After pitching the four tents we have stored on Appa's saddle, Zuko returns from gathering fire wood. The sun is starting to set, and we gather around the fire as dinner is cooked. It's a simple stew again, made from some local fungi that is safe to consume, along with vegetables that float to the surface. Somehow, bread made its way onto Appa's saddle of previsions, so we each get a small loaf to dip into the stew.
It's quite good. I'm sitting between Katara and Toph, with Zuko mostly across me with the fire between us. I don't want him to know that I've let go, that I've allowed him to be himself, that I know he will right his wrongs in some way. I try hard to avoid looking at him.
"Wow, camping," Aang says, laughing. "It really seems like old times again, doesn't it?"
"If you really want it to feel like old times, I could, uh . . ." Zuko says, a laugh underneath his breath, breaking his loaf of bread in half, "chase you around a while and try to capture you?" He smiles, and everyone laughs except for Katara and I.
Me because well, old times would be me stuck on a boat with nothing to do but drink tea and talk about nothing with Iroh. And old times for Katara would be well. Her sarcastic "Ha, ha" says it all. Plus, she's glaring into her bowl of soup so she's not finding anything humorous.
"To Zuko!" Sokka says, holding his cup up. "Who knew after all those times he tried to snuff us out, today he'd be our hero?"
Everyone lifts their cups and yells, "Hear! Hear!" but Katara and I keep our cups down. Sure, I don't hate Zuko anymore, but I'm not going to sing his praises just yet.
Aang nudges Zuko with his elbow, and Toph lightly punches Zuko's other arm. He looks happy. Happier than he ever was with Iroh and I. I look away, out into the darkness, at the ocean so close to us. Anywhere other than Zuko, finding his place in the world. Finally.
"I'm touched," Zuko says. "I don't deserve this." He looks sincere, and happy, and like the world isn't about to go up in flames because of his dad.
"Yeah, no kidding," Katara says, standing up and leaving her mostly untouched stew behind. She walks away.
"What's with her?" Sokka asks, not understanding everything that Zuko has done. That Katara has witnessed. Granted, Sokka wasn't there when Zuko sided with Azula. When Azula basically killed Aang.
"I wish I knew," Zuko says, standing up and following her.
"What's with him?" Sokka asks. This kid is clueless.
So, I tell him. "Well, Sokka. Zuko changed in Ba Sing Se. Or he had and then he changed back." All eyes turn to me, and my heart catches in my throat. They don't know. They don't know about what happened to Iroh and I after Aang and Katara left to find Sokka and the rest. They don't know. And I'm about to tell them over a hearty stew and a cool summer breeze off the ocean.
Some part of me far away considers that it isn't my place to share this. But it happened to me too. Zuko happened to me too.
"I think with Katara, at least to me, Zuko's betrayal was something deeper. I mean, he betrayed both of us, in a sort of way. In the catacombs underneath Ba Sing Se, Katara saw a part of Zuko that wasn't just hunting them and trying to regain his honor. She probably saw the Zuko that I had seen for months. The Zuko that cares, and believes in something other than honor, and is actually a good person.
"But then he helped Azula. And Azula shot Aang full of lightning in front of Katara and I. So, Katara probably connects Aang's death with Zuko's betrayal." A deep breath. "Katara is on edge because she doesn't trust that Zuko's change of heart is permanent. If he did it once in Ba Sing Se, if he was a good person when Iroh and I were with him and loved and cared for him, why did he change so suddenly? What was the thing that turned him toward goodness while he was back home? What does his father have planned that he disagreed with? Why did Zuko disagree with him?
"There's all these questions, and I think Katara doesn't know how to phrase them. Or how to just trust that Zuko's a good person. Despite everyone here agreeing that he is." I don't have anything else to say, because I just rambled and rambled about the thoughts that have been rattling around in my own brain since joining the group.
The silence fills the air, and it is thick. Tense. I said something I shouldn't have.
"Well, Zia does pose some good points," Sokka says.
"But when Zuko joined us, he wasn't lying. He was sincere when he came up to us at the Western Air Temple," Toph says.
"I didn't think he was lying to me when we were together, and I traveled with him for the majority of the year," I say. "Why do you think he wasn't lying?"
"I can tell when people are lying, and Zuko hasn't lied since he's joined up. He's sincere, and Katara is just letting her hurt feelings cloud how much Zuko has changed."
Oh, cool, never lie around Toph, good thing to know.
