Writer's Note: Occurs during and after The Boiling Rock Part Two and contains spoilers.
Fight and Flight
When it came to Mai, Zuko could handle her anger. He could handle being yelled at, being called names, being insulted and made fun of and threatened with sharp objects being hurled into his body. She was good at it; she had a way with words, with making even the most innocent of phrases seem like a deadly threat. She was often deadpan, calm in her fury and cold in her rage. These were things he had found himself used to, found himself expecting when he knew he had angered her, and found that he was able to deal with whatever form her anger came in.
But when she cried, his world turned to ash. When her eyes filled with tears and her eyes went light with grief, his vision went dark. When her face crumpled into a grimace of pain and she lowered her head to hide her face from him, his heart cracked and all he wanted to do was run and disappear so that her reason for crying would vanish from her life for good.
When he locked her in that cell, her eyes filled. When he met them, it took every shred of self-control not to open the door again.
He didn't think about it then. He just ran. But later, after she rescued them, after they got away, after everything had settled down and he was able to rest, Zuko curled up in his decaying cot and thought about it.
And all he could do was crumple, himself. There was no other way to deal with it.