PLEASE READ THE AUTHOR'S NOTES AT THE END. I HAVE AN IMPORTANT NOTE.
Disclaimer: I still don't own. But I still watch religiously, I swear.
Once Upon a Teashop
Of all the things Jet had been expecting from music night, this was most definitely not one of them.
"I didn't know you played the tsungi horn," he said by way of greeting. Li, who had just exited the stage to a large round of applause, looked like he was about to throw said instrument on the ground as hard as he could.
"You don't know anything about me except what you may or may not think you found out by breaking into where I live and going through my things." Now Li looked like he was about to throw the instrument at him. Jet cleared his throat nervously and braced himself, Smellerbee and Longshot there as silent backup.
"So, uh…Sokka told you about that?" The glare he received was slightly softer than his usual fare, so Jet pushed forward, joining the shorter boy as he walked away from the stage and through the bustling crowd. "You remember my friends, Smellerbee and Longshot, right?"
Smellerbee waved.
Li nodded awkwardly, a slight jerking motion with his chin. "Yeah. Hi? It's, uh. It's nice to see you again."
"You're really good on the tsungi horn," the girl complimented. "Where'd you learn to play?"
"Thanks, I guess. My mother taught me."
"Your mother?" Jet reiterated, suddenly intrigued. He'd never heard Li talk about either of his parents before. It was always just about his uncle. "Where is she?"
"She's dead." There was a surprising lack of anger in that statement. In fact, there was a surprising lack of any emotion in that statement at all. Still, though, it was more than Jet had ever heard before, so he decided to push a bit.
"She's—was it the Fire Nation? Did they get your dad, too? Is that why you came here with your uncle?" The sudden tic that developed in Li's jaw indicated that Jet wasn't getting anymore out of him.
By now, they had reached the other side of the bustling teashop, and Li approached his uncle, returning the horn by unceremoniously dumping it onto the table in front of Mushi, Sokka, and a blind girl that sat with the two.
"That was a very heartwarming performance, as usual, nephew," the old man greeted, unfazed by his nephew's surliness.
"Who's the girl?" Jet asked, sitting down at the table, as well. Music night was, apparently, a serve yourself kind of thing meant more for fun than any real sort of income, so while Mushi had made them attend, there wasn't too much for them to do beyond take their turn performing.
"Oh. Jet, this is Toph. Toph, that's Jet. You already know Li, you know, Mushi's nephew. Toph's Aang's earthbending teacher."
"Wait," Toph began, a knowing grin on her face. "Is this Jet? You know, the Jet?"
"Yeah. Actually. He works here, too." Sokka glared at the wheat-chewing older boy, but got a smirk in return.
"Hah! Well, I'm not the one telling Sugar Queen about this."
"Please don't," Sokka muttered.
"You don't want to tell Katara about me?" Jet taunted, leaning across the table towards his acquaintance. Surprisingly, it was Toph who answered, and not Sokka.
"You don't want us to tell Katara about you. I can feel her murderous rages three rooms away! And that was just from one conversation about you, and most of that was not directed at Sokka."
"Yeah, Jet, it's probably best to leave that one alone," warned Smellerbee.
"Why, what happened with her?" Li asked, and Jet gave a pleasant sigh inwardly at the confused look on his usually upset face.
"Nothing," the dark-skinned teen snapped.
Li shrugged and took a seat next to Toph.
"So…" Toph began, when the silence had grown a little too uncomfortable for the preteen girl. "Nice weather we're having."
"It is, isn't it? Perfect weather for the zoo. Speaking of which, Li and I are going this weekend." Jet directed a pointed look at Sokka. Maybe he would get the point and leave the two of them alone, but then again, the watertribe boy had made it something of a personal mission to ruin Jet's life (at least, the Freedom Fighter thought so). Still, it didn't hurt to try, and if he could somehow buy some alone time with the object of his affection, he would be one step closer to his overall goal.
Surprisingly, though, it was the scarred teen himself who responded.
"Sokka's coming, too, actually," he commented offhandedly, purposely ignoring the snide look that passed from the Freedom Fighter to the blue-clad warrior. "He's the one who got the tickets."
