Pairing: Zuko x Fem! Reader (specifically thinking about the Zuko in the photo above)
Word Count: 22k
Warnings: Major Angst, Past Toxic Breakup Dynamics, Mentions of Parental Abuse & Financial Control (Ozai), Depictions of Panic Attacks/Anxiety, Intense Emotional Vulnerability, Crying During Intimacy, and Explicit Sexual Content towards the middle (NSFW/Smut) MDNI 18+
A/N: Writing this was essentially just me holding Zuko by his shoulders and shaking him until the truth fell out of his mouth. A year of mutual pining and digital exile because this boy literally does not know how to perceive love without assuming it’s a threat. Suki represents my exact inner monologue throughout the entirety of writing her parts. Enjoy the emotional wreckage.
A low, concussive bass thrums through the floorboards of Jet’s off-campus house, rattling the soles of Zuko’s shoes and settling into the heavy ache in his chest. The entire living room is submerged in a suffocating, low-fidelity blue light that turns the crowded space into a blur of bruised shadows, thick with the sharp tang of stale beer and drifting vape smoke. It’s a sensory overload designed for forgetting.
It’s exactly the kind of party Zuko usually avoids, but Sokka had dragged him out under the guise of "celebrating the end of finals," which really just meant Sokka wanted an excuse to drink out of a red solo cup that wasn't in their own messy apartment.
Zuko leans against the doorframe of the kitchen, his fingers hooked into the front pockets of his jeans. He feels entirely out of place, a dark smudge against the neon-soaked canvas of the room. Beside him, Sokka is loudly debating some trivial sports statistic with Katara, who is crushing a lime into her drink with a look of concentration. Aang and Toph are somewhere in the thick of the crowd, Toph likely causing a hazard on the makeshift dance floor while Aang tries to ensure no one actually gets hurt.
It’s the Gaang. It’s always been the Gaang. Except it hasn’t been, not really, for exactly three hundred and sixty-five days.
Zuko takes a slow sip of his lukewarm beer, the bitterness coating his tongue, doing absolutely nothing to wash away the phantom taste of regret. He shouldn't be thinking about the timeline. He shouldn't have the exact date burned into his skull like a brand, but every time May rolls around, the air gets too heavy to breathe.
"Hey, man, you're doing that thing again," Sokka’s voice cuts through the thumping bass, a heavy hand dropping onto Zuko’s shoulder. "The brooding thing. Drink your beer. Look alive. Jet actually bought the name-brand chips for once."
"I'm fine," Zuko mutters, twisting his shoulder slightly to shake off Sokka's hand. He isn't fine. He hasn't been fine in a year, but admitting that aloud feels like picking at a scab that took twelve months to form.
"You're a terrible liar," Katara says, not unkindly, though her blue eyes scan his face with that sharp perception she always uses when she thinks he's spiraling. "If you want to leave, Zuko, we can go. Honestly, Jet’s parties always end with someone putting a hole in the wall anyway."
"No, it's fine. Stay," Zuko says, his eyes drifting away from his friends, scanning the shifting sea of bodies under the blue strobes.
And then, his heart stops.
It isn't a metaphorical sensation. It is a violent, physical halt, a sudden, freezing vacuum in his chest that makes his breath catch in his throat. The noise of the party—the laughter, the screeching bass, Sokka’s voice—instantly drops into a dull, underwater hum.
Across the room, standing completely static against the faded wallpaper of the living room wall, is you.
Zuko’s grip on his beer can tightens until the aluminum dents beneath his knuckles. He freezes, staring through the haze of blue light and drifting vapor clouds, convinced for a terrifying second that he is finally hallucinating from the sheer weight of his own guilt.
But it’s you.
It’s undeniably you.
You’re nursing a red solo cup, your fingers wrapped loosely around the plastic, holding it near your chest like a shield. Two girls from your major—girls Zuko vaguely remembers meeting at a campus coffee shop a lifetime ago—are standing on either side of you, laughing dramatically, their mouths moving in animated sentences. But you aren't laughing. You’re just nodding along, polite, as your eyes stare blankly out at the throngs of dancing college students.
You look entirely different. And yet, you look exactly the same.
The first thing that hits Zuko like a physical blow is your hair. The soft, familiar dark strands he used to spend hours twisting around his fingers late at night, burying his face into when the nightmares got too real, are gone. In their place is a sharp, striking platinum blonde that catches the blue neon light and turns almost silver. It changes your entire aura, sharpening the soft edges he knew by heart, making you look distant, and untouchable.
As you tilt your head back to take a slow, measured sip of your drink, the strobes flash, catching the glint of silver on your face. Zuko’s breath hitches. A small, delicate silver hoop is pierced through your right eyebrow. It’s tiny, but on you, it looks incredibly rebellious, a mark of a life lived entirely outside of the boundaries he had once drawn around the two of you.
"Zuko? Hellooo? Earth to Zuko—" Sokka starts, trailing off as he follows the unwavering, dead-eyed trajectory of Zuko’s stare.
Sokka goes quiet. Beside him, Katara gasps softly, her hand flying to her mouth.
"Oh my god," Katara whispers, her voice sounding small, cracked beneath the weight of the bass. "Is that...?"
"Yeah," Sokka says, his usual boisterous energy instantly evaporating, replaced by a tense, uncomfortable sobriety. "Yeah, that's her."
The silence that settles over the three of them is heavy, a thick, suffocating blanket of history that none of them know how to lift. For three years, you hadn't just been Zuko’s girlfriend; you had been the glue of the group. You were the one who remembered everyone's birthdays, the one who bought the specific snacks Toph liked, the one who sat on the porch with Katara talking about life until the sun came up, the one who validated Sokka's ridiculous theories. You had been woven into the very fabric of their lives, a golden thread that held their chaotic, mismatched group together.
And then, a year ago, the thread had been violently burned.
