His Enemy, His Lord

Heat pressed against Sokka’s skin the moment the ship slid into the harbor, the weight of it different from the sharp, clean cold of home. The Fire Nation capital rose in red stone and gold, layered like armor around a beating heart he could hear in the clatter of markets and the ring of steel from training yards. Banners snapped overhead, bright and proud. The streets were swept so clean that his reflection flickered in patches of polished stone. He couldn’t look at the gleam without thinking of soot on snow.

He adjusted the blue of his formal sash, fingers lingering on the bone clasp Gran-Gran had sewn back on for him the night before he left. He had stood straighter then, with the ocean at his back and the promise in his chest that he would bring something home. Here, he felt too wide in the shoulders, too ordinary, as servants in crimson walked with gliding steps and nobles drifted past with hair braided in perfect symmetry. Every warm gust carried the scent of spiced tea and something sweet browned in sugar. It should have been pleasant. It felt like a taunt.

The guards at the palace gates did not look at him the way soldiers used to look at him when he was just a boy with a boomerang and a mouth too quick. They looked through him, faces stern and blank. He gave his name, his title—representative, Southern Water Tribe—and the syllables sounded heavy and borrowed. The gates opened on a courtyard of red lacquer and white stone, carved dragons twining up pillars that reached to a ceiling painted with a sun that never went out.

Servants led him along corridors that glowed with paper lanterns, past courtyards where orange koi slipped just beneath the surface of black water. The city wasn’t just rich. It was relentless. Every surface declared a history of winning.

His room overlooked the harbor, black ships with gold trim nestled like sharks at rest. He set his satchel on a lacquered table and took out his notebook, sketching the harbor lines and the cranes that lifted crates with effortless precision. He wrote in the margins: Harbor reinforcement design. Easy to adapt to ice piers if materials provided. He wrote like each curve of the pencil could anchor him in purpose so he wouldn’t get swept by old anger.

He stopped at the word purpose and shut the book. He could see his father’s hands, scarred and steady, building a canoe with patient cuts. He could see Katara’s eyes when she talked about new water pumps for the village so the kids wouldn’t carry buckets halfway to the sea in winter. He could see the line of broken huts along their shore, bones picked clean by wind and salt. The room around him hummed with silence.

He had come to take resources home. Food. Timber. Tools. Benders who would teach, healers who would share techniques instead of hoard them. He had come to look officials in the eye and make them say out loud that anything given wasn’t charity. It was owed.

The Harmony Summit began with a procession across a mosaic that showed the world in perfect balance, waves and flame and earth and air nested together in a circle. Sokka walked beside delegates in green and white, cream and brown, faces serious, eyes moving the way his did: counting guards, exits, the slope of the floor if someone ran. At the far end, beneath a canopy of carved phoenix wings, Fire Lord Zuko stood in crimson trimmed in black, hair pulled back, expression carved from something he didn’t show. The scar pulled at the left side of his face like an old truth.

Sokka’s jaw tightened. He didn’t look away.

They bowed. Formalities unfurled. The first speeches were about peace, about rebuilding, about the world turning toward new days. Sokka listened, his hands folded in front of him until his fingers ached. When they called for statements of need, he stepped forward. The floor was cool through the soles of his boots, the air on the edge of too warm.

“My people rebuilt our homes throughout the war with our own hands,” he said, voice level, projecting. “We will keep doing that. But whole villages were burned. Fishing lines were cut. Tools were taken. Supplies were redirected to fuel this war. We need timber that won’t splinter in the cold, metal that won’t crack, seeds for crops that can handle short summers. We need medical supplies. We need skilled help—builders, not overseers. Teachers, not inspectors. We’re not asking for palaces. We’re asking for roofs. We’re asking for fishing boats that won’t sink the first time they touch ice.”

He paused, let the words sit. He could feel Zuko watching him from the dais. “And we’re not asking as beggars,” he finished, steady. “We’re asking as partners in making right what was done. We’re asking you to accept responsibility with action.”

A murmur rippled. Some faces pinched; others looked down at their hands as if they could hide in the lines. Sokka held their eyes, one by one, until the Fire Lord spoke.