"Oh, yeah, you got those from Aang, didn't you?" asked Toph. "You know, he's the one who relocated the whole thing. Nice bit of earthbending, if I do say so myself." She looked every bit the proud teacher. Jet blinked as he noticed the hand Li had resting on the table clench into a fist when the girl mentioned Aang's name. He looked up, to see an even more defined frown than usual on the scarred face, the other boy's one brow furrowed darkly. Apparently, he wasn't the only one to notice the sudden shift in mood, because the earthbender spoke up about it suddenly. "What's your problem?" she asked Li, leaning into his space to pester him.
"Nothing," he said flatly, not reacting to the way she was impeding on his personal space.
"Well, che, that's a lie if I ever saw one. And I'm blind! So, what, do you have a problem with Aang or something?" Li's fist tightened again, and Jet found himself surprised at how perceptive this blind girl was. How did she even notice?
There was tense silence despite the loud noise from the crowd around them as everyone waited for Li to respond. Mushi finally interrupted it with a forced cheerful laugh. "Would anyone like another cup of tea? The ginseng is especially soothing today."
"No, I wanna hear what his problem with Twinkletoes is. I mean, I'll understand. He can be really annoying sometimes." She leaned more into the scarred boy's personal zone, but was stopped when Sokka placed a hand on her shoulder.
"Toph, can I talk to you for a second? Over there?"
"Fine, whatever. Ruin all my fun."
Jet watched them go, and contemplated following them to eavesdrop. Whatever it was was most likely about Li, and he would take information about his mysterious future soulmate in whatever way he could. However, before he could, someone else surprisingly caught his attention.
"So—Jet. Have you ever…been to the zoo before?" It was awkward and forced, and sounded like having to make pleasant conversation physically grated on his nerves, but Li had actually directed a regular, conversational topic towards him. Jet was not going to let this opportunity get away from him.
Meanwhile, Sokka walked Toph through the sea of people, making a straight line for the storage room. The dark-skinned boy made sure to lock the door behind him before turning to his friend and travelling companion.
"Is anyone hanging around trying to overhear outside or anything?" he asked.
The green-clad girl shrugged one small shoulder. "No, not that I can feel. Why? What's the deal, Snoozles?"
"Okay, what I'm about to tell you: you have to promise not to freak out about it, okay? And you can't tell Aang or Katara—they wouldn't get it, and they might do something stupid and rash, and he's really not that bad of a guy." Sokka knew he probably sounded like he was pleading, but he didn't really care. He also didn't know why this was suddenly so important to him.
"What are you even talking about?" the girl returned with a yawn. "Just say what you're going to say."
"Li is actually Prince Zuko."
Toph paused in the act of picking her ear wax with her pinky. "You mean evil Fire Nation ponytail guy who chased you guys around all the time?"
Well, when she put it like that… "Um. Yeah. Kind of. But he doesn't have a ponytail anymore. And his uncle, Mushi, is actually Iroh, the general who held Ba Sing Se under siege for 600 days."
And why did the blind earthbender look entirely more excited than she should have at this prospect? "So you're saying the Fire Nation have infiltrated Ba Sing Se?"
"No! Well, yes, sort of, but, no! And why are you so excited at that thought?" Really, that was a little disturbing, Sokka thought to himself as he backed away from the small girl—not that there was really much room for him to go anywhere in the tiny storage closet.
"Are you kidding? This place is so boring! I need to kick some Fire Nation butt."
"Well, they haven't infiltrated. They're here as refugees, albeit unorthodox ones." Sokka waited for Toph's reaction, and didn't know whether to be surprised or not when she just grinned wide and leaned back against the door.
"I don't know, this plan of theirs to conquer Ba Sing Se through the magical power of tea is pretty ingenious. Have you had Uncle's tea? One sip and you're dependent on it for the rest of your life. He'll have the whole world in no time. Forget about Ozai, the real villain here is this teashop." The boy laughed at this, but then she turned serious for a second. "Look, I know why I don't really care—I mean, I've met Mushi or Iroh or whatever before, and he's a pretty good guy who cares about his nephew, and you don't seem to be bothered by them being here, but that's what I'm wondering about: why aren't you bothered?"
