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Zuko’s fingers flex in his loose hair, teeth grating—how is it, every time, that Uncle Iroh wins with such a flourish? And such smugness, laying his final tile with a perversely gleeful grin, mischief glinting in his eyes.
They’ve played Pai Sho a hundred thousand times, by now, and still Zuko is barely treading water. It’s infuriating.
He tells him so, by way of a hissing, grumbling groan, and Iroh laughs and laughs.
Places the tiles back into their box, orderly, humming to himself. It’s an old song, one Zuko only recognizes by virtue of the fact it’s Iroh’s favorite.
It’s oddly soothing, couched in instinct like the smell of home, and Zuko feels the lateness of the hour. Feels the state dinner he had to sit through, and the start he’ll have to make tomorrow, early even by a Fire Lord’s standard.
He can’t imagine the exhaustion--the joy, the jubilee, the great circus he’ll have to put on. A show of set-jaw fortitude, of social acrobatics, oh, how Zuko wishes he could stay in bed. Or even in his study, working on things that actually matter.
So much to be done. He wonders if this is how an older man feels, but will admit that that’s probably worse.
Either way, with the Pai Sho set stowed neatly, it’s doubtless time for bed. Iroh will show him that crinkle-eyed smile, will ruffle his hair, bid him restful dreaming. Will shuffle off to bed himself, bemoan the stiffness in his back--Zuko can hear it, the way he’ll cluck his tongue, but…
Iroh just nestles back down into his cushion, pours himself another cup of tea. Fills Zuko’s cup as well, without asking, and meets his narrowed eyes.
“So,” he says. “Now that I’ve defended my position as the master of Pai Sho,” and with this he smiles, devious. “Why don’t you tell me why you really brought me here?”
Zuko’s eyes slit even further, like a cat coming into harsh midday. He’s been had, been seen through yet again. Ugh.
It’s even worse than losing at Pai Sho, being known like this.
Iroh only shakes his head. “It’s getting late, nephew. An old man needs his rest, and so do you, and we’ll both have that easier if you can clear the air.”
How, Zuko wants to ask, how in all the hells are you always right?
But Iroh would just tsk at him for swearing, and he is right, there is--
“T-tomorrow is my eighteenth birthday,” Zuko blurts, fingers knotting in his robe.
Iroh nods, gently, sips his tea. “So it is, and I could not be more proud of the man--and the Fire Lord!--that you’ve become.” Easily, he says this, like it’s simply fact, like it never leaves his mind. Zuko’s throat feels tight.
He thinks he’d burn every royal portrait, cancel every parade, throw every banquet to the dogs to hear that. And he doesn’t even have to.
It holds him up, shoulders him enough to purse his lips, to say softly, hoarsely, “it’s about Mai.”
“Oh,” says Iroh, sagely, cheered. “You’ve come to learn the business of crafting heirs and spares, have you? Well, have yourself some tea, because we’ll be here for a while--!”
“Uncle! Agni, don’t--!” Zuko reddens, curls in on himself like he’s heard a foghorn, and Iroh cackles.
“Oh!” he hoots, “Oh, I am sorry, nephew, I was only trying to clear the air--snnk!”
“I’ll set your eyebrows on fire, old man,” Zuko shoots back, but the corners of his mouth quirk up anyway, rather despite himself.
Generally, the things that Iroh makes Zuko do in spite of himself are worth it. He’s got to admit that.
“But if you have any questions,” Iroh adds, slyly, “you come straight to me, alright?”
“Alright,” Zuko grumbles. He does have questions.
It’s just that. He has more questions, worse questions now.
“Now, Zuko, I’ll ask you again, and if you don’t tell me I’ll have to start guessing, and I can guarantee that you won’t like that one bit.” He says this with a smile, knowing just how right he is. “What’s the matter?”
Zuko sighs, deep and heavy, like a stone settling to the bottom of the sea.
“Um,” he tries, but it’s a false start. “Uh.”
He takes a breath, the kind of centering thing he’d do before walking into a council meeting, before speaking on something important.
“Everyone thinks that, um, that Mai and I, that we’ll...Well, with me turning eighteen and stuff… everyone kind of thinks we’ll be a-announcing our engagement.”
