They always tend to have a rather rocky start, don't they?

Content Warning: Mild adult language and themes, Sokka discovers smoking jackets and obnoxious pipes. The very first chapter of the previously seen WIP, Mark of the Banished Prince/Zuko from the Start.

December 30th – Proposal

BY THE TIME ZUKO ARRIVED AT THE GATES OF OMASHU, HE WAS SERIOUSLY RETHINKING THE LIFE CHOICES THAT HAD LED HIM THERE. As he slumped in the saddle, trying to keep his teeth from chattering as the river of traffic slowly inched its way towards the gates themselves, he felt that he had ample reason to embark upon such a serious self-examination. For one thing, he had just spent the better part of a month fighting his way through a winter hellscape, and even now, a soft but steady snowfall was coming down from the heavens. The journey had left him soaked to the bone and freezing cold, wondering if he would ever be warm again, seeing as his heavy winter clothes had not proven up to the task. Maybe they would have, if he was a normal traveler, but he had been in a rush and so, instead of stopping from time-to-time to dry his things and wait out the occasional blizzard, he had been forced to press on, a thick woolen scarf wrapped around his face, blinded by the flurries. His tobacco had been ruined, leaving him desperate for a cigarette, and his stomach growled, since his week-and-a-half's worth of food had, after much rationing, run out the day before.

On top of all that, as if the gods had seen fit to add insult to injury, he had been cursed to spend the entire journey atop one of the most foul-tempered ostrich-horses he had ever had the misfortune to meet in his entire life. If he hadn't needed the damn thing so badly, he would have turned it into stew days ago. So, to recap, he was stuck in traffic, tired, hungry, tobacco-deprived, soaked, cold, and at least five days late.

It was easily the seventeenth most miserable journey of his entire life, easily enough to make him wish he had never even heard Jeong Jeong's proposal, much less agreed to it.

"Nei teng m dou ngo aa, leng'zai?"

Zuko let out a heavy sigh. Oh, right, and I'm also being catcalled by bored prostitutes, because of course this traffic jam has decided to stop cold just as I'm sitting in front of a brothel. Omashu was a big city, and like any big city, it extended far beyond its outermost walls, and like those big cities, this outer city was unplanned, more-or-less lawless, and packed to the brim with brothels and opium dens and dice parlors and bars. The streets were winding and narrow and lined with beggars (most of whom, Zuko assumed, were refugees from the never ending war), basic hygiene was mostly a laughable suggestion, cutpurses and con artists and the occasional pimp plied their trades, and from around a bend in the road ahead of him, Zuko swore he could hear some crazed religious zealot railing against the sins of humanity. Zuko looked around. Makes sense; plenty of sins to rail against around here.

There came a whistle from up and to his right, and he closed his eyes and counted to ten. The prostitutes had been haranguing the traffic for some time now, but some reason Zuko couldn't possibly begin to guess, one of them had homed in on him and decided to…to…

To do what, exactly? Zuko shrugged. Gods only know. Zuko assumed she was bored; most of the peasants stuck in the traffic were farmers, and many of those farmers were traveling with members of their families, including wives and sisters and daughters. Probably a slow day for a brothel. Not that Zuko cared.

Another whistle came, shriller this time, followed by the original question, Don't you hear me, handsome, uttered in the same attempt at a coquettish voice, said attempt marred by the gutter Guangzhou it was said in. Then there came another whistle, and another, until finally Zuko, his temper flaring, could take no more. He yanked the scarf down off his face, looked up – making sure his tormentor got a good look at his scar and his dead left eye – and snapped, also in Guangzhou (he wanted to make sure he was understood), "Still think I'm handsome?"

The prostitute, to his surprise, was very pretty, even bundled up in blankets and furs, and looked to be twenty or twenty-one, only a few years younger than him. She turned her head first this way, and then that, giving him a look so deep and piercing that he felt a physical urge to squirm, before saying, in a voice that could only be called intrigued, "Honestly? You exceeded my expectations."

Zuko found that hard to believe. He had been accused of many things in his life, but exceeding expectations was not one of them. "You see the scar, right?"

She shrugged. "I've seen worse, and besides, it gives you a rather…I don't know…rakish look." She gave him another once-over, and, to Zuko's shock and horror, licked her lips. "To tell you the truth, if I wasn't working, I'd have you for free."

The blush that bloomed on Zuko's face was made all the more painful by the sensation of blood flowing into ears and cheeks left almost numb by the cold. The prostitute's words had sounded suspiciously like a compliment, and Zuko couldn't handle compliments. He had been first into the breach at a dozen sieges, but nothing terrified him more than a compliment.

He was aware of how sad that was, so he chose not to think about it, turning away from the prostitute and muttering bullshit under his breath in Nihongo, his native tongue and one he was fairly certain she wouldn't understand, even if she heard him.

To his lack of surprise, that didn't seem to faze her. "What was that?" came the voice from above.

He coughed into his hand and cleared his throat. "I said, I'm sure you say that to all the boys."

He looked up just in time to catch her rolling her eyes as she muttered something he decided he'd rather not catch. "Well, which would you rather believe: That I offer a free afternoon to every young man that passes through, or that you might actually be kind of cute?"

"I'm sure you pretend to offer that to the old men, too," he replied, face blank and voice as dry as the Si Wong Desert. When in doubt, grump your way out. Zuko felt that those were words to live by.

Sure, the principle had never actually worked out for him, but Zuko believed that there was a first time for everything.

To his surprise, the prostitute threw back her head and laughed. "Oh, I like you. You are just my type, you know that?"

