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It's a perfectly ordinary day when it happens. They're at the tail end of autumn, and the rest of Team Avatar have taken advantage of the cooling weather to come and visit Zuko in the palace; at Suki's behest, he promises to take them on a tour, so that they can know all the places where danger can lurk. It's boring, but still nice to walk with everyone.
They fall back into a familiar rhythm quick enough: Aang and Katara admire the decor, Sokka complains about the number of hallways, Zuko snappishly informs him that the excessive hallways are intentional because they make it easier for assassins to get lost, and then everyone gets weird about the fact that the palace was built with assassination in mind. Then Toph inevitably breaks some priceless Fire Nation statue and everything repeats itself. It's soothing, until they get to the south wing and Toph stops in her tracks, tilting her head like a bird.
"What's down there?" she asks, pointing a finger down the hall. Zuko cuts off halfway through his explanation of the palace's various escape routes to squint in the direction she's pointing.
"Uh," he says. "More hallway?"
"No, moron," she says. "The room. There's a room down there with a big block of stone in the middle of it."
"Huh," Zuko says, furrowing his brow. "I...don't know, actually."
"You don't know?"
"I haven't been back here that long!" Zuko defends. "It's all the way out here anyway, so it's probably not even important. I bet it's just some altar to Agni or something."
"I bet you're wrong," Toph snarks, and goes off down the hall to throw open a set of double doors that Zuko doesn't remember. The other members of the gang give Zuko curious looks, but he just throws up his hands.
"Wait for me!" Aang calls, darting after Toph as she disappears between the doors. The rest of them follow suit, with Zuko racking his brain to think of what rooms are out here. Katara goes in next; Zuko can hear her footsteps echoing a bit, so the room must be big. He grabs the door before it can swing shut again, heaving it open to see—
Oh.
Oh. Now he remembers.
Next to him, Sokka is whistling appreciatively, and Suki's making some kind of dry comment, but Zuko just stares. He stares at the stage, long and narrow with nowhere to run; he stares at the high walls and open ceiling, designed to let large blasts of fire shoot out into the sky; he stares at the bronze sconces, which have evidently stood empty for years. He watches as Aang darts up on a gust of air to peer out over the walls, and as Toph raps her knuckles against the side of the stage. They're all wandering around, guessing as to what this place could be used for, and they're all wrong.
It's funny: Zuko had forgotten that this room existed. He knew that it did, of course, just logically—but to his mind, it didn't exist here. It wasn't part of the palace. It was another world, another space, neatly separated from everything else. It was the place where his life was split into before and after. He'd never seen it before that day, and he's never seen it since. Even now, it feels surreal, like it's impossible that he could step back through the door and return to life unchanged.
It's bigger than he remembers it being. Maybe because, back then, it had felt like the entire world had shrunk to just that stage. That stage, the one right there, rectangular and made of stone and spanning nearly the entire length of the room. Zuko approaches it, feeling half-dazed. Which end had he knelt on? He doesn't remember. He knows the sun had been behind his—behind Ozai, and the duel had happened past midday, so he must've been facing west.
There are more details that he doesn't remember. There are seats—he didn't recall seats. Everyone he cared about had been standing in the front row, but really, it only makes sense. The entire court had been ordered to attend; most of them would've needed somewhere to sit. There's the pillars, too, which he hadn't noticed his first time here. They're all carved with designs meant to invoke battle. Zuko reaches out to touch the nearest one: two dragons with their teeth bared and their claws interlocked, hurtling towards the ground.
A hand comes clapping down on his shoulder, and he startles—but it's just Sokka. Just Sokka, his hand an easy weight on Zuko's shoulder as he gestures at the ceiling. Above them, the autumn sun shines merrily.
"Look, man, that open ceiling has to be a security issue," Sokka says. Ahead of them, Toph's already climbed onto the stage. "What is this place, anyway? Is it for, like, performances? Dancers? What does the Fire Nation do for entertainment other than burn stuff down?"
"It's an arena, actually," Zuko says. His voice feels distant from him, like it's speaking without his input. "It's used for Agni Kai."
Sokka blinks at him. "Say what?"
"An arena," Zuko repeats. On the stage, Toph's gone still. She twitches her head in his direction like she's trying to hear him better. "For Agni Kai."
