Disclaimer: I don't own anything. I'm also not really what you would call sane.

Author's Notes: As you might know my main project for the summer is Blood, Silk, and Steel, which is completely different from the other things I've been working on lately. It's turning out to be very long, and consistently dark. I thought I'd break away from the angst of BSS with a short little piece, which is what you have before you now.

In retrospect, I probably had WAY too much fun writing this. (Oddly enough, I had even more fun proof-reading it.) Hopefully you'll enjoy reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it.

Two
Teabending

Zuko hated his life. Well gee now, that was a new one—not. Had he been alive in our here and now, Zuko wouldn't have gone goth, because he was far too much of a straight arrow for that. The kind of people who spend years combing the globe in search of the Avatar to please their father weren't the kind of people who dressed in black leather trench coats and got piercings all over their bodies. So Zuko wouldn't have been goth, besides, that was more Mai's subculture, but he would have quite possibly turned emo.

Especially after his uncle's wedding.

It wasn't that his uncle didn't deserve to be happy; of all the people on the face of this earth, Iroh most deserved happiness. It was just that, when it was a choice between Zuko's happiness and Iroh's, well, Iroh normally picked Zuko's happiness (Zuko also normally picked Zuko's happiness, after all, being happy made his uncle happy, right?) But this time had been different, and it had all started with tea.

Zuko had always hated tea. Deep down inside he must have known that it would be tea in the end which would ensure his lifelong misery, and he hated tea for it. He hated all sorts of teas. If it had leaves and water, he hated it. That had been the one point on which his uncle had never allowed him to have the last word, because his uncle loved, but seriously, absolutely adored tea, and he had gotten it into his head that Zuko should love tea too, because that would make him happy.

But no, tea was Zuko's mortal enemy.

And all it was dried leaves and water.

Water.

That was the evil part in it: the water. Because, it turned out, that if tea was made out of water, then a certain Waterbender could bend it, which in short, made her a Teabender, and well, Uncle Iroh just had to love her. It couldn't be helped, he said, she could bend tea, tea!

Zuko had thought it was a moderately neat parlor trick when Katara had bent the tea he'd spilled on himself off of his clothes and back into a cup. Later, he had realized that she had been trying to flirt with him, but by then it was too late. Iroh had seen what she could do, and he was in love.

So it had started. It started with tales of his adventured in the Spirit World. The Avatar had loved those. And then, it had moved on to tales about his life in the Fire Nation. After those were done, it was long moonlit walks. Several long walks, some flowers, and more tea than Zuko cared for later, Iroh announced to Zuko that he was getting a new aunt.

That was gross enough. After all, his uncle was like, sixty years old. In teenage years that was like, a gazillion and one, or not. At any rate, he was far too old to get married. But then, he found out to whom his uncle was getting married, and well, that was just absolutely disgusting.

In retrospect, he really should have put two and two together long before his uncle told him, but the idea of Katara and his uncle together hurt his mind. Katara was younger than Azula, and that meant that she was young enough to be Iroh's daughter. Heck, she could probably have been his granddaughter. And besides, Zuko kinda liked her, and the idea of fantasizing about the woman to whom his uncle was married, well, there were no words for describing how disturbing that was.

But, like with tea, Iroh decided to listen to all of Zuko's emo considerations, and then politely ignored him, while serving him a steaming cup of jasmine tea.

Anyway, the way things turned out, they won the war and Iroh was placed on the throne of the Fire Nation. Iroh got married to Katara and they went on to have seven children, each one evidence of the fact that they were still going at it like rabbits, and each one taking both Zuko and Azula farther and farther away from the throne. And so, Zuko got very depressed, and decided he'd rather travel the globe in search of the Avatar than stick around the palace and see his ancient uncle make out with the girl he used to have a crush on. Aang, who was perhaps the only person to find out about Katara's engagement to Iroh after Zuko did, asked Zuko if he could join him on his quest, because, heck, he'd rather travel the world looking for the Avatar than stick around and watch his surrogate mother/the love of his life make out with the Fire Lord, but Zuko pointed out that he couldn't very well set out searching for the Avatar with the Avatar on his ship, because that would be one very short game of hide-and-seek. So Azula, who had lost all hope of ever getting the throne, told Aang she'd hang out with him, and make sure Zuko never found him, because, well, ruining Zuzu's life was the only thing left for her.

Somewhere along the way Azula and Aang got very drunk and when they woke up the next morning they were married, but since Zuko arrived in the city before they had time to get it annulled, they never bothered. Instead they decided to call it quits and return to the Fire Nation, but of course, they didn't tell Zuko, because then he would have captured them and brought them back to the Fire Nation.

And so, they all lived happily ever after.

Well, not Zuko; he spent the rest of his days pretending to be a banished prince and looking for the Avatar. But it gave him an opportunity to be emo, and he kinda liked that, so I guess in the end, it turned out ok, even for him.

Author's Notes: I think I lost a few brain cells writing that. How 'bout you guys? Not too formulaic I hope. Tell me in your reviews. :)