Sitting on the ground and leaning back against the shelf, the watertribesman stopped to ponder the question. "I…honestly don't know," he finally replied. "At first I was all set to get out of here and tell Aang and do something about it, but I can't really tell you what made me change my mind. I mean, Zuko seemed a little desperate, which was kind of odd to me. Curiosity, probably at first, but since then, well—you know that feeling when you realise that everything you've believed your whole life may not be entirely true?"
He glanced at the noble girl who was now sitting cross-legged across from him, seriously listening to what he had to say for once. "Yeahhhhh—no. Not really."
"I feel like we spend so much time villainizing the Fire Nation as a whole that we've lost sight of the fact that they're people, too, and some of them have probably been hurt just as much, if not more than the rest of us."
"So, you feel bad for him," Toph interjected surprisingly quietly for once.
"Well, kind of, yeah. I mean, I know more about him than either Katara or Aang because when he was chasing us, I took the time to find out as much as I could about him. You know, know your enemy and all that. That's how I knew about his dad banishing him, and why I thought we should've left him at the North Pole. Someone that desperate is dangerous and would do anything to capture Aang." Sokka paused and laughed slightly. "Like breaking him free when someone else caught him. You can't trust someone like that, and I didn't. But there were other rumours, too, that I thought were just that—rumours. Now, I'm not so sure."
"What kind of rumours?" the girl asked, completely curious. He didn't mind, though. He was just glad to finally have someone to talk to about everything that had been bothering him lately (well, beyond the stuff with Jet. Aang was perfectly willing to sympathise with him over Katara's unfortunate escapades in the woods).
"You know, about his scar." Sokka casually gestured to his face, forgetting for a second that Toph was blind.
"…What scar?"
"What do you mean what scar? It's giant, takes up half his—oh."
"Yeah, great job there, Sokka. Tell the blind girl how easy to see it is." Her tone was annoyed, but the earthbender actually looked more amused than anything else. It was weird how much she seemed to like cracking blind jokes.
"Well, he's got this big burn scar on his face. Takes up most of the left side. I used to just assume that he did it to himself in some firebending gone wrong, but I'm not so sure anymore. I've heard a couple different stories, but the general consensus was that the Fire Lord did it."
"Wait—so you're saying his dad purposely burned his face like that?" Toph looked incredulous.
"Yeah. I mean, I didn't believe it at first—because Fire Lord or not, what kind of dad would do something like that?—but then we met his sister, and found out that he's wanted by the Fire Nation, too, now. I haven't brought it up or anything, but getting to know Zuko, it seems a lot more likely than the firebending accident thing."
"Wow."
"I know."
"I guess I would be angry all the time if that happened to me, too."
"Yup."
"Well, yeah, so that's why it's probably best not to bring up Aang around him. I think he's still got Avatar-hunting urges buried deep down even though he's mostly resigned himself to a life of tea-serving and bad leaf jokes and crazy, wheat-chewing stalkers, so it's best if we don't stir those tendencies back up. I mean, he's actually a pretty entertaining guy when he's not trying to kill you."
xXxXxXxXxXx
Zuko would never admit that he was nervous. Well, okay, he might admit that he was to Sokka, and maybe—just maybe—to Uncle Iroh, but he would never admit to Jet that he was nervous, not even if his father decided to change the conditions of his banishment so that he could come home if he admitted to his stalker just how nervous he was at the thought of being friendly and making friends and all of those things that normal people did. Okay, so he probably would if it let him go home, but he wouldn't if it was the choice between telling Jet and letting Azula kill him, but only slowly and after revealing all his embarrassing childhood secrets to whoever might be around.
So, really, he wasn't that nervous. Sokka had been decidedly unhelpful in the advice department, and the former prince was now beginning to wonder if this plan had any chance of working. Clearly being himself wasn't the problem—or, rather, it was. His natural inclination was to insult and/or assault whatever was bothering him, generally ending with a rather positive result. Jet seemed to thrive in Zuko's standoffish tendencies, and just used it as an excuse to do things most normal people—or even people as out of touch with society as the Fire Nation prince himself—considered a breach of privacy and utterly indecent.
If there was one thing "Li" couldn't stand, it was people invading his privacy.
