AN: Just to clear things up. Zuko knew of the base that Jin so recently infiltrated because up until a few months ago it was a naval research base, which he visited a few times as a child with his father and Azula. He was thoroughly embarrassed by his sister during the last visit, but that's another story. It has recently been modified into a war balloon base, with the intention of preparing for future attacks on the North Pole. The Ba Sing Se resistance has known of its location and purpose for a while due to their interception of military messages. (Also, the Fire Nation has set up an airship base in the western area of the agrarian district in Ba Sing Se, and has been flying war balloons over the city to strike fear into the people's hearts.) Due to the proximity and imminent threat of the base in question, The Northern Water Tribe has taken appropriate defensive measures.

Why didn't the Gaang know about this development? Because they didn't ask. Aang was in hiding and the invasion plans were kept very quiet (well, they thought they were quiet.) So Ba Sing Se didn't know of the invasion until it happened and the Northern Water Tribe were being jerks and not talking to Hakoda because they were upset about something or another (who can keep track anymore?)

So there you go. Thanks for pointing out that this was weird. (Also, things24: oops! I made the correction, thanks.)

Chapter 19: The Avatar

Jin watched as Lee practice his first conversation with the Avatar. It was sad. And funny. He could be so eloquent when he wanted to be - when he wasn't nervous. She pondered how to make him less anxious while he paced back and forth, finally doing a poor impersonation of his uncle, and then his sister (although she couldn't be sure of the accuracy of that one). When he started impersonating her she had to put a stop to it.

"Hi Avatar and all your friends! I've heard so much about you! I'm big into helping people and I came up with this plan the other day where I would get my boyfriend to teach you fire bending. The great news is that you already know each other. Yay! Group hug!"

"I don't sound like that. You suck at impersonations."

He collapsed onto the ground to hang his head between his knees. "I suck at a lot of things."

She cleared her throat, "Hey, Zuko here. I'm mopey and don't want to be here, but I'm so whipped that I have no choice. I'm also so nervous that you won't like me that I'm going to babble about useless crap. Grrrrr."

"I don't have a lisp."

"It's cute."

"Group hug!"

"I have never said that before."

"I doubt that."

"Are you ready to go, or what?"

"I guess I'm as ready as I'll ever be."

He hefted himself onto his feet with a wince and she leaned forward to kiss his cheek.

"You look hot."

"I hope that doesn't affect the avatar's decision."

"Ooo!"

"No."

Jin absolved Lee of any fault for the fiasco that followed. Yeah, he had been nervous, and awkward, and not terribly coherent, but he hadn't really done anything wrong. And, after all, she had been the one to draw her tiger hooks. What was she supposed to do? The water bender had hit him with a whole torrent. It was just a low blow to hit someone who was injured! Jin wasn't going to sit back and let that happen. Of course, acting on instinct like that had been wrong, and the whole situation just escalated from there. The water bender had freaked out (beyond what Jin would consider reasonable), and the sarcastic boy had started screaming, and the Avatar (who she thought they had been reaching) had looked so angry at the end.

Jin mostly blamed the Avatar and his friends. Why didn't they see reason?

"Those idiots. Does he not want to learn fire bending? Do they want the world to end? Why can't people just get over their prejudices? It's what I've been saying this whole time about looking past the surface and recognizing the people – the souls – underneath."

"They kind of already know me."

Lee sat next to the camp fire and watched as Jin paced. It was a role reversal for her to be the one that was upset. And he was enjoying the fact that he had correctly predicted the outcome of their meeting with the Avatar, while she had been wrong. This, plus her indignant anger and the last twenty minutes of her cursing the Avatar and his friends while expounding upon Lee's many virtues, was making him feel somewhat better.

She waved him off. "Don't be stupid. It takes a whole lot of time and effort to get to know you. And I should know."

"Maybe they don't want to put in that kind of effort."

"Well, they don't have to. Do they really have to know you, or even get along with you, to learn fire bending?"

"I think your argument is getting confused."

"I think you should shut up."

He did so and watched in mild amusement as she paced a circuit around the fire again before slumping to the ground next to him.

"So what do we do now?"

"Try again tomorrow."

"They'll be nicer tomorrow, will they?"

He shrugged. "Maybe." She scoffed. He decided that she was very attractive when she was a little pissy. "They'll have had time to think on it. And we've come this far, it'd be stupid to turn around after one meeting and go back… Wait, can we go back?"

"No." Jin groaned and buried her face in his shoulder.

He kissed the top of her head. "We'll try again tomorrow. Then we'll try again the next day. We'll wear them down and convince them. This is too important to give up."

She groaned again.

"Do you have a better plan?"

"We could kidnap the Avatar and force him to learn fire bending."

