Fic: Airbender's Child: Water 6/12

[scwlc_fic]

Disclaimer: I don't own anything in this story, in fact a lot of the dialogue will probably be cadged straight from the show itself, which means I own even less.

Author's Notes: Okay, I got lazy and created a flimsy excuse to effectively leave Zuko out of the episode, mea culpa. I really wouldn't have included Jet, but I don't know exactly how I'm doing what and where and when. So I didn't want to back myself into any corners come the second season and working Jet into the Ba Sing Se plotlines. I mean, how different would the show have been if they'd never met Jet back in his forest? Also, another drumroll please . . . sort of a moment you've all been waiting for.



Somehow, despite the sudden surge of urgency generated by the knowledge that Sozin's Comet was coming and the Fire Lord would take over the world if Aang didn't learn how to bend all four elements by then, no one seemed all that panicked. There had been a brief burst of activity, during which Katara had offered to teach Aang what she knew of waterbending, which was followed by shenanigans when she got jealous, stole a scroll from some pirates and nearly got them all killed.

Zuko found her, much later that night, standing by the water, trying and trying and trying again to get at least one move right from the scroll. "Stupid water! Work with me . . . Aarrgh!"

"Katara?" She whipped around, exclaimed in surprise, and sent the water falling everywhere. Zuko winced. "Sorry."

"What do you want, Lee?" she snapped. Then suddenly seemed to realise how irrational she was sounding. "I'm sorry. What's up?"

He took a few cautious steps closer. "I was a little worried. After you blew up at Aang before - not to mention stealing from those pirates - I just wanted to be sure you weren't . . ." he trailed off, not quite sure what word he wanted.

"I'm fine," she sighed. Then abruptly plonked herself down on the riverbank. "It's just . . . I showed Aang what I can do, and he's already better than me," Katara groused. "It's not fair. I worked for months to get that right, and he just . . ." she waved her hands, not even noticing when the water behind her followed her movements.

"Well, he does have a teacher-"

She cut him off. "Don't tell me I'm a great teacher, Lee," she said. "Aang already told me that, and it doesn't help."

"It's not just that," Zuko said. "I mean, yes, you're showing him how to do things, and you didn't have that, but it's more than that."

Katara frowned. "What do you mean?"

Zuko started ticking points off on his fingers. "First, I'm pretty sure he's a prodigy. I mean, he's an air master, and he's twelve. He just naturally learns faster and better than other people."

"I hadn't thought of that . . ." Katara mused.

"Second, since he's already learned one kind of bending, I bet it's easier for him to learn another kind, because he's picked up things about bending, generally, from learning air," Zuko said. "It's like fighting with one kind of sword, then learning another. Not everything applies, but some things do." Katara was looking attentively at him now, clearly thinking about what he was saying. "Last, I don't know for sure, because I don't really know anything about the Avatar, but I'd bet that some part of him remembers his previous lives, when he had learned all this stuff already. So it's a little more like relearning something, than learning for the first time."

She pursed her lips briefly, in thought, then spoke. "I guess you're right. It's just . . . I worked so hard to teach myself all those things, and he just . . ." she waved her hands around again.

"Did them?" Zuko offered.

"What do you know about it?" Katara snapped.

He glared right back at her. "Excuse me, miss, 'I'm so strong in my element it follows me around when I'm not looking'," he snapped back, pointing to the whirlpools Katara had created just by absently moving her hands in her agitation. "What do I know about staring at a bunch of kids half my age who can do all the bending I can and then some because I'm just so weak in my element I can't even do elementary things with it?" He glared at her. "At least you don't have your parents standing over you half the time telling you you're a disappointment just because you either are weaker than normal or can't bend at all."

That took the wind out of her sails. "What do you mean?" she asked with a confused frown, and moved closer.

"I mean, I couldn't tell my father I . . ." Zuko stopped before he accidentally said the wrong thing, then settled on the right lie. "I couldn't tell him I was an airbender, could I?" He looked away. "My younger sister's a firebending prodigy, and all I could do was fight with swords. As far as my father was concerned, I was failure twice over, because I couldn't firebend, and because I couldn't firebend as well as my prodigy sister."

Impulsively, Katara laid a hand over Zuko's and he stared at the gesture of comfort as though it were something alien. It actually was, but he kind of liked the way it felt. "Your mother-" Katara started.

