Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Ba Sing Se was a black hole that had sucked Zuko’s uncle straight into it. The old man had immediately gone on about making a life because “life would happen wherever they were” or something. But Zuko didn’t want this place to be where his life happened, he wanted to go home. He was tired of dealing with crabby customers and insignificant pay. He was tired of having to constantly think about the budget for himself and Uncle. He was just plain tired, most of the time. Being home would mean that Zuko wouldn’t have to worry about money or safety or his father’s love anymore. Because if he could go home, it would mean his father’s love and respect had returned.

Then again, home was a distant concept now. And wasn’t that just salt on his wound? He’d been obsessed with the idea of home for the years he was gone. The idea of his mother and their family being happy. Summers on Ember Island and the moments when Azula acted like the little kid that people forgot she was. The days when he trained with Master Piandao. All these moments Zuko dearly missed. But he’d been reflecting on his wish for home and was starting to see the flawed logic in it.

Really, the reflecting had started from Uncle’s advice. Rare as it was, his true advice was annoyingly well placed. Zuko had gone on and on about recapturing the Avatar as the two had traveled across the Earth Kingdom toward Ba Sing Se and its’ relative safety. He’d been so close at the North Pole! The Avatar had been with him and in a state unable to fight him about it. It had been luck that the Avatar’s friends had shown up and taken him back. Zuko was so close, he just had to get the kid again. A few weeks into listening to Zuko’s plans to follow the Avatar again, a few days before they had reached Full Moon Bay with passports procured from Uncle’s weird-and-definitely-not-a-simple-Pai-Sho-enthusiast friend, and Iroh had lost patience.

“And what would you do if you captured him, hm? Sail back to the Fire Nation on a boat that we do not have? You are not thinking things through, Prince Zuko!”

Zuko had stopped walking on the empty road, the bay for hopeless refugees still far away. “I would think of something.”

“I’m sure you would try. But the same thing happened at the North Pole. You had him, and then you didn’t know what to do.”

“I was waiting for the storm to end!”

“No! You were out of options and had no plan to follow through with! If the Avatar’s friends had not found you, you both would have died.”

“We wouldn’t have died!”

“Yes, you would! And do you know what would have happened if you did? I would have lost another son! And I would not even have had a body to bury this time!” Iroh had reached a breaking point in that moment of the conversation. His eyes were watery, and his voice was loud and commanding. Zuko had thought his uncle must be reliving the time just before Lu Ten had died. He didn’t know the details of his cousin’s death, but he knew it had hit Uncle harder than he could handle. “I cannot live through that pain again.” Iroh had said, much softer.

Zuko’d had no retort, especially for his uncle’s last sentence. So, they had continued along the path again. The silence was heavy. Eventually, Iroh had spoken one last time about the subject.

“I think you need to look at your wishes and plans. Think of your ultimate goal, nephew, and how you must get there. Because I know you, and I do not think your true goal is the one you continue to pursue. And how you have gone about pursuing it is unlike you as well. It is not my place to tell you your destiny. But it is my duty to you to set you on the path to it. Think, nephew. You do not have to come to your answer straight away, but think. Who are you and what do you truly long for? This question is difficult and took me years to answer for myself. And sometimes the answer changes. But I must tell you to start asking yourself the same question. You must change your thinking, lest you destroy yourself on your current path.”

Zuko hadn’t had an answer for Uncle then, and he still didn’t now that they were stuck in the city. The things he wanted, his mother and the life he’d lived as a child, were unattainable. Zuko wasn’t an idiot, he knew that time could not rewind. But if he was not fighting for his old life and honor, then he was fighting for nothing at all. So Zuko had been mentally stuck in a blank in-between state. He didn’t know what he wanted. Uncle seemed to know but wouldn’t give him any more insight. And throughout it all, he was still nothing but a disgraced and dishonored prince waiting tables for practically no pay. All he could seem to do was serve stupid tea and be annoyed at the stupid stalking from stupid Jet.

But Zuko, or Lee, continued to reflect during his days. He knew the tone that Iroh used when he was giving real advice and wanted you to listen. His uncle was actually wise when he wasn’t using confusing proverbs. So, despite Zuko not wanting to make a life, he had made a routine. Get up, work at the tea shop (Zuko had been incensed with himself when he’d started recognizing and becoming friendly with some of the regular customers), avoid spirits-damned Jet, come back to the apartment to sleep and reflect. On the weekends, do the shopping and budget the money. Zuko was falling into the black hole of the peaceful routine. And each day he thought less about the Avatar.

Chapter Text

“Lee, Lee, Lee!” little Su Mei shouted at him from the back door of the shop. Zuko cursed the day he’d taking pity on the crying child. He had been throwing out the day’s leftover pastries (more like leaving them out for desperate people to take, Zuko knew what it was like to not have anything more to eat than grain and gruel) and has seen the little girl crying at the end of the alley. She had lost her pet bunny-cat and had been looking for it all day to no avail. Zuko remembered how fond he’d been of the palace pets and had taken pity on her. He gave some of the leftover pastries to her and had given her some warm and fruity tea that kids seemed to enjoy. She had felt much better afterward, the bunny-cat had been mysteriously found within the week, and Uncle had given Zuko the fond look that he despised.

And now the little girl would not leave him alone. She was constantly coming around alone or with her friends to beg free food and tea off him. And he gave it to her every time because he was weak, and the kid wouldn’t leave him alone until he did. Uncle thought it was hilarious.

