A/N: The Following is Rated V and S; for violence and suicide.
It corresponds, chronologically, with S2E2 "The Cave of Two Lovers."
Reader discretion is advised.
"The Death of Two Lovers."
Late Autumn, year 10 in the reign of Fire-Lord Ozai.
Hair was not something Zuko had ever spent a great deal of time thinking about.
It grew on your head. You put it into a topknot. If it ever became cumbersome you cut it off with the nearest sharp object to something more manageable, put it back in the topknot, and then carried on.
Now though…
The first few mornings Zuko had woken up after Kanka, bereft of surname and lying on the ground in whatever clearing in the woods he and his uncle had eventually collapsed in, his hands, seemingly of their own accord, had tried to put his hair into the topknot. While it wasn't forbidden for a ronin to wear the topknot (the style was even popular among peasants in the Fire-Nation) Zuko had no desire to pretend to be something he was not. It was a traditional samurai hairstyle, and that was something that he was not.
So, for the first time in his life, Zuko was forced to contemplate what to do with his hair. Like most decisions he had made in his life he chose to deal with it thoroughly and decisively.
So, he'd shaved his head.
The process had taken the better part of an hour, crouched over a small stream in the woods, and when he was done he was forced to re-sharpen his now terribly dull razor.
If I try to do this AND shave every day I'll have little time to do anything else, he mused as he contemplated the treacherous ruins on the left side of his face.
So, he didn't bother.
Now, a few weeks later, he had what he considered to be the reasonable beginnings of a beard. Hopefully that, combined with the large straw hat he'd bought, would be enough to throw off any bounty-hunters.
The wanted posters featuring he and Iroh, oddly without their names attached to their portraits, had sprung up quite quickly after he'd torched his sister's boat and left Kanka behind. The two new fugitives had decided that, although they were enemies of the Earth-Kingdom, what Azula would do to them when she found them was a great deal worse. So, they'd turned south, acquired some green-hued peasant clothing and invaded the Earth-Kingdom.
It was practically a family tradition at this point.
As they made their way through small villages Zuko was perpetually on edge. He expected someone to identify them at any moment, summoning a legion of Earth samurai, and triggering some sort of final showdown. The Dragon of the West and the son of the Fire-Lord were probably the most wanted men in the entire Earth-Kingdom and Zuko's eye flitted from person to person, just waiting for the telltale signs of recognition he was sure would flare there.
Despite his paranoia, all he found was the same looks he normally got. Pity and horror after a good look at his scar. He was surprised to find that the scar actually helped him in his disguise, as it was taken as a sure sign that they were not Fire-Nation spies.
After all, who would do that to their own people?
The stress of potential discovery was made even worse by the need to exercise complete control over his bending at all times. A single involuntary burst of flame would give he and Iroh away as firebenders, which was not something one wanted to advertise while in the Earth-Kingdom.
Zuko hadn't even noticed how often he had bent before. It was simply something one did, like breathing or yelling at people. Now firebending niggled at him, beckoned him, called to him in every torchlit street and tavern hearth.
And finally, because he didn't have enough to worry about, the earth peasants were just so… earthy. Every earth village he'd ever been in before had been terribly quiet, the people hiding in their homes, praying the Fire-Nation would spare them.
Now though…
The villages he passed through were loud rambunctious affairs, full of bustling activity, loud shouts, and laughter. The sedate controlled calm and purposeful deliberate activity of a Fire-Nation village was nowhere to be found. Instead people… loitered… chatted… were drunk in public. Zuko couldn't seem to walk ten feet without his ears, or sensibilities, being assaulted by something.
They were just all so crass. Even the merchants, who should have been quietly minding their shops, were in the streets, shouting for all and sundry to come as see their wares. Their wares were the best, far better than the shoddy work of that shop across the street, they would declaim.
Which was yet another problem.
Zuko had run out of money.
Certainly, he and Iroh had had some money when they'd crossed the Kashi-no-Ki, but it managed to disappear far more rapidly than Zuko could have imagined. Food, not to mention sake, was remarkably expensive this close to the front, and while Zuko had tried his hand at hunting in the wooded areas between villages, he found it a great deal more difficult than tracking bandits had been.
He'd never been this hungry before.
