Chapter Text
Back when Zuko was younger, when everything was clear and the world was how it should be, the city of Ba Sing Se was just a concept to him. He knew it had to be real, because Uncle and Lu Ten had to be off somewhere, but, like the war as a whole, it was very vague—he only heard about it in stories. It didn’t have much impact on him otherwise.
He thought it must be a great city, if it had kept Uncle occupied this long—Uncle was a legend in his own right, he was a Dragon, so if he was having this much trouble conquering it, it must have been something.
Later, after Lu Ten died and Uncle came home, Zuko thought it must be a horrible city, if it could take away a person like his cousin and break a man like Uncle. Even later, after his father ruins him and the world turns upside down, Zuko doesn’t know what to think about it.
Now, with a bounty on their head and Azula after them and Jet looking at him like he understands, Zuko thinks that this city is going to kill him.
They manage to get through security quick enough (it’s incredible, Zuko thinks, that no one recognizes them—Uncle almost conquered the city less than a decade ago, and Zuko’s scar isn’t exactly unrecognizable—and it’s almost laughable how easily two members of the actual royal family can slip into the impenetrable city), and Uncle manages to nab an apartment in the middle of the lower ring. It’s a tiny thing, smaller than the damn courtyard back home, and it takes the better part of a day to sweep all the dust off the floor and get the sink working. Zuko hates it.
Uncle also manages to get them a job—at a tea shop, of course, and Zuko shouldn’t be surprised. He isn’t, not really. If Uncle had to do one job for the rest of his life, it would definitely involve tea in some way. It’s kind of comforting to know that some things never change, even if places and names do. It doesn’t mean he has to like it, though.
And he doesn’t like it—the shop is tiny, too, and the aprons are stiff and ridiculous and the owner stared at his scar too long and gave him some kind of look that was way too close to pity before he hired them, and Zuko doesn’t even know how to make tea (well, he knows how to in theory, because when Uncle came home from the war he was very sad and very fragile the first few months, and he would give Zuko step by step instructions with shaky hands and Zuko never had the heart to turn him down, because these things seemed really important to him—but he’s still just not very good at it).
Uncle says they should be grateful they found a job so quickly, but Zuko can’t feel grateful when it’s just one more step into disappearing.
That’s what they’re doing: they’re disappearing. They have new names and new clothes a new roof over their heads; they have a job where they work and make money to keep their tiny hut of a house, and they don’t know anyone here and this city is going to kill him. This city is going to make him disappear—and he doesn’t wanna disappear, he wants to go home, but he can’t go home because Father doesn’t want him to come home, Father wants him locked up and out of the way. And besides, ‘this is our home, now’ Uncle says, ‘this is a chance to start over, make a new life,’ and Zuko doesn’t want to make a new life, he doesn’t want to make a life here in this overcrowded city that’s going to kill him, but there’s nowhere else to go that their own nation won’t find them, so he has to.
He can’t bend here, doesn’t know when he’ll ever be able to bend again, and he never knew it would bother him so much to be disconnected from his element, but he feels like he’s burning up half the time. The other half, he feels like whatever fire’s been keeping him going this long has gone out. This city is going to kill him.
Jet shows up at the end of the first week.
Zuko thinks he probably should have expected him, even if he didn’t want to. It was hard to look at Jet, and hard to talk to him. Every time he did, he thought about the things Jet had said to him on the ferry, and when they got off the ferry, and the things he had assumed, and things he had promised, and the way he had looked at him—like he understood, like he could ever understand.
“I take after my mother.” he had said, voice pitched low and sympathetic, “I assume you don’t much take after yours, though, huh?”
And in theory, in theory, he knew what war left behind, the kinds of things that soldiers, no matter the Nation, could do in the heat of battle. But he had never thought about—about that. About kids who weren’t quite Fire and weren’t quite Earth, and what exactly would have had to happen for those kids to exist. To have it thrown in his face like that was—a lot.
And when Jet said, “You don’t have to be ashamed of it, trust me. You aren’t alone in this,” and Zuko really thought about what it implied, and what it implied about him, he—it was hard to breathe, and he hurried away too quick. He tried not to think about it as running away.
It was weird, having someone look at him like that, having someone trust him so easy like that. He hadn’t been offered that much in a long time. For a very very small moment, he wanted to accept. But then he remembered who he was—who he is, who he still is—and knew he couldn’t.
Jet shows up anyways.
“I thought I told you no,” Zuko says, irritated, and Jet just shrugs.
“I’m just here for some tea,” he says innocently, “Job hunting isn’t easy, y’know.”
“If you didn’t sit around drinking tea, maybe you’d find one faster.”
He laughs at that, like Zuko had made a joke, and says, “Probably. But word on the street is your uncle’s a regular tea makin’ master.”
Zuko snorts, “Don’t tell him, it’ll just go to his head.”
Jet laughs again, rolling his toothpick (?) between his teeth, and Zuko ignores the voice that tells him it’s a pretty nice laugh.
He shows up again a few days later.
“It really is great tea,” he says in explanation, “Plus, I really think the apron’s a good look for you.”
Zuko tells him to hurry up and get a damn job.