Summer, and Zuko's life goes into stasis.
It's not an overstatement: one day stretches out into eternity and there seems to be so much stuff he can't really figure out, the heat numbing his brain and confusing him. He's so goddamn warm all the time, his ceremonial robes scratching at the back of his neck, making him feel exposed, vulnerable. Mai looks at him with concern carefully veiled by her trademark boredom and it's the most he can do, to smile dismissively and comment on the weather.
The palace seems crowded with people asking whether he's okay, clones of the same old balding man with the uneasy expression and shifting orange eyes. He operates on autopilot, tells them all the same thing: "I'm fine, it's just the weather," and that's the most they can reasonably expect from him in this heat. He's constantly making plans to get the omnipresent old man to get some decent air-conditioning in the halls, but he always gets sidetracked by the mental image of Aang blowing a great gust of wind and sending the entire palace toppling and Zuko getting cast back into his fugitive way of life.
Life in the Fire Nation slows down in time with his, the streets buzzing with a lethargy that hangs heavy in the air. It hurts him viscerally to watch the most vigilant people struck by the curse he has brought down upon them, to see the baffled sleepy-eyed set of faces that he sees from his windows. Theories have sprung up, curse from the gods, from Agni herself, that they should heed more to the signs and spend more time praying for forgiveness for the past years.
Sometime in the same day played on a loop, Mai suggests a trip to Ba Sing Se.
His eyes crack open with difficulty, grappling with forces of nature. "What?"
Mai flicks a hunk of bread shaped like a fist at the ducks, watches them fight disjointedly and without grace for it. He's never liked feeding the ducks. "Ba Sing Se," she repeats, her eyes on the blue-grey water of the lake. "We haven't gone there since forever."
Zuko looks directly at the sky, so unforgivingly blue at the rims of his eyes feel scratched, his eye sockets streaming fire.
Once his entire existence feels charred, he tries to picture Ba Sing Se, not as he saw it in his official visit last year with the green flags waving, beckoning, but as it was when the world was a ball of flame suspended on his father's fingers. He pictures the streets, paved only up to a point, afterwards which there were only hopelessly cobbled streets, endless twisting footpaths that got him lost time and time again. He pictures the tea shop, the constant scent of jasmine hanging in the air just out of reach, and he pictures a boy with hair the color of the smoke covering the sun, before his mind shutters closed.
He inhales raggedly, short puffs of breath. He feels Mai's sidelong glance at him, drugged and hazy along his skin.
He looks back at her when his heart rate's settled down and she's staring into the horizon, waiting for white sails to appear. Someone once told him that this was a sign that the world is round, and Zuko believed them. It would explain how he kept coming back to the same place.
Ba Sing Se. How many years?
A/N: this will be told in annoyingly short installments, because that's how the Powers That Be want it.
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