Disclaimer: I own nothing you might recognise from the series.
Notes: So, yes, I have been off in the lands of Primeval, writing all sorts of things there. I know I'm overdue for even thinking about this, let alone an update, but I offer you this, which is more on the topic of Ursa's revelation that Lee is actually Crown Prince Zuko. Sokka and Toph this time. Rebel Energy, newboy, a123b all requested either the gaang or Sokka's reaction to meeting Ursa, and Kimberly T, well, I don't think what I did with Toph here is exactly what you wanted when you asked for flashbacks, but . . . you got her PoV, anyhow.
Also, some of the italics may be messed up. This site's been cranky about my italicisation lately and it's rather irritating. I might miss something on posting recheck, so I apologise if something makes no sense due to lack of italics.
"I see you still talk to that runt like she's your only friend," said a female voice from behind them. Sokka and the others whipped around to see an arrogant-looking woman had come up behind them and was shooting Lee a rather scathing look.
"And who are you?" Sokka demanded, guessing that this woman was probably one of the parts of Lee's past that made him hate himself.
"This is my mother, Lady Ursa," Lee said. Oh, how much that explained. "Mother, this is Master Waterbender Katara, her brother, a warrior of the Southern Water Tribes, Sokka, and the Avatar, Aang."
Katara was her usual silly, trusting self, and marched forward, hand outstretched all friendly-like. "It's nice to meet you," she said with a smile. "I'm glad to finally meet Lee's mother."
Sokka had to clamp down hard on his natural response when that woman sneered down her nose at his sister and replied, "A pleasure." Maybe being all snippy like that with fake smiles anyone could see through was acceptable in those fancy-pants upper classes that Lee and Toph were from, but in his book, acting that way was just asking for a quick smackdown.
One look at Lee, however, and Sokka knew that this was completely normal for this woman, more, that she probably treated Lee just the same. He opened his mouth to tell her off when Toph appeared with a woman in tow. "My name is Ling," she told them, with a bow aimed at Aang. "I have spoken to the elders of our enclave and they wish to speak with the Avatar and his companions."
"Then let's go," Sokka said, turning his back on Lee's mother. She huffed indignantly at being dismissed. For once, Katara understood Sokka's totally obvious facial gestures (she normally just squinted and asked if he was constipated – then suggested he stop having as much meat) and she took Lee's arm, steering him after Ling.
Once they were on the move and out of that woman's earshot, Sokka said, "Pleasant woman, your mother."
Lee protested and Sokka swore internally as he made excuses for that kind of behaviour. "She's had a hard life."
Toph might be an unpleasant girl who smelled funny and like hurting other people more than was warranted in a normal human being, but that sort of bluntness paid off for Sokka, in letting him not be the one to break it to Lee that, "Yeah. So hard she started off by telling you you're an incompetent moron right off."
Maybe he needed to talk to Shuga. Sure, a flying bison wasn't the best conversationalist, but they seemed pretty smart, and he might be able to pick up a clue or two about how to beat some sense into Lee's head about his own self-worth.
"She didn't mean it like that. She was just . . . concerned. I mean, she's always had to protect the Cheng Dhu enclave, so it's right that she's protective. She was just scolding me. I mean, there were only rumours about the Avatar, right?"
Katara's lips were pursed as she caught Sokka's eye. He nodded in answer to her silent question, We will do something, won't we?
In one of his bursts of perceptivity, Aang saw the interchange, laid a hand on Katara's for a moment, nodding himself, and quirking an eyebrow at Sokka. Toph seemed to have noticed something as well, her eyes darting back and forth, unseeing as always, but the tilting of her head showing a reaction oddly like Aang's. She shook her head reprovingly at Lee when his eyes were focussed on Katara and Aang.
Lee wasn't stupid, though, and saw their exchanged looks. He flinched. "Lee," Sokka tried, reaching for his friend's shoulder.
The firebender pulled sharply away. "I'm fine," he snapped, clearly anything but, and hurting so obviously that it made Sokka's heart hurt the way it had when he'd caught his dad grieving for their mother.
They'd forgotten the adult presence with them, and Ling startled them all when she said, "I know she's your mother, Lee, but you shouldn't take everything she says to heart. She's not as important as she thinks she is."
