Zuko did go and see Dr. Chimon, but a lot of the time he found himself just sitting there not saying anything. He wasn't good at talking about feelings. The nightmares were, if anything, getting worse. He was just so tired all the time... and Qin was so maddening. The urge to yell at him, or punch him, or just... something was almost unbearable.
And people were starting to look at him funny.
Zuko was just coming out of yet another meeting when someone stepped in front of him. He looked up to see Sokka and Suki. Suki was carrying a wicker basket.
"Zuko, we're kidnapping you for a couple of hours," said Sokka.
"I really don't have ti-" Zuko began regretfully.
"You have no more meetings, and your paperwork can wait," said Suki. "You need a break, and this is not optional."
Zuko hesitated for a second, but as he realized Suki was right, Sokka grabbed his arm, and they started marching him out the door. Zuko glanced at guardsman Kuzon, but the guard just gave him an innocent smile and a shrug as he followed on behind.
Their journey ended at the turtleduck pond. As the three of them sat down on the grass, and Suki started pulling out food, the turtleducks swam over to the near edge of the pond and eyed them, waiting. Sokka pouted at them. "I still think it's weird that you feed the meat here," he said. "Greedy little things, aren't they?"
"I think they're sweet," said Suki, pulling out a badly-burnt end of bread. With difficulty, she broke off a piece before handing the rest to Zuko. "I'm guessing you're trying to avoid feeding human food to turtleducks?" She broke a smaller piece off, and tossed it to the ducks. They quacked, and scrambled for it.
"Pretty much," said Zuko. "Even the palace cooks burn things sometimes, and there isn't enough wild food for the ducks." Zuko and Sokka added some more crumbs, and the scrum in the water became less frenetic. They soon finished the bread, and the turtleducks swam off and began sunning themselves on the shore.
One of the smaller ones walked up to Suki and made eyes at her. "Shoo," she said. "It's our turn to eat." If a turtleduck could have pouted, it would have. Instead, it wandered off and made eyes at Zuko. Zuko looked at it... and caved, breaking off a corner of his sandwich for it to take from his hand.
Sokka shook his head.
"So what have you guys been up to while I've stuck in meetings?" asked Zuko.
"I've been training with the Kyoshi warriors, and also making friends with Ty Lee, Mai and some of the guards. The Chi-blocking training is going fairly well, though it looks like it would take years to truly master. Mai is worried about you. She would have been here right now, but she has some sort of function her Mom has had planned for weeks."
Zuko winced. "I wish I could spend more time with her, but..."
"I know," said Suki. "I think she wants to help more. If you can think of something she could usefully do..."
Zuko rubbed his forehead. "I'll try. I've already got her keeping track of the younger members of the court and the industrialist set her father hangs with. I can't do that, and it's really helpful. Sokka? What have you been doing?"
"I've been spending much of my free time in the library," said Sokka. "The palace library has lots of awesome stuff. And I headed out to the University of Caldera yesterday. The engineering department is pretty cool. We should really get the Mechanist in to talk to them some time. Have a..." he waved his hands "meeting, you know, of scientists from everywhere, and talk about machinery and physics and equations all day for several days. I bet we could come up with all sorts of cool ideas, and now there's peace there's no reason we shouldn't build peace machines together."
"Peace machines?" said Suki, raising an eyebrow, and smiling.
"Well, they're not war machines..." Sokka pouted. "Some people have no sense of humor."
"It was a pretty bad pun," said Zuko.
"Says the guy who forgets the beginning of a joke but tries to tell it anyway."
"True," said Zuko.
"So Zuko... how have you been the past couple of weeks? We've barely seen you, and your eyes make you look like a raccoon dog."
"I've been busy," said Zuko.
"Are you sleeping at all?" said Sokka. "Because if the Fire lord starts hallucinating that the walls are attacking the turtleducks because he hasn't slept in three days, that would be kind of bad."
"Oh Agni, Qin would have a field day," said Zuko. "I am sleeping, just not well. I'm seeing the doctor about it, and it's under control."
