A/N: Hi everyone! I know there are already some Avatar Zuko fics out there, but I've no intention to impinge; just want to write my own story :D Tags will be updated with characters, relationships, etc. as they approach. Check the end of each chapter for notes on my thought process / reasons for authorial decisions and changes to canon, and some Chinese language / history lessons.

ZUKO

Zuko wakes up the day after his seventh birthday rather earlier than he would have liked.

"Good morning, Zuko! Up you get now; we firebenders rise with the sun!" Lu Ten wastes no time in yanking the covers off and bodily dragging his cousin from bed.

"What's happening?" Zuko mumbles, still half-asleep.

"We're going on an adventure, that's what's happening. Come on, we'll be late for the ship."

Zuko dresses slowly, watching in confusion while Lu Ten packs a satchel with Zuko's clothes. "Where are we going?"

"I just said, on an adventure."

"But where?"

"You'll see. Don't worry, you'll love it."

By the time they're out of sight of the harbor, Zuko is feeling distinctly betrayed. This is his first time at sea. On trips to Ember Island, his father always takes the family in the royal hot air balloon, and now Zuko knows why. The ship is awful, with its constant rolling and swaying. Any moment now, it's going to throw him right over the railing and into the sea, and then Lu Ten will be sorry for dragging him along.

"Relax, Zuko. Deep breaths and you'll feel better. This is why I didn't let you have breakfast before we left."

"I thought that was because we were going to be late! You wouldn't even let me say goodbye to Mom!"

"Actually, that's because she already left to see Azula off to school, remember? She's going to the Royal Fire Academy for Girls, just north of the capital. You get to go to school with me instead." Lu Ten stares out across the water with a fond smile on his face.

"Why do you have to go to school? You're all grown up."

"This is a very special school we're going to. We'll be training with Master Piandao, the greatest swordsman in the world."

LU TEN

"Now remember, we're going incognito, so don't forget your name. As long as we're here, you're Lee and I'm Mushi," Lu Ten says as they walk up the hill towards Piandao's mansion. In the spirit of 'incognito', they're both wearing their plainest clothes and trying to look decidedly not royal.

"Yes, I remember!" Zuko says impatiently. He runs up to the door and knocks like he's trying to wake the stone lion turtles on either side.

The door opens, and a scowling butler peers out. "Who are you?"

"I'm Zu—"

"I'm Mushi, and this is my little brother Lee. We're here to learn from Master Piandao."

"And what have you brought for the master?"

"Er…" No one had told him about this part.

"I thought so," the butler grumbles. "Come in then."

He leads them into a wide room, filled with sunlight from the balcony opposite the door. Master Piandao sits facing it as they enter and doesn't turn around, too absorbed in his calligraphy.

"Mushi and Lee, here to see you, sir," the butler pronounces with disdain, and leaves.

Piandao continues to twist his brush in arduous, inky strokes as he speaks. "Mushi," he begins skeptically, "and Lee."

"Yes, sir. My brother Lee and I have come to learn the way of the sword from you. That is, if you are willing, sir."

"How much do you two know about the way of the sword?"

"Well, er…it involves swords, I know that." Really brilliant, Lu Ten. The master will be so impressed. "And… a lot of discipline and practice, I guess?" Lu Ten hazards. He clasps his hands behind his back and tries not to fidget from nerves. He doesn't have the excuse of being seven years old like Zuko. Truth be told, this trip was a great idea when Aunt Ursa suggested it, but it's getting worse by the minute.

"Guessing will get you nowhere. You cannot guess where your opponent's sword will strike; you must know it. Lee, what do you know about the way of the sword?"

"Nothing at all, master!" Zuko says as knowingly as he can.

"That's more like it." Piandao stands and faces them. His eyes are dark and look like they've seen ages of the world pass by. "I will train you two."

ZUKO

"The warrior practices a variety of arts to keep his mind sharp and fluid. You will start with calligraphy."