As a child, living in the palace of Otosan Uchi, the idea of food was an abstract, ephemeral. You said you were hungry, food appeared. When he'd been banished and lived in a shack with his uncle, he'd become used to the food supply having limits, but had still had a reasonable expectation of three solid meals a day. When he'd become an officer, food had become a resource. Necessary for maintaining his men at combat readiness, but still merely a cerebral exercise. Now food was a visceral thing, a ripping tear at his stomach, a pang in his guts.
It has only been TWO days! He growled at himself. Reports used to speak of soldiers going whole WEEKS without food. I will NOT be weak!
Iroh had grown so hungry by the third day without food that he had mistaken the poisonous White Jade Bush for legendary White Dragon Bush. Zuko had been forced to take him to a local medicine woman in the small town of Omatomo to stop the swelling from spreading to his lungs and killing him. The young woman who worked there had given Iroh a salve, free of charge, and had then invited them to her home for roast duck. Despite Iroh's pleading, Zuko declined as politely as he could bring himself to be to a peasant.
"We must make our own way, uncle," he said as they left. It was also a great deal safer if they didn't spend too much time in a stranger's company.
That, and accepting charity was a weakness Zuko would not abide.
"We'll make our way into the grave if this keeps up," Iroh had said chidingly, still scratching at the rapidly subsiding rash. "Besides nephew, when a pretty girl invites a man to her home for 'roast duck' she's not just offering up waterfowl, you understand?"
"No?" Zuko said, eyeing his uncle askance. Did his uncle suspect that woman of treachery? Why had he tried so hard to get him to-
"We have discussed this, nephew. When a pretty girl bats her eyes at you like that and offers you something, anything, but most especially food, she is trying to sleep with you. Or at the very least give you a nice proper kiss. Nothing wrong with a little-"
"Are you OUT of your mind?" Zuko snapped, hissing quietly at his uncle. "Even if that WERE the case, which it wasn't, this is NOT the time for- for- romantic entanglements."
"There is always time for romance, nephew."
It galled Zuko. He and his uncle had been cast out, been stripped of honor and name, and yet his uncle continued in his relentlessly affable good mood. Why couldn't the man be properly ashamed! His good humor grated on Zuko like a good blade on glass.
Despite Zuko's irritation, they slept the night on the streets, back to back for safety and defense, and in the morning they were both stunned to find a few copper zeni had been thrown into Iroh's hat where it had fallen off of his head.
"They think we are beggars?" Zuko snarled, leaping to his feet.
"So, we must seem," Iroh said examining his hat, an odd contemplative look in his eyes.
Zuko began to walk away, casting around angrily as if to find the person who had insulted him.
"Are you coming, uncle?"
"I am still quite tired actually," Iroh said letting out a little yawn. "It is not as though we have a schedule to keep, nephew." With that, he closed his eyes and fell back asleep.
Zuko began to walk, both restlessly and aimlessly, through the small town. He watched the people carefully as he stalked along, alert for any sign of violence, but found none. People here barely even seemed to notice him, which he was still finding an unusual sensation.
When, after several hours, his pointless wandering took him back to where Iroh had been sleeping he found the man on his feet, singing a jaunty marching tune about the beautiful girls of Ba Sing Se. A man, obviously a bushi of some stripe, stood in front of him laughing uproariously, while his three companions chuckled along with him.
"Come on!" the first man roared, "I'm offering a whole bu! Dance for me fat man!" And then he drew the pair of swords at his back and began to make jabs at Iroh's feet, to encourage his dancing.
Zuko exploded forward, the hilt of his katana slamming into the man's jaw without fully exiting its sheath. Blood streamed from his mouth as he fell backward on onto his friends.
"What do you think you are DOING?" Zuko growled malevolently.
The bushi spat blood and drew himself up. "Whatever the fuck I want Mr Ronin." He invested the word with scorn after taking in Zuko's lone blade. "Do you know who I am?!"
"A dead man," Zuko said grimly, taking a stance, his hand still on the hilt of his katana.
"Aka? I don't know if you want to-" one of the other bushi began.
"Now, now neph-" Iroh cut off, flinging himself out of the way, as Aka began his attack.
Aka seemed to be a competent fighter. He might have even been able to best a ji-samurai on a good day.
Zuko was not a ji-samurai.
