Chapter Text
“I’ll be honest,” Sokka shrugs, “I kinda assumed you were dead.”
“Yeah,” agrees Toph. “We totally thought you kicked the bucket, Sparky.”
Zuko gapes at them. “I—I’m not.”
“Clearly,” says Katara.
And—wait. Let’s back up.
“Uncle!” A boy currently called Lee shouted on his way back from table three, laden with a tray and a pot, anticipating at least two more customers coming in the door any moment and aware that table five needed a wipe-down before that happened. “We need more lychee!”
The Jasmine Dragon was beautiful. Its offerings were second-to-none, which every citizen of Ba Sing Se to cross its threshold since their recent grand opening heartily agreed upon. Its staff were also top-notch—though customers who knew the shop’s proprietor from his days in the Lower Ring (of which there were few but more than none, as there is nothing that sees the mighty brought low and the lowly rise above their station quite so much as the promise of a good cup of tea) were impressed by the way dear Mushi’s nephew had really stepped up in recent weeks.
Young Lee was a frequent topic of conversation among the Jasmine Dragon’s regulars. He was memorable for many reasons: attentive service, striking eyes, and the fact that he was one of two employees, for a start. His looks didn’t hurt, either, though this far outside the Lower Ring he served as a physical manifestation of the entire city’s shared elephant-rhino in the room.
(It was a shame, a gaggle of grey-haired women with empty nests and little else to do sighed, that there was nothing to be done about his face. He could have been so handsome.)
This rush in the mid-afternoon was nothing compared to the morning shifts. University students in particular lined up around the block to treat themselves to a cup of hot tea kicking off a day or marking the blessed end of an all-nighter. More than one exhausted student had received a free cup of tea and a healthy dose of gentle advice from Mushi after stumbling, bleary-eyed, into his presence.
Lee was less likely to give either—advice or free tea—but he was a good listener.
“And then I found out he told Tou that Hei-Lin helped me unlock the door, so it was a moot point anyway.” The girl blew her own bangs out of her eyes crankily and set her chin in one hand. “I just don’t know what to do.”
“Mhm,” Lee hummed quietly as he wiped down the table.
The rush of customers had slowed to a trickle, leaving Pang an empty corner of the shop and Lee’s ears—or ear, maybe, but she thought it would be rude to ask if he could hear out of the left one; he tended to keep her on his right side anyway—hers to use.
“I guess it’s a pretty big jump to end a friendship over one prank and one zebra-cow,” Pang added.
“Yeah,” Lee agreed in his gentle, creaking voice. The table was long since clean; he began to stack empty cups one table over.
“But! What about… what about loyalty? You know? If you ask a friend to keep a secret, does it matter what it’s about? If you’ll betray me over a zebra-cow in the planetarium, you’ll betray me over something else in the future.”
“Hm.” Lee sounded thoughtful.
“I guess…” Pang sighed, “it was a stupid move. Friends aren’t friends if they just enable you. Sometimes they have to remind you to keep your head on straight. You’re right. I should apologize to Tou.”
Lee didn’t quite smile. Pang didn’t know if she’d ever seen him smile. The side of his mouth twitched, though, and he nodded slightly. He carried away the tray of stacked cups. Pang followed to pay her bill, noting the uneven ends of the boy’s shaggy hair, which tickled his collar and bunched behind his ears like he’d never had a proper haircut. You can take the boy out of the refugee camp, Pang supposed.
Lee’s smiling uncle greeted her warmly at the counter.
“And how are you this lovely afternoon?” Mushi asked.
“Much better.” Pang returned his smile.
“I’m happy to hear it. It isn’t every day we get to help a refugee of our own!” Mushi laughed at his own joke.
“University security will catch up sooner or later,” Pang shrugged ruefully. “Thanks again for letting me hide in the kitchen, though. I promise I won’t make a habit of it.”
“Any time! I’m certain my nephew enjoyed the company.” Mushi shot a sly smile through the window into the back room, where Lee was methodically cleaning teacups.
“Thank you as well, Lee! You were a big help today.”
As Pang made her way back into the streets of Ba Sing Se, she could have sworn she heard a grumble in a familiar voice behind her. She was too far away to make it out exactly, but it might have sounded a lot like, Don’t say anything, Uncle.
She also missed the answering chuckle, but it was there nonetheless.
Zuko swept the marble steps of the Jasmine Dragon in the orange light of sunset. He could feel its last rays disappear even with his back to the doorway. The fire in him cooled with the oncoming night: a natural cycle like flickering candles, like steady breathing. A week before, this daily ebb and flow of power served as a reminder that he was not what this city thought he was. He was something else; he was more.
Now, it was simply another sensation. It meant nothing more or less than what it was—same as the wind on his face, the sound of rushing water beneath the footbridge he crossed in the lilac-colored evening, the pebble that rattled in his shoe on the walk back to his and Uncle’s apartment.
“May I help with dinner, Uncle?” Zuko offered. Uncle smiled, nodded, and passed Zuko a cutting board and an onion.
It had been a long time since the luxury of fresh vegetables was so easy to indulge in with such frequency. Even on the ship, they stocked provisions for months at a time and from Earth Kingdom ports. In the Fire Nation, the war produced abundance; elsewhere, scarcity.
There was no war in Ba Sing Se.
There were, however, fresh onions.
“Table for two, please.”
Bustle of orders, faces, steaming cups. The rhythm falls heavy. It goes light, then heavy again. Footsteps around chairs, pulled out with no warning, arms where arms should not be and hot, hot tea ready to scald. It is lucky that Zuko is light on his feet.
“Could I get a napkin?”
Messes made by other people are a new source of suffering. Tablecloths start out white. They end the day otherwise. He crouches to mop up cold tea. Feet in his face—not new. Not here. Not elsewhere. Zuko may go to the ground, but he never kneels.
“Could I get a refill?”
Tea is endless. Steam wafts up, becomes clouds, becomes rain, becomes river. The well here is trustworthy, but tea has to boil. It boiled as well in the forest and the tenement as it does here. Zuko still cannot tell the difference.
“Could I get your name?”
Lies make the legs unsteady, leave a lingering look, and come out laconic. Memory is a knife. Truth is a pursuant danger. Faces come and go without words to signify. Words put three into one: lies, memory, truth. Zuko’s face does the job well enough on its own.
“I ordered ginseng, not jasmine.”
There is honor in humility. There is humility in service. There is service in standing silent while a man spits rudeness through his teeth. What service—that’s the question. Men dare make demands of their lessers. Men dare make lessers of one another. Zuko was one such man, once, which is when time cracks—
Time cracked.
So did Uncle’s favorite ceramic teapot, the one with the lotus pattern around its belly. The flame beneath flared hot enough to shatter porcelain; a flower cracked in two. Zuko knew enough about tea to feel the shame of ruining something beautiful—more than the pot. The heat surely scalded the leaves inside beyond salvaging.
Uncle’s eyes were not angry. Uncle’s eyes were never angry these days, and that had always been the worst part. The worry in them did nothing to stop the shame.
Shame was colder than anger, at least. Zuko breathed in. He fell heavily back into the rhythm.
Deep beneath Ba Sing Se, a plan fell into place. A battle was lost; a battle was won. For the first time in the history of the Earth Kingdom, lightning struck underground.
Zuko saw the smoke first.
He had his own room in the Upper Ring apartment. Gratitude was a sweeter taste than he had known in years, so he sat with it daily: a new color to his meditation. Still, it wasn’t often he spent evenings alone anymore. Uncle’s quiet humming soothed him, a fact which he had steadfastly refused to admit for too long.
It was hard for Zuko to remember why he had wanted to deny that Uncle made him feel safe, feel whole, feel worthy. All of it felt so distant these days. A story that belonged to him, yes, but one that had happened when he was a different person. It had little to do with who he was now.
This evening, he wanted solitude. If Uncle had poked his head into Zuko’s room and invited him for a walk, he would have said yes; it was not the solitude of exile anymore. He was not burning away inside his own body. He was calm. He was still.
He looked out the window.
“Uncle!”
Iroh had not heard his nephew sound so afraid since Azula struck him down in the ghost town far beyond the city. He had not heard Zuko sound so young since the bandages across his eye were fresh. Iroh’s body filled with the cold anticipation of lightning before he even turned around, ready for what would come.
He took in the state of his nephew with one eye a general’s eye—the other, a father’s.
