A/N: you may be wondering why it's taken me 2 months to update (the answer is that I am the Literal Worst™) and after finals I just got lazy af and i didn't mean to be gone for so long (sorry!) but i'm back ayeee

not much to say for this chapter except that i had to reread this fic over twice because it's been so long since i've written anything that i've forgotten what i already wrote lol. also... i struggled hardcore with getting this to go where i wanted to so the next chapter will be better i'm sorry! (pls love me and review this anyway)

The silence in the room is almost painful.

As always before a big meeting, Zuko looks at himself in a mirror, but instead of standing in his own chamber, he's in Mai's, eyeing his robed reflection. It's actually unusual for her to be giving him the silent treatment. She's always made it clear what's on her mind. But now, she sits with her lips fastened, not even bothering to look in her boyfriend's direction. Part of this irritates Zuko. He wants to scold her for acting so childish, for going out of her way to ignore him when she knows he would never do anything with the intention of making her unhappy. She's his girlfriend. He loves her. He doesn't deserve her anger.

The other part of him, which he is trying his damnedest to ignore, feels dejected.

This isn't like the silence between him and Katara earlier in front of the turtleduck pond. That was natural. Calm. Peaceful. The conversation between them had came to a definite, gentle end, and they were cradled in the silence that didn't need to be filled. This however, is nothing like that. This is intentional and vengeful. This silence is punishment.

Zuko hates it.

"You can't actually be mad at me for this," he finally mutters as he smooths the invisible wrinkles on his clothes. "I didn't call Katara my concubine. A servant did." He turns around to look at Mai who is quietly picking her nails as she remains seated on her bed. Her expression never changes, though it rarely ever does, especially when she's as upset as she is right now.

"You didn't correct him either," Mai states, sliding further back onto her bed. She inspects her nails more thoroughly and it's all Zuko can do to keep from yelling at her. She knows this is getting on his nerves. He knows she's trying to grate on him, baiting him so she can have more of a reason to be irritated, but he's not in the mood to fight. Not now, not ever, and especially not over something as silly as this.

"Since when did you start caring about what other people think?" Zuko asks. He contemplates walking closer to Mai when she sits up, but her words halt him.

"Since when did you stop?" Suddenly, she's uninterested with her nails as she looks up to Zuko with crossed arms. That typical look. He thinks back to a time when that expression was captivating to him, when he'd watch her look at everything in disdain, only for her eyes to soften when she looked his way. Those days seem to be long gone.

"Mai," Zuko sighs, taking a few steps toward his unreceptive girlfriend. Her scowl deepens. "I don't want to fight about this right now."

"Because of your meeting," Mai groans. "Let me guess, you'll do better in the future, you're just too busy, too stressed, too busy recovering—"

"What do you want me to say?" he asks. He's not sure when he got so close to Mai, looking down at her, just inches from where he stands. It's a stalemate. They stare at each other, matching glares, tensed muscles, minds full of words they know could mutilate each other emotionally. And then, silence. He doesn't know how much time is passing, but it's slow, agonizingly so, until Mai finally speaks up again.

"I don't want you to say anything," Mai replies. "I just want things to change."

Zuko almost falls for it; he almost slides into the trap of delving deeper into this argument and allowing his anger to best him. She's being vague and passive and so infuriating that he wants to keep going and hash it out the way they always do, but... He's tired. He's tired physically, he's tired emotionally, and so he takes a step back and takes a deep breath.

"Fine," he says. "They will."

He doesn't know how. He doesn't know when. But he knows Mai is right, and sooner or later, things will come to a head between them. Until then, all they have is silence.

.

.

.

Everything happens too fast.

Zuko refrains from telling Katara too much about the meeting she's going to sit in on, for reasons she doesn't understand, and tells her when and where to meet him and his council. Most of his instructions go over her head. Talk like this! Sit like that! The fact that she even makes it to the correct room on time is worthy of praise.

Katara sits, listening to the councilmen spew jargon back and forth around her while Zuko takes it all in, silently musing as they all discuss problems she didn't even know were Zuko's responsibility. She's seated closest to the young Fire Lord, on her knees at a table the way the rest of the council sits. The room is more daunting than she would've imagined it being, with Zuko on a throne, elevated from everyone else. Flames flicker behind him and cast intimidating shadows across the floor, and just like every other setting in the Fire Nation, no one acknowledges Katara's existence.

