Zuko got carried away, he realized. It was foolish of him, he knew that now, but in his defense, his life had changed so rapidly and so dramatically that he hardly had time to notice. He made the mistake of thinking he could be normal. Katara made him feel like he could be anyone, while everyone else constantly reminded him that he would always be a recluse with a facial deformity. His life with Katara had been energizing and refreshing. She made him feel like happiness was within his reach. She made him feel like he was in control of his own future.

He was angry, but not at her. That was worse, he thought. If he were angry with her, at least his anger would have some kind of direction, some kind of purpose. But it didn't. It was just an aimless, amorphous darkness that wouldn't leave him alone. He couldn't use it for anything. It used him.

That being said, he didn't really understand why she left. She'd said something about journalistic integrity and conflict of interest. He couldn't help but wonder if those were just excuses. He had thought she seemed happy, but then again, he was never good at reading people. Maybe he had suffocated her with his poisonous loneliness. Maybe he was a really bad kisser.

He'd call it a break-up but it wasn't even that. It never got that far. Zuko's life was a series of aborted ideas and endeavors that never got the chance to become anything. He'd add this not-break-up to the list, just below his and Katara's not-relationship.

The world was still so new to him, it just didn't seem fair. But even he knew enough about the world to know that nothing was fair. He wondered where people even picked up the notion of equity if no one had ever really seen it. Nobody seemed to have a hard time differentiating other fairy tales from real life. Nobody ran around chasing unicorns and mermaids, but plenty of people lived and died in pursuit of equity. Zuko vowed not to be one of them.

His short-lived romance with Katara hadn't been for nothing, then. In a twisted way, it was exactly what he needed. He had been so busy having fun that he'd forgotten himself. It was his lot in life to do the grueling work that no one else wanted, and he was the type to keep his head down and do it. Let other people waste their time chasing fantasies. Other people didn't have a country to run. Zuko's single brush with fantasy had thrown him wildly off-kilter. He needed something more tangible to hang onto.

Besides, it was time he stopped neglecting his family. It was so easy to ignore his uncle and Mai when he had Katara's sympathetic advice to rely on. Without her, all of his critics were starting to make a lot more sense. He was letting his own sister rot behind bars for crying out loud, and all because he was too consumed with his glamorous new lifestyle to care. What kind of person even does that? Not a good one, that's for sure.

He was spiraling. This was only about Katara. Right?

He decided to call Azula's lawyer. It felt empowering to make a decision about something. Anything. Then it occurred to him that he didn't even know her name. Surname Tan, maybe? Or Tuan. Tang? Ah ha. A quick google search revealed it to be Ruomei Tan.

He gave her a call and tried not to be too dismayed when it went to voicemail. His mood improved marginally when he recalled that it was a bit past three in the morning in the Earth Kingdom. He did not wonder what Katara was doing right now. She was probably sleeping, like any reasonable person would be at three in the morning. Not that he was thinking about it. Because he wasn't.

Ms. Tan returned his call when daylight broke in the Earth Kingdom, and Zuko answered, even though it was dark and late in the Fire Nation. He knew checking his phone every fifteen minutes wasn't at all more productive than sleeping, but at least he hadn't missed Ruomei Tan's call. To his surprise, not only did she agree to speak with him, but proclaimed that she'd like to do so in person. She caught the red-eye that very evening.

They shook hands. Her grip was unwaveringly firm.

"Ruomei Tan. It's a pleasure," she announced, folding her graceful legs in the chair opposite him. She was brisk and professional.

"Likewise. Ms. Tan, could you please give me an update on Azula's case?"

"Oh!" she exclaimed, eyebrows slanting skyward. "You want to talk about Azula?"

Zuko hesitated. Um. Duh? Why else would he have called her here? Why else would she have accepted that offer?

"Well, yes… she's my sister and you're her attorney…"

"Oh, I see!" She laughed a plastic, garish laugh. "I just wasn't sure, since, you know, you've literally never taken an interest in her until now."

Zuko frowned.

"That's not true."

"Oh, isn't it though, Fire Lord?" Her voice was deceptively sugary. How did people always manage to utter his title like it was an insult? "I've been working on her case nearly every day. I've been meeting with her weekly, sometimes more. You've visited her a grand total of zero times, if I'm not mistaken, and the one time you had an opportunity to have her transferred to a Fire Nation facility, you turned it down!"

