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When Iroh reflects on his life, he has so many regrets he thinks he would die before he finished counting them aloud. He wishes he never laid waste to the walls of Ba Sing Se. He wishes he had been standing in front of Lu Ten when he was cut down on the battlefield. He wishes he wasn’t so wrapped up in his grief when he returned home that he allowed Ozai to usurp the throne and disappear his wife and father while he was at it.
There are several moments where he wishes he had chosen differently. Spoken up, acted, even if it didn’t change the outcome, even if it would have made it worse.
Watching his little brother maim his nephew for the sin of having compassion without intervening is one of his greatest regrets.
The child is sagging, held up only by Ozai’s grip around his hair, and the only way Iroh knows he hasn’t passed out yet is that he hasn’t stopped screaming.
Ozai’s fire doesn’t go out.
Zuko begs for mercy.
Azula laughs.
Iroh looks away.
Ozai grows tired after a while. It is not fast; firebenders do not burn easy, and Ozai knows this, so his incinerating clutch on his son’s face tightens and continues on, and so it goes until the screaming stops. Iroh forces himself to look up. Zuko is crumpled at his feet, and- oh dear boy, Agni save us- his face. Iroh lets out a choked sound as Ozai announces the terms of his son’s banishment, because the still-smouldering bloody charcoal he left in lieu of childish-soft skin wasn’t enough of a branding.
Ozai steps over his son’s motionless body on his way out of the Agni Kai chambers.
Zuko wakes up halfway through the first debridement in the Court infirmary.
His voice is gone, so his scream is a broken whisper as Iroh holds him down. The small wisps of fire shooting desperately from the child’s fingers are put out efficiently by the tears falling from his Uncle’s eyes.
Ozai steps in the doorway and watches impassively as the physician carefully applies a balm to the burn, trying not to take off any more skin than had already sloughed off in the first treatment.
Iroh looks at the child unconscious in the bed and squeezes his hand before he gets up and roughly shoves his brother out of the room, slamming the door behind them.
Ozai is the Fire Lord.
Iroh could be put to death for treason.
The Dragon of the West finds that neither of these facts interest him.
“How dare,” Iroh snarls, flames licking his fists. “How dare you come here, as if you care.”
Ozai’s eyes are cool and disengaged.
“I hear the wound is infected. The boy may not have long left to-“
Iroh sweeps his brother’s feet out from under him and pins him down, holding flames to his left eye. Ozai doesn’t react, staring at Iroh with a lazy disinterest.
“If that child dies, brother,” Iroh says, low and raging. “I swear upon Agni and every Fire Lord that has come before you that you will join him on that pyre.”
Ozai just laughs.
He doesn’t wake up again for four days, which is ample time for a ship to be requisitioned and enough medical supplies to be transferred on.
It’s plenty of time for Iroh to sit at Zuko’s bedside and stare at the white bandages covering a majority of his nephew’s face and take in the words that the physician says- permanent nerve damage and hearing loss and major sight loss and he still may not survive this, I’m sorry General Iroh-
Zuko wakes up.
Zuko cries.
Zuko wants his mother, who is gone or dead.
Zuko wants his sister, who laughed at his public maiming.
Zuko wants his father.
Iroh has nothing to add to that, so he tries desperately to wipe the tears from Zuko’s functional eye before they get his bandages wet and he tries to keep him from understanding, really, what has just happened to him.
Iroh has to shave back Zuko’s soft, black hair, like he did when Lu Ten was five and got thick glue tangled into his hair by accident. Zuko’s must go because the hair keeps getting caught in the bubbling blister that covers nearly half of his face. The hoarse cries that exit his nephew’s mouth when the physician tries to remove them in between swells of the waves is enough to fuel Iroh’s nightmares for months.
Every modicum of consciousness Zuko gains is offset by pain.
“I want to go home, Uncle,” He moans one night, three weeks after they have left Fire Nation territory. “Uncle, I want to go home.”