No matter what scorn anyone heaped on him, no matter how many times he had failed to capture the Avatar, Zuko was a full-blooded Akodo Lion samurai, trained in the art of killing since he was seven. The fight was over before it even truly began.
Aka's first, and truly his only, strike was a high overhead swing with both swords. Zuko parried, stepping to the side, and brought his sword down on the back of Aka's knee, severing the tendon. The bushi tried to spin around on his now unresponsive leg and found the point of Zuko's blade slipping through the space between his collarbone and neck, moving at a downward angle, severing his lungs and piercing his heart.
Drawing the sword out with a single fluid motion, Zuko took a guard position facing the other three bushi, preparing to do the same to them if necessary. They, in turn, took large steps away from Zuko, palms up and away from their weapons.
"Whoa, whoa there friend," the largest one said, still backing away. "We've no quarrel here.
"I've just killed your ally," Zuko said icily. "You expect me to believe-"
"Ally? HA!" the smallest one said. "Aka was an idiot, good riddance I say!"
The third one, who was a height with Zuko, although not as broad through the shoulder, just nodded in agreement.
Zuko nodded back, then bent to clean his blade off on the dead Aka's clothes.
"I don't suppose you're looking for work, Mr…?" the big bushi said questioningly.
Zuko opened his mouth to answer hotly when his uncle jumped in.
"PING. He's Ping, and I am his uncle Mushi," he said grinning broadly.
Zuko glared at him silently.
"What?" his uncle said, amused. "You owe me a whole bu nephew." He indicated the cooling corpse.
/\^/\^/\^/\^/\^/\^/\^/\^/\^/\^/\^/\^/\^/\^/\^/\
After Iroh, friendly and genial as always, struck up a conversation it transpired that the three bushi were called Kaba, Shirshu, and Hanasu. Kaba was the big one, almost a foot taller than Zuko and wielding a massive tetsubo. Shirshu was the little one, almost a foot shorter than Zuko and was named for the animal because he was a hunter and tracker and NOT, he insisted, because his nose was larger than most. Hanasu was the middle sized one and a mute, having lost his tongue at some point in his life. The three had a brief chuckle over the inappropriately named "Ping" and decided that he should just stick with "Mr Ronin" instead.
They were mercenaries they said, soldiers of fortune and odd-job warriors. They had been in town to rest and resupply when "Mr Ronin" had killed their newest member.
Shockingly they weren't that upset about it.
"It's definitely a four-man job!" Shirshu said winningly. "We'll be down the hole without a ladder if you can't help us out."
Zuko was again about to simply snarl a negation, bow and walk away but his uncle got there first.
"Simply fascinating. What sort of job is it?"
The job, it turned out, was the recovery of a priceless set of earthbending scrolls. The merchants that had been bringing them to the local magistrate had been attacked by bandits en route. With the war on, and growing ever closer to the area, there simply wasn't enough law enforcement personnel, not to mention samurai and soldiers, to resolve something like this.
Which is where the four mercenaries had come in.
"Should be simple!" Shirshu assured Zuko and Iroh, tapping his not at all average sized nose. "I've already found their lair, it's up north in the foothills of Omashu. We just came back to town to rest up before the final plunge."
"What a thrilling sounding adventure!" Iroh said, "Of course my nephew loves adventure, but I worry that he should be able to feed himself…"
"Oh, don't worry about that!" Kaba interjected. "This job is worth four WHOLE koku." His eye practically twinkled at what, to him, was a ludicrous amount of money. Zuko, on the other hand, was unsure if dealing with them was even worth his time. His share would only be a single koku after all.
But in the end, he found himself agreeing to join. He was responsible for their short-handed state, and his honor, tattered and shabby as it was, demanded that he redress the situation.
The fact that Shirshu bought him and Iroh lunch to apologize for Aka's rudeness had nothing to do with it.
/\^/\^/\^/\^/\^/\^/\^/\^/\^/\^/\^/\^/\^/\^/\^/\
The next morning Zuko rose at first light and met his new compatriots at the town gate.
Iroh had elected to stay behind, most likely to take up begging again to Zuko's growing dismay.
As they walked north, away from Omatomo, the chilly predawn silence was filled with chatter, mostly from Shirshu, aided and abetted by Kaba. The little man talked and talked and talked, and Zuko spent most of the morning ignoring the questions the little man shot his way and trying to figure out how to make him shut up without being rude… or killing him.
