have landed close enough to that boat to make it, with the weight of his cast dragging him down.

A moot point, as he struggled in Aake’s grip.

“I did say legs,” the man joked, humorlessly.

Hakoda tried to meet the prince’s eyes, but the soldier was too intent on battering himself against Aake’s hold. He met his crewman’s eyes, instead. Nodded.

Aake sighed. “Right. This is happening, kid. Hold still this time if you want it to be clean.”

The prince, eerily, did hold still. He didn’t scream. He hadn’t last time, either.

* * *

(Father hadn’t stopped burning him until he’d stopped screaming.)

* * *

“It’s coca-poppy, Prince Zuko,” Healer Kustaa said, from behind a re-locked door. “It will help with the pain.”

“I know what it is,” the prince shouted. “I don’t want it.”

Across the passageway, behind the door of his own cabin, Hakoda composed another ransom letter. This one ended up crumpled on his floor, too.

How did you tell a father that you’d broken both his boy’s legs? Things would be easier if—

Well. They still had that interrogation to get through, before he saw whether there’d be an if.

* * *

“She was alive when I last saw her. Your son, too. Sir.”

“...With the Avatar,” Hakoda repeated.

“Yes,” the prince said, staring up at the sickbay ceiling. “...Sir.”

Hakoda rubbed his temples. “I’ll be confirming your story. Until then: ship rules. You already know the price of escape. You have two more limbs, Prince Zuko; take more care with them. Firebend at my men again, or damage my ship, and your chances are done. You’re going to stay in here and obey every order our healer gives you, or I’ll be back in for another talk. Am I clear?”

“Yes. Sir.”

Sweat was beading on the prince’s forehead. His hands kept clenching and unclenching around his blankets. Let him be in pain, if he wanted; Kustaa had already offered him an out.

* * *

The doctor on Zuko’s ship had started him on coca-poppy before he’d known he was on a ship. Before he remembered what had happened, before his vision was clear enough to read the banishment notice for himself. Uncle had fussed over every little sound he made, and made sure Zuko drank every dose.

It took him a year and a half to get back off it.

* * *

Kustaa had prescribed at least an hour on deck each day. Firebenders and sunlight, or something. The prince sullenly allowed himself to be carried by a crewman and propped up out of the way.

Panuk watched him watching the waves. He went below deck, and came back with a plate. Set it on the deck between them, and sat himself down next to it.

“Drowning is not a pretty way to go,” he said conversationally, between bites of smoked fish the prince was pointedly not sharing.

“Is being murdered by savages any better?” the prince snapped, finally looking away from the water.

Panuk chewed. Swallowed. Used his foot to nudge the plate against the prince’s leg. Above the break, obviously.

“Are you going to eat?”

The prince looked… really confused. He looked down at the plate, then back up at Panuk, then around them, like he was looking for a net about to fall.

Which explained why he’d snubbed Toklo yesterday, when their youngest crewman had tried to have lunch with him.

“It’s common to share meals in the Southern Tribes,” Panuk said. “If someone sets a plate down next to you, it’s probably for sharing.”

“...Oh,” said the prince. He picked up a piece. Ate it, slowly, while sneaking glances over at Panuk. Ate the second a lot faster.

“We’d make it quick,” Panuk said. “If your dad doesn’t meet Hakoda’s demands, or if you screw up again. Quicker than the ocean would, at least.”

“...I don’t want the Leg Breaker to do it. Or the Chief.”

“I could volunteer. If it comes to it.”

“...Okay,” the prince said, and ate a third fish. And a fourth.

“How old are you, anyway?” Panuk asked, eyebrow raised.

Prince Zuko, fearsome prisoner of the Akhlut, was sixteen years old.

* * *

Prince Zuko, sixteen-year-old prisoner of the Akhlut, was bored.

“What?” he snapped at the healer, who’d stopped to give him that disappointed stare.

“How did you even reach that?” the man asked.

Zuko hunched over his borrowed book, and didn’t answer.

“Ask next time. I’ll help you get them down.”

Then the man went back to doing whatever it was he did in here, with all his powders and ointments. Maybe Zuko would understand, if he read far enough.

“Ask if you have questions, too,” Not-Uncle said.

…So Zuko did.

* * *

General Fong wanted the kid. General Fong wanted a lot of things he couldn’t have.

We have secured his cooperation, Hakoda wrote back. While I thank you for your offer, we do not anticipate the need for army assistance during the negotiation process—

* * *

Hakoda tried not to go into the healer’s cabin without cause. It was unpleasant, the way the boy spooked every time a crewman stepped in. The way he watched them with those wolf-hawk eyes, coiled like a pit-viper-leopard ready to spring, broken legs or no. But the door was open, and…

“Just pet him. Come on, one itty-bitty little ruffle-wuffle…” Toklo cajoled, pushing a growling isopuppy towards the prince’s face.

