Chapter Text
(i)
His uncle is hurt.
Uncle Iroh has been burned by Azula, an almost deadly blast of blue flames that could have stopped his heart. She had gotten away afterwards and Zuko hadn’t even cared. All he had cared about was his uncle, on the ground, possibly dying.
For hours after the Avatar and his friends left, Zuko cursed himself for yelling at the waterbending girl. He hates that he turned her away when he knows she can heal, when she could have helped his uncle. At the time, he had been terrified that she would do something awful, that she would let Uncle slip away without caring—but he knows better. She had been genuine in her offer, and he had driven them away with flames and screaming.
After that, he could only pray to Agni that his own meager abilities would be enough to save his uncle. Forget the Avatar, forget the waterbending girl that he had turned away, and forget his sister—
(who tried to kill him)
(who would have killed him if not for his uncle)
—Just focus on Uncle. It’s been a long time since he left his uncle in that cave, since he took the ostrich-horse that he had stolen and rode off. He realizes now that his uncle must have been following him the entire time, watching him make a fool of himself in his desperate travels.
He wonders vaguely, as he wraps bandages around the newly washed-out wound, if his uncle had been in the crowd when he had fought the crooked Earth Kingdom soldiers. He wonders what his uncle had thought about his actions if he had.
(he’s too afraid to ask)
Uncle will wake up soon, and he doesn’t know what to do. His whole being rebels at the thought of apologizing—he had needed to leave; he couldn’t keep traveling with his uncle. But things have changed again, and now that he’s seen his uncle’s face, he doesn’t think he could bring himself to walk away a second time.
Instead, he busies himself by starting a small fire, using some sticks to prop the teapot he had found in his uncle’s things. He pours the water from his own pack into the pot. There’s a stream near enough that he isn’t afraid of wasting the water.
It almost took nearly dying of dehydration once for him to start making sure that he always knew where to find the nearest water source.
Really, he doesn’t have the least idea as to how to properly make a pot of tea. Zuko has seen it done a million times before, both on the Wani and on the road, but he’s never made tea himself. He’s never felt the need or desire to learn.
Still, it can’t be that hard.
He grabs a handful of leaves and puts them in the water in the pot. He doesn’t know how many he should add, but it’s probably fine. The water is still cool, and he frowns into the pot, wondering if maybe he should have waited before he had added the leaves. Oh well, it’s too late now.
Soon enough, the water is boiling heavily, and he pulls the pot off of the heat about a few minutes before his uncle shifts. The tea looks to be about the right color, albeit a little darker than it usually is when Uncle makes the tea.
Zuko pours Uncle a cup as he wakes up, hoping that he’s done it right.
He can tell by the expression on his uncle’s face that it’s bad. He can taste how bitter it is, although Zuko doesn’t know if that’s a bad thing when half the time tea is kind of bitter. It’s just hot leaf juice, and that’s what he’s made.
Bracing , his uncle describes it.
Another failure , Zuko hears.
(ii)
The people in the Upper Ring are worse than those in the Lower Ring. The Lower Ring may have been full of seedy characters, of people who wanted to skip out on their bill, and low-quality teas that drove his uncle insane, but at least the people there made sense .
Zuko is never going to understand what caused rich Upper Ring ladies to walk into the Jasmine Dragon and act like they own the place. Half of them don’t even know anything about tea. It’s all a status show for them—one that drives Zuko up the wall. He can’t remember acting like this when he lived in the palace. Maybe a little self-centered, sure, but he wasn’t as much of a jerk as these people are.
He thinks. Hopes.
God, if he ever goes back home, he’ll be sure to change his behavior. Customers are awful .
“You there, boy.”
Speaking of.
Zuko turns to the woman who had called out to him, plastering on his best smile. It’s still not a very good one, but he’s working on it. “Yes ma’am? How may I help you?”
“I ordered my tea a while ago, and it’s not here yet. Where is it?”
