Zuko had always known in his heart that being the Fire Lord was his destiny. Even back when he had no idea what being a Fire Lord entailed exactly. He had always assumed it would involve leading men into glorious battles or sailing around the world with the wind sweeping his hair. It never ever occurred to him that being Fire Lord on most days meant paperwork. Heeps and mountains of tedious paperwork. Orders to sign off on, petitions to answer, budget plans to approve, infrastructure plans, requisitions, trade deals, laws - it was all on scrolls, first covering the desk of his private study, then slowly invading the shelves, and the floor like an unstoppable flood.

The paper-mountain was more bewildering for the young Fire Lord than the five assassination attempts. After all, he was a trained vigilante himself, moving around silently, matching blade with blade, fire with fire was something he was good at. He was never particularly good with endless piles of paper. At first, after his coronation, he went to his war council with the papers. They were all respected generals, the best strategic masterminds of the Fire Nation. Unfortunately, it turned out the members of his war council were only good at war; none of them were any good at peace. They knew how to attack and take position, secure supply lines, choose strategic targets - they knew nothing about trade, budget or infrastructure.

Zuko then tried to talk to his father, who mostly stared at him menacingly, or spoke poisonous words that made him feel like a worthless child again. In his desperation, he even visited Azula ( after all, she was good at everything ) willing to offer her truce in exchange for her help, but the princess was not in a chatty mood. She set the scrolls he carried with him on fire and burnt through her bounds long enough to send a quick lightning bolt at him. Zuko, after redirecting the lightning, concluded that he had no choice but to deal with the paper mountain himself and read everything trying to understand and solve all the problems from the environmental devastation of the river near Kaipu factory to the many problems of the Fire Nation colonies. It was certainly a crash course in government, one that ended with Zuko collapsing with exhaustion and waking up in Ba Sing Se, in Iroh's tea shop, surrounded by the scent of calming jasmine tea.

There, in their old apartment, sitting cross-legged on the floor, his uncle gently explained to Zuko how to prioritize and delegate. More importantly, after the exhaustion incident, Iroh showed up every few months, with his tea pot and his pai sho table to spend time with Zuko and help him with the paper mountain. On his second visit, he brought along Ryu. She was a strict-looking lady in her fifties vouched for by the White Lotus and as it turned out, she was an excellent paper-bender. A true master of paper-bending. She filtered and organized files, and somehow made sure that Zuko was always on top of the paper-mountain. She guarded his private office like a dragon, ensuring that the Fire Lord saw all the scrolls he needed to see, and more importantly avoided the ones he did not need to see.

So these days, Zuko's study had a somewhat manageable pile of papers. Still, he spent many evenings working late into the night. As he was reading through a particularly detailed document of a new plan to repurpose the old army drills to machines for road construction, Zuko's delicate hearing picked up strange noises coming from outside the door. He hadn't had an assassination attempt in months, but his senses went on high alert immediately. He leapt up, silently sneaking towards the door with his dagger in his hand and threw the door open. He immediately saw the dark figure that had one of the Kyoshi warriors pinned against the wall. Zuko grabbed the man and with a quick motion thrust his blade against his throat.

"No, Zuko!" yelled Suki in distress, and that's when Zuko realized he was staring into a familiar pair of blue eyes. He pulled back his blade and let Sokka go with a relieved sigh.

"Way to greet your guests, your Hotheadedness," Sokka grimaced at him, rubbing his neck with a pained expression.

"Only self-invited guests," grinned Zuko widely "who sneak up to snog my guards while on duty." He was too overjoyed to see his friend to care about protocol, but he never missed an opportunity to poke fun at Sokka and Suki, and the way they somehow felt compelled to continue sneaking around even if the whole world already knew that they were a couple.

"What brings you here, buddy?" He gave Sokka a brief hug.

"I wanted to do some research in the royal library." Sokka replied with a shrug. " Research in the royal library " was obviously code-word for spending time with Suki, but neither of them ever admitted that. Zuko let him keep his pretenses.

"Research on what?" he asked innocently.

"Oh, on this and that, you know." Sokka's voice went an octave high which was a sure sign that he was lying. Zuko just kept staring at him with his eyebrow raised. Sokka's eyes went round at the silent insinuation. "I mean not that. Definitely not that. There's a new island off the coast of the South Pole and it is unclear…"

"Researching the history of an iceberg?" Zuko snorted. "You should come up with a better explanation, Sokka. Come, I need your eyes on something."

Sokka looked back at Suki with a certain regret, but followed Zuko into the study. He plopped down on the chair opposite of Zuko's and put his booted feet on the exquisitely carved red cedar desk. Zuko gave him the scroll with the drill re-purposing plans. Sokka examined the schematics and nodded with appreciation. "Really looks like a good plan. It looks like something that I would come up with. You see the turning bit over here..." Sokka got into a longish explanation of the mechanics of the gizmo, but Zuko's overtired brain just tuned it out. He took the paper, put a royal seal of approval on it and dropped it in the basket that Ryu marked for completed. "That was all?" Sokka asked, anxious to head back to Suki.