“Your needs are acknowledged,” Zuko said, each word careful. “The Fire Nation will contribute resources to a joint project designed to demonstrate—”

Sokka’s teeth met. He felt the words turning toward symbols and gestures, toward things that would look good from far away. He didn’t interrupt. Not here. Not yet.

He stood rigid as the session moved on, making notes, catching eyes where he could. Outside, during a break, he moved to the edge of a balcony and breathed the ash-tinged wind. He could taste iron under the sugar in the air.

He had a plan. He had lists. He had the stubborn, hard knot of determination that had carried him across ice and desert and sky. He leaned on the balcony, looking down at the city that had lit itself on fire for a hundred years and called it light. “You owe us,” he whispered to the rooftops. “I’ll make you say it with your actions.”

From the corner of his eye, he caught a flash of red and black as Zuko stepped into the courtyard below, guards trailing. The Fire Lord tipped his face up as if he could feel being watched. Their eyes met for the barest moment, a line strung tight between balcony and stone path. Sokka didn’t blink.

He turned back to the conference room when the bell sounded. Duty first. He could feel the tide shift underneath his feet, the day pulling him toward the next exchange, the next demand. He palmed his notebook and went to take his place.

When the bell tolled and the delegates returned to their arranged places, the air settled into polite stillness. Sokka stood the way his father had taught him to stand when he had to be unmovable—feet apart, spine straight, words ready.

He asked for numbers. For shipments. For dates. He put facts on the polished table like he was laying down tools. He described how the Southern ice cracked differently now because their piers had gone rotten after years of patchwork, how a child’s cough didn’t fade in cold houses with thin walls, how the fish had shifted because their routes were upset by burned shoreline and oil. He didn’t soften his voice. He didn’t raise it, either.

“Our hunters can only go so far on patched skiffs,” he said, flipping his notebook open to a simple diagram. “We need four shipments of treated timber in the next three moons, not promises of future assessments. We need iron nails by the barrel and a forge crew to help us build a kiln so we don’t have to beg for every nail forever. We need two teams of healers trained in frostbite and infection. We need this confirmed by end of week so our people can plan the winter stores.”

The Earth Kingdom representative looked down at his hands. The Air Nomad envoy, a young monk with a calm face, watched Sokka as if weighing breath. The Fire Nation ministers to Zuko’s right whispered behind their sleeves. Zuko sat forward a fraction, expression carved smooth, the scar catching the lantern light.

“Representative Sokka,” one of the red-robed ministers said, voice clipped. “The Harmony Summit has an order of operations. Petitions—”

“These aren’t petitions,” Sokka cut in. “They’re needs. My people have been feeding themselves on smoked fish and grit for years. They will keep doing it if they have to. But your ships took our tools. Your soldiers burned our stores. You can decide if you are going to help fix that. I’m not here to make you feel comfortable while we talk about it.”

A sharp rustle went through the room. Zuko’s gaze slid to him and held there, hot and unreadable. The reminder of the boy who had chased them across the world tugged at Sokka’s ribs and died there. The Fire Lord spoke before any other official could jump in.

“I hear you,” he said. The words were quiet, but they cut across the murmurs. “The Fire Nation will contribute resources. But we need a framework that does more than move crates.”

Sokka’s jaw worked. “Crates build roofs.”

“And roofs fall if foundations are cracked,” Zuko returned, not unkindly. He shifted, palms flat on the carved armrests. “There’s a colony on the Earth Kingdom coast, south of Pohuai,” he went on, addressing the room but not looking away from Sokka. “It was destroyed in the last year of the war. It sits on a vital trade line. The Earth Kingdom doesn’t have the manpower to rebuild it fast enough. The Fire Nation has resources but lacks trust. The Water Tribe needs materials and training that can be adapted to their climate. I’m proposing a joint reconstruction project there. Neutral ground. Earth Kingdom oversight. Fire Nation funding and labor. Water Tribe design input and training exchanges. It will stand as a symbol of unity and as a test case. If it succeeds, we scale. If it fails, we learn and we change.”