Iroh nods deeply, cradling his teacup in his hands. Zuko takes a sip of his, a measured motion, and lets the warmth, the familiar flavor smooth him over.
It only helps a little, but the scent of it, the heat in his fingers--it’s nice.
“So they do,” says Iroh. “I had wren-flies buzzing in my ear about it all night, Zuko, I don’t know how you stand the gossip. Oh, the busybodies in this town, they’re worse than the society ladies in my tea shop!”
Something like a laugh crawls up from Zuko’s knotted throat. “I know, sometimes I think I should just make a law about it. The Mind Your Own Business Accord.”
Iroh quirks a brow. “An inspired bit of policy, Fire Lord Zuko.”
“Heh, uh, thank you.”
“B-but anyway, that’s not--I haven’t proposed.” It comes out of him all at a rush, eyes squinting, teeth digging at the inside of his cheek.
“I know,” says Iroh, softly.
“She--I think she might have proposed to me, actually? Which isn’t. The way it’s supposed to be, so I thought she might be joking but I can never tell if she’s joking, so I just--well, after that I had to go, go hold a meeting, and I think she might be mad at me about it?”
Scarcely a week ago, and it still rings in his mind, clashing and pitching like a storm at sea. Tempest-tossing him, taking his focus, acuity, sleep.
“Well. Do you want to marry her?” He pauses, face softening ever more. “It’s not a decision you have to make straightaway, my nephew. A marriage lasts for decades, you know, and the two of you are so young… No matter what anyone says, no matter how much they want to throw a royal wedding, there isn’t any rush. You just take the time you need to decide what you want.”
Zuko’s lips purse, hard enough for them to go all white and bloodless. His brow knits, his head pounds, he--!
“But I already know what I want!” It bursts from him, wild like a bird from its cage.
Iroh doesn’t mind the volume, the clatter of Zuko’s teacup on the Pai Sho board--he just reaches for him, lays his palm across the back of Zuko’s hand.
Every firebender runs warm, but Zuko swears there’s something else to it, to the way his uncle soothes him.
“And what is that, dear Zuko?”
Zuko breathes in deep, holds long enough for it to hurt. “I don’t. I don’t want to marry her. I want to--to stop, but I don’t know how to do that and… make it easy.”
“I want it to be easy. Mai’s my friend, and I’ve hurt her before. I won’t do that again.”
“Well,” says Iroh, sagely, tinged with pride. “Haven’t you grown up, my nephew?” Short fingers curl around the knob of Zuko’s wrist, and Zuko half-smiles, head bowed, weary.
“Really, there’s no way to make something like this easy. But there is making it quick, and there is making it kind. Do you remember, Zuko, when I used to change your bandages? Like that.”
“I see,” Zuko murmurs. “I still don’t know how.”
“The secret is that there isn’t any secret. You just have to tell her how you feel. And it’s hard out there, Zuko, for a girl like her--for any girl--so you make sure she knows it’s not her fault.”
A nod--”I think I can do that.” Zuko takes another drink of tea, though it’s not quite proper for him to hold the cup one-handed.
“And you keep her close, if you can. That Mai is a real friend, and a clever, clever girl, and there’s no doubt that you’ll need her.”
Zuko knows, oh how he knows. Mai is a bright, flinty thing, obsidian, and she will never steer him wrong. It feels like a disservice, that he can need her so dearly, but never in that way.
He sighs.
“Okay,” he says, and his heart is heavy, because that is the way it is. His shoulders sink.
He dreads the way she’ll look at him. Dreads worse the way she’d feel if he married her anyway.
Tied her down anyway, given the way that he is.
Iroh clucks his tongue softly, like one might do to encourage a solemn cat. Squeezes Zuko’s wrist, firm like a heartbeat, like mouthing the words I’m here.
“That’s my boy,” says Iroh, and Zuko takes that to his heart. That that’s something he is, something he can be, for as long and as hard as he’s tried. Iroh’s boy.
A little smile plays on his face, wan and watery, and Iroh looks well pleased.
“It’s alright,” he says, “to be young, to take that time--no matter what anyone says! It’s alright to not want everything straightaway.”