Zuko was on his feet; that was better than it could have been, though he’d seen the young man many times stubbornly fight through injuries that he oughtn’t have tried to. He was not bleeding; this, another sign for the optimist in Iroh, though he knew well that many of the worst wounds left no mark on the skin. His face was a mask of something beyond terror—pure panic. That was, perhaps, worse than if harm had shown itself in any of the other ways.
“Zuko.” Iroh dropped the hand shears he had been using to prune his bonzai. He crossed the room to set gentle palms on Zuko’s shoulders. He could feel his nephew trembling. “What happened?”
Zuko’s mouth twisted in pain. He opened it, but a sound through the open window spoke first.
Wailing. The crash of stone. The crash of metal.
Iroh smelled smoke.
An old, reflexive selfishness whispered that this was wrong, only because if Ba Sing Se were to fall, it should have fallen to him. Iroh smothered it like a wayward flame. This was now his city, his home, his future of peace and prosperity. It was where life happened. More importantly, it held all the remaining family he himself cared to hold. The city walls were his own arms: Zuko within them, finally allowing himself the chance to stay.
And now the Fire Nation had broken through—had hurt his nephew, even though they had not found him.
Iroh was not one to panic.
“Breathe,” he reminded the boy shaking apart before him.
Zuko breathed, and Iroh breathed with him. He recognized the rhythms; lessons repeated often enough become habit to the body. It took minutes of slow breaths to calm Zuko enough that he could speak.
His eyes opened—asymmetrical, which had not always been the case, and serious, which had—and his chin tilted in decisive resignation.
“Burn my face,” Zuko said.
“What?”
“The other half of my face. You have to burn it.”
“Zuko—” Iroh’s worry turned heavy and metallic. He had a strong stomach, in every sense, but the thought of his nephew’s face burned raw again—by another man he trusted, by him—was more than enough to send it roiling.
“I’m not exactly hard to recognize, Uncle,” Zuko spat. He was forgetting his breathing again, Iroh could feel it. “The Fire Nation is here. You think they won’t notice the traitor prince just because he’s wearing an apron and serving them tea?”
“I think you need to keep breathing. Sit down, let me make you something hot to drink.”
“Tea isn’t the solution to everything!” Zuko batted Iroh’s hands off of him and backed away like a frightened, cornered animal. “We thought this city was safe. That’s made us careless. The whole Upper Ring knows what we look like now, and there’s nowhere to run. Don’t you understand, Uncle? You laid siege to it yourself! You know that conquering Ba Sing Se means the Earth Kingdom is as good as beaten. The only thing left to do is hide, and I can’t do that looking like this!”
Zuko gestured violently to his scar. Iroh did not know if his nephew had always responded to fear with anger—before Lu Ten’s death, before the banishment, Iroh had loved Zuko, but he had not known him. Not the way he did now.
Now, Zuko bared his teeth against anything sharp enough to cut him. It was reflexive; whether born or bred did not matter.
“It is a foolish wolf-lion that gnaws off its own leg before testing the trap,” Iroh said slowly, palms out.
“This isn’t the time for a proverb.”
“Zuko.” Iroh closed his eyes. The shape of Zuko hovered behind his eyelids, blurry and red. “I understand you are afraid, but this will not give you the peace of mind you think it will.”
“Please, Uncle.” Zuko’s voice broke. Something in Iroh broke with it.
“No.”
“Then—then I’ll—”
The quiet crackle of flame reached Iroh’s ears. He opened his eyes to see Zuko’s face lit orange from below, palm cupped around a fire the size of his fist. He looked thin; he looked afraid; he almost looked sick.
The flame went out in a final puff of light when Iroh grabbed Zuko by the wrist. Firmly, gently, he pulled his nephew into an embrace.
“Listen to me,” Iroh said. “I will do whatever is in my power to keep you safe. I will leave this city. I will take us into the desert. I will kneel at my brother’s feet and accept the price of treason before I use fire to harm you.”
“But how—”
“We will figure it out. You have never given up before, and I know this will not be what breaks you. You are stronger than any man I have ever known, my nephew.”
Zuko’s stiff posture softened slowly, laboriously.
“I would be strong enough to handle the pain,” Zuko muttered. There was less heat behind it.
“But you should not have to. Not everything that can be endured must.” Iroh pulled away to look him in the eye. Zuko would not meet his gaze; his eyes shone wetly. “And what must be endured should be done with grace, not desperation.”
“What are we going to do?” The question was not a challenge, as his others had been. It was a plea.
“Right now,” Iroh breathed in through his nose, out through his mouth. He imagined the smell of blossoms was stronger than the smell of burning. “We mourn. A great loss has been felt today. Tomorrow, we will face what faces us. We will do it with honor.”
The streets from Jade Park to the Palace Mall were closed to foot- and wagon-traffic. This happened annually for the Earth King’s birthday. It had only been seven months since then—never in living memory had the roads of the Upper Ring had been put to such a purpose as they were today.
The military procession passed directly in front of the Jasmine Dragon. Zuko recalled the pride with which the man who gave Uncle the tea shop had explained that it was located along one of the main thoroughfares to the palace, ensuring frequent clientele of the highest caliber. Today, its clientele swarmed over the tea shop the way they swarmed over colonies, over battlements, over the burned lands and bodies of any nation but theirs.
The thought left a sour tang behind Zuko’s teeth. He didn’t know if it was an unfamiliar disgust with his countrymen, or a too-familiar disgust with himself for thinking such things.
“Lee,” Uncle addressed him loudly, unsubtly, with his false Earth Kingdom name. “I think you should take over brewing today. I won’t be around forever!” He chuckled, but his eyes were hard and serious.
Any other day, he would have guided Zuko out of the kitchen and into a stack of waiting trays like a general leading a man to be court-martialed. Today, his fear of Zuko ruining the tea was weaker than his kindness. Zuko could keep his right side turned to the window, his eyes on the boiling pots, and his hands steady as they measured out leaves.
His ears were the one thing he couldn’t control. The celebratory voices of Fire Nation soldiers burrowed in like earwig-moths. The nobles honored to attend the appointment of the new governor chatted amicably, clicking teeth and teacups like mandibles.
For three years, Zuko had refused to think about the way gossip traveled among the nobility like wildfire—fast, destructive, and aided by military funding.
“Two more cups of ginseng!” Uncle called merrily. Zuko heard the door swing open as he reached for the pot.
“I’m brewing, I’m brewing,” he muttered.
Uncle stood beside him and reached for a pot. It was the white one with a green stripe around the middle, a gift from Zuko the day after he broke the lotus pot.
It was oolong, not ginseng.
Zuko looked up sharply. Uncle’s face was calm.
“If they recognize me,” he said, low enough that Zuko could barely hear him, “go out the window and don’t look back. If they don’t know the Dragon of the West when he’s humbled himself, they won’t know the prince they have not seen in years. The hair makes quite the difference,” he added as if it would make Zuko laugh.
Zuko didn’t laugh. He gave a tight nod of acknowledgement.
“Oh,” Uncle said back at a normal volume, “how foolish of me, this is oolong! Thank you, nephew.”
He took the pot of ginseng from Zuko, poured two cups with the precision of ceremony, and walked back into the ranks of red filling the shop.
In the days following the fall of Ba Sing Se, soldiers and nobles flooded in from the Fire Nation. Most who were not entertained in the former Earth King’s Palace or the re-purposed guard houses chose to give their patronage to businesses that were, to put it colloquially, under new management.
The Jasmine Dragon was an exception.
It was only an exception for some, of course, but one repeatedly made. The old man who owned the place was properly feudal in his hospitality and made the best tea any of them had tasted since leaving the shores of the Fire Nation (none would admit it was better than anything from the homeland as well, but they knew). His nephew, on the other hand, was trouble.
More accurately, he was troubling.
The old man (none would admit they had stooped so low as to learn the name of an Earth Kingdom teamaker, let alone granted him the respect his age would have earned had he been their countryman, but they knew) had finally let the boy out of the kitchen, seemingly content he wasn’t about to spit in the faces of their distinguished guests or single-handedly start a rebellion. These guests did not appreciate the way the teamaker’s nephew refused to smile, to speak when spoken to, or to stop making such unnerving eye contact all the time. Some even came close to teaching him a lesson.
None actually followed through.