"My mother was disappointed I wasn't a good enough bender, period," Zuko told her. "She thought it proved I have too much of my father in me." He looked out over the river. "She's probably right. People say I look like him."

"Is that a bad thing?" Katara asked.

"How . . ." He was going to ask her how she could say that, when he realised she didn't know anything about his father aside from the man being a firebender. Katara was still a decent enough person not to assume the worst of a person just because of that. So Zuko told her the one thing he knew would make sure she understood just what his father was, and just how badly he could turn out. "He gave me this," Zuko said, pointing to the scar on his face. "I spoke out against letting our . . . Letting Fire Nation troops get massacred, I was banished, and my father told me that pain and suffering would be my teacher. And then he just . . ." Zuko let the silence speak for itself.

Katara's eyes were filled with tears, and she reached out to him. "Lee."

"Don't," he said sharply. "I don't want pity. I just want you to understand that the Fire Nation is full of people like that." He stood, and then added. "That my family is like that. That I might . . . that I might turn out like that."

"You can't-" Zuko didn't stick around to find out what he couldn't do or be. He'd said too much, and he didn't want her pity. He almost ran back to his sleeping roll, and curled up in it, faking sleep. When Katara came back, he ignored her whispered query of whether he was awake. She crawled into her own roll and settled when it became clear he wasn't responding. Eventually, Zuko fell asleep.

The next morning, the four travellers were woken by the sound of startled screams and two bisons roaring. Zuko snapped awake and saw a company of Fire Nation soldiers scattered all over the clearing. Some had clearly been blasted aside with the powerful airbending of Appa and Shuga's tails, but others were rapidly approaching. Zuko cursed, fluidly rolled to his feet and sliced through a burst of fire with his swords, which he never slept without any more.

Katara had scrambled up and somehow the intensity of the moment gave her the impetus to perfect her water whip just when she needed it. Sokka had already engaged a soldier and Aang was zipping about the clearing, aiming air slices and tightly controlled whirlwinds at the attackers.

"Get the Avatar!" shouted one. "He's the airbender!"

Zuko immediately switched tactics. Even Aang couldn't take on a whole company by himself. "Hey!" he yelled. Switching his concentration, he threw out an open palm, pushing the heated air away from himself and into the shouting man. "How do you know it's not me?" A few judiciously placed kicks and air slices, and the soldiers were confused, dividing their time between the two of them.

Unfortunately, Zuko's concentration on both his bending and keeping some of the men distracted narrowed his focus, and he didn't see his attacker until too late. The ball of fire caught him in the back and sent him flying between the trees and out of sight of the rest of the melee. Dimly he heard Aang shouting at the soldiers that he was the Avatar, but he had no chance to return to the fight.

"Prince Zuko."

"Commander Zhao," Zuko replied.

That was the end of the formalities. No longer in a melee, having lost his blades, Zuko defended himself. Zhao had a solid stance, each of the flame fists he sent toward Zuko were solid and drove the teenager back a step. The man didn't let up, never giving the prince a chance to recover or counterattack.

That was until something he'd heard again and again from the airbenders he'd learnt from in the past came to mind. "A blow can't land if you are not there to receive it."

Zuko pushed aside his uncle's lessons on stance, on maintaining the root and on stability. This wasn't an Agni Kai. Zhao slammed a leg out, the kick flame strike flying through the air toward him, but Zuko didn't even try to block. He spun out of the way, leaping into the air, diving and rolling around. While Zhao spun around and around, trying to get a grip on the teenager, Zuko slipped around him easily, staying out of range by staying behind the commander.

It was enough to afford him the recovery time and to launch a counter-attack. Zuko whirled, dropping to the ground, fire lashing out from his extended right foot, knocking the man off-balance and sending him to the ground virtually on top of the prince. Zuko kept moving, rolling out of the way, using the momentum to turn his leap back to his feet into another strike with his trailing left hand. Zhao was flung back into the water, and Zuko levelled one final simple palm strike at him. The ball of flame caught the other man in the chest, and sent him flying across the water.

He didn't wait to see what had happened to Zhao. Zuko just ran back toward the others, fearing the worst, but instead saw them cleaning up the last of the soldiers. Zuko scooped up his swords from the ground, and with a wordless accord, the kids tossed everything onto the bison saddles and just flew.