Zuko blinks. He had set the water on the fire just a few seconds ago, and then walked back out to check and make sure that no one else needed assistance. The water was still cold.
“I’m sorry, ma’am,” he forces out. “The water hasn’t heated sufficiently to steep the tea, yet. I will bring it out as soon as it is ready.”
The woman frowns. Her lips are painted a bright pink that clashes with the light green of her outfit. “Well then, why don’t you keep water ready at all times? It’s bad service to keep someone waiting for their order.”
Zuko counts to three. “Because to make tea properly, water shouldn’t be kept at a constant boil. Our tea is the finest quality, and that requires steps that must be taken upon receiving a customer’s order.”
“Are you trying to tell me that I don’t know anything about tea?” She looks like she’s sucking on a lemon, now.
This time, Zuko counts to seven. “No. Just that we have a specific process that must be followed.”
“Well then, maybe you should change that process.”
At this point, Zuko is forced to take deep breaths and count to ten. The lamp nearest to him flickers dangerously, and he takes a moment to remind himself how badly he needs to reign in his temper. “Alright. I will keep your words in mind. I’ll go fetch your tea, now.”
The water isn’t hot enough. The tea she ordered is going to be too weak, but she clearly doesn’t know anything about the drink, anyway.
She prattles on about how she’s finally getting her tea and how she hopes she’ll never have to wait so long here, or she’ll take her business elsewhere. Frankly, Zuko hopes that she does. Then he’ll at least be less likely to expose himself due to sheer rage.
Zuko serves the overly weak tea to the woman as-is and refuses to meet Uncle’s eyes for the rest of the day.
(iii)
He comes up with the idea to brew tea for everyone when he finds the roll of leaves in his pack after he returns with Sokka.
When he had packed to leave the palace, he had known that he could only take the absolute necessities. He had only grabbed clothing, whatever food he could hide that he knew would last longer than a few days, and his weapons. And then he had seen his uncle’s teapot. The one he had brought with him from Ba Sing Se, which had traveled through almost the entire Earth Kingdom.
He hadn’t been able to leave it behind. He kept the tea leaves wrapped safely inside the pot, and the small cups rolled up in a cloth so that they didn’t clack against each other too hard. They were already chipped; they didn’t need to break any more.
The tea pot had been a stupid thing to bring with him, he knew. It was kind of heavy to carry, and it definitely wasn’t necessary to teach the Avatar firebending. But as soon as he had seen it, he’d known that he couldn’t leave it behind.
So he takes the teapot and the cups out to the fire, where Katara is cooking dinner. He doesn’t want to interrupt her, so he grabs some kindling and larger sticks from the pile that lies next to their large fire, and clears out an area thirty feet away or so, where he figures he’ll be out of the way.
“And just what do you think you’re doing with that wood?” Katara interrupts as he arranges the smallest sticks in the clear patch of dirt that he’s made.
Zuko looks up to see her standing over him, hands on her hips. “Just making a small fire here,” he says quietly. “I want to make some tea, and I didn’t want to interrupt dinner.”
“Hmmm,” she says. She’s clearly trying to figure out if he’s lying, or if he’s somehow planning on using the fire in some nefarious way, but he’s not. He forces himself not to get angry, taking deep breaths to keep himself calm. She’s not worse than any customer he faced in the Upper Ring.
Finally, she shrugs, and goes back to dinner. He’s free to finish making the tea, he supposes.
He finishes arranging the kindling and the sticks that will make up his little fire, then goes back to the larger fire to borrow the spark rocks.
“Spark rocks?” Sokka chimes in from where he sits nearby, determined to be the first person to get food as soon as it’s ready. Toph is leaning next to him. She looks asleep, but Zuko can guess by the way that she’s holding herself that she’s listening. “What do you need those for? You’re a firebender.”
Zuko pauses, then reddens slightly. “I haven’t started a fire for tea without spark rocks in a long time,” he admits. “When I worked in Ba Sing Se, I always used them. I guess it was just habit to find them.”