"Jin, don't say that."

She sat up and looked to the stars. "I've actually been thinking about contingency plans. Longshot knows all the sympathetic fire benders. We could go back to Ba Sing Se and bring one of them here."

"I don't think any of them would come. There's a difference between desertion and just having a big mouth."

"We could dress the Avatar up like a Fire Nation kid – he could wear a hat or something – then we enroll him in a fire bending school."

"And he'd wear a hat the whole time?"

"Yes."

"And they'd trust us to recommend a fire bending school? They wouldn't think it was some sort of stupid trick?"

"It wouldn't be you teaching."

"No, but we'd give them the information, so there's still the trust issue."

"Can we give them the information without letting them know it's from us?"

"Just leave a note with a map and some names somewhere they could find it, and go home and hope for the best?"

"Sure."

"Would you be satisfied with that?"

She sighed. "No."

"Plus there's the problem that fire bending schools usually only meet once or twice a week and go fairly slowly. He doesn't have that kind of time. He needs intensive training."

"So we could find a master and bring him here. Someone sympathetic. Maybe we could break a traitor out of prison."

"I wouldn't know how to do that."

"I do. I'm the expert on prison breaks."

"I think we'd still run into the problem that they don't trust us. No matter how we find another teacher, if we show up with someone to teach him fire bending, they won't be trusted either just by association."

"So we have to get them to trust you."

"Yeah."

"Huh. How do we do that?"

"We get them to like you – that's easy. Everyone likes you. And I just come along for the ride."

"Oh, that's not true."

"Yes it is."

"Alright, it is. But don't let it get you down."

"I don't."

"Maybe we could bring them a hot dish. The women in my tenement do that all the time. It's friendly."

"Your cooking would make them sick. They'd think we're trying to kill them."

"Hey, you watch it."

From the bushes behind their campsite Toph listened in on their conversation. She hadn't meant to eavesdrop. She was going to come and talk to him and she just … got distracted.

Ok, so she was spying. Who cared?

If she hadn't already known they were sincere from their faint pulses traveling through the ground, then it was surely clear now from their conversation. They were trying hard to help. They were going out of their way when they really didn't have to.

It really was nice of them.

She thought again about standing up and talking to them. Tell them she was on their side. Invite them back to the air temple right now.

But then they started kissing and Toph decided that she had heard quite enough, thank you. She hurried back to the temple. They would try again tomorrow. And she would be on their side.

They went back down to the Air Temple the next day to find that only the water bender was home. They exchanged a look. Zuko shrugged, and led the way up to her.

She was stirring some sort of soup that she water bent defensively in front of her when she saw them approach. Bits of carrots and celery hung suspended in the liquid and actually managed to look threatening. "Zuko!"

"Umm… hey."

"What are you doing here? Aang's not here. He's off training with Toph, and I'm not telling you where they are!"

"Well, that's alright. We can … uh … talk to you? Try and be friends?" Oh, he sounded so stupid.

"Friends?! You're delusional." Her eyes shifted to Jin. "And who are you?"

Jin smiled. "I'm Jin. I'm the leader of the Ba Sing Se resistance movement, and I'm the one who dragged L-Zuko here."

The water bender narrowed her eyes in suspicion. "You use tiger hooks."

Zuko found this an odd statement, but Jin smiled again. "Yeah." She drew them quickly and the water bender tensed. Jin flipped them and held them out to the other girl, handle first. "You can hold onto them if you'd like. I trust you to give them back."

The water bender looked just as startled by this as Zuko was. What was more surprising was that she bent the soup back into the pot and took the swords carefully and inspected them with something akin to awe.

"Where did you get these?"

"A friend of mine gave them to me."

"What was his name?"

"Longshot."

The water bender's head snapped up. "… These are Jet's!"

Zuko started "How do you know Jet?" but Jin already knew the answer from the pain visible in her eyes.

"Yes. They were. He was a courageous man and died with honor. Zuko made sure he received a proper burial."

This was obviously the wrong thing to say as the girl turned on Zuko and started shouting again.

"You're a terrible person, you know that? Always following us, hunting the Avatar, trying to capture the world's last hope for peace! But what do you care? You're the Fire Lord's son. Spreading war and violence and hatred is in your blood. I'm disgusted that you would soil Jet's death with your presence!"

"You don't know what you're talking about."

"I don't! How dare you! You have no idea what this war has put me through. Me personally!" She was on the brink of tears and brandishing the tiger hooks as though she might use them. "The Fire Nation took my mother away from me."

Jin felt a pang in her chest and attempted to avoid the mental picture of her brother.

"I'm sorry." Zuko said. "That's something we have in common."