In her old regiment, Lieutenant Jiaxin had earned a reputation for having a short fuse. This was, at a minimum, the third most significant reason she had been granted the honor of joining the first wave of infantry on the ground in newly-conquered Ba Sing Se. As a being fueled primarily by rage, she was quick to spy the trait in others. The young waiter’s general demeanor was a slap in the face personified, and she didn’t share his uncle’s faith that he wouldn’t try something very stupid very soon.
When the little rat stepped on her foot, she grabbed him by the collar.
He barely flinched, so she lit her other hand on fire. The boy’s eyes flicked to the flame. He didn’t stare in horror or fear or even disgust like most displaced Earth Kingdom commoners—and Jiaxin knew he was one, could practically smell the refugee camp on him, no doubt about that. His reaction would have looked like nothing to anyone watching, but Jiaxin saw it and knew the boy knew what he was doing.
He met her gaze and turned his face.
The scar across his eye, cheek, and ear was ugly. It was old. She got a good view of it in startling contrast to the unblemished half when he faced her almost dead-on, just the slightest tilt that put his left side directly in her line of fire.
Go ahead, his tight jaw and tighter eyes said. Strike me again.
The wordless accusation in the action fell heavily in Jiaxin’s stomach, stoking her anger but freezing her limbs. She wasn’t the one who had put this mark on a teenager’s face. A child’s, actually, she realized unwillingly when the corner of her mind that remembered kindness did a quick arithmetic: age of the boy minus age of the scar equalled a solution that scorched black like Earth Kingdom farmland. (Neither Jiaxin nor her fellows would admit to feeling guilt over the orders they carried out daily, but they all saw scarred children too often not to know.)
She let him go.
Not without a shove that sent him stumbling, of course. The half-bend of his spine when he found his balance again would have been perfect for turning the movement into a low, respectful bow. The teamaker’s nephew caught Jiaxin’s eyes, then spun away before straightening, arms still firm by his sides.
No one was sure just who had learned the lesson.
On days like today, Zuko could almost imagine the Fire Nation had never brought down the Wall. He could almost imagine a lot of things: that the constant weight of fear would ever go away, that the war really didn’t exist, that his name was Lee and always had been.
On days like today, the soldiers and courtiers in red had better things to do than drink in Earth Kingdom tea shops. It might have been coincidence; it might have been mysterious business that required every off-duty guard in the city to be in attendance. Zuko did not know and did not want to find out.
He had peace, while it lasted. An afternoon, an hour, the next five minutes—he was going to appreciate that peace and nobody was going to stop him, or else.
Alright, fine, the woman sobbing into her tea at table seven wouldn’t face his wrath. Maybe a refill would help her quiet down, though.
“Oh,” she said when he poured her fresh tea to the brim. “Thank you, I’m sorry, I’m just—”
“It’s okay,” Zuko replied as reassuringly as he could. He didn’t have much practice. “Do you want—”
He was going to say an egg custard, which Uncle had just begun ordering in bulk from a baker in the Middle Ring.
“Yes! Thank you. It’s so hard with them everywhere. I’m afraid to talk in my own house. It must be worse for you, since those… those—” She looked frustrated at her own inability to think of a word terrible enough for the fighters and first citizens of the Fire Nation. Zuko shifted uncomfortably. “Since you’re so close to the palace.”
“We get by.”
“That’s all any of us can do these days,” she agreed solemnly, and promptly burst into tears again.
“So, uh,” Zuko said after a few seconds, “do you want an egg custard, or?”
“It’s good to know people are still kind,” she said thickly through all the fluids coming from her face. “I almost— It sounds stupid when I say it out loud, but I sort of expected all the goodness in the world to go away when the Avatar died.”
Several things happened in quick succession.
The teapot in Zuko’s hand hit the ground and shattered. Hot tea soaked into his shoes. The woman cried out, apologizing hysterically. The kitchen door slammed open. The wall struck Zuko’s back. The world went fuzzy at the edges.
“Young man?” A voice he didn’t recognize and a face he couldn’t focus on swam into his awareness. “Are you alright?”
A hand grabbed onto him, a voice made demands of him, and a figure lurched way, way too far into his personal space. Uncle’s sudden appearance with a hand on his wrist was all that stopped Zuko from throwing fire in the stranger’s face.
The concerned customer shuffled away from Zuko and out the door, leaving a half-full teacup and a generous tip.
“Nephew,” Uncle said calmly, but Zuko was already back upright, leaning over the table. His vision narrowed to the crying woman; nothing else mattered.
“The Avatar?” Zuko croaked.
“You didn’t know?” The woman sounded aghast. She put one hand over her mouth. The other reached out in sympathy toward Zuko’s face. She flinched before touching him and pulled back. “I’m so sorry. I thought everyone had heard. The soldiers gloat about it so much, I just assumed—”
“Perhaps you should go home early today, nephew,” Uncle suggested quietly, laying a hand on Zuko’s shoulder.
Zuko shrugged it off.
“What happened to him?”
“Princess Azula.” She paused. “That’s the Fire Lord’s daughter—”
“I know who she is,” Zuko snapped. His knees felt softer than the egg custard he’d offered her. “What did she do to the Avatar?”
“She— I wasn’t there, but the papers—the new ones, the propaganda, it all says she struck him with lightning. That even— Even at his most powerful, he wasn’t strong enough to face the Fire Nation.”
“His most powerful,” Zuko repeated weakly.
“His eyes and tattoos were glowing. They say,” the woman’s voice turned bitter, “that even the Dai Li were frozen in awe, but Princess Azula kept her head. The full might of the Avatar couldn’t faze her. So even if we sit and wait around for a new one, what then? It took a hundred years for him to show up, and the war is as good as lost now—”
Her voice faded into white noise like distant running water. Zuko could hear nothing over the erratic pounding in his head: Azula. Lightning. The Avatar. Azula. Eyes glowing. The Avatar. Azula. Lightning. The Avatar. Lightning. Glowing. Lightning. Azula. The Avatar. Azula. The Avatar.
There won’t be a new one, Zuko wanted to say. His jaw was locked as if a live current ran through him. He couldn’t grit the words out between his clenched teeth. It was better that way; it wouldn’t do him any favors to try to explain why he knew more about the Avatar than nearly anyone else alive.
A vision of the airbender boy at his strongest and most vulnerable, lit up with the legacy of all his past lives, swept over Zuko.
The Avatar State. Lightning. Gone.
Of course it was Azula. Of course she destroyed Zuko’s one chance at going home again—
But did he really still think he had a chance? What had he been doing, pouring tea in the middle of Ba Sing Se, nameless, hiding from the war like a coward and hiding from his sister like he was nine years old again? Where was his honor now? Where was the celebratory homecoming he had once truly believed his father would give him now? They must have been in the same place, if they were anywhere at all—as ever, forever, they lay with the Avatar.
The world was fuzzy and soundless, but Zuko was dimly aware of Uncle sending him home. His feet traced the pattern of the streets between tea shop and apartment. The stairs groaned like dying men under his weight.
Zuko collapsed onto his bed. At some point, the sun set. The moon did not take its place. Time slipped past him.
It was strange, this sudden emptiness that had opened in his chest like a sinkhole. A cold, painful absence rippled all through him like a blow to the solar plexus—it reminded him of the news of Lu Ten’s death. Of the too-bright morning after he saw his mother for the last time. Of watching the last mountain peak of the Fire Nation disappear beyond the horizon, flat as a painting with his left eye packed in gauze.
If Zuko were honest, he had stopped believing he could ever regain his honor months ago, after he and Uncle ran from Azula’s ship under cover of those first spring blossoms. He had agonized over the thought, then run from it, then, at some point, started seeing the life he was currently living as more important than the one that had been taken from him. There was peace in that. Contentment, even. Perhaps, eventually, there could have been joy.
So what new grief was this?
Zuko stared at the ceiling. Confusion bubbled up like anger. He closed his eyes and dove into the mouth of the hollowness, hoping it would tell him its name before it swallowed him whole.
Soon, sleep took him too.
The South Pole.
The snow lies flat around his feet, the land flatter. No one stands guard over the village. There is nothing between Zuko and his prize—there is nothing at all.
Though he cannot see it, he knows exactly what strikes him on the back of the head: the peasant’s boomerang. The ice sheet becomes grass and the waterbender freezes him in place, ice crawling up Zuko’s legs, growing like crystal around his arms, his throat, water filling his mouth so cold it burns. He takes a breath he should not be able to take, perhaps his last.
His own breath turns inside out, turns against him, turns to wind throwing him into the air like a trebuchet.
