AN: Two years after calling it complete, I summoned this story from the deep abyss and mustered up a sequel. I was in the mood and you asked for it. It was damn depressing, but hey, I had fun. That's all we can ask for, right? It was pretty interesting to see how much my writing has changed over time. Anyway, hope you like it.

If they'd had been any other two people, the matter would have been patched up sometime later that day. But they weren't. They were two teenage boys who saw the ability to tune out emotions as imperative to manhood.

So in the ever continuing battle to out 'pretend that nothing has happened' each other, Sokka had them see an Ember Island original, The Boy in the Iceberg. Everyone left emotionally disturbed.

It's that night when Aang confronted it, on the softer end of the issue. "I think you should go talk to him."

"Talk to who? About what? There's nothing going on." Sokka's nervousness shone through his teeth.

"To Zuko. He's been a little… stand-offish today. I don't think the play helped."

He gives a laugh which is a little bit too high pitched. "It's Zuko; he's always like that."

"I don't think so. He canceled training tomorrow, and I figured he'd have to be dead on his feet before he ever canceled training."

"Pssh, the guy just needs a break. What's the big deal?"

"But it's Zuko." The guy would run himself into the dirt way before he'd ever admit he needed a break. "C'mon Sokka, we all know about the falling out you two had before."

"What! What are you…? Wah…" For such a chippy kid, the airbender had a great deadpan face. Sokka threw his hands up in the air. "It wasn't my fault, okay! I didn't think it was a big deal!"

His nervous heartbeat roared. The idea of confrontation made him anxious, but the idea of Zuko in general made him even more tense. Worse, he felt guilty. He'd made the guy cry and then took him to a play where he watched himself get killed; that wasn't exactly what good friends do. It'd been nice to have a friend his age, and he was terrified that he'd destroyed it all with his big, fat, murder-accusing mouth.

"Whatever happened between you two wasn't anybody's fault, but it isn't going to be solved by ignoring each other." Aang seemed to be able to see right through him. "Sokka, when we go to fight the Firelord we need to be able to be there for each other. That means getting rid of any unnecessary drama." He winced inwardly. "More than there already is."

Sokka never liked unnecessary baggage within the team, like when Toph and Katara fought, or when Katara still held a grudge against Zuko. It slowed them down and usually caught him in the crossfire. Curse the kid for playing into his logical side.

"Ugh. Why do you have to make so much sense?" Between the Avatar status and the wisdom of a lost, 100 year old culture, Aang was wound up like a moral compass. It got a little annoying at times. "But even if I wanted to talk to him, he's probably asleep by now."

"Actually, he's outside burning old pictures." Aang added helpfully.

"He's… um, why?" He was more curious than confused by the idea. Setting fire to family memorabilia just seemed like a Zuko thing to do.

"Dunno. You go out there and ask him for me, I'm going to bed." The airbender said with a cheery smile.

He skipped off down the hall, firebending out the candles as he went, leaving Sokka with the mission of having a heart-to-heart with their little pyro prince. In the dark. Well, there goes putting it off till morning.

Sokka stumbled around blindly towards the door, trying to follow a light in the window that might've been Zuko's portrait pyre. He managed to stub his toe on something on the way. It's an old picture frame, he can't make out the portrait but if Zuko was burning old photos, he wouldn't mind giving toe-stabber as an offering.

Reaching the firelight, Sokka started off with a thoughtful, soul-opening, "Hey."

"Hey."

He wasn't sure if Zuko was surprised to see him. The two hadn't spoken to each other since that evening two days ago, Sokka even skipping dinner once to avoid the confrontation. That alone must have set off alarm bells.

Sokka rocked on the balls of his feet, trying to think of something to say. He liked to pride himself as the smooth-talking idea man of the group but in situations like this, he was as conversational as a dead spider-mouse. "So... couldn't sleep either?"

Zuko gave a wry laugh. "I didn't even try."

"Yeah." Black bags hung under his eyes and Sokka couldn't help but feel guilty. Seeing yourself burn on stage would probably keep him up at night, too. "That was… a bad play."

"It was a good reminder. I've spent so long worried about everything I did wrong in the past, when it's really the future I should be more worried about."