They stared at each other for a moment. The water bender averting her eyes first.

Her voice was soft when she spoke again. "I'm sorry I yelled at you."

"It doesn't matter."

"It's just that for so long now, whenever I would imagine the face of the enemy, it was your face."

He visibly twitched and his voice grew slightly harder. "My face. I see."

The girl's eyes widened and she quickly corrected herself, honestly not wanting to offend him. Well, not like that anyway. "No, no, that's not what I meant."

"It's ok. I used to think this scar marked me. The mark of the banished prince, cursed to chase the Avatar forever. But lately, I've realized I'm free to determine my own destiny, even if I'll never be free of my mark."

The girl averted her eyes again and Zuko shot a look at Jin. It was something like gratitude.

"We'll come back later… when the Avatar is here."

He turned to leave but the water bender called out to stop him. "Wait. I- I have healing abilities."

Zuko turned to her. "What?"

"Your hand. I can tell it's pretty bad. What happened?"

"Nothing."

She gave him a look of disbelief.

Zuko rolled his eyes and gave Jin a sideways look. She thought that getting the girl to heal his hand was a great idea and wasn't going to help him get out of it. "The Dai Li" he mumbled.

"What? Did you punch them and break your hand?"

"Yeah. Something like that."

The girl stepped forward and Zuko took a step back. Jin snatched up his hand impatiently and held it out for the girl, who slowly unwrapped the bindings, then the many splints.

She gasped as the swollen purple flesh was uncovered. "Tui and La…" Zuko hadn't seen his damaged hand before and averted his gaze as he felt the bile rise in his throat. Jin held his arm steady.

"It's looking better than it was, actually" she offered quietly.

His hand became cool and tingly, then slightly numb. "Wow" Jin murmured.

"This is really bad" the water bender said. "How long did it go untreated?"

Zuko shifted uncomfortably. "I- I'm not really sure."

The water bender turned to Jin, who supplied the information. "The doctor near the port said that it had probably been two or three days since the fingers were broken. And that the finger nails were probably removed before that."

"Yeah, that's about right" he muttered.

His hand felt wet for the first time as the water dripped off his arm. He glanced down to see that his color looked much more natural.

"Can you move it?"

He slowly balled his hand into a loose fist. It was still sore, but significantly healed. "This is… Thank you."

"Re-growing your fingernails will really hurt. If I were you, I'd just wear a glove and let them come in by themselves."

Zuko nodded and inspected his hand, moving it this way and that.

"I'm Katara, by the way." She held out her hand in the customary Water Tribe greeting. He stretched out his repaired hand and grasped her forearm.

Jin was gathering lychee nuts when she ran into the sarcastic boy on the path.

"You!" he shouted, drawing his sword.

"Hi" Jin smiled.

The boy's eyes narrowed. "What are you doing here? We told you to get lost."

"I'm gathering lychee nuts. And berries. But I'm not really sure if they're edible. Do you know?" She held one up to show him. His glare tinted with confusion. "You could also have a lychee nut. I know that those are good."

The boy seemed to have an internal struggle between his desire to eat and his need to be distrustful. Jin sat down on a rock to give him time to decide.

"My name's Jin. What's yours?"

"Why do you want to know?"

"To be polite."

He scoffed. "Yeah sure."

"I know Zuko lacks manners, but his irritability hasn't rubbed off on me yet."

"You going to apologize for him?"

"No. I have no control over his actions, believe me." She held out a lychee nut again. This time he took it and sat across the path from her.

"I'm Sokka of the Southern Water Tribe."

"Really? I've never met anyone from there. What's it like?"

"Cold. And small. But I was working on rebuilding it. I built a defensive wall and a watch tower."

"You built them yourself?"

"That's right."

"Wow."

The boy smirked, and took another nut. "Yeah, I pretty much ran the tribe until I decided to help Aang find a water bending teacher."

"You're a politician?"

"I'm a warrior. And a strategist." His chest seemed to puff out.

"I'm a strategist too. I'm not much of a warrior though. Zuko pretty much covers that."

"Is that why he's so useless by himself?"

"Hey, he's not useless. I actually think he could help you."

"With your crazy fire bending teaching idea?"

"You've never had a crazy plan?"

He looked at his feet and fiddled with the hilt of his sword. "Yeah."

They sat in silence for a moment.

"I had this plan where we would turn the fire benders stationed in Ba Sing Se against the Dai Li. We spent weeks spreading rumors and feeding them false information, causing problems then spreading blame. It was going perfectly and the tension was about to reach a head. The next step was to incite violence between them. I sent an earth bender to throw rocks at the fire benders as the Dai Li passed. Then Zuko was going to shoot fire back at the Dai Li. Then we would leave them to their own devices and their control would crumble.

