Firelord Zuko sits in the small office patiently waiting as he watches the healer rummaging around her office, trying to find the right file.
The woman before him is the only healer of her field; the health of the mind. Many people do not trust her methods, preferring to leave the mentally damaged to rot in the dingy, depressing asylums. This healer prefers to use herbal prescriptions, verbal communication, and spiritual healing to help her patients then leaving them to stew in their own pain alone in the dark. She has broken conventions and her way of doing things is very new and completely untested.
But just as this is an era of peace, Aang and Zuko are also determined to make this an era of growth and progress. And they both see the healer's ways as a form of progress. So Zuko has gone to her for help.
When she finally sits, Zuko smiles at her, unperturbed by the delay. Her dark hair is disheveled and her face is flushed, but she seems calm nonetheless. "How are you, An?" Zuko asks kindly.
She nods, "As good as can be." He knows what her answers means, seeing as she is basically an outcast. If it weren't for Zuko's protection, she would've been driven out of the capitol a long time ago. "And you?" she asks.
"Same," he replies, smirking.
There is a moment of silence. Then she asks, "Shall we move on?"
He nods.
She opens the scroll in her lap and lays it out on the table between them. "These observations are not very accurate. I've only seen her four times and that is not nearly enough to completely understand her psyche," she warns.
"Please tell me," he replies.
"As you know, Azula's breakdown was caused by the world she had carefully created collapse around her," the healer explains, "But that is not where the problem lies."
"Where does it lie, then?" he asks.
"The problem is why she felt she ever had to create that world in the first place," she replies, "The world she created was precise, calculated, and run by using fear to control others. But when she was young, you said she was not like that. You told me when you were both very young that she and you got along very well."
Zuko nods. "Yes," he replies. They... they had once been very close.
"That was the only time in her life that she was herself. She was surrounded by love and she had no reason to drown out who she was," the healer continues, "She had no reason to make other people fear her because she trusted everyone around her. She could rely on love."
Zuko nods again, finding An's words interesting, especially in relation to Azula.
"It is only when things started to fall apart that she started to build her world. Her mother became more attached to you"—Zuko doesn't say a thing, knowing that An is only telling her what Azula has said—"and all she was left with was to please her father who she knew didn't really love her, but refused to believe it. Love left her world and to fill the void, she created a world that she could control."
There is a pause.
"Subsequently," An continues, a little more slowly, "When that world vanished, all she was left with was the bitter reality—no one loves her."
Zuko looks away for a moment. He wants to speak up, to say the healer is wrong. But he's not so sure she is. He looks up at An, "So what do we do?"