The Avatar.
“Do you think we could have been friends too?” the boy asks as he launches Zuko through a wall. The wall puts up no resistance, and Zuko is on the other side of it, certain he must get back. He cannot be found here.
Soldiers of Pohuai Stronghold surround him. They will know him in an instant if he stops moving. He has lost his mask. He fights barefaced, like a traitor.
He severs spearheads with his swords, whirls around and around. Next to him, the Avatar circles the soldiers with identical movements. His staff spins. Zuko’s dao spin. There is one gate between them and freedom, between Zuko and home.
Zuko puts blades to the Avatar’s throat. The Avatar is wanted alive, so if Zuko threatens his life— But the boy turns around in his arms. Zuko sees his face. It isn’t Aang.
Lee. Real Lee, the Earth Kingdom boy whose name Zuko stole before he knew it was another of his many stolen things.
“No! I hate you!”
Zuko rides out of town on an ostrich-horse, equally stolen. The weary, hungry villagers who line the road eye him warily. The Water Tribe siblings are there. Katara. Sokka. The earthbender he met when Uncle was hurt. Her eyes are blank, but she glares at him as the Avatar’s other friends do—nothing but blame.
As he rides, laughter comes from behind him. High, mocking, familiar.
He hears the crackle of lightning and the crash of thunder. He reaches out a hand to take the lightning into himself, to give it back, and now he is again on a flat sheet of ice. Not a landscape—a bridge.
The moon reappears in the sky, red as blood. The Ocean Spirit pulls Zhao into its fist. Zuko’s hand is still outstretched, but Zhao pulls away, would rather die than take anything Zuko could give. Zuko keeps reaching.
The hand before him is smaller, younger, with a blue arrow on the back lighting up as bright as the moonlight was on the water when he sank the fleet of ships. This hand reaches back, but now Zuko is the one pulling away.
Uncle’s voice warns him as if from a great distance. Zuko knows, feels himself fail as the lightning goes straight through his heart—
Zuko woke with a shout, flailing so wildly he tangled himself in his bedding.
Panic surged through him. He summoned flames to his hands and burned the blanket apart. His chest rose and fell like the time he nearly drowned in dark, freezing water. Outside the window, the moon was full.
“How can we help you gentlemen today?”
“I think it’s how we can help you. Help you keep this lovely tea shop standing, that is. Nice decor, but unfortunately not up to code.”
“What code—”
“Oh, thank you for telling us. May I ask, what about our humble shop does not meet the city’s standards?”
“No portrait of the Fire Lord, for one thing. Wouldn’t want people to start thinking you’re the rebellious type, now would we?”
“That’s not a law!”
“Please, forgive my nephew. He only means that this is the first we have heard of it.”
“Makes sense. You’re locals, right? I guess you wouldn’t know how to honor your nation if it bit you in the— Woah, back off, kid. Old man, get your kitchen boy in line, or I’ll do it for you.”
“Lee.”
“Grr.”
“Did… did the kid just growl at me? Did you just growl at me?”
“Perhaps we could discuss these codes over a cup of calming tea. Have you tried our jasmine blend?”
“We’re not here to drink your tea. We’re here to get you… what’s the word? Compliant. Otherwise, someone might start to get suspicious, and then who knows what could happen.”
“Indeed. I ought to pass this on to our neighbors, then.”
“Oh, don’t worry about that. You’re our last stop. You know the Yans, from down the block?”
“The couple who run the bookstore, yes! Such lovely people. They have a fine collection of earthbending scrolls.”
“Had, you mean. Shop burned down the other night.”
“I see.”
“Let me guess. They didn’t put up a portrait of the Fire Lord?”
“They sold banned documents, actually. Peddling traitorous ideas. Did you ever go to that bookshop, boy?”
“I—”
“Thank you again for taking time out of your busy day to keep us informed. Are you certain I cannot tempt you to a cup of tea?”
“No. I mean, yes. Yes, I’m sure. Get that portrait up. And watch yourself.”
“Have a pleasant afternoon!”
“Uncle.”
“Very kind people, the Yans. Do you remember them, nephew?”
“Lychee for Min, green for Shi. He usually ordered a second cup before she was done with the first.”
“I’m glad. You’re getting better at remembering people. That is an important skill to cultivate.”
“Uncle! We can’t just stand around talking about how nice they were. The soldiers burned their shop down!”
“Yes.”
“Well?”
“It is unfortunate. What do you think we should do?”
“I— Help them, somehow. Or, or stop it from happening to anyone else. To us.”
“The man you growled at was more than happy to explain how to stop it from happening to us. Is that your plan?”
“We are not putting up a portrait of my— Of the Fire Lord.”
“Why not?”
“Why not? What do you mean, why not?”
“You were once quite accustomed to portraits of the Fire Lord. What’s different now?”
“We’re not in the Fire Nation now! I— Ugh. I’m going for a walk.”
“The park on Marble Boulevard is very lovely. Nephew! Do you have your keys?”
“Yes.”
“What?”
“I said yes, Uncle!”
“I’ll have dinner ready when you return!”
“Don’t wait up!”
“But I’m making dumplings!”
“...Fine!”
He had the dream again.
The sight of a face familiar from before the Wall fell was becoming a rare occurrence in the Jasmine Dragon.
Every time it happened, Uncle smiled like he had just run into a long-lost member of the family—if he had come from a very different family, that is. He called the guest by name more often than not, which constantly surprised Zuko; how did he remember so many of them? How did he even find out their names in the first place, when all he did was pour tea?
Zuko shook his head. Uncle did far more than pour tea for the people who came to his shop. Even as their regulars became more and more frequently Fire Nation—not only soldiers, now, but craftsmen and entertainers and merchants who filled Ba Sing Se like it was just another colony—his hospitality did not waver. Though, again, a friendly Earth Kingdom face was likely to earn a reception even warmer than usual.
“Pang!” Uncle boomed with genuine delight as a young woman approached the counter. “It has been too long! How are your studies?”
This one, at least, Zuko remembered: the girl who once hid in the kitchen for an hour and then talked his ear off. Hard to forget. He glanced up from the dish basin to send Pang a quick nod of greeting.
He did a double take at the look on her face.
“Do I know you?” she asked Uncle. She sounded baffled and more than a little uncomfortable.
“My sincerest apologies,” Uncle replied humbly. “There was a young woman named Pang who visited us from time to time, and you resemble her very much.”
“No,” she shook her head. “My name is Pang. But I’ve never been here before.”
Her green eyes darted around the shop. Zuko set down the cup and leaned through the window into the main room, just over Uncle’s shoulder.
“You’re an astronomy student at the University of Ba Sing Se,” he said. Her eyes landed on his face—and did not waver over the scar. She had seen him before, then. Zuko was sure this was the same girl, but there was something off about her.
“I’m a student,” she said haltingly, “but I study… I study geology. I’m sorry, I think I’m in the wrong—”
“The zebra-cow in the planetarium?” he prompted. Uncle glanced at him warningly, but Zuko ignored whatever message he was trying to convey.
“The what?” Pang asked. She tucked a lock of hair behind her ear nervously. Her hand shook. “No, that can’t be right.”
“You hid in our kitchen through the whole afternoon rush,” Zuko said.
“Nephew,” Uncle murmured.
“I’ve never been here before! I haven’t, I—”
“And you’re not a geology student,” Zuko pressed.
She was clearly lying, and clearly nervous about it, but why? There weren’t any soldiers in the shop today. He and Uncle had compromised on a flame insignia pennant over the counter, so there wasn’t even a standing threat to burn the place to the ground hanging over them. It was suspicious.
Given how their lives had been going for the last few months, Zuko was not exactly fond of suspicious.
“I’m… I don’t—” She stammered. Her pupils were wide and dark, more than they had been when she walked in, Zuko was sure.
“It wasn’t just the prank that got you in big trouble. With how often the planetarium is in use,” he continued, leaning so far out from the kitchen he considered hopping over the sill, “you said, because of all the phenomena this summer—”
“—for the first time in nine hundred years,” Pang said suddenly. Her voice shifted oddly in register, as if reciting a speech she’d forgotten she had memorized. Her eyes were wide and blank. “A total solar eclipse in the same season as the Great Co— The—”
Pang choked. Blotchy red crept from her neck across her face.