Two days later, they were packing up camp again, when a couple trapped hog monkeys left them with the information that there were Fire Nation troops nearby. Katara and Aang had started to get into Appa's saddle, when Sokka stopped them. "Ah! No flying this time," he told the other two.

"What?" Katara asked.

"Why wouldn't we fly?" Aang added.

"Think about it," Sokka said. "How do you think Zhao knew where to find us? All he had to do was look for Appa and Shuga. They're just too noticeable."

Before Aang or Katara could protest, Zuko said regretfully. "Sokka's right. We should keep to the ground for a few days. Just long enough that Zhao, and any other Fire Nation soldiers he runs into, think that we've gotten away." At their confused looks, he explained, "Hopefully, Zhao will think we managed to sneak around him, and that we're several days flight away. Then we can start flying, and we'll have an extra head start because he'll be even further behind us than if we were just flying."

"Oh," Katara looked disappointed, as did Aang. They gathered their things, tossing them onto the bisons to carry, and set off walking. While Zuko walked, keeping Shuga company, and Aang was bounding around from tree to tree like his lemur, Sokka and Katara were arguing.

"Anyhow," Sokka was saying pompously, "My instincts are telling me we should play it safe and walk."

"Your instincts?" Katara said derisively.

Her brother shot her an annoyed look. "Yes," he told her snappishly. "Anyhow, you should listen because I'm the leader."

Zuko and Aang exchanged looks and promptly tuned into the argument. This was going to be either very stupid or very dramatic or both. No matter how you air sliced it, though, it was going to be entertaining. "You're the leader? But your voice still cracks!"

"I'm the oldest, and I'm a warrior," Sokka declared. Then he tried to deepen his voice. "So, I'm the leader!"

"First, Lee's probably older than you, and he's a warrior too. Second, if anyone's the leader, it's Aang. I mean, he is the Avatar," Katara reasoned.

Sokka stared at her, incredulous. "Are you kidding? He's just a goofy kid." The guy had a point, Zuko thought. Aang was hanging upside-down off of Appa's horns, having given up on his bouncing around.

"He's right," Zuko found himself saying along with Aang. Katara snorted and sent a glare their way that should have scorched the flesh from his bones. Zuko silently counted them all lucky Katara wasn't a firebender.

"Why do boys always think someone has to be the leader?" Katara demanded of the world at large. "I bet you wouldn't be so bossy if you kissed a girl," she added in a complete non sequitur. Zuko reaffirmed to himself that he wasn't going to get in the middle of this conversation. It was just too weird.

Sokka was sputtering like a broken ship engine. "I've kissed a girl," he said indignantly. "You just haven't met her."

"Who? Gran-gran? I've met Gran-gran," Katara teased her brother.

"No, besides Gran-gran," groused Sokka. "Now you've been outvoted anyhow," he said irritably, "So either way why don't you just stop bugging me and walk."

"Who knows?" Aang piped up, "Walking might be fun."

"No, it won't," Zuko said with a sigh. "Sokka's right, but it won't be fun."

Sure enough, an hour later, Katara and Aang were whining and it was all Zuko could do to keep them from getting nasty with Sokka just because the younger two had sore feet. It did poor Sokka's credibility no good that they had managed to approach a Fire Nation camp from the direction the soldiers hadn't come from, and before any sentinels had been set out for the evening.

"The Avatar!" one shouted, and a nasty-looking man sent a fistful of flame at them. He mostly missed, but he managed to set the woods behind them alight.

"Sloppy," muttered Zuko to himself.

Luckily no one heard him to wonder at the statement, because Sokka was trying to bluff their way out. It didn't so much work. Before anyone could make a move, however, there was an odd zipping sound and the firebender dropped like a stone.

"Nice work, Sokka, how'd you do that?" Aang asked.

Sokka looked as baffled as Zuko felt. "Uh . . . instinct?" he offered, clearly unwilling to give up his bluff.

"Look!" Katara shouted, pointing into the trees. A teenager, probably the same age as Zuko, leaped down, taking two soldiers down as he landed, then used some odd swords with hooks on the ends to send another two flying.

"Down you go!" he said with a smirk.

It seemed a signal for an attack to commence, and Zuko threw himself into the fray with a will. He wound up fighting back to back with their newest acquaintance for a moment. "Nice moves," said the other with an appreciative cocked eye as Zuko easily slipped through the forest of guan dao spears that had appeared, his two blades allowing him to easily slide past the defences of the polearms and take out the soldiers behind them.

