Uncle would kill me if he knew what I was doing. Zuko looked out the side of the war balloon, the waves silently rolling hundreds of feet below them. With a flex of his chi, he sent another wave of flames into the small furnace powering the balloon. But this is the right thing to do. If I didn't help Sokka, he'd do it by himself. And he'd get himself killed. A low whistle cut through the companionable silence, and Zuko turned to his travelling companion. "What?"

"What? Oh, I didn't say anything." A short awkward pause passed, in which Sokka looked around the balloon, desperately searching for something. "You know, a friend of mine actually designed these war balloons."

"No kidding." So Sokka knows the Mechanist. I shouldn't be surprised, I guess, given the technology that was present at the Day of Black Sun.

Sokka raised a hand, carelessly allowing it to dangle beyond the rim of the basket. "Yep. A balloon. But for war."

The firebender scoffed as he bent another plume of flame into the open furnace. "If there's one thing my dad's good at, it's war."

"Yeah, it seems to run in the family." Sokka gave him a pointed look, having met them on more than one occasion.

Zuko bristled as he turned to confront Sokka. "Hey, hold on. Not everyone in my family is like that." Not anymore, at least. Uncle's retired.

The other man held up his hands "I know, I know, you've changed." Though Sokka's lackadaisical tone led him to believe that he was just indulging Zuko.

"I meant my Uncle." Zuko's eyes fell, remembering all of the ways that he'd let Iroh down. "He was more of a Father to me. And I really let him down." You mean you let them lock him up for treason. The man who'd always believed in you, always supported you. And you treated him like he wasn't worth the char in a rusted lantern.

"I think your Uncle would be proud of you." Zuko's eyes flicked up to see Sokka looking at him, sympathy written across his face. "Leaving your home to come help us, that's hard." the Water Tribesman's vision seemed to focus on the sky beyond the balloon, mind swept back into his own memories.

Zuko sighed. "It wasn't that hard." I wish that it'd been harder. I wish that we weren't in this war. My people are dying for my father's pride, and I've done nothing to stop it.

"Really? You didn't leave behind anyone you cared about?" Sokka seemed surprised, which made sense to Zuko. He probably figured that Zuko had a lot of friends and people who cared about him back home. From what he'd seen, Team Avatar was close-knit, and only Toph had any sense of how the nobility lived. Probably why he got along so well with the pint-sized terror.

"Not really. I went to break Uncle out of prison on the Day of Black Sun, but he'd already escaped by himself." He smiled to himself, vaguely amused. "Probably fooled or charmed all of his guards into a false sense of security."

Sokka gave him a flat look. "You expect me to believe that the prince of the Fire Nation didn't have a special someone? A lady friend, perhaps?" At Zuko's scathing look, Sokka waved his hands in front of his face. "Or a special guy. I'm not judging."

"Well, I did have a girlfriend. Mai." His face twisted. For all the good that was.

"Wait, isn't Mai that gloomy girl who sighs a lot?" Sokka leaned forwards, humour dancing in his eyes. "Really?"

Zuko slashed his hand between them, fire trailing from his fingers. "It didn't work out. That's what happens when you find out that our entire relationship was started by my sister."

"Azula? Big yikes. Still, she just set it up. You can't really blame Gloomy for that, can you?"

"Her name's Mai. And no, that's not the worst part. I wish that it had been." He stared into the flames of the furnace, letting their heat warm him as the cold slowly crept down his spine. "No, that happened when I found out that she'd been spying on me for Azula. Reporting on where I'd been, what I was saying."

Sokka was silent for a long moment, looking out over the sky before giving him a rueful smile. "Wow. That's.. Something alright."

"It could have been worse. At least she liked me." Zuko jabbed another fist of flame into the furnace. "When I confronted her, she told me that if it hadn't been her, Azula would have found someone else. At least she had my 'best interests' at heart. Agni, I was such an idiot. I hadn't seen her in years, and suddenly she seduces me out of nowhere? Azula always lies." Zuko snarled into the furnace.

"My first girlfriend turned into the Moon." Sokka offered after another long, lingering silence.

Zuko blinked at him, confused. I'm sorry, what. "What?"

"My first girlfriend. Poof." Sokka mimed his hands exploding. "Gone. Just like that. We barely had any time together, and then she was gone."