Uncle was around the side of the counter before Zuko could blink. Zuko himself was over the edge of the window and in the main room of the shop, also before he could blink. Uncle’s steady hands hovered near Pang’s shoulders as she gasped for air.
“Are you alright?” Uncle asked with alarm. Pang nodded, a deep, shaky breath finally clearing her airway.
“What were you going to say?” Zuko asked.
“That’s enough!” Uncle’s voice was stern. Zuko froze; the air in the shop felt a short spike in temperature. “Would you fetch our guest some water, please?” He asked, calmer.
Zuko glanced from the girl taking deep, grateful breaths and staring sightlessly around the room, back to Uncle’s grim face. He nodded.
When he returned with a cup of fresh water, Pang was sitting calmly at the nearest table. Her hands were steady and her pupils were a less unnerving size.
“Thank you,” she said kindly. “I have trouble breathing sometimes this time of year. It’s all the pollen. What’s your name?”
Zuko knew it wasn’t the pollen.
“Lee.”
“I’m Pang.”
“Nice to meet you,” he gritted out between his teeth. To all appearances, the last five minutes were gone from the girl’s head entirely. “Can I get you some tea?”
He took her order—the same as it had been before the Wall fell, before whatever happened to her that made her choke half to death on the word comet.
And no mistake, that was what she had tried to say. It had been a topic of courtly conversation for as long as Zuko could remember, how great an honor it was to live to see the return of Sozin’s Comet, the prodigious source of the Fire Nation’s first sure step in the war. An omen, certainly, of their impending victory.
Our, Zuko corrected himself. Our victory.
The day after his grandfather’s funeral, on Zuko’s first full day as Crown Prince, he stood at the foot of Sozin’s enormous tapestry and stared for a long time. He didn’t remember what it was he meant to do in the first place—imagine himself there, maybe? Wonder what the weavers would surround his own image with, the way the comet arced red and sweeping over Sozin’s head like a bloodstain? Whatever it was that went through his ten-year-old mind, something else stuck with him.
He thought about that tapestry a lot, years later. He learned truths about the slaughtered airbenders that his history lessons had never prepared him for, alone in a metal cabin swaying on the sea. He stepped over their bones, walked in the places where they once lived.
Zuko told himself, over and over until it became as sure a mantra as the other reassurances that let him sleep at night, that what had happened in the past meant nothing beyond how it could help him accomplish his goals in the present. The dead had no use for honor; Zuko did.
It had been months, at least, since he had thought about that. With the loss of the Avatar, the Air Nomads were truly gone. His great-grandfather’s wish, realized at last.
“Here,” Zuko said quietly. He set Pang’s steaming tea on the table. She thanked him.
The dead had no use for honor. If he were to return to the Air Temples, would he still say something like that?
Zuko didn’t think so.
He had the dream again.
“Would you take out the dishwater?” Uncle asked, gesturing to the basin.
Zuko nodded. He reached down to grab the container in front of him, carried it through the store room, pushed the back door open with his hip, and heaved the load forward in a familiar motion.
Usually, this movement was accompanied by the splash of dirty water in the alley, which would soon enough drain through the grate in the narrow, paved road behind the Jasmine Dragon. This time, Zuko felt the weight slip out of his hands and heard a startling clatter a second later.
He blinked. He looked at the ground, littered with ceramic shards; then at his hands, empty; then, he peered in through the open window into the kitchen.
Sitting on the counter was the dish basin.
Scattered in the alley were the pieces of the teapot Zuko had just thrown several feet onto flat stone.
“Um,” Zuko said.
“What was that?” came Uncle’s voice through the window.
“Nothing, Uncle!”
He had the dream again.
This night, the restless emptiness it left behind sent him wandering into the main room of the apartment. He expected to be alone with the waning moonlight. Instead, he came face-to-face with Uncle’s back. He was at the counter, pouring tea.
“Have a cup,” he said, turning toward Zuko with a tired smile. “It will help you sleep.”
“Sorry,” Zuko said. “Did I wake you?”
Uncle only smiled.
“Do you remember our first few weeks at sea?”
Zuko was startled by the question, seemingly out of nowhere. His hand closed unconsciously around the warm clay cup Uncle gave him.
“Not very well,” Zuko admitted.
He remembered brief pockets of stillness with an almost uncanny clarity: the ship leaving port, the Western Air Temple, that first supply stop when the merchant laughed in his face for being thirteen and requisitioning provisions for two dozen men—the way he stopped laughing when Zuko told him his name. The rest was a haze of itchy bandages and wobbly legs and dusty texts in candlelight crawling like insects across his feverish, half-darkened vision.
“You did not sleep well then, either,” Uncle said in a massive understatement.
Zuko doubted he slept more than an hour at a time until the bandages came off, and then only after Uncle agreed to resume his firebending training. He drank the tea and waited. Either Uncle would continue, or he would sit silently with Zuko until he slept again. He was too tired to chase the thread of conversation.
“I didn’t know,” Uncle continued at last, “that you were keeping yourself awake all night. You fell asleep on deck one day. Do you remember?”
Zuko shrugged. Uncle had reminded him at least once a week for months afterward, nagging at him to get some rest, but Zuko couldn’t be sure if he actually recalled passing out in the middle of a sentence while shouting at the helmsman or if the memory was built from pieces of Uncle’s retelling.
“I carried you to your room. I was going to leave, but then I heard your voice. I thought you’d woken up.” Uncle’s voice was a low, soothing constant. Zuko was in near danger of nodding off then and there. “You hadn’t. You were having a nightmare.”
Zuko didn’t remember the specifics, but he could guess. He nodded.
“I stayed with you that evening, but I knew you wouldn’t want me to hover. Your room was far from mine. Over the engine and the crew, I couldn’t hear a sound from you. I would lie awake and wonder if you were still running yourself into the ground, if you were visited by bad dreams, or if you were finally allowing yourself time to rest.”
“I’m sorry,” Zuko said again.
“No, my nephew. I’m not telling you this to make you feel ashamed. I’m telling you so that you can understand. I am happy to be woken up in the middle of the night, because it is better to hear your suffering and do what I can to help than to hear nothing at all.”
The last leaves of Zuko’s tea were dark and scattered in the bottom of his cup. He didn’t see the future in them, but he sat with it anyway.
“Although,” Uncle added with a yawn, “it would be best of all to hear some snoring now and then.”
“I don’t snore,” Zuko grouched reflexively.
Uncle chuckled. Zuko felt the corner of his own mouth twitch.
“I’m going back to bed now,” Zuko said at last. “Thank you… for the tea.”
“Thank you for the company.”
Zuko slept, and he slept until morning.
The address of the bakery was written on a slip of paper in Uncle’s careful handwriting. It wasn’t much help, considering Zuko had no idea where he was.
“Excuse me,” Zuko addressed a young man hawking ‘exotic’ fruit—which just looked like an assortment of dried up ocean kumquats to him—as he looked around the market alley. “How do I get to the Middle Ring from here?”
“Screw your head on better next time, kid,” the man laughed. “You’re already there.”
“Oh.”
Zuko’s brow furrowed in irritation. He didn’t think he deserved to be laughed at for his confusion.
He’d walked through the gate Uncle told him to and did a double take, certain there must have been some impossible feat of earthbending involved to deposit him directly into the Lower Ring. The buildings were crowded where they weren’t half-burnt, and the people more so. The motley painted houses and clotheslines like festival flags, which Zuko remembered from the time or two he’d had cause to visit the Middle Ring in the last months, were gone. In their place were layers of soot, muting colors and voices alike.
“Need anything else? You’re in the way of my customers.”
There didn’t seem to be anyone else in the crowded street clamoring to try dehydrated kumquat. Zuko shook himself; he could almost feel soot and despair settling over his skin.
“Yeah, can you point me to this address?” He handed the fruit seller Uncle’s paper.
“Oh hey, the Paddling Turtleduck! Just around that corner, take two lefts and you’re there. They have the best mooncakes in the city. Make sure you try a couple.”
“I’m picking up an order,” he snapped, “not here to buy mooncakes.”
Zuko went around the corner, took two lefts, and was there.
“Order for the Jasmine Dragon,” he grumbled to the woman in the flour-dusted apron. A smell hit him just as she was wrapping up the basket. “And… two mooncakes. Please.”
With an order of egg custards under his arm and a bag of cakes in his hand, Zuko watched the Middle Ring go about its business. He had long ago made a habit of memorizing the places he went to the best of his ability: entrances, exits, shadowy corners.
