Work Text:
Zuko didn’t like getting introspective. It was far more comfortable to be reactive, to lash out, than it was to ever think about why. It had always been Uncle who kept pushing for Zuko to examine himself; it was all the more frustrating when everything he got involved with kept threatening to drag him into that, dragging his uncle’s words back to him when he least wanted it.
But he’d always had his goals. Even when all that complicated stuff got to him, when the things he didn’t want to examine made themselves known, made him question himself, Zuko had always had that fundamental desire to go home . And he could set everything aside for that, for better or worse.
But now he was here. And now there was nothing to keep him from getting dragged back into his doubts, or from the creeping realization that he’d experienced too much for his conscience to let him live like this.
Zuko…had made the wrong choice.
The worst part of it all was that he knew he never would’ve made it differently. He’d needed to get everything he thought he’d wanted in order to finally give up on it for good.