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Zuko had thought that he understood why his childhood had been the way it was. He had it all mapped out in his mind, why things were the way they were. He knew by now that he didn’t deserve any of it, but he still thought that he understood why.
Now, he didn’t think he understood anything.
“What’s up with you, buddy?” Sokka asked.
He and Zuko’s other friends were visiting the Fire Nation capital for pleasure this time, not for business. The birth of Zuko and Mai’s first child was cause for celebration, and the entire gang had arrived to meet the baby. Now, the two men were sitting on a veranda, sipping sake and watching the world go by while Ty Lee, Katara, and Aang got their fill of holding baby Izumi up in her nursery. Mai had gone to bed early for some well deserved rest.
“Just… it’s a lot, you know?” Zuko answered after realizing he had stayed silent a beat too long.
“Yeah, I can imagine. That’s a whole new person that you’ve just brought into the world.”
“I didn’t bring her into the world, I freaked out in my study while Mai brought her into the world.”
“Yeah, fair enough. So? Are you still freaking out now or what?”
Zuko sighed and took a sip from his glass. He could already feel it going to his head. He hadn’t had a proper drink since they discovered Mai’s pregnancy and his wife demanded that he give up his glass of wine at dinner in solidarity, so his tolerance was off just a bit.
“I just… I don’t understand.”
“What don’t you understand?”
“I don’t understand… how anyone could look at the face of their child and not feel anything other than shame when they burn half of it away.”
Sokka paused and slowly put his own glass down.
“I thought I understood why my father was the way he was,” Zuko continued, “I thought I understood why he did what he did. When I was a kid, I thought that I deserved it. That I must’ve done something wrong that I needed to be punished for.”
“You didn’t—”
“I know that now. I know now that I didn’t deserve a single thing that Ozai did to me. But I still… I still thought I understood why he did it. I thought I understood him.”
“But… now?”
“Now… spirits, Sokka, just looking at her little face… I don’t understand how someone could look at a child, their child, and make the conscious decision to hurt them so badly.”
He sighed again and knocked back the rest of his glass.
“I just don’t get it.”
Sokka hummed and poured more sake into Zuko’s glass. Zuko took it without question.
“You wanna know why you don’t get it?” Sokka asked after a second.
“You know why?”
“I do. You wanna know?”
“…Yeah, alright.”
“You’re a good dad, Zuko.”
Zuko snorted against the rim of his glass.
“I’ve been a father for all of six days, Sokka. You’re a man of science, you know you need a bigger sample size than that before you go making definitive statements like that.”
“Dude, I swear alcohol makes you more coherent than you normally are sober. Anyway, you are a good dad and I can say that with absolute certainty because you don’t understand why a man would hurt his kid.”
“What?”
“That’s what makes you a good dad already. You can’t even imagine hurting Izumi. The fact that you don’t get why someone would want to hurt their own kid is just proof that you’re a better person than Ozai could ever be.”
Sokka finished his drink and turned to Zuko, who resolutely stared straight ahead. In the pond in the garden below, a mother turtleduck led her three ducklings around in circles. It was mesmerizing to watch, but not mesmerizing enough to take the weight of Sokka’s gaze off of Zuko’s shoulders.
“Bad dads don’t care about being good dads. They don’t worry that they might be bad dads. That’s what makes them bad dads. And Zuko… you worry so much about being a bad dad. You want so badly to be a good dad and that’s why you don’t understand Ozai’s actions. There is nothing to understand. He just didn’t care. You do.”
Zuko finally tore his gaze from the turtleducks and looked his best friend in the eye. Sokka was rarely serious these days, in these peace times that were quickly becoming the norm, but he was being serious now.
“Do you think I’ll ever understand?” he found himself asking. Sokka shrugged.
“I doubt it. But you know Mai, Aang, Katara, and your uncle would kick your ass if you did start to.”
Zuko chuckled and agreed. He knew for a fact that Mai would castrate him if he even thought about laying a hand to Izumi in anger. Add Katara to the mix and they’d never find his body. But he knew it would never come to that.
After all, he just didn’t understand. Maybe it was a good thing if he never did.