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The six of them trudge home after watching “The Boy in the Iceberg”, trading digs about each others’ characters as they gather around the campfire on the beach in front of the vacation house. The play had been awful, making each of them (besides Toph, who was thrilled with her representation) angry and uncomfortable around each other. Zuko especially can’t stop remembering exactly how his character had been engulfed by flames at the end, and his father, rising victorious. He shivers slightly.
They slump onto the logs around the campfire, Aang lighting it with a quick burst of flame from his fist. Zuko takes a moment to be proud of the way he’s become more comfortable with his firebending.
“Zuko?” Suki asks.
“Yeah?”
“There’s something I don’t understand from that play. If you’re the Crown Prince, why would they make fun of you the way they did the rest of us?”
“Yeah, wouldn’t that be like, treason or something?” Sokka dumps the last of his fire flakes into his mouth as he speaks, almost immediately choking on them. Suki pounds his back as he coughs and hands over her water skin.
“Well, for one thing, I’ve definitely committed treason by joining you.”
“But, sure, maybe those playwrights know that, but what about the crowd? How would they know about that?” Katara says, and the rest nod in agreement.
“And they were all laughing and cheering when your character died.” Sokka interjects. “Isn’t that bad, for them to like that you died, Mr. Crown Prince?”
Zuko sighs and rubs the heels of his hands into his eyes. He thought the whole world knew about this by now. He knew the Fire Nation did, and he just figured the rumors had spread.
“Do you guys know why I was in the South Pole when Aang first appeared?”
They frown and look around at each other.
“Now that you mention it,” Katara says, “No, we don’t. We figured you were on a mission for the Fire Lord.”
“I suppose you could say that. I convinced myself I was. But in reality, I was banished.”
“Banished?” several voices say at once.
“Yes. That’s why I was there. I was banished three years ago, when I was thirteen. The same time this happened.” He brushes the edge of his scar with his fingertips.
“What happened?” Aang whispers. “How could your… how could the Fire Lord banish you? How did you get hurt?”
He can feel all their eyes on him. Internally, he’s screaming at himself to shut up. Why should he relive his worst memory, lay himself bare in front of them? But the part of him that speaks in his uncle’s calm, measured voice tells him, they will understand. They care about you, now.
“Firebenders don’t burn easily,” Zuko says softly. He’s gazing into the fire, watching as it rises and falls ever so slightly with his breaths. He doubts his friends, whose faces he is resolutely not looking at, can tell it’s even happening, but he can. He can feel the fire, a distant and close thing all at once.
“What do you mean?” Aang says, quiet, his staff held across his lap, comforting.
“I mean-“ Zuko breaks off, lighting a small flame in his palm. “It takes a lot, for our skin to burn. Otherwise, we’d all be burnt to a crisp before we even really learned to bend. It takes intent.” He hovers his hand over his outstretched arm for a moment, watching his companions reach instinctively out to stop him. He only hovers for a second, maybe two, before he drops his hand again, showing them his unblemished skin.
“If I did that to any of you, you would have a burn. Small, probably first degree, but it would hurt you.”
“So… so then…” Katara’s voice is soft, and he can hear the flicker of horror there, can see it as he glances up to Sokka’s face, to Aang’s and Suki’s. Even Toph, beside him, looks sober, small.
“So this,” Zuko says, gesturing to his own face, mouth twisting in a mockery of a smile, “Was no accident.”
It’s as if he’s sucked the oxygen out of the air around him. He can feel them staring again, but this time he’s closed his eyes. He can’t look at the flames of the campfire, all of a sudden.
“It was my fault.” He starts. “Or at least… at least, that’s what I thought. Uncle says it wasn’t, but-“ he chuckles without any humor, “But I don’t know. Anyway. I was invited to Father’s war room, to sit in with the generals. It was an honor. But I-“ He breaks off and draws a deep breath.
“General Bufei was going to sacrifice a whole phalanx of soldiers, new recruits. He was going to let them die as a distraction. I spoke up. I confronted him. And in doing so, I dishonored Fa- I dishonored the Fire Lord.”
“But-“ Aang’s voice is confused, almost heartbroken. “But you were right. Those soldiers didn’t deserve to be used that way.”
Zuko opens his eyes again to look into Aang’s face. Sometimes, he forgets how young the Avatar is. Just a year younger than he had been.
“I know. They didn’t. But Fire Lord Ozai is not known for his compassion.”
“So what happened?” Toph asks from beside him. She hadn’t even known he had a scar until earlier tonight, when the kid at the playhouse had commented on it. He’d let her run her hand, so much smaller than Ozai’s, over it, feeling the rough, damaged skin and his malformed ear. She had been uncharacteristically quiet since then, only speaking to continue commenting on the terrible play.