Jet whipped his unusual swords about, catching the soldiers' weapons in the hooks, and disarming them with easy flicks of his wrists, even as he was able to cut and slash in between. "Nice move," Zuko shot back. There were no other benders besides the one man they had disarmed, so he didn't bother bending. He was armed, and there was something fundamentally unfair about fighting a non-bender with both weapons and bending.

It was kind of nice to be in a fight like this one, where he wasn't bending and there was no chance he'd be caught or killed or anything else. It wound down quickly, and soon enough, everyone was being introduced around, and Katara was staring at Jet with a sort of glazed and happy look in her eyes. Zuko rolled his eyes internally. He knew that look. He'd seen it directed at himself three years before.

It was before everything in his life had gone completely to pieces and he was still the Crown Prince of the Fire Nation. Azula's strange friend Mai had had that look. Zuko had mostly tried to avoid her, because being around her meant that he was around his sister. As much as he might have liked the adulation by someone in his life, Azula's presence and all the teasing, harassment and mockery that went with it (not to mention all the 'accidents' she made sure he had while training) were just not worth it.

Their new friend Jet seemed to have no such trouble. Zuko had to admit, Katara had acquitted herself fairly well in the melee, and she was fairly pretty. Actually, very pretty, he admitted in the back of his mind. So the flirtatious smiles Jet was sending Katara's way were entirely explicable. Sokka was unhappy about it, but anyone who knew Sokka knew that the boy thought Katara should be living in a nunnery, with her only male company being Sokka and whatever item of clothing he needed mended that day.

Suddenly, the youngest of the so-called Freedom Fighters, the Duke, said, "Hey, Jet! These barrels are full of blasting jelly."

"That's a great score," Jet told him with a smile.

The large one, Pipsqueak, his age entirely undiscernable from the combination of size and apparent stupidity, held up a crate and said, "And these are full of jelly candy!"

Jet's face never wavered as he said easily, "Also good. Let's not get those mixed up." He reminded Zuko a little of his Uncle Iroh when the man had to deal with some of his dimmer subordinates. Jet's band started loading up a cart and with enthusiastic endorsement from Katara, they were soon all heading for the Fighters' hideout.

Zuko had to admit, it was an impressive treehouse. It was nothing on the complex system of tunnels and openings of the volcanic islands the airbenders in the Fire Nation had called home, with the doors and camouflage controlled by airbending. But, this was built by a bunch of kids, not over a century by hundreds of airbenders.

Down on the ground, Shuga was making some noises that Zuko thought were kind of suspicious. He hurried down and saw exactly what he'd been worried about. "No! Absolutely not! I am not going to deal with bison calves while I'm helping the Avatar save the world. Do you understand me?" Appa, who had been nuzzling at Shuga in a distinctly amorous fashion, gave him a disgruntled look.

"Lee?" Aang's voice drifted down from the canopy. "What's going on?"

"Appa's trying to get Shuga in calf, that's what," Zuko said irritably. "Maybe one of them will listen to you." He turned to Shuga and said sternly, "I know you like Appa. He's a good bison. I just don't want to lose you while I'm still travelling with Aang."

Aang dropped out of the trees. Somehow, he knew what Zuko was actually saying. "Even if something happens and Shuga has to stay somewhere to be safe, we're your friends, Lee. Me and Sokka and Katara. We won't leave you behind."

Zuko turned and let his pride take the hit as he didn't bluster, trying to say that he wasn't afraid of being alone. "Thanks Aang."

"So . . . I offered you some lessons in airbending. Would you like one now?" Aang asked.

He smiled. "I'd really like that."

"Great!" Aang said. "So . . . um . . . all airbending derives ultimately from the motions of the air currents around us. So what you have to do is start by getting a good feel for the way that air curls and moves around things. When I move my hand through the air, it displaces the air, and it forms eddies around my hand."

Thinking for a moment, Zuko said, "Like when you move your hand through still water?"

Aang nodded. "Whatever helps you feel it." He thought for a moment, and said, "So when you breathe, you can feel the movement of the air in and out of you. That's really important. It's the easiest way to feel the air, is by feeling it as it enters your nose or mouth, travels down your throat and into your lungs."