The firebender was quiet for a minute. "That's rough, buddy."

Sokka facepalmed. "Seriously? 'That's rough, buddy?' That's all that you've got? I'm here pouring out my heart to you, and that's all that I get?"

"What do you think that I was trying to do? You can't just up and tell someone that your first girlfriend turned into the flaming moon! How do you expect me to react to that?" He breathed out a tongue of flame, pacing to the front of the basket and back. "I've been through a lot, but that?" Zuko shook his head. "I don't even know."

He watched as his friend - were they friends now? Is this what having friends was like? leaned back. "Tell me about it. Last year, spirits were oogie boogie stories that Gran Gran told around the midnight sun campfire. Now we can't go more than a month without stumbling upon one. It's all Aang's fault, I tell you."

"Uncle's always been wiser about that than me. Always going on about 'spirits this, spirits that'. Always took it for a load of ash until that day that I saw that beam of light." Zuko sent another palm of flame into the furnace as the boys fell silent.

"So… was there anyone else?" Zuko looked up from the flames at Sokka's hopeful face. "You know, since Gloo-I mean Mai didn't work out?"

"Well, there were these two girls in Ba Sing Se. Uncle forced me onto a date with one, and the other one… well, she was too pretty for me anyways." Zuko smiled, remembering that ferry official. Suki. I wonder whatever happened to her. I hope that she wasn't in Ba Sing Se when Azula took control.

"For real?" Sokka sat back, a wide grin on his face. "So you're telling me that old man Iroh is in charge of his nephew's love life? You know, scoring you a date and all."

"Ugh, really Sokka? Uncle isn't that bad about my love life compared to his own. You haven't had to trek across the entire Earth Kingdom with him. If it wasn't one woman, it was another. A teller at the Ba Sing Se terminal, Aunt Wu, half of the nuns in that convent where your sister whipped Jun and her shirshu with perfume. The list went on and on."

"Hey Zuko?"

Zuko just grunted back at him.

"You ever get the feeling that Iroh's got more game than both of us put together?" Sokka couldn't help but laugh as Zuko gave in and tackled him to the floor.

Hours later, Zuko still couldn't believe it. These guards are incompetent. Note to self: replace all of them if I become Fire Lord. How he and Sokka, a pair of nineteen year olds, had snuck into and successfully infiltrated the Fire Nation's most infamous prison, he didn't know. His luck was terrible enough as it was, so he wasn't going to question whatever help Agni saw fit to toss his way. He'd been searching for Sokka for the past half hour, and he still hadn't found him. Where had he gone? Saying that you'll meet someone up there really wasn't helpful. Still, the information that he'd gleaned from the other guards had been worth it.

He saw a lone guard leaning on the railing around the upper level overlooking the yard. His eyes narrowed, looking at his relatively slight build and darkly tanned skin. He sidled up to him and decided to take a chance. "Hey there, fellow guard. How goes it?"

Sokka raised his visor. "..Zuko? That you?"

He punched the other man's shoulder plate and shushed him. "Listen, I asked around the lounge. There are no Water Tribe prisoners." He slashed his hand between them before lifting his own visor. Sokka deserved to look him in the eye. "I'm afraid that your father's not here."

"What? Are you sure? Did you double check?" A note of panic had begun to creep into Sokka's voice, and his eyes darted from side to side.

"No, I just asked the first guard that I met and assumed that he told me the truth." Sokka opened his mouth to protest before Zuko huffed out a flame in irritation. "Of course I double checked. I started a conversation in the lounge about what kind of prisoners to expect here. The guards were surprisingly friendly to the new guy, especially this one guard named Aiguo. Chipped tooth, couldn't stop talking. I couldn't get into the records room, though." At Sokka's confused look, he relented. "It's where they store prisoner intake papers and have a record of everyone behind bars here. If I could get into there, I could tell you for certain. But I can't, not without spending an extra day or two figuring it out. But I'm as sure as I can reasonably be, yeah."

Sokka growled and walked away from the railing, clutching his helmet in his hands. "No. No!" He slammed his palms onto the metal wall of the prison. "Spirits take it."

"I'm really sorry, Sokka." If Chief Hakoda isn't here… Chances are that Father chose to make an example out of him. I really want to be wrong, but he really should be here.

