AN: I know, I said I'd post this Thursday night and its Friday, but I had homework I'd been putting off all week and haven't gone to bed yet so its still Thursday as far as I'm concerned.

Thank you everyone who favorited and followed! I'm bad at responding to them but I do read and really appreciate comments as well. :)

Here's part 2. There's lots of dialogue inbetween the introspection again, but most of it is banter this time-some of its even lighthearted (lol).

The Lotus' Gambit - Part 2: Uncle

The palace entry loomed high and grand before him. There was a time when he had expected tea with the Earth King under much different circumstances, namely negotiating the total surrender of the Earth Kingdom. He never imagined the view in such a serene situation. Although, these circumstances were less serene than they could've been. He'd prefer not to be inspecting the areas he passed for signs of struggle, scorch-marks or broken stone. Nothing looked suspicious, that he could see as he was led through the complex toward a gold-roofed, steepled tea room that would put any of the interior tea rooms of the Fire Nation Royal Palace to shame, more a tea house for one. He grew hopeful, surely nothing would be so calm if an overthrow by Zuko had succeeded or even occurred. Though that brought up the question of where Zuko was. Inside, there was a table set on the lower floor and a throne on the wooden dais. The room was bright but empty, as he prepared the tea and set it to heat over a very small stick fire. And he waited with growing trepidation as the Earth King didn't appear.

Then someone did, someone in green, and royal no less, however, it wasn't the Earth King, not that he knew what the young man looked like outside of a rough idea of his age. Two Dai Li agents framed Azula coming in through the King's door. He heard more steps behind him, but didn't turn to look just yet. His heart had leapt into his throat with fear of the consequences of this development.

"Hello, Uncle."

"Azula, when did you get into Ba Sing Se?" He said with more nonchalance than he expected.

"A few days ago. I found the security lacking. It's a wonder to me that it took you so long only to fail."

"Is your brother-"

"Oh, he's here. Should be fighting the Council of Five as we speak." In a second, his heart plummeted from its position blocking his throat to the pit of his stomach. Zuko against five of the Earth Kingdom's greatest generals, Zuko allied with his sister. "Don't worry, he has some Dai Li as back up." This was not comforting, and the satisfied expression on the girl's face told him she knew that. "I'll be happy to take you to him, it'll have to be in chains though. We can't have traitors to the Fire Nation just wandering around the place. Dai Li, arrest him."

The four agents behind him moved into a broken circle as those in front closed it.

"Niece, do you know how I got the name the Dragon of the West?" He asked standing up and taking a sip of the tea he had prepared.

"I don't have time for one of your stories."

"Oh well." And with a hefty shrug and breath. He felt the great wave of chi deep in his gut ready to rise. A great plume of fire erupted from his open mouth, in the closest approximation of a dragon's snarl as he managed nowadays. It rebuffed the Dai Li as he turned in a circle.

There was a doorway in the side wall of the lower area, he made for that. Hoping it would lead to an exit. Azula shouted for him to be followed and caught. Four sets of pounding feet perused and another much lighter step. Zuko could move similarly light, when he wasn't trying to make his steps as loud and 'intimidating' as possible, and he was struck for a second by this comparison in manner between the siblings he had always thought so different. A wall of flame delayed them only a moment until Azula broke it with a two-handed splitting motion that set the walls steadily aflame.

The hall met a dead end, and he hoped for an exterior wall as he sent a fireball. He was on a second story and there was really only one thing to do from there. Unless he wanted an even less friendly family reunion, and a situation he could do nothing about.

He jumped. Thankfully, there were some topiaries, which weren't exactly comfortable to land on, but it beat stone pavement.

And quickly as he could, with how sore that landing had left him, he got to his feet. And with only the briefest glance at the opening he had made and its young and familiarly displeased occupant, he ran.

He thought about going to the apartment, but that would get Lu Ten involved and he was reluctant to do that. He also didn't want to see that painfully sad-confused-disappointed expression on his son's face. It was one that he'd seen so much in the last few days, all the more difficult to bear because it had been so very rare in the first twenty years. He remembered the three occasions well: first when Lu Ten was almost five they'd been in the Royal Gardens, a child about Lu Ten's age had recovered from a fall and called out for his mother running into the arms of a woman almost falling again but caught up by her and held close, Lu Ten had watched the interaction intently then turned away and held even more tightly to his robe, he'd squirmed away from his nurse's every touch for a week after that; the second when his boy was nine, the first time he'd had to leave him at the palace to his studies instead of taking him on campaign with him; and lastly on an older face dirty from sweat and dirt and soot looking at him from the flap of his tent and questioning the 'necessities' of war.

