A/N: I've been thinking about the latest episode, the Headband, and a lot of things are going on in that episode that you don't realize on the surface. We know that Mai and Zuko are together only because Azula wishes it (see the comic in the all-Avatar mag to understand). Couple that with the fact that the only time we see Zuko anywhere else besides Iroh's prison, his hair is in his topknot, but when we see him trying to visit Iroh, his hair is down. Yeah.
Disclaimer: Avatar's not mine. But I wouldn't want it anyway. Mike and Bryan, you're absolutely brilliant in comparing and contrasting the fake Zuko we see with Mai and the real Zuko we see with Iroh. I wish more people would understand what you're getting at by putting Zuko in these two situations in the same episode.
Topknot
You're finally home. You think you have everything you want. But you know that it is all a fake pretext. You go along with it, anyway, because you want to. You wake up each morning and dress yourself in lavish royal garments and tie your hair back in the topknot that you are finally able to wear again because you have restored your honor.
You spend your days with the same girl, saying things that you don't mean. You like to think that you're in love, but you know that's just a ruse. You stare out at the sunset and claim you hate it, but you know that you really love it, because it is a time of passion and transition, of in-between, giving way from blue to the grayness that you wish you can understand better.
You kiss her, and you smile, your hair in that honorable topknot the whole time—but your sister brings you back to earth. The lies wash away as the one you think you should love leaves you on the simple request of your sister. You know, just in that moment, that your sister is only manipulating you, trying to make you feel comfortable and set you on edge at the same time. She tells you to be careful during your nighttime escapades because they might arouse suspicion. She wants to absorb you in this world of lies that you want to absorb into yourself, but something's holding you back. Something always is.
At night, you let your hair down out of that honorable topknot, and you remember when you cut off your first topknot and lived with your uncle, a fugitive, seeking a new life in Ba Sing Se. You hide yourself in a sweeping dark red cloak and visit—you must, because that is the only the place you can recognize any sort of truth, any place stripped of sweet nothings and savory, sugar-sweet lies.
Your hair down, shaggy and untamed like a wild beast, you beg and beg for a request, but all you get is silence. Your heart is breaking, because even though you claim to be in love, it's not the love that you want. There is only one person you love, and that person is sitting with his back to you in a cold cell with straggly hair, and he won't respond to you, he won't say anything to you. A sick part of you tells you that you deserve this, and you want to cry and weep like there is no tomorrow that you have to worry about, that there is no next morning when you will have to put your hair up in that horrid topknot again and kiss that girl that you don't love again and cling to the every word of the sister that is manipulating you.
You know that this tower, this prison, is the only place where there's any truth in your life. And that truth is sheer silence, cold and hard and unfeeling with a heartbreaking sorrow underneath it. You hate that truth for its silence. You hate the way it reminds you of so much regret that you have, and the way it reminds you of your terrible past, and the way that it weeps for your lost opportunity to remedy that terrible past. You respond in the only way you know, with the only truth that you know—you yell and flush out your anger like the raw, wild brute that you know you are.
You lose yourself in a mixture of the lies and the truth, and you order that man to kill the Avatar. You know that killing the Avatar won't get rid of the Avatar—another Avatar will be born as soon as the current one dies. But you convince yourself that it can be done anyway, because you can recognize the truth but you prefer the lies so much more.
And tomorrow you will wake, and you will put your hair in your honorable topknot, and you will not weep like you do when your shaggy hair is down, obscuring your face. You will believe that the only person you love doesn't love you at all, and you will be so, so wrong, because you won't realize that he could easily escape, but he stays in that prison for you, that he weeps for you as much as you weep for him, that he loves you always, with or without that honorable topknot you seem to love and hate.