Chapter 2:
A Simple Life, Interrupted
This story was commissioned by a customer who would like to remain anonymous.
Zuko was walking. He had done nothing but walk for at least five days of night now.
Trying to sleep through a storm of hail, mud and wet ash was a fool's errand, but it didn't stop him from trying. The hours spent laying on rock outcropping within caves only served to let his body rest, not his mind. The smell of burning earth and sound of hail with lightning made rest for the mind impossible.
The now abandoned villages and towns of people who fled from Sozin's storm, as said fleers called it when they passed him going in the opposite direction, were much more restful places to lay his head. Not least of which because he occasionally found potable water and even minor food stuffs within the comparatively dry abodes. Each was a godsend, but he tried not to take too much in case more refugees fleeing from places closer to Ba Sing Se needed them more.
He was certain to leave brightly colored signs near places with still usable water or food that he found, and always triple checked each building for people in need of help. So far, all he had found was more groups resting before the next leg of their journey. He left them be in favor of solitude.
The entire while he did not think, nor did he plan. His foot took them where they pleased. During the first few days he assumed they were taking him to the only place that had ever felt like home; the tea shop he and his uncle had worked so hard to build in Ba Sing Se. It may have also been possible that he was being drawn to where his beloved father had died, in the vain hope that he had survived the cosmic impact. And yet, his feet had taken him northwest instead of the northeast path he would have needed to take to reach Sozin's crater. And by the time this happened he no longer had the mental strength to even ponder his body's will.
It was only on the fifth day that the hail and lightning subsided. The rain and overcast both became lighter and the occasional ray of sunlight illuminated the desolate landscape. On a particularly bright day, where nearly half of the sky was rays of sunlight carving the earth like knives, Zuko collapsed in physical and mental pleasure at the return of the sun and warmth and splotches of green in the landscape.
The soft soil, slightly but not fully dried by the recently returned sun, was as inviting as the freshly aired sheets by the royal palace servants.
He groaned in delight as he buried his face into the earth and slowly fell into the sweet embrace of sleep.
"Whoa! Looks like somebody went the wrong direction." He heard an approaching voice say.
Zuko didn't even have the strength to look up, and so he merely lay there as they got closer until he could feel them standing right over him.
"Up you get! You better be alive, stranger." The voice said.
And Zuko felt himself being flipped over onto his back to be met with a face full of blinding sunlight instead of the visage of his savior. He tried to make it out anyways, and the blurry bald head with a splotch of blue on top was all too familiar in his sleep deprived mind.
"Aang?" He groaned out. "But... how?"
"Aang? That sure aint my name." The man said as his outline became less blurry and the small patch of blue on his bald head was revealed to be a hat. "You can call me Sensu. You don't know me, but I know you, Prince Zuko. Lee described you to a T. That sure is one distinctive scar."
As his vision cleared up somewhat Zuko could make out more of the man. He was only a few years older than himself, with scars of battle marring his otherwise young face. Not least of these scars was the arm completely missing from his left side. Something about what he said sounded familiar, but he couldn't place it.
"Up you get, Prince. You are most welcome here." Sensu told him as he lifted Zuko up to prop him against his shoulder. "From what I hear from mum, you don't object to a good meal and long nap in the hay. So let's get you both of those and a bath, shall we?"
Zuko relented as he was dragged along towards a smattering of familiar buildings in the distance. somehwere along the way his mind managed to connect a few of the dots Sensu had shared with him.
"Sensu?" He asked the man, who looked down at him questioningly. "Lee... Gantsu... Sela... "
Sensu laughed at Zuko, but not in a friendly way.
"That's right. They're all eager to feed you again. So let's not get them waiting, eh?" Sensu said.
"But... they hate me..." Zuko choked out as he was dragged along.
This time Sensu's laughter did sound mocking, as if what he had just said was the dumbest thing anybody had ever said. As Zuko would soon found out, it was certainly the most incorrect.
"Home..." Zuko managed to meek out with a smile as he realized his feet had carried him exactly to the place where he belonged.
Two Years Later:
Zuko drove the last nail of the day into the last shingle of the week and breathed a sigh of relief.
He leaned back and stretched his shoulders, rotating him in joy at the early end to his day. It was still a sweltering hot afternoon instead of the cool early evening he was used to finishing under. He much preferred ending early to enjoy a bit of relaxing sun bathing instead of suffering labor under that same sun.
"Oi! Prince" He heard the telltale voice of former Lieutenant Gao from the road nearby. "Don't you figure Mrs Elk has enough problems to deal with without you ruining her roof?"
Zuko looked over to the former bully, now standing in the road with a fresh shipment of cabbages in the card he dragged behind himself like a mule.
"I mean, if you really want to help her out maybe you could get your old gang back together?" Zuko yelled back to the duel-hammer wielding maniac. "You could shake her down for money and, if she refuses, wreck her house. Then I can charge her for repairs. What do ya say?"