"I'm not anybody's type," he snapped. He knew he shouldn't be snapping at anyone, least of all a pretty girl – prostitute or no – who was being nothing but nice to him, but the traffic was beginning to move and yet there he sat atop a foul-tempered ostrich-horse, struggling to control his shivers, teeth clacking, his head pounding from the tobacco withdrawal.

If the prostitute noticed or cared, she didn't show it. "I find that very hard to believe."

"Believe what you want," he said, biting down on the frustrated anger starting to boil up through his veins. It was stupid to get mad, but when had something being stupid ever stopped him before?

You know, said a voice that sounded remarkably like his uncle's, you could just…move along, Zuko.

Shut up, Uncle.

Tsk tsk tsk, such manners.

Not now, Uncle.

If we don't address your poor manners now, then when?!

Zuko closed his eye and groaned. Even in my head, I can never win an argument. He had a sudden, vague sensation that someone was speaking to him, for real, this time, so he opened his eye and looked up and said, "What was that?"

The prostitute just rolled her eyes. Zuko couldn't help but notice that she was very good at it. This irked him even more; even when he'd had two functional eyes, he'd sucked at rolling them. "I said, as fun as this is, it's very cold. Why don't you come up and we can continue this conversation over a nice cup of tea in front of a roaring fire?"

Zuko couldn't believe his luck. An out had just magically appeared right before his eyes, and he grasped at it. "I'm afraid I'll have to pass."

She smiled and shook her head. "Yes, you don't seem the tea type. How about sake? Or maybe some fire whiskey? Baiju? Soju?" She paused, gave him yet another once over. "Cigarettes? They're local, but I'm sure you won't mind."

Zuko absolutely would mind, nothing compared to Fire Nation tobacco for him, but he'd been stuck with Earth Kingdom tobacco for years now and a cigarette was a cigarette, and the prospect of even one was more tempting than all the roaring fires in the world.

Whatever. I just have to get into the city and get to my destination and then I can have all the smokes I want, on someone else's sen, too. "That sounds…nice, but I'm afraid I'm on a budget."

She popped an eyebrow. "We can stick to conversation if you want. I'm sure you have a lot of interesting stories to tell."

Now that was very much true. Sadly, Zuko had little faith in his ability to tell them, and besides… "Well, I can't afford that either."

That earned him another eye roll, giving Zuko the strange feeling that he was missing something. Zuko didn't doubt this. He usually was.

"On the house, then."

Zuko began to become suspicious then. The idea that a pretty young woman, whether she was a prostitute or not, might be sincerely trying to seduce him was too absurd to even be considered, which left a whole host of other possibilities, few of them good. "That seems like a poor business plan for a prostitute."

That earned him the most bemused smile yet in a conversation overrun with bemused smiles. "Well, good thing I'm not a prostitute."

And yet you're hanging out on the balcony of a clearly marked brothel, flanked by other prostitutes, male and female, trying to cajole people out of the traffic. Zuko paused, chewed on this for a moment, if only to distract him from his physical misery. So, either you're the madame's bored daughter, or I'm about to get murdered.

"Beg your pardon?" he said, as he inched a free hand towards the dagger in his boot. Firebending would have been a better option, but the street was too crowded and the risk of setting fire to the city too great.

Her smile grew, and she leaned over the railing, and when she spoke, the gutter Guangzhou was gone, whisked away like so many leaves in the wind.

"Wǒ kàn dào dùjuān huā zài wǔyè kāihuā."

Zuko had been prepared for many things, but he very much not been prepared for a flirty twenty-something not-prostitute leaning over a balcony in the outer city of Omashu to say, in pitch-perfect Putonghua fit for the Imperial Court in Ba Sing Se, I see that the rhododendron blooms at midnight.

His mind blank, Zuko could only think to say one thing.

"Oh, you have got to be shitting me."

Later, he would be pretty sure that they had been able to hear the not-a-prostitute's hysterical laughter all the way in the Fire Nation.

-0-

"I just don't see why we need a guide at all."

Katara sighed, slumping back in her chair while she pinched her nose, closed her eyes, and tried very hard to resist the urge to reconsider the life choices that had led to her arguing with a fourteen-year-old deep in the bowels of the Royal Palace of Omashu. "Okay, what is it you're not getting, Aang?" she said, doing her best to ignore how she sounded an awful lot like an exasperated mother lecturing a wayward child. Which, now that I think about it, isn't the least accurate way to describe how I spend most of my time these days. She opened her eyes and looked around the room, or, in her mind, cavern. It was just the dining area attached to their suite of rooms, but it still felt larger than the house she had grown up in. Two months, an ocean between me and home, and now with a palace thrown in, and I'm still mothering someone.

It's enough to drive a girl mad.

"I dunno," Aang said, poking at his breakfast with a pair of chopsticks. "I guess I just don't see the point, you know?" He paused, ran a hand through his short brown hair. "I mean, we have such a good little group, right? Why change that?"

Katara couldn't help but smile. Sure, traveling with her dope of a brother and a teenager who had a blatant crush on her wasn't the most pleasant way for a twenty-two-year-old woman to try and save a world she had longed to see all her life, but there were worse options, and Aang was a sweet kid with a good heart. "Yes," she said, sitting forward in her chair and picking up her tea cup, "we do have a good little group, don't we?" Most of the time, she said to herself, pausing to sip her astonishingly good tea. "But that's not the point, is it?"

Aang made a face. "Then what is?"

Katara tried not to sigh, she really did. Here we go again. "Because you're the Avatar, Aang, and until you're fully trained, we need to do everything we can to keep the Fire Nation from getting their clutches on you." Especially after you went full Avatar State at the Southern Air Temple and probably lit beacons all over the world. "They still don't know who you actually are and what you actually look like," we hope, "and we need to keep a low profile."