A minister to Zuko’s left leaned in sharply. “My Lord—”

Zuko lifted a hand. “It’s not a gift,” he added, to Sokka. “It’s not meant to replace direct aid. It’s meant to prove we can build something together that doesn’t reek of the old system.”

Sokka felt the hard knot in his chest resist. Neutral ground. A symbol. He could already hear the speeches and see the painted murals. He didn’t want a symbol. He wanted barrels of nails and timber lashed to the decks of ships turned toward the south.

“Symbols don’t hold heat in a blizzard,” he said, steady. “My village can’t live in a ceremony.”

“No,” Zuko said. “They can’t.” He looked older than he had when Sokka first met him, not softer, but less brittle. “But if we do this, we create a pipeline and a precedent. We can assign resources to the Southern Water Tribe from the project. The teams we assemble will rotate north for training and support. The structures we standardize can adapt. If I sign a treaty today that says we’ll send timber and iron, a future minister can decide that the docks were too busy and delay it a season. If we lock this into a joint venture with multiple nations and a fixed timeline, that’s harder to ignore.”

Sokka swallowed against the instinct to argue with anything that sounded like compromise. “You want to do something that looks good,” he said. “You want to make your people feel better about what happened.”

“I want to make sure what happened doesn’t happen again,” Zuko said, and the quiet flare under the words didn’t feel rehearsed. “And I want your people to have roofs before the snow comes back. We can load the first shipment to the south within two weeks—timber, nails, medical supplies. We can also move a team to the colony at the same time. I’m not asking you to trade one for the other.”

The Earth Kingdom delegate cleared his throat. “If the colony is rebuilt with joint oversight and becomes a hub, it would benefit our coastal towns as well,” he said, careful. “And if Water Tribe design is integrated, the structures might better withstand winter storms.”

Sokka stared at the map laid out between them, the black ink lines of trade routes, the way they converged. He thought about the people they’d seen on the way in, shoulders bent, faces turned toward ruin. He thought about Katara’s careful lists and the way she’d smiled at him like he could make something happen.

He lifted his chin. “Two weeks for the first shipment,” he said. “And I’ll need the names of the healers and builders assigned north. If I find you sent me people who want to teach without listening, I’ll send them back. For the project, the Water Tribe needs final say on any design that will be replicated to our climate.”

Zuko nodded once. “Agreed. And the Earth Kingdom has final say on sites and community leaders. Fire Nation handles transport and funding. We meet every week to report progress.”

A minister started to protest. Zuko didn’t glance away. “It’s done,” he said, voice flat with authority he was still learning to carry.

Sokka exhaled slowly and felt the room decide around him. It wasn’t what he had come for, not exactly. But for the first time since he’d stepped off the ship, he felt the door to something open.

He closed his notebook with his palm. “Then we start now,” he said. “Time is not going to wait for our feelings to catch up.”

The council broke for the day with agreements sketched, not signed. A servant led Sokka down a quiet corridor to a smaller chamber with lacquered screens and a low table. The door slid shut with a soft click. Zuko waited by the window, hands clasped behind his back, city smoke threading the red sky behind him.

Sokka didn’t sit. “So that’s it? You get your symbol. We get to be part of the decoration.”

Zuko turned. “That’s not what this is.”

“It looks like exactly what this is,” Sokka shot back. His heartbeat was still sharp from the room, from all those eyes. “You spoke over your ministers so you could sell me something that makes everyone feel better about themselves.”

“I spoke over them so they wouldn’t shred the idea before it had a chance to live.” Zuko’s voice was even, but there was an edge under it. “You think I’m trying to look good? I am trying to make it work.”

Sokka took a step closer. “You keep saying neutral ground like it means we’re equal in this. We’re not. My people need aid. Your nation owes it. ‘Joint reconstruction’ is a nice phrase that lets you avoid saying the word.”

Zuko flinched, a small tightening around his eyes. “Reparations?”

“Yes,” Sokka said. “The one that gets stuck in your throat.”

Zuko’s jaw hardened. “You want me to go into that room and tell ministers who already think I’m weak that I’m going to punish our own people for a war they didn’t all choose? I’m trying to do something that won’t collapse the moment I turn my back.”