In the brief snatches of conversation Zuko did listen to, he was inundated with personal information about the trio, who apparently had been working together for quite some time.
Kaba was actually the illegitimate son of Lord Toritaka, a family of samurai who lived a good way east of Yu Dao. It certainly explained why he was seven feet tall, Zuko was of the opinion that the Earth-Kingdom aristocracy bred for size as a matter of course. He'd been raised on the sidelines of the family until it became apparent that he wasn't a bender. Showing what Zuko considered to be nothing more than the typical uncivilized behavior of everyone outside the Fire-Nation, the Toritaka had cast Kaba out to live on the streets after his seventh birthday, the time by which bending, had it been present, would have manifested.
Very little was said about Hanasu. The man was a mute and his past seemed to be something of a mystery to Shirshu. He was armed with a bamboo hafted spear and carried himself with a fluid grace that marked him as a dangerous opponent in Zuko's eye. He seemed to have worked out a rudimentary sign language with Kaba, and while he was silent he often grabbed the big man's attention with a gentle squeeze at his forearm and gesticulated simply; asking questions and being answered, usually with a smile and a booming laugh.
Shirshu was an orphan from the city of Omashu and about ninety percent of his chatter was about the wonders that were his city. Lord Kuni Bumi was the world's greatest earthbender. The city was foremost in the world in its engineering and its mail delivery system was the origin of Ba Sing Se's public transit system. Shirshu's favorite shop was a bean curd bun place called "Mama's Hot Buns," on Quarry Lane in the east side of the city.
Zuko, despite the fact that this would probably only encourage him, was about to ask why they hadn't stopped in Omashu if he loved it so much when they topped a rise and sight of the city made the question moot.
Large red Fire-Nation banners had been draped over the city walls.
Even as Shirshu seemed to slump despondently Zuko's heart leapt in quickly suppressed joy.
Ha HA! Zuko thought triumphantly. This means we control BOTH sides of the Kashi-no-Ki! With that, the garrison at Shiro Bor-Lei will fall and we can move the 107th up to… He came back to himself in a rush, suddenly remembering that he wasn't an officer of the Fire-Nation anymore. Not only that, but the more areas under his father's control meant there were fewer places he could go without being forced into a conflict with his own people.
Fewer places to HIDE you mean?
The group, for entirely different reasons, continued on in gloomy silence.
/\^/\^/\^/\^/\^/\^/\^/\^/\^/\^/\^/\^/\^/\^/\^/\
They camped for the night still within sight of Omashu; the city's watch-fires faint pinpricks, miles away.
Shirshu had managed to be solemn and somewhat depressed for the better part of an hour but quickly regained his spirits, much to the displeasure of Zuko's battered ears. He made up for it by disappearing as they set camp and reappearing less than an hour later with a brace of long-eared rabbit-quail and his grin fully back on his face.
Zuko admitted himself impressed.
He was also impressed but the powerful snores the little man produced when they turned in for the night. But it wasn't the noise that kept Zuko awake. He simply couldn't fall asleep so close to people he didn't know and so he moved his blankets away from the fire and beyond the camp.
When the bushi awoke the next morning Zuko had already placed his blankets back by the fire and was in the middle of his thousand cuts. Hanasu nodded in seeming approval and unwrapped the blade of the spear to join Zuko in morning ritual.
Kaba stretched and yawned, cracking his massive neck. "Should be a fun day!"
/\^/\^/\^/\^/\^/\^/\^/\^/\^/\^/\^/\^/\^/\^/\^/\
It most assuredly was NOT a fun day.
Kaba, the nominal leader of the group, laid out the plan for Zuko over breakfast. The cave was covered by a rough wooden palisade and guarded by a single guard. Shirshu would take him out silently with his bow, then Kaba would smash through the flimsy thing with his tetsubo.
From there it would be a simple slog through the tunnels of the cave. Kaba would be in front, keeping the enemy away from Shirshu and would be backed up by the long thrust of Hanasu's spear. Zuko was the rear guard, cave systems having so many branches it was impossible to clear them all simultaneously, hence the necessity of a fourth man.
It was a good plan and for the most part, it went entirely as expected. The bandits were nearly feral madmen, missing teeth and with weapons more rust than iron, and they were dispatched with ease. Zuko barely had to do anything until they reached a central cavern and discovered the bandits' chief…
Who was an earthbender.