Not that that had any effect either, Sokka thought, as he saw Lee's shoulders straighten and his stance firm up in response to the slight to his mother's honour. But Sokka also saw something else. Doubt. He was fairly certain this might have been the first time an adult had doubted the value of that woman's opinion in front of Lee, and it was giving the other boy something to think about.
Sokka left him to it, not wanting to push before Lee had a chance to absorb the novel concept that his mother sucked as a human being.
Between Toph harassing him, Katara bothering him and Aang bouncing off the ceiling, Sokka didn't even notice Lee had vanished until after he'd heard one of the elders say approvingly that Ursa had taken her son home with him. Sokka didn't even think as he dashed out the door and down the street to the house where Lee's mother lived.
Standing outside the door, he paused a moment, hearing a raised voice inside.
"No thanks to you. I still cannot believe you protected the monsters who destroyed our people."
"I-"
"I don't want to hear any excuses from you," interrupted the harpy. "Because you had to protect firebenders-"
"It was a nonbending unit!" Lee pleaded. "They were new recruits. Under eighteen, all of them."
She ignored him. "Thanks to your need to protect the enemy, our enclave and Cheng Dhu were victim to a burnout."
That was low. Laying the blame on him because the Fire Lord was a jerk and killed his own people just to murder airbenders was beyond the pale. Sokka knocked on the door, just so that no one could say he hadn't, and walked in. "Where's Lee? I wanted him to stick with me," he said loudly. It was a small place, so it was the work of moments to find Lee, who looked like he'd seen a ghost, or just been accused of murdering people. Either or. He was pale and shocky. "Are you okay? You look as white as a sheet."
"He's fine," snapped Ursa.
"Come on," Sokka said, pulling Lee up. "Let's take you to see Katara."
"I . . . We shouldn't bother her," Lee said.
"Yes," Sokka told him in no uncertain terms. "We should."
He pulled his best friend into the street and away from that poisonous atmosphere. Bato and knives flashed through his mind again, and Sokka pressed his lips together, ignoring Lee's protests that he didn't need a healer.
Toph froze as she felt Sokka and Lee approaching Ling's house. Lee was leaning on Sokka, although he seemed to be trying not to, and his heart was beating fast. When the door opened she listened to his protests, but heard his unsteady breathing underneath. She'd heard breathing like that before. Often when her parents had locked her away under the pretext of 'protecting' her. When she'd been left alone for days and days with no one to talk to but a nurse, who wouldn't speak to her, just brusquely brush her hair and shove her into some uncomfortable clothing.
It was the sounds you made when you were trying your hardest not to cry and not to be heard not-crying.
"My parents, they just . . . sometimes it was like they just forgot I existed," she said, trying to distract herself from the disconcerting feeling of not knowing where she was or what was happening. "Sometimes . . . I felt like I wasn't even real, like-"
"Like there was something wrong with you, because they didn't want to see you," Lee finished. "Spirits, my father was awful, but he never pretended I didn't exist, just said to my face I was a disappointment." He sighed. "But my mother just . . . if it weren't for Shuga," Toph heard him move and felt a rumble through the leather underneath her and supposed he must have petted the animal they were riding on. "If it weren't for Shuga I don't know what I'd've done."
"That was part of why I ran away," Toph admitted. "There were the badger moles, and when I was good enough for the arena, no one there ever ignored me."
He wrapped his arms around her, and Toph shivered. It felt . . . good. So wonderful to hear the heartbeat in her ears and to feel him like that. It made her forget all the times she hadn't felt like a real girl, only a sort of flawed doll. "I still say that if it came down to it, Sparky, I'd marry you."
Lee gave a weak sort of chuckle. "You'd probably be better than most of the girls I'd be set up with," he admitted. "But I always wondered what it would be like to have a sister who didn't hate me."
Sister? She could deal with that. There was always time to get him to change his mind if she needed a decent husband. "It's a deal Sparky. Just don't think this means I'll go easy on you when we spar."
"Wouldn't dream of it," he said, laughing.
And he'd just come from his mother's. While Katara fussed and fluttered and Toph heard the sound of the girl's water clearly investigating Lee for her, she plonked down next to him. "What's wrong? Something happened, your heart's beating way too fast."
"His mother," Sokka ground out.