Zuko sighed, the fire dipping down to a glow so Sokka could make out the half charred portraits it used as fuel. He saw Ozai scorched black, a younger but still sinister Azula, and a woman who might've been Zuko's mother. In Sokka's own hands was the portrait he'd found in the dark, a painting of the Firelord standing with his hand on his firstborn son's shoulder. He looked across to the firebender and tried to convince himself that the scarless, smiling kid in the portrait was the same person.

The thought made a knot in his stomach. It was easier to pretend that Zuko had always been like he was, scarred and aloof and quick to temper, than to try and comprehend that he'd once been the innocent kid in that picture.

The fire rose up again. Sokka crumpled to the ground and sat beside it.

"Look, Zuko, I'm really sorry about before. I shouldn't have tried to dig up the past when I knew you didn't want me to, and I really shouldn't have accused you of being all those things. I just didn't know it would make you so..." He bit off the sentence; there was no need to make excuses. He tried for a deprecating laugh. "I'm more curious than what's good for me."

He turned to face Zuko, hoping at best for a look of forgiveness and at worst an unreadable stare at the fire. Sokka didn't expect forgiveness that quickly, but Zuko had never been one to hold a grudge. He got neither.

Zuko's eyes were wide, shining with a playful, crazed light. "Are you still curious?"

The question washed away any relief Sokka had felt from his confession.

"What do you mean?" The outright answer was yes, he was still curious, no matter how insensitive he knew it was. He'd made his friend breakdown in broad daylight and he still had the nerve to wonder what he didn't tell him.

I spoke up when I shouldn't have and wouldn't fight when I was told. He couldn't help but try to decipher what that meant and he'd be lying if he said the prospect of hearing the answer didn't excite him.

"The past is in the past." Zuko continued, tone somber. "I overreacted. Besides, after all you guys have done for me, you deserve to hear the story. From me."

His eyes kept glinting mischievously, as if reassuring him that nothing was awry. But then he saw how the fire glowed yellow and lashed out in scared, haphazard angles. He saw how Zuko's shoulders drooped under some unknown weight, and Sokka knew that behind that gaze, Zuko was terrified.

He remembered the tremble in Zuko's voice two days ago, a tremble that hadn't been there when he faced the Avatar or when he was captured at the Boiling Rock or when he'd faced Azula alone on top an airship, a thousand feet from the ground.

"Zuko, you don't have to tell me if you don't want to."

It felt reckless, like they were about to cross a chasm on a rope bridge that might not take their weight. The firebender was too headstrong to be dissuaded. He gave only a moment of pause, before he walked off onto the bridge.

"We can't change the past." Zuko held a hand up to his scar, talking more to himself than anything, and Sokka's curiosity was beginning to churn into a pit in his stomach. "And besides, it's just a story."

Sokka hated the irony of that idea. Maybe told around a campfire it was just a story, but this was Zuko's life, his memory. Zuko knew that of course, but perhaps calling it a story was a small comfort.

"I spoke up when I shouldn't have and wouldn't fight when I was told." He quoted. "That really is what happened, without all the cause and effect. And you were right about one thing: it was the Firelord."

The fire had gone back to a warm orange and Zuko's gaze began to grow far away. He didn't seem to know where to begin. "I was 13. It wasn't exactly the best time in my life. I was never the best firebender, never enough for Ozai at least, and after my mother… disappeared… things didn't get any better."

"But we already knew all that." Sokka tried to keep the mood light, but the humor sounded dry in his ears.

"Right. So by then, I was getting more and more reckless to try and prove myself."

Sokka understood that. Being the son of leader was a source of great pride for him, but it also meant that he spent a good portion of his life trying to escape his father's shadow. It was especially tolling when you had a miracle sister around, something that the two boys shared. Except, when Sokka had tried to prove himself to his father, Hakoda had given him a pat on the back and told him he had already proven himself. Looking at where Zuko was, that likely was not how his father had reacted.

"That day, I went into a war meeting that I shouldn't have been in and that I definitely shouldn't have been saying anything in. But I was 13, and I could never have imagined…"

Zuko's eyes were lost somewhere long in the past.

A private war meeting. The Firelord. Speaking up. Things started to click into place.

"So you spoke up when you shouldn't have." Sokka tried to coax him back, quoting the words he had said earlier.