Fight an earthbender underground increased the danger by several orders of magnitude. Stone could, and did, come from anywhere.
Something which Kaba discovered to his fatal displeasure.
The entrance to the cavern filled with gore as the earthbender bent stone, descending without warning from the ceiling, a massive block of it slamming into Kaba, killing him instantly. Hanasu let out a warbling sound of grief and loss and charged forward without concern for his safety, or group tactics.
Ash and bone, what is he doing? Zuko thought also advancing rapidly, albeit with more caution. He's lost his mind! It's not as though they were… OH…
Their blankets HAD been a little closer together than mere comradery would suggest.
Well… shit.
Shirshu began to fire arrow after arrow at the chieftain, preventing him from crushing the rest of them while Hanasu, spear twirling and stabbing, tears streaming from his eyes, fought his way closer. Zuko focused on clearing the room of the few rabble left so that they could all focus on the major threat together.
Just as he had slain the last of the foot soldiers Zuko saw Hanasu knocked backwards, his knee bent in an odd angle, directly on top of Shirshu, and both men fell down in a heap. The earthbending bandit raised his hands in a gripping motion to pull another slab of stone down on the two prone men.
Damnit!
Abandoning secrecy in a near unconscious desire to protect his fellow soldiers Zuko bent a gout of flame, which knocked the bandit off his feet as he rushed forward, managing to close the gap as the enemy tried to rise. The ragged earthbender snarled madly and tried to impale Zuko on a rising angled stalagmite as he gained his feet. Zuko wrapped his katana in a protective corona of fire and smashed through the rising stone with a low rising sweep and then followed through with a roar of fury and an overhead chop that lodged itself in the bandit's neck just below the chin.
The fight over, Zuko spun to his co-workers.
Maybe they didn't see?
"Spit and stones, you're a firebender!?" Shirshu said with unsuppressed horror.
Damn. They saw.
Narrowing his eye Zuko advanced on them, sword at the ready, fire gathering.
"Hold on, hold on, we- we don't care about that sort of thing! Do we Ka-" Shirshu cut himself off with a grimace- "Do we… Hanasu?"
Hanasu had somehow managed to get himself to his feet, using the broken haft of his spear as a crutch. He looked sadly at the red smear that had been Kaba, then to the corpse of the man who had killed him. He met Zuko's eyes and nodded in approval.
Zuko sheathed his sword and nodded back.
"I'll find the scrolls, you two…" Shirshu gestured vaguely at Kaba's remains.
The two of them, Zuko and Hanasu, stood before the mess that had until recently been a jovial smiling giant. Zuko bent fire into his hand and looked questioningly at Hanasu. The man exhaled a shuddering breath and nodded, but held up a finger, asking for a moment. He knelt, trailing his fingers through the wreckage, tears spilling from his eyes, and mouthing silent words as he rocked back and forth. Zuko turned away, giving the man as much privacy as he could. After a long moment, Zuko heard the sound of Hanasu struggling back to his feet. He turned and without a word set the whole patch on fire.
He wished he had something to say, but all the ritual words he knew were for samurai, about returning their honor and surname to the fold.
He knew no words for bushi... or for ronin.
I hope your next life is a better one, he thought. It wasn't much, but it was the best he could do.
Like always, his best wasn't good enough.
/\^/\^/\^/\^/\^/\^/\^/\^/\^/\^/\^/\^/\^/\^/\^/\
It was a much quieter and slower group that returned to Omatomo the next day.
Hanasu looked like grim death, limping along refusing any attempts to aid him. Even Shirshu's constant verbal patter fell flat without Kaba to back him up. No one had slept the previous night, not with Hanasu's quiet keening and the disturbing image of the once giant man they had known transformed into red paste burned into their brains.
"I'll see about returning this," Shirshu said after they had crossed the threshold to the town, gesturing with the scroll box he'd found in the wreckage of the bandit cave.
"Shouldn't we go together?" Zuko said narrowing his eye.
"No, it's bad form. Too many mercenaries at the meeting means we don't trust them. Good way to get us into a fight and not get paid at all."
"Fine, but if you try to betray me…"
"You saved my life ronin. In my line of work that means something."