Zuko frowns at the blank scroll of parchment before him. This is not at all what he envisioned for sword training. Beside him at the table, Lu Ten asks, "What should we write, Master?"

"Your names. When you write your name, you stamp the paper with your identity. You must learn to use your sword to stamp your identity on a battlefield."

Fine. Zuko prepares to make the first stroke of his name, but Lu Ten grabs his wrist. "Wait just a second, Lee. You're holding it wrong."

Oh right, I forgot. Lee is my name. He frantically casts around his mind for an appropriate way to write 'Lee'. 'Beautiful'? Ugh, no. Too complicated, anyways. 'Sharp'? A little too apt for a trainee swordsman. 'Reason'? Who even names their kid that? 'Strength'? Cliché. As if reading his mind, Piandao asserts, "Remember, you cannot take back a stroke of the brush, or a stroke of the sword."

Lu Ten writes something down for 'Mushi'. Zuko has to make something up. Quickly, he dashes down five strokes and straightens up as Piandao comes to examine their work.

"Hm, Mushi… 'to admire the West'… very patriotic. Your 'heart' is squashed down at the bottom, though. Take care that your true heart's feelings aren't overcome by what you think you should feel or do, for your country or anything else."

"Yes, Master."

"And Lee… 'to stand firm.' Simple but telling. You have a strong, straight hand. However, the way of the sword will teach you that often, you must bend from the path you have taken to succeed. Versatility, not rigidity, is your friend."

ZZZ

"He sounds like a fortuneteller, not a master swordsman," Zuko complains that night before bed. He and Lu Ten are bunked in one of the guest rooms. "What do your 'true heart's feelings' have to do with fighting?"

"Lots, I'm sure."

Zuko flops down on his bed and beats his pillow into shape. "At this rate, we'll definitely be masters of calligraphy soon, but not swordfighting."

"Patience, cousin. Master Piandao knows what he's doing, and we've got all the time in the world. It's like eating a meal with your parents. First you eat all the nasty, bitter vegetables, and then you eat your nice hot cakes or egg tarts to take away the aftertaste. In the end, everyone's happy: your parents, because you ate your vegetables, and you, because you got dessert. All's well."

Silence settles between them for a while. Then: "You know who's not happy?"

"Me, because you won't let me sleep with all these complaints?" Lu Ten says teasingly.

"No, the food, because it's being eaten."

ZZZ

To Zuko's dismay, Piandao has plenty more vegetable-lessons lined up for them. Zuko learns to practice landscape painting ("to hold the lay of the land in your minds"), rock gardening ("to manipulate your surroundings and use them to your advantage"), dancing ("to keep your feet light and your mind open"), brewing tea ("to calm your mind"), and a multitude of other arts that he is sure they will never have any use for, but Piandao is unshakeable.

"No wonder he has such a huge house," Zuko tells Lu Ten in their third week there, as they sit across from each other at a low pai sho table, the only piece of furniture in the room. Piandao has given them one hour to advance the game as far as possible. "He has to put all his paintings and calligraphy somewhere. I wonder if he takes it all with him when he goes to battle."

Lu Ten moves a piece, the white lotus. "Master Piandao actually doesn't go to battle anymore. He deserted the Fire Nation army years ago."

Zuko gapes at him. "Really? But that's not allowed."

"When you're a legendary swordsman, apparently it's allowed. He got bored of fighting, is what people say."

"So he devoted his time to playing pai sho and painting instead?"

"It's more fun than killing people, don't you think?" Lu Ten says, unexpectedly serious. "Your move, Zuko."

ZZZ

"Today, you will begin your weapons training," Piandao says as they follow him down the corridor.

Finally! It only took a month of art lessons to get here. Piandao leads them to a room full of swords, stacked from floor to ceiling around the periphery. "Choose wisely."

