Some more background information of Zuko and his childhood sweetheart before the story starts. This chapter takes you through his first couple years of life, from 7 to 11. Enjoy.

From the day of their meeting the boys had been inseparable. Zuko didn't remember a day he didn't see Hakagi, even though the palace was so large that could have easily been possible. They always met, in the garden, in Zuko's room, in Hakagi's room, it didn't really matter to them. Every time they saw each other, whether they'd just seen each other or it had been the day before, Hakagi would run up to Zuko and hug him. At first Zuko would find it strange but after a while it seemed like the most natural thing to do, being clung to by the smaller boy.

When they were seven, Zuko's martial arts practice was intensified, so that he could catch up with Hakagi, who was 2 kata's above him. He was out on the terrace, practicing for all he was worth, not being able to get the moves, feeling dull and worthless.

His father had been out to see him earlier, and he had not been pleased. 'Zuko, you might as well have been born in a water tribe with moves like that.' He had said coldly. Zuko was supposed to be learning the spurts of fire move, the one he'd been so dazzled by the year before when Hakagi had done it. He pumped his fists for the 40th time that day, stepped forward, jumped, landed…and fell.

This time he didn't get up. 'I can't do it. Something's wrong with me.' He decided, curling into a ball on the cold floor. He remembered the look that had been on his fathers face and began crying. 'He hates me.'

"Zuko?" Hakagi said softly, walking towards him. "I've been looking for you all over."

Zuko felt humiliated. Couldn't he have just a moment to fall apart? Hakagi noticed immediately that his cheeks were wet when he looked up. "Oh…I was…taking a nap." Zuko said unconvincingly. Hakagi hugged him, smiling.

"Why were you crying?" he asked. Zuko looked at him and he burst into tears again. "I c-cant d-do the spurts of f-f-fire!" he wailed. Hakagi looked bewildered.

"Yes you can." He said. "You're really good."

"I can't!" Zuko said stamping his foot. He felt angry all of a sudden, that Hakagi was better. "I can't! So leave me alone."

He turned his face to the ground and Hakagi turned it back, kissing Zuko's damp cheeks. Zuko looked at him with red eyes. "I can't." he whispered.

"You're my best friend." Hakagi said seriously. "You knew that right?"

"Well…I didn't know what we were exactly." Said Zuko. His cheeks were dry now, because where Hakagi had kissed had become hot and evaporated the wetness.

"Well I don't know what I am to you." Hakagi said. "But you're my best friend. I love you and cherish you very much."

Somewhere inside his seven year old mind, Zuko knew that this was not the way that most boys acted, that this was far more girly and intimate than it was supposed to be. But they were alone now, so he guessed he would let it slide. "You're my best friend too." he smiled, still slightly embarrassed, but like the tears on his cheeks, that was evaporating too. Hakagi made him feel comfortable about himself.

"Here, I'll teach it to you." Hakagi smiled. Zuko smiled back. 'Best friends…

He showed Hakagi his secret room right before he turned eight, and Hakagi had become just as enthralled with it as Zuko was.

They'd sat by the window and read to each other for hours on end. Sometimes they had acted out the parts of the characters. "You be the princess." Zuko said forcefully. "You look more like a girl."

"You look like a girl." Hakagi said. He stroked along Zuko's jaw line. "You have a feminine face. It's delicate. Soft."

"Shut up." Zuko snapped, slapping Hakagi's hand away. He wondered why the boy did such strange things, touched him in ways that just didn't seem natural. There had been a few times when he felt the urge to do it as well, to touch him, maybe hug him back. It just didn't feel…normal.

"It's true. Get over it. I'm not being the girl."

"Well," Zuko said thoughtfully, running his hand along the windowsill. "Let's both be boy's."

"There needs to be a princess in Cinderella." Hakagi said, arching an eyebrow.

"Let's make it be a prince. That way, we can both still be boys." Zuko said, crossing his arms. "Ok."

They didn't know, at their innocent age, how strange it was for two boys to be standing at an alter, whether real or made up.

Zuko was glad for the next royal function that he had to be at, that Hakagi was at it too. They'd stood in the corner of the room, snickering and making fun of the girls in pompous dresses and make-up, all flirting scandalously with their fathers.

"I'm never getting married." Zuko whispered. Over the three years that they had known each other and gotten closer, he'd felt some of Hakagi's personality rubbing off on him. He'd become more quiet, more thoughtful, more sensitive, while Hakagi had become more mischievous and less docile. He still had the constant urge to blurt out his thoughts though, before thinking them through.

For some reason, he'd half hoped that Hakagi would've vicariously agreed with him, but he only continued staring at the crowd. "Are you?" he said after a while, wanting to know. "I suppose. My father often speaks about it." Hakagi said.

Zuko tried imagining Hakagi as a father. He couldn't. "Well I'm never." He said, standing firm with his decision.

Hakagi looked at him, then reached over and brushed back some of his hair that was sticking out.

"Let's go out on the patio." He said.

"I know you dislike the indoors." Zuko smiled.

"Don't tell anyone. It isn't painfully obvious is it?" Hakagi teased.

"I promise." Zuko grinned, catching the sarcasm.

They walked outside, and Hakagi immediately took off the stuffy robe he'd been given to wear and threw the expensive garment on the ground. Zuko listened to the strains of music coming from inside and began rocking to it. Hakagi noticed. "May I have your hand madam?" Hakagi asked cortiously, bowing as he'd been taught.

"Oh my." Zuko said in a jokingly bashful voice. The two boy's took hands and danced across the pavement, Zuko laughing like crazy. Hakagi pulled him closer. "You've grown. You're nearly as tall as me."

"I'm nearly nine. What do you suppose it will be like?" Hakagi whispered.