The corners of Ba Sing Se were particularly shadowy, and not particularly empty.
The Middle Ring was overflowing; it looked ready to collapse under its own weight. The extra bodies couldn’t be accounted for by former citizens of the Upper Ring alone, Zuko thought. If this place could be so changed, he wondered what the place that had been his— that had been where he lived in the Lower Ring had become.
He made it back to the Jasmine Dragon and dropped the basket heavily onto the counter. The shop was mostly empty. It had opened barely an hour ago, and the rush was either over or about to begin.
“Here are the egg custards,” he said to Uncle’s smiling face. “I hope the delivery boy gets well soon.”
Zuko meant it as a passive-aggressive complaint about the errand; some of his less pleasant habits were making a resurgence these days. But he felt a twinge of remorse, and then a twinge of hope: he did wish the best for the delivery boy, honestly. Missing a day of work could really deal a blow to someone without much to start with—he had learned as much at Pao’s shop.
The thought of the Lower Ring sent Zuko’s mood spiraling again.
“What do you have there?” Uncle asked, interrupting Zuko’s retreat to brood in the kitchen.
“Oh. I bought some mooncakes.” He dropped the bag into Uncle’s hand.
“Thank you, nephew!” Uncle said, pulling a small plate and a dessert knife out of thin air to cut his cake into quarters. He eagerly ate the first piece, already eyeing the bag containing the other cake.
“Don’t eat both of them!” Zuko said. He snatched the bag back. “I was going to save one for later.”
“Don’t dawdle, or you may find your cake has gone stale before you allow yourself to eat it,” Uncle said through a mouthful of bean paste as if it were a piece of sage advice and not a ploy to steal Zuko’s breakfast. “Joy should be indulged in wherever and whenever you find it.”
In response, Zuko shoved the entire second mooncake into his mouth.
Uncle laughed his deep, throaty laugh as Zuko chewed slowly and awkwardly. He glared, unable to speak and irritated that he had no one to blame but himself.
His first customer of the day asked if he’d been stung in the mouth by a mosquito-wasp. Zuko nodded angrily.
“And how does rashness taste?” Uncle asked a few minutes later as he brewed another pot of ginseng. Zuko was in the middle of prying the remains of the cake from his teeth with his tongue.
“A lot like lotus seeds,” he replied. Uncle laughed again.
That night, the clouds were so thick the moon might as well have packed up and gone home.
It was a perfect night for moving undetected. There was no reason Zuko could not be seen in the Middle or Lower Rings, exactly—he had his false passport, was well-known enough in the city by now that someone other than Uncle would be able to vouch for him, and didn’t intend to stir up trouble. Yet he felt more comfortable in the shadows on a trip like this.
Uncle would not approve, for a start. He would want Zuko to get a full night’s rest before they opened the shop in the morning. He would want Zuko to find contentment in brewing tea, unworried about who was drinking it and what colors they wore, what they might have done before walking into the Jasmine Dragon—what they might do after they left.
Life happens wherever you are. Uncle had been right about that. Life happened. Life was happening. But it was happening to Zuko, which was a state of affairs that chafed against him like shackles.
If he wanted agency in his own life again—presuming he’d ever had it to begin with, but that thought led down a road darker than this cloud-covered night—he needed to know.
He needed to know every inch of this new Ba Sing Se. His whole life, Zuko had been steps behind Azula. He’d spent years at a dead sprint trying to catch up, still always tripping over failure. Here he was, seemingly away from her at last, until she came and tore this city of his down from the inside out without even bothering to find him and gloat about it. That was new: in the past, she had hurt him because she enjoyed it.
Apparently Zuko wasn’t even worth her cruelty anymore.
But as much as it burned to admit it, she was still worth his attention. He had to know what else she’d done, what else she’d taken from him. Home, honor, family, love—and now Ba Sing Se, a city that, by rights, ought not to have belonged to either of them.
The claws of an angry pygmy puma nearly took out Zuko’s remaining unscarred eye. He shook himself and ducked out of the alley. Focus.
There was a fact of life that had served Zuko well as a lonely child, inventing solitary games to see how many guards he could sneak past without getting caught: people rarely looked up. It had served him well again as a traitor and then as a thief.
It made the jump from a Middle Ring rooftop onto the uneven, scorched stone of the inner wall and the careful journey along the ceiling of the gate, over the heads of Fire Nation soldiers yawning through their night shift, swift and easy. The other side, though, proved problematic: there was no rooftop in the Lower Ring waiting to catch him.
Zuko dangled by one hand from a deep crack in the wall. His fingers were already beginning to ache. In the dark, he couldn’t tell where the empty air below him ended and the ground began. Wait much longer, and his swinging legs would catch the guards’ attention.
He breathed, swung himself past the edge of the stone gate, and let go.
The ground resolved itself out of the darkness just in time for Zuko to fall into a roll. There would be bruises all along the backs of his shoulders come morning, he could already tell, but nothing was broken.
Well. None of his bones, anyway. As Zuko got to his feet and looked at what had been the Lower Ring, he understood that Ba Sing Se was more broken than he’d thought.
He walked through the streets in a haze—literally, given the number of fires filling the air with an omnipresent grey curtain of smoke. There was raucous shouting one street over as an unrecognizable shell of a building collapsed in on itself in a burst of dust and ash. A small group, faceless in the dark, huddled around the flames flickering inside a large metal drum.
Zuko was seized by the fear of being seen. He didn’t know what he would do if he met the eyes of anyone who lived here—didn’t know what he would do if he recognized them.
Moving by rooftop was faster, anyway. Zuko got a running start, took a leg up from the edge of the burning drum—“Hey, watch it!”—and grabbed the sloped shingles of the nearest roof. They were unevenly laid; while Zuko kept his footing easily enough, he knew that when the heavy clouds overhead chose to break open the roof beneath him would leak like a sieve.
Not your problem. Zuko hesitated, surprised by the shame welling in his chest at the thought. None of your business, he amended.
He reached the peak of the roof and felt the same vertigo as he had upon entering the Middle Ring, momentarily certain he could not possibly be where he thought he was. Dead ahead, where the great Outer Wall of Ba Sing Se had once risen around the city as if to meet the sky itself, Zuko only saw darkness. It was framed on either side by pillars of stone—No.
That was the Wall. In pieces.
Below him, a gruff voice shouted something unkind to the people warming themselves around the drum. Zuko peered down and saw the spiked armor of a footsoldier around the posture of a man indulging himself a bit too much while on-duty.
Zuko tensed, but the group eking out an existence in the alley seemed too used to such treatment to give the bully the satisfaction of a response. Zuko moved on.
In the starless night, broken buildings jutted like monstrous teeth around him. People wandered the squirrel-rabbit warren of the streets below, silent more than not, like the stories of lost souls in the Spirit World that Uncle had told in the galley on nights when the ocean was still. He had held the crew in rapt attention then; he had held Zuko’s attention too, as much as he was too proud to show it.
A low voice drifted from an open window in the tenement under Zuko’s feet, crooning the start of a familiar melody.
“Winter, spring, summer and fall…”
For a moment, Zuko was in that tenement building. He was there, and he was on the deck of a ship as a damp wind carried the last chill of winter, and he was in a cave in a forest hearing an old man hum as he brewed tea like he was grateful for the privilege. He was eight, learning to purse his lips and push air out the bell of a tsungi horn bigger than he was, hearing a kindly laugh and the first compliment that had come his way in months, Finding power in your breath is a valuable skill, Prince Zuko, and from the sound of it, you have quite a lot.
There was a harsh series of thuds and another voice, “Shut up!”
The deep baritone shifted out of song and into a string of curses that would have made the boatswain who’d worked on Zuko’s ship for six months—before resigning with a tirade that had taught fourteen-year-old Zuko several new and handy phrases—blush bright red.
Zuko almost laughed. Before more than a huff could escape his lips, he heard a shift in the air behind him.
He whipped around, arms extended to block and attack. The rooftop was empty.
Better keep moving. He leapt to the next roof. It wasn’t hard. The Lower Ring was still crowded, buildings shoved so close together they propped one another up. Too close: fire could jump between them, just as Zuko had, and take out a neighborhood with a single spilled candle.
It’s not candles doing the work around here anymore.
At the sight of two off duty soldiers sharing a drink in front of the burned-out shell of what Zuko recognized as the only shop within walking distance of their old apartment that sold at-all trustworthy fresh fish, it clicked: why this place was so confusingly familiar.