There is a crumbling in Zuko--the cracking of his throat, his healed and hardened ribs. He doesn’t cry, though, not yet.
“What if,” he says, and it comes out small and mournful, the voice of a child who has lost his first tooth, who thinks he is coming apart, “what if I don’t want it at all?”
“Well,” says Iroh, as even and gentle as the way he pours tea. “That’s perfectly fine, too. What is it that you don’t want, particularly?”
Zuko shifts his weight on aching ankles, chews his lip.
“Forget I said anything.” he mumbles, after a moment’s passed.
He knows Iroh won’t let it stand, knows that he’ll be pressed. Knows that it’s the only way he’ll ever get it out, ever cut that cord.
But Iroh just hums, takes another draught of tea. “Alright.”
“Huh?”
A gentle nod, a little shrug of Iroh’s shoulders.“I said that that’s alright. If you don’t want to talk, nephew, then I will gladly forget about it, and I will pour you some more tea, and I will tell you every scandalous little tidbit I know about your entire cabinet, until I pass out right on the Pai Sho board. You’ve had it rough, tonight.”
“But,” he says, and Zuko can’t help but smile a little, having known there would be a but. “I’ll be leaving soon, and I imagine asking my advice will be much more painful if it has to cross the sea from here to Ba Sing Se and back.”
He’s right, he’s right, he’s always right. It’s so preeminent to him now that sometimes Zuko wonders why it ever took him so long to see it. But there is much that’s buried there, and the excavation’s slow.
And. Well. He could just write the letter--it’s a habit of his, now, letters flitting back and forth on carrier falcons all across the globe. Even with all the wretched writing he’s forced into as Fire Lord, there is time enough to send updates to his friends. To Ty Lee at Kyoshi Island, to Aang and Katara wherever they rove, to Jin at Ba Sing Se. To Iroh, always to Iroh. Every week, measured, like the perfect regularity of his jasmine tea.
He could write the letter. It tempts him, almost, but Zuko--Zuko is not an eloquent child. Less so in writing, when the forever shake in his hands disrupts his brushstrokes, and, well, Uncle really is right.
He could tell him tomorrow night, too, but he knows he’ll be exhausted, knows Iroh will probably be in his cups by then.
Or the night after that, or the next, but by then he’d lose his nerve.
He could tell him never, could shut it up, condemn it like an ancient house.
He won’t, he knows he won’t. Isn’t strong enough to, or weak enough to, whichever. Both.
Zuko shivers, twists his wrist to clasp at Iroh’s hand.
“I,” he stammers, fumbling on stumbling-block words. “I don’t. I don’t want to get married at all. When I think about--that kind of thing, I just--I feel like I’m already tired. Like I’ve already been married as long as Mother was to Father.”
“I don’t want a wife,” Zuko says, and his knuckles are bloodless around Iroh’s palm, and his heart fits, and Iroh--
Iroh is only listening, the way he might if Zuko was just telling him some story. Just placidly, just soft. Permissive, arms outstretched.
Zuko lets it be coaxed from him, the hoarse-hushed words. “I only think about boys.”
One boy, just one boy. With his dark hair, his quick tongue, the way his eyes narrow when he’s working something out--but that’s beside the point.
The point is that it’s out and the regret is immediate, piercing like winter rain--the point is that even so, Iroh is smiling.
“Oh,” he says, “my boy. My boy.”
He says it the same way that he would say I’m sorry, that he would say let’s go home.
Zuko bites hard into his lip without even thinking why, curls in tighter on himself. Like he can be a salamander, drawn back safe within the fire.
Iroh doesn’t stop holding his hand, doesn’t stop brushing knobby knuckles with the rough pad of his thumb. Doesn’t stop murmuring thank you for telling me, thank you.
“And that’s not--you don’t think that’s--?” He babbles, a burnt-down match with nothing left to give.
A smile, warm and comforting as a teacup cradled in the palm. “There are some people who would change the way they thought of you, if you told them.” His lips purse, and Zuko can see him groping for the grace to not name names. “But I am not some people, dear Zuko, and this changes nothing so much as it allows me to love you better.”
Zuko splutters, helplessly, and all Iroh does is hold out his arms. All Iroh does is hold him, for a while.