That small detail didn't seem to deter the bastard Freedom Fighter, though. In fact, it seemed to only encourage whatever sick fascination Jet had, and instead of going away, the tall boy just hung around more and more, incessant and fervent, until one day Zuko happens to be talking to Sokka and finds out that the annoying, cocky, smooth-talking Earth Kingdom stalker had not only broken into where he lived (again), but had also found his hidden compartment under the floorboards and discovered something he doesn't even think his uncle knows. Understandably, the firebender's first instinct was murder, but that didn't seem like it was viable option at this juncture. People (namely Smellerbee and Longshot) might notice if their leader ever went missing and actually worry about the thick-headed louse. They might even suspect Zuko's involvement, as they were surprisingly perceptive at times, and that was the last thing he needed—any more attention of any kind being drawn to them at all. It was bad enough that Uncle was practically a celebrity now. News of his tea had spread even beyond the inner walls, all the way to the guards who practically lived on the outer wall. They salivated at night dreaming of tasting the enchanted leaf juice they heard so much about, but disappointed as they were unable to leave their posts. This kind of attention, while good in that it made people entirely less suspicious of a kind old teashop owner and his moody nephew than they might otherwise be, also drew attention. And attention, when directed at the scarred young firebender, tended to be more negative in nature than positive (or kind of weird and creepy and only sometimes appealing when it came from girls his age).
So killing Jet was out. Sokka's advice was clearly crap because being his usual self had gotten him nowhere, and if there was one thing Zuko would admit to not knowing, it would be how to act comfortably in a casual social setting with other people their age. That was why, when Smellerbee started directing a lot more questions in his direction (Uncle had suspiciously fled the table to go take a turn on stage) and with a reminder to himself that he was supposed to be "friendly", instead of getting angry and annoyed, he found himself flustered and uncomfortable, barely able to get anything out of his mouth without tripping over the words. It was embarrassing, to be quite frank, and even more humiliating to be reassured by Jet's easy smirk and teasing about how cute he was.
Zuko, the banished and scarred crown prince of the Fire Nation, did not like this at all.
Jet had a motive. If there was one thing the generally perceptive firebender was sure of, it was that. As he watched the older boy respond to something his friends had said (though how Longshot said anything was something of a mystery in his mind) with a casual chew of the wheat stalk in his mouth and big, open gestures, he made a catalogue of everything he knew so far about the person he had come closest to ever being friends with.
The most obvious thing on the list was the number one reason why Zuko no longer felt even a modicum of positive emotion or the barest inklings of trust towards the Freedom Fighter: Jet was determined. This, in itself, was nothing new. The prince had met many determined people in his travels, not the least of which was the Avatar. But Jet was determined in a single-minded, focussed, all-consuming-passion kind of way, utterly concerned with only one thing: the complete and utter destruction of the Fire Nation. Zuko had only known one other person in his whole life who had that kind of frenzied devotion to any goal: himself. He was probably the most aware of how unpredictable it made him at times, and he couldn't let himself drop his guard around someone who had that same amount of focus put into destroying people of his culture. It was also somewhat annoying to be on the focus of that kind of drive when it had nothing to do with being Fire Nation. He actually almost preferred the days after the boat when Jet, feeling especially hurt and betrayed, had followed him and Uncle around to try and catch them bending.
At least then it was easy to figure out what the hell he wanted. Now, Zuko had no idea what Jet really wanted with him, and it was leaving him twitchy.
He was not looking forward to the zoo this weekend.
TBC…
Hey, all. I'm back, and in a timely manner, to boot! There are a couple more chapters that I still need to edit for lots of stuff, and that brings me to the questions I have for all my readers:
1. My current plan is to update every two weeks. Is that an acceptable wait period for you all?
2. Is there any particular day that you prefer to get updates on? I try to make it on Fridays in time for the weekend, but do you guys have any preferences?
3. Are the chapter lengths acceptable, or would you like to see them longer?
4. Where, exactly, do you currently see this story going (I mean, I have a plan, but I'd like to know what you guys think)?
So, that's it. Answers to any of these questions would be a great help to me. Thanks for reading! I'll see you all again in two weeks.