It was a good decision in the end, since not a block into the city he caught wind of the Dai Li agent tailing him. One is easily dispatched; bound and gagged with the ever-convenient extra cloth that is the hallmark of rich clothing.

Ba Sing Se had fallen to the Fire Nation, an attack apparently led by Zuko and Azula. He had a hostage with information but no power to do much about it. Then he was frozen in his tracks by a realization, the Avatar was in the city, how could that have slipped his mind Zuko had been speaking of barely anything else. Where was the house he had mentioned?

With a convenience that Zuko would have killed for, he looked up to see a large white animal flying low over the neighborhood. He followed the direction and eventually found a house under repair. Along the way, anyone he passed immediately disappeared from the street into houses and shops at the sight of the mild-mannered tea maker in the open company of a Dai Li agent. When he knocked, the door opened to three faces two struck with a mixture of confusion and horror, the third and foremost a broad grin of a young, fond acquaintance. "Glad to see you're OK."

"I come to help, but bearing bad news."

"You guys know eachother?" The young avatar asked as though he hadn't heard him.

"I met him in the woods once and knocked him down. Then he gave me tea and some very good advice," Toph provided.

"May I come in?" He asked politely, flattered by her words. "Ba Sing Se has been conquered."

"What?!"

"That can't be." The Avatar said, pleadingly, looking very much a young boy who just couldn't handle another obstacle. "We were just at the palace, the king was busy having tea."

Iroh's grim tone matched the situation, "That tea service involved no Earth Kingdom royalty."

"What kind of royalty did it involve? Aside from you, that is." The other boy asked, having neatly read between the lines.

"Princess Azula."

"She must have Katara," Aang surmised.

"And where was your angry jerk of a nephew?" Toph sent Sokka a look that had him relenting, "No offence."

"None taken. I'm afraid the peace I hoped he'd find here was out of reach. And now I don't know whether he needs helped or stopped."

"Well I think there's an obvious answer. Obviously, he's helping his freaky sister! What else can we expect from him," The watertribe boy said flinging his arms into the air.

"I know how you must feel about my nephew, and I am concerned about what Zuko has been driven to, but I assure you there is good inside him."

"Good inside him isn't enough. Why don't you come back when its outside him too. Ok? And besides, how do we know we can trust you?"

The young Avatar interrupts with a barely-calm exclamation, "Katara is in trouble, all of Ba Sing Se is in trouble. Working together is our best chance."

"Thank you for your trust. I brought someone along who might be able to help us."

Outside, the tied up agent was hoisted into an earthen, very uncomfortable looking, interrogation contraption by Toph. They didn't even need to ask any questions. As soon as the gag was removed the man began talking. "The Fire Nation have control of the city. Azula and Long Feng plotted the coup, but the prince showed up and forced the King into surrendering. The generals of the Council were going to be taken out while we were taking out the Dragon of the West." He glanced at Iroh, who was wishing dearly he'd asked the man some questions before entering the house. He wished this was not the first he was hearing this, that he wasn't getting this shock when he still needed the trust of these children.

"Katara! Where are they keeping my sister?"

"In the crystal catacombs of old Ba Sing Se, deep beneath the palace."

"I can find that." Toph said hands on hips and with all the confidence in the world.

"Looks like we'll be stopping Zuko." Aang said looking as sorry about that truth as Iroh felt, as though he too had been hoping the teenager would turn away from his father for years.

"I've been waiting for that rematch for ages." Sokka said, heading for the fluffy bison. It was larger than Iroh had thought, having seen it from afar so many times, the thought that herds of these creatures once roamed the sky was terrifying and utterly amazing at the same time. He steeled his expression into determination as he approached the bison, trying to exude his willingness to aid them and fight two members of his own family. Thankfully they permitted him on, with only slight mumbling about this obviously being some clever trap on Zuko's part. They gave his nephew far too much credit in terms of plans. Toph helpfully provided a lift for him up to the saddle.

