A/N: Kind of a short chapter. I really just wanted to get a chapter out for you guys, so I split this off from another I have yet to write (actually better this way, continuity-wise). Sorry for any typos - wrote this whole thing on an iPad. Man, wish I had a laptop right now (but this is better than nothing, so I'm not complaining!).
Thanks so much to everyone reading this, adding it to you alert and favorite lists, and reviewing! I live writing this story and love reading your feedback and really just seeing that you are reading it, too :D
Disclaimer: do not even feign to own a sliver of the A:LA universe.
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"Character is what you have left when you've lost everything you can lose."
~Evan Esar
The meeting wrapped up well and successfully. There would always be tensions somewhere and with something when you're the one that runs a nation but, as of now, there were virtually none. Zuko's only stress came from a new plan he signed into effect regarding restrictions on businesses. And then there was the silent part of him that missed Katara terribly, being in and used to her company for a long time now.
Under his grandfather's and father's collective reign, the imperial government became more and more suspicious of those that may be opposing them. It was natural, but the steps they took, including pulling most able men or smart men off the streets for military service, led to a monopolization on most services.
But Zuko only saw absurdity in what the thought behind it was - that thought being that if someone had a business trading across the seas and with other nations, he or she could be trading military secrets as well. Military secrets that they would be unable to have access to in the first place. And overseas trading was largely shut down during Ozai's reign, in his early days - some five or six years before.
Plus, it was hard to keep the small, just-around-the-corner shops open if the ones criminalizing and vandalizing it were military. Which they usually were. They wouldn't go to jail and the ones with the job to stop it were those supposed to prevent it in the first place.
Yet, in a way, a very far-fetched way, it was those soldiers (or, at least their families) he was trying to protect. You can't judge a group by one's actions.
"Okay, I barely understood just now what you were trying to accomplish in there, but I hope it works," Ty Lee said as she came out of nowhere and sidled up beside him as he walked down the hall.
"How did you sit in?" Zuko's asked. The meeting was, of corse, a closed one and, if he recalled correctly, her name wasn't on the list of permitted to attend.
She shrugged. "I used the balcony by the ceiling."
"Isn't that decorative only?" He knew quite a large extent of her acrobatic abilities but was still a little surprised by this.
She only shrugged again but there was a small, proud smile on her lips.
"So what are you doing here?" Zuko's asked. As far as he knew, Ty Lee was going to go from Natsuno to Kyoshi Island, with no unnecessary stops in between. He rubbed his neck tiredly. He was even more wary of asking questions - he'd been doing that all week.
The noble born girl yawned too, as it was as contagious as a simple summer cold. "I came to say goodbye - but not for long, remember. Maybe a week or two, I think."
It took him nearly a full minute to figure out what she was talking about. "Sokka and Suki's wedding is in almost two weeks. Twelve days."
"Right. Have you got the number of hours and minutes left for me too?" Ty Lee joked. Zuko smiled along. He didn't want to admit that sometimes he did calculate that - it would be the next possible time he would be able to see Katara.
They stopped outside of his office. He opened the door and offered for her to come inside to talk more but Ty Lee shook her head, saying she had somewhere else to be.
"I'm going to see my sisters before I leave."
"But not your parents," Zuko bluntly said. She nodded.
"They disapprove of me running off to join the circus and if they heard I was going to live and be a Kyoshi warrior?" Ty Lee curled her hands together and then rapidly opened them and pulled them apart, indicating an explosion - with the semi-accurate sounds, too. "they're going to some banquet something, something today do I should be able to sneak in and out before they know it." The cheerful girl grinned. "You know me, I tend to tune out when reading their letters."
Zuko smiled lightly in response to her truthful words. But, he didn't say anything as, admittedly, his mind was elsewhere. It was on the faces he had to speak with urgently, the meetings he had to attend, and the reforms he had to enact so that the Fire Nation could be functioning for more than three days before a report came across his deck about someone being arrested or some property being seized because his - Zuko's - words didn't match the laws on the books.
Those things couldn't be taken lightly and they plagued his mind with a kind of stress he hadn't experienced before. The kind his father warned him about. Zulu automatically shook off that thought, almost driven by instinct. If he wrote any law haphazardly, it would do no good. Zuko knew that while he could interpret the words exactly as he intended, those after him, and after that, wouldn't have his thoughts, his mind, to interpret and would see it differently.
And Zuko didn't want some volatile, potentially dangerous, interpretation of his peaceful changes.
A shuffling maid or servant walking past snapped him out of his thoughts. "I'm sorry, Ty Lee, what did you say?"
"I asked if you've heard from the Avatar. I was just wondering how his temple efforts were going. My friends in the Earth Kingdom keep wondering about it too; they're happy about taking part in the program."
He nodded and gestured with his free hand. "It's going good. He's planning on moving on to the Eastern Air Temples by next year. As far as I know, he's going to leave early for those like he has done the southern ones after the upcoming wedding. Everyone's adjusting well - but he is busy, planning and stuff. His nation is much more spread out than ours," Zuko joked.
"I don't understand how his program works-" Ty Lee shrugged and smiled serenely, as always. "-but I hope it works out."
"We all do." A beat passed. "Hey, and Ty?"
"Yeah?"
