Disclaimer: I own nuthin' 'cept the new girl. Poor thing.

AN: So, thanks to Ryth76 for the review. This chapter's a bit of a shorty but I promise the length will pick up in the next one.

Chapter One – The Tea Shop of Scars and Secrets

They traveled for two days, almost non-stop, but she remembered almost none of it. Lee wouldn't let her ride by herself, and so she rode tandem with him – in front, because when she initially sat behind him, she forgot to hang on, and nearly fell.

"You could've been killed!" he raged, shaking her shoulders.

"Nephew," Mushi tried to interject.

She simply gazed back at him, blank, uncomprehending, the grief raw and hovering just beneath the surface of her face.

Lee gripped her shoulders a little tighter, then silently guided her back to his ostrich-horse.

"Sit here," he muttered, and helped her up. "It'll be safer."


Upon reflection, Zuko realized it was ridiculous to assume that two men and a pair of teenagers could run a tea shop, especially with the crowds Iroh pulled.

He and Song waited tables during the busiest hours while Pao cooked the snacks and Iroh made tea like it was going out of style. But it was during those quiet days, when Pao would be holed up in his office, and Song spent the afternoons back at their apartment napping or revising healers' lore, that Aneko would arrive to pick up the slack.

At first he didn't know much about her beyond that she lived somewhere in the lower-middle tier and had taken this job to escape a raucous home life, as well as improve upon her allowance. She was easy-going, the same age as him, and one of the few people who gave his scar a calm once over before simply discounting it as just another part of him. To her, he figured it was about as significant as his toes and elbows.

But he learnt some of the most important things about Aneko the day they both had off, when a pack of bullies caught him a back ally by a well, and decided to make him miserable.

A fist had just landed in his gut for the second time – and he was wondering how quickly he could take them all out without bending or his Dao or any kind of distraction – when a familiar voice piped up from the other end of the ally, by the well.

"Hey, bao-faces! Leave him alone!"

Bao-faces? Zuko thought, looking up.

The bullies were looking too, and there was Aneko, her scowl melting into alarm as she suddenly realized how many there were, and that no one would hear them yelling this far from the square on a market morning.

He watched with rising horror as two of the bigger thugs broke off and began backing her further away from him, closer to the well. He struggled and yelled for her to run, for them to leave her alone, but to no avail. He looked on, helpless, restrained, as Aneko stepped back into the muddied earth around the well and slipped. He saw her sitting there, looking up at his attackers.

And then he saw her smile.

"What?" one of the bullies said – the leader – with a leer on his despicable mug. "Wanna play, little girl?"

She gave him a sideways look. "How do you feel about mud wrestling?"

Zuko couldn't see all of his face, but he could hear the faint surprise, the horrible lusty threat in the leader's voice.

"I like it quite well," came the pronouncement, and the second thug smiled.

"Oh, goodie," Aneko replied.

Zuko had a bad feeling about this.

And wow, was he ever right.

Aneko flung up her hands, launching handfuls of mud at the leader and his companion, and at the same moment there was wet roar. Following the motion of her arms, monstrous twin spirals of mud rose from the boggy ground around the well and bore down on the bullies with mucky and stenchful vengeance.

It was all the distraction he needed. While the two holding his stared open mouthed at their sodden friends, Zuko twisted in their loosened grips and landed a neat pair of roundhouse kicks that sent them sprawling. When they struggled to their feet, snarling, he dropped back into a defensive stance. He felt the rage that always swam beneath the surface swarm upward and settle upon his face, rearranging his features into a near blank countenance of cold anger.

Something must have shown in his eyes; some deadly thing that offered no gentleness or mercy. It had gone beyond being beaten by cowards in an alleyway – they had threatened someone they had thought could not fight back, and for Zuko, since he and Iroh's rescue of Song, that had become a sin unforgivable.

He watched the two exchange fever-eyed glances, and run wheezing back towards the marketplace.

Cowards.

He turned in time to see the other two that Aneko had swamped (in about every sense of the word) trying in vain to slough the muck from their limbs and faces.

