Chapter Text
Iroh watched his nephew closely over the rim of his teacup, taking a slow sip as Zuko fiddled with his ear.
“Nephew,” Iroh said, slowly returning his cup to the table. “Is the hearing aid bothering you?”
Zuko snapped his attention to Iroh, the frown he wore deepening. “It’s annoying.”
“Annoying in what manner?” Iroh asked. He had no right to be concerned so early on—Dr. Balaji had said Zuko would have an adjustment period ahead of him—but he could not help himself. Anxieties came and went as they wished, not as he bid.
“I don’t like how it feels.” Zuko pushed two fingers against the housing behind his ear.
“Does it irritate your scar?”
As with any mention of the burn, Zuko’s demeanour grew dark. He glared at Iroh. Iroh did not take this to heart. After nearly four years of this, he knew the anger was redirected from somewhere twisted with hurt inside his nephew. It no longer stung the way it initially had. Especially since that anger had dwindled heavily since his latest return to Iroh’s side.
“No,” Zuko snapped.
Iroh sipped his tea again to hide his sigh. Zuko had never pinned down the art of lying—that talent fell to his father and sister alone. Where Ozai and Azula could lie truths from their smiles, Zuko couldn’t even convince anyone of falsified emotions. Though, Iroh supposed, this was not a sad thing. The less lying Zuko did, the better. Lying was unbecoming.
Setting his teacup down again, Iroh said, “Perhaps you should mention that to your follow-up appointment in two weeks.”
Zuko slumped in his chair. “Why do I have to go back? They did everything already.”
“So that you may report grievances such as this,” Iroh said. “Dr. Balaji explained this to you, remember?”
Zuko looked off to the side, lips pursing somewhat.
Ah. He had not paid attention, then.
“Other than the grating against your scar,” Iroh said, “is it giving you any other problems?”
“My voice sounds weird,” Zuko said, fingers returning to the hearing aid—this time pushing against the tip in his ear.
Iroh nodded. Zuko had said as much in the audiologist’s office. Dr. Balaji had informed them that this was normal.
“And everything is so…” Zuko threw his hands in the air in exasperation. “It’s… ugh!”
“Perhaps you should have taken Dr. Balaji’s advice and taken it out until we returned home,” Iroh said.
Zuko’s good eye narrowed to the size of his scarred one, glaring around at the clamorous diner around them.
“If I’m going to get used to it—” he started.
“Then you should follow Dr. Balaji’s instructions,” Iroh cut over him with a pointed look.
Zuko’s lips bunched into an awkward position again. Iroh did not bother hiding his sigh this time. He understood paying attention was not always easy for Zuko, but sometimes…
“Take it out, nephew,” Iroh said. “We will try again for a few hours at home tomorrow.”
Zuko needed no further prompting. He ripped the hearing aid from his mangled left ear, yanking the tip out of his ear canal. Iroh winced at the haste—surely that would not be good for the device. Zuko stored it away in his jacket pocket—Iroh winced again—and then rubbed his freed ear.
Getting Zuko to accept his need for a hearing aid had been a challenge Iroh had never in his life expected to face. Of course, he had never expected plenty of things in his life. This one, though, only came to fruition almost four years ago, when Zuko had stood at Iroh’s doorstep after being released from the hospital.
Of course, Iroh hadn’t noticed right away that Zuko had little hearing on his left side. The immediate attention had gone to Zuko’s dead left eye. Zuko had eagerly wanted to replace that with a prosthetic. He had been so sure, mere months after his eye had burned out, that his father would want him again if he looked normal. If he pretended to be whole. Iroh had agreed to Zuko’s wishes, but he had only done so because the current eyepatch pressed against Zuko’s scar, irritating the new half-made skin permanently red.
It had not been an instant fix. Zuko had been at his most angry when his eye had been sewn shut, the implant healing behind it. Iroh suspected it came from pain—though whether it came from the eye itself or the deep twisting and tearing happening inside Zuko, Iroh could not tell. Then the stitches came out, and the acrylic went in.
Iroh observed Zuko stare at himself in the bathroom mirror for hours that night. He made the mistake of leaving to make tea. When he came back, the mirror lay in shards on the floor, blood seeping around the tiles.
Ozai had not wanted his son back. Zuko had a small scar on his left palm.
“Sorry for the wait,” a waitress said, releasing Iroh from the past. She carried a tray of two plates, which she quickly set in front of Iroh and Zuko. Each grimaced as they looked down at their plates, then switched them as soon as the waitress left.
“Oh, dear,” Iroh said as he realised something.