Zuko remembers the breakup not as a single conversation, but as a series of shattering impacts. It had been loud. It had been ugly. It had been a slow-motion car crash fueled by his own deep-seated insecurities, his toxic habit of pushing people away before they could leave him, and the suffocating pressure of his family's expectations. He had screamed words he didn't mean, words meant to cut deep enough to ensure you wouldn't come back, because a sick part of his brain believed he didn't deserve a love as pure as yours anyway. He had broken your heart on the floor of his bedroom, watching you cry until your chest heaved, watching the light completely die in your eyes.
The next day, you were gone. Not just from his apartment, but from the group. You hadn't made them choose—you had just quietly, completely extracted yourself. You stopped showing up to the diner you would spend late nights studying at. You changed your route to class. You ghosted and then left the group chats completely.
Zuko remembers the agonizing weeks that followed. He remembers checking your Instagram every single hour, desperate for any sign of how you were surviving the wreckage. One night, three weeks after the split, he had opened the app to find your profile completely hollowed out. Every single photo—the anniversaries, the candid shots of you laughing in the passenger seat of his car, the group photos at the beach, the silly selfies—had been deleted. Cleaned out. A digital scorched-earth policy. All that remained was your profile picture, a small, distant shot of you looking out at the ocean, and your name. No bio. No highlights. Just a ghost town.
Now, seeing you standing there in the flesh, the reality of that year-long absence crashes over him.
You aren't wearing the oversized, comfortable hoodies you used to steal from his closet. Tonight, you are wearing a cropped, tight black top that clings to your skin, exposing a sliver of your midriff, paired with dark, form-fitting jeans that accentuate every curve of your hips and thighs. You look stunning. You look grown. You look like a woman who has entirely reconstructed herself from the ashes of a fire he lit.
"She looks... different," Katara says softly, her eyes welling with a sudden, sharp nostalgia.
Sokka rubs the back of his neck, shifting his weight uneasily. "She looks good, Katara. She looks really good." He glances sideways at Zuko, his expression a mix of pity and warning. "Zuko. Don't."
Zuko doesn't hear him. He can't. His eyes are locked on the way your fingers trace the rim of your red solo cup. He knows that habit. You only did that when you were anxious, when you felt overwhelmed by a crowd but were forcing yourself to stay anyway. You were playing a part tonight, pretending to be the cool, detached girl in the blue light, but he knew the girl underneath. Or, at least, he thinks he used to.
Suddenly, your eyes shift.
It’s as if some invisible current passes through the crowded, sweaty room, a sudden drop in atmospheric pressure that alerts you to his gaze. Through the shifting bodies, through the haze of smoke and the flashing blue strobes, your eyes lock onto his.
Zuko’s chest tightens so hard it hurts.
Your expression doesn't change. You don't look angry. You don't smile. Your eyes, dark and unreadable simply hold his. The silver hoop in your eyebrow catches the neon light once more, a tiny spark between them. For five agonizing seconds, the world completely stops. The music dies. The party vanishes. It is just him, bleeding internally in the kitchen doorway, and you, standing like a beautiful, distant statue against the wall.
Then, you look away.
You turn your head back to your friends, nodding at something she said. It is the most brutal thing Zuko has ever experienced. It isn't hatred; it is complete, total indifference. It is the realization that you have learned how to look directly at the man who broke you and feel absolutely nothing at all.
"Zuko," Sokka’s voice is firmer now, his hand gripping Zuko’s elbow, pulling him back a fraction of an inch. "Seriously, man. Let it go. It's been a year. You guys had a mutual disaster. Don't go over there and make it weird for her."
"It wasn't mutual," Zuko says, his voice a low, gravelly rasp that sounds raw even to his own ears. "I ruined it. You know I ruined it."
Katara sighs, a deeply sad, tired sound. "We know, Zuko. We all know. But she made her choice to leave the group. She didn't want to see us. If you go over there now, after all this time..."
Across the room, Jet appears out of the crowd. He’s holding a fresh drink, his usual arrogant smirk firmly in place, his backward cap casting a shadow over his eyes. He walks straight up to your group, throwing an arm casually over the shoulder of one of your friends, before turning his attention entirely to you. He says something close to your ear, leaning down to be heard over the bass.
Zuko watches, his jaw clenching so hard a muscle tethers in his cheek, as you look up at Jet. You give him a small, genuine smile—not the fake one you gave your friends, but a real, soft amusement. You raise your solo cup to him in a silent toast, and Jet laughs, tapping his cup against yours.
A dark, hot wave of jealousy and pure, unadulterated panic surges through Zuko's veins. It’s a toxic, ugly feeling, because he has absolutely no right to it. He gave up the right to be jealous the moment he slammed his apartment door and let you walk down the stairs alone in the rain, carrying your life in two cardboard boxes. But seeing another guy—especially Jet, who always circled like a vulture around anything beautiful—in your orbit makes him want to tear the house down.
"I need to talk to her," Zuko says, stepping forward, his boots clicking against the linoleum kitchen floor.
"Zuko, stop!" Katara reaches out, snagging the sleeve of his dark jacket, her face tight with worry. "Look at her. Look at how much work she’s done to move on. Don't pull her back into your mess just because you're lonely tonight."
Her words cut deep, sharp and accurate as a knife. Your mess. That’s all he ever was to you at the end, wasn't he? A vortex of unresolved trauma, anger, and constant pushing away. You spent three years trying to heal a boy who refused to believe he was broken, and in the end, the shards of his identity had just cut you to pieces.
He looks back across the blue-lit room. Jet is still talking to you, his hand gesturing wildly as he tells some stupid story, but your eyes have drifted again. You aren't looking at Jet. You’re looking down at your drink, your thumb tracing the plastic rim over and over again, your shoulders slightly hunched.
You look so lonely in that crowd of people. You look like you're throwing a party in your own head, but no one turned up except the ghosts.
Zuko remembers a lyric from a song you used to play on repeat in his car during the quiet, late-night drives when neither of them could sleep. A song about throwing a party just for someone who wouldn't show up. He had thought it was a pretty, melancholic pop song back then. Now, looking at you, he realizes you had been living in that song long before the final breakup. You had been standing in the blue light of his dark moods, waiting for him to finally show up for you, until you simply ran out of breath.