"Why you little…"

Aneko glowered up at them from the mud, raising her hands again. "Did you know you can drown in just an inch of water? Wanna find out how much mud it'll take for you smother?"

Apparently not, because the pair of them gave her eyes wide with fear before backing away and beating a hasty retreat in the same direction as their buddies. Not before however, attempting a parting shot –

"Slop-bending freak!"

– To which Aneko replied with a pair of mud balls to the backs of their heads.

Zuko watched them flee squalling and felt the barest of smiles worm at the corners of his mouth. He looked back to the well, where Aneko still sat, looking tired and grubby as she unsuccessfully attempted to bend and shake the mud from her sleeves. He sighed – she helped you – and strode over to her. As his shadow fell across her face, she blinked up at him, eyes narrowed against the mid-morning sun, before offering a small smile as she took his outstretched hands.

"You're a bender," he stated as helped her stagger over to the well proper. "An earthbender."

Aneko flushed and looked away from him, trying to focus on pulling up water to rinse the worst muck from her clothes. Come to think of it, his weren't that fantastic either.

"Erm…" was all she said.

"I mean, I knew your dad was one. But you never said…"

He frowned at her. She was still pink.

"Why didn't you say anything?" he asked.

She fidgeted, squeezing murky water from her sleeves and the ends of her obi. He noticed she was biting her lip and appeared terribly anxious.

Zuko continued to look at her.

She took a deep breath.

"Look." She sat beside him on the lip of the well. "I'm…not really…I'm not really an earthbender."

Zuko stared at her with naked disbelief. "But, with the mud…"

"Exactly."

Another deep breath. A series of them in fact. She was trying to psych herself up for something, he realized.

"The mud. See, I'm…ugh…I'm not earthbender, in the conventional sense."

"…conventional?"

"Yeah."

There was a pause.

"Okay! Well, see, I'm just – this is really embarrassing for me – there must have been some Water Tribe in our family somewhere, because I really don't see how otherwise, but…" More deep breathing. "I'm a mudbender. I bend mud. And nothing else."

Zuko gazed at her blankly for a few minutes. Then his good eyebrow rose slowly but steadily to his hairline.

"Okay."

As it turned out, Aneko's bending was of little consequence and rather useless in any practical sense, so she'd never really trained as a bender. He father, an architect of modest renown, had passed on to her what he could of earthbending and she had made do with that and her own improvisation. It worked, for the most part, and helped avoid mishap.

It was also a secret, and thus Zuko was sworn to secrecy on the spot.

On some level, he realized that Aneko thought of her bending in the same terms he thought of his scar; something shameful, something not to linger on…something that ate holes in them in those inescapable quiet hours when one couldn't help but think.

And so it remained secret. The thing about secrets, though, is that they bind people.

Later that night, as he and Song sat wrapped in blankets, stargazing upon the apartment building's roof, he asked her, "What do you think of Aneko?"

Song smiled, her eyes still focused on the Two Bears constellation. Ursa Minor's front paw was especially bright that night.

"I like her," Song said. "She's kind, you know? Good to talk to." She turned to him, the smile content. "And it's nice to have a friend again, isn't it?"

Zuko gave her a hesitant smile back. "Yeah…yeah, it is."

So Zuko found himself a little more willing to talk to Aneko about important things, and things that weren't really important at all, but were fun to talk about anyway.

One day, on an afternoon when they had closed early for once and had the tea shop's tables to themselves, he sat drinking peppermint tea with Song and Aneko, smiling as the two girls laughed…

…and realized with a start, that for the first time in his life, he did have friends.

A week and a half later, another secret rose that would bind them all even closer.

It happened one morning during opening, and began, as these things sometimes do, rather innocuously when Zuko noticed there was something off about Aneko's expression.

"Soo," he began. "Have a good sleep?"

Smooth, Zuko, real smooth.

"Sure," she replied, voice deceptively light.

He watched warily as she doubled the apron strings around her waist before tying them.

"There was one thing, though."

"Oh?"

"Yeah, I got a letter from one of my cousins in the country."