"I'm just telling you how I feel about the situation, about all the questions that are running through my head, because Katara and I's situation with Zuko is similar to one another. We trusted him, and then he betrayed us in a way that was hard to get over."
Aang says, "Do you trust him now?"
Spirits, I can't lie with Toph right there. "I don't completely trust him, no" - good, not a full lie - "but I can't easily forget what he did. I just know what Iroh would want, and I'm trying to put the two ideas together."
Aang smiles, because I think he wants me to be buddy-buddy with Zuko again. And to hold the Air Nomad teachings close. But Aang doesn't know the truth. The pieces of me that I've given up and left behind. I move my attention back out to the sea. The moon reflects nicely off the water, and it is beautiful.
Suki, Katara, and I are sharing a tent. Well, actually, I have a whole tent to myself. Suki sneaks out long after we enter the tent for bed. And Katara hasn't returned from storming off in anger at Zuko.
The tent we've pitched is blue, and I think it came from Katara and Sokka's home in the South Pole, only because Sokka's tent is the same color. Zuko has his own tent, the red of the Fire Nation, and Toph creates her own tent out of the earth, also making buffers against everyone's tent to keep the ocean wind from seeping through the cloth.
I settle down, getting all snug underneath the blanket that's been offered to me. However, it feels weird sleeping alone, with everyone else so close but so far away. I lay there, against the far wall of the tent, for a while, just barely touching my bo. That is, until Katara finally comes into the tent.
She looks angry. I sit up. "You didn't look like you ate a lot at dinner," I say. "So I saved some bread for you. Sokka also gave you some jerky."
"Thanks," Katara says, sitting down heavily on her own sleeping blanket.
"I understand why you're angry at Zuko," I start.
"Well, you're the only other person that experienced something similar."
"I know. But, I think you're projecting your feelings about what happened with your mother, what the Fire Nation did on a whole, onto Zuko." Katara looks up at me sharply, and there is fire behind her eyes. I put a hand out, saying, "I'm not saying that what Zuko did didn't hurt you, that what he did wasn't wrong. Because he hurt you. He hurt both of us. What I'm saying is that, is it Zuko that you're mad at, or the entire Fire Nation?"
She glares at me, but there isn't venom in there for me, or for speaking out of turn. I don't know what the Fire Nation did to her mother, but I know it wasn't Zuko.
"You said that you thought Zuko was just a creature spawned by the Fire Lord to do more evil," I say, speaking more to fill the silence and the churning of my own brain. "If that were true, Toph would know he was lying to you. He would have let you get crushed by rocks this morning. He would have killed us in our sleep. He would have" - abandoned me at the Boiling Rock or Sokka or - "he wouldn't be here."
After a while, in which she stares at the bread in her hand, she says, "I know."
I wake up fairly early, earlier than Katara. Suki never came back to our tent last night, so I imagine she spent the night with Sokka. Quietly, hunched over, I step out of the tent, bo in hand.
And Zuko is sitting there, on the rock right outside our tent. My grip tightens on my bo, but I don't say anything. When he looks up at me, he looks exhausted.
"You've been out here all night?" I ask.
He nods. "Yeah. I'm waiting for Katara to get up."
I stand there, looking at Zuko and the sun rising and the ocean so close. I spent the majority of the night tossing and turning, facing down the questions I asked about Zuko's change. I couldn't figure out the answers myself, so I sit down next to him on the rock. He looks shocked by the motion, but I just say, "What changed?"
"I want to bring peace to the world. To restore honor back to the Fire Nation."
"No, I know why you're doing this. But what was the event that triggered this? Why leave the Fire Nation? What changed there that wasn't already changed?"
Zuko sits for a long time, and I place my eyes at the horizon, watching it change colors as the sun continues to rise. "I had everything I ever wanted, I was the prince, but I wasn't happy. The perfect prince, but it wasn't me. Then I found out my mother's grandfather was Avatar Roku, and Uncle Iroh told me that there has always been this war inside me between Sozin and Roku, and I had the ability to destroy the world or bring peace to it.
"I've seen the way the world is now, all the pain and misery and suffering the Fire Nation has caused. I want that to end."
I stand, stretching. "Well, I understand where you're coming from. It just took you imprisoning Iroh and I to see that." I place my hand on his shoulder, and Zuko looks up sharply at me. "I just hope this one sticks." I smile, but there's no happiness behind it.
"I think it will." I nod, and maybe want to believe in him. A part of me isn't ready yet.