"So we came all this way for nothing. I failed." Sokka cried out, despondent. He leaned against the recently abused wall and slid down it, head between his knees. "Again. I failed planning the Day of Black Sun, I failed to protect Yue, and I failed to find my dad. I'm useless."

Ash and bone, I'm not good at this optimism thing. I wish that Uncle was here. Wait, that's it. "Err, what would Uncle say?" Zuko tapped a finger to his chin, racking his brain for one of Uncle's usually useless anecdotes. I miss you more than ever, Uncle. "Sometimes…" He trailed off, desperately looking for something around them to jog his memory. "Sometimes clouds have two sides, a dark and a light one. And a silver lining in between. It's like a silver sandwich. So… when life seems hard…" Zuko trialed off, not entirely sure where he was going with this forced metaphor. "Take a bite out of the silver sandwich?"

Sokka Looked up at him. "Really? That's your big play? Take a bite out of the silver sandwich? Ancestors, we're screwed." Zuko extended his hand to Sokka, and the Water Tribesman gripped his forearm and let himself be pulled up.

"Look, if there's one thing that I know, it's that we haven't failed until we give up." Zuko tried to smile at Sokka, but it pulled at his scar and came out as more of a lopsided grin. "Besides, I'm terrible at this optimism thing. That's what you're good at."

They both walked back to the railing and looked over the yard, the enormity of their task falling upon them once again. "So what's plan B?" Zuko asked as he flipped his visor back down. Couldn't be too careful, after all.

Sokka perked up and smiled, flipping his visor back down to match Zuko. "Maybe.. Maybe we haven't failed after all."

Agni, really? That easy? Maybe I'm not completely terrible at this. He slapped Sokka on the shoulder. "That's the spirit. I can't believe that that worked. Maybe Uncle rubbed off on me more than I'd thought." He crossed his arms, inordinately pleased with himself. "I didn't even know what I was saying."

Sokka waved him off. "No, what you said made no sense at all." Ignoring Zuko's abrupt deflation, he pointed out at the crowd. "But look!"

Zuko silently traced his eyes along the trajectory of Sokka's arm. "Is that Suki? What in Agni's name is she doing here?"

His companion whipped around, gobsmacked. "Wait, what? You know Suki?" In the distance, a guard hit a gong, and the women in the yard gradually stood up and walked back into the building. Both boys took a moment to silently appreciate the sway of Suki's hips before Sokka grabbed Zuko's arms and shook him. "Okay, spill."

Zuko distractedly knocked off Sokka's arms. "I met her before Uncle and I got into Ba Sing Se. She was working as an official in the southern dock of the Full Moon Bay ferry terminal. We had a… nice talk."

Sokka couldn't take his eyes off of the blush that'd risen on Zuko's neck and cheeks. "Ancestors. She's the other girl. The one that's too pretty for you."

He couldn't help but rub the back of his neck, a smile crossing his face. "I'm pretty sure that she knew who I was. She certainly knew that I wasn't a refugee. It was the first almost normal conversation that I'd had in years that wasn't with Uncle." He paused, and his smile turned rueful as he looked at Sokka. "That's where you met her too, I guess?."

Sokka's jaw had dropped. Zuko couldn't figure it out, but before he could say anything, Sokka grinned almost disturbingly large. "You know what, let's go track her down and let her tell the story." Zuko sighed in exasperation, but motioned for Sokka to go first. The other man almost gleefully skipped off the walkway and back into the building.

It'll be good to see her again. Ash and bone, she's got a lot of explaining to do. How'd she end up here of all places? This is no place for a ferry official. Zuko consciously buried the underlying happiness at seeing someone who'd seen him for him beneath the layer of worry. Romance… despite who elated he was sure that Uncle would be, this wasn't the time for it.

Besides, after Mai, he wasn't sure if he was ready to open his heart up like that again. Despite what he'd told Sokka, he had cared for Mai. She was Really Cool; beautiful, fiercely intelligent and dangerous. But he'd told her that first night that she had to be completely honest with him, and she'd agreed without batting an eye. That'd hurt, when he found out the truth. Hardening his heart, he followed after his friend into the cool darkness of the prison building.