"Like the one you had with Azula?" Katara asks, from the other side of the room. At Zuko's nod, her face goes dark. "You have a whole arena just for stuff like that?"
"It doesn't get used much," Zuko says numbly. "Mostly just for royalty and high-ranking nobles. If I wasn't a traitor, and I challenged Azula for the throne outside of the Comet, it would've happened here."
He pictures it, for a moment: him on one end of the stage and Azula on the other. He pictures them both in the traditional Agni Kai combat outfit, with the gold armbands digging into their biceps. He imagines an audience of Fire nobles watching two children fight each other to the death.
Toph's turned around fully now. Her brow is furrowed, and her head is cocked, like she's listening intently. "Sparky," she says abruptly. "You okay? Your heart sounds off."
At that, Katara turns her head sharply. "If your lightning wound's acting up again," she starts, already reaching for her waterskin, but Zuko waves her off.
"It's not that," he says. He tears his eyes away from the stage and focuses on the pillar he's leaning against instead. He studies the dragon carving, runs a thumb over one of their fangs. "It's just—bad memories. I fought in here once."
Katara frowns. "What? You and Azula didn't fight in here."
Zuko shrugs, because he doesn't know what else to do. "It wasn't Azula," he says, and then weighs his next words carefully.
He hasn't told any of them how he got his scar. What's the point? What's done is done. Ozai is already in prison, and the war is over, and there's no reason for him to drop his useless sob story on them when it won't do anyone any good. But when he dares to look up, he finds the others looking at him with varying degrees of concern. Toph's hopped off the stage now, and she's got her arms crossed, obviously listening to his rapid heartbeat.
There's no point in telling them, but—well. They're his friends, which is a title he's worked hard to earn. He doesn't want to keep secrets from them, especially not one as stupid as this.
So: "It was my father," he says, and he ignores how Sokka's face drops, how Katara's eyes go wide, how Suki purses her lips. He ignores the little wounded noise Aang makes, like an animal caught in a trap. "I disrespected him, and he punished me with a duel. It's how I got the, you know." He gestures at his face.
"I don't know, actually," Toph says, something dark in her voice. "It's how you got what, Sparky?"
She knows he has a scar. He knows she knows, because they've mentioned it before—even that stupid play brought it up, wrong side and all—but he realises, suddenly, that she doesn't know what it looks like. Everyone else has gone pale, but Toph stomps forward and throws out a hand.
"Let me see," she demands. Zuko complies, leaning down to let her touch his face. She's uncharacteristically gentle about it, her fingers pressing lightly as she fumbles them across his face. She skims them along his browbone and the bridge of his nose, and he watches her face fall the longer she feels.
"That's a big scar," she finally says. "Your—your dad...?"
"Yeah," Zuko says. "He banished me right after."
"Oh," Toph says, her voice very small. Then, after a beat of silence: "Sparky, your dad sucks."
Zuko snorts out a laugh. "Yeah, he does," he says, and then there's a flash of orange in his vision and a warm weight being thrown against his side. He stumbles a bit, looking down to find Aang clinging to him, his face buried in Zuko's robes. Usually Zuko would peel him off, but...
But Aang's shoulders are shaking. He's thirteen now, which means he's the same age Zuko was when it happened. Zuko's struck, suddenly, by how young Aang is. His face is round and his limbs are stick-skinny and he's just—he's so small.
When Zuko was that small, Ozai had burned him so badly the doctors feared he would die, and it had happened in this room.
"I'm okay now, though," Zuko says awkwardly, patting Aang on the back. "So, uh. It's fine."
"It is not," Katara says, looking absolutely furious. "What do you mean, your dad did that to you? He—he—how could he?"
"I mean, we knew he was evil," Sokka reminds her. "Like, we definitely already knew that."
"Not this evil!"
"Burning me's not any more evil than nearly burning down the Earth Kingdom," Zuko says. "Besides, it doesn't matter anymore. We can't do anything about it."
"Yes we can," Toph mutters darkly. "Since Twinkletoes over here decided to let him live—"
Aang's grip on Zuko's robes tightens. "Zuko, I'm sorry," he says, and finally looks up. His eyes are red. "I—if I'd known—"
"Listen, just forget about it, okay?" Zuko says. It comes out snappier than he'd intended. "It happened, and it's over, and you already humiliated my father to the Spirit World and back. We don't need to do anything else about it."