"But they caught Zuko, and they were so distracted by catching him that they forgot all about their internal fighting. The plan failed and they hurt him and it was all my fault."

She looked up into Sokka's face. He seemed to understand her completely. "I'm trying to atone for my mistakes. If I help the Avatar, then my city will be saved. If Zuko helps the Avatar, the world will be saved and he'll in some way atone for being terrible to you and your friends."

The boy seemed to consider this. "He was pretty terrible, you know."

"Yeah." She smiled. "I bet he was."

They talked for another hour. They talked about all the awful things Zuko had done, while casting his antics in an amusing light. He complained about how terrible Ba Sing Se was and she told him that it would get better eventually. He told her about his discovery of his love for haiku and they bonded over their shared joy of reading. He said that he went to a library in a desert that was filled with the most amazing volumes. Jin told him about how she would have attended the University where the professor he met taught. Except that the Fire Nation invaded. She told him about the resistance and her friendship with Longshot and Smellerbee. He told her about how stupid Jet was. She told him about her tiger hooks and he told her that his sword was made from a meteorite. She told him about how you couldn't see meteor showers in the city. He told her about the southern polar lights and how sometimes there was only an hour or two of sunlight each day. She told him some tea jokes that she had learned from Mushi and he told her some jokes about leopard seals. They finished all the nuts and tested the berries. She told him about the war balloon she had stolen and flew, and he said that he had helped design them.

By the time night fell, they were best friends.

The next day they were ready to try again with the Avatar. He jumped up as he saw them approach the open courtyard. His face was pulled into a scowl and he held his staff aggressively. He soon realized that his friends had not sprung to the defensive. He cast confused sideways looks in their directions, before bristling further.

"What are you doing here?"

Zuko stopped and held up his hands. "I just want to talk."

"We don't want to hear what you have to say."

"Aang," Katara reached up and placed a hand on his arm, "Maybe you should listen."

The Avatar's eyes widened in something resembling betrayal.

"I don't think it's a great idea," Toph said, "Where else are we going to find a fire bender? If it'll help take down the Fire Lord, who really cares?"

"But-"

"Look," Sokka said, holding up his hands in an appeasing manner, "Maybe he's screwed up in the past. Ok, a lot in the past. But it seems like … I don't know, he's been doing a lot of good in Ba Sing Se. People change, right?"

"You guys were the ones who said we could never trust him!"

"I know we did," Katara lowered her eyes, looking slightly ashamed, "but maybe we were wrong."

"Give him a chance, Twinkle Toes. We can take him if he pulls anything." Toph pounded her fist into her hand menacingly.

Aang didn't know where any of this was coming from. Just the other day his friends had all been against Zuko. Were they talking about this behind his back? Yes. Of course they were. He already knew that. But this had been the conclusion they came to? Trusting Zuko?

Zuko could see that they were getting through to the boy and spoke up again. "I know I haven't explained myself very well. I've been through a lot in the past few years, and it's been hard. But I'm realizing that I had to go through all those things to learn the truth. I thought I had lost my honor, and that somehow my father could return it to me. But I know now that no one can give you your honor. It's something you earn for yourself, by choosing to do what's right. All I want now is to play my part in ending this war. And I know my destiny is to help you restore balance to the world." He bowed. "I'm sorry."

His speech was honest, from the heart. He always did better when he spoke like that. He didn't trip over his words, worrying about if he was saying the right thing.

He remained bowed, waiting anxiously for the Avatar's answer, but smart enough not to push it. Aang chewed the inside of his bottom lip, weighing everything he knew about Zuko against his friends' recommendations and the pull in his gut. He had once asked if they could be friends, and part of him still thought that they could. The only reason that they weren't already was because Zuko had reacted poorly to the offer. But now he was ready. He was ready to accept friendship and stand firmly on the side of good and teach that last missing bending art.

Really, part of him had been expecting this for a while now. It was poetic. It was a happy ending. And he appreciated happy endings.

Aang smiled and bowed to Zuko. "I'd like you to teach me."

"So here you go, home sweet home. I guess, you know, for now." Sokka gestured about a small, bare room that emphasized the fact that monks once lived here. "Unpack... lunch soon. Uh...welcome aboard?" Sokka really was trying hard, but both he and Zuko were aware of how awkward it was.

Zuko gave the boy a small smile to try to ease the tension. It didn't seem to work. It might have actually made Sokka more ill at ease, as he responded to the smile with a blank look, then turned and left.

This was going to be slow going.

He had only pulled a few things out of his bag before Jin came in, dropped her bag on the floor, and sprawled on his bed.

"They showed me to a room down the hall." She shook her head in disbelief. "Prudes."