Aang brightened up at that, dropping his chopsticks so hard they made his bowl ring. "Then wouldn't three people be better at keeping a low profile?!"

Katara shook her head, taking another sip of her tea. Tui and La, this stuff is good. We'll have to see if we can take a box or three with us. "Three normal people, maybe, but two of those people have never really left the South, and the third is a teenager who's been stuck in an iceberg for nearly a century. And that's leaving aside the inevitable language difficulties."

Aang jabbed a thumb to his chest. "Well, I can solve that easily! As Avatar, I can tap into any language that my previous incarnations spoke. Then, I just need a bit to catch up with any changes, and bam, universal translator!"

Katara set her tea cup down. Gently. Carefully. "Maybe so, but personally, I think we should have more than one person skilled at languages in the group," preferably an adult, "at least until Sokka and I can catch up."

"Oh," Aang said, frowning and slumping back down into his chair, "I guess that makes sense."

Indeed. "Look," she began, leaning forward and making sure that he was looking her right in the eyes, "it comes down to a question of reality. You've decided that I'm to be your waterbending teacher, and I'd be a Master if we bothered with that sort of thing in the South, but only the North can officially declare either you or I a Master, and so we must get to the North. We can't go by sea, because the Fire Nation rules the sea, and we can't go through the Fire Nation, because duh, so we have to go through the Earth Kingdom, and to do that, we need someone who knows the Earth Kingdom."

Aang shrugged as only a teenager could. Katara tried her best not to grind her teeth. "We've done alright so far."

Katara ran the past two months through her mind, and decided that any time period that included getting imprisoned in rock candy as part of a mad king's bizarre little lesson to the Avatar could not be labeled as being alright, but Bumi was an old friend of Aang's from before the War so she decided to let it go. "So far, but things are only going to get more difficult, dangerous, and complicated from here. So," she finished, picking up her chopsticks and turning her attention back to her food, "that's the way things are, and that's the way things are going to be. Now, eat your food."

Aang sighed, picked up his own chopsticks, and set to his task. He looked so dejected that Katara felt a sharp pang of guilt at mom-ing him like that. She went through a mental list of ways to take the sting off what she'd said, decided on a promising path, and opened her mouth to speak just as Sokka entered the room with a series of theatrical flourishes that set Aang to laughter and Katara to eye rolling. "Nice of you to join us," she said, making sure to speak Inuktitut instead of Yuupik, their tribal language, so that Aang could join in.

"Well," Sokka said, plopping himself into the chair next to Katara's and turning to her with a smile, "you know how I like to be fashionably late."

Katara could sigh as she turned to face him. "So that's what we're calling it these…these…Sokka?"

"Hmm?" Sokka muttered, his response muted by the stem of the ludicrously large and ornate pipe he had taken to smoking since they had come to Omashu.

Katara looked him up and down, and tried to prevent herself from snatching the stupid, gods-awful thing from his hands and smashing it into a thousand pieces. Preferably on his head. "What in the name of all the gods above and below are you wearing?"

"You know," Aang said from across the table, where he had resumed picking at his food, "the monks taught me an interesting lesson about difference between spirits and gods, or even whether there is one. You see-"

"Not now, Aang," Katara said, turning to him to smile and using a kind voice before snapping back around to Sokka and returning to Sister Mode. "Seriously, though, why in all the hells are you wearing pajamas to the breakfast table?"

The look her brother gave her could only be described as hurt. "Pajamas? Sis, I'm not wearing pajamas. I would never wear pajamas to the breakfast table." He finally got the pipe lit, and paused to take several dramatic puffs while also dramatically tossing his spent match into a handy ashtray. "Gran-Gran would spontaneously appear before our very eyes just to spank me."

The idea of beating him to death with that stupid pipe had never seem more appealing to her. "Then what in the name of La do you call all that?" she said, gesturing at his outfit.

His expression switched from one of hurt to one that could only be described as offended. "Why, it's a smoking jacket, of course."

She blinked. "A smoking jacket?"

He beamed. "Yes, a smoking jacket! They're all the rage among the more discerning gentlemen of Omashu."

She couldn't help but blink again. "You, a gentleman?"

The hurt look was back. "Why, yes."

She made a mental note to go down to the kitchens and get herself a big wooden spoon. Preferably a thick one. "Since when were you a gentleman? I mean, to call yourself discerning is bad enough, but a gentleman?"

The offended look returned as he placed a hand to his chest. If he had had pearls to clutch, Katara had no doubt that he would have done so. "Why, since birth, of course. It's not my fault that there just wasn't much opportunity to pursue such a role back home."

She leaned back in her chair, crossing her arms and trying very hard not to huff. "I thought you were a warrior."

"Hey, don't put me in a box, Katara," he said, going to far as to draw the shape of a box in the air with the stem of his absurd pipe. "A true man of the world can, indeed, must," a word he underlined with a swipe of his pipe-stem through the air, "wear many hats."

To that, Katara could think of only one thing to say:

"You're totally shitting me with this, right?"

"Well," Aang chimed in, "I dunno. Sokka does seem pretty sincere."

In that moment, Katara decided that she was going to need two big heavy wooden spoons.

-0-

It took a good two hours after entering the brothel, but Zuko was finally starting to feel like a human being again. The not-prostitute had met him behind the brothel, showing him where to tie up his ostrich-horse, given him directions, and then casually strolled behind him while he rushed upstairs, face burning and hands shoved deep into his coat pockets, doing his best to avoid eye contact with anyone. She had deposited him in what seemed like a kind of VIP suite, pointing out the roaring fire and the liquor cabinet and the box full of pre-rolled cigarettes, then left to get him dry clothes and some towels. She had then tried to stay in the room while he changed, but he had glared her out.