"What the ash is this?" Zuko growled quietly.
The trio sat at a small table contemplating their bowls of ramen and the four silver coins that sat in the very center. One of those coins was already spoken for to pay for the food.
"It's… payment," Shirshu said, sighing bitterly.
"You said four koku, not-"
"I know what I said! The gravel chewing magistrate…" Shirshu slumped dejectedly- "changed his mind. He said his 'deal was Kaba' and that we'd take what he was willing to give or he would run us in for stealing the scrolls ourselves."
"I knew I should have gone with you. Your friend gets killed and you can't even manage to-"
He cut off as Hanasu slammed his fist down on the table, making their bowls and their meager payment jump slightly. The man hadn't even touched the ramen in front of him, nor any food that Zuko had seen since Kaba died. He didn't make eye contact with anyone at the table either, just sat like a lump.
"Fine!" Zuko snarled, rising from the table. "I'll go get what I deserve."
"Don't be a fool Ping! What are you going to do storm the Magistrate's house and-" he dropped the volume of his voice and waggled his fingers- "whoosh at them?"
"They dishonor the memory of one of your comrades and you will do nothing? Pathetic."
"This is how it IS for us, ronin! Better get used to it!" Shirshu shouted at Zuko's retreating back.
/\^/\^/\^/\^/\^/\^/\^/\^/\^/\^/\^/\^/\^/\^/\^/\
Zuko sat alone in a tree, arguing with himself.
He'd waited for nightfall at least before wrapping himself in the grey woolens he'd managed to retain after he fled Kanka. He sat high in a tree overlooking the manor house of the local magistrate, holding his "Grey Ghost" mask in his hands. His outer stillness belying his inner conflict.
Honorless bastards deserve death. How is taking what was promised, what's YOURS by rights any worse? He raged at himself.
So, you are a thief? A calm voice, reminiscent of his uncle's seemed to ask quietly.
NO! They're the enemy! It's a RAID!
You're not an officer of the Fire-Nation anymore. Those rules don't apply.
This is JUSTICE! It's bigger than loyalty or nations or rules. More important!
More important than your honor?
…
You are hungry. You are hungry and tired and disgusted with yourself. You thought you knew what it was to be strong, but a few weeks of privation and you're sitting here contemplating banditry. Common theft. You've executed people for less. Call it what you like, justice, revenge or something in between, it's still just because you're hungry.
…So what's the alternative? All the high-handed speeches and useless platitudes don't keep you alive. FOOD keeps you alive. MONEY buys you food.
You're not starving.
So I should wait until I am? Until I am too weak to do anything about it?
I thought it was "death before dishonor?"
…That's a samurai credo. I'm a ronin.
Zuko exhaled a breath he hadn't realized he had been holding. "I'm a ronin," he said quietly, slipping his mask on.
/\^/\^/\^/\^/\^/\^/\^/\^/\^/\^/\^/\^/\^/\^/\^/\
"Where did all this money come from nephew?" Iroh asked a few days later as they sat at an inn, a plate of dumplings between the two of them.
"Don't worry about it uncle," Zuko said, taking another sip of the sake he'd purchased. It helped to bury the image of the Magistrate's burning house.
"But I DO worry," Iroh said, leaning across the table and putting his hand on Zuko's shoulder. "I know things have been difficult nephew, but you must not give in to despair. The life of a ronin is taxing upon the body-" he glanced at the bag of gold coins- "and the spirit."
Shirshu and Hanasu hadn't wanted any of it. Hadn't wanted any part of money so "dishonorably" earned. Hanasu didn't want anything anymore.
"I assume you would prefer that I caper through the streets like a fool?" The very idea set Zuko's teeth on edge. He poured another drink.
Iroh shook his head. "There is a simple honor in poverty, Zuko."
"There is no HONOR in begging, uncle." Another pour, another drink. "We are Akodo and we do NOT beg. Not even when we are ronin." The very word "beg" made his scar throb and he could almost see his father bearing down on him, flame in his hands.
Zuko took another drink, fighting to keep his hand steady.
Hanasu had begged. Not with words of course but with his eyes. Those eyes of his had been haunted.
Pour. Drink.
"It's not so hard. It's a skill just like anything-"
"The only skill I have is killing, uncle."