Sokka laughed, short and humorless. “And you think painting over it with a project will make it easier to swallow.”

“You think I haven’t considered every angle?” Zuko’s control slipped; heat rippled in the air. “You stand there and act like I haven’t bled for this. Like I haven’t fought my own family to drag us to this point.”

Sokka’s throat went tight. Katara’s tears, his father leaving, Yue’s pale glow flickered inside him like old, cold light. “You chased us across continents,” he said quietly, the words finding their own path. “You burned villages. You hunted Aang. Every time I see that crest, I see our boats cut loose and our nets on fire. Now you want me to nod along because you’re the one holding the pen.”

Zuko’s breath hitched, and then he straightened like he’d been struck. “You want me to be the villain,” he said. “It’s easier for you. If I’m always the monster, then you don’t have to admit I’m trying to fix it.”

Sokka’s hand curled into a fist at his side. “I don’t want you to be anything. I want you to do the right thing without making it a performance.”

“And I want you to stop pretending the only way forward is through your hurt,” Zuko snapped. “You talk about nails and timber like I don’t hear you. I do. But you won’t hear me when I tell you the only way this lasts is if we do it together and we show it to the world. You think I care about murals? I care about not letting the next Fire Lord undo this because I signed something that can be burned with a decree.”

Silence stretched, tight as wire. Sokka forced himself to breathe. The room smelled faintly of tea and ash. “When I was ten,” he said, voice lower, “your soldiers came and took the men. We rebuilt with children and old women. We were laughing at dinner one night because the stew burned and it tasted terrible and it was all we had. And then the sky lit up with your ships. You can tell me you’re different now. But you wear the same color.”

Zuko stared at him, and the anger in his face flickered, not gone, but shaken by something like grief. He swallowed, looking for a moment like the boy who had stood alone on the deck of a battered ship and shouted to a storm. “When I was thirteen, my father burned my face and banished me,” he said, each word measured. “I hunted you because I was taught that love looked like a task I would never finish. I don’t know how to make any of that right. But I’m not my father. I won’t lead like him. I won’t.”

Sokka felt the old ache shift in him, not softening, but moving. He dragged a hand through his hair and let out a breath. “I don’t trust you,” he said. “Not yet. Maybe not for a long time.”

Zuko nodded once, like he’d already known. “Then don’t trust me. Trust the framework. Put your people into it. Watch every ledger. Tear apart every plan I send you. Make sure it’s something that still stands if I fall.”

The door slid open without a knock, and a senior minister stepped in, flanked by the Earth Kingdom delegate. He assessed the set of their shoulders, the temperature in the room, and made the same choice Zuko had made earlier—he spoke before the moment could thicken into paralysis.

“Fire Lord. Representative.” His tone was formal, practiced. “The council has requested clarity on leadership for the Pohuai project.”

Zuko’s anger cooled into something flat. “You already decided.”

The minister didn’t blink. “Consensus supports the optics of joint leadership.” He glanced at Sokka. “You will serve as co-leads. Fire Nation administration and Water Tribe design in cooperation with Earth Kingdom oversight. The appointment is effective immediately.”

Sokka stared at him. “Against our recommendation?” His eyes cut to Zuko, sharp. “I didn’t agree to be managed by your ministers.”

The Earth delegate lifted a hand. “This was my suggestion as well. The people of the coast will respond better if they see the two of you together.”

Zuko’s mouth thinned, his gaze returning to Sokka’s. An entire conversation passed there—frustration, resignation, a grim, unwilling acceptance. “We didn’t ask for this,” he said, voice low.

“No,” Sokka said. He could hear his own pulse in his ears. He thought of roofs and nails and children who coughed in thin-walled houses. He thought of Katara’s lists and Aang’s soft hope. He pulled his shoulders back. “But we’ll do it.”

The minister inclined his head. “Your offices will be given the draft orders within the hour. The first coordination meeting is at dawn.”

The door slid shut again. The room felt smaller. Zuko stared down at the table for a long beat, then lifted his eyes.

“Co-leaders,” he said, as if testing whether the word would crack.