"Against a general." Zuko swallowed hard, his sentences coming out shorter and leaving him out of breath. "He had this horrible plan… to sacrifice an entire division of new recruits. I was so sure I was in the right, that I would… impress him by calling out something so wrong, but…" Zuko just shook his head. "The Firelord said speaking up was an act of disrespect. The only way to resolve it was an Agni Kai."

"That wouldn't be Fire Nation jargon for 'talk it over', would it?"

Zuko smiled without humor. "Fire duel."

Sokka's mouth went dry. "That works, too."

"Even when he said it, I wasn't afraid. I was 13 and I was naive and…" Up till then, Sokka had been picking up on untold cues to try and wrap his head around what was being said: how Zuko kept repeating he was 13, or the fact that he'd never once called Ozai 'father'. Now he didn't need to, because Zuko's neck was bent low and a tremble was growing in his voice. "I thought… I thought I was fighting the general."

His words from earlier echoed in Sokka's ears. You were right about one thing...

Suddenly, the rope bridge they were crossing snapped, and Sokka threw himself onto the other side of the chasm, hard. The energy was knocked out of him. Any thoughts of humor or keeping things light spiralled into the abyss.

"Why would he… why?"

"I'd spoken out in his war room, against his general. He was the one I had gone against."

"No, that's not what I meant. Why would your own father challange you in the first place?" Sokka looked back at the portrait in his hands and images flashed in his eyes, of the hand that lay so innocently on his son's shoulder rising up, covering the boy's face and then… "Nevermind. There's nothing to understand about that."

Zuko sat there, shoulders hunched, the orange glow of the fire cast over him, as if he hadn't heard a word he'd said.

"I didn't fight back."

Sokka wished he'd told it to someone else, someone who could actually be of some comfort. To Katara who always knew how to traverse the maze that was emotion, to Aang who understood sacrifice and about leaving the past to the past, even Toph who would've sat there and given him some semblance of strength as he went on. Instead he came to him, the guy who'd prodded the story out of him and couldn't do anything but stare at the fire when he was done. He caught sight of a face in the flames and it was all he could do not to retch.

Any facade of storytelling had crumbled away.

"I woke up on my ship a few days after. My uncle told me that I'd been banished and the only way I could come home is if I captured the Avatar." He sighed. "He never really wanted me to come back, but I think you know that I took that chance to heart."

Zuko smiled as if making a quip at his old Avatar chasing days, but knowing that it was his desperate want to go home that had lit a fire under his feet made the idea less than comical.

Sokka shook his head, too tired to feel anything but disgust, and a deep, deep sadness. "No offense, Zuko, but… why did you even want to go back?"

His smile stayed, but it shared the same sorrow. "It was home… it was all I ever knew. I thought if I just kept trying harder… maybe it would want me back, too."

Silence followed, but the descript beach house and the paintings burning in front of them felt too loud an answer.

Sokka caught a glance of Ozai's burning eyes in the pyre. The past is in the past. He was beginning to understand why Zuko wanted to burn that history. Perhaps it wasn't the healthiest way to express it, but it was Zuko's way, and Sokka wasn't about to stop him.

He dug into his pockets, searching for something.

"Here, I found these." Passed across the fire were the wanted posters and the portrait Sokka had found. "Do what you want with them."

Zuko stared at the first sheet, the one from three years ago that had ripped in half. He smiled again, the sadness still there but not as raw. It was the sorrow of someone who had suffered, but could now look back from a better place.

"This was the best thing he could've done for me. It got me away from him." He laid the paper at his side, as if he planned on keeping it. "It's a little ironic that it took this many wanted posters before I finally realized that my father never wanted me."

"You've got a thick skull." Sokka joked. "But Ozai's got one worse if he never wanted you."

"Oh, he wants me. Dead or alive."

Sokka laughed, despair giving way to a new, unwithheld respect. An honor, you might say. "I think I speak for all of us when I say you're wanted here, Zuko, very much alive."

A lost look came over Zuko's eyes before turning into silent thanks. Sokka guessed that he hadn't heard that much of his life. Zuko reached the final item in his hand: the portrait of him and his father. He stared, eyes unreadable.

"Looks like I missed one." Is all he said before the frame turned to cinder in his hands.

That was about as healthy an expression of emotions as he was ever going to get.