“So, the Fire Lord said, to atone for my disrespect to the general, I had to fight an Agni Kai. It’s a traditional duel between firebenders, to reclaim honor once it has been lost. Usually it’s between masters, between those sixteen and older. But,” he shrugs, “the Fire Lord has never been one to care for things like laws, at least not where he’s concerned.”
“So the general did that to you?” Suki says, hushed anger in her voice.
“No. My father did.”
Their reactions are- are confusing, at first. They are all a variation of anger, not at him, but at the thought- memory? - of Ozai. But they startle him with their vehemence, the hissed curses from Katara and loud shout of “WHAT?” from Sokka.
Zuko can see, overlaid over each of their faces like a haunting specter, the memory of his father, the way he’d smiled as Zuko had stared up - up, and up, his father had been so much taller than him - into his face. His breath stutters, and the fire sends up a shower of sparks.
“I spoke up against the general, yes, but it was in my father’s war room. It was a slight against him as the Fire Lord. So, when it came time for the Agni Kai, it was the Fire Lord who I had to duel.” He swallows, staring into the fire again, remembering- remembering that hand, coming up to hold his face, remembers thinking for one agonizing moment that he would be forgiven, that it was a caress, not a strike. “It wasn’t a duel at all. I- I begged him.” He can hear the disgust in his own voice, knows the others can too. He wonders if they realize who the disgust is for. “I asked him to forgive me. Told him I was loyal. And instead, he- he reached out his hand. And.”
He lifts his right hand to cover his face, palm overlapping his left eye, fingers following the path of the burn. He breathes, lets his hand, and his head, drop. He doesn’t want to see the looks on their faces.
“Tui and La,” Sokka breathes.
“I woke up on the ship, a week later. He banished me the second the duel was over. Uncle says I hadn’t even been taken to the healer yet.”
Toph silently reaches out and grasps his hand. He holds on, feeling like it’s a lifeline tossed to a drowning man.
“How did you survive?” Katara asks, her voice shaky. “A burn that big, you shouldn’t have…”
He shrugs again. “I don’t know. Spite, maybe. My memory from that time is...hazy. You’ll have to ask Uncle, when we see him again.” He doesn’t voice the if we see him again that snakes through his mind.
Aang has tears silently coursing down his face. Sokka and Suki lean into each other unconsciously, and Katara has her arms wrapped around herself.
“Anyway.” Zuko says, after the silence has stretched for long enough to start to be uncomfortable. “That’s why the audience was laughing. They know I was banished. I doubt they know why, but that doesn’t matter. I’m enough of a disgrace as it is.”
Toph jumps to her feet suddenly, ripping her hand from his grasp, and Zuko flinches as the movement blurs in the left side of his vision- it’s always been hazy since the burn.
“No!” she shouts, stomping her foot, and a pillar of sand rises and slams back down just past the ring of logs they’re sitting on. “No. Don’t say that. If anyone’s a disgrace, it’s Ozai.” Her lips twist around the name, and he knows if she could firebend, she’d be breathing flames as she says it.
“Yeah, well” he clenches his hand into a fist, staring at the tendons that stand out starkly on the back, “I am my father’s son.”
“No,” Zuko glances up, and this time it’s Aang who speaks, much quieter than Toph had, and he’s staring resolutely into Zuko’s eyes as he does. “You don’t have to be. You can choose to be more than he is. You have, by coming here, by teaching me. You’ve chosen good.”
Zuko blinks. “You and Uncle would get along very well.”
“Aang is right, Zuko.” Katara stands too, coming over to sit on his right side, and she takes his hand the way Toph had. He stares into her eyes for a second before he has to look away.
“I know I took a while to trust you. And knowing what I know now… I’m sorry. I’m sorry that happened to you. It shouldn’t have. It wasn’t your fault.”
“Yeah,” Sokka says from where his head is resting on top of Suki’s. “Fathers shouldn’t treat their sons that way. And generals shouldn’t treat their soldiers that way. You were right to speak out, and he was wrong to hurt you for it.”
Zuko breathes. He can feel something in his chest cracking, just a bit. Uncle has said as much before, but hearing it from these people, who have seen him at his worst, at his angriest and most awful, and have come to accept him anyway, with no prior obligation… it feels like it could be true.
“Thanks.”
They sit in silence once more, but this time it feels comfortable. He feels like he can breathe a little easier.
They know the worst, now. And they’re still here.
“You know this means you have to kill him, right, Aang?”
“TOPH!”