Sokka huffed a sound that wasn’t quite a laugh. “Try not to set the maps on fire.”

“Try not to stab my advisors with your pen,” Zuko returned, dry, a hint of humor breaking through without permission.

It slipped away just as fast. They stood facing each other, history curled between them like a sleeping animal they didn’t dare touch. Sokka reached for his notebook, thumb rubbing the worn edge.

“Dawn,” he said.

Zuko nodded. “Dawn.” He turned back to the window, to the red wash over the city, and Sokka let himself out, the echo of the word trailing him down the corridor like a promise and a warning.

Dawn came with a thin mist clinging to the palace courtyards, and the planning chamber was already crowded when Sokka stepped inside. The lacquered table was covered in scrolls and sketches weighted down by smooth stones. Brass models of cranes and pulleys stood like insects at rest. Zuko sat at the head, hair pulled back, robes crisp. His advisors arrayed themselves like armor along the walls.

Sokka set his notebook down and flipped it open to a page of neat sketches: water catchment systems, modular wall panels, a layout of a community well ringed by benches. “We’re wasting time if we start with the monument,” he said, before anyone could launch into ceremony. He tapped the drawing of a courtyard with a communal cooking pit. “Pohuai needs shelter they can fix themselves. Kitchens that won’t leave them burning driftwood inside their houses. A place for the kids to be where their parents can see them while they work. And the wells—these are hand pumps made from iron and wood. I can train anyone to repair them.”

An advisor in red with sharp eyebrows sniffed softly. “We are not building a festival village. The Fire Nation has a standardized housing plan that has proved efficient in post-disaster zones. Pre-fabricated structures, uniform, easy to replicate.” She slid forward a bundle of diagrams: neat blocks of houses, narrow streets, a central tower.

Sokka’s mouth tightened. He didn’t touch the polished designs. “Uniform means nobody’s needs fit unless they force themselves to. Those ‘efficient’ plans don’t account for the coastal wind, or that the ground there shifts with the rain tide. Your roofs will rip, your floors will warp, and you’ll blame the people living inside instead of the blueprint.”

A man with a graying queue folded his hands. “Our engineers have calculated for weather. There’s a drainage grid here,” he said, pointing with a lacquered nail. “And a watchtower to deter unrest. Security will help the population feel safe.”

Zuko glanced at Sokka, then at the plans, jaw tense. “We can adapt the designs,” he said. “We aren’t going to drop the same structures on different soil and hope.”

“Adapt how?” Sokka asked, heat climbing his neck. He slid his own plan forward. “Start at the shoreline. Reinforce the breakwater with reclaimed stone and bent wood piers. Use what’s there, not imported lumber nobody knows how to maintain. Build the first houses in clusters with shared tools. Put the infirmary near the freshwater source, not in the center of town where carts have to haul patients over uneven ground.”

“And what of optics?” a younger advisor asked, eyes cutting toward Zuko as if for permission. “The people must see progress. A visible center—a tower, a hall—signals stability. It tells our enemies and our citizens that order has returned.”

Sokka laughed, short. “A tower tells people who to blame when they trip over loose paving stones because the street flooded. People don’t live in optics. They live in homes. They get water in buckets. They fix broken door latches with string. They need training and materials, not a shining square with banners you can see from a distance.”

“Representative Sokka,” the woman said, tone edging toward patronizing, “you speak with conviction, but the scale here demands efficiency. Our pre-fabricated units can be assembled by a trained team in a day. Your hand-crafted approach—”

“—isn’t hand-crafted,” Sokka cut in. “It’s modular. Panels that can be lifted by two people. Pegs instead of nails where we can use them. If a wall rots, they replace the panel, not the house. If a hinge breaks, the whole door doesn’t fail. I’m not telling you a story. I’m telling you what will still stand in five winters.”

Silence rippled. Zuko’s fingers pressed flat on the table. “What if we blend the approaches,” he said, voice even. “Use the Fire Nation infrastructure for speed—roads, supply chain—”

“And you get your square,” Sokka said, unable to keep the bite out. “And a watchtower to ‘deter unrest.’”

Zuko’s mouth flattened. “Security isn’t just about intimidation.”