"I'm not trying to pull her back," Zuko says softly, his voice cracking, his eyes never leaving the silver glint of your eyebrow piercing. "I just... I just need to tell her I'm sorry. I never got to say it. Not properly."
Sokka looks at Katara, an uncharacteristic gravity in his eyes, before looking back at Zuko. "And if she doesn't want to hear it? If she tells you to go to hell, or worse, if she looks right through you again?"
Zuko swallows the massive, painful lump in his throat, his knuckles white against his sides. "Then at least she'll know I'm the one standing in the dark this time."
He pulls his arm gently out of Katara’s grip. She doesn't reach for him again, but her eyes follow him with a heavy, prayerful sadness as he steps out of the kitchen and into the suffocating blue heat of the living room.
The bass thuds against his chest with every step he takes, a physical barrier he has to push through. The crowd is a blur of sweaty skin, laughter, and spilling drinks, but Zuko keeps his eyes locked entirely on the platinum blonde hair across the room. With every foot he closes between them, the ghost of their three years together grows heavier, pressing down on his shoulders until it’s almost impossible to move forward.
He remembers the way you used to smell like vanilla and fresh rain. He wonders if you still do, or if you’ve changed that, too, along with your hair and your clothes and your digital footprint.
Ten feet away. Jet is still there, laughing at his own joke. Your friends are taking a selfie, their phones creating a brief, harsh white flash in the blue darkness. You aren't in the photo. You’ve stepped slightly back, your back pressed firmly against the wall, a solitary figure in a crowded room.
Five feet away. Zuko’s heart is hammering so loudly against his ribs he thinks everyone in the room must be able to hear it over the speakers. His mouth is completely dry. He opens his lips to speak your name, to voice the word that has been a silent prayer in his mind for three hundred and sixty-five days.
You choose that exact moment to look up.
Your eyes meet his again, much closer now, completely devoid of the distance of the room. Up close, Zuko can see the faint, dark circles under your eyes, masked carefully by makeup, and the slight, nervous tremor in your hand as you hold your cup. You see him coming. You know exactly what he’s doing.
You don't run. You don't hide. You just set your red solo cup down on a nearby windowsill with a slow, deliberate finality. You look at Jet, pat him once on the arm to interrupt him, and whisper something in his ear. Jet glances over at Zuko, his smirk instantly dropping into a hard, protective scowl, but you place a hand on Jet's chest, shaking your head gently.
Jet hesitates, then spits on the floor, turning his back to Zuko, taking your friends with him as they move deeper into the kitchen.
And suddenly, the space between Zuko and you grows once again as he retreats back to his friends.
The memory of that blue-lit living room doesn’t fade; it stains. For seven days, Zuko carries the image of you standing against Jet’s wall like a phantom limb, an ache that flares up every time he closes his eyes. He had stood five feet away from a girl who looked like a stranger, watching the silver hoop in your eyebrow catch the neon light, watching the way your platinum hair turned silver under the strobes. He hadn't spoken. Sokka had pulled him back, or maybe his own cowardice had finally frozen his boots to the floor. Either way, you had walked out of that house with Jet's friends, and Zuko had gone home to an apartment that smelled like old take-out and silence.
A week later, the humidity of the late semester gives way to the biting, damp chill of a campus winter. The university is emptying out, turning into a ghost town of concrete and bare trees as finals wrap up and winter break descends. Most students have already dragged their rolling suitcases to the airport or packed them into the trunks of their parents' cars.
Zuko walks down the perimeter of the campus, his hands shoved deep into the pockets of his heavy black coat. The air is so cold his breath blooms in white clouds before him, vanishing into the gray dusk. He’s exhausted. The skin under his eyes is bruised from sleeplessness, his mind a chaotic loop of history and the sharp, sudden reality of seeing you alive and breathing in the world without him.
He turns the corner near the commuter lot, intending to just head straight back to his apartment, shut the door, and let the darkness take him until next semester.
Then, he sees the light.
A single, flickering halogen streetlamp illuminates the concrete pad of the campus bus stop. The light is harsh, buzzing slightly in the winter quiet, casting a cone of pale yellow through the encroaching evening.
And standing directly beneath the sign, perfectly centered in the glow, is you.
Zuko stops dead in his tracks, his boots crunching softly against the thin skim of frost on the pavement.
You’re waiting for the campus shuttle, likely heading back to the dorms to grab the last of your things before the university shuts down completely for the holidays. You look so small underneath the massive, rusted metal sign. You’re snuggled deep into a heavy, oversized coat that swallows your frame, a stark contrast to the tight, revealing black top you’d worn to Jet’s party. Big, padded over-ear headphones are clamped over your ears, the faint, tinny vibration of a baseline leaking out into the cold air. Your hands are stuffed securely into your pockets, your shoulders slightly hunched against the wind.
But it’s the scarf that makes the air leave Zuko’s lungs.
Wrapped twice around your neck, pulled up so high it almost touches your chin, is a thick, forest-green knit scarf. It’s slightly frayed at the edges, a little worn from years of use.
He knows that scarf.
He bought it for you two years into your relationship, during a weekend trip to a tiny mountain town when the weather had turned unexpectedly brutal. You had been shivering, your teeth chattering as you tried to pretend you were fine, and he had marched into the first local shop he found, spending the last fifty dollars in his checking account on the heaviest wool they had. He remembers the look on your face when he wrapped it around you himself, tucking the loose ends under your chin, his fingers lingering on your cold cheeks until you smiled up at him with that fierce, unshakeable devotion that used to terrify him because he didn't know how to hold something so precious.
You were still wearing it.
After the shouting matches, after the slammed doors, after deleting every single trace of him from your digital life, after bleaching your hair and piercing your skin to rid yourself of his ghost—you were still wearing his scarf.
The sight of it does something violent to his chest. It’s a contradiction that tears him apart. You had looked right through him in the blue light a week ago, a vision of complete and total indifference. But here, in the quiet winter gray, you were carrying a piece of him close to your throat, letting it keep you warm.