Zuko was openly scowling now.

"You really traveled all this way just to tell me to go fuck myself?"

She smiled sweetly at him.

"I get frequent flyer miles."

xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Not too long after Katara resigned, Cheng Young advised him that The Burning Questions was to continue with a different host. Hong. Since then Zuko mused about that new host. Would it be better or worse if he's entirely unlike Katara? Zuko wondered.

Worse, it turned out. Much worse.

"Fire Lord Zuko, we meet at last!" Hong cried and gave Zuko an overly familiar slap on the back.

"Please refrain from touching me," Zuko chided, gently, and pried the man's sweaty hand off his shoulder.

"Right, right, sorry. So I'm just gonna come right out and say it: I'm not Katara."

Astute, this one was.

"No. You're not."

"But I still believe we're going to get along just fine, you and me," he prodded, making a weird gesture that involved pointing alternately between Zuko and himself.

"That's nice."

Hong paused. He was staring, Zuko could feel it, but he refused to meet his eye. He made Zuko want to wash his hands.

"Alright," he relented, shuffling his notes and flicking on the recorder, "Let's get started then. So if you had to speculate, why would you say that Katara quit?"

In spite of all his efforts at self-control, Zuko's fist collided with the table.

"Damn it, could we not start with that?" He implored, and then added, "please?"

"Testy," Hong observed, "Alright, we'll begin with something easier. How's your sister's trial going?"

Zuko roared. Not with words, but an actual, guttural, animalistic roar. He clamped his hands on either side of his head.

Hong positioned himself as far away from Zuko as he possibly could without actually getting up from his seat. His face had drained of color.

"…Sorry," Zuko begrudged.

Hong issued a nervous chuckle. "That's alright… I guess the trial is off-limits too, then? What do you actually want to talk about?"

Zuko flicked a shred of used eraser from the table.

"I don't know," he muttered.

"Well we have to talk about something," Hong shot back. Did they really? Truly, this one was a gem in the field of journalism.

They landed on his support of the Southern Water Tribe independence movement. Zuko tried his best to divorce the topic from his memories of Katara. Chief Hakoda could have been anyone's father, Zuko insisted to himself. As far as he was concerned, Hakoda was just a fellow world leader with whom he'd made an agreement. It was just politics. Yes, that was it.

Their conversational rhythm (or lack thereof. Honestly, it was like pulling teeth) put Hong once again at ease. He resumed his one-sided banter, and even felt comfortable enough to toss one final tacky joke at Zuko before they parted.

"You're not going to try and kiss me, are you? I know you have a thing for journalists."

For fuck's sake.

Zuko left the room. He didn't say goodbye, he didn't announce that he was leaving, he just left. He didn't even care that it was his office. He avoided it for several hours, even though Hong was probably long gone by then. It felt tainted, like his privacy was compromised in it.

Was it just too late for him? Had he put off handling his responsibilities for too long, and now no matter how hard he tried, everything would just blow up in his face? Maybe he made a better puppet ruler than a real one. He didn't exactly like being the fire lord, so why had he been so resentful when Kuei took care of everything for him? It's not like he had a vision for his nation. He didn't even have a vision for himself.

He felt the way he had when his father was assassinated. It was like floating, but not in a pleasant, dreamlike way. It was more like he wasn't properly in touch with anything or anyone, and so he had nothing with which to orient himself in reality. Someone might yank him down to solid ground if he was momentarily needed, but then he would be released into empty space again when it was over. Time stopped being linear when he felt this way. He felt the weight of not only his current uselessness, but also of all the years he'd be useless in the future, all bearing down on him at once. He thought he'd come a long way in the past few months, but he had been sorely mistaken. He was right back where he started.

He knew he was overthinking. It was a nasty habit he'd acquired after he was disgraced. But he just couldn't help it; there was so little else to occupy him, what was he supposed to do? He felt thirteen again, with his whole life ahead of him and nothing to fill it.

If his thirteen-year-old self had learned to cope with it, then he could too. He was still the person he was back then. He just had to focus on the now. If the rest of his life really was as endless and vacuous as he feared, then he had plenty of time to deal with it later.