He’s sick. A high fever from the infected burn has made the experience of having to debride it all the more unbearable for every party involved.
“You are home, my nephew.” Iroh says softly.
“N-no. Home. I want to go home,“
“Prince Zuko-“
“Why won’t you let me go home? Why-“
He’s struggling, hitting Iroh weakly with closed fists. It only takes a few seconds of Iroh wrapping tight arms around him for all of his strength to leave him.
Zuko sags against him, and Zuko weeps.
Zuko has nightmares often. He’s been thoroughly trained to believe that asking for help is weak, so Iroh stations a guard outside Zuko’s door, and tells them to wake him up if they hear screaming inside the room.
The first few times Iroh shows up at Zuko’s door in the middle of the night with a pot of tea, the child is confused and angry.
After a while, he accepts it, and he sits up with his knees drawn to his chest and his tear-stained face cast down while Iroh pours him chamomile tea and tells him stories about Lu Ten.
They’ve been at sea for two months when Zuko demands that they begin searching the Air Temples. There is still a bandage wrapped around half his face, he only catches half of what anyone says to him, and he knocks his left shoulder into door frames at least three times a day. He hasn’t yet started practicing his firebending, but Iroh watches him flinch away at candles that are too close to his face, so he does not yet push him to.
Lieutenant Jee is a quiet man. Iroh has seen far too much to mistake his silence as indifference.
Jee is the one that sets them on the long course to the Western Air Temple so that Zuko has more time to recover. He is the one that teaches Zuko how to read nautical maps and how to communicate with other ships using flags. He distracts Zuko when he gets too worked up, slips extra congee on his plate when he isn’t looking, and moves back morning reveille when the guards have to wake up Iroh for nightmares more than once in a night.
Iroh and Jee make eye contact over Zuko’s excited chattering over his newfound understanding of how to properly correct their heading, the places the Avatar most likely is, how he’ll be able to go home by the end of the year, maybe in time for his birthday. Jee quirks an eyebrow over Zuko’s head, asking does he realize? Iroh stares steadily ahead and shakes his head slightly.
No.
What child, no matter how publicly wearing the mark of their father’s sins, wants to realize their father does not mean for them to come home?
The Western Air Temple is beautiful and old and sacred. It is full of light and air, murals and statues, lovely, bright rooms.
There are also scorch marks on the walls and remains in the corners of the long, stretching hallways.
The Avatar is clearly not in this long-abandoned tomb, but that does not stop Zuko from searching every corner. He comes staggering out of a room, his face paled, and promptly throws up against a wall.
“Prince Zuko!” Iroh yells out, alarmed.
“Uncle-“ Zuko manages rasp out. He points at the doorway.
Iroh looks.
The floor and walls are nearly black for their burns. Huddled in the back of the room, covered in singed orange and red tatters, are skeletons. Leathery skin stretches taut over old bones, and Iroh can make out faded blue arrows on some of the bigger remains.
But most of them are tiny. The smallest skull cannot be bigger than Iroh’s fist. He immediately understands why Zuko is still throwing up, taking in shuddering gaps like he can’t quite bear to have oxygen reach his lungs.
He thinks, inexplicably, of Lu Ten cut down on the battlefield, Zuko prostrate before his father.
Iroh sends a silent prayer up to Agni. For what, he isn’t sure.
He exits the rooms and sits across from his nephew. They are silent while Zuko struggles to regain control of his breath. There is red blossoming on his bandages; the burn has been irritated.
“Children,” Zuko chokes out after a while. “Th-they’re children.”
“Yes,” Iroh says quietly.
“I-I thought it was an army-“
“Yes.”
It’s what the children are taught in school. Iroh was a young boy when the curriculum changed under Azulon. Most adults realize it’s bullshit by the time they’re conscripted into the army and are forced to confront many other unpleasant truths about their country. However, Zuko is not much larger than the biggest skeleton in that room. He never had time to be eased into the uncomfortable realization that almost everything he’s learned is propaganda.
