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It happens in the fall, in Zuko’s thirty-fourth year.
It’s a shock, like any death is. Zuko expects the sky to turn dark and the world to stop turning, for everything he knows to shut down, because how can life continue when Zuko’s strongest linchpin is so suddenly and without warning torn from his foundation?
Technically, Uncle has been retired since Zuko was thirteen, but hadn’t officially retired from running the shop in Ba Sing Se until the year before. Even then, he’d been the same, steady force that Zuko’s always known. As consistent as the sunrise in his support and kind nature, if a little slower than he once had been. Age hasn’t ever stopped him from being so resolutely present.
More present than anyone else Zuko’s ever known—present for him, present for Izumi, who’s eight and in that funny stage between helpless adoration for her parents and finding everything they do embarrassing.
Death has always been a part of Zuko’s life but it’s been so long since it’s touched him, long enough that he thinks he’s forgotten how it felt.
(He hasn’t forgotten, of course. He just wishes that he had. The familiarity of grief doesn’t help.)
Zuko, age thirty-four and the first of his name, sits on the floor next to Iroh’s bed. Down the hall, he can hear one of the maids beginning to sniffle. The staff love him, of course they do.
If Zuko doesn’t move or speak or breathe, it isn’t real. If he doesn’t move or speak or breathe, he can just exist in this bubble where the world isn’t suddenly wrong, where he can pretend that Uncle’s just having a lie-in. If Zuko doesn’t touch the back of his exposed hand, he doesn’t have to know that it’s cold. If he doesn’t check for a pulse, for breath, he doesn’t have to know that they’re both missing.
If Zuko can just sit here, if he can just sit here…
Zuko, age thirty four and the first of his name, has no idea how long he sits, alone. He may be known among the people as the gentlest man to sit atop the throne in at least two hundred years, but nevertheless he’s been Fire Lord since he was sixteen and no one dares interrupt him.
Uncle’s quarters are always tidy. Tidy space, tidy brain, he would say regularly with the benevolent eye roll towards Zuko’s person. He’d been saying it for years, as if Zuko having a messy cabin aboard the Wani was personally responsible for all of his nephew’s ails. Thirteen year old Zuko had hated it, much like he’d hated most things that were supposed to help him.
Thirty-four year old Zuko would give literally anything he owns to hear it again.
It’s not right to start the day without a cup of tea.
Zuko’s not sure how but manages to find his feet, wanders over the the small kitchenette to rummage for brewing supplies. He forgoes his own preferred blend in favor of the quality jasmine that Uncle likes in the morning, passes up the decorative good-company pot for the very good replica of the one Izumi has broken when she was five. It’s small and has a chip in the spout, and painted with tiny purple wisteria flowers.
It’s a strange feeling to exist outside of one’s body.
Zuko feels distant, disconnected, underwater.
He’s not sure what’s more terrifying: the idea of breaking the surface or slipping down, underneath the waves, and drowning instead.
Air is suddenly very hard to find.
“My lord?”
Zuko jerks at the voice that comes from somewhere around his elbow. He’s not sure how long he’s been standing there heating the water, except that the kettle’s empty and the whole room smells like hot metal. One of the maids—new and barely a slip of a thing, Zuko hasn’t learned her name yet—has her hand out like she wants to take his arm but doesn’t dare.
Zuko stares blankly down at the kettle, distantly wonders where the water is. Maybe it’s all inside him, and that’s why he has the ocean in his head.
“Uncle has tea with breakfast,” he hears himself say from miles and miles away. “He can’t eat without some tea.”
“Okay, my lord. Okay.” The girl’s eyes are huge and wet, like she’s trying not to cry. It’s a very strange experience to finally be the one in the room with the least amount of feelings. Zuko’s so used to feeling everything all the time that the absence feels more like a gaping hollow than anything else. “Can I fetch some more water for you, please?”
Zuko allows the kettle to be taken from his hands but will not be ushered out of the room. He sits back down, folds his hands into his lap, wonders what he’s going to do when he’s forced back into reality.
He stares at Uncle’s still chest and closed eyes and when a warm, steaming cup is set in front of him, he drinks.
There’s a bitter edge to the jasmine and he can’t even bring himself to be upset when he goes foggy and drops, very slowly, to sag against the top of Uncle’s kotatsu.
It’s a relief, then, to not know anything at all.