Soaring into the air was a new and wonderous experience. How his grandfather could give up and systematically destroy the bond that permitted this experience to the Fire Nation, he could not fathom, even more than when he had first encountered the dragons.

The four of them arrived at the grand stair entry of the palace. Here was the scene of destruction he'd been looking for that morning on the palace's other side, the steps were torn ragged by earthbending but they were at least ascendable if one watched their step. There was, however, a conspicuous lack of scorch marks on the stone. Was there some other disturbance in the night, one more homegrown? Or had, by some miracle, Zuko learned to be discrete with his flames?

"What happened here? Toph, did you do that?"

"When would I have done that, Sokka?"

"I don't know, it looks like your work though."

"If I'd done that, I assure you there would either be no stairs left or I would have properly cleaned up after myself."

"Guys…" Aang whined, bringing their attention to the task at hand.

"Right," Toph knelt with a hand to the ground. "I can feel it. It's huge. Like a whole city underground." That was the closest to wonder he'd heard from the little girl. She squinted her eyes as though to get a clearer view of something far off. "There's something else too, further and alittle deeper, feels like people, a bunch of them."

"That could be the king and his generals." A group of people, below even the oldest parts of a palace, that sounded like a dungeon. He rather hoped it was a dungeon full of royal and military prisoners, he prayed that Zuko had not fallen so far as to have killed anyone, that his nephew could be spared that always but at least a bit longer, he was too young. Lu Ten had been too young when he joined the army, like so many others, younger still when he had first learned the price of war. The young should be spared from the weight of that price, leave it to the old who are already burdened. These children, all of them, shouldn't be fighting even to the extent they were in this war. Lu Ten's admonition that he had failed to have this finished echoed in his head.

"Ok. Aang can get him and me to Katara and, Toph, you and Iroh can get those others."

"I think it would be best if I did not go to those there, given my past with the city," Iroh added to the plan.

The boys looked confused, but Toph understood, "Right. I'll take Sokka then."

"But, Toph—"

"It'll be fine, Sokka." Aang assured in what Iroh had come to realize was a constant cheerfulness the boy possessed.

So they split up, the young Avatar bending a tunnel downward for them toward the under city and the waterbender, while Toph took Sokka toward what was hopefully the king and generals.

"So, Toph thinks you give pretty good advice, and great tea!" Aang says when they were deep enough that the light from above had faded.

"The key to both is proper aging. What's on your mind?" It felt good to have someone who seemed to genuinely be asking for his advice, it had never been so simple with Zuko.

"Well, I met with this guru who was supposed to help me master the Avatar State and control this great power, but to do it, I had to let go of someone I love." The boy stopped and he followed suit. "And I just couldn't."

"Perfection and power are overrated. I think you were very wise to choose happiness and love."

"What happens if we can't save anyone and beat Azula and… Zuko? Without the Avatar State, what if I'm not powerful enough?"

"I don't know the answer to that."

"The monks used to say that a barren valley offers the most space for new flowers to bloom, about clearing oneself of earthly attachments."

"That is very wise, though I think there is another perspective. That the greatest change may come to those places and times we think most hopeless, like your barren valley. Of course, I wouldn't presume to question the values of your people, not being particularly inclined to abandoning attachments myself."

With a final push of earth from the boy, they broke through into a cavern brightly lit by the great crystals growing everywhere.

"Aang?"

"Katara!"

"What are—" Then her eye caught on Iroh "Stay back!" She moved so Aang was behind her and she was positioned into a fighting stance. "I knew you were up to something when I saw you yesterday. And I was right! Aang, we need to get out before Azula and Zuko come back. They knew you'd come for me."

"I come in peace to you, to help you out and to liberate this city."

"And why should I believe that? You didn't do anything when your nephew had me tied to a tree. How do I know you didn't lead Aang here as a trap?"

"There is very little I can say to you to convince you except a promise that I would gladly work against the Fire Nation when the world is concerned, including against my own family. There is no love to be lost between my brother and I." He'd long ago separated the man Ozai had become from those memories of his affectionate baby brother before the age of nine.

"And the rest of your family?"

"I have already expressed my willingness to fight my nation."

"Your nation aren't the ones who put me down here as bait, your niece and nephew are."