Sokka looks torn between laughing at him and complete confusion. “Why would you do that?”
“Because I couldn’t firebend when I needed to hide in the Earth Kingdom?”
“Oh.”
“Yeah, but you can use firebending now, can’t you?” Toph says.
“I guess,” Zuko says. “But I think I’d rather use the spark rocks. It reminds me of my uncle.”
No one has anything to say to that.
Soon, the larger pot is sitting above the fire, filled with water and slowly heating up. The teapot already has leaves inside, carefully measured to suit the size of the pot and the type of tea. Zuko smiles to himself as he realizes how easily he goes through the motions now, after so long spent working at the Jasmine Dragon and that little shop in the Lower Ring that he hated so much.
He frowns as he sets out his cups. There are only two of them, and last Zuko counted, there were at least nine of them. Ten, maybe?
“Toph?” He calls out.
Toph groans loudly, pushing herself to her feet and trudging over. “What do you need, Sparky?”
Zuko frowns. “You didn’t have to come over here if you didn’t want to.”
“Well, I wanted to,” she says. “I just like making a big deal out of it. What’s going on?”
“I don’t have enough cups,” he explains. “I was wondering if maybe you could—”
Before he even finishes the sentence, Toph stomps on the ground. Several fist-sized rocks dislodge from near her foot, and she sits in front of them. One by one, she molds the rocks into small teacups, almost exactly the same size and shape as the two he already owns. They’re a little roughly shaped, clearly made for function rather than looks, but Zuko doesn’t need them to be pretty. Function is good enough for him.
“A multitude of teacups, courtesy of the best earthbender in the world,” Toph says, spreading her arms wide when she finishes. “Maybe I should start a business!”
“If you could pay someone to decorate them, you probably could,” Zuko comments. He picks one of them up. They’ll work perfectly. “I’m going to go wash these while the water finishes heating.”
By the time he returns with clean teacups, the water is hot enough to be simmering. He watches it carefully after that, making sure that it doesn’t get too hot before he takes the large pot off the fire and pours the water over the waiting tea leaves. He lets them steep, the heat of the water slowly releasing the flavor of the leaves.
After a few minutes, he pours the tea into half of the waiting cups. He sets the water back on the fire, bringing it back up to the necessary simmer while he discards the used tea leaves and adds new ones to the small pot. Normally, he would reuse the leaves. This time, he wants to make the tea as properly as he can for the Avatar’s group.
(as properly as he can for aang’s group, he reminds himself)
He isn’t part of them, he knows. But his uncle has always said that tea brings people together in a way that not anything else can. So he’s at least going to make sure that his tea gives him a good chance.
Soon, all of the cups has tea, and he reheats the ones who had cooled slightly with his bending—it’s cheating a little, but as long as there aren’t any leaves in the cups to burn, it shouldn’t hurt the flavor of the tea.
He sets all of the cups on a tray that Toph bends for him. It makes it heavy to carry, but no heavier than the multiple pots of tea that he used to carry when the shop was full.
He passes them out, one by one, to the people sitting around the fire. Food is ready, so everyone is around. Only Katara refuses to take one, so he leaves the tray with the remaining cup near her, in case she changes her mind.
He’s not thanked by anyone for his work, but when he settles down near the fire with his food—he can’t resist the warmth—the people around him drink their tea, and he feels good.
He thinks he’ll do this again soon.
(iv)
Zuko is stressed out. He’s so stressed out.
He’s ready to rip his hair out every time he speaks to the current Minister of Agriculture, trying to convince him that setting up a process of agricultural trade with the nearby Earth Kingdom cities would improve the lives of the Fire Nation and relations with the Earth Kingdom.
Honestly, Zuko wants to start trade with the Northern Water Tribe as well. But he’s got to get people interested in it at all before he can argue for more remote locations.
Now he’s in his study, pacing back and forth as he tries to come up with a way to get it through the Minister of Agriculture’s thick skull that the Fire Nation needs to start interacting with other countries before they get too isolated.