Zuko had really overused that joke at Gao's expense in the past. In the early days it had led to outright fights in the tow square. Even before the first one Zuko had understood it was completely unfair, as the man had changed drastically since their sad duel over Lee. Hell, the entire village wouldn't have survived had he not wielded earth bending so masterfully as to provide shelter for everybody in the aftermath of Sozin's impact. And yet, Zuko still sued the insult at every opportunity. Not to hurt the man, but because he knew it would wash right over him during any of their smack-talking and he didn't want to experiment with new insults.
Was he just too lazy and uncreative to come up with new ones? Maybe. Sokka and Katara has always been skilled at hurting people with words. Zuko? He was pants at it. And didn't want to get good at it in the first place.
"Well, if those three ever find themselves back in town I'll make sure to let them know about your offer." Gao said as he continued carting off the wagonful of cabbage in his usual merry way.
A lot of villagers criticized both of them for working so hard with their bodies instead of just using their bending. They just didn't get it, and neither man had the patience or eloquence to explain it.
Every raise of the hammer Zuko performed. Every nail driven into wood. These are things he earned with his body. These were things everybody else could understand. But bending? that was not something he earned. That was a gift, a blessing, that most people don't have. They couldn't understand how much work went into being able to use it to even a basic degree. Even with the hard work it required, that hard work never undid the constant feeling of undeserved benefit. it was a well known psychological effect, the double edged pride of bending. Even if a bender put all of the work in necessary to become a great bender, as much work as was required to become a master swordsman are tradesman, the genuine pride in oneself never materialized. It was liked to being an able-bodied man in a world of amputees, and the shame in one's abilities that would result.
There was also a lot of psychoanalysis on the need of some benders to handicap themselves by restricting their bending so that they might fit into larger society, but that was a discussion for another day.
"Mrs Elk!" Zuko yelled down to the small home beneath his feet, knocking on the last installed shingle.
"Yes, prince?" The ancient lady called back up, coming out through the back door.
"I'm all finished for today, so I'm going to head on home. Need anything else before I go?" Zuko offered.
"No dearie, I'm just preparing dinner for my husband. Everything else here is perfect. Head on back to get dinner of your own." Mrs Elk told him.
He climbed down, threw all of his tools unceremoniously into his bag and began his march back to the Lee farm.
The village had grown rapidly in the last two years and was now on the cusp of being a full-blown city. From what he heard, this happened to a lot of the smaller towns and villages throughout the earth kingdom as they swelled with refugees who had survived Sozin's impact in the tunnels beneath Ba Sing Se. Only to then nearly drown when the waters came in to fill the crater left behind.
Teh swell of people in new homes mere weeks after Zuko's arrival had flung him head first into the trades. He'd done it all. Digging foundations, splitting and placing rock for foundation, scaffolding, drywalling and roofing. The only things he never got into were those that required a delicate touch, like tiling or wallpapering. He just did not have the patience to get all of the air bubbles out, and people demanded perfection in those sorts of things.
These days most of the people who ever planned to move to the burgeoning city already had, so the need to build new homes was gone, but the need for repairs never went away. Being the man who build many of these homes, he had no shortage of customers who knew him by name and who would call on him first for any job in need of doing.
When he set out to help rebuild the world in the aftermath of the phoenix war and comet impact, he hadn't expected to wind up doing it so literally, but every time he walked through the town square he took pride and joy in his accomplishments.
"Oi, prince!" Old man Baahu called over to him from his little tea stall. "I finally tracked down some of that white dragon bush you keep badgermoling me about. Should be here in a week!"
Zuko waved over to him with a mischievous grin.
"Make certain you watch the seller try some himself so you know he isn't trying to pawn off some white jade bush leaves." Zuko told him.
"What kind of idiot do you think I am that I can't tell the difference?" Baahu asked, askance.
"A tea obsessed one. And tea obsessed idiots will put the dumbest things into their drinks." Zuko countered. "But if it's the real deal have my usual ginseng prepared along with it and I'll buy the whole stock!"
The town had grown so much since he first arrived that it had long since become impossible to remember everybody's name and face, but Zuko still tried his best. He was at a natural disadvantage with his name and face being so recognizable that people he had never met knew him. he tried not to let his celebrity status go to his head.
People greeted him on the street, all happy to see him. It was the kind of community that made him feel at home in a way he never could have understood just a few short years ago.
"Oh hey Zuko. You're early." Pe Pun, Sensu's fiancé, greeted him at the door of his restaurant. "I'm sure we can find a table for you though. Come in."
Zuko accepted the invitation, ducking under the front flaps to Sensu Beans, the best chili in town. Nothing quite restored a man's stamina nor improved recovery time from a long day of work quite like Sensu Beans. And Zuko didn't just say that because it was his brother who owned the shop.