"Miss, I believe that for both of us, though perhaps for different reasons, there is little line between nation and family. You wish a better world to protect yours, I will go against mine for its own sake to the same end." He believed it, he did. In the end, it would be for a better Fire Nation, if his nation felt he had betrayed it, so be it, he was no longer proud of the name he had made for himself. But he was a member of the royal family, it was his duty to serve and protect the people of his nation. Defying his brother, no problem; subtly but actively undermining his nephew for the last six months, at times he had felt bad for it but it was for the best. 'Work against' indeed; he was uncertain of his ability to actually fight Zuko, even less so Lu Ten in some possible future turn of events. While he wanted these children's trust and disclosure was a textbook part of that, one he'd failed at with Zuko, though he thought with reason; but these children would not take kindly to the knowledge of yet another member of the royal family in the city, and an awakened protectiveness would keep that particular card close to the chest as long as he could.

"We should be going." He was getting the prickly feeling of a closing trap, even if it wasn't for him.

"Katara, we can trust him, Toph does, and he gives really good advice."

Her face pinched, but Aang's entreating big and trusting eyes apparently won out. She sighed, "Ok."

They made their way through a tunnel Aang created through a thin wall, the end of which the glowed with more green light and the sound of rushing water. That faint sound was momentarily overtaken with that of earthbending from the direction they had come from.

A line of blue fire, narrow but reach as high as shoulder level, ran right between Aang and Katara, breaking them apart as all three turned toward the assailant. Azula, of course, and Zuko, who, while his sister sped forward to take advantage of her attack, stood locked in eye contact with Iroh.

Whether or not the boy was aware of it, his face expressed his feelings as it always did. And there was a look of surprise, but more than that, the same surprise as he had worn before the whole court upon turning around in the arena. The expression was fleeting however and surpassed by a downturn to brow and tightening of the mouth into a grimace and jaw tense, an expression that had grown comfortable inhabiting the face over the last three years. And that was when Iroh realized what had happened in that instant. The trust he'd built over the years between them, had been broken utterly. And the old temper was the only safe place for that hurt to be expressed.

"You don't have need to do this," he reasoned with his nephew as the attempted exchange continued between the children. He got the expected answers.

The Avatar submitted himself to capture but Katara rushed to intervene, as he would have, had Azula not gone after him with a cold intensity like lightning.

The fighting took them into the open area, brightly lit and filled with the sound of falling and bent water. Iroh tried to keep track of the other fight, two-on-one, but was more preoccupied with keeping his own skin unburned. He had known Azula's skill was far beyond her years, but he had not expected a fourteen-year-old even a prodigious one to be one of his most formidable duels. She didn't speak yet, only sniggered.

"Katara!" Aang's young voice called gleefully. A moment later he saw Zuko blown back into the wall and felled to the floor. This interruption brought pause to he and Azula. Her face lit in the cruel amusement that he's told normal siblings find in eachother's misfortunes, though this seemed more disturbing. He wanted desperately to step closer and help, but just then with a low growl Zuko's splayed figure tensed and balled fists produced flaming daggers as he pushed himself up and into the fray with Katara and Aang once more. A bolt of blue fire narrowly passing his head instigated his own fray, that end of the cave becoming an inferno.

"Whatever your goal in this treason is, Uncle, you won't succeed, you couldn't even win over my weak-minded brother. And now your defeat will be the first achievement of my legacy." She boasted, taunting him in a way she seemed to think would be effective. "Traitors earn a traitor's—" she had begun a familiar and deadly motion but was interrupted by a gusty tunnel of wind pushing her too against the wall. He looked around in this moment of reprieve and saw the Avatar held firmly by two Dai Li agents and Katara fighting her way there through Zuko.

"Miss Katara, go to the others, I will try to get him." He called out.

"But—"

"He will not go without you safe. Go!" He reported as Azula stood back up blank faced but fuming with flames already at hand and growing. As Katara ran for the waterfall and the daylight above it, he made flames to match and was taken by surprise at the sudden lack of blue in the fiery heat around them. Then there was a familiar pressure in the air and just in time he managed to move infront of the bolt aimed for the retreating blue back. In the way he had invented decades ago, but seemed only to be using recently, he moved the lightning through himself and out into the high-ceilinged rock.