Two scenes, layered together, something not-right about each of them: the Lower Ring, as it had been; and the amalgamation of a dozen ports-of-call, spread out over the colonized coast of the Earth Kingdom—little towns stubbornly clinging to cliff sides, surviving on nothing but spite.
Well, nothing but spite and the sea. The Lower Ring now, soot-coated and worryingly empty of both people and sound, might as well have been a pirate cove with no pirates. A port with no ocean. Nothing to subsist on. Hardly any life left, except what couldn’t be scraped away on the first pass.
“Hey, kid! Stop right there.”
Zuko flinched, but the voice ringing out in the street below wasn’t directed at him. One of the off-duty guards—supposedly off-duty, anyway, though that was unlikely to stop them from flexing what petty authority they thought they had—advanced unsteadily toward a girl in a brown dress.
“What?” She was trying to hide fear in her voice and not doing a very good job. Zuko crouched to the edge of the roof for a better look.
“I think you’re out past curfew, little miss.” The soldier’s words slurred.
Zuko’s fingers clenched hard around the edge of the roof. She has to be at least my age. And what curfew gets enforced in the Lower Ring?
“I’m on my way home.”
“Should have thought of that before sundown.” The soldier reached for the girl’s arm.
Zuko, as he was wont to do, didn’t think.
His feet struck the earth between the soldier and the girl. Zuko knew the weak spots in Fire Nation armor; two blows to the man sent him sprawling. His companion stood, squinting in the dark. Then, her eyes flicked past Zuko and widened.
“Get back here! Get— Aw, forget it. You, though, you’re under arrest.”
Zuko heard footsteps fade around the corner. He didn’t need to turn back to know the girl had run the moment the soldiers were distracted. Good instincts.
He watched the soldier he’d struck struggle to his feet and the other pick up her spear. Zuko readied a fighting stance.
He hesitated. Actually, I really don’t want to deal with this.
A nearby window, long-since missing its glass, was a perfect hand- and foot-hold as Zuko launched himself up onto another roof. Below, twin grunts of enraged confusion told him the soldiers hadn’t been watching carefully enough—he’d jumped too fast, black clothes in the black night, for them to see which way he’d gone.
If people like that are all that’s keeping Ba Sing Se in its place—
The near-silent whistle told Zuko that something was coming toward him very, very quickly. It was barely a second of warning, not enough to get out of the way as a hand made of stone wrapped itself around his ankle. Then, movement near the edge of the roof: a figure in dark robes and a broad hat.
Zuko focused a small blast of fire out as he brought the side of his hand down hard on the stone cuff holding him to the roof. It shattered, but the flash would alert the figure instantly, as well as anyone else who might be watching.
He ran.
The boy in black was quick. He was quiet. He would have made a good recruit if he weren’t a criminal.
Or a firebender, of course. That might make training with the Dai Li problematic.
Although, the city had changed dramatically in the last few weeks. Perhaps a firebending unit was inevitable. Still: criminal. That was important. Catch, reeducate, release.
Tianqi was still working on the first part.
The boy ducked silently flying stone with startling precision. He slid down sloping rooftops and leapt gaps between buildings as if he had no fear of falling. No fear of anything. Tianqi’s grandmother had put her faith in fortunetellers in the later part of her life, which his father had scoffed at. Tianqi had agreed.
Now, he briefly wondered if he ought to reassess that position. This boy certainly moved like he knew the landing-place of not only his own feet, but the stones attempting to trip them as well, before either had even become airborne.
A traitor who could see the future. This was not comforting.
The chase took him beyond his usual route. Good. Perhaps that would mean reinforcements and another set of eyes to witness the boy who had just—
Disappeared. Off the edge of a roof.
Tianqi’s musings had made him slow. His knowledge of the city had made him presume the light-footed boy would not leap off the tallest building in the Lower Ring directly into a neighborhood that had been notorious for resistance to Fire Nation rule before it had been razed to the ground.
More fool he.
There was a crash in the alley to Tianqi’s right. He slid down the stone edifice of the building. The boy must have broken his own fall. He had rounded the corner. Then, where?
The Lower Ring was dark as pitch tonight. The alley was darker. Nothing moved. A pile of broken shipping crates. A barrel. An empty storefront. A singed tarp hanging still in the windless air. Tianqi waited. He listened.
A sound: the shifting of a living body. A shape in the broken window, a shade of black darker than the air around it.
Tianqi approached. The shape froze. Given a moment, the boy would make another break for it. He did not have one to spare. He threw his hand of stone.
The pygmy puma yowled. It hissed and spat and clawed at the stone hand curled into the nape of its neck.
More pairs of yellow eyes peered at Tianqi out of the darkness. An entire clan of them.
His commander had said being stationed in the Lower Ring would be a rewarding challenge. It would look excellent on his resume. He would be the first line of defense against invasion and the last against insurrection. It would be a noble choice to volunteer for such an assignment.
He was really starting to regret listening to his commander.
Zuko didn’t so much as breathe until the earthbender was gone. Then he didn’t breathe for a full minute after that.
Through the slats in the old barrel, he could see the pygmy pumas circling territorially around the alley. He hoped they wouldn’t come for him next; he knew from experience animals didn’t like it when someone threw rocks at them, and that they didn’t always differentiate between rock-throwers and innocent bystanders.
He made no sudden movements as he climbed out of the barrel. The pygmy pumas were inclined to ignore him, apparently. Small miracles.
Very small, in a world of almost nothing but disasters.
Zuko took the least efficient route possible back to the wall, crawling through abandoned buildings rather than over them. The streets were lousy with soldiers, obviously, and the rooftops—
He wanted to laugh. Or scream. One or the other would be fine, but he couldn’t do either right now because he was dressed head-to-toe in black and sneaking through the city where he lived as if it were Pohuai Stronghold, all because of his sister.
Really, Azula? The Dai Li?
She had done what Uncle could never do and taken Ba Sing Se. She had done what Zuko could never do and defeated the Avatar.
I wasn’t trying to kill him. I wasn’t— He clenched his teeth as if the thought would bounce off him like a punch.
And apparently, Azula had not been content simply to steal the quests that her family members had fought and bled and known unspeakable loss trying to achieve out from under them in a single day. She had found her own special accomplishment to carry home to Father: bringing the secret, elite earthbending police of the greatest Earth Kingdom stronghold under her thumb and keeping their loyalty, even while an ocean away.
…if she was an ocean away.
No. Absolutely not. Don't even consider it.
But it would be just my luck.
He simmered with a rage so hot he worried there might be smoke coming out of his nostrils the whole way home.
Zuko hooked a hand over the top of the sill and swung in through the open window. From the other side of the apartment, he heard Uncle’s door quietly slide shut.
That, he could deal with in the morning. He smelled like smoke and dirt; he had burnt all his anger out in the long trek here; he was too tired for any of it.
He had the dream again.
And again.
And again.
The Ba Sing Se Sun:
Ba Sing Se’s First Official Newspaper as Appointed and Approved by Fire Lord Ozai
Royal Return
Princess Azula returned to Capital City to an appropriately celebratory reception today. After her noble victory in Ba Sing Se, securing the Fire Nation’s permanent influence in the Earth Kingdom, the Princess greeted a procession in front of the Royal Palace. Over eight hundred members of the nobility and citizens of the homeland were in attendance. Her advisors announced the return of our “clever and beautiful” Princess to the gathered crowd.
Princess Azula has accomplished two of the most significant military successes of this decade within the last month: the breakthrough at Ba Sing Se and the removal of the Avatar. With such an acceleration of victories for the Fire Nation, experts at Caldera University have predicted an end to the war “within the year.”
Fire Lord Ozai’s official release (see page 4) praises his daughter as highly in writing as he does in speech. After three years of waiting, rumors abound as to when the Fire Lord will finally crown the Princess his primary heir.
After much speculation, the Fire Lord has announced the newly-appointed Governor of Ba Sing Se. In a conference on the steps of his office, Governor Noru…
The rest of the article quickly became illegible as the paper started to blacken and curl between Zuko’s fingers. With a snarl, he threw it in the gutter.
Little tongues of flame had time to eat away his father’s name before the trickle of rainwater in the gutter doused them. Long after Zuko walked away, the half-burned newspaper fluttered into the canal. The water carried it out of sight.
Lightning struck Zuko straight through the heart.