Don't do it, Sokka’s voice echoes in his head. Don't pull her back into your mess.
Look at how much work she’s done to move on, Katara had said.
Zuko takes a step backward, his heel skidding on the ice. He tells himself to turn around. He tells himself that if he walks away right now, he can leave you with your music and your quiet, letting you go home in peace. He forces his muscles to tense, attempting to steer his body back toward the path to his apartment. He grips the fabric inside his pockets until his nails dig into his palms.
Leave her alone.
But his feet don't obey. Like a man caught in a undertow, he finds himself stepping forward into the light. The distance between them shrinks—twenty feet, ten feet, five feet—until he is standing inside the yellow cone of the streetlamp, the heat of his breath mingling with yours in the freezing air.
You don't move. Your eyes are closed, your head tilted slightly back against the cold metal post of the bus stop sign, lost entirely in whatever song is spinning through your headphones. The platinum blonde of your hair looks ethereal under the halogen light, glowing like spun silver against the dark collar of your coat. The silver eyebrow piercing glints sharply, a tiny, defiant star on your face.
Zuko stands there for a full thirty seconds, utterly paralyzed. He is close enough to see the small crystals of frost caught on the wool of the green scarf. Close enough to smell the faint, ghostly trace of vanilla that still lingers around you, cutting through the crisp winter air.
His hand trembles as he lifts it out of his pocket. His fingers are numb from the cold, but as he reaches out, they feel heavy as lead. He hesitates, his palm hovering just an inch above the thick material of your shoulder. Every instinct in his body screams that this is a mistake, that he is trespassing on ground he traded away a year ago.
He closes the distance. He places his hand on your shoulder.
The moment his fingers press into the heavy fabric, you flit your eyes open.
A sharp, violent gasp hitches in your throat, and you flinch away from the touch, your body tensing instantly as your hands yank out of your pockets. Your head snaps around, defensive, ready to confront a stranger who crossed a line at a deserted bus stop.
But the anger in your eyes instantly freezes over.
The color drains from your face so fast it leaves your skin looking almost translucent under the yellow light. Your lips part slightly, the green scarf slipping down an inch, exposing the pale skin of your throat. For a second, just a fraction of a second, the cool, detached mask you wore at Jet’s party isn't there. Instead, your eyes widen with a raw, bleeding shock that mirrors the agony in his own.
Slowly, deliberately, you reach up and slide the headphones down around your neck. The tinny sound of a melancholic synth track leaks into the space between you, a rhythmic, hollow heartbeat.
"Zuko," you say.
It’s the same name, but out here in the cold, without the bass to hide behind, it sounds entirely different. It sounds heavy. It sounds like a word that has been buried in a shallow grave for twelve months, suddenly dug up by the roots.
"I'm sorry," Zuko says immediately, his voice cracking on the syllables. He doesn't even know what he’s apologizing for first—touching her, stopping her, or the entire year of wreckage behind them. "I saw you from the path. I didn't mean to scare you."
You don't break eye contact. Your gaze drops down to his hand, which is still hovering near your shoulder, before rising back to his face. You wrap your arms tightly around yourself, burying your hands back into the sleeves of your coat, pulling the green scarf back up to your chin as if trying to shield yourself from the sheer presence of him.
"What are you doing here, Zuko?" you ask. Your voice is quiet, steadying itself with a visible effort that makes your shoulders tremble slightly.
"I was just walking home," he says, stepping back a single inch to give you space, though every cell in his body wants to do the exact opposite. He wants to reach out and pull the scarf down, to see if the skin beneath it still remembers the heat of his mouth. "I recognize that scarf."
The words leave his mouth before he can filter them, raw and clumsy.
Your eyes flicker down to the green wool tucked against your chin. A small, bitter line forms at the corner of your mouth, and for the first time, the indifference from the party begins to settle back over your features, a protective armor against the cold.
"It's cold," you say, your tone dropping into a flat, matter-of-fact register that makes his chest ache. "It’s a good scarf. I didn't see a reason to throw away twenty percent of my winter wardrobe just because of how it got into my closet."
The words are a calculated strike, a reminder that to you, he has been reduced to a transaction, a historical footnote that can be compartmentalized and utilized for warmth without any emotional tax. But Zuko can see the way your fingers are tightening against your elbows through the fabric of your coat. He knows you. He knows that when you are lying, your left eyebrow twitches just a fraction of a millimeter.
It doesn't twitch tonight, but your breathing is too fast, the white clouds of your breath coming in short, jagged bursts.
"You look different," Zuko says softly, his eyes tracing over you appearance. "The hair. The... everything."
"A year is a long time," you reply, your voice lifting slightly, carrying the faint edge of someone who has spent twelve months explaining their reinvention to people who didn't care. "People change their hair, Zuko. They get piercings. They move on. They don't stay frozen in the exact shape they were when someone broke them."
"I know," he says, the guilt settling into his stomach like a stone. "I saw you at Jet's. A week ago. I was... I wanted to come over. Sokka stopped me."
"Sokka always had better judgment than you," you say, and though the words are sharp, there is a faint, exhausted sadness in them that cuts deeper than any insult. You look away from him, your eyes scanning the empty campus road, watching for the headlights of the shuttle that will save you from this conversation. "You shouldn't have come over tonight either."
"I couldn't help it," Zuko says, stepping back into the cone of light, his voice growing desperate as the reality of the approaching bus threatens to cut his time short. "I've spent a year looking at an empty Instagram profile, trying to figure out if you were even still in the same city. You deleted everything."
"Because there was nothing left to look at," you say, your head snapping back to him, your eyes flashing with a sudden, hot spark of the anger he remembers from the very end. "What did you want me to do, Zuko? Leave the pictures up? Leave the reminders of every time you screamed at me to leave because you couldn't handle someone loving you? Leave the evidence of the three years I wasted trying to pull you out of your own head while you threw everything away?"