“There was no army.” Zuko says. His hands are tightening into fists. Iroh looks up and down the hall. There is no crew around to witness the Crown Prince’s first foray into casual treason.
“There wasn’t.” Iroh agrees softly. “The Air Nomads did not believe in violence, Prince Zuko.”
The inference sags heavy between them, and Zuko bows his head down. Iroh understands. To realize that you are descended from genocidal murderers is to wonder why Agni does not strike you down where you stand.
The silence stretches. Zuko looks up and his visible eye is red and swollen.
“Do you- how are they meant to be put to rest?”
Iroh sends up another silent prayer, this time of thanksgiving, that this is a child of Ursa and Roku and not of Ozai and Sozin. He gets up and offers Zuko a hand.
“I‘m not certain, but I don’t think the spirits would be too upset if we scattered their ashes in the wind and said the traditional prayers for them, do you?”
“No,” Zuko says. His shoulders are set back and he looks more determined than Iroh has seen in months. “I don’t think so.”
It is back-breaking work. They do not tell the crew. It is their burden to bear. It is Zuko’s burden to bear.
Iroh builds a pyre in the main hall and collects remains from the adjacent rooms. Zuko disappears for a while, and when he finally reappears, the top of his collar is soaked with tears, and he is missing his outer-robe. Cradled in his arms, carefully shrouded in black and red, is a small bundle.
Zuko places the bundle on the flames, and he kneels and bows his head. Iroh kneels next to him and places one hand on his shaking shoulder.
When they get back to the ship that night, smelling of ash and dirt and shame, Zuko disappears for hours into his room. Iroh is in the middle of a Pai Sho game with Jee when he reappears in fresh robes and his face hardened back up.
“Set a course for the Southern Air Temple. We will find the Avatar.” He says.
Iroh takes out his white lotus piece and places it on the board.
“Of course, Prince Zuko.” Iroh says.
Zuko is sixteen when they finally discover the Avatar. It has been three excruciatingly long years in which the Crown Prince has gotten angrier with every letter home ignored, every dead end, every suspicious near death experience. Pain has turned to fear has turned to anger, and after their disastrous attempt at the South Pole, his anger is peaking into rage.
They’re sitting at a dock in an Earth Nation province while the Wani is repaired. Or, more accurately, Iroh is sitting. Zuko is pacing a path into the extremely flammable wooden boardwalk.
“He’s a- he’s a child-“ Zuko says in a strangled voice.
“Yes,” Iroh agrees. A child he had been, with the arrows of an airbending master tattooed onto his skin, far more vibrant than the faded blue they’d seen on scorched-dry skin, all those years ago.
“The Avatar is younger than, than when I-“
Zuko doesn’t finish his sentence. Iroh understands it anyway.
“Yes.” Iroh says. “Yes, he is.”
Zuko sits down heavily.
“I want to go home.” He whispers into his drawn up knees.
When Iroh was still identified by the insignia on his epaulets, he noticed a phenomenon in his loyal men. In the thick of fighting, in the thick of the war and violence and heat, they had to be fine, so they were fine. But as soon as their leave started, many of them broke.
Nightmares, anxiety. So jumpy they would singe their own sleeves. They ate little and slept less. It was as if the sudden silence and lack of danger allowed them to relax enough to realize what they have been through.
This is what happens to his nephew in Ba Sing Se.
Iroh thinks, naively, that they are safe- nameless scarred refugees amongst thousands of other nameless scarred refugees. They have quiet jobs in a tea shop, they live in a quiet apartment and they share quiet moments.
Zuko has never done “quiet” well.
The nightmares get nearly as frequent as his first month on the Wani. Iroh has learned to sleep with one ear towards Zuko’s room- as he has gotten older, he has learned to bite down on his pillow, not wanting to wake Iroh with his screams.
Iroh wants to be woken.
