Title: The Way the Cookie Crumbles
Word Count: 205
Warning: Finale Spoilers
Challenge: 73
For May-Flyer, for her excellent points!
Zuko looked around the teashop. As Lee, he could see a long and peaceful future ahead of him, safe behind the walls of Ba Xing Xe. He and Uncle "Mushi" would live comfortably, working to support himself. He would find Jin and ask her for a second date, finishing off what they had started. He would be a citizen of the Upper Ring, with a home, a thriving business and a life of obscure security.
He could see his entire life ahead of him. He would learn from Uncle and inherit the Jasmine Dragon someday. Eventually, he would find a nice common girl to marry. He would live with his wife in the apartment with Uncle. Eventually, he would have healthy, carefree peasant children who would go off and become artisans and working class citizens of the Earth Nation. He would grow old and gray, playing Pai Sho with the other elderly men. Then, he would die.
He just had to accept that he was Li now, not Prince Zuko. He had to understand that world was behind him.
He absent-mindedly opened up a fortune cookie. "The first step to failure is acceptance of mediocrity," he read quietly. For some reason, that message scared him.
Notes: I know fortune cookies are anachronistic but so are tanks and steamships.