Agni, he needs a cup of tea.
At that thought, he freezes. He’s becoming like Uncle.
But tea is calming, and he can hear Uncle’s voice in his head recommending a nice, calming cup of jasmine tea. He turns to his shelves, where his old, chipped pot sits. The servants hate that he keeps it displayed, but he needs it there. The reminder of everything he went through in the Earth Kingdom, with his uncle and with Aang and the others. The two original teacups sit nearby the pot. One is horribly cracked, but it still holds tea, so he keeps it.
Honestly, half the reason he wants to make tea is because he knows that he can at least make it properly. He just wants to do something himself that he knows he can do successfully. Agni knows that he has no clue how to be a successful Fire Lord.
He doesn’t have any tea here, so he has to go down to the kitchens to find some leaves. He could have it sent up, but honestly, he doesn’t want to talk to anyone right now. He asks his guard to have jasmine tea leaves sent up to him. Yes, just the leaves, thank you. Don’t steep them, he doesn’t need a tea pot either. Just leaves. Jasmine tea leaves. And a pitcher of water. Room temperature is fine.
When the guard is done clarifying his confusion of Zuko’s request, Zuko returns to his study and pulls his old, weathered teapot off the shelf. Really, he should heat the water in a kettle, and then pour that water over leaves in the pot. But when times were the worst, he couldn’t afford to carry both a kettle and a teapot.
He’s going to do this the way he did it with his uncle. The way he first learned when times were the hardest.
The servant girl arrives soon afterwards. She’s young, small enough that Zuko wonders if she’s actually old enough to be working. He grimaces to himself, knowing that if he draws attention to it, he’ll either end up insulting her or, worse, get her into trouble. He stays quiet.
The girl brings a tray of tea leaves with an accompanying pitcher of water to his desk and sets it down. She eyes the old pot waiting on the table, looking a little bit lost.
“Would you like me to make your tea with that, my lord?” she asks, clearly nervous.
Zuko pinches the bridge of his nose to stop himself from shouting that he just wants to make his own tea, please. He’d probably scare the poor girl. “No,” he says instead, voice level. “I’ll make my own tea.”
“Would you like me to bring you a better pot, my lord?”
“Absolutely not.”
The girl takes a step back at the vehemence in his tone, eyes widening. “I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to offend—”
Zuko sighs and picks up the pitcher of water. There’s already a pot hook ready for him to hang his pot over the fire, since he takes tea in his study so often. He pours the water into his little pot and places it over the fire.
He turns around to see the girl still standing there. She looks at a loss, like she doesn’t know what to do now that she’s been told that he doesn’t need a new pot. He frowns at her, and she shrinks into herself a bit more. A moment later, she takes a breath and stands up a little straighter again.
“Is there anything else that you need then, my lord?” she asks.
Zuko starts to say nothing, then pauses. “Your name?”
“My name?”
“What is it?”
Her confusion is poorly disguised as she answers. “Minji, sir.”
“Well, Minji, would you like to have a cup of tea with me?” Zuko isn’t sure what possesses him to ask the question. He had wanted to be alone, not to talk to young serving girls that are nervous around him. But now that the words are out of his mouth, he realizes that he does want to drink tea with the girl. Maybe to show her that he’s not scary, or perhaps—just maybe—because he doesn’t want to drink tea on his own.
(sharing tea with a fascinating stranger is one of life’s true delights, his uncle has always said)
Thankfully, the girl doesn’t argue with him. Instead, she nods her head slowly, and sits down on the pillow in front of the low table near the fireplace.
Zuko finds himself talking as he monitors the heat of the water and makes the tea. “My uncle was the one who taught me how to make tea,” he tells Minji. “General Iroh, you probably learned of him as. He’d much rather be known as Tea Master Iroh, I’m sure. He loves nothing more than drinking tea with whoever is willing to sit with him.”