A long while, until Zuko stops leaving tearstains in the silk of Iroh’s robe, until his heart is gentled back into step. Until Iroh has hummed his lullaby the whole way through, until Zuko is reminded once again that he, too, is the brave soldier boy.
Until he softens, and words can find his mind again.
“The Fire Nation is just dreadful about this kind of thing, Zuko--something else for you to change! Your to-do list will never run down,” Iroh says, and Zuko sniffles, breathes a laugh into his shoulder.
“But I want to tell you, and I want you to be sure, there’s nothing wrong with being the way that you are. Nothing strange about it, not at all. In fact, you’ve got a glorious tradition, I would say.”
A glorious tradition, words Iroh reserves generally for tea, for Pai Sho, the White Lotus. Zuko slumps back, sits neatly up to listen. Iroh smiles at the severity of his posture, at the way it looks like he’s getting a brief from the peacetime corps--if not for the naked wonder on his face.
“For starters,” says Iroh, “I don’t think we’ve had an Avatar that was--well. There’s the way you think a person is supposed to be, and then there are other sorts of people, and I don’t think we’ve had a straight-and-narrow Avatar since Kuruk.”
“I’m sure your tutors told you about Kyoshi. Oh, the things they say about Kyoshi!” Iroh shakes his head. “Kyoshi was a strong Avatar, a brave person, and she fought fiercely for the woman that she loved. She was Fire Nation too, you know, name of Rangi. Ferocious women, like hawks, Zuko, I only wish I could have seen them. I only wish that you could have seen them.”
A sigh, almost wistful. “But they loved each other. They were besotted, Kyoshi and Rangi. Fighting back to back, even now in the Spirit World.”
Zuko is put in mind of her, of the scalding block-prints his tutors showed him. A scowling woman, painted, they said, like a whore, the blades of her fans like ruthless talons. Her dread fingers clenched around the wrist of a fallen Fire Nation ruby.
He’d always looked down his nose at her, at the wild Earth Kingdom Avatar.
He didn’t, anymore.
“And then there was Roku--Roku and Sozin, you’re related to the both of them so you probably wouldn’t want to see the letters.” He smooths it over quickly, snickering at the muted horror on Zuko’s face, in amid all the astonishment. “And Yangchen, I don’t know if you know this, Zuko, but the whole world says her name like a prayer, holy Yangchen. And she loved men and women, both.”
Bemusement plays on Zuko’s face, on his tear-tracked cheeks. “I-I thought the Air Nation--”
“That they weren’t supposed to form attachments? It’s more complex than that, most things are. But I can assure you, Yangchen--had so much love to give. Just like I know that you do.”
“U-uncle--!” Zuko scrubs at his face, a little, if only so he won’t wax teary again. It’s a losing battle, though, and where he has eyelashes, they wet.
“Yes, yes, I know, I’m a terribly embarrassing person. But you deserve to know your history, Zuko. And you deserve to know that you’re just as good as any of them. That someday, someone like me is going to tell your story to someone like you.”
He thinks often of it, of being Fire Lord Zuko, First Of His Name. Of being strong enough, good enough, of right thought and right action. Of the legacy that’s already started to be written, for him--every portrait he sits for will last a thousand years, everything he touches will become an artifact.
It never occurred to him, before, that it wasn’t only going to be his works that made him. That history was going to look at him for who he was.
It scares him, deep and resonant like the clatter of a gong. But in this--for this…
Perhaps it might not be so bad. At least in part.
Zuko took a ragged breath. He’d think on it more later, no doubt, the next time sleep evaded him. But not now, not when he is so enervated, a brazier full of ash.
Not when his uncle is here, holding him up.
“I can see you thinking, dear Zuko.” The lines in Iroh’s face show bleary cheer, affection. “You should save that for when we’re rested.”
“Y-yeah, I--should I let you get to bed?” He slips, for half a syllable, into his Official Voice, rather startled into it, and Iroh can’t help but laugh.
“No, no,” he says, “not yet. I have one last thing to ask of you.” There’s mischief in his eye again, the one way that age and fatigue never dull him.