The circus was in town.
This fact had somehow completely skipped Zuko's notice until after he had exited the chili shop to find night fast approaching and an unusual number of flashing lights in the distance. He had all of two seconds to wonder what it was before a gaggle of children in silly masks stomped by him with shouts of what circus game they were going to dominate in.
With his belly full, his work done for the week and no social responsibilities he could think of he followed the pack of hyperactive preteens down the road until a large, three-story tent filled the horizon. Hundreds of smaller tents with filled with games involving small rings, balls and darts littered the countryside around it with an equal number of food stalls with delicacies the world over.
The path leading up to the front flap of the giant tent was kept clear of such clutter and served as a kind of main road lined with nothing but food stalls. Deciding the best snacks must be along said main road, and further deciding that he wanted a sweet desert and cold drink to wash down the delicious dinner he'd just had, Zuko meandered along the main road in question. He had just purchased a small bowl of something called fennel cake an iced drink made from watermelon by a preteen water bender when he came across the strangest creature.
"What in the world is that thing?" Zuko gasped at the strange creature before him.
Some hairy animal was walking on a bouncy ball like a log-rolling champion. It was a species Zuko had never seen before, which he would have thought impossibly with an upbringing in the Royal palace of the fire nation. Strange and exotic animals were regularly paraded before the royal family, and promptly eaten. Yet here, dancing before him, was an animal he had yet to eat.
"That, dear Zuko, is a bear." Toph told him flippantly as she walked up to stand beside him.
"You mean, like, a platypus bear?" Zuko asked.
"Nope. Plain old bear." Toph said.
"So... like, an armadillo bear?" Zuko offered.
"Nope. Just... bear." Toph countered with a shrug.
"That's so weird." Zuko complained.
"Super weird." Toph agreed.
They stood there in silence watching the creature walk on its hands like an acrobat. It was a strangely comfortable silence for Zuko, considering the closeness of the stranger. It wasn't until his mind once again caught up to his situation that he reacted appropriately.
"Toph?!" Zuko yelled in genuine surprise.
"Zuko!" Toph replied in mock surprise.
Zuko's hands went right to her waist to pickup the tiny woman and swing her around like the long-lost friend she was. The loss of his desert and drink on the ground could be made up for later. She squealed in surprise at the sudden loss of contact with the ground, and probably from the unexpected affection from the usually dour prince. When he put her back down, he twisted his torso to present his shoulder to her for some reciprocal affection.
"Ow. Ow! Why did I get two?" Zuko asked as he rubbed his shoulder from the two punches.
"One for each year I've missed you." Toph said cheekily.
And suddenly the boyish girl he remembered vanished, and a bashful young lady stood in her place. With both hands clasped behind her back and one knee bent to paw at the ground shyly her posture suddenly screamed "Look at me!". And boy, did Zuko look at her.
She was still miniscule, though now thinner than she was short. The most shocking change in her appearance wasn't the in puberty, but her choice in clothes. She now dressed entirely in jade and gold, in clothes exactly like those of his sister's old chi blocking friend. What had her name been?
"Hey Toph! We start in five! Get your butt into gear!" He heard Ty Lee's voice call from behind him.
Sure enough, he turned around and there she was in her usual garish pink. She had already turned around and begun her sprint into the tent for the oncoming acrobats show. Toph came up from behind him and slipped piece of paper into his hand before pecking him on the cheek.
"Come watch me, okay?" She pleaded.
He blinked at the strange eye contact they shared, and, for at least a moment, he forgot that the girl was blind. He recalled people tended to forget that unusually often.
He nodded and she smiled at the promise, before walking away.
Zuko watched her walk away. He wasn't watching any particular part of her of course, that would be rude, but he did watch her. When she disappeared into the castle-sized tent he looked down into his hand to find a single ticket with the number thirteen on it. Deciding thirteen was now his lucky number, he marched in after her.
He was grinning for some reason. It was a stupid grin, but it felt right.
I rewatched "Zuko Alone" for this chapter and when I found out Lee's brother was named Sensu I HAD to make a Senzu bean joke somewhere. I hope you appreciate this chapter and look forward to the next one, where we get reunited with a lot of our favorite side characters.
Want your Story Written?
I take commissions now! You can pay me to write your fanfiction or original works. My prices are as follows.
$25 per 1000 words of fanfiction, with some wiggle room. I don't pad my work. You also get to video chat with me as I type the first chapter.
$25 per 500 words for original works, so anything that is not fanfiction. I also charge $25 per 500 words for smut or fetish materials.
Prices subject to change in the future. Check with me.
Become a Patron:
NonsensicalRants
You can also still become a patron for ONE DOLLAR to get access to future chapters 2 weeks early and vote on which stories I update next.