Zuko starts moving around the room counterclockwise, while Lu Ten goes in the opposite direction. There are just so many to choose from—single-edged, double-edged, bronze, steel, curved, straight, long, short. Zuko has no idea what he should be looking for. Perhaps he'll know it when he sees it? Behind him, Lu Ten moves between the displays with similar indecision. They inch towards each other, about to meet each other at the median of the room, when Zuko sees it—a pair of identical curved swords, tapered smoothly to sharp tips. One hangs crossed over the other on the wall.

That's it. Zuko reaches for one of them… just as Lu Ten takes the other. Coincidence?

The swords are clearly made for someone of Lu Ten's height; the one Zuko's holding is nearly as tall as he is. Never mind, I'll learn to wield it just as well. They turn to face Master Piandao.

"We've made our choice, Master," Lu Ten says, as if it weren't clear.

Piandao frowns—but he's always frowning. Zuko doesn't get the sense that he's displeased, but rather thinking deeply.

"Good choice, you two," he finally says. "However, you both have made the same mistake."

He steps forward and takes both swords. "These are dual broadswords: two halves of a single weapon." He demonstrates a fluid move with the two blades, one following the other through the air as if connected by an invisible string. "Don't think of them as separate, because they aren't. They're just two different parts of the same whole."

Zuko watches in fascination as Piandao goes through several forms, each with a practiced ease that speaks of years of experience.

"There are two sides to a person: the one they show the world, and the one they show themselves in the mirror," Piandao continues. Zuko sees his own reflection, tiny and blurred, in the gleam of the swords as they flash by. "A person can only achieve balance with themselves and with the world when both sides are the same, like these two blades. Swords do not lie; neither can you lie to yourself or to others about who you are."

Zuko shifts nervously. That sounds like a direct contradiction of what he and Lu Ten are doing right now, posing as Lee and Mushi. Would Master Piandao still accept them as students if they revealed their true identities? Fortunately, Piandao finishes his demonstration without any more philosophizing.

LU TEN

'All is one, one is all.' Piandao leaves them with these words one morning, along with instructions to train all day while thinking about what they mean.

"I didn't realize we were going to be doing so much wordsmithing. It's not like you can defeat an enemy by spouting nonsense at them on the battlefield." Zuko says as they warm up. Master Piandao gave Zuko a pair of dual broadswords that are actually small enough for him, perfect, in fact. He moves them like extensions of his own thin arms.

"Most of the time, you can't," Lu Ten agrees. "But I think what the master might be trying to get at is that you can avoid getting into battles by understanding what this nonsense—uh, wisdom—means."

They start sparring in the courtyard. That Fat isn't watching them dourly from the house is a testament to how much they've grown on the sour old man… or maybe he's not home? Piandao seemed to indicate that he was going on a short trip out of town.

Lu Ten doesn't hold back with Zuko; he's learned that if he does, his cousin will tire himself out faster trying to throw him off balance. When they spar as equals, Zuko paces himself and strategizes better to save his energy. They meander all over the grounds, and Lu Ten fervently hopes that Piandao doesn't notice the stalks of bamboo that they cut down in a frantic chase through the grove, or the lion turtle carving on the bridge that's missing its nose because Zuko thought it would be a good idea to take their fight into the stream.

"So what do you think it means?" Zuko wonders as they pile rocks on the bank of the stream to obscure a now-decapitated bonsai tree (rock gardening does come in useful!)

"All is one, one is all," Lu Ten reiterates. "Well, first off, what is all?"

"All people? All things? Everything in the world?"

"And one."

"One person. Like you or me."

"That doesn't make sense, though. How can one person be everything, and how can everything be in one person? I think I would have noticed if everything in the world was inside of me."

LLL

Evening falls. They've talked in circles about the riddle all afternoon. Neither Piandao nor Fat seem to be home yet, so they climb out onto the roof and look at the stars. The stars look back at them with a warm, distant gleam.

"How many stars are there, Lu Ten?" Zuko asks drowsily.

