31_days | [Dec. 8] [Avatar] Family Ties

Title: Family Ties
Day/Theme: 12.8 - Marriage without consent
Series: Avatar: the Last Airbender
Character/Pairing: Zuko, Hakoda, surprise pairing
Rating: PG-13
A/N: Zuko and Hakoda get into a little argument about a certain lady who's central to both their lives.

“Are you sure I can’t ask my daughter to heal that for you?” Hakoda asked, shifting uncomfortably on his cushion in the stony silence that followed his question. Across the table, the young Fire Lord glared back at him, silent and unmoving, his face the same color as his scarlet robe, except for the area around his good eye, which was turning purple.

“The punishment,” Zuko responded icily, “for striking the Fire Lord is death.”

“You broke two of my fingers,” Hakoda reminded him calmly, waving his bandaged hand as evidence.

“You were in my mother’s room!” Zuko shouted, planting both his hands against the tabletop, leaning across the short distance between them. “It hasn’t been light out for an hour! What were you doing in my mother’s room?!”

If there had ever been any question that Hakoda was Sokka’s father, the (stupid, infuriating, superior) look on the older man’s face - one Zuko had seen countless times on his son – left no doubt. “Surely General Iroh has explained these things to you, Lord Zuko,” he said, on eyebrow raised, and Zuko nearly leapt over the table in a rage.

“You have no right,” Zuko seethed, “to breathe the same air as her, let alone share the same room! She’s royalty! War hero or no, you’re still a peasant! I’d have you killed just for looking at her if I didn’t think it would upset her!”

“So,” Hakoda mused, when Zuko paused to draw a deep, ragged breath. “If I married her, I wouldn’t be peasantry anymore, would I?”

Whatever he’d been about to say died in his throat, and Zuko sat back on his cushion, face going slack. “I’m having fever dreams again,” he mumbled to himself, staring blankly at a spot on the wall just over Hakoda’s shoulder. “This is just a bad dream. Last time I was the Avatar, and now I’m the water tribe scum’s brother. I need Uncle. Where’s Uncle?!”

“He’s with your mother,” Sokka offered as he entered the room, settling himself down beside his father. “Mind if I ask what you were doing in her room?” he queried, giving his father the same look, raised eyebrow and all, that Hakoda had given Zuko moments before.

Hakoda opened his mouth to respond, his grin much too smug for Zuko’s liking, and the Fire Lord decided he’d had enough. “I’m going for a walk,” he announced calmly, rising and leaving the room as quickly as he possibly could. It was too early in the morning for a headache.