So he even wakes up to his near-silent whimpers on a hot summer night when every window is thrown open to catch even the slightest breeze.
Iroh gets up and finds Zuko sitting straight up in bed. His eyes are blown open asymmetrically wide as he stares at his wall blankly, and he’s biting his lip so hard Iroh is sure he is tasting blood.
“My nephew,” Iroh says softly, sitting on the edge of his bedroll. Zuko startles violently, but Iroh grabs his hands and points them away before the flames even appear on his palms.
“S-sorry,” Zuko croaks out. He wraps one hand tight around his wrist and digs his ragged nails into his skin.
“You have nothing to apologize for.” Iroh gently pries off his hand. There are already four crescent blood moons imprinted on his wrist.
Zuko is shaking like he has been left on a frozen Northern tundra to die, so Iroh reaches out and pulls him tight to his chest.
“It’s alright, it’s alright,” He repeats, over and over again, until the shaking stops. When Zuko finally pulls away from him, he drags his knees up to his chest and wraps his arms around them.
Iroh stays silent. If nothing else good has come out of his banishment, Zuko has gotten slightly better at talking since realizing that Iroh will not use his fears and insecurities against him.
“Do you remember,” Zuko starts, and drops his head further down so he doesn’t have to meet Iroh’s eyes. “Do you remember when I was eleven, and I broke my arm?”
“I do,” Iroh says and tries to keep his voice without inflection. He knows what his nephew is about to tell him, lets him say it anyway.
“I-I told you I fell from the tree in the garden.”
Zuko, age eleven, who still smiled sometimes and had bright eyes so like his absent mother, had a cast from his fingers to his shoulder. He looked down and stammered out an excuse when Iroh asked what happened, and Zuko had never been good at lying, so that was as much of an answer as if Zuko had just told him.
“Yes, I remember,” Iroh gently prods when Zuko has been silent for too long.
“I-I didn’t fall. I- I was behind in my bending lessons, and Azula- she told my Father. And Father came to my next lesson. I guess my katas weren’t precise enough and he-”
Iroh waits. Zuko is shaking again. He places a steadying hand on the back of Zuko’s bowed neck and thanks Agni when the boy doesn’t flinch away.
“He broke my arm.” Zuko whispers.
Iroh pulls the boy to him again and presses a kiss to the crest of his forehead. Zuko finally meets his eyes.
“He- he shouldn’t have done that.”
It’s said as a statement, but Iroh knows better.
“My dear boy,” Iroh says softly. “No, he shouldn’t have.”
Zuko nods once and pulls his head to his knees again.
“I miss my mom,” He says, so quietly and so openly Iroh barely can believe that it left his mouth.
“I miss her too.” Iroh says.
They sit in silence for a moment and Iroh looks out the window. There is a full moon tonight. Iroh saw the posters for the Avatar’s bison yesterday; the Avatar must be here with his friends. Iroh wonders if the young waterbender is out practicing.
“I have been wanting to try a new blend,” Iroh says. “Lavender and chamomile. How about I make a pot?”
“You should sleep, Uncle. I don’t need tea.”
“Prince Zuko, you always need tea. I will sleep plenty when I’m dead. Come.”
So Iroh makes a pot and they sit on the couch, and Iroh tells stories from Lu Ten’s childhood until Zuko falls asleep against his shoulder. Iroh carefully sets his tea down and moves his nephew into a more comfortable position. He runs a hand through the silky dark hair finally growing back in, ragged around the scar.
“I’m sorry I did not do more to protect you, my nephew,” Iroh whispers into the dark room. “But I will do everything in my power to protect you now.”
He doesn’t get the chance before he is in a Fire Nation prison and his nephew is once again under his father’s control.
Zuko comes to his cell nearly every day. Iroh does not turn around, not matter how much Zuko yells and pleads.
He can see from the shadow he casts that Zuko’s hair is back in the traditional topknot, his epaulets pointing out.