Or, at least, he liked to think it had been the glare that did it. He had a strong suspicion that she had just left the room to because she had been on the verge of hysterical laughter, but he tried not to think about it. He tried not to think about a lot of things regarding his situation. For example, he had thus far been too embarrassed to say so much as one word to her, which struck him as profoundly silly, but after about five minutes he figured he was in too deep and didn't know how to change gears without further embarrassment, so now he was stuck.

He settled deeper into the comfy chair he had moved to right in front of the fire, alternating sips of fire whiskey with long drags on his newest cigarette. He had his feet propped as close to the fire as possible, feeling had returned to his fingers and toes, he had fresh, clean clothes and his old clothes were hanging from the mantle, almost dry last he had checked on them. He had even been fed! And through it all, he had said nary a word, not even to the servant who had brought him the food. He hadn't even spoken to himself. For a moment, he worried that, if he didn't dispel this sense of embarrassment soon, he would never speak again.

In the next moment, he pondered whether that would be a bad thing. Maybe a vow of silence was just the thing for him. What was it that Master Piandao said? Better to keep silent and be thought an idiot, than to open your mouth and remove all doubt. Zuko rolled the aphorism around in his head. He hadn't paid much attention to the advice back when he was just another teenaged idiot at the Royal Military Academy, but now that he was a little older and if anything, less wise, maybe there were some merits to be considered…

He didn't make it far down that track, though, before he was interrupted by a familiar voice. "Well, I'm glad to see that you're making yourself comfortable."

Etiquette lessons had once been a daily torment for Zuko, but old Yoshitaka-san's switch had apparently done its painful work, because he was up and out of the chair, performing a shallow bow and mumbling an apology, all of it without having a single conscious thought. He paused only to promise to kick himself later for shattering his vow of silence so quickly.

The not-prostitute waved his apology away. "No apologies necessary, Brother Lotus. After all, the whole point of bringing you up here was to thaw you out and turn you back into a human being before taking you into the city. Oh, and you might want to put that out before you get burned."

Zuko googled at her for a moment, before looking down to see that his cigarette had burned almost to his fingers. It took a good minute to find the ashtray and stub the thing out, all while the blush returned with a vengeance, seeming to start all the way down in his toes this time. "Sorry," he muttered, wondering if he would be able to keep his mouth shut if he took vows and became a monk, that might do the trick, "I was…um…I was probably going to…you know…put it out before you…uh…came in, you know?" He set his glass of fire whiskey on the table next to the ashtray, turned back to her, and gave a deeper bow. "I really must…um…well…I really should, you know, apologize, though, for mistaking an agent of the White Lotus for a prostitute." He paused, watching in disconnected horror as his hand crept up to his neck and tugged at his collar. "And…well…I'm not an initiated, you know, member of the White Lotus, so you don't have to call me Brother Lotus or anything."

She gave him a soft, bemused smile and clucked her tongue against her teeth. "Yes, shame on you for thinking that the young woman cat-calling you from the balcony of a brothel was a prostitute. Shame." She paused, rolling her head from side-to-side as if rolling a thought around on her tongue. "Though, if you're so remorseful, mind fetching that chair over there and bringing it over to the fire?"

"Oh, no," he said, already moving to get the chair she had indicated, "not at all, let me just bring it over…"

Not long after, they faced each other by the fire, Zuko no longer sprawled in his chair, but rather perched on the front edge, back ramrod straight, hands clasped in his lap. She was much more relaxed, but in a careful, disciplined sort of way, as if she, too, had once suffered under the blows of an etiquette tutor's bamboo switch.

Indeed, now that Zuko took the time to really look at her, there was very little that actually screamed prostitute, even a high-class one. She moved with the easy grace of nobility, and her Putonghua was just as refined and polished as his was. Her clothes were expensive, but elegantly so, tasteful, even, and her hair had been elaborately plaited and wound in a way that said she had at least one personal servant.

She was also very, very pretty, but Zuko had tossed that down the hole where he kept everything else he chose not to think about.

"So," he said, trying not to wither under her gaze, "um…you're…uh…you're noble-born, aren't you?"

"What tipped you off?" she said, her smile growing more bemused with each passing moment. "The clothes? The manners?"

"The accent, honestly," he said, shrugging. "The gutta Guangzhou you spoke outside led me astray at first, but they don't teach Putonghua like that just anywhere."

She acknowledged this with a bow of her head. "True," she said, reaching over to the table with the fire whiskey and pouring herself a few fingers' worth into Zuko's glass. "In case you're wondering, my nanny when I was a little girl was from around Gaoling, and I guess her way of speaking Guangzhou rubbed off on me. Used to drive my language tutor up a wall." She took an elegant sip from Zuko's glass and pointed back towards the liquor cabinet. "You're going to have to get yourself a fresh glass, I'm afraid. I've decided that I rather like this one."

For some reason, those words made Zuko blush even harder. He covered it up by going to get himself a fresh glass, or, at the very least, hoped he covered it up that way.

As he got the fresh glass, returned to his seat, and poured himself a drink, she continued the conversation. "So, if you're not even an Initiate, what shall I call you?"

"Well," he said, settling himself back down into the chair, "that depends, I suppose. How much do you know about me?"

"The broad strokes, but no real details," she admitted with a soft sigh. "The message from the Grand Lotus was a maddening combination of precision and vagueness."

"Oh…" He allowed himself a big gulp of his drink, then reached for the box of cigarettes. "Mind if I smoke?"

"Not at all; they're here for you."