For once, he didn’t awaken gasping for air or flailing against his blanket. He woke up stock-still and calm—calmer than he’d been in weeks. Dawn was a long way off; his room was bathed in moonlight. That was good. It meant he had time to prepare.
With the efficiency of a navy man, Zuko dressed and began to pack. Sturdy shoes; utility knife; dark clothing, breathable enough to fight in; turtleseal-skin bag; passport; throwing knife; emergency coin; hood, to keep his ears warm; blanket; sunhat; two more knives, just in case. Last came his broadswords. They were hidden between the wall and the sturdy set of drawers that had come with the new apartment, which was unfortunately lacking in loose floorboards.
Uncle caught him silhouetted against the window, already reaching for the door.
“What are you doing awake?” Uncle yawned. “We don’t open the shop for hours.”
“I’m not opening the tea shop today, Uncle.”
Uncle was silent. Zuko glanced at his face—he looked thoughtful, and old, and wise. He did not look surprised. If Zuko let himself believe it, he could have almost said Uncle looked proud.
“Where are you going, Zuko?”
“You told me I was free to choose my own destiny. That’s where I’m going.” Zuko’s hand closed around the door handle. He stopped. He turned around. Uncle faced him with his hands in front, ready to return a bow.
Zuko threw his arms around him. There was no hesitation before Uncle hugged him back. The old man was strong and soft. He was more of a home than any person or place Zuko had known since he watched his mother’s face vanish into a dark hood and a darker night.
“Be safe,” Uncle said, low and serious. Zuko understood all that lived beneath the words—the trust that Zuko could protect himself as well as Uncle had protected him for years.
“I’ll see you again.” Zuko could not give the promise his uncle asked for, but he could promise that much.
The streets belonged to the soldiers and the rooftops belonged to the Dai Li. To get out of Ba Sing Se, he used neither.
Zuko had not survived every close escape so far in his life by following paths meant to be walked. An entrance was an entrance; an exit, an exit. Many things counted as either or both if you looked past the blinders of intention and precedent—if you looked at them from the bottom up.
The narrow canals that striated the Upper Ring were functional as well as decorative; running water irrigated parks and gardens, kept wells in the better-off neighborhoods from turning stagnant, provided an easy method of waste disposal, and, soon, would carry the Crown Prince of the Fire Nation swiftly out of the city to wherever the canals ended.
They had to end somewhere.
All Zuko had to do was cling to overhang shadows for half a block, then cross the street. The only differences between this and his daily walk to work at the Jasmine Dragon were time of night and the way he was dressed. And the swords, of course.
A deep breath, a short drop off the footbridge—barely making a splash in the moving water—and the current pulled him down a winding path beneath a city rising to greet the pink-tinged morning.
It was better than the petrifying cold of the arctic sea, at least. Compared to that and the three-week stint floating through endless saltwater that came after, the chill of springtime runoff and the pace of the current were nearly relaxing. Zuko allowed nothing but his head above the surface, stayed as close to the stone wall as possible, and watched the lightening sky fly past overhead, broken occasionally by the passing shadows of bridges.
A woman dumped a bin of dishwater over Zuko’s head as he passed behind a restaurant. The water grew shallow for several city blocks, enough that keeping his body underwater meant his chest scraped against the bottom. He dove beneath at the telltale click of soldier’s boots and did not come up for air until his lungs burned.
The water got deeper and the current faster. Other canals converged, emptying into one; the street was now so far away none of the city-sounds were audible above the sound of water over stone. Zuko was entirely in shadow, the blue sky a distant ribbon overhead.
He heard rushing, crashing water.
The canal ended ahead at a wide, gaping maw into darkness. Zuko realized, abruptly, that there were no open canals in the Middle Ring—but there were sewer tunnels beneath it.
The drop had to be a dozen feet, at least. The smell hit Zuko harder than the water. He would have to clean his swords and knives thoroughly as soon as he found his way back to the surface. He only hoped the bag was as waterproof as the vendor had promised it to be; the loss of his fake passport and all his clothes wouldn’t be the worst thing to happen to Zuko recently, but it could prove inconvenient.
He tumbled through water so sludge-like it made him grateful for the darkness. Things brushed against him—accumulated trash from the largest city in the Earth Kingdom, he hoped, and nothing more. Nothing alive. Zuko kept his head above water; he kept himself in the current.
Time passed, or it didn’t. He had lost all sense of it. But eventually: light.
The light was small and distant, but it was there, and the rushing water carried him straight toward it. He swam, quietly rejoicing, anticipating the sun on his face—
A current caught Zuko around the chest and spun his body like a child’s toy. Another tunnel must have emptied into this one, creating a cross-current that swept his head underwater. He kicked toward the surface, toward the light.
Hard metal slammed into Zuko’s spine. He broke the surface with a sputtering cough and saw that he had reached the end of the tunnel, which was blocked off by thick, vertical bars. Beyond it was sunlight, so bright after the darkness it dazzled him. The current pinned him to the bars, barely half the width of his body apart. Zuko took as deep a breath as he could, pulled one fist out of the water, and summoned a concentrated flame.
Fire daggers were a signature move of Zuko’s—or, he always hoped they would be. No one besides Uncle had ever commented on them, but he’d spent months perfecting the fine control required to keep a flame still and candescent at the same time, so close to the skin but never burning himself.
There was nobody to impress in this tunnel that was currently doing its level best to drown Zuko in sewage. He held the glowing edge to the metal and pushed.
It took a long time, probably. If Zuko was sweating, it was indistinguishable from the grime sticking to his hair and face. If the sun moved in the sky, he couldn’t see anything but the way it glanced off the water just beyond the bars. If he slipped and burned a thick, red mark across his right wrist, he would deal with the inevitable infection once he was out of this sewer.
First one slice through the metal, then another. The second was two feet higher, almost out of Zuko’s reach with the exhaustion of the task coupled with keeping himself above water. He bobbed, gasped, and nearly swallowed mouthfuls of whatever the rushing current threw into his face, but after some unknowable measure of time, the section of bar fell away and sank with a splash.
Zuko’s arms shook. He hauled himself up the metal pole, through the fresh gap—still glowing forge-hot, inches from his skin—and out the other side.
The water fell away into the distance before Zuko, a man-made river that cut through the rolling lands beyond what remained of Ba Sing Se’s great Wall. The current was still swift, but with the room to spread wider than the tunnel the river was nearly peaceful.
Zuko floated on his back, feeling the sun on his face.
There was work to do. But first, he could let himself rest. A man needs his rest.
Thinking ahead had never been Zuko’s greatest strength. Still, he needed enough of a plan to pick a direction to walk in.
He sat in the dark, having deemed a campfire this close to the city too high a risk, and catalogued everything he knew about the Avatar’s friends.
They were definitely out there, and probably still together. The two from the Water Tribe were brother and sister—as if that meant much on its own, Zuko thought grimly. But he had seen the way they worked in tandem, the things they were willing to do for one another. The two were together still, he decided. The waterbender—
Katara. Katara and Sokka. Zuko decided he should start thinking of them as people with names if he was planning to join them in an act of deliberate treason. It was only polite.
Katara had been protective of the Avatar, and violently so. She wouldn’t have given up yet, if only out of pure rage at the death of her friend.
Sokka was a warrior. Zuko knew a bit about what that meant for a man of the Southern Water Tribe. It was a duty—one that kept a teenage boy standing tall with a warship bearing down on him, for a start. He would have gone down with the Avatar before abandoning people who needed him, and certainly before abandoning the war altogether.
The earthbender was an unknown variable. Zuko didn’t even know her name. Uncle had been there, maybe he’d caught it—but it was too late to ask him now, and who knew what good her name would be to Zuko.
The Southern Water Tribe, then. That was his best lead. Zuko turned his thoughts that way and recalled all he could: an alliance with their fleet was the closest thing to a formidable naval force the Earth Kingdom had; they were notorious for blocking Fire Nation access through Chameleon Bay—the reason Uncle had once led a march by land an extra hundred miles to avoid them; Chameleon Bay was a straight shot by water from Ba Sing Se.
There was little chance the Avatar’s friends would be with the Water Tribe’s fleet, but they were just as likely to be there as anywhere else. It was a start. Zuko had spent three years chasing dead ends from one end of the world to the other. What was one more hopeless quest?
At least this one would mean something. At least it was his own choice.
Cold, alone, under the wide star-map of the sky, Zuko slept better than he had in weeks.