Zuko was not going to let him off that easy. "One less paper. It calls for celebration." He rubbed his tired eyes and asked the servants to bring some plum wine. "You need to fill me in what's going on with everyone, I haven't heard from them in ages." Zuko poured a generous helping of the spirit into Sokka's cup and handed it over.

"You met Aang at the annual peace talks like a month ago," Sokka protested but took the cup nevertheless. If Zuko learnt one thing of Water Tribe men, it was that they would never refuse a drink and took it as an affront when someone did. Which left Zuko more than once in excruciating pain. The inevitable after-effects of whale vodka. So pay-back was only fair.

"Well, you know, there is never time for real talk during those awful things," Zuko countered. Both him and Aang hated the peace talks. It was full of insufferable people who always took the opportunity to make the Avatar and the Fire Lord feel like naive kids. He loathed the endless ceremonies, the pomp, the small talk, the stiff dinners. When things got too much, they sometimes climbed on the roof with Aang, just trying to get away from it all for a few minutes. When life was particularly unbearable, they even did the dragon dance under the stars. "Give me the real news..."

Sokka nodded. "Well, have you heard that Toph got into another epic splat with the town council men in Gaoling when one of her students broke into the town treasury and claimed it was a metalbending exam…" and he talked and talked. It was not hard to picture Toph, while older, still tiny and as intimidating as ever, giving a piece of her mind to some town leaders who never knew what hit them. Katara was apparently having her own clashes at the South Pole where she was leading a big reconstruction effort of her tribe. Zuko smiled as he imagined vividly her ocean blue eyes turning stormy as she faced the elders who frowned at her for trying to change the "old ways".

Zuko longed for Team Avatar being together. They all did, but ending the war was just the beginning. They were building a new world, and they all fought the same battle in different scales. The war was not only about armies, the battle-lines were etched people's hearts and souls like a lingering poison.

He turned back to Sokka to refill his cup with some more plum wine, but he was snoring already, his mouth open and his head rolled to the side.

-0-

Sokka woke up with a terrible headache. Damn Zuko and his plum wine, he thought as his memories slowly came back. The bed beside him was empty. He was not sure if Suki spent the night there or if he was merely dreaming it. Rubbing his eyes, he staggered out of his room. The palace was already a bustle of activity; the Fire Nation woke with the first rays of the sun. One of the servants - or as Zuko liked to call them these days: employees - noticed him.

"Would you like a bath, Master Sokka?"

Sokka sniffed himself and decided that a bath was definitely a good idea. He followed the boy to the baths and watched him firebend the water. It was really unfair how the Fire Nation had an endless supply of bathwater-warmers, while in the South Pole where warm baths were a rare luxury, they had to go through the pain of building actual fires and warming water which cooled almost immediately. Sokka sighed happily as he submerged himself in the fragrant, warm water and started to imagine a grand scheme where the Fire Nation would send firebenders to do bathwater-warming duty on the South Pole as war reparations. He would definitely had to suggest it to Zuko some day.

When his fingertips started to look like pickled sea-prunes ( mmm, sea prunes , his stomach grumbled loudly), he got out of the tub and wrapped himself in a fancy red bathrobe. His clothes were taken by the bathwarmer boy who probably found it unfit for the royal palace in terms of odour and cleanliness.

Sokka made his way to the kitchen, where the cook, a plump woman called Yio gave him a big smile and wink.

"Master Sokka, good to see you here again. Your presence always cheers up the palace. Would you like the usual?"

"I could definitely go for those wonderful poached eggs." Sokka learnt fast that flattery went a very long way with the woman. "And something sweet if you have it."

"Of course, dear. I've been preparing steamed tea-dumplings. General Iroh is due for a visit soon," Yio chatted while she filled a giant plate with generous portions of rice, poached eggs, meat, fish and fruit. And of course the dumplings.

Sokka took his plate and wondered around in search of Suki. He found her on the training ground, commanding the Kyoshi warriors and palace guards in what looked like a joint training exercise. Sokka marvelled - and secretly envied - her confidence. She made being in charge look so effortless as if she was doing it her whole life. Well, she actually was doing it her whole life.

Sitting on the sidelines, under the pleasant shade of a cherry tree, Sokka started to work through his enormous breakfast with quiet concentration to the sound of swords, knives and fans. Suki noticed him after a few minutes and called a swift end to the training.

"Look who's up," she kissed him on the cheek and used his lapse in attention to steal a dumpling.

Sokka yawned. "It's the plum wine. And Zuko's incessant talking. It was impossible to get away."

Suki gave him a sceptical look. "Funny. I always thought Zuko was not much of a talker unless you count groans, huff and grimaces as talking… Are you sure he was the one impossible to get away from?"

Sokka shrugged. "Fine. We had things to catch up on. Manly things."

"Right," Suki grinned. "Manly things. You mean gossip."

"No, things man like. You know like swords and ice-fishing and…" Sokka drew a blank on all the supposed manly topics.

"Zuko and ice fishing? I can't imagine that."

Sokka decided change of tactics was a better option. He wiggled his eyebrows suggestively,"Now, I'm imagining other things."

"What things?" she moved closer.

He could have sworn Suki blushed a bit under the layers of makeup.

