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Zuko's windshields are covered in snow when he finally decides it's early enough to enter and pretend like he just arrived and not like he's been waiting for close to an hour to get out of the car.
The early January air gets sucked into his lungs, and he holds it there for a minute before he lets it out and eyes the clinic in front of him. Blending in with the snow and the clear sky in the background, Zuko has to squint and let his eye adjust to the stark white of it all.
‘He shouldn't be here,' he thinks; he wouldn't have to be here if things were better (if he were better). He stuffs his keys and that thought away and makes his way inside.
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He sees her next to the counter for the first time in months. He sees her without the white hospital gown engulfing her body, hiding her from him, or perhaps him from her. He sees her without bandages on her arms, without the scratches she clawed down her face that made marks that stretched down to dip in her neck. He sees her whole, he sees her alive, he sees his sister staring back at him with eyes identical to his. Her hair is short, he realizes suddenly, shorter than it’s been before, cut haphazardly but framing her face in a way that looks nice, like it wasn't the result of crazed mania. Zuko knows that it is.
She turns away once their eyes meet, and Zuko remembers what he's here for as he walks up to the counter to gather her paperwork and check her out. The nurse next to him reads out her prescriptions and her outpatient treatment plan for the next 6 months, and Zukos' eyes flick over the medications he sees on the page. He feels hollow instantly looking at how much of her was stolen. How she has to take meds to sleep, or the nightmares will keep her awake until dawn and then keep her lying in bed till dusk. He signs the last of the release forms when he finally lifts his head and turns back to Azula and her nurse in conversation.
He takes the moment to look at her carefully for the first time since she was admitted, and when he thinks about it, he can't remember how long it's been since he last did, even when she was back home with him.
She's grown just as he has, the years having taken a toll on her body. He looks as she stands hunched over, holding her hands over her stomach as if she's trying to disappear into herself, as if trying to shrink the size of her body so that she can sink into the floor. She shifts her weight from one leg to another, and he sees how she can't seem to stand still, getting the attention of the nurse, who has to steady her with firm hands on her shoulders.
She used to be taller when she didn't have this heavy weight pulling her shoulders down. She used to be the one with the strong hands that lay steady on his own shoulders when he couldn't stop shaking.
She looks at him then, not the fleeting look they both shared when he entered the clinic, but a glare directed right at Zuko, or at least he thinks it's directed at him. He can't tell if she's staring at him or through him, her unfocused gaze seeming to glance at objects around Zuko but never directly on him. The nurse follows her eyes and gives him a nod, stepping away to let Zuko come forward.
“Hey 'Zula,'" he says easily, even though the words seem to take forever to leave his mouth and even longer to reach his ears.
Her eyes focus then, and he feels the stare she gives him pierce through his own and into his soul. He sees her, and she looks like she's seeing the inside of him, like she's dissecting him with just her mind trying to figure out how in all these years apart and broken he can greet her with her childhood nickname like nothing happened at all. Like she hasn't changed at all. Like he hasn't either.
"Zuko," she says, strangled, words garbled through the grating walls of her throat, and Zuko wonders how many hours, how many days of screaming, crying, and wailing she had to go through for her voice to be permanently scarred, scarred just like the rest of her.
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“I want to go home,” she mumbles from the back of the car. Zuko cleared up the trash and other miscellaneous items in the passenger seat for her before he came to pick her up, but it went ignored. He takes the turn towards his complex and says simply,
“We are going home, Zula. We're going to my apartment. Your room is all ready if you're concerned."
"No, you don’t get it," she whines, and it sounds painful. “I want to go home."
He turns around and sees her with her hands over her face, the heels of her palms digging into her eyes and sharp nails clawing at her scalp.
“Azula,” he starts.
“I want to go back,” she gasps, heaving like she's carrying the burdens of the world, and maybe she is. “I want to go back to before you ruined everything, before you messed up."
And he knows exactly what she's talking about. He can hear her shaking sobs in her voice. “If it weren't for you I'd be fine," she hisses. “I want to go back home. Father was proud of me, you know? I was good, but you ruined it. You ruined it, and I hate you for it. Zuko, I hate you.” She cries, and Zuko parks the car.
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She ends up on the couch instead of in her room and Zuko doesn’t mind. He doesn't bother her for a while, and he doesn't think about what was said in the car. It was true, wasn't it? It was his fault. Fathers in prison now, Azula’s not wrong.
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“You’re not in uni?” He hears her say from the spot she claimed for herself, the space on the floor between the two couches was hers now. Zuko wasn't allowed near it.
And no, he wasn't currently, but that doesn’t mean he never was. He tried for a while to make it work with everything going on and ended up in a position not too far from Azula’s.
“No, but I'm trying to go back," he says plainly. He doesn't see the point in lying to her even if the embarrassment is trying to surface through his cheeks and heat up his face.
"Pathetic," she sneers, and he's about to retort when he glances towards her form, huddled on the floor, blanket draped over her, and he finds he can't sense her usual sardonic tone.
"Are you thinking of going back too?” He questions and is surprised when she acknowledges it with a scoff.
“Don’t be ridiculous Zuko."