She leaned into him, squeezing his hand and murmuring in his ear, "You are real, and you're worth it."
He steadied as Toph spoke, relaxing as Katara continued to touch him and chatter on at him. Sokka wasn't talking to Lee, but from the way he moved, he seemed angry and Toph would have bet a dozen champion belts that he was imagining giving that horrible woman a swift kick up the-
The door slammed open. "I expect my son to return at once," declared the bitch.
Katara was super-duper nice, sounded distracted, and that was the only reason Toph could think of that she wouldn't have noticed the way the bitch sounded. "As soon as I'm done checking him over," she said absently. "He's clammy and he's cooler to the touch than he ought to be, he's pale and Toph says his heartbeat is too fast. When I'm sure he'll be okay he can go back."
"Now," demanded Ursa. "He can fake illness as well in my home as he can here."
"Fake?" Katara asked. Toph felt the other girl's head come up and felt a sudden shift that meant aggression and anger. She nearly smiled, because sweetness sounded like she had some claws after all. Hopefully they'd get sharpened on the bitch.
"Yes, fake. I don't expect you realise this, but he is something of an inveterate liar," the woman had the gall to say. "Why, he sent me a letter declaring his father had scarred his face terribly. I could certainly believe it, given that firebenders are savages, but there isn't a mark on him." She sounded as false as Toph's mother did when faced with a social inferior. Like a poisoned sweetmeat.
Katara didn't fall for it. "He had a scar. It covered the whole side of his face, disfigured his ear and affected his vision and his hearing. After Admiral Zhao burned your son's face off, I was granted the power by the Spirit Oasis at the North Pole to heal his face completely."
That was . . . horrible. And Sparky's dad was clearly even worse than he'd let on if he was burning his own son's face off. At least her parents had never beaten her.
"Oh," said the evil woman. She sounded surprised. "The scar was real?"
"Yes, it was real," Sokka ground out.
"What was he doing that got him into a fight with Zhao?" inquired the harpy. Toph could hear, the heartbeat the way the woman shifted, the undertones of her voice, she didn't care and thought it was something stupid.
Aang stood proudly and said, "Defending me while I was in the Spirit World trying to find a way to keep the Northern Water Tribe from being invaded." Apparently the Fancy Dancer still thought he could convince the woman by talking to her that she was wrong.
"Really," Ursa said contemplatively. She turned to Lee. "It's good to know that you're trying to overcome the bad blood from your father."
Sokka snapped. "Just because his father's a firebender and high up in the Fire Nation doesn't mean Lee's a bad person. It just means he has bad luck in a parent." Something about the statement put Lee's heart into overdrive. Toph felt his head turn, a soft gasp escaping him.
Lee pleaded, "Sokka, don't."
"High up?" his mother said. "You have no idea, do you?" she continued. "You have no idea who he really is."
"Mother," Lee pleaded. Toph wanted to hit the woman. Whatever she was going to say was being calculated to hurt her son, to hurt Lee. Toph knew one thing, she wasn't going to stand for it. Whatever the woman said, Toph wasn't going to lose her potential future husband to this. She wasn't going to let him be hurt because someone who should be nice to him was a terrible person.
"You've been taking advantage of these poor, foolish, naive children," the woman said, turning to the small band. "'Lee' is not who you think he is. 'Lee' is actually the Crown Prince, Zuko. The son of the Fire Lord, Ozai."
Lee – Zuko's heartbeat thundered in Toph's ears. His hands spastically moved, as though he was uncertain of what to do. Over it the earthbender could hear the woman, the Fire Lady's heartbeat. She was telling the truth, but lying by telling it. She was trying to tell people her son was evil by telling the truth about him. Which was worse than straight up lying. "She's telling the truth," Toph said. "I can feel her heartbeat and she's not lying." Then she let her anger colour her voice. "Not that I care, lady," she said to Ursa. "Sparky's a nice guy and I like him."
Zuko didn't believe them when they all started saying that. He didn't believe it when Ling, in a move Toph heartily approved of, tossed Ursa out of the house. He didn't really believe it when Sokka was so angry he had to go hit things and when Katara and Toph snuggled him.
That was okay, Toph decided. There was lots of time for them to make him believe it. In the meantime, she hung on to remind him that she was there and he was real.