The words hit him like a physical blow. He actually recoils a step, his breath hitching. The silence that follows is deafening, filled only by the low, tinny hum of the music still leaking from the headphones around your neck.
"I didn't mean those things," Zuko whispers, his face contorting with an old, familiar agony. "The things I said that night... I was angry. I was scared. My family—"
"Don't blame your family," you interrupt, your voice dropping into a dangerous, quiet hiss that shakes with a year’s worth of suppressed tears. "Do not use your father or your sister as an excuse for how you treated me at the end. I took every single blow your moods dealt. I stayed through the silence, I stayed through the drinking, I stayed when you wouldn't look at me for days. I didn't leave because it got hard. I left because you looked me in the eye and told me I was a burden."
A tear finally escapes your eye, hot and bright, tracking rapidly down your cheek before freezing in the biting air. You don't wipe it away. You just stare at him, your chest heaving under the heavy coat.
"You told me I was dragging you down," you whisper, the words sounding small and broken in the winter night. "You told me you didn't love me anymore. You said it so clearly. And I believed you."
Zuko feels the tears welling in his own eyes, hot and blurring his vision until the yellow light of the streetlamp smears into a jagged halo around your head. He reaches out automatically, his hand moving toward your face to wipe the tear away, to touch the skin he used to know better than his own.
"I lied," he chokes out, his fingers stopping just inches from your cheek as you flinch back again, your teeth clenching. "I lied because I was drowning, and I thought if I didn't push you away, I'd take you down with me. I loved you. I've never stopped loving you. Not for a single second of this miserable year."
The admission hangs in the frozen air between them, a heavy, bleeding thing that neither of them knows how to fix.
You look at his hovering hand, your eyes dark and unreadable. Slowly, you shake your head, a single, definitive gesture that feels like the final turn of a key in a lock.
"It doesn't matter anymore, Zuko," you say softly. The anger is gone now, replaced by that terrifying, hollow exhaustion that he had seen a week ago at the party. "It doesn't change anything. You think you can just show up at a bus stop, tell me you lied, and expect me to undo a year of rebuilding myself? You think this scarf means I'm waiting for you?"
She reaches up, her fingers wrapping around the forest-green wool, pulling it slightly away from her chin.
"I wear this because it's cold," you say, your voice cracking, but your eyes remaining steady. "And because I wanted to prove to myself that I could carry the things you gave me without breaking anymore."
In the distance, the sharp, bright glare of two high-beam headlights cuts through the commuter lot. The low, rumbling engine of the campus shuttle grows louder, its brakes squealing as it rounds the final turn toward the bus stop.
Zuko looks at the approaching lights, panic rising in his throat like bile. This is it. The bus is going to stop, the doors are going to hiss open, and you are going to step inside, disappearing back into the winter break, back into your new life, leaving him alone under the halogen bulb.
"Please," he rasps, stepping closer, his boots touching yours now, the heat of his body close enough to challenge the winter air between them. "Just let me buy you a coffee. Ten minutes. Just let me talk to you without the shouting. Let me apologize properly."
The shuttle pulls up to the curb with a heavy, concussive sigh of its air brakes, the bright white interior light spilling through the glass windows, washing over the two of you, obliterating the soft yellow glow of the streetlamp. The doors hiss open. The driver doesn't look at you two bickering, they just stare straight ahead into the dark road.
You look at the open doors of the bus, then look back at Zuko.
For a long, agonizing second, the girl he loved for three years looks out through your eyes—the girl who used to laugh into his neck, the girl who used to hold his hand until the nightmares stopped, the girl who threw a party in her own head just hoping he would show up.
"Goodbye, Zuko," you say softly.
You don't wait for him to answer. You turn around, your heavy coat swirling around your legs, and step up onto the stairs of the bus. You don't look back as you pull your headphones back up over your ears, clamping the music back down over your head, shutting out the sound of his voice before he can even try to call your name.
The doors hiss shut with a definitive thud.
Zuko stands perfectly still under the flickering halogen light as the shuttle pulls away from the curb, its red taillights bleeding into the dark winter night until they vanish completely around the bend. The green scarf is gone. The platinum hair is gone. You're gone.
The rhythmic, rubbery smack of the neon pink sticky ball hitting the popcorn ceiling was the only sound competing with the frantic clacking of Suki’s mechanical keyboard.
Smack. Drop. Catch.
You lay flat on your back across Suki’s mattress, your head hanging completely off the mattress edge so the room was entirely inverted. From this angle, Suki’s small off-campus bedroom looked like an upside-down sanctuary. Her fairy lights hung upward like luminous vines; her posters of local indie bands were flipped on their heads; and Suki herself was an inverted silhouette, her auburn hair falling toward the ceiling as she aggressively hunched over a final term paper for her sports medicine major.
Smack. Drop. Catch.
"If you leave a grease stain on my ceiling, I'm making you paint over it by yourself," Suki muttered, not looking away from her monitor. Her fingers flew across the keys, executing a vicious sequence of citations.
"It’s silicone. It doesn't leave grease," you droned, your voice sounding slightly nasal from the rush of blood to your inverted head. You tossed the ball again. It stuck for a fraction of a second longer this time, dangling precariously above your face before gravity reclaimed it. You caught it blindly in your palm. "Besides, it’s a distraction. I’m practicing hand-eye coordination. A basic survival skill."
"What you're practicing is sulking on my bed," Suki corrected, finally hitting a final, aggressive keystroke and letting out a long, theatrical sigh. She spun her black mesh swivel chair around to face you, crossing her legs. She was wearing an oversized University sweatshirt—one she had undoubtedly stolen from Sokka—and a pair of thick-rimmed blue-light glasses that sat crookedly on her nose.
Suki had been your anchor since your sophomore year of high school, long before the chaos of college dorms, changing majors, and catastrophic breakups had entered the equation. She was also, by extension of her four-year relationship with Sokka, the only remaining bridge between your current life and the ghost town of your past. When you had severed ties with the Gaang a year ago, Suki was the only one you hadn't cut loose. You couldn't. To lose Suki would have been to lose your own reflection.