Iroh’s stomach twists every time Zuko accuses him of not caring. He wishes he could shake the child by his shoulders and tell him that he has cared more about him than any other member of his family since the day his mother disappeared.
He cannot. Zuko is angry, and he is angry, and he is angry, and if Iroh says something wrong and Zuko reacts wrong, they will both be held for treason, and Ozai is not a merciful man.
Not even for his family.
Especially not for his family.
So he directs his nephew towards the scrolls that reveal his true parentage and hopes that Zuko walks the path himself, and when the Eclipse occurs, Iroh breaks out.
And doesn’t see his nephew for several months.
He hears things, of course. What use is an international Pai Sho association if not for getting court gossip from the other side of the world?
The Crown Prince has been officially removed from the line of succession.
The Former Crown Prince has been spotted with the Avatar.
There has been a breakout at Boiling Rock, and the Warden swears on his life one of the perpetrators was the traitor Zuko.
(Iroh smiles at that tidbit passed to him by Jeong Jeong, the familiar tight feeling of worry and pride in his chest, so like the symptoms of a heart attack, returning as he thinks of his nephew breaking Prisoners of War out of an impenetrable fortress.)
Iroh is sleeping in a tent outside of Ba Sing Se. When he wakes, Zuko is sitting beside him, head cast down and hands on his knees.
His robes are tattered. He looks leaner. He looks humbled.
Iroh sits up and away from the boy, because there are already tears in his eyes.
“Uncle,” Zuko starts, his voice wavering. “I know you must have mixed feelings about seeing me. But I want you to know-” Zuko’s voice breaks completely. “I am so, so sorry, Uncle. I am so sorry and ashamed of what I did. I don't know how I can ever make it up to you, but I-”
Iroh turns around and roughly pulls his nephew into his arms, one hand clinging tight to the back of his head. They’re both crying and Zuko has never been good at breath control and there is a battle about to start and the ever-present threat of death is looming above them, but Iroh has never been more at peace.
“H-how can you forgive me so easily?” Zuko’s hands are fisted in Iroh’s robes, and Iroh just holds tighter. “I thought you would be furious with me.”
Iroh loosens their hold to press his forehead to his nephew’s.
“I was never angry with you. I was sad, because I was afraid you'd lost your way.” He says softly.
Zuko clasps onto Iroh’s wrist and looks down. The tears drip onto the dirt-packed floor.
“I did lose my way.” He admits.
Iroh gently tilts his chin back up until he is meeting Zuko’s eyes. “But you found it again, and you did it by yourself. And I'm so happy you found your way here.”
Zuko initiates the hug this time. And he says, muffled into Iroh’s shoulders, because he really is at heart, a thirteen-year-old brat,
“It wasn’t that hard, Uncle. You have a pretty strong scent.”
Zuko is not crowned Fire Lord until one month after Ozai’s defeat on account of Azula having shot him full of lightning, a terrible fever, and a court physician declaring him “startlingly underweight and malnourished”.
He of course already wields the responsibility and title- he was running councils from his sick bed and even at one point, according to Chief Hakoda, slept-walked to a meeting when he was dangerously feverish.
When Iroh enters his nephew’s chambers on the morning of his coronation, there is no trace of sickness or injury.
Zuko is standing tall in his formal robes and his dark hair has finally grown long enough to pull into a proper topknot. He’s reading a briefing scroll with intense concentration as a tailor makes last-minute adjustments.
“So, does the Fire Lord have any time for his poor old Uncle?” Iroh says.
Zuko startles, and the full-faced grin he breaks into when he makes eye contact with Iroh immediately shatters the illusion of a serious national leader; Iroh can only see five-year-old Zuko running to greet him in the courtyard.
“Uncle!” Zuko steps off the stool- the tailor makes a noise of frustration, like this is a common occurrence- and immediately hugs Iroh.
“I was worried you wouldn’t make it.” He says. Iroh reaches up and smooths an errant hair off his nephew’s forehead.