Zuko frowned, and decided to see what he could feel of air. Hae had said some thing about how the elements connected, and maybe, Zuko would be able to sense the other elements through the presence of his own in them. For a moment it didn't seem to work, and then suddenly, the air he'd inhaled was . . . infused with the heat of his inner flame. Concentrating, Zuko could feel the way the heat moved in the air, and when he exhaled, he was able to trace the swirling, curving, circular movements of the air until the heat dissipated. He smiled.

The rest of the lesson with Aang was hard work. It was obvious the younger boy had never taught anyone before, but he was very patient and willing to show something as many times as were needed, and was also willing to try explaining something differently until Zuko was able to understand.

By the end of the lesson, several of the moves that had left Zuko baffled before, tornadoes and some interesting blocks an airbender could use, were suddenly within his reach. A little more practice and he'd be able to do them. Aang smiled and told him he'd done well, and Zuko felt a heady rush. It was just nice to be given praise and to not hear somewhere behind those words of praise someone thinking about Azula or the other airbending children.

He had even found himself able, with Aang's coaching on how to feel air, to reduce the amount of heat in the air and still have the same impact, or to increase the heat in the air to give himself a greater impact.

They companionably headed off to dinner with Jet's band of kids. That was when things got a little strange. Aang was quickly pulled away from Zuko, and Zuko found himself isolated at the back of the room with no one talking to him. Katara was making big moony eyes at Jet, so Zuko knew he wouldn't get any help there. Sokka was also hanging around Jet, but he was constantly glaring at the other teen, and Zuko sighed, putting the display down to Sokka's overprotective tendencies.

Aang was soon busy with the Duke, eagerly talking about something or other. Most of the words Zuko caught were the names of big, exotic animals. He tuned out of that conversation because he knew Aang was just finding someone who was interested in the same things he was. The real problem was that none of Jet's bunch were willing to even talk with him. They seemed almost to only be tolerating him, which was odd, because they'd all been perfectly friendly with him before.

It was more of the same the next morning, and Zuko wasn't even able to ask anyone where his friends were, the forest-dwelling gang was so determined to shun him. So, he headed off to meditate, and then went to spend time with Shuga and Appa. When he got there, they were getting dangerously close again. Zuko, feeling like someone's five-year-old child who doesn't want a younger sibling (and not much liking the experience) decided he was going to have to watch them. And then he took a brief break, left for a quick bath in a nearby stream, and when he came back, Shuga was edgy and Appa was missing.

Zuko went looking for the others, and found Katara and Aang standing on a cliff, overlooking a dam. He heard Katara say, "Why would they need blasting jelly?"

"Because Jet's gonna blow up the dam," Aang replied, sounding like he'd just come to a realisation.

"What? No," Katara denied instantly. "Jet wouldn't do that." She didn't sound quite as certain as her words though, and Zuko winced. He started to leave the woods, when he saw Jet sneaking up on the pair.

Aang didn't try to argue with Katara. He just said, "I've got to stop him." He started heading for the cliff's edge, clearly planning to take the glider to the dam.

"Jet wouldn't do that," Katara said, now pleading.

Before Aang could take to the air, Jet had leapt out of the brush, and used his swords to catch Aang's glider and take it away from him. "Yes, I would," Jet said.

Zuko didn't know everything that was going on or why destroying the dam was such a problem, he wished he'd put more effort into talking with the others since they'd met Jet, but he knew Katara and Aang were concerned enough about it to want to stop it. "Shuga!" he shouted, calling his bison out to them.

"Lee!" Katara said, startled. Then she turned back to Jet, "Why would you destroy a whole village of people?"

Jet's looked at Katara earnestly, "Katara, you would too if you just stopped to think. Think about what the Fire Nation did to your mother - we can't let them do that to anyone else, ever again."

"So you're going to flood a whole village?" Zuko asked, incredulous. "There are children down there!"

Aang was concerned with more important things. "I need to get down there," he said, reaching for his glider. Jet lashed out with his swords and yanked the staff away from him again.

Shuga chose that moment to show up, and Zuko moved to block Jet, who lunged at the Avatar. "Take Shuga and deal with the dam!" he shouted at the other two. Then he was too consumed with ducking, weaving and generally trying not to allow Jet to gut him. He noted with relief that Katara and Aang had hopped onto his bison and were already heading for the dam, but Jet chose that moment to cleverly twist a hand, causing Zuko to lose his grip on the blade in his right hand.