The council wastes no time in getting into the heart of their discussion, the fate of the Fire Nation militia in the Earth Kingdom, with particular attention being paid to Ba Sing Se. Katara finds herself more invested than she thought she would've been, eyeing the men before her as words are passed back and forth. Poverty, hunger, anger, riots. 'The tension between our nations is reaching a breaking point' , 'there's no feasible place for all our men to go to if we remove them from the Earth Kingdom, but nothing will improve if we don't do so.' For a while, she wonders if the people discussing issues in front of her have been affected by the war. She wonders how much they truly understand they things they speak of.

Katara waits, for something she can't quite explain, for an opening, for a pause, for a chance to interject her thoughts. She's no political expert; Sokka was the one who kept up with these topics as a child while she focused her efforts on bending, and while she's smart enough to understand these Fire Nation men explaining the issue of having nowhere to relocate their men, she is not sure what proper etiquette needs to be adhered to for her to express herself.

It goes on for entirely too long. Her hands are in fists in her lap. Her tongue is snug between her teeth. She wants to wait for a lull, for a moment where she won't have to talk over someone, but the council is too quick, too used to spreading ideas from one mouth to another like wildfire that she knows the only way she'll be able to get a word in is to shout above the noise.

She doesn't want to, but she does anyway.

"There may be somewhere else your military can go for the time being," Katara chimes in. She knows she's interrupting someone but not a single head turns to her in the following silence. Instead, all eyes turn to Zuko as the room awaits for the inevitable punishment, verbal or otherwise, they assume Katara will receive for speaking out. The quietness of the room burns her. She knows how her own people would handle this kind of disrespect, with quick chastising and reprimanding. She doesn't mean to, but she turns her head slightly to look at Zuko herself. This is not the angry boy from the catacombs of Ba Sing Se. He's not the troubled exiled prince from a year ago. Now he's regal, he is refined. He is the boy Katara has grown to know, but someone different still that she feels she has not met.

"Continue," Zuko says, nodding his head in Katara's direction. "I want to hear what you have to say." There's something oddly intimate about the phrase, about the way Zuko looks down at her without looking down upon her. Katara wonders if she holds his gaze for too long and if the pause between Zuko's speech and her own feels as eternal to everyone else in the room.

"The Southern Water Tribe needs help rebuilding itself," Katara begins once she collects her thoughts. Her blue eyes skirt the sea of men before her with equally disinterested expressions. "If you're looking for a place for some of your military to go while also making amends with other nations, that might be one option. The war took a toll on the South in ways it didn't affect other parts of the world. I know the Northern Tribe has said they would like to help aid us, but... With the amount of damage that was done..." Katara trails off and the council begins to murmur amongst itself until Zuko speaks up again.

"I see no reason why that couldn't be done," he says. Katara is almost certain she sees him smiling at her, but she feels it might be improper for her to stare long enough to find out.

"There is still one problem with that, however, Fire Lord Zuko," one of the councilmen states. Katara whips her head to look at the man speaking. Not a single physical trait stands out to her.

"And what would that be?" Zuko asks.

"With the exception of Ba Sing Se, that sounds like it could be reasonable... But there are too many issues for us to just take our men out of Ba Sing Se specifically. We have known for decades that Ba Sing Se was a place for refugees to go, including some of our own people." There's a pause and Katara is certain everyone turns to Zuko again when this is said. "There's a large possibility that all kinds of people are there. Fugitives, traitors, prisoners of war..." Katara looks at Zuko as the list grows longer and longer.

"And how do you propose we find them?" Zuko asks. "I don't mean to sound impatient, but delaying the decision on the off chance that we can find some war criminals—many of who might not even be criminals under my jurisdiction—seems impractical."

"I agree," the same councilman says. "But we do not know yet which people are in Ba Sing Se, or whether they're being held involuntarily." Katara can feel the air getting tense around them. Zuko looks more serious than she's seen him look in a long time. His eyes narrow and he leans forward, keeping his voice level.

"And who do you suspect is important enough to spend our time and effort searching for them?" No one moves, no one speaks, no one breathes, and Katara recognizes the hopeful, desperate pleading that permeates Zuko's eyes, the look on his face that begs the councilman to say what he wants to hear more than anything, the words that will incite actions Zuko would normally be too logical to fall victim to:

"Princess Ursa."

Zuko's reply is instantaneous.