She looked at you now, really looked at you, her sharp green eyes taking in the view of your upside-down face. Your platinum blonde roots were starting to show just a fraction of a millimeter of your natural dark hair.
"You look like a bat," Suki observed, leaning forward and resting her elbows on her knees. "And you’ve been throwing that stupid ball for forty-five minutes. Sit up before your brain starts leaking out of your ears."
With a dramatic sigh, you let your momentum carry you, swinging your legs down and shifting until you were sitting cross-legged in the center of her unmade duvet. The sudden rush of blood leaving your head made the room tilt for a brief, dizzying second. You squeezed the sticky ball in your fist, feeling the tacky material deform between your fingers.
"Finals are done," Suki said, removing her glasses and tossing them onto her desk. "Which means I am officially off the clock, and you are officially out of excuses. Talk to me."
"About what?" you asked, aiming for a tone of breezy indifference and failing spectacularly. "I'm fine. Just ready to start moving in here for the break."
"Right. You're so fine that you ran into Zuko at a deserted bus stop at seven o'clock on a Tuesday night, had a cinematic crisis in the freezing cold, and then texted me a single string of incoherent emojis at two in the morning," Suki said, her voice dropping into that grounded, no-nonsense register that usually meant she was about to lay out your life right front of you. "Sokka told me Zuko came back to their apartment that night looking like he’d been hit by a semi-truck. He hasn't left his room in three days."
The mention of his name felt like a cold finger tracing the length of your spine. You looked down at your lap, your thumb brushing against the silver ring on your thumb. "He shouldn't have come up to me. I was just trying to go back to my dorm."
"But he did," Suki countered softly. "And you didn't run away. Not immediately."
"I took the bus, Suki. I left."
"After you let him see you wearing the scarf."
You flinched, the accusation landing cleanly. You pulled the collar of your sweater up instinctively, even though the forest-green wool scarf was currently tucked safely away inside your duffel bag across the room. "It’s a piece of clothing. It was like zero degrees outside."
"You have four other scarves, babe. I helped you pack them when you moved places," Suki said, her expression softening from clinical to deeply empathetic. She slid off her swivel chair and moved to sit on the edge of the bed beside you, her shoulder brushing against yours. "Look, I’m not lecturing you. God knows I watched the two of you burn that bridge down from space. I know how bad it was. I was the one holding the box of tissues while you cried in my bathroom for a month."
"Then why does it feel like you're taking his side?" your voice cracked, the raw, jagged edge of an old wound tearing open in the quiet of her bedroom. The anger came up fast, a defensive shield against the sheer vulnerability of the memory. "You know what he said to me, Suki. You know how he made me feel. Like I was some kind of... some kind of anchor dragging him into the bottom of the ocean just because I wanted him to talk to me. I spent three years trying to decode his silences, trying to make up for the fact that his dad is a monster and his sister is a psychopath. And the second things got hard for him, he threw me away like I was the problem."
"I know," Suki whispered, reaching out to place her hand over yours, stilling your frantic squeezing of the silicone ball. "I’m not taking his side. Zuko was an idiot. He was toxic, he was defensive, and he handled his survival by hurting the only person who actually had his back. I wanted to punch him in his stupid face for months after you guys split. Sokka had to physically hold me back from keying his car."
A small, wet laugh escaped your lips at that, a single tear slipping past your eyelashes. You wiped it away quickly with the back of your hand, cursing mentally. "Then what are we talking about?"
Suki let out a breath, her fingers gently squeezing yours. "We're talking about the fact that it's been a year. A whole year of you bleaching your hair, getting pierced, deleting your social media, and trying to pretend that three years of your life just... vanished. But you're still carrying it. You're carrying it in the way you look at the floor when someone mentions the others. You're carrying it in that green scarf. And you're definitely carrying it in the way I know probably you looked at him under that streetlamp."
You kept your eyes fixed on the floorboards, your jaw tight. "He told me he lied."
Suki paused, "What?"
"At the bus stop," you whispered, the admission tasting like copper in your mouth. "He said he lied. He said he told me he didn't love me anymore because he was drowning, and he thought he’d take me down with him if he stayed. He said he’s loved me every single second of this year."
The silence that followed was heavy, filled only by the distant hum of the apartment building's heating system. Suki didn't interrupt. She just sat there, processing the words, her mind working behind her eyes.
"And what did you say?" she asked finally, her voice incredibly gentle.
"I told him it didn't matter," you said, your voice shaking. "I told him it didn't change anything. Because it shouldn't, right? You don't get to destroy someone for their own good. You don't get to decide what I can handle. That’s not love. That's just... isolation."
"You're right," Suki said, and the absolute certainty in her tone made you look up, surprised. She wasn't giving you a platitude. She was validating the anger you had cultivated like a garden for twelve months. "It is selfish. Zuko has a massive, deep-seated savior complex mixed with a martyr fixation. He thinks the only way to keep things safe is to burn them down before anyone else can touch them. It’s what he did with his family, it’s what he did with his old friends, and it’s what he did with you."
She got off her chair, sitting beside you, forcing you to meet her gaze directly.
"But here is the piece you’re missing," Suki continued, her hand moving to rest on your shoulder, right where Zuko’s hand had been a week prior. "He didn't run away this time. For three years, every time Zuko got overwhelmed, he withdrew. He went silent. He pushed people out. But a week ago, he saw you across a crowded room looking completely different, totally untouchable, and his first instinct wasn't to hide. He wanted to go to you. Sokka had to stop him. And then, a week later, he saw you alone at a bus stop. He touched your shoulder. He told you the truth, even knowing how much you probably hated him for it."
You shook your head, a defensive instinct. "So what? I'm supposed to just forget everything? Go back to his apartment and pretend he didn't break me into pieces?"
"No," Suki said firmly. "Absolutely not. If you went back to him right now, I’d lock you in this room. You worked too hard to find your feet this year to let him knock you over again. But..." She hesitated, searching your face. "You haven't moved on, babe. You’ve just built a very high wall. And you're standing behind it, freezing to death, holding that damned green scarf."