"Close to ten. Then you'll be a pre-teen. That's so close to 13 and soon you'll be getting married." Zuko teased, feeling light-headed. He put it on Hakagi's shoulder.

"I'm serious." The blue-eyed boy sounded worried.

"The same. You'll discover new things, learn more, especially in our fire bending." Zuko mumbled, reaching up and playing with some loose strands of his friend's hair. The music stopped, and so did they, and Zuko finally realized how close they had been. He was glad it was dark. 'He has the ability to get me to go so close to him without me even knowing. He's almost…enchanting.'

Their first day of sexual education had been in the reproduction topic, when they were both 10. They had never been exposed to it before, hadn't even known that girls had different genitals from them. Zuko listened, enchanted as Kitomi sensei spoke about how babies really came into the world. He had Hakagi had thought it through many times, and they both had ended up deciding that when two people were married they got a baby, sometimes two, and if the first one was older than the second, then the second one had gotten lost in the mail somewhere and had finally come. It was so logical.

But apparently, it wasn't so. Zuko had found a book, buried behind others in the library shelves, thick as about five of his own books that talked about 'a wave of heated passion effulging the two lovers until they lost control of their mind and body, and soon their bodies weren't two, but one, tangled in a web created by their love.'

This is what they had been talking about. "So, can two men have sex too?" Hakagi suddenly asked. Zuko picked his head up off the table. How could he say the word so freely? Didn't he feel embarrassed knowing he was talking about something so…dirty. Zuko wasn't stupid. He knew it wasn't as clean cut as Sensei was making it out to be. He'd read that book, and now that he knew what it was talking about, he knew what went with the actual doing of the act. There were sounds and shaking and touching before it started, and kissing and fondling of places not meant to be tampered with. It seemed all vey private.

Kitomi's eyes widened slightly, though he tried to hide it. "Well, I suppose prince Hakagi. "It's not…widely practiced though." Kitomi was a small man, short and slender with a slightly receding hairline and spectacles. He looked severely shaken at the question, but then again, it didn't take much to shake him.

"Can they have babies?" asked Hakagi.

"No. Two men…their body's weren't made to join in such a way. A sperm and and egg must combine. Two men is perverse."

"Then why do they do it?"

"For...pleasure." Kitomi said, feeling nervous. He didn't want to lie to the children, he'd been told not to hide anything from them. "They're future Lords." he'd been told. "They have no time to be shielded from the world." But a topic such as homosexuality seemed too advanced. He changed the topic. Hakagi didn't object, only rocked his chair backwards and looked thoughtful. Zuko noticed how much older he was suddenly looking, less like a child. Something about that evoked worry in him, like Hakagi was leaving him behind even though he was only two months younger and still taller. He sat up straighter.

The real turning point had happened later that day, when the boys were laying by the lake, near the apple tree. They'd just come out of the water and were breathing heavily in the grass when Hakagi suddenly turned to Zuko and began running his hand over the other boys chest, his hand moving with the up and down movements.

On instinct, Zuko hit his hand away. "Stop." He gasped out, not having much breath to speak with. It had been their 10th race for the day and he was wiped out.

He began to close his eyes, the birds chirping above his head putting him to sleep. He felt the hand on his chest again. He sat up. "Hakagi!" he hissed to the half-naked boy, who gazed up at him with a half-innocent, half-mischievous look in his eye.

"Zuko?" he said back playfully.

"Stop doing that."

"What?"

"Touching me. You know what you're doing."

"Oh. Ok." Hakagi said, bringing his head off the ground and laying it on Zuko's stomach. Zuko didn't protest to that. He was used to being laid on by Hakagi, used to lying on him, used to feeling the soft curve of the gentle boy's forehead pressed into his shoulder when he cried for his mother, used to feeling hair tickle his neck when Hakagi's head was buried there as he seeked comfort. He was used to that sort of closeness.

Then the hand was sliding over his chest again, and he grabbed it, intertwining his fingers with the other boys. "What is wrong with you today?" he snapped. "You said you would stop."

"I didn't say when." Hakagi grinned.

"Why are you even doing that? Is there some gunk on your finger you're trying to wipe off on me?" Zuko questioned suspiciously.

"No."

"Then why?"

"I'm experimenting." Hakagi said, turning his face so he was looking at Zuko as he lay sprawled out on the grass.

"On?"

"What Kitomi Sensei said. About some parts of boys bodies being sensitive and reacting."

"To girls." Zuko huffed. Hakagi had been obsessing over that lesson for what reason he didn't know.

"I don't believe its just girls. Why would it be? Everyone has hands."

"Something in your hormones I guess." Zuko said, rolling over, holding Hakagi's head so it wouldn't fall off of him. "Just know nothing is sensitive about my body."

Hakagi fingered a lock of Zuko's hair. "You bet on it?"

Zuko held out his pinky. "Bet." He said tiredly, wanting Hakagi to drop the subject. Sometimes he wondered why he cherished the boy so much, why he put up with all his weird quirks. 'Why I even love him.'

Hakagi touched his chest again, lightly brushing his fingers over it. Zuko felt a shiver in his spine, but refused to say anything. 'If I don't make a sound then he wont know.'

Hakagi's hand moved higher. On its way to Zuko's neck, it accidentally brushed Zuko's nipple. Zuko let out a small grunt, his body shivering.

A grin spread over Hakagi's face. "Not sensitive hn?" he teased. Zuko blushed bright pink. "I bet I can find somewhere sensitive on you!" he yelled, outraged at what his body has done. Hakagi looked up at him with an air of despondence. Zuko straddled him. Just give me a minute. And so the game had started, that fateful Sunday afternoon, the game that would completely change their lives.

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