“Anything,” says Zuko, serious and earnest. And it’s true--for all he owes him? Iroh could have the kingdom if he wanted it. Could have all of it and more--but it’s the most beautiful thing about his uncle, that he doesn’t want even a sliver.
Iroh smiles, wry and wise, weary in the way of a new mother up to feed. “Can you tell me, Zuko, when the Fire Nation came closest to losing the war?”
Zuko’s eyes narrow, a bit. “Uh, when we lost?”
A laugh, then, bright and warm like a red paper lantern. “Before that,” he says “but you’re not wrong.”
He thinks a moment--the war was long, long, a brute thing of attrition. But the answer comes.“It must have been fifteen years ago,” he says, “at Silver Canyon.”
“Exactly. It didn’t come to a battle, and nobody was hurt, but the Fire Nation lost some valuable ground. Lost one of its colonies, in the Earth Kingdom. It was my biggest disgrace, before Ba Sing Se--you should have heard the way your father went on about it! Oh, I’ll never get the sound of his yammering out of my ears.”
A half-smile flickers on Zuko’s face--but quickly falls, because “w-why are you telling me this now?”
“Because the official line about Earth Kingdom spies--it wasn’t true, Zuko. I was the one who sold the Fire Nation. I sold my brother to the White Lotus to protect the man I love. He was a deserter, you see, and they were after him--I think some folk are still looking.”
I’ll put a stop to it right away, thinks Zuko, and then--wait--the deserter?
His voice comes soft, awed on the words “you and Master Jeong Jeong?”
Iroh only nods, satisfied, stroking his beard. “The White Lotus never would have agreed to protect him for me--I was the enemy general, they’d never do it without a price. So I told them some secrets, and I turned around and gave a report on where the Earth Kingdom army was going to strike, and I think--I think I did the right thing. It turned out right enough, and Jeong Jeong is just fine.” He looks a little dreamy as he says it, a little bit wistful. Far away, across the sea somewhere.
“You never told me.” There’s no betrayal in it, none of the vinegar he might have mustered up scant years ago. Just reverence, just hushed amazement that he’s trusted with it now.
“You had other things to worry about, my boy,” says Iroh, “and it was my charge to protect him. Him and you,” he says, “and it always will be. Oh, do write him a pardon so I can introduce you properly! I think he’d rather like you, Zuko.”
“I’ll remember,” Zuko says. “I’ll have it written up before the parade tomorrow, I promise.” He has written half a hundred pardons, maybe more, since taking up the crown. He knows well the way they go, even dreams them.
But Iroh only shakes his head. “There is no rush. He is safe, now, where he is.”
Zuko nods slowly, resolves to do it anyway. He’s already rehearsing the opening line of it, words flickering in his sleep-starved mind.
“Well. Maybe there’s a little bit of rush. I’m not getting any younger, am I, Zuko? But that’s not the point.”
He reaches for him, then, lays one broad palm on the knob of Zuko’s shoulder. “The point is that I’m the same as you. That I know what it’s like, and that I’ve been doing it long enough to know that it doesn’t say a thing about the man you are.”
For the rest of his life, Zuko feels, these words will ballast his heart.
“And that you are a very fine man indeed, my nephew--you’re courageous and true, and that’s what matters.”
“And,” he says, with a glimmer, “I know that you can take ten seconds of that courage to tell that Sokka what you think of him.”
Zuko flares, wails “Uncle!” Shields his face with both his writer’s-callused hands, but really? Really, he lives for the hearty ring of Iroh’s laugh, for the squeeze of the hand on his shoulder.
“It’s alright, Zuko, it’s alright, you’re young yet. It can all come in good time. No need to worry about it now,” he declares, with a smile that Zuko watches through parted fingers, “when we ought to be getting to bed.”
“You’ll be a man, tomorrow,” he reminds, “and a man needs his rest.”
A little huffing breath--even Zuko’s not sure if it’s laughter. “You said I already was a man.”
“Yes, well. I think you can let your old uncle be a little sentimental, hm? Since I’ve done such a wonderful job of raising you.”
And he has, Zuko feels it, even if it hasn’t always turned out the way he planned. Even if he hasn’t always made him proud.
He will, though. For the rest of his life, Zuko will.
It’s the only way to repay him, the only thing that Zuko wants to do.