Tea
Love was a country we couldn't have found.
Zuko sipped tea. He grew to hate tea over all the years with his Uncle. Yet, Uncle wasn't here and he drank it all the same. It fit. For her, for grief, for what couldn't have been. It fit.
She pulled him, a searching, spinning moment in his mind that never ended. He would always reach her in the next second. He would always find her in the next turn. She evaded him on accident. She fought him on purpose. They burned each other. Drowned each other. Everything with them went wrong. No pleasant second wasted, no tortured minute uncounted. One could circle the other for eternity. As always, fate laughed over him. Eternities were always much shorter for Zuko.
A father's love recanted, an Uncle's trust failed, a destiny perpetually unfulfilled. Everything he'd ever thought would last until the end of time broken into jagged pieces. She was stronger. Too strong for him.
He knew he pulled her too. He could feel it in the way her eyes dragged over his scars. It peeked at him in her too harsh kicks. It slid over his skin in the ice that chilled his room at night. He felt her shiver as his hand passed over hers. Push and pull, round and round. In fighting, speaking, breaking. Loving. The two out of reach. And then she swam away. The sun lost the moon. His world dried up.
So Zuko sipped tea and watched the children of the Avatar mock him from the gardens.