"Remove the military from Ba Sing Se," Zuko says. "I'm going to find her myself."

.

.

.

"I might be gone for a while." Zuko isn't sure why he tells Azula this, or why he decided to see her again, but he says it anyway, in what can only be described as desperation to salvage the scraps of their relationship. The words spill from his lips like excess saliva and stain his sister's ears. Azula sits on her bed while he's on a chair in front of her, careful not to move to quickly or startle her. Azula is looking healthier now, but vacant. Her eyes are dull and empty, and trained on anything other than her older brother. Perhaps she won't react. Maybe she has nothing to say to him.

"Where are you going?" Azula asks. She stares at her blank sheets instead of him, her fingers fiddling with the starch white blankets.

"The Earth Kingdom," he tells her. He came to the decision almost instantly in front of his council once they told him they were sure she was in Ba Sing Se. He knew he hadn't thought it through thoroughly enough yet. Sure, he'd move the militia to the South, and then send some people to the North if they needed the assistance as well, and he'd have to think of some way to moderate his troops to prevent any rogue actions under his name while he went to Ba Sing Se himself to find his mother—if the rumors were even true... And then the issue of Katara, who insisted on staying in the Fire Nation, only for him to change his plans entirely. He briefly thinks about how he'll break this news to Mai, especially now that they're in an argument and he doesn't really want to talk to her all too much, and it's enough to make him focus on the present.

He waits to see if Azula will ask any more questions, she stares back as if her gaze is prodding enough.

"I—I'm going to look for our mother," Zuko says. Azula swallows hard, staring at her sheets with more intent than she had been before.

"And will you come back?" she asks. Her voice is low, almost like she's musing aloud the possibility of him not returning, but she doesn't sound malicious. She almost sounds saddened. Concerned.

"Yes. Of course," he says. Azula's expression remains static but slowly, she turns her head to Zuko and it all comes crashing down on him like a wave. Her eyes, her lips, her long, thin nose. Every physical thing about her is indistinguishably Ursa. She was always the splitting image of their mother. But... He sees something else. Something that's different from Ursa and Ozai but is still eerily familiar that he knows he's seen before.

"Why are you staring at me?" she demands, and he drops his gaze immediately. He knows he will regret saying the words once he thinks of them, but he allows himself to say it anyway.

"I see a lot of myself in you," Zuko admits.

"What?" Azula scoffs. When she laughs, it almost feels like she's her old, controlled self, but the ambiance of her room keeps Zuko present and grounded. "I am not like you, Zuko."

"For starters, you're stubborn—"

"How dare you ever insinuate—"

"You don't ever listen—"

"You and I are nothing alike, Zuko—"

"You're only proving my point by arguing with me now—"

Azula doesn't respond, not with words. Instead she huffs, impulsively and angrily, blowing blue flames straight at Zuko's face. He only barely manages to dissipate them before they touch him. The annoyance in her eyes is suddenly replaced with fear, as if she suddenly realizes the severity of what she just attempted and how she might be punished. It only takes a moment for her face to become slick with tears, hot and heavy and rolling down her cheeks and her eyes swirl with too many emotions far too quickly, fear, anger, hurt, confusion, and Zuko wants (or perhaps he feels obligated) to console her.

"This time a year ago, I used to be just like you," Zuko says. She's seething now, snarling and crying and he knows he should go now before he disturbs her more, but he can't move yet, staring at his sister who he can't decide if he actually loves or if he merely feels required to stay by her side. "I used to feel nothing, or too much, or the wrong thing. But I had someone who never gave up on me, and I was able to change."

Azula stares blankly, blinking rapidly as her tears continue to fall. She's not looking at Zuko anymore and he knows she's reached her capacity for the day. She's no longer going to respond to him for the rest of this visit.

Zuko stands, awkwardly, his chair scraping across the floor and he looks at Azula one final time before he leaves.

"I'm not leaving you alone, Azula. I'm not giving up on you," he says. She looks up at him, her eyes shift lazily, and she doesn't say a word.

.

.

.

When Zuko returns to his chamber for the night, he wonders if it's possible for anyone to have it all, if it's reasonable for him to want things with Mai to return to normal and to want Katara to stay with him no matter how selfish it is, if he can really pray that one day he makes a breakthrough with his sister and that this irrational trip he plans to make for his mother will turn out to be worth it.

When he can't fall asleep, he tries to calculate how likely it will be that at the end of this, he will have nothing.