“No. He’s going to maul me,” the prince snapped, holding one of Kustaa’s medical texts between them like a shield.

“That was not a mauling,” said Panuk. “That was barely one itty-bitty little blood-draw. Just shove the seal jerky between his teeth when he lunges, then pet him. We’ll train him that you mean food—”

“How is that going to help with the biting?” the prince demanded.

Hakoda backed away before he could be seen.

…Apparently there were exceptions, in who the prince himself wouldn’t maul.

* * *

Apparently Hakoda’s dog was now one of those exceptions.

Fire Nation sympathizer.

* * *

Bato came back.

“So,” his second-in-command said. “Fire Prince in the sickbay, huh?”

Hakoda groaned into his hands.

* * *

“Did you name the dog?” the prince asked Bato. The kid was sitting up in his bed, propped up on pillows, draped in at least three layers of furs and an oversized coat. Which explained where Kustaa’s had gone. He was, inexplicably, holding one of Kustaa’s medicine jars between his hands.

“Interrogating the prisoner already, nephew?” Kustaa asked, setting out the last of his supplies. Then he reached for the bandages. Bato braced himself.

“Did you?” the kid said. And then, after a delay: “You are not my uncle.”

“At least wait for the torture to get started,” Bato said, through gritted teeth, as Kustaa tugged the edge of his bandage loose in what was probably the gentlest way but felt anything but.

He couldn’t have said if the prince kept pressing the matter, after that. Not until Kustaa was spreading on that miracle salve of his. In its tiny jar. Its tiny, near-empty jar.

“...Are we out of that stuff?” Bato asked, with some trepidation.

“We’re making more,” Kustaa said.

…The jar between the kid’s hands was steaming now. And he was still scowling.

“He volunteered,” the healer added, cleaning up.

Huh.

“I was making fun of Hakoda,” Bato said. “Not his son. Sokka’s a good kid.”

“So name the dog Hakoda,” the Fire Prince said, with a scowling seriousness that made the joke even better.

* * *

“Good boy, Hakoda. Who’s our Chief Woofer? Is it you? Is it you? Yes it is!”

“I hate you,” Hakoda said. “Go back to the nuns.”

The pupper thumped his tail against the deck, and barked for more jerky. Who was Bato to deny his chief?

* * *

“Wait,” Bato said, stretching his burned arm out slowly, and staring at the newest medicine pot the kid was heating. “Didn’t Hakoda order you not to bend?”

He’d never seen golden eyes that wide, or a pot boil over that fast.

* * *

“So,” Bato said, leaning against Hakoda’s doorway. “You ordered the kid not to firebend, but you also ordered him to follow Kustaa’s orders. Guess what Kustaa’s had him doing?”

“He what,” Hakoda said, standing. He marched across the hall, to where his healer was rubbing some kind of salve on their prisoner’s hands. “You have him firebending?”

Somehow, the kid’s eyes got even wider.

* * *

So. It turned out the prince needed to meditate. Badly.

* * *

The Fire Lord’s first reply arrived. Hakoda took in some meditative breaths of his own, then made sure the isopuppy followed him across to the healer’s cabin.

“Prince Zuko,” he said. Levelly. Reasonably. After his dog had jumped up into the kid’s arms. “Can you tell me why your father thinks the letter you sent him was a forgery?”

“It wasn’t,” the prince said, like that was the issue.

Hakoda pinched the bridge of his nose.

* * *

They needed proof of life. Proof they had the kid at all.

The Fire Lord’s son got a haircut.

Hakoda would have had Aake do it, but Panuk volunteered. Their second-youngest crewman and the prince had a brief stare off, before the prince lowered his head for the knife. Panuk did it in one slice; handed it off to Hakoda, without looking at him. Then he sat down behind the kid, and tidied up the cut. The prince had already been growing stubble over the rest of his scalp; it was just a matter of evening it out.

Hakoda sent the long phoenix plume with his next reply.

* * *

The Fire Lord responded with fingers.

* * *

The kid saved Kustaa’s life. Had the burns to show for it, too.

* * *

He still expected Hakoda to take his.

Maybe in some other life, Hakoda would have known how to reassure him. In this one, he stepped out of his cabin, and sent in his dog and Kustaa.

* * *

It was… unpleasant, having someone on his ship that was afraid of him. Someone who wasn’t an enemy.

The kid could walk around now, some, with the crutches their ship’s carpenter had made for him. His burns were healing well; Bato had inducted him into the Burned Arm Club, which had an elite membership of two. No, the prince insisted, the time Toklo had accidentally burned himself on a ship’s lamp didn’t count. This, despite his own protests over the club’s very existence.

He’d started yelling at the crewmen who—quote—wasted medical supplies by doing the same stupid things to themselves again—end quote.