"I should have known you'd convince them to save that Fire Nation scum down there," Jet snarled.

Zuko glared back at him, as they wove back and forth in the clifftop clearing. "What does that mean?" he shot back. He ducked under a swing of Jet's sword, made a feint to the right and dove for his other blade. He almost made it, too.

"It means Katara told me all about your sob story," Jet said. "Fire Nation nobility, and then you got yourself banished. So you're not only Fire Nation scum, you're faithless Fire Nation scum." He smirked, kicking Zuko's blade close to the cliff edge.

"It doesn't matter at all to you that there are people down there who've never done anything to hurt anyone?" Zuko demanded.

Jet glared back. "They're Fire Nation. They've done it just by existing. Like you."

"You told your friends to shun me, didn't you?" Zuko asked. Just to confirm a suspicion.

Face set, Jet told him, "Yes. I don't want them associating with Fire Nation scum. Not you, not those . . ." Jet was clearly searching for a word vile enough to describe the settlers in the valley.

"They're people, Jet. Mostly just innocent people who've been told this is open land for settlement and don't know any better." Zuko tried to get through to him. "Not many people in the Fire Nation know what's really going on out here. They don't know. They can't. No one tells them."

The so-called Freedom Fighter was having none of it. "They should know. How can they not know?" The question was rhetorical, because he renewed his attack, clearly not interested in the answer, and Zuko didn't have the breath to spare to explain about propaganda and the lies the Fire Lord told.

In the distance, there was an explosion, and they both paused in their fight, Jet's expression exultant, Zuko's horrified. But the dam didn't so much as twitch, and as they looked, smoke started to rise a small distance away from the structure. Zuko grinned, and he murmured, "They did it," with relief.

Jet's face went from delight, to shock to unadulterated fury in seconds. "No!" He turned to Zuko, clearly intent on taking out his fury over his balked plans out of the other's hide. They ranged back and forth, Zuko managing to get Jet to lose one of his hooked swords, so they were both working with half a set. Then Zuko stumbled on a stone, Jet got in a lucky strike that sent Zuko stumbling back, accidentally kicking his own fallen blade over the edge of the cliff.

If the swords hadn't been so important to him, if they'd been just another set of weapons, Zuko wouldn't have done it. If it hadn't been such a sore point with him all the things his own family had done to the world, he wouldn't have done it. If he hadn't spent the last day being shunned on Jet's orders he wouldn't have done it. It was one thing too many, though, and Zuko whipped around, the form of his roundhouse kick perfect, and sent an arc of fire into the other teen.

It slammed into his opponent with all the force of a runaway komodo rhino, sending Jet flying backwards into a tree trunk. He slumped to the ground, unconscious, and Zuko hurried to the cliff's edge, hoping he could at least see where the blade had fallen so he could retrieve it. He didn't have to.

"So, were you trying to kill me?" Sokka asked, good-humouredly, as he flew up from below on Appa. He handed Zuko the blade, pointing to the spot on the saddle where it had managed to land by sheer luck.

Zuko took back his sword, and with great relief, slotted the two back together and into place on his back again. "No. I was trying to keep Jet occupied so Katara and Aang could stop the dam from blowing up."

Sokka stopped, whipped around, and saw the apparently intact dam, and the smoke coming from a small distance away from it and he whooped in triumph. "Yes! I got the town evacuated, but I'd hoped we could still stop it."

"We almost didn't," Zuko said, wryly. "But Aang figured it out in time, and I sent them to stop it on Shuga." He went and collected Aang's staff, then started to climb onto Appa. "We should g-"

He was cut off as Jet, who had woken up, unnoticed, had crossed the clearing with amazing speed and had yanked Zuko back, sending him flying across the clearing himself. "You stinking, lying . . .!" Words seemed to have failed Jet in his fury over Zuko's duplicity. The Fire Nation native knew what had so angered Jet. As long as Zuko was just a nonbender, or an airbender who had lived in the Fire Nation, he was just bad. But a firebender was The Enemy and everything wrong with the world.

Jet, inspired by sheer fury was swinging at Zuko again and again, intent on killing him. Zuko wasn't even able to get at the swords on his back because he needed both his hands free to catch himself as he ducked, wove, flipped and rolled out of the other's way. They were interrupted by a completely unexpected source, as a sudden blast of water caught Jet completely by surprise, and sent him flying back into a tree.

