It was hard not to stare at the one the others called Zuko.
The boy -- and really, all of them were children, excluding himself and Hakoda -- stood tall, his shoulders pushed back and something hard set on his lips. His eyes were the typical honey-gold of a fire bender -- Chit Sang was the odd one out, having brown, muddy eyes. (His eye color was the reason he wasn't allowed to join the military in place of his brother. A fire bender without the tale-tell golden eyes? Unheard of.) The boy was still wearing the red rags of the Boiling Rock Prison, and he was currently serving everyone tea around the fire he had made.
So the boy -- Zuko -- simply could not be the Banished Prince. A prince, even banished, shouldn't and couldn't serve him tea.
But the scar on his face, angry and red, told another story. Everyone who knows about the 41st knew about that scar, knew how and why he got it.
So could this really be him, the Prince Zuko who stood up for a bunch of new recruits? Could this be the little thirteen-year-old from three years ago who cared for his people in a way unlike the other higher-ups of the Fire Nation?
There was only one way to find out.
There was a lapse in conversation, and Zuko was moving to refill Chit Sang's tea. As the boy poured the tea, Chit Sang told him softly, "My brother was part of the 41st Division."
Zuko's eyes widened and his mouth fell open. Something hard settled in his eyes, and steel flickered across his face before he closed off his expression.
He brought the steady stream of tea to a stop, his hands just barely trembling. A quiet, "I am sorry," left his lips, his eyes going downcast.
Chit Sang lifted his hand to the boy's shoulder, ignoring the stares that they were suddenly getting.
"You don't have to be," he told the boy who was stronger than he ever could be. "You did more than expected of you, too much. Akai -- my brother -- he was so thankful. Our families were, too. I am."
Zuko looked up at him, his one good eye watering.
"It wasn't enough."
Chit Sang shook his head, "It was, Fire Prince Zuko."
The fire rose a foot into the air as Zuko scoffed. He stood up, abandoning the tea, and left the courtyard. The fire quickly returned to normal.
Chit Sang was alone with the questioning faces of the group Prince Zuko had made his way into.
"What was that about?" Sokka demanded, protective of his new friend.
"You don't know?" Chit Sang asked, dumbstruck. How could they not know?
"Know what, fire-man?" the blind one -- Toph? -- asked.
He glanced around the faces lit up by the firelight, seeing confusion, curiosity, and anger as the main emotions. Could he tell these people, these strangers who clearly took the Prince for granted, about the amazing bravery the Prince held at only thirteen?
Chit Sang recalled the hardness in the Fire Prince's face, and decided that yes, he could. Prince Zuko certainly wouldn't.
"The real reason I was in the Boiling Rock," he decided to begin, "is because I knew too much about a scandal involving the Royal Family. I was charged for conspiracy and treason, along with more than one-hundred other Fire Nation citizens who were close to anyone who was a part of the 41st Division. All of us were innocent."
Well, if we had had more time to simmer and stir the wrath, we probably wouldn't have been.
"The 41st Division?" asked the Avatar, and wasn't that funny? The Prince helping the one he was meant to capture so he could "regain" his honor. (But he'd always had it.)
Chit Sang gave a bitter chuckle and nodded an acknowledgement to the boy.
"Yeah," he said. "My little brother was part of it. He was drafted, never was a fighter. The one time we went hunting together he cried because he regretted killing some fox-chicken. He wasn't cut out for war."
He caught the Water Tribe girl rolling her eyes, but he dismissed it. Now wasn't the time to pick a fight with an ignorant and racist thirteen-year-old.
"All of the 41st were new recruits. They should have been sent to make rounds through the colonies, or become border patrol before being sent out to battle. Get some experience in before having to know what it was like to watch your best friend be crushed to death by some earthbender. That's the protocol in the Fire Nation, see -- we have a strict, set way of doing things. But one of the generals -- I don't care to remember the scum's name -- had another idea.
"He wanted--" Chit Sang stopped, pained. He inhaled once and started again, "He wanted to use the new recruits as bait. Sacrificial ferret-lambs for a division of Earth Kingdom warriors, so that a stronger and more experienced legion of Fire soldiers could march in and trap the Earth warriors."
Chit Sang let out a shaky sigh, "It was a massacre on both sides."