The blush wasn't getting any better. It was starting to cause Zuko real concern. "Oh, well…okay…you want one?"

"No, thank you. Nice job stalling, by the way."

He coughed and muttered and lit his cigarette with a snap of his fingers, but didn't really reply to that. Instead, he took a long drag, blew it out, and said, "Well…just call me…Tsukuru, I suppose. It's the name I served under in the Army."

She lifted her glass to that. "To Tsukuru, then." They both drank, and then her smile was gone and she was leaning forward, all business.

Zuko almost wept with joy.

"So," she began, seeming to weigh each word very carefully, "how much to you know about why you're here?"

Zuko tried not to shrug, he really did. "Well…I guess you could say that my orders are the same combination of precise and vague as yours are. I…uh…let's just say that I live in a community of individuals in similar situations to my own-"

"The deserters' colony up north?"

"…um…yes…anyways, almost three weeks ago, General Jeong called me into his house and asked if I was willing to undertake a dangerous mission, a mission for which I am the single best qualified candidate." Or close enough; General Jeong had actually called Zuko the only possible candidate for the job in the entire world, but Zuko chose not to think about that.

It had, after all, sounded suspiciously like a compliment.

She popped an eyebrow. "And you accepted?"

This time, he did shrug, mostly to hide a fresh wave of embarrassment. "Didn't have anything better to do, I suppose. Anyways, he asks me, I accept, he gives me the papers necessary to get into Omashu, tells me to get here as soon as possible, I said sayonara to my friends, and off I went."

She nodded. "Hmm…did he tell you what the mission was?"

"Not really, no."

"And you didn't ask?"

"It's not the first time the White Lotus has told me to do something strange without the slightest bit of explanation."

"True…they do make a habit of that, don't they?"

Zuko wasn't sure he was supposed to respond to that, so he just spread his hands and shrugged.

To his surprise, this made her laugh. "Not one to complain, are you?"

"Not anymore, at least. So, what is the mission?"

"Well," she said, all business once again, "as it happens, we have found ourselves in need of someone who knows the Earth Kingdom well, and the real Earth Kingdom. This person would, ideally, know a wide array of languages and customs, be well-versed at traveling light and fast, and have a knack for avoiding Fire Nation entanglements, while also knowing how to fight if necessary. Oh!" she said, sticking a finger up into the air. "And if this person could be a skilled firebender with good reason to wish for the Fire Lord's fall, all the better. Does that describe you, Tsukuru?"

"Well," he said, rubbing the back of his neck, "I mean…yeah, I guess?"

She slapped a hand on her thigh. "Well, then! That settles it! You're perfect, from your qualifications all the way down to your magnificent ass!"

Because the gods were cruel, Zuko was in the middle of taking a drink when she said this. He was pretty sure he saw the afterlife several times during the coughing fit that followed.

Meanwhile, she just laughed. "Oh, you are just a delight to tease! When this is all over, you'll have to swing through Ba Sing Se and let me show you the town."

Zuko was still working out the coughing fit, leaving him to shake his head and try to get the tears out of his eye until he croaked out, "Well…uh…if you say so…"

He decided to ignore the hungry way she looked him up and down. "I do, indeed. So," she continued, polishing off her drink and pouring herself a fresh one, "are you in?"

"In what?" he choked out, rubbing at his chest.

He immediately regretted his choice of words when she threw him a wink. "Oh, if only I had the time to show you all the possible answers to that question. Alas," she leaned back in the chair, waving her glass through the air, "duty calls. The mission, you silly boy."

He didn't even try to cover up his furious blushing this time; there seemed to be no point. "Well…I guess I'm in, like I said, it's not like I have anything better to do."

"What, no girlfriend back at Jeong's little deserters' camp?"

"Well, I mean…no."

That earned him another cluck of the tongue. "More's the pity; we could've invited her to join." She threw him another wink, and then pressed on before he had time to think about the implications of that statement. "So, now that that's settled, would you like to know your mission?"

"It would be helpful."

With that, she smiled, and told him. He felt that his initial response was rather apt:

"Okay, now I know you're fucking with me."

She was not.

-0-

"No."

Sokka put on his best Oh Nothing I'm Just Sweet Innocent Little Sokka smile and spread his hands as if to say, Who, me? "What do you mean no?"

Katara pinched her nose. It did not escape her notice that she was doing that a lot that day. "You are not wearing that."

Sokka looked down at his clothes. "Wearing what?"

"Your stupid smoking jacket. We are going to see the King. The entire court's going to be there, and we're going to meet our guide for the rest of our trip through the Earth Kingdom, so, no, absolutely not. I refuse to be seen in public with you while you're wearing that."

"Oh, come on, Sis, it looks cool!"

"No, it most definitely does not."

"Come on, Aang," Sokka said, turning to the would-be Avatar, "buddy, pal, friend of mine, you've got my back here, right? It's cool, right?"

Aang, to his credit, grimaced and rubbed the back of his neck, doing his best to avoid eye contact with either one of them. "I dunno, Sokka, I mean, it's neat, I guess, but not really appropriate for court, you know?"

"Well," Sokka said, turning back to Katara, "it's not like any of us are dressed for court. We're in our traveling clothes, for La's sake!"

Katara had to admit that that was true. They were, indeed, in their traveling clothes, and though said clothes had been washed and mended and more than a few items had been replaced, they were still very much dressed for a hike, rather than a King's court. "That's because, as soon as we've met our guide, the King is going to give us lunch and then we're off. Speaking of which, Aang? Did you make sure that you packed everything?"

Aang nodded. "Yes, Katara, I made sure."

"Did you check your room at least twice?"