With a shattering boom, the struck area exploded and fell. Iroh's heart nearly stopped when he saw Zuko throwing himself to the ground trying to avoid the collapse. His view of the boy was lost in the cloud of dust that the impacting rubble threw up.

"Well done. You've solved my succession and credit problem quite nicely." Azula stated, coolly and not at all like her brother might be dead.

"Zuko?!" He called, desperately, hoping that the faint orange glow emitting amorphously within the dust that had engulfed half the cavern was not his imagination. But no response came.

Then Azula's efforts to wound him with words struck a nail at last. "That's two you've gotten killed by falling stone in this city, isn't it?" She made no move to capture him, as though she no longer expected a fight. For a moment she was not wrong in that, as he stood rooted to the spot with a hopeless terror he had felt once before. She simply walked toward the haze and the Avatar behind it.

Before he could respond or shout again—or think much beyond a mantra of 'no, no it can't be, because the first time was false too'—a wind picked up inside the underground cavern. It sucked the dust away thinning the haze and exposing a thin figure holding a flame; and something glowed brightly blue within the thickening dust at the wind's source. With her brother alive and an unbroken Iroh still in her range, Azula increased her efforts to engulf Iroh in fire. The glow became more obviously Aang in the Avatar State and Iroh in an effort to support the promise he had made to get Aang out of here cast fire to encircle Zuko keeping him in place but the increasing wind blew it wild and off course creating a path toward rather than a wall from Aang and briefly catching Zuko's black sleeve aflame.

Iroh was then distracted by Azula for the next moments until the wind suddenly died. Azula settled into a relaxed stance wearing a half-proud, half-amused smirk and looking past Iroh. He turned to see what had happened and found Zuko standing at the center of a clear area immediately surrounded by a ring of small stones. He held his swords in one hand and an unconscious Aang in the other. He was covered in dirt, disshelved and looked exhausted, not exactly the hero of legend or stage. They made eye contact and Zuko's rather stunned, empty expression gained wariness and his sword arm rose, the single blade pointed protectively out toward Iroh across the boy's chest. The hand on this quarry's collar tightened. It struck Iroh just how much had been broken by the betrayal Zuko found in his actions. He wasn't just preparing to fight to keep his prize, but to defend himself from Iroh as though he were as much an enemy as the other children and might actively attack him. He'd spent years convincing his nephew he would never strike him or strike against him in combat, all that had been lost now.

Iroh did nothing as Dai Li, who had suddenly reappeared, captured him up to the chin in crystal. He relented silently to being led into a prison, not looking at Zuko beside him with the Avatar. Iroh could do nothing outside but perhaps he could still fix something by being returned to the Fire Nation, even in chains. New plans for the Order would need to be made anyway.

In the cold, dark cells under the Earth Kingdom palace, where some commotion seemed to have occurred earlier, given the distinct lack of a king in occupancy. He was placed in a cell next to the young Avatar.

Sometime before dusk, a flicker of blue light next to him marked the waking of Aang, the little boy's breathing was fast.

"Hello?" the high voice called into the dark.

"I am here as well, Aang."

A outward breathe of relief at the company. "And here is?" the voice still held a waiver however.

"The hands of the Fire Nation, soon to go to the homeland, I suppose."

"Oh." There was a beat then in a smaller voice. "Mr. Iroh, what is going to happen to me?"

"I'm not sure, Aang." He wanted to apologize for what he feared but, he couldn't bear to frighten the boy.

PSAN:

So there's our peek into Iroh's actions, and hopefully a somewhat more coherent rendition of the fight in the catacombs (Zuko's head was alittle chaotic by the end of chapter 9). Its interesting phenomenon that when you watch kids shows as an adult you start wondering what the adults were doing and it adds some nice nuance and flaws to what originally appeared as the silly or wise mentor archetype.

There's some breadcrumbs in this two-part interlude that will reappear later and the allusions here from Iroh's perspective will get some clarification through Lu Ten's (if anyone's been spotting them and wondering, don't worry I will be picking up the crumbs I'm laying down ;) ).

Azula really is too much fun to write, so is Toph.

Book/season 3 plot arc will be coming soon, now with Zuko and Lu Ten's pov's, I'm hoping for next week but it might be the following depending on my free time and how busy my beta is.

As always, I'd love to hear your thoughts, critiques, etc; and what you think might be going down going forward.