Zuko tipped his head back to soak in the last rays of the setting sun as he walked Ba Sing Se's narrow streets, craving the solace exposure to his element provided. Since he was working four days in succession at the barracks, Zuko was staying with his friends. To make up for any inconvenience he was handling their meals, although they insisted he didn't need to because he was one of them. They made him feel like a heel.
That was going to end tonight. He and Jet had discussed his growing discomfort with lying to the others. Jet believed they were ready for the truth, but Zuko hadn't been so afraid since the night his mother fled the palace, leaving behind only her cryptic words of goodbye and a sense that she'd done something horrible, something that was ultimately his fault.
He'd befriended the Freedom Fighters under false pretenses. After everything they'd lost to his family's war, should he even hope to be forgiven? He didn't think he'd done anything to earn forgiveness, so he dreaded Longshot and Smellerbee's reactions.
He walked inside the slightly shabby entrance to the apartment building, paused to take several calming meditative breaths, and half-ran up the stairs. When he stepped inside, Smellerbee and Longshot were both already home. Luckily he could hide any unease by starting dinner right away, mumbling an apology as he pulled a marinating cowpig loin from the ice box, putting it on the rack inside their stove and starting a pot of rice. Longshot helped him clean, slice and skewer some assorted vegetables. Smellerbee kept them entertained with an update on the Tea Snobs' progress as tea servers.
"Any day now," she said, "they'll be able to work a whole half shift without yelling for help. It's almost cute how both keep forgetting they're older'n me. And supposedly know more about tea." She tipped back her chair. Zuko noticed that her foot was braced on Longshot's thigh instead of his just washed table so he kept quiet. If Longshot objected, he'd let her know.
"Clean laundry, coming through," Jet called, backing into the apartment.
Smellerbee's chair's legs banged the floor as she jumped up to claim the big basket he was carrying. "Let me get that." Setting it on the floor by her bed, she started to rapidly sort the folded contents into piles.
Zuko managed not to grin at this evidence of her surprising girly streak. While she was clearly indifferent to handling her friends' clothes, it was equally obvious she didn't want the boys touching her undergarments. She called them to get their laundry while Zuko started broiling the skewered vegetables.
Jet gave Zuko a significant glance and Zuko nodded, noticing that Longshot caught the byplay. Jet added a brief headshake: Not yet, and Longshot's brows rose as he caught each of their gazes in turn. He nodded, accepting that whatever it was, he'd be finding out soon.
When everything was ready, Zuko sliced the meat and plated everything. By unspoken agreement, they kept the talk light, focusing on work or amusing incidents throughout the day. Zuko got the feeling that Smellerbee, too, knew that something important was coming up.
After they'd eaten, Jet said, "Meeting, guys. The dishes can soak for now."
"They sent some more orders?" Smellerbee said, sneering a bit.
"Nothing from either sibling," Jet replied.
"Then what is it?" she asked.
Jet shot Zuko a glance. With a calming breath, the fire bender said, "I need to tell you something. All of you."
"Both of you," Jet corrected. "I've known what he's going to tell you for a while now."
Zuko felt a warming rush of relief at his quiet support. With a sigh, he finally admitted, "Jet wasn't wrong about me. I'm Fire Nation." He waited.
The pair looked at each other, communicating in that wordless way he envied. Smellerbee frowned in thought before she spoke. "You gotta know we have some questions."
Jet somehow managed to sprawl in his straight backed wooden chair. "Ask away."
Zuko couldn't believe they hadn't cursed and attacked him. They hadn't even ordered him to leave. He sat up straighter, met their eyes and said, "First question."
"Was Jet right about the fire bending? He said your uncle heated a cup of tea."
"Yes. We're both fire benders."
Smellerbee rocked back in her chair. "Why'd you come to Ba Sing Se?"
"We're fugitives. Since the Fire Nation wants us imprisoned or dead, it seemed like the safest place to go."
She glanced at Longshot, then asked his question with her words. "Did you do something horrible?"
"No! Well, treason, only I don't think we were wrong to do what we did."
"I thought it was just your uncle," Jet said.
Zuko looked at the Freedom Fighters' leader and sought the right words to explain. Slowly he began, growing more assured as he went on. "Maybe I wasn't part of it, but if I were caught and questioned, I'd have to say he did the right thing. I don't understand spirit stuff. I've studied a little in the last few years," and Jet nodded, understanding the reference to his former quest, allowing him to continue more comfortably, "Uncle's studied much more than I have and he's very wise. If he believed Admiral Zhao's plan to attack the Moon and the Ocean had to be stopped then it had to be stopped."
"Um, how do you attack an ocean?" Smellerbee asked, sarcasm entering her tone. "Not to mention a big, shiny untouchable thing in the sky!"
Zuko shrugged. "Spirit stuff. The Moon and Ocean spirits took on bodies and lived at the North Pole."
Her jaw dropped. "So the Water Tribe's got the greatest water benders possible! How's the Fire Nation winning the war again?"
"They aren't people. They were koi fish."
"What fish?" she asked blankly.
"Koi. Um, decorative pond type fish."
"They aren't even sea monsters? Squidsharks or wolfwhales or something cool?"
"Nothing cool," Zuko agreed. "When Zhao nearly killed the Moon Spirit, the Ocean Spirit possessed Avatar Aang. The Water Tribesmen probably thought that was cool." He remembered broken ships and sunken armored bodies. Others floated, not having been dressed for battle. Support personnel or sleepers. He hoped the sleeping ones hadn't woken. And the predators...