“What is it?” Zuko’s good eye went wide with alarm. “Is something wrong?”
“I forgot to ask for more tea,” Iroh said, looking at his empty cup.
Zuko stared at him, then let out a long sigh.
“Uncle,” he said. “We work at a tea shop. I’m sure you can get more tea later.”
“But it would be so nice to have tea that I did not have make…”
“You like making tea!”
Iroh let Zuko argue with him a while longer. It wasn’t that he enjoyed teasing his nephew but… alright, he did, a little. After all, it was his role as uncle to exasperate the boy.
Eventually, Zuko began tucking into his pancakes, tired of arguing tea with Iroh. Iroh himself began eating, too, but he kept a covert eye on his nephew. Zuko seemed to be less upset than he had been an hour ago at the audiologist’s office.
After Iroh had discovered Zuko’s difficulties with hearing—shamefully, it had taken him almost half a year with the boy to recognise this—he had tried to urge Zuko into getting himself help. Zuko had worked himself up into such a rage that he had shouted for an hour. Most of it was just the anger of a hurt and angered thirteen-year-old, but Iroh had read between the lines of what he had said. Ozai would not want him to look weak. Weakness would be admitting he needed help. Help would look bad.
Following that, Iroh had decided to wait until Zuko’s temperament had calmed. Unfortunately, Zuko’s hurt and anger did not leave him, so he never calmed, and all the while his hearing troubles became more prevalent.
It was only when Zuko broke free of Ozai’s keeping a second time, sombred and self-assured, that Iroh felt it wise to return to the topic. Zuko still had not been so receptive.
“I already have a fake eye,” Zuko had exclaimed. “I don’t need a fake ear, too!”
And Iroh had spent a good long hour explaining how a hearing aid was not a false ear. And another good long month convincing him that this was good for him.
Zuko had only come around to the idea in these past few months. One night, he tentatively asked Iroh about what a hearing aid would actually do, and Iroh had phoned someone almost immediately after the conversation had ended. He needed act before Zuko changed his mind. And it worked. Dr. Balaji’s initial appointment with Zuko had sold him on the idea of a hearing aid.
Only now… he had to be sold on the actual hearing aid itself.
He watched as Zuko tapped his palm against his molten ear. The current attack of his nephew’s tinnitus seemed to trouble him greatly.
“Zuko,” Iroh said, stern but gentle.
Zuko looked up at Iroh, hand mid-smack. His face pulled and his hand dropped in an instant.
“Are you alright?” Iroh asked.
“It won’t stop,” Zuko grumbled.
“How long has it been happening?”
“Since I had the hearing aid in.” Zuko glared at his pocket. “Stupid thing.”
“I am sure it will not happen so much when you acclimatise to the device,” Iroh said. Zuko’s sceptical look was well-earned—Iroh was not sure he even believed himself. “Which I suggest you treat with better care, by the way. They do not grow on trees.”
Zuko’s face tugged into a guilty look again. He pulled the hearing aid out of his pocket. Iroh supplied the case supplied by the audiologist, and Zuko slipped his hearing aid into the case. He returned the device to his pocket, this time protected from harm.
“How is school?” Iroh asked then, because he was a good uncle who cared about his nephew’s education.
“Fine,” Zuko said.
Did Zuko know how bad he was at lying? Surely, his younger sister should have informed him. Azula had liked to taunt with these sorts of things.
But as Zuko sullenly picked his fork at the last few bites of his pancake, Iroh decided not to pursue the conversation further.
“I’m finished,” Zuko said quickly after another few minutes. “Can we go?”
Iroh, ever-so-skilled at hearing the things Zuko did not say, nodded and passed Zuko the keys to his car. “I shall pay the bill, if you would like to go sit in the car.”
Zuko all but fled the diner. Iroh took his time in getting up, making sure to leave a generous tip behind before he went to pay at the counter.
“The tea was lovely,” Iroh made sure to tell the girl at the desk. It was a lie, of course. The tea had been weak, from a teabag, and whoever made it had certainly boiled the dickens out of the water. But sometimes a little lie went a long way—in a good sense. Perhaps this was the sort of lie Zuko should learn. Never mind that, though.
Zuko sat in the car, jacket hood pulled over his head and tugged tight. Iroh entered the car quietly, letting Zuko desensitise. Loud diners never did good things to the boy. Iroh could only imagine how awful the ringing in his ear had made the already-too-noisy atmosphere.