Aang actually rolled his eyes at this. "Yes, Katara, I checked twice. I even checked thrice!"

"Because we can't come back up here. Once lunch is over, we leave."

"I know, Katara, you already told me."

"Good. So, where's your air-bison whistle?"

"Right here around my-" He paused, his hand grasping at his chest, his eyes going wide. "I…um…I'll be right back…" With that, he was off, leaving Katara to turn on her brother and switch from Inuktitut to Yuupik, the better to make her displeasure clear.

"Right, where were we? Oh, right, that stupid thing you're wearing. Take it off."

Sokka groaned and rolled his eyes and began to take the so-called smoking jacket in the most dramatic way possible. "Oh, alright, Katara, if it's that big of a deal to you. Just give me a moment to get it into my pack, and we'll go."

Katara could feel her hands beginning to itch. She had managed to swipe not two, but three rather sinister-looking wooden spoons from the kitchens, but they were snuggly packed away and she was regretting that decision with each passing moment. Maybe I should just pull a Gran-Gran and smack him with my shoe. "It's not going in your pack."

This brought Sokka up short. "What? Why not?"

"Because it's not coming with us."

"What?! That's bullshit!"

"No, it's not."

"But, it's cool!"

"It's stupid."

"I look good in it!"

"You look like an idiot in it."

"Do not!"

"Do, too!"

"Do not!"

"Do, too! Seriously, Sokka, are we really going to do this?"

Sokka started to grumble and mumble under his breath, finally yanking the horrid thing off and tossing it aside. "There, happy?"

Katara looked up at the heavens and pleaded to the gods for strength, though she doubted that her pleas would be heard. These were, after all, the same gods who had cursed her with Sokka for an older brother. "Eventually. Now, come on, pick up your pack and we'll get moving as soon as Aang's back."

"Yeah, whatever." There was a long pause, and then: "I'm keeping the pipe."

"You know what? Fine. Keep the stupid pipe."

"I'm going to bitch about this for, like, at least the next week or two."

"I can live with that."

"Suki would've liked the smoking jacket."

"Is Suki an actual living, breathing girl?"

The half-wistful, half-hungry look that rippled across her brother's face was something that Katara could've spent the rest of her life living without. "Oh, she very much is."

"Then she would've hated it, too."

"You know, Katara, not everyone's as close-minded as you."

"…I should've left you back home."

"Love you, too, Sis."

-0-

"What're you thinking about, Tsukuru?"

Zuko looked away from the window of their carriage and turned to his…companion? Fellow White Lotus lacky? Tormentor? Zuko couldn't think of anything to call her, and it was far too late to ask for her name, so he decided to just kind of…let it be. "Beg your pardon?"

She gestured towards the window. "You just looked so…focused, I was sure that you were thinking about something deep and profound."

Zuko had actually been thinking about something dark and horrible, and twisted memory that slithered through the depths of his consciousness, a sharp, brutal, painful memory of the moment when he realized that his father really had never loved him, never would, just wanted to be rid of him, but he wasn't about to dump that all on his…interrogator? "Nothing, really," he replied, shaking a cigarette out of the pack he had been given and lighting it with a snap of his fingers. The cigarettes were standard Imperial Army issue, very Earth Kingdom, but beggars couldn't be choosers. "Just wondering where all the traffic went."

"Oh, it's still there. The traffic has been just…awful, the past few months. Your lot did a lot of damage to the defenses last time you tried to take Omashu, and so they've had to close some of the gates to do repairs and upgrades. Plus, even some of the gates that are still open are closed to civilian traffic, so we're going to one that's for military and official use only."

"Hmm," Zuko said, turning back to the window and lifting up the curtain, "I didn't realize that we managed to do that much damage."

"You were here?"

"On the other side. It was one of the last military operations I took part in before I deserted. I actually led the Forlorn Hope into the Cao Cao Redoubt."

He heard the gasp, but tried not to think about it. "I heard that was a horrid, brutal battle."

He shrugged. "It was. We won, I guess, took the redoubt, but it ended up being so costly that the army had to withdraw. We were all pretty angry about that. We'd been told that taking the Redoubt was vital in order to bring our siege artillery closer to the walls, and then we were told that we'd lost too many men and it was too close to winter to make it worth hauling the heavy artillery up that blasted hill, and then we were pulling out."

"And you were in the Forlorn Hope that went into the breach."

"I was."

"By the gods, why? Did you have a death wish?"

At the time, Zuko had absolutely had a death wish, but again, he didn't want to talk about it with her. Or with anyone, really. "Just luck of the draw. None of us volunteered, we all thought the assault was pointless, so they eventually had us draw straws."

"I see." A long pause, during which Zuko swore he could actually feel her eyes boring into him. It was at times like this that he was glad that, when his father had burned him, it had also blinded his left eye. It allowed him to just keep the left side of his face between him and whoever was talking to him and he could just…fade away. Go somewhere else. Watch it happen.

It made it easier when she said, "You're a terrible liar, you know."

"I know." It seemed the only thing to say.

"And yet, you still try."

"Not really, but I'm in too deep now, you know?"

"Oddly enough, I do."

Zuko couldn't think of a single thing to say to that, so he just looked out his window, smoked his cigarette, and changed the subject. "Anything I need to know about the King's court?"

He didn't have to see the sad expression or the slump of the shoulders to know that they had happened. "It's a court like any other. I've been told you know your courtesy and etiquette, so I wouldn't worry too much. Besides, the court here is much less formal and uptight than, say, the Emperor's in Ba Sing Se, or the Fire Lord's in Miyako."

"So, I don't need to kowtow?"

He could actually feel the grimace. "I mean, you can, but I would recommend against it. The King is known to find kowtowing…um…rather amusing, and when King Bumi is amused, it's best to run for the hills."