Something in the tone of her voice set the hairs on the backs of his arms and neck leaping to attention. When she looked up at him, her face was full of thunder.

"The letter came with this really interesting poster. A wanted poster, would you believe it?"

"A – A wanted poster, really? Wow, um."

He began frenetically stacking tea cups.

"A wanted poster," she confirmed stonily. "And who do you think was featured on this wanted poster, Zuko?"

The world balanced upon a knife edge. Time slowed down. Zuko felt every nerve ending, every chi point in his body at once as a frisson of fear moved over his skin. As though moving under water, he turned to Aneko, a tea cup slipping from his rictused hand. It hit the floor and shattered upon the wooden tiles, the resulting five separate pieces coming away from each other like a flower opening.

Aneko's hazel eyes narrowed to dangerous slits.

Paralytic with shock, he gave no resistance and she collared him and dragged him back through the kitchen and into the store room beyond. Suddenly, he was shoved into a set of shelves (they rocked ominously until he steadied them with both hands) and then found himself going cross-eyed looking at the set of chopsticks Aneko held under his nose. They shook with suppressed threat, dull light from the one small window glinting on their red lacquer.

"You," she hissed, "have got some nerve, coming into this city – my home – lurking around, getting into people's heads –!"

"Lurking around? People's heads – Aneko, what are you talking about?"

"I told you – about my bending – my secret – and you're – you're –!" She faltered for a moment before snapping, "Jet was right!"

He blanched at the mention of his former friend-cum-enemy, and then took a step toward her, frowning – though some of the confusion was clearing. "One secret for another, is that it? Aneko, people knowing who I am could get me and Uncle killed!"

"And people knowing about my bending couldn't?!"

He stared blankly at her. "…what?"

"They used to drown kids like me, Zuko. Inbetweeners. Kids born caught in the middle of two elements. We were bad luck, an affront to nature. Only the Avatar could possess control over all Four."

Zuko's face hardened and he went to say...

She glowered at him.

"And don't give me that 'this never would've happened at home, we're out to spread civilization' spiel. My grandfather was historian. We had travelers' diaries dating back before the Hundred Year War."

The look on her face made his stomach drop. Oh, no…

"They used to burn inbetweeners in the Fire Nation. One of my great-great-uncles watched it happen one day, at a festival. People cheered.

"I read that entry when I was eight."

Zuko felt sick. He noticed she was shaking. She didn't flinch or turn away when he put his hands on her shoulders, just gazed at him dully.

"Hey," he murmured. "You're one of my best friends. One of my first friends. I won't let that happen to you."

Her eyes went glassy with tears, and she sniffed.

"You can't go promising these things willy-nilly, Zuko; some day someone will catch you with you pants down if you do."

He grinned.

"I'll make sure to wear clean underwear."

She let loose a single surprised laugh and roughly wiped at her eyes. "Wow, you made a joke."

"Must be the first sign of the apocalypse."

"The world is ending," she agreed. "Does Song know?"

"…Yeah."

Aneko looked curious, but wary. "When?" she asked simply.

"Two days after we rescued her from the raiders. I used my bending to light our camp fire; I didn't even think…and she just looked at me, then at the fire, then at Uncle, then back at the fire. She was still in shock then, about her mother. I think when she started to get over her grief; she got over our secret, too."

He looked at her sharply, gazed gilded with subterranean fire.

"What are you going to do with what you know, Aneko?"

She gave him a searing glare.

"You have to ask? I'm not going to tattle on you or Mush – General Iroh. I'm a big girl, Zuko; big enough to know that the War hasn't just hurt people in my country – the Fire Nation has children too and you're still one of 'em. I'm a strong believer in taking care of children. So, I burnt the poster down to nothing when I figured it out. I'm angrier that you didn't trust me enough to tell me more than anything else."

He gave her a small, hesitant smile.

"So, we're okay?"

He wasn't expecting the hug, but it wasn't unwelcome.

"We're okay."

AN2: See you next chapter, Those Girls from Ba Sing Se. In the meantime, review like you mean it…and tell me how you feel about the new girl.