A/N: So they've had a confrontation. You would think they would want to talk about it, work things out. But these are boys. Are they going to deal with this confrontation? Hell no, boys being boys they will simply ignore it. Yeah. That will work.

Disclaimer: Okay, I don't own Avatar or its characters. Owell. I'll get over it. So will you. In the meantime…

Chapter 10

"We need to start the time-table," Zuko said. Did Sokka hear a challenge in the statement, or was he only listening for one?

"I wish we knew more. Getting out, that's easy. Getting away, that's the hard part," Sokka was torn by his own anxiety to be gone and the fuzziness of their plan once they were past the prison walls.

"I don't get you. Every time we've run up against each other, you've just acted without hesitation. Now you can't seem to make up your mind," Zuko was frustrated.

"And every time we've run up against each other, there was no time to consider our options, dipshit." Sokka wondered yet again how Zuko could be so smart and yet so amazingly dumb! "And, you may recall, our original plans failed as often as not."

"Oh. So you're not such a brilliant strategist after all?"

"No, I'm not brilliant. I – we've been damned lucky!" Sokka growled under his breath that he'd like to see Zuko do better. He would have liked to claim a higher victory record, but history had taught him not to boast. "A good plan requires testing, and we don't have that luxury. We just have to run it through between us, looking for holes. And then," and here he voiced the kicker. "We have to run it through Ling-Ling. No one will know better than her if it will work."

Zuko blanched, his pale skin achieving a hue beyond Sokka's limited experience. "Then we are dead. I know you think she's smart. All right. I admit, she must be smart. But what is a smart girl doing in a backwater prison system? If she were really smart she would be running this place."

Sokka allowed himself a smile at Zuko's expense, the first in several days. "I have two answers to that. First, what are the chances for a smart – ugly – girl in the Fire Nation to get ahead? Second, what makes you so sure that she isn't, in fact, running this place already?"

Zuko's next skin tone brought yet new breadth to Sokka's color wheel, making him wonder about the benefits of something to shade vision.

"You are kidding me, right?" Zuko thought about the pleasantries he had murmured in Ling-Ling's ear, and felt his lunch revolt.

Sokka thanked the spirits for the shortcomings of clever princes.

"I wish I were. It's up to you to figure out just how much leeway we have in creating a time-table. I think we can take it as a given that she knows how and when this place operates. How much she's willing to share with us is up to you."

How far are you willing to go to find out, was Sokka's unasked question. And because he was inherently honest, he asked himself the same question. But he knew the answer, even as he knew it before they had determined that Ling-Ling was more than a simple dupe to their stratagems.

Sokka had alwaysknown he would be called upon to kill. Pinioned in his memory was the death of the great ice-bear that he had wrought, less than a year ago. It had been a cause for celebration, yet also a time of awe. And yet more recently he stood before the younglings of the Southern Water Tribe, exhorting them to show no fear when faced with the enemy. Oh yes, he had felt fear when he faced his first Fire Navy ship.

Before the siege of the North Pole he had battered heads and broken bones, but he had not actually taken human life before defending Yue and her tribe. As they fought their way back to the oasis and Katara, Sokka knew he had taken more than one life, and wondered at how much less he had felt at that taking than he had felt when he killed the great ice-bear. This remained a mystery for him, and he looked forward to the day when he could resolve it.

At the same time, it was easier to think of that life-taking, than of the uncounted lives he had slain in those unguarded minutes that had resulted in his most recent incarceration. The betrayal by the merchant, the soldiers massing around him, and the frightening carnage his unthinking vision had registered as he had drawn both boomerang and saber to defend himself…

He hoped it would be a resolution the Sokka he used to be could live with.

Given the talk among the guards of the prison, Sokka suspected that his own count didn't really measure the deathtoll that encounter had taken, and he wondered, for the first time aloud, what kind of man he would return to his friends.

Zuko had lost track of the scores he counted against Sokka. He wanted desperately to believe that they outweighed the debts owed. Well, perhaps there was no real accounting for the debts owed. His own innate honestly required that much acknowledgement. Which, of course, only intensified his hatred for Sokka. Guilt was an unlooked for rift in Zuko's hard-won sense of calm. It was intensely annoying that every time he tried to look at the future the Water Tribe boy's face intruded itself upon his mind's eye. He wondered if, even when they both were free of the prison, he would be free of Sokka's hold on his imagination.

It was strange how little he felt he had gained from knowing Sokka's great secret. He realized now that the triumph he had felt had originated in his unraveling of it, not in the value of the secret itself. And, of course, in showing Sokka that he had figured it out – that he could keep up with him. More important still, he had wanted to take that look of superiority from Sokka's smirk.

As for the secret itself, its implications were various. It meant Sokka was fully aware that his own emotions could over-run his logic, and he feared this. It meant that the Avatar was probably either very near or, worst case, already a prisoner. It meant that Sokka didn't trust him despite bringing him into his escape plans.

Well, of course, why should he? This made much more sense than that Sokka should care about what happened to him. But he didn't like it.

"All things considered, we've actually been pretty lucky," Zuko mused.

"Absolutely. Not everybody gets to spend their days being fed at others' expense, and all that worry about maybe dying of some terrible illness? Not for us," The only thing Sokka found interesting about Zuko's statement was the use of the word "we".

"Ass. I mean that we could be in a prison where the guards were a bunch of diligent, well-trained soldiers, not these shit-for-brains brutes marking time for their return home."

"Emphasis on the word 'brutes'," Sokka rubbed gingerly at a shoulder that had been savagely poked when he made the mistake of leaning against the front wall of bars on Zuko's last return to his cell. "Point taken, though. Not to mention, these guys talk a lot!"

"I think we're considered easy duty," Zuko shrugged. "We don't make trouble, and there are just the two of us. Since they don't let you out, in effect there's just me."

"And you're nothing to worry about," Sokka grinned wryly. Zuko returned the grin.

"Right."

"They have been extraordinarily helpful. And you're right, extraordinarily stupid," It had taken very little prompting for the guards to decide varying the walk to and from the exercise yard and latrines was good for their own boredom levels, giving Zuko the opportunity to scope out their options for escaping the complex once they were free of their cells.

The silence that followed was comfortable, holding none of the tension of the last couple days.

Zuko found himself wishing he could invoke this comfort level at will, instead of having to rely on those moments when the solidarity of their shared state overcame their shared history. Of course, this conflicted with his need to maintain Sokka as his enemy, to keep his understanding of his own identity intact. Zuko had lived with discomfort in his relationships all his life. He could live with it now. He could turn his back on regret.

Sokka allowed himself to relax. Zuko was not to be trusted, but he knew now that the Fire Prince had the natural wit to delay any hostile acts until after their escape. He would not betray Sokka – it would run too contrary to his nature and his pride. Sokka's candid exposure of his limitations would work for them, and not against him until later. He needed Zuko to be able to think for himself and not rely wholly on him. Certainly, he had not meant to reveal so much, and he regretted his own missteps there, more for Aang's sake than his own. Zuko had surprised him. A calculated risk that could well back-fire. Oh well. One day at a time.