Hanasu had appreciated that skill at least. Seppuku was much easier with a second and after Zuko had figured out what it was he wanted he had obliged him. Sent him quickly home to his ancestors so that he could try to be with Kaba again. Perhaps in his next life.
Pour… the bottle was empty… the next was uncorked… Drink.
"That's not true Zuko. You know that-"
"What is the POINT uncle?" Zuko said quietly. "What is the point of anything anymore? How are we… how am I supposed to…" he shook his head. "Without my honor, I might as well be dead and ash."
"No Zuko!" Iroh said quietly but fiercely. "You must never give into despair. Allow yourself to slip down that road and you surrender yourself to you your lowest instincts. In the darkest times, hope is something you give yourself. That is the meaning of inner strength."
Zuko had always believed that his honor had been his inner strength. Now that he was completely without, the last vestiges he had stripped away by his sister and his own actions, his uncle wanted him to join him in his new-found begging career. To somehow sink even lower.
Iroh just didn't understand.
And Zuko lacked the words to make him understand.
"I think we have very different views on what it means to be ronin," Zuko said voice flat and emotionless. "I think we are no longer best served by traveling together."
Iroh's eyes grew sad.
"It's also safer… for both of us," Zuko said rising unsteadily to his feet and gathering the coin and his sake bottle to him. If they stayed together Zuko was suddenly certain that he would probably get his uncle killed too. "I think I need to find my own path uncle."
"Zuko… just… be careful? I would not want you to become lost."
"How can I be lost, when I've got nowhere to go?"
And with that Zuko staggered out into the darkened streets, now drinking directly from the bottle.
A/N: Greetings and salutations readers, and welcome to the end of the chapter! Bit of a downer I know, but you've got to hit rock bottom before you can start over as they say.
Or something like that anyway.
It is with much sadness that I must report that my computer of nearly four years has passed away, hence the lateness of this chapter. Luckily I am a strong believer in Google Drive (praise be unto it) and so there was no loss of words. So now I have to do my editing on my school computer, which of course, does NOT come with MS Word.
Thank goodness for google docs and grammerly, eh?
And now some Bits of Meta
Bushi: Bushi simply means warrior as far as I understand it in Japanese. The relevant parallel for us in the west is just warrior or mercenary to the samurai's knight. In the L5R game, bushi is the fighter subclass of samurai, while a samurai CAN be a bushi, a bushi is not necessarily a samurai.
Tetsubo: I've used the weapon in the story before, but just now realized that I didn't explain what it is. Sorry about that. A tetsubo is basically a big metal bat. Sometimes with spikes, sometimes without. Pretty simple.
DEVIATIONS FROM STANDARD.
A Note on Chapter Titles: I've always had fun trying to come up with chapter titles that echo the titles of the episode they're built around. Literally this entire chapter originated from that practice. "The Cave of Two Lovers" became "The Death of Two Lovers" before I even wrote word one of this. I regret nothing.
Uncle gets Zuko a job: Iroh understands that Zuko is going to have a hard time being ronin, I'm pretty sure he's been just trying to distract him for a while so that he doesn't get to thinking about his situation and then over brooding on it. (like he does at the end of the chapter) SO when a bunch of mercenaries start making overtures towards Zuko joining their group he jumps on that like white on rice. Unfortunately, it doesn't work out.
An ostrich-horse? Really?: I really didn't like Zuko stealing the ostrich-horse. From people who had FED him to. It was just so abrupt and I felt that if Zuko was going to slip into dishonor it would be more gradual and more in keeping with his normal character flaws. SO I changed it, because I can. Zuko is a man who has been taught to solve problems with violence. So when butting heads with a problem that would be very common for ronin and non-samurai, namely being taken advantage of by those in power, he solves the problem, with violence.
Last line: Loved that last line, and while I don't normally talk about the music I listen to while writing (or in general) I just felt that this lyric, and in fact the ENTIRE song, is just spot on Zuko at this point. It is "Unforgiven III" by Metallica and I can't recommend it enough, even if you don't like rock/metal. That is all.
Thanks again for reading!
NEXT WEEK on a very special "Avatar: The Last Dragon"...
Iroh drinks tea? Zuko chops wood and makes a stab at thrilling heroics!
TUNE IN. Same Zuko time, Same Zuko channel!
Original post date: 19 August 2018