Iroh said nothing as they drove home, letting Zuko relax in his own time. Normally, Iroh would suggest meditating; however, one could not do much meditating in stop-and-start traffic such as this. Well, perhaps Iroh could, but absolutely not Iroh’s loose-tempered nephew.
“I do not hold you to shop duties today, Nephew,” Iroh said as he parked the car. “You may spend the afternoon off, if you would like.”
That was all the encouragement Zuko seemed to need. He took off for the apartment above the shop. Iroh himself went into the teashop and relieved Song of her tea-brewing duties. Jin asked when she would be relieved, and Iroh fondly reminded her she had four more hours left of her shift.
The remainder of the day flew on at the same pace as any other. Iroh gladly brewed tea after tea, savouring all of the aromas lifting from each cup he made. He felt particularly warm inside every time he got to brew some ginseng. His favourite. Lu Ten’s had always been jasmine tea, though, so every time he brewed a jasmine tea, he smiled to himself and remembered his son fondly.
“Where’s Zuko?” Jin asked after a while.
“He is taking the day off,” Iroh said, pouring tea into a paper to-go cup. He capped it and handed it over to Jin.
“Oh, is it ‘cause of—”
“He has had a long day,” Iroh said. “I felt he should have the afternoon to relax.”
“I get it,” Jin said, nodding. “It’s not every day you go to the doctor and come back with hearing aids. Hey, does he like them? Are they a cool colour?”
“His one hearing aid is silver,” Iroh said. “He had an… aversion to the flesh-toned ones.”
Mainly because, as Zuko had grumbled, they did not quite match the flesh of his ear.
“Don’t focus on it too much,” Iroh warned Jin then.
“Of course not! Iroh, you know me,” she said. “I’m not that dumb. I’d never make him feel bad.”
“No, of course not,” Iroh said. “Forgive me for any implications that you would.”
“Nah, you’re fine,” Jin said. She smiled. “Me ‘n Song won’t say a thing. And we’ll keep glaring at customers that stare.”
“You two are the finest servers this city has to offer,” Iroh told her.
“In the city? Wow, Iroh. Not a very high bar, there.”
He waved her away with a chuckle and an instruction her to pass off that jasmine tea he had given her.
The day continued on, until it was time to close the shop. The day always stopped there, for Iroh, and became the night. No matter when the sun set, it was the evening as soon as the doors closed.
“Tell Zuko hi!” Jin said as Iroh prepared to lock up the shop for the night.
“I will,” Iroh promised, waving to her as she left the shop. He latched the door after she had gone, then sighed quietly to himself. Jin and Song seemed to be the only two friends Zuko had at the moment.
Iroh went upstairs to the apartment.
Inside, he found Zuko standing in the middle of the kitchen, fussing with his ear.
“Zuko,” Iroh sighed.
Zuko spun around, mouth shaped in an o of surprise.
“It will not feel any better if you play around with it,” Iroh said.
Zuko slowly removed his hand from his hearing aid. “I… uh…”
“I suppose now is as good a time as any to practice using it,” Iroh said. He gestured to their small dining table. “Dr. Balaji said to start with conversations in quiet spaces.”
Zuko blinked owlishly at Iroh, then slid over to the table and slumped down in his chair. Iroh took his own seat, folding his hands on the table as he smiled at his nephew.
“What did you do today, after we returned?” Iroh asked. The level he spoke at would usually have Zuko asking Iroh to repeat himself.
Now, Zuko simply replied with, “Nothing.”
“Nothing?” Iroh asked.
Zuko shrugged. Then he pressed on to another subject. “I hate talking with this thing in. My voice echoes in my head.”
“You will get used to it,” Iroh assured him. “All things come with time and patience and a little practice.”
Zuko’s nose wrinkled. He had never been good with the “patience” part.
“I will be here all the while,” Iroh said.
“I know,” Zuko said, mumbling it a little as he blushed.
“I will always be here, nephew. Always.”
“I know, Uncle.”
Iroh reached across the table and took Zuko’s hand. Zuko managed to look Iroh in the eye long enough to give an awkward smile, then dropped his gaze to their hands. The smile grew warmer, caused by some thought inside Zuko’s head. Iroh could only watch with his own smile as whatever it was made Zuko happier.
“So,” Iroh said. “Jin would like me to pass on her greeting.”
“Ugh,” Zuko groaned, pulling his hand from Iroh’s as he flopped back in his chair. “She works with me! I’ll see her tomorrow! What’s her deal?”
“Perhaps she simply wished you to know she was thinking of you? After all, you are a handsome boy. Plenty of—”
“Uncle!”
Iroh laughed fully at the scandalised look Zuko shot his way.