A/N: Merry Christmas, and now for a rare moment of Zuko maybe actually being happy (emphasis on the Maybe)

Love

"I love you!"

Those words might as well have been a different language for all Zuko understood them—but while the four nations' scripts might be different, the spoken tongue had been unified under Avatar Yangchen over four hundred years ago.

It felt that long since someone had spoken those three words to him.

Mom said I love you in absence. In the space her arms used to fill, her body like a turtleduck's shell, shielding him from anger that cracked like lightning. She's not here to feel him growing taller with each hug, until she would be the one tucked beneath his chin, his arms the barrier to protect her. Back then he was too small, too weak, to keep her from wherever she's gone.

(If she loved him more, would have stayed?)

Azula said I love you in contradictions. In sparring—no, humiliating; it's been six years since his bending proved any match for hers. In the way she'd toss out a grain of advice, just waiting for him to peck—just waiting to twist him into the dirt, into a stepping stone to lift her higher. Azula always lies but then she wouldn't, just once, just enough for him to trust again—because she's his sister and he remembers her unbridled laughter mixing with the sound of the surf. When the only competition that mattered was finding the prettiest seashells, building the biggest sandcastles, leaping the tallest waves.

(If he'd just been stronger, could they go back?)

Father said I love you in fire. In punishment and pain and all the lessons he'd been too weak to learn. If he'd been smarter, stronger, maybe Father's love wouldn't hurt so much.

(The traitorous part of him thinks maybe this love is better from afar.)

Uncle says I love you in warm tea and steady advice, in full-belied laughter and presence. No matter where Zuko goes, Uncle is there, sticking tight as the barnacles crusted to the hull of the Wani. South Pole to North, prince to poverty, palace to forest to thin-walled apartment—Uncle never wavers.

(Words aren't needed, and would probably come out too convoluted, anyway.)

And the girl clinging to his leg, she says I love you in cluelessness. All he's done is add a spoonful of honey to her tea, but from the way she looks at him, he's sweetened her entire world.

It doesn't mean anything. She probably says it to every stranger she meets.

(But a warmth spreads in his chest that has nothing to do with fire.)