A sob caught in your throat, hot and agonizing. You squeezed your eyes shut, letting the tears fall freely now, the weight of the past year crashing down on your chest all at once. Suki pulled you into her arms, wrapping her limbs around you tightly, letting you bury your face into the stolen sweatshirt.
"It hurts so much, Suki," you choked out, your hands clutching the fabric of her back. "Seeing him... he looked so tired. He had the same dark circles he gets when he doesn't sleep for days. And I wanted to hate him. I wanted to look at him and feel nothing, like I did at the party. But the second he touched me, it was like the last year didn't even happen. I was just... I was just back on that floor, watching him walk out."
"I know," Suki murmured, rubbing your back in slow, soothing circles. "I know, sweetie. Because you loved him with everything you had. You don't just turn that off because he screwed up."
She let you cry for a long time, until your breath slowed and the heavy, ragged sobs turned into quiet, occasional hitches. The room grew darker as the sun set completely outside the window, casting long, gray shadows across the bed.
Finally, Suki pulled back just enough to look at you, her hands resting on your upper arms.
"Here is my advice," Suki said, her green eyes steady in the dim light. "The best advice I can give you after watching this disaster play out for twelve months. Give him a chance to explain himself."
You blinked through your tear-blurred vision, your mouth dropping open slightly. "What?"
"I don’t mean get back together with him," Suki clarified quickly, her tone sharp and authoritative. "I don’t even mean you have to forgive him. But you need to let him sit down, face-to-face, without a bus arriving in five minutes, and tell you exactly what happened in his head a year ago. You need to let him speak his piece, not for his sake, but for yours."
"How does that help me?" you muttered, wiping your nose with a tissue Suki handed you from her nightstand.
"Because right now, you're ghost hunting," Suki said. "You're fighting a version of Zuko from twelve months ago—the version that yelled at you and left. You haven't allowed yourself to see the guy who has been living in the aftermath. If you let him explain, one of two things will happen. Either you’ll look at him and realize he hasn't changed at all, and you’ll finally get the closure you need to drop that scarf in a donation bin... or you’ll see that he’s actually trying to fix his own broken parts, and you can decide, on your own terms, if you want him in your life again. As a friend. As an ex. As whatever."
She leaned back, crossing her arms, a small, knowing smirk starting to form on her lips as she watched the realization dawn on your face.
"You're in control now," Suki added softly. "A year ago, he made the choice for both of you. He ended it. He drew the line. But right now? He's waiting on you. The ball is in your court. You get to decide if you want to hear him out or leave him in the dark. But staying in this middle zone—where you're running away from him at parties and crying over his clothes—is killing you."
You sat in silence, the neon pink sticky ball rolling out of your limp hand and settling onto the duvet between you. You hated it when she did this. You hated how cleanly she could strip away the layers of your anger and expose the bleeding, frightened core of your pride underneath.
She was right. She was completely, entirely right, and it was infuriating.
"I hate you," you mumbled into your tissue, though there was no venom in it.
"I know," Suki smiled, leaning over to press a quick kiss to the side of your head. "That’s why I’m the best friend you’ve ever had. Now, wash your face. Sokka’s coming over with Thai food in twenty minutes, and if he sees you've been crying, he's going to think we fought, and then he’ll try to give us a lecture on conflict resolution using spring rolls as a visual aid."
You let out a genuine, wet laugh, shifting off the bed to head toward her small bathroom. As you turned on the faucet, letting the cool water pool in your palms before pressing it against your swollen eyes, you looked at yourself in the mirror. The platinum blonde hair, the silver piercing—they were still there. They were part of you now. But as you stared at your own reflection, the wall behind your eyes felt just a little bit less heavy.
The ball wasn't stuck to the ceiling anymore. It had fallen, and for the first time in a year, you were actually looking down at your hands, realizing you were the one holding it.
The white screen of the notes app cast a stark, digital glare over your face, illuminating your dark bedroom with a ghostly hum. You had been staring at the same ten-digit number for exactly ten minutes, the cursor blinking rhythmically at the end of the line like a tiny, mocking pulse.
Three hundred and sixty-five days. That was how long this number had sat exiled in the graveyard of your phone's utility folder. You had deleted his contact the morning after the breakup, your hands shaking so violently you’d nearly dropped your phone. It had felt like a necessary exorcism at the time—a frantic attempt to scrub his name, his custom ringtone, and his existence from your life. But a small, terrified part of your subconscious hadn't been strong enough to let the line go completely dead. You had copied the digits, pasted them into a blank note titled simply with a period, and buried it beneath grocery lists, and class schedules.
In case.
It was a pathetic safety net, an admission that even when you were screaming at the walls of your empty room, you weren't ready to let the universe completely erase him.
Now, your thumb hovered over the screen. You highlighted the number, copied it, and dropped it back into the empty 'To:' field of a fresh text message thread. The bubble was blank. The gray text read Text Message, an empty chasm waiting for you to bridge it.
Your heart thudded an irregular, heavy rhythm against your ribs. Suki’s words from the night before echoed in the quiet space of your skull, scraping against your pride. You haven't moved on, babe. You’ve just built a very high wall. And you're standing behind it, freezing to death.
You closed your eyes, took a deep, shuddering breath of the stale dorm room air, and let your fingers move before your brain could sabotage the impulse.
Let's talk. The Daily Grind near Suki's place. 2:00 PM?
You hit send.
The blue bubble shot upward with a soft swoosh. You instantly flipped the phone face-down on your comforter, pressing your palms against your eyes as if the sheer physical distance could shield you from the reality of what you had just done. Your skin felt hot, the adrenaline spiking through your veins so quickly it left a metallic taste on your tongue. You expected to wait. You expected him to take hours, to let the message fester in his notifications while he brooded or debated with Sokka about whether it was a trap.
Buzz.
The phone vibrated against the mattress before you had even drawn your next breath.