"Stay in Kyoshi. It makes you happy. I don't know, teach your friends that chi-blocking stuff you do or open a small circus as a side job or something if that warrior stuff gets boring."
"Hey!" she protested, laughing. "Being a Kyoshi Warrior isn't boring. Besides, I don't know if there are enough people in Kyoshi to take part in my circus."
Zuko smirked, amused. "Then I guess you'll have to find out."
She bounced on the balls of her feet, full of merriment. "I guess I will," she answered coyly. They then exchanged goodbyes - until the wedding - and wished each other good luck on whatever the other needs luck on and then she was gone, briefly shocking another maid by cartwheeling down the hall.
The young Fire Lord went into his office and took a minute, forgoing the pressing work waiting for him, to stand by his embankment of windows and think. His thoughts invariably turned to Katara. Where he would normally dwell in any thoughts regarding the stubborn, fascinating water-bender, Zuko turned his thoughts to the Gaang instead. It was funny to him how much they all changed. Yet, they were all the same people on the inside - they just all reacted differently to events or happenings of violence or commotion.
He thought about Sokka's upcoming wedding. Of all people, he thought, smirking, before contradicting with, well no, that makes the most sense. Of all people, of course Sokka.
A few more minutes passed and Zuko's mind wandered to his sister. It was the sibling connection, he knew. He thought of his mother and his wish to visit her daughter. Azula's most recent status report lay unopened on his desk. His mother deserved to visit Azula. But, as selfish as it was, he didn't want to know if his visit hurt dear sister. Yet, he did want to know if it had helped.
The curiosity got to him eventually.
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By three methods we may learn wisdom:
First by reflection, which is the noblest;
Second by imitation, which is the easiest; and
Third by experience, which is the bitterest.
~Confucious
She was happy. Not content or "fine" or managing as she'd told her mother, her son, her friends, Sar-Ursa. She reminded herself of the Fire Lady's real, at-birth-given, name every day that she shared correspondence with the older woman she held so dear and trusted in her mind. Truth be told, during their shared letters, the other woman was completely comfortable with being called by her alias and, therefore, the younger girl continued to.
But Tadame was happy. The day was sweet in its temperature, it's view, it's feel. Jains was off at a friend's house, enjoying rare delicacies - for him - like a pink berry tart or a lemon tart. Her son loved those. While she would splurge more than normal and, on a few, semi-rare occasions, they would get ice cream in thick, sugary-warm waffle cones, it wasn't very often that she - and Jains, by default - would eat baked goods. Mostly because of the required "baking" part. Tadame did not pretend to have anything near expertise in that area.
Tadame took the key out of her slip pocket and unlocked the door it went to. It was her shop now. It was strange to her, when she thought about it, that while it seemed Ursa had only left a day, a week, ago, the flower shop always seemed to be partly hers. Hers to run, hers to own, hers to maintain.
The young fire nation born woman flipped the Open/Closed sign and went back to the "kitchen". The orders she had noted down were organized in a complex system of bulk amount versus needed-delivery date. Saru had been able to remember all of the orders without writing down so much as a word - every detail, ever receiving person, every location, every single flower asked for.
But Tadame couldn't remember. With a son constantly keeping her running around here or there and now a shop and business on top of an apartment to keep busy and clean too left her with more than enough energy to sleep and not enough hours to do it. Fretting would be a good word to describe her usual routines.
Maybe the reason she'd never felt more shocked about running the flower shop - besides the initial stunned calm she had felt - had been because Saru always told her that she meant for the widowed, young, fire nation woman to take over when she was no longer able to. Tadame always tried to downplay when the Fire Lady said she - Tadame - deserved a second chance to make a new life.
Saru had no qualms about loneliness. However, when she'd gotten to know Tadame, she had admitted to the girl that while loneliness was bearable, it was "the right company" that made life worth it.
Tadame gathered some long, bushy sprigs of green leaf stalks. A few were woody at the bottom. Unfortunately, their length was perfect for the vase she had picked out. She took the select stems to another counter and treated them with a tool that resembled a peeler - used for, you guessed it, peeling roots and vegetables and other things like such - but it was duller and had soft grooves. It lifted the bark layer but left the almost-raw one behind. It would speed up the deterioration of the plant but less than it would if she'd cut into the stem with a knife. So that was something.
Picking the daisies and three beautifully orange-red striped carnations out of the bins for the arrangement, Tadame found that she was missing a wispy final piece of spotty white - a faint cream, really, if you look hard enough - blooming flower that resembled a full dill bouquet hybrid. It would die looking the same as it did alive, except that it was dry; thus, it was used in nearly every arrangement she made.
Tadame put the unfinished work into an iced case and grabbed a small bag of coins and the front-door key. She needed to go down the street to an older couple's residence for a couple she knew that took an avid interest in having the best, most overflowing garden in Hemero-Callis.
They were nice people who, with a little payment added to the request, always came through during an emergency and let her come and cut off whatever stems she needed.
Normally, Tadame got frustrated when work was interrupted. It was her safe-haven and escape from the rest of the world, if only for a few hours. Not this time. Tadame smiled wider. Maybe I'll ask them if they've decided to adopt that, what, cat? Whatever they were thinking about getting as a pet, Tadame thought. Yeah, I'll do that.
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