"What's the matter?" asked Suki. "Is War Minister Qin giving you trouble?"
"Yes," said Zuko, flopping down in the grass on his back with a huff. "The man is a total pain! He questions my every decision and is so indirect that I usually can't call him on it, and he gets Mung and Shinu to do the same. Even when he's too direct and I make him backtrack, by then I'm so angry that the fires are jumping, and I look out of control. I'd love to fire him, but I can't because he's got too much support."
"That's rough, buddy," said Sokka. "But the others are mostly okay, right? And they can see what he's doing, so if you just hold your temper..."
"Just hold my temper!" said Zuko. "What do you think I've been doing for weeks? And the ruddy fires keep reacting to my emotions and showing what I actually think of him, so it doesn't even matter if I hold my tongue." He glowered. "And people are looking at me funny and I feel like someone's going to stab me in the back."
"You've got guards for that, though."
"Yes." Zuko turned and looked at Kuzon and Ming as they stood at the entrance to the garden. "And they do a good job. A disaffected soldier tried to sneak into the palace with a knife two days ago, but he never even got past the walls. I only found out at the next morning's briefing."
"Huh," said Sokka. "At least the guards are loyal. That's something."
"Yes."
"Why'd the soldier want to kill you?"
"Thinks I'm a traitor for helping the Avatar take down my father."
"So he'd rather have the Earth Kingdom be smoking rubble than see them free. Nice guy."
"The quality of someone's enemies says a lot about their character. I don't think you should feel bad to have him as your enemy," said Suki.
"I don't, not really. The school system here encourages obsessive devotion to the Fire Lord, so it's not surprising some of them hate my guts for turning against my father, even if the fact I'm now Fire Lord is really awkward for them. I'm more worried when others turn that kind of devotion on me, and act like everything I do is right by definition, simply because I'm the Fire Lord. It's scary, because they will literally obey any order I give. ANY order. I'm almost thinking I understand my Father a bit better now. He was powerhungry and cruel before then, but once he was Fire Lord the power went to his head, and he... well, you know how he ended up. Declaring himself Phoenix King of the world and trying to burn the Earth Kingdom to the ground."
"That is pretty scary. But you won't go like that," said Suki. "Not least because we won't let your head get that swelled."
"Yeah, we'll just tease you until you stop," said Sokka. "You might want to think about doing something about the education they're getting, if it's that bad, though."
"On my list," said Zuko. "Somewhere around item #1027. There's just way too much I need to do, and it's all important."
"But it isn't all urgent," said Sokka, poking him in the stomach.
Zuko turned his head to glare at him. "And you're not going to do any of it if you collapse from overwork," said Suki. "Seriously, is there anything we can do to help?"
"This," said Zuko. "It's so nice to be - have someone I can vent to without causing a political confloption because Qin got offended when he found out I'd called him a bloody nusiance. Which he totally is!"
Sokka laughed. "Your secret is safe with us. Besides, Qin was a total git to the Earth Kingdom refugees at the Northern Air Temple. I'll be glad to see the back of him when you can safely get rid of him."
Notes: Real ducks should not be fed bread. It absorbs water and expands in their crop, and this has bad effects on them. Since bread for turtleducks is canon, I am going to assume that the turtleducks are adapted to be healthy on a diet that includes a substantial amount of bread. They are, after all, not entirely ducks. Ba Sing Se has a university. Do you really think Caldera would let them be the only one? Zuko's guards are incompetent to an unlikely degree in a lot of post-war fanfic. Unless they are actively disloyal, they should be able to stop at least some of the assassins before they get near Zuko. The Fire Nation is clearly capable of producing competent guards, otherwise I doubt Ozai would have survived his first year in office. Someone probably wanted Iroh in power enough to try and kill Ozai, who doesnt have eyes in the back of his head, and has to sleep sometime. And Azulon should have gotten assassinated at some point in his very long wartime reign. Which leaves me assuming disloyalty, but they usually aren't portrayed as being such.