He nodded. "I'll keep that in mind." He took a long drag from his cigarette, blew it out, watched the thick smoke of the tobacco mix with the thin, wispy smoke of his breath on the cold winter air. "Do they know that I'm Fire Nation?"

"I don't know, but I can't imagine why they wouldn't be told."

He looked down at his coat. It was a good coat, thick and heavy and woolen, the scarlet-and-black muted and somewhat washed out, but it was still very recognizably the Army-issue winter coat of a Fire Nation officer. It was one of several items he just hadn't been able to give up when he'd deserted, like the thick woolen scarlet cap that he had pulled down over his ears.

Sometimes, when he couldn't sleep, he'd take the coat out and count the patched-over bullet holes. Once he hit eleven, he'd run out of bullet holes and start again.

He wasn't entirely sure why it helped.

"So, maybe I should ditch the coat?" he asked.

A long pause, and then, "Is it the original coat you were issued when you received your commission?"

The memory attacked him with a vengeance. Suddenly, he was standing by his bunk, the left side of his face still covered in bloody bandages, his head swimming from the milk-of-the-poppy.

Suddenly, he was eighteen again.

"Yes, it was."

"And how many Forlorn Hopes did you lead, wearing that jacket?"

He had to think about that for a moment. "Seven." He had always volunteered. It had seemed the efficient thing to do.

"Then it seems to be your lucky coat. I'd keep it, if I were you."

"I intended to."

"Well, obviously."

That comment made Zuko smile for the first time since he'd spotted Omashu that morning.

-0-

At the Southern Air Temple on Patola, Katara had felt uncomfortable, but also not. She well understood the feeling of living under the edge of the knife, the knowledge that at any moment, the ravens could come with their blood-red banners to try to finish the job. The worst part of that first major stop of their journey had been when Aang had discovered…certain facts about how the Fire Nation had been able to launch such an effective assault on the monks and nuns of the temples so many years ago, and his rage had launched him into the Avatar State and Katara had discovered that she had only glimpsed fear, but never really known it.

Their next stop had been Kyoshi Island. There, Katara and her brother had faced culture shock and a massive language barrier (or, at least, Katara had; Sokka, true to form, had managed to make friends regardless of how few words they shared in common), but at the end of the day, it had felt…familiar. Average people did their best to survive day-by-day under the looming storm clouds of a never-ending war, and that was a life that Katara knew all too well. She had even been spared contact with the Earth Kingdom's bewildering class system, which she had only heard rumors of so far; Avatar Kyoshi had made very sure, all those years before, that no lords or ladies tried to throw their weight around on her island, the island she had, after all, straight up made.

Now, as she, her brother, and Aang followed a servant through the twists and turns of the Royal Palace of Omashu, she took time to have one last look at the first truly alien environment she had ever known. It was all so…bizarre, to her, the bowing and the orders of precedence and the tables of rank and the lords and the ladies and…just…the Court of a King. When random courtiers told her that King Bumi's court was orders of magnitude less formal and straight-laced than, say, Ba Sing Se's, she had felt dizzy from the level of her disbelief. How could anything be more bizarre and surreal than this? Even Sokka had felt…disjointed, from time-to-time, his infatuation with that stupid smoking jacket notwithstanding. The language barrier had been the least of it. It had just felt so…so…

So alien…

Yes, Katara thought, as they turned a final corner and came to the final doors that would open onto the throne room, it's about time we got out of here. We will be well rid of this place. She turned to Sokka, who was standing to her left, and said as much to him in Yuupik, the one language they could be sure no one, not even Aang, could understand.

Sokka sighed. "You know what, Sis? You might just be right."

Katara gasped, pressing a hand to her chest. "Did my big brother just admit that I was right about something?"

Sokka rolled his eyes and gave her a shove. "Don't let it go to your head."

"Too late," she replied, giving him a shove right back.

"Can you guys stop bickering for, like, even a minute?" Aang asked over his shoulder. He stood in front of them, back ramrod straight, folded air glider held upright like a spear in his right hand.

"You finally use your Avatar tricks to learn Yuupik?" Sokka asked, switching back to Inuktitut.

"No," Aang admitted, looking rather glum about it, "it's just that sibling bickering kind of sounds the same, no matter what language it's taking place in." His face fell, and he looked so sad for a moment that Katara's heart broke for him. "I mean, I never had any brothers or sisters, but a lot of my friends did, and you pick up a few things."

Without even thinking about it, Katara reached out and squeezed Aang's shoulder. "Well, we're your siblings now, Aang."

Sokka did the same, only he clapped Aang on the back hard enough to make the boy stagger. "Absolutely, buddy, even if you didn't have my back over my smoking jacket."

Aang gave Sokka a sheepish grin. "Well, Katara is pretty scary when she's on the war path about something…"

Katara gave Aang a final squeeze, then flicked him on the back of the head. "And don't you forget it, young man."

Aang rubbed where she'd flicked him. "Yes, ma'am."

Sokka almost doubled over in laughter. "He just called you ma'am!"

Katara, though, shrugged and took a moment to fiddle with her hair as the guards moved into position to open the doors to the throne room. "Damn straight."

That just made Sokka laugh even harder.

-0-

At another set of doors that would lead into the throne room, Zuko's…escort, he supposed, stopped him, pulling him close enough that he could feel her breath on his skin as she began fiddling with his coat.

"I meant what I said earlier," she said, tugging at his coat's collar. "Just be yourself, act natural, and don't worry about anything."

He let her fiddle and fuss. Or maybe he just submitted to it, or even enjoyed it? He honestly had no idea. "Look, I already know they're not going to like me."