“My nephew, I wouldn't have missed your coronation for anything.” Iroh says. Zuko looks down.
“It should have been you.” He says quietly.
“No, Fire Lord Zuko. It shouldn’t have.” Iroh insists gently. “You are the bravest, most resilient young man I know, and you will lead this nation with wisdom and compassion unseen since before Sozin.”
Zuko smiles, and Iroh thinks that maybe, he is starting to actually believe him.
Zuko’s twentieth birthday is met with both trepidation and great excitement. Some of Zuko’s advisors have warned him that making a fuss for his coming-of-age may draw attention to the fact that he was Fire Lord for the better part of four years before being considered of-age. Other advisors have informed him that the city desperately needs a morale boost and that a festival celebrating his birthday is the perfect occasion. Zuko, who would prefer absolutely no one in the world knew he had a birthday to begin with but wants what is best for his nation, is miserable either way.
When Zuko informs Iroh of this fact, sitting with his head on the table in the backroom of the Jasmine Dragon and poking at an egg custard like it may be poisoned (he has had four assasination attempts this year alone), Iroh blows a raspberry and sets down a cup of jasmine tea for his nephew.
“Have a party, nephew! A great big one! You deserve a celebration.”
“I honestly didn’t think I’d live this long,” Zuko sighs.
Iroh smacks the back of his nephew’s head, and it is a testament to the goodwill Iroh has built with Zuko’s personal guard that none of them even flinch when Zuko yelps indignantly and rubs the spot.
“But you have, and you will celebrate that.” Iroh says resolutely. “I will be coming to Capitol City, and I expect a celebration.”
And a celebration there is.
Zuko uses the royal endowment (it’s really their money anyway, he reasons to Iroh, we just took it from them) to fund a city-wide festival and personally delivers mooncakes to the orphanages he has set up for the thousands of displaced children.
His friends arrive. It is a matter of great joy to see the Avatar, now taller than Zuko by several inches, gleefully run and jump into the Fire Lord’s arms, beaming, as Zuko blushes and rolls his eyes.
The court party is long and stiflingly boring, obviously, but made bearable by watching Zuko smile when one of his friends slings an arm around him or cracks a joke. By midnight, Iroh realizes he cannot find his nephew in the crowds of drunk nobles, and has a suspicion that he may have fled.
He grabs some bread for the turtle-ducks, wondering if any of his friends or advisors have noticed the same, but stops by the sliding door leading outside when he hears a soft laugh float in.
The courtyard is lit up with lanterns. Zuko is laying on a blanket in the grass, his head in Mai’s lap, who is pulling up dandelions and piling them on his forehead. The Avatar is hanging upside down from a tree branch, and Katara has a ball of water directly in front of his face and is threatening to move it forward. Toph is sitting next to Sokka, who has one arm slung around Suki, and they are engaged in an intense discussion that seems to involve a lot of swearing and giggling.
Music is floating over the walls from the party, and Iroh watches as Katara makes good on her threats and douses Aang with pond water. Aang, in retaliation, grabs the shrieking girl, heaves her up, and takes off in a whirlwind of air.
Zuko laughs as Toph bends up a bar of earth and Aang trips over it, leaving both he and Katara tangled together in the grass, giggling and hitting each other. Mai leans down and kisses Zuko, and the gentle expression that appears on his face when she does is enough to make Iroh want to cry.
Iroh smiles softly and closes the door, resolving to place the bread back in the kitchen and seek out Hakoda, who seems like he may be a noteworthy Pai Sho opponent and exclusively able to commiserate with Iroh over the pains of loving a child who saved the world, and is still having to hold it up on their shoulders.
Iroh regrets many things in his life. It is his greatest pride and joy that his hand in guiding Zuko’s path is not one of them.
Let everything happen to you. Beauty and terror. Just keep going. No feeling is final.
- Ranier Maria Rilke