The water is simmering, so he takes it off the heat. He adds the proper amount of tea leaves—or as close as he can gauge with his eyes; he was never quite as good as his uncle as measuring without utensils—and leaves the leaves to steep for a minute or two. Minji watches his actions with wide eyes, curious. Zuko wonders if she’s been taught how to brew tea before in the kitchens.
“He owns a tea shop in Ba Sing Se, now. I think he likes it there, serving tea to the people, giving back to the community that he once took so much from. He’d probably say he told me so if he could see me now, making tea by myself after I spent so long hating it.”
He pours the tea into the two chipped cups and lifts it towards the girl who sits across from him. She takes the cup carefully and blows lightly at the liquid before she takes a sip of it. It’s still very hot, but she smiles at the taste.
“This is good. It’s almost sweet,” she says, enthusiastic. “All the tea that I’ve ever had before has just tasted bitter.”
Zuko takes a sip of his own tea. He doesn’t blow on it; his uncle has taught him that it is horrible manners to blow on hot liquids, so he just takes a small sip. It’s not his best cup, but it’s also not terrible. “Jasmine is sweeter than a lot of green teas more commonly found in family households.”
“I like this a lot,” Minji says.
Zuko is surprised to find himself smiling.
(he rarely smiles now; there’s still too much wrong to smile)
“Thank you,” he says. “Next time I need to share a cup of jasmine tea with someone, I’ll be sure to send for you.”
She sets down her cup in order to bow, formal, her hands coming together as she inclines her head. “I would be honored,” she says, grinning widely in return.
Zuko drinks his tea with a fascinating stranger, and he thinks that his uncle would be proud.
(v)
His uncle pulls him away from his katas to sit with him. For tea, Uncle says. Zuko complies because the bandages haven’t yet come off, and Zuko still feels guilty for leaving his uncle alone for weeks with barely a goodbye.
Not that he’s said he feels guilty. He probably never will.
“What is it?” he asks, wishing he could get back to his exercises.
His uncle holds up the pot that he uses to make his tea. “I would like for you to learn how to make tea properly .” He emphasizes the word properly enough for Zuko’s face to burn in shame when he remembers how badly his first and only pot of tea went. “No nephew of mine should live life without knowing how to make a proper pot of tea.”
Zuko pushes to his feet, still flushed. “I don’t need to learn to make tea,” he growls. “I’m going back to my firebending forms.”
“No, Prince Zuko,” Iroh says, calling him prince as he always has like the title still means anything. “You cannot spend all of your time training your body and your bending. You must sometimes turn your mind elsewhere, to expand your skills and learn more than what you think is necessary to achieve your goals.”
Zuko sits back down, realizing that he’s not going to get anywhere by arguing. “All right.”
Iroh smiles, looking satisfied. “Finally,” he says. “The opportunity to teach my nephew about the noble art of tea brewing. I have waited long enough for this moment. Listen closely.”
Iroh talks for a long time and at length. Zuko struggles to pay attention, to take in everything his uncle tells him while watching what he does to the water, the pot, and the leaves. The steps don’t seem that hard—it’s just heating up water with leaves in it, but at the same time, his uncle makes it sound like making tea is much more than that.
It doesn’t take very long for Zuko to lose his temper when it’s his own turn to make the tea.
“I’ll never need to know how to do this!” Zuko exclaims, frustrated. So much of it is guesswork, intuition, and minute detail that he doesn’t have the patience to pay attention to. He doesn’t even like tea that much. “Why are you making me do this?”
“You never know when a good cup of tea could be just what you need, and I might not always be around to make one for you,” Uncle responds, watching as Zuko’s anger makes the flames under the pot jump higher.
“This is ridiculous.”
Uncle just smiles and patiently directs him until the tea is done.
It’s too bitter, the water growing too hot under Zuko’s frustration and causing the tea to release bitter flavor rather than sweet. Even Zuko knows how bad it is. But Uncle drinks the whole pot with him, tells him where he went wrong, and lets Zuko know that he will try again tomorrow.