"Some library research…" he linked his fingers in hers.

Suki laughed. "That's sweet, but I'm working now. I think you have to do library alone."

"That's not nearly as much fun…" sighed Sokka.

"How about - I'll find you during my lunch-break?" Suki suggested.

Sokka pouted and was rewarded with a brisk peck on the lips before she left. He sat with his empty plate somewhat glumly now that his morning plans were destroyed. Luckily he was the plan guy. Which meant he had backup plans. If he couldn't do "library research" in quotation marks, maybe he could do some real library research instead. That would be the perfect way to get back at Zuko for mocking him yesterday.

Feeling better now that new plans were in motion, he made his way over to the Fire Lord's private collection. He pulled out some old scrolls from the royal history section - those often had juicy stories and even juicier illustrations. He loved reading them. Strictly for science, obviously.

Soon, Sokka was so engrossed in a story about the life and deeds of one Princess Miyu and her twin brother Hayao, that he did not notice a shadow creeping up on him. He jumped when something cold touched the back of his neck and let out a most unmanly scream. Suki giggled.

"Does everybody in this place have to be this sneaky?" Sokka huffed.

"Stealth is kind of my thing," Suki smiled and to prove her point, she slid her fingers inside the red silk bathrobe Sokka was still wearing.

"I guess it has it's positive sides," Sokka leaned closer, mollified at her soft touch. As soon as their lips met, a loud coughing disrupted them. They jumped apart immediately like two kids caught stealing pies. One of the guards stood awkwardly in the doorway.

"Suki, we have a situation at the gates."

"What situation?" Suki straightened her uniform surreptitiously. It was already completely straight.

"There is a ... strange... man demanding to see the Fire Lord."

Suki pursed her lips and looked at the guard annoyed. "So? You know the rules on appointments."

"But this person claims he knows personally the Fire Lord and it's a matter of life or death. But… well… it could very well be that he's just completely nuts..." The guard made a gesture that was understood in all four nations as the sign for someone not having their brain screwed in right.

Suki sighed. "I better check this out."

Sokka's curiosity was spiked. "I'll come, too." There had better be a good reason to so rudely interrupt their "lunch break".

The loud voices of an argument could be heard before they even reached the gates. Sokka stared in disbelief at the half-naked man covered in red and white tattoos. Heavy golden earrings hang from his ear-lobes and he wore a hideous pony-tail on his bald head. Not unlike the one, Zuko used to wear back in the old days when he was still bad and chased them around the world.

"Who are you? And how do you know the Fire Lord?" asked Suki.

"Like I'm gonna tell you that," the man said dismissively.

"I know - it's obvious. He knows Zuko because they used to go to the same hairdresser," chuckled Sokka. That was a great joke. He would have to remember to tell it to Zuko.

Suki and the man did not share in the hilarity.

"I'm sorry, but we cannot let you in until you state your business clearly." Suki sounded very official sometime. Sokka liked that about her. Well, he liked pretty much everything about her. Except the make-up. That was rather impractical at times.

"And I'm not going anywhere until I've seen Prince Zuko…" The man crossed his arms across his chest in challenge.

"I told you he's Fire Lord now," one of the guards gruffed.

The guy with the earrings and ponytail ignored the interruption and continued to address Suki. "Many lives hang in the balance and the masters need him."

"Masters?" Suki asked.

"His firebending masters…" the man clarified in a way one would when one states a fact so obvious that all reasonable people in the world would know it.

"You mean General Iroh?" Sokka asked. Maybe something happened to Iroh and this man knew about it? Zuko's uncle sometimes liked to travel with questionable characters.

"No, I mean the masters." Ponytail-guy corrected him pompously. Firebending masters - as in not one. At least two. But more than one. Strange people. Sokka's brain was spinning at full speed, working the problem.

"I know now. You must be from that island Aang and Zuko took a little field trip to, when Zuko lost his..." Sokka cut himself off, realizing that announcing to the world the bit of a rough patch their beloved Fire Lord, Agni Incarnate or whatever nonsense they liked to believe in the Fire nation went through with his bending was maybe not the best idea.

"Lost what?" It was Ponytail-guy's turn to be baffled.

"An... egg?" Sokka offered with a sheepish smile. Suki facepalmed. Damn. Why did he always say egg whenever someone caught him off guard with a question.

"You know about the egg?" Ponytail-guy was seemingly shaken by this. "Nobody can know about the egg."

What was he even talking about? Sokka realized that the conversation was running away from him. The guards stared at them in utter confusion.

He whispered to Suki. "I think we better discuss this in private, with Zuko."

"You think we should let him in?" asked Suki sceptically.

"I think we would want to get to the bottom of this riddle. And I'm your guy, if you need to solve a riddle. My middle name is Mr Riddle."

"You only have one name, Sokka," Suki replied dryly. She turned to the man. "Come with us then."

The man squared his shoulders, puffed out his chest and gestured rudely at the guards. As the trio walked towards the palace, dressed in a full Kyoshi uniform, in a red bathrobe and in next to nothing with lots of tattoos, Sokka could not help thinking: What in the spirits had just happened?