“It is when you put a tower before you put in a clinic,” Sokka said.

A murmur rose from the advisors. “My lord,” the gray-haired man said, “there are funds to consider. Consolidating resources into central projects reduces waste. If we allow local variance, we will hemorrhage coin on custom parts.”

“Custom parts?” Sokka stared at him. “It’s wood and iron and rope. The custom part is teaching the blacksmith to make a pump ring and paying him for it, instead of shipping everything from your foundries so you can stamp your crest on it.”

Zuko’s eyes flickered to Sokka’s, something like agreement there, and then slid away, snagging on the lines of the tidy Fire Nation plan. “We won’t get the council to approve a budget that looks… scattered,” he said quietly.

“It’s not scattered. It’s distributed.” Sokka felt the room thinning around him, the way he did before a fight he didn’t want to have but couldn’t walk away from. He tapped the simplest drawing he had, a square room with two windows and markings for airflow. “If you build ten of these with the right orientation, you cut smoke in lungs in half. You reduce infection. People sleep. They work better. You want efficiency? Healthy people are efficient.”

The young advisor actually leaned back, as if the volume of Sokka’s certainty was a force. “There are signifiers we cannot ignore,” he said, weak ground shoring under a familiar line. “If we present this to the world, to the Earth King, to our own nobles, they must see Fire Nation order at work. Your… communal arrangements read as untidy.”

“Untidy.” Sokka’s laugh came out flatter this time. He looked at Zuko. “Is this what you meant by ‘showing it to the world’? Because if the show matters more than the people on the ground, then this is nothing.”

Zuko flinched at that, the smallest twitch at the corner of his mouth. He looked down at his hands, then at his advisors. “We will not ignore the local needs,” he said, and the room stilled because his tone had shifted into steel. “We aren’t building soldiers’ barracks. This is a home for people who have already been broken by our war.”

The gray-haired man bowed his head minutely. “Then, my lord, we propose a compromise. Begin with the square and main thoroughfare. Establish the clinic and storage near the center for ease of distribution. Deploy pre-fabs for immediate shelter while the… distributed units are trained and constructed.”

Sokka swallowed the protest hot on his tongue. Immediate shelter was the only piece he couldn’t argue with. “And who decides where the pre-fabs go?” he asked. “Because if you place them in the flood path, you’ll be back in a month rebuilding everything.”

“All placements will be made by the engineering corps,” the woman said, already scribbling notes.

“No,” Sokka said, the word scraping raw. He looked at Zuko, not the room. “We go to Pohuai and walk the ground with the people who live there. We don’t place anything until we do.”

An advisor’s mouth opened to argue. Zuko lifted a hand and the room shut its teeth with a click. His gaze on Sokka was unreadable for a long breath. “We’ll go,” he said, quiet but ringing. “But the initial shipments and crews will be dispatched today. We can’t wait.”

Sokka’s shoulders dropped an inch. He could feel the stalemate settle like a stone between them, immovable for now. “Fine,” he said. “Send roofs that can be lifted by four people. Send nails and pegs. Send rope. Leave the tower scaffolding on the dock.”

The woman’s pen paused. She looked to Zuko. He hesitated, the weight of a crown in the space of a second. “The tower can wait,” he said. “The clinic can’t.”

It won him nothing in the room but a few tight mouths, a few lowered eyes. It didn’t feel like a victory to Sokka. It felt like a thin line drawn on paper while a storm chewed at the edges.

The meeting dragged until the sun was high, every decision a tug-of-war. When they finally stepped out into the corridor, the air tasted like dust and old smoke. Sokka pressed his fingers to his eyelids and exhaled.

Zuko stood a pace away, looking like he’d been carved down to the necessary parts. “We’re not going to agree on half of this,” he said.

“Not today,” Sokka said, the words dry in his mouth. “Maybe not until we’re standing in the mud.”

Zuko nodded once. “Then we’ll stand in the mud.”

They didn’t look at each other as they parted, each taking a different hall, carrying the same weight into different rooms. The stalemate walked with them, the shape of a fight they would have again and again until one of them broke—or something else gave way first.