"Li?" Smellerbee said. "Li? You don't look too good."
She sounded concerned. She still cared, still considered him a friend. Longshot rested a hand on his shoulder, giving it a reassuring squeeze. He blinked back tears, some for remembrance, some from gratitude. "It was slaughter," he told them all. "Zhao had to be stopped. If I'd come to my senses earlier and sided with Uncle Iroh, how many of my people wouldn't have had to die? He tried to kill me. I could have challenged him to an Agni Kai. I beat him once before. Even if they arrested me Uncle would have been in command. Even if he couldn't withdraw right away he would never attack the spirits. He's only crazy about tea."
She giggled, though it sounded a little forced. Right. Uncle and tea, he thought. It sounded like I was trying to joke. I should tell them about the time he almost poisoned himself. Then I robbed the nice family that helped us. He felt a little nauseous. More guilt.
Smellerbee suddenly froze as Longshot caught her eye again, raising his brows. "You did say Uncle Iroh, right? Like, the general the whole army's still scared of? The one who was supposed to be Fire Lord after Azulon?"
"Keep it down, Bee!" Jet interrupted when her voice began to squeak. "Walls aren't that thick, all right?"
"Right. So if you really are his nephew," Zuko nodded and she continued, "that makes you the other one. Zuko. The prince with the mystery charges."
"Mystery charges?"
"Your wanted poster, which luckily sucks so much I never recognized you, doesn't exactly say what you supposedly did. You just said you didn't change sides at the North Pole. This Admiral guy tried to kill you before you showed up there if I understood right."
"Yeah."
"So is anyone else in the Fire Nation sane?"
He started to laugh and froze in shock. Then he took a moment to look at his friends. Jet was as assured as always, like he hadn't even imagined the possibility of trouble springing from Zuko's real identity. Longshot was steady, calm and stoic, a personification of earth. Smellerbee was grinning, giving him an assessing, amused look. "Looks like the Fire Nation messed up," she said. "We get to keep you. How about you explain the Blue Spirit now?"
Zuko chuckled. "That's Zhao's fault, too."
He described how shocked his younger self had been at the degree of arrogance and corruption he found among Fire Nation officers. The crew his uncle had scrounged for their ship were still active troops, but Zuko had quickly tired of fighting to prove that they qualified for their pay. Then Zhao (at the time a new minted Commander but then and always the biggest jerk the prince had ever met) refused his requested funds outright. Fed up, Zuko decided to steal the money. He'd picked up the decorative blue theater mask to protect his identity. He was pretty sure it represented a trickster or avenger figure, but couldn't recall any details.
Longshot grinned widely, giving the table a delighted slap. Then he mimed opening and reading a scroll. Somehow his sober face gave an impression of scholarly age.
"So it comes from some really old plays, huh? Is it really called the Blue Spirit?"
The archer shook his head with a careless wave, indicating that the real name was a lot duller.
Smellerbee chimed in with the whole story of his third persona, much to the boys' approval. Zuko felt his face flush. It wasn't just embarrassment. He could recall his own quick violence and the way he'd scared those guards into submission. It still felt shameful rather than heroic. Despite the brief memory of guilt, Zuko this was one of the best nights he'd ever spent.
With his own secrets gone at last, he could relax and enjoy his friends' stories about their makeshift family/rebel army in the treetops, created from war orphans like themselves. Their stories about giant Pipsqueak and his tiny partner in crime, the Duke, actually had him laughing until tears leaked down his cheeks, fist shoved against his mouth to keep the noise down. His laughter died when Jet casually mentioned Pipsqueak first having discovered the Duke rooting around in the Freedom Fighters' trash heap.
"You found a little kid in the garbage?" Zuko repeated, sickened. "That's how you met him? What if..." He trailed off. He really didn't want to imagine the boy's fate if he hadn't stumbled on the older children's camp. "What made you come to Ba Sing Se after all that?"
He winced inwardly as soon as he asked. They'd lived in conquered territory. It couldn't be good.
The three traded a grim look, then Longshot and Smellerbee indicated that Jet should answer the question. Looking uneasy as he began, Jet said, "We did something that didn't go the way I planned. There was a dam with a Fire Nation settlement below it. Some troops, more colonists. Families," he added with unconcealed bitterness. "We wanted them gone. Our homes back. They buried our graves in water." His eyes only grew colder, his voice flatter, as the tale unfolded. Zuko could see the young warrior that lived inside his genial friend. That youth would have been his implacable enemy. Rightly so, Zuko had to admit. The bitter, homesick prince he'd been wouldn't have wanted to understand Jet's rage and loss.
He knew more about the Earth Kingdom now. As the Fire Nation returned its people to the cycle of rebirth through fire, the Earth Kingdom returned its dead to the soil, nourishing and thanking its primal element. To submerge that village's honored dead beneath water had been a cruel insult. That they then built a new settlement beneath the dam was an act of spiteful mockery.
He understood their desire to destroy the thing even as he was relieved and grateful to learn that Aang's companion Sokka (of all people!) had warned the settlers, buying them time to evacuate.
I owe him, Zuko thought with growing unease. I owe the Avatar for not turning us in to the Dai Li. At some point, the universe would demand that he repay those debts. Stupid balance, he thought.