"Are you sure?" Sokka asks. "Because we can definitely do something else about it—"
Zuko levels him with a look.
"—or we could just, you know, leave it," Sokka says, pivoting smoothly. "That works great too."
"Or I could destroy this room," Toph adds, digging one heel into the floor to prove her point. The stage starts to quiver, as if she's preparing to raise it from the ground, but Zuko stops her with a hasty hand on her arm.
"No, don't," he says. "It's traditional."
"Traditional?" Katara says, sounding livid. "Who cares if it's traditional? Your dad burned you!"
"I care!" Zuko snaps back. "Just leave it alone, okay? Toph, put the stage down."
Toph acquiesces, but she's scowling. No one looks happy, least of all Zuko, but he doesn't know how to explain the real reason why he wants this room intact. He doesn't know how to tell them that, if Toph destroys this room now, he doesn't know if he'll ever remember it exists again. If Toph destroys this room now, then the Agni Kai remains something distant and otherworldly, and Zuko will always remember it like it was a nightmare and not a real memory.
He needs to remember it like it was real. He just—he needs to. He needs to be able to remind himself that Ozai did what he did, and that it was cruel and it was wrong.
"Maybe you could use the room for something else," Aang offers, after the silence stretches too long. "For dancers and stuff, like Sokka said earlier."
It's not a half-bad idea. Zuko doesn't plan on challenging anyone to an Agni Kai, so he might as well use the stage for less violent performances. "Yeah, maybe," he says. "I'll think about it."
No one wants to stay in the room after what's just been revealed about it, so when Suki clears her throat and suggests moving on, everyone agrees. The others file out, but when Zuko goes to follow them, Sokka taps him on the shoulder.
"Look, man, you can tell me to piss off if you want, but I just wanted to ask," Sokka says. He's keeping his voice low enough that the others can't hear, letting his and Zuko's footsteps mask the words as they leave the room. "You said you disrespected him, so he punished you. Can I...ask what you did?"
Zuko breathes in. Breathes out. Pushes away the memory of that dark war room, of heat flaring at his back as his father made his displeasure known.
"Spoke out of turn," he says simply.
"Okay," Sokka says, his voice pitched an octave higher than normal. "Okay, okay, cool. Totally, uh, worth burning your kid's face over." A pause. "You know that that's fucked up, right?"
"Sokka."
"I was just checking!"
"Just checking what?" Katara calls from ahead of them.
"That Zuko's gonna close off that ceiling, duh," Sokka says back without missing a beat. "Huge security risk, remember?" He squeezes Zuko's shoulder once, brief but reassuring, before letting go to catch up with the others. Zuko watches him, trailing behind, until he catches sight of Toph leaning against the wall. One look at her face tells him all he needs to know.
"You heard that, didn't you?" he asks. Toph presses her lips together and nods.
Zuko had spoken out of turn. He wonders how many times Toph—loud, brash, foul-mouthed Toph—has spoken out of turn around her father.
Like Aang, she's thirteen. Like Aang, she's small. Zuko looks down at her, with her shoulders hunched inwards and her face tight with anger, and he wonders how Ozai ever did it.
"I hate him," Toph says. Her voice shakes, just slightly. "I hate him."
"Yeah? So does the rest of the world," Zuko says tiredly. "Come on. The others will get lost if I leave them alone too long."
Toph pushes herself off the wall, and they walk down the hallway in silence. Then: "Hey," Toph says. "Do you think I could host the next Earth Rumble in there?"
"No," Zuko says vehemently, and Toph huffs out a watery laugh. When she silently reaches up to take his hand, Zuko lets her; when Aang comes up around his other side and hooks their elbows together, he lets him too.
It's a perfectly ordinary day, and Zuko is surrounded by friends. He'll learn to live with the memory eventually. Not now, and maybe not for a long time, but—he will. He'll do it someday. Maybe he'll tell them the whole sorry story someday too, with all the awful details.
Yes, he thinks, as he's frog-marched down the hall by two thirteen-year-olds with unscarred faces. He'll do it someday.