I'm so sorry for all the feels people. I tried to warn you about the drama zone... when I wrote these Iroh scenes I was a MESS. I hate Iroh dies stories, but unfortunately stories have a habit of telling me how they need to be told rather than the other way around.
Off Hiatus II
No tea, she decides, so its fire whiskey she finds for them a few nights later when she cannot possibly bear this winter from the boy of summer any longer. She leads him not to the province mayor's treasury as they'd planned, but far enough into the forest that even Toph won't find them.
He resists at first, sheds the mask to make sure she knows he's not happy about it, but she overrides him with a toast to the general.
'For his service to the Fire Nation and his family.' She thinks the waver in her voice stills the scowling boy almost as much as the words. But the first toast she drinks alone.
By the second, Zuko has dropped to his knees beside her and begins talking.
Iroh Remembered I
'When I was a child, he wasn't around much. He and my cousin Lu Ten spent a lot of time at the front. But when he came home for war meetings with Grandfather he would take me for walks down to the docks and the fish markets. Mother and Father never wanted me to go, Father didn't want me among the commoners and Mother worried for my safety, but Uncle… he said the best way to learn about our people was from our people. He knew them all. The baker in Dockside, the seamstress two streets over, the owner of the best tavern in the city… He said a man should know the people whose lives he'll one day have care for. That was before Lu Ten died and my father took his throne.'
Iroh Remembered II
'Was he with you the whole time?'
'Every day.'
'Your whole exile?'
'He went into exile with me, gave up his titles and lands to some lord loyal to my father.'
Katara cannot see the bottom of the boy's brokenness, but the crumbling of his edges is clear. She hands him the spicy liquor and squeezes his shoulder with her mother's ghost upon her own.
'He was a good man, a good uncle.'
Zuko's eyes are fuller than the moon, the tears leak like spring melt. 'A better man than me. A better man than my father.'
Iroh Remembered III
The fire whisky makes her bold, makes easy the words that her heart stumbles over in daylight.
'I should have been quicker.' She lets her guilt fall open like palms held up in surrender. 'I was closest to him when Azula—when she… I should have been faster! I could have knocked him out of the way or blocked her strike. There was a whole canal there! I could have… could've…'
The firebender doesn't tell her to quiet but his forehead against hers begs for release. 'It wasn't your fault. It wasn't anyone's fault but hers.'
She grips the hair at the back of his neck and the softness he shares, grips them like a lifeline. 'We'll bring her to justice,' she swears in a sudden fit of fervour. 'She won't get away with this!'
Zuko sighs and wipes his eyes. 'It's Azula,' he offers in explanation, 'of course she will. She was born lucky.'