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t work anymore,” she says like that answers his question. She takes a pillow and pushes it onto her head, over her ears, shoving it hard enough that Zuko’s concerned she's going to hurt herself.
"Dinner's ready." he says looking back at the pot he was stirring.
“Don’t want it."
“You have to eat at some point Azula,” he says, starting to get frustrated. It's been three days, and the most she's had was some curry he managed to get her to choke down when she first got here.
“Go away."
“This is my apartment."
“Then let me leave."
“Where would you go?”
…
It’s then that Zuko decides to break the rule and infiltrate her space. He walks from where he is around the counter and steps over the lump that is Azula on the ground to the other side of her.
“Has no one taught you any manners, Zuko?" she snarls from beneath the blankets, the pillow still compressing her head, muffling the warning in her voice.
“If I had any manners, we wouldn't be where we are now, would we?” he says straightforward, grabbing the edge of her blanket and lifting when he senses no objection. He slides himself underneath it and lies down with her a comfortable distance apart.
He looks at her this time, closer now that they're face-to-face, and sees the tears welling up behind her red eyes.
“You’re awful Zuko,” she starts, and he can hear the waver in her voice, her voice that once was so strong, so bold, "You're awful for what you did, if you were better, things would be different."
“I know, I'm sorry 'Zula," he whispers, and he can hear her low gasps turn to harsh sobs.
“I was good, Zuko, I was so good. I did everything I had to, everything I was supposed to. It was you," she gasps for a breath. "You never pulled your weight, you—" She cuts herself off, and he sees her struggling to find words. She never used to struggle to speak. Zuko was always jealous of her skills when she spoke to a crowd. She never stuttered or stumbled over her sentences like he would.
“You're good Azula. You're still good.” He tells her, and he means it. He shifts so he's looking into her eyes, and he sees it takes an effort for her to look back into his and see him, not someone else.
“I’m sorry," she says when her sobs die down and leave her breathing shakily around him.
“For what?"
“That it ended up this way."
“I’m not,” Zuko starts, and he sees her eyes flick back up to his, a furrow leaving a dent between her brows. “I’m glad he's gone. I’m glad he can’t hurt us anymore Azula. I’m so glad he can’t hurt you."
And Azula just stares, tears streaming steadily down her face, and Zuko takes his sleeve and wipes them carefully.
“He told me once that you were born lucky, you've always been the promising one out of the two of us, and that's a fact that exists without him. He’s gone now, but you're still here, and you got out, and you're so—" He pulls her towards him, and she goes, “So strong, Azula."
"fuck," she stutters into his chest.
“I’m sorry I wasn't there."
“It’s not your fault," she whispers, “you got out too."
"Yeah," he says, staring over her shoulder. “I did."
They stay like that for a while, Zuko seeing the time go as the light passing through the blanket over their heads gets dimmer and dimmer. He’s taken to running his fingers through the mats in his sister's hair, content on lying on the carpet for as long as she needs.
“I’m tired," she mumbles.
“Wanna go to bed?”
“Mhm”
----------
“I love you, Azula."
They're in the kitchen, Azula eating the takeout Zuko brought after his shift at the Jasmine Dragon, and he himself idly watching veggies cook on the stove. He looks behind him at her as she lifts her head from her phone. She stares back with a complicated expression, and he can tell she's processing because once again her gaze lands around but never directly on Zuko.
“You don't have to say it back."
“Zuko-”
“You don't," he says, and he turns around to fully face her. "You're my little sister,” he begins, and find he suddenly can’t stop, “through all of this, through everything you've never been anything but, and...and I don't know." He looks at her, his own face twisted in upset, and his vision is blurry. “I want you to know, Azula, no one told me, and I thought...I thought no one did so..." He trails off when his tears spill over and onto his cheeks, and he wipes them vigorously with his palm.
“Ok,” she says, and he can tell she's trying to keep her expression unreadable.
"Ok," he says back, and once again he looks over at his sister like he’s making up for all the times they would pass in the hallway back home and never give each other a second glance. Her hair has grown out, and the bags under her eyes look like his own. They carry that together, the forever exhaustion, the forever sorrow, but when he looks at her, that's not all he sees anymore, and he knows thats not all she is anymore. She's sitting upright and tall like she used to, she's wearing the clothes that were gifted to her by Mai and Ty Lee instead of the sweats she used to live in.
And Zukos is happy, he doesn't remember the last time he felt this way, the last time he looked at his sister and didn't feel the gnawing jealousy and the anger spark inside him.
She snickers as she gets up out of her seat in the kitchen and heads for her room. Zuko eyes her incredulously, and when she gestures her head towards the smoke filling the room around him, he knows why she's cackling over her shoulder.
“Fuck!”
“Stoves burning Zuzu," she calls out helpfully from where she's escaping the smoke-filled kitchen. “I know you don't make enough at Uncle Fatso's dingy shop to pay for any damage."
He whips his head back to her, glare on his face and retort on his tongue when he catches her smile, half covered by her hand but genuine in a way he hasn't seen on her in a long time.
He finds it within himself to hold his tongue just this once.