“What, what, what?” Zuko responded in his most dead voice. Strange how a tone that had grown men nervous simply did not affect a six-year-old.

“Can I please sample some of your finest wares?” Zuko could just about strangle Uncle for teaching the small child that phrase.

“I don’t know, can you?”

Su Mei rolled her eyes, which included rolling her entire head. “MAY I please sample some stuff?”

“Of course, you may! What a polite child,” Uncle inserted. “You must come inside to sit down, little one.” The girl hopped over the threshold of the back entrance which was way too high; whoever had built the establishment had obviously not cared about where the slab of wood went. Pao tripped over it constantly, which gave Zuko a rush of satisfaction every time it happened.

Uncle dragged over the stool he sometimes used during the later hours of a shift. If Pao was not there to nag them about constantly being alert and on their feet, the stool made tea brewing that much more comfortable for an aging man. Zuko continued to maintain that he had played no part in fixing its wobble after Iroh had nearly fallen off, though he knew Uncle didn’t believe him. Su Mei climbed on top of the stool to sit and watch the tea get brewed. She didn’t ask any questions, a lesson learned after she asked why the fires under the teapots were different sizes and Uncle had launched into an explanation about the temperature that different teas needed to brew. Zuko’d had a private laugh at the sight of Uncle passionately talking about tea to a glazed over gaze. It wasn’t only him who didn’t care about leaf water after all.

Uncle put on a small pot of the girl’s favorite peach tea, and Zuko moved to gather pastries for her and for some of the other tables. He dropped off a napkin with some rolls beside the kid and moved out to give an apple turnover to a table with a mother and daughter taking a break from their shopping day, judging by the number of parcels he had to reach over. He then moved to give some sweet cakes to one of the many groups of guards that stopped in before their shifts.

Zuko didn’t know how to feel about the city guards. On one hand, they were boisterous and would definitely imprison him and Uncle if they knew about their fire bending. On the other hand, they made enough money to tip decently and liked Uncle’s tea enough that the two refugees had quickly stopped getting hazed the way that newcomers to the city often had to deal with. Zuko gained grudging agreement for Uncle’s insistence that good tea brought good will after groups of guards started recognizing him as the nephew of the amazing tea maker and left him alone on the walks between the apartment and the shop. The guards, however Zuko felt about them, could usually be found coming in waves to the shop just about every day.

After dropping off the sweet cakes, Zuko stacked cups from a newly empty table and seated a group at another as they walked in. By the time he got back to the kitchen to drop the used cups in the sink, Su Mei had finished her food and was sipping at her fresh and probably still-too-hot tea. In-between sips, she was recounting the newest gossip from her classroom. As far as Zuko could tell, the education that she was receiving was sub-par at best and the school functioned more as a city-sanctioned day-care. She never talked about mathematics or reading, and the times she talked about history was to tell them about the ‘cool’ days when the Dai-Li would appear in the school to talk about the ‘cultural history’ of Ba Sing Se. To Zuko, it sounded like pure propaganda. He counted himself lucky that refugee children weren’t required to attend whatever counted as finishing school here; he didn’t think he’d be able to stand it.

As the little one finished up both her tea and her tale of the two classmates she swore were leveraging class chores from the students through a ball-game-hustle, Zuko gave her the last of the day’s cucumber sandwiches to take home to her father and shoo’d her out the back door. Uncle hated to turn her away, Zuko deliberately had no opinion on the matter, but Pao would be coming soon to help with closing and he hated “street urchins sullying the name of my good establishment.” Zuko really enjoyed seeing Pao trip on the too-tall threshold.

The day came to an end in a manner similar to how most days in Ba Sing Se ended. Zuko swept the store and ignored Jet across the street, who obviously thought he was a very good hider. Pao arrived after closing tasks were done and took half the tips from the day, despite not waiting any of the tables. Zuko went to the back of the store to help Uncle finish washing whatever teapots were left and start preparing ingredients for the next day’s round of pastries, leaving the old pastries by the trash instead of in it. He had a sneaking suspicion that Jet was one of those who took advantage of this trash system. He didn’t seem to hold a job, with how often Zuko noticed him staring at the shop even in the broad daylight. On a mission to prove them fire nation terrorists while at the same time eating the food that Zuko was making. Hypocrite.

After turning out the lights of the shop, he and Uncle walked back to their tiny apartment. Uncle stopped twice to take compliments from stationed guards, and neither time they commented about how the two were almost past curfew. Once they got to the small complex, Zuko noted that the newborn on the first floor was crying again. He might just be too tired to be kept up by it, though. He could hope, anyway.

As Uncle put on a pot of tea despite having just closed a tea shop, Zuko laid down and tried to reflect on Uncle’s question from a few weeks ago. He remembered the somber tone as he’d asked, “who are you, and what to you truly long for?” Zuko found himself drawing a contradictory picture. The prince of the most prosperous nation in the world should not be giving food to kids and hiding the action from his uppity manager. The prince of the most advanced military to ever exist should not be avoiding a simple stalker (who was yet again sitting on the opposite roof). He longed for the peace in the city to be real, instead of a cracking façade. But how could he begin to attain that want? And with that question to himself, he pushed off a wave of exhaustion and nausea. Really, anytime he pondered Uncle’s question too long he had to fight off an accompanying feeling of sickness. It was the strangest phenomenon, which Zuko wasn’t entirely sure the cause of. Maybe a spirit cursed him. Or something. It would be just his luck.