"They can't do that!" the Water Tribe girl raged, her brow furrowed. "The man just-just sacrificed them?"
He barked out bitter laughter, "They could, and they did. But not before the story leaked to the Division, and then the family and friends of the soldiers."
"What story?" Sokka asked cautiously. The boy was clearly adept at reading the atmosphere -- he knew something was wrong.
"The story goes that one person stood up for the 41st, and payed a high price for it," he answered solemnly.
"Zuko," Toph filled in, reading between the lines as a frown settled upon her lips. Chit Sang nodded.
"Zuko?" Water Tribe girl asked, disbelief in her voice and painted on her face. "Zuko knows nothing about paying any prices."
Chit Sang resisted the intense urge to throttle her. She's thirteen, he told himself.
He went on, not bothering to respond to her, "The Prince spoke out against the plan, saying that they couldn't let a division of soldiers, loyal to the Nation that was supposed to protect them, be sent off to die like that. His father, the Fire Lord--" He spat the title out like it was something worse than acid, and maybe it really was, "told him that he was being dishonorable, and that he must fight an Agni Kai to regain that tarnished honor."
"An Agni Kai?" asked Suki, the girl who escaped with them.
"A fire duel," Hakoda breathed, clearly having heard of it before.
"Yes," Chit Sang nodded. "It used to be to the death, but in recent years, the duel ends when one opponent lands a hit on the other. Now it's only to the death if someone challenges the Fire Lord's right to the throne.
"Anyway, Prince Zuko looked at the general. He was old, the Prince knew that he could take him, and so he accepted the challenge. However, he had misunderstood. It had not been the general he had dishonored, but his father."
"No..." whispered Sokka, his eyes wide.
The Avatar shook his head in denial.
"His own father?" the Water Tribe girl asked, abhorred, color rapidly falling from her face. Hakoda put a gentle hand on her shoulder.
"There's evil everywhere, Katara," he told her softly.
Chit Sang continued, "When the Prince saw who he had to fight, he immediately yielded. But the Fire Lord would not let him. He lifted his hand--" Chit Sang did the same in demonstration, "--and he burned his only son's face. It was a blow meant to kill."
Chit Sang rested his hand in his lap, "When Prince Zuko survived, his father couldn't out-right kill him. Even those who agreed with the general and his plan would turn against the Fire Lord. So instead, he banished the Prince and sent him away."
His shoulders shook, and Chit Sang didn't know if he was going to laugh or cry. "It was -- it was some huge joke. Prince Zuko, too dumb to die. So let's send him on an equally foolish quest. Let's give him hope that will never amount to anything. Let's have him search for the nonexistent Avatar. Let the Avatar be his only hope to ever return to a home that doesn't even want him."
The Avatar, just a little boy, looked sick to his stomach, as did everyone else around the fire.
"And then it wasn't some huge joke," Chit Sang continued on. "And then the Banished Prince actually had a chance that he was never meant to have."
"So they sent Zhao after us," Sokka pieced together, haunted.
Chit Sang nodded, a twisted, but disgusted grin on his face.
"Couldn't let the failure come back home, after all."
"How... how long ago was this?" Hakoda asked hesitantly.
Chit Sang grimaced, "Three years ago. The Prince was thirteen."
Suki let out a small gasp, and Haru closed his eyes.
"But why arrest the friends and family of the 41st?" Sokka couldn't help but ask.
The fire bender shrugged, "In 81 AG, the Fire Army set a Fire Nation colony in the Earth Kingdom ablaze because they got too attached to the natives. The people back home were enraged -- so they began marrying the natives and having half-breeds, who cares? The Fire Nation nearly collapsed into a civil war. Luckily, an Earth Kingdom battalion of ships attacked and massacred dozens of Fire Navy ships. There was then a common enemy again, and the Houka Colony was forgotten.
"After that disaster, it was decided that colonials could do whatever, so long as they remained loyal to the Fire Lord. That's also why they had to get rid of us who knew about the 41st Massacre -- the higher-ups were afraid of another uprising, one that wouldn't be dispelled with the other nations' militaries so beaten down. Today they say that the 41st had been ambushed -- a load of crap."
Chit Sang gazed into the fire, felt its pulsing heat. For a second, he saw his little brother dancing in the flames.
"Akai deserved better than that."
And Fire Prince Zuko, too.
Nothing more was said that night.