Zuko stopped, and saw Katara, tears in her eyes as she manipulated the water to coat Jet, and then breathed out, an icy wind escaping her lips that made Zuko think of his Uncle's breath of fire trick, only reversed. He watched as ice appeared, and quickly grew to coat Jet until he was frozen to the trunk of the tree.

"Katara!" he shouted. "We could have freed this valley! And now you're defending that fire scum?" He glared at Zuko. "He's a-"

Jet never got to say anything else, because Katara slapped a gag made of ice over his mouth. "No Jet," she said. "You're the one who's been scum. Goodbye Jet." She turned her back on him, leading the way to the bisons. As they climbed on, she told them softly so Jet couldn't hear, "We're going to have to keep the villagers out of the village a while longer. We still need to repair the dam. We weren't quite in time, and we shouldn't take risks. Aang's managed to earthbend a little by accident, so he's holding the gap closed, but we should get going."

Since Katara and Shuga seemed to be having some sort of odd girl to girl bison bonding moment, Zuko climbed onto Appa with Sokka. "Thanks. I mean, you could have told Katara about me, but you didn't."

"Told her what?" Sokka asked.

"Thanks," Zuko said.

Sokka stared. "No, really, what? I have no idea what you're talking about. This isn't an I'm-saying-what-because-I'm-letting-you-know-I'll-pretend-I-didn't-see-anything-what. It's a 'What?' what."

"What do you mean, what-what?" Zuko snapped. "My firebending."

"What!" Sokka said, whipping around and staring at Zuko.

He couldn't believe he'd just done that. "I . . . thought . . . you'd seen me bend Jet into the tree," Zuko told him, slowly. "And then you were saying 'what' and I guess I thought you'd figured it out. Before, I mean. So that you didn't think it was a big deal or something." He backed away a little, then looked at Katara as she sat grimly on Shuga's head, saying something to the bison. "I'll . . ." He felt like crying, this was so awful.

"You'll what?" Sokka asked, his voice sounding odd. Zuko couldn't look up to see the expression on his former friend's face.

He took in a shaking breath. "I'll take Shuga and go as soon as we land. I . . . Well, that doesn't matter. You wouldn't believe me anyhow."

"Lee," Sokka said, "Just . . . why didn't you say anything? Why all the pretending?"

Zuko turned back, furious. "Why? My mother really is an airbender. I grew up having to pretend I was an airbender. I learned to fake it well enough that they just thought I was incompetent. I was 'Lee the crappy airbender' half the time." He glared at Sokka. "Would you have trusted a firebender? Would anyone? I don't even trust me."

"Was your bending the only lie?" Sokka asked. They were getting close to the dam.

Zuko sighed. "There's another one," he admitted. "But . . . I . . . that one changes everything. And I don't know if I'm ready to stop being Lee yet." He turned to Sokka. "But it doesn't really matter, because I'm-"

"It has to do with why Shyu knew you, and you knew Zhao, doesn't it?" Sokka asked shrewdly.

"Yes." It came out as almost a whisper.

Sokka looked at him as they landed, then grabbed Zuko's arm before he could get off the bison. "You're going to have to admit it to Aang and Katara eventually, you know," he said. "But I'll keep it quiet for now."

"What?" Zuko gasped. He'd been preparing to get on Shuga and get out of there before Katara or Aang crippled him for his lies.

"You're our friend," Sokka said. "You've never done anything to indicate that we shouldn't trust you, and so far, all I've seen are secrets you were keeping because you were scared how we'd react." Zuko could feel his mouth hanging so far open, he was sure he ought to be feeling the saddle under his chin. "Now come on," Sokka said. "Let's see what needs doing for the dam."

Zuko followed him, dazed but feeling something like joy bubbling in his chest. Sokka knew and he hadn't rejected him. He'd always thought friends like that were something that only happened in stories and to people like the Avatar. He pinched himself to be sure he wasn't dreaming. "Ow."

"Are you okay?" Katara asked him, concerned.

Zuko grinned at her happily. "I'm great. I was just pinching myself."

He heard her mutter to Shuga. "Boys are so weird." Life was good.

Prologue Part 1   Part 2   Part 3   Part 4   Part 5   Part 7 Part 8   Part 9   Part 10   Part 11   Part 12

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