She hot him a look that reminded him so strongly of his mother that he almost broke. "Well, they should. You're a good guy, and if we were commoners, I'd be sending my father around to your father to tell him that courtship would not be unwelcome."

Zuko hadn't the least idea what any of that meant. He knew, of course, that the common folk courted, but he didn't really…understand it. It was beyond his comprehension, beyond his experience. He had grown up knowing that one day, his father would inform him that a match had been found, he would go to the miai, he would smile and nod and sign the contract, and eventually he would be wed. If he was lucky, he would know her, maybe even grow to like her. If he wasn't lucky, he would spend the rest of his life miserable.

He thought of his mother, and pushed away the knowledge of how horrid an arranged marriage could be.

Unable to think of anything else to say, he just shrugged and adjusted the way his dried-out pack rested on his shoulder. "That's…thank you. That's honestly the nicest thing anyone's ever said to me."

She looked up at him and smiled. "You know? I believe that. What a shame." She made a final few adjustments, stepped back, looked him up and down. "Have enough tobacco?"

He gave his pack a shake. All of the clothes he brought with him were in there, dried out and neatly folded, along with the small handheld portrait of his mother, the medical discharge papers his former commanding officer had forged for him, a purse full of money, and enough pre-rolled cigarettes to last him at least a month. "I think I'll survive. Um…where's my…you know…"

She winked. "Your katana? It's already been moved to the Avatar's air bison. It's wrapped up in your bedroll, well…your new one. Look for the scarlet bedroll, it's wrapped up in that one, if you end up wanting to keep the katana hidden."

He sighed with relief, paused, felt awkward, pushed past it, and gave her a deep, respectful bow. "Thank you, my lady, from the bottom of my heart."

He rose, to see a scene that struck him more speechless than usual. He could've sworn that she had tears in her eyes, but he couldn't be sure, because suddenly she was popping up and kissing him on the cheek, and then she had her back turned to him and the doors were opening and they were going through, her in the lead, him following carefully, correctly, behind.

-0-

Katara saw him before he saw her, which made sense. He had his…eye, she supposed, locked on the King, and the King was dragging things out and their…guide, had obviously received an education in etiquette because he looked straight ahead at the King as the King rambled on and Bosco did some tricks and everyone laughed and she heard none of it because all she could see was him and all she could hear was the roaring of blood in her ears.

All she could smell was the horrid scent of burned flesh and the sharp, metallic odor of spilled blood.

All she could taste was the ash.

All she could see was black snow falling from clouds dark as pitch.

He was handsome, she would give him that. Easily as tall as her brother, if not a little bit taller, broad shoulders, fit, with a hardened but also somewhat cute air about him that even the scar and dead left eye couldn't detract from.

But he held a scarlet woolen cap in his hand and he wore what was obviously a Fire Nation Army-issue winter coat and his skin was pale and his hair – long enough to pulled back into a short, neat ponytail – and his beard were raven black and his eyes, even the dead one, were the shape of almonds and she knew what he was the moment she laid eyes on him.

He was Fire Nation, and for the foreseeable future, she was going to be stuck with him.

Assuming she didn't kill him first.

-0-

He stood before the King and Court of Omashu, presented with honor and prestige, and all he wanted to do was curl into a ball and disappear.

He had seen them when he'd walked in. He had seen the Avatar, a kid caught in that awkward stage between boyhood and manhood, short-cropped brown hair and lack of tattoos showing that he had been locked in his impossible iceberg before he had become old enough to take his vows at one of the Air Nomad temples. The kid whose name he'd been told was Aang had a bright face and an optimistic expression that Zuko instantly liked, even though he knew he shouldn't.

Standing behind the Avatar and to the Avatar's left was a young man with the dark skin and round bright blue eyes of the Water Tribes. He had the sides of his hair shaved and his remaining hair pulled back into what Zuko's far-distant tutors told him was called a wolf-tail in the Water Tribes. He looked about the same age as Zuko, about the same height, and though his face looked concerned as he got a good look at Zuko, there was also a…softness, an openness to him, to his eyes, a strange quirk at the edges of his mouth that told Zuko that this guy would give Zuko a shot, give him a chance.

But it was the woman he would never forget. She was, quite frankly, the most beautiful woman Zuko had ever seen in his entire life. She was tall, at least by the standards of the women of the Earth Kingdom and the Fire Nation, coming up to who he had been told was her brother's shoulders. She had skin just as dark as her brother's, but her eyes were so much deeper, so much richer, as dark and blue as the ocean itself. Her dark, curly brown hair fell back from her brow like a waterfall, all the way down to the small of her back, and she was curvy in a way that would be mocked in the nations of Fire and Earth but that Zuko found almost captivating.

She was also looking at him with a look of pure, utter hatred.

In a strange way, even as he wished for the floor to swallow him whole, Zuko felt almost relieved.

He knew how to react to people who hated him.

So, ladies and gentlemen, I've hinted at it, pulled liberally from it, but I felt now was a good time to share the very first chapter of my current WIP and upcoming project, The Mark of the Banished Prince. Everything, and I mean everything, is still very much up in the air. This is a work that is still very much a work in progress. But...I'm excited for it.

I hope you like this sneak peak at what I've been working on in the background, and I hope you're looking forward to it, too.

And with that...we made it. It's been a wild ride, just as it always has been. Over the next few days, I'm thinking of posting some of the first drafts/first ideas that I've hinted at here and there over the course of the month, if you're interested, along with some other random pieces of this and that that I've left strewn through my Documents folder over the years.

In the meantime, from my family to yours, goodnight, good luck, and Happy New Year!