"A lot. More than there are people in the world. More than there are ants in the world, or grains of sand on the beach."

"That is a lot."

Lu Ten leans back on his elbows. "Some people believe that the stars existed before anything lived on earth. One day a star crashed into the earth and gave rise to all life that exists here now."

"How can a star become alive?"

"Er… I'm a bit fuzzy on the details, honestly. My dad told me when I was about your age. But anyways, the point of that is, we're made from stardust. It's like we're all carrying a bunch of little stars inside of us."

"Really." Zuko doesn't sound like he thinks that computes.

"Yep. We came from the stars, we live out our lives, we die… well, we don't think about that for quite a while yet… and then our spirits leave our bodies and fly back out to the stars." He's actually not sure if this is how his father told it, but maybe Zuko will believe him. "The cycle resumes. So maybe after people die, their spirits could reincarnate into different people, nations, times, places in life. Although to be fair, I don't know if normal people can be reincarnated, or just the Avatar. What do you think, Zuko?"

He looks over at Zuko, whose hands are folded primly over his stomach, which rises and falls slowly in time. His cousin is asleep, lulled by his circular pondering. Lu Ten scoops him up and starts the precarious descent from the roof. He slides down and tumbles gracefully through the window into their room… okay, make that decidedly not our room. Lu Ten might not have a great sense of direction, but mistakenly swinging into a room on entirely the wrong side of the castle is a new low for him.

Master Piandao stands at a drafting table, surveying a map of the four nations. He looks up as Lu Ten freezes on the carpet, Zuko still clinging to his back in slumber.

"Sorry, Master," Lu Ten squeaks, a sound he hasn't made since he was…fourteen? Since his voice changed, anyways. "I'll just…" He turns to head out the window again.

"Go out the door, Mushi," Piandao says. "Sneaking through windows like a thief in the night isn't becoming."

"Yes, Master." Thank God, at least I wasn't interrupting anything, I don't think…? He chances a glance towards Piandao's map as he carries Zuko out of the room. It's headlined 'Order of the White Lotus', and there are white lotus tiles scattered at various locations around the map. Hm…

Zuko wakes briefly as Lu Ten's putting him to bed. "Go back to sleep. I'm going to tell Master what we figured out today." Zuko nods and closes his eyes again.

LLL

"Master?"

"Yes, Mushi." Piandao has rolled up the map, but remains standing at the table.

Lu Ten walks around in front of him. "I thought about what you said this morning."

"And…?"

"And I have to say, I don't fully understand it."

"Ah. You are learning from your brother. Good! Children are so often wise in spite of, and indeed because of their years, few as they are."

"In lieu of an answer, I have another question." Lu Ten takes a deep breath. "If all is one, and one is all, then the world is meant to live in harmony. To harm another person would be to harm oneself. So why are the four nations at war?"

Piandao studies him intensely. "You understand more than you know you do," he says. "But something is preventing you from understanding still more. Something in your heart."

Lu Ten traces the circumference of a white lotus tile still lying on the table. "To be fair, we've only three nations now that the Air Nomads have been wiped out."

"You are almost old enough to enlist, aren't you?"

"Next year," Lu Ten says. And he will, of course, he will. General Iroh will be thrilled.

Piandao nods. "If you must, you must."

Lu Ten bows and leaves. It will have to do.

They leave Master Piandao two months later on a clear, sapphire day, swords on their backs, questions in their hearts, and a white lotus tile in Lu Ten's pocket.

A/N: Here are some notes I've written on how the Avatar cycle works in this universe, and other interesting facts! It's hosted on Archive Of Our Own because 1) I don't want to artificially inflate my word count, and 2) a lot of the text contains Chinese characters / hyperlinks, and those do not work well with FFN's interface.

(Just take out the spaces and correct the punctuation): archiveofourown dot org /works/7019827/chapters/15978724

Leave a comment if you liked it! Thank you for reading!