He didn’t even avoid Aake, though the Leg Breaker name had stuck, and spread amongst the crew.

“I understand the chain of command,” the kid said, stiffly, when Hakoda had asked.

It had been Aake’s suggestion. But it had been Hakoda’s orders.

Hakoda watched the kid brought to tears over sea prunes. To laughter, when Bato figured out he was ticklish. The kid started warming up the crew’s breakfast in the mornings, because he was up anyway, and because he could.

He… wasn’t a bad kid. But he’d never be one of Hakoda’s.

* * *

General How sent a letter. It was significantly more diplomatic than the latest from Fong.

—a child of such value in an active warzone. Likewise, the prince should be continuing his tutelage in matters of state and such subjects as befit his station and future, and to build in him an appreciation for the support a joint backing by our nations could provide. You would be welcome to send with him a delegation representing Southern Water Tribe interests—

* * *

“You’re selling me to the Earth Kingdom,” the prince said, sitting across from Hakoda at the desk.

“I’m…” There would be no money exchanged in the transaction. But that didn’t change its nature. “...It’s the best circumstances I can provide for you, Prince Zuko.”

“It’s just Zuko,” the prince said. “I’m banished. And dead. Remember? Sir.”

Hakoda sighed. “Pack your things, Zuko.”

The prince looked at him a moment more, then left. It wasn’t until later that Hakoda realized the boy didn’t have anything to pack. He’d come to him with the clothes on his back, and that was how he’d leave.

* * *

The Water Tribe delegation consisted of Toklo and Panuk. Kustaa was needed on the ship.

“Look, they sent a carriage,” Toklo said, leaning over the rail. The General’s men were already waiting for them on the docks.

“Fancy,” Panuk said.

None of them mentioned the prince’s continued need for crutches, nor the impossibility of him making the trip by ostrich-horse. Hakoda was glad the general had sent a carriage, rather than a wagon. It was a relatively auspicious start.

The boy himself was sitting on a barrel, his crutches propped beside him. The isopup leaned against his legs, three hind pereopods drumming against the deck as he enjoyed a good ear scratching. It was impossible to explain to him that this was the last he’d get from firebender-warm hands. Or that when he scratched at the healer’s cabin tonight, there’d only be an empty bed inside. The boy had slept with Hakoda’s dog more in the past months than Hakoda had during this entire voyage.

Hakoda cleared his throat. The boy didn’t startle, thankfully.

“What?” he asked, eyes on the soldiers waiting for him, as their crew tied up to the pier.

“You could… take him with you,” Hakoda said. “The dog. He’s more yours than mine, these days.”

The prince’s breathing hitched. His hand stopped scratching, which led to nuzzling and play-nibbles, before he resumed.

“I can’t,” he said. “I don’t know if they’ll hurt him.”

Hakoda didn’t make any other offers.

His crew secured the boarding ramp.

“It’s your last chance,” Panuk said, giving the boy a nudge. “Go.”

And then the prince was hugging their healer, and if he was crying, that was between him and the man’s shirt. The kid was still wearing Kustaa’s oversized coat.

“You’re still not my uncle,” he said, into the man’s shoulder.

“You don’t get to choose your uncles, brat,” Kustaa said, hugging his nephew back.

* * *

The isopuppy prowled the ship all night, searching.

* * *

After the war—after the coalition of nations, after that uneasy alliance with the Dragon of the West and the sharp-toothed smiles he had specifically for Hakoda, after the peace talks and the compromises—

After.

The new Fire Lord had a council with all nations represented. Hakoda sent Bato, and Sokka. Panuk was already there. Toklo had gone home, to a sister that didn’t remember him, but was still young enough to accept him back within the week.

Katara left for the Fire Nation, too, when news reached them of the Avatar finally being found. She joined the other Southern healer in residence in managing his care. If Kustaa resented a teenager whose qualifications consisted of “magic water” stepping into his domain, Hakoda never heard of it. And he did still hear from the man, in the occasional letter home.

The Avatar, one letter read, was extremely pleased to have graduated to a cane matching his nephew’s. His nephew was less enthused.

* * *

Chief Hakoda of the Southern Water Tribe was not invited to the coronation of Fire Lord Zuko.

#Royal Physician Kustaa: *exists*#Fire Lord Zuko: I NEVER HIRED YOU #Royal Physician Kustaa: Iroh did #us uncles have to stick together #Ten Years Later: a very good dog surfaces in Caldera Harbor #capsizing multiple pleasure yachts with his tail wags #deafening the city with his barks #Zuko rushing to a palace window: CHIEF HAKODA <3<3<3 #Iroh and Kustaa: Well that’s the first time he’s been so happy to say THAT name #Salvage #Break-a-Leg Salvage #Avatar The Last Airbender #atla #ficlet #Zuko #Hakoda

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