Your hand flew out instantly, flipping the device over.
Zuko
I'll be there. Thank you.
The response was instantaneous. It was so fast it was almost terrifying, an validation of Suki's theory that he had been sitting in his own dark room, staring at his own empty screen, waiting for the sky to fall.
The digital clock on your lock screen read 1:00 PM. You had exactly sixty minutes.
The bathroom mirror was a cruel witness to the civil war raging inside your own head.
You stood in front of the glass, a curling iron smoking slightly on the counter, staring at the version of yourself that stared back. You had spent the last forty-five minutes executing a meticulous, calculated transformation that made absolutely no sense given the thesis statement of this meeting.
This was supposed to be an eviction notice. This was supposed to be the final chapter, the heavy iron key turning in the lock of a three-year history so you could finally take off the forest-green scarf and finally breathe.
So why were you wearing baby pink?
You looked down at your outfit, a sudden, sharp spike of self-loathing twisting in your gut. You had chosen a soft, oversized pastel pink cardigan that fell off one shoulder, paired with a short, pleated skirt and thigh-high knit socks that met the hemline with a sliver of exposed skin. It was sweet. It was intentional. It was an outfit that screamed for attention in the softest, most vulnerable way possible.
"What are you doing [Y/N]?" you whispered to your reflection, your fingers tightening around the edge of the porcelain sink.
You had spent a year cultivating your armor. You had wanted to look like someone who could survive a wreck. But today, you had styled your hair into soft, tumbling waves that framed your face in romantic curves. You had spent ten minutes with an eyelash curler and a tube of expensive waterproof mascara, ensuring your lashes were perfectly fanned out, making your eyes look wide, and devastatingly familiar.
You were dressing for him.
The realization hit you like a bucket of ice water. You were standing on the precipice of a final closure, yet a pathetic, lingering part of your heart was still trying to curate the way his mind would hold your image after you left. You wanted him to see the new, untouchable girl, but you also desperately wanted him to remember the soft, sweet girl he used to hold on the couch on Sunday mornings. You wanted him to look at you and bleed from the sheer gravity of what he had thrown away.
"You're pathetic," you muttered, reaching for a nude lip gloss and applying it with an aggressive, defensive swipe.
You checked the silver hoop in your eyebrow, ensuring it was straight, a tiny glint of defiance against the soft pink of your sweater. You didn't change. You didn't put the heavy black boots back on or hide behind a leather jacket. You grabbed your keys, stuffed your phone into your pocket, and walked out into the gray winter afternoon, your heart hammering a relentless, terrifying rhythm against your breastbone.
The Daily Grind was a small, independent coffee shop tucked between a vintage clothing boutique and an old laundromat. It was the kind of place that smelled permanently of roasted espresso beans, cinnamon, and damp wool. Inside, the heating was turned up too high, fogging the large glass windows and turning the world outside into a smeared, gray watercolor.
When you pushed the heavy wooden door open, the brass bell jingled overhead, a sharp, cheerful sound that felt entirely inappropriate for the execution you were about to attend.
You stepped inside, pulling off your gloves, your eyes instantly scanning the dim, wood-paneled room.
He was already there.
It was 1:50 PM. You were 10 minutes early, a strategy to ensure you could choose the table, establish your territory, and be the one waiting. But Zuko was already sitting in a corner booth near the back, half-hidden by a large, leafy fiddle-leaf fig tree.
A heavy, aching sorrow settled into your chest at the sight of him.
He looked like he had been carved out of charcoal. He was wearing his heavy, dark canvas jacket, the collar turned up against a draft that didn't exist inside the heated cafe. A paper coffee cup sat untouched in front of him, the plastic lid off, a faint wisp of steam rising into the air before dying out. He wasn't on his phone. He wasn't reading. He was just staring fixedly at the grain of the dark oak table, his large, scarred hands flat against the wood.
Up close, as you walked down the narrow aisle between the tables, the details of his exhaustion became brutal. Suki hadn't been exaggerating. The skin beneath his amber eyes was dark, a bruised, violet shade that spoke of days spent staring at the ceiling in the dark. His dark hair was messy, longer than it used to be, falling over his forehead in jagged strands that almost touched the old, puckered scar on the left side of his face.
He looked small. For a guy who used to carry himself with a defensive, rigid intensity that filled every room he entered, he looked entirely hollowed out.
As your presence drew closer, Zuko’s head snapped up.
The breath caught in his throat, a distinct, audible hitch that you could hear even over the low acoustic indie music playing from the cafe's speakers. His eyes widened, his gaze sweeping over you in a frantic, unblinking rush. He took in the soft waves of your hair, the glint of the eyebrow piercing, and then, his eyes lingered on the baby pink cardigan slipping slightly off your shoulder.
A look of profound, agonizing recognition passed over his features, followed immediately by a flash of deep, internal pain.
"You're early," you said, your voice sounding detached, a protective mechanism you had practiced during the walk over.
Zuko scrambled to his feet, nearly knocking his untouched coffee over in the process. His hand shot out to steady the cup, his movements clumsy, frantic. "I—yeah. I wanted to make sure I got a table. The one in the corner. I know you don't like sitting with your back to the door."
The fact that he remembered that—a tiny, trivial preference from a lifetime ago—made the wall behind your eyes tremble. You didn't acknowledge it. You just slid into the vinyl booth opposite him, setting your keys on the table with a soft clink.
Zuko sat back down slowly, his eyes never leaving your face. He looked like a man who had been granted a temporary reprieve from a life sentence, terrified that if he blinked, you would vanish back into the gray mist outside.
"Thank you for coming," he said, his voice low, gravelly, and thick with an emotion he was trying desperately to suppress. "I didn't think... after the bus stop, I didn't think you'd ever want to see me again."
"Suki gave me a lecture," you said plainly, resting your forearms on the table, the pink wool of your sleeve bunched around your wrists. "She thinks I'm ghost hunting. She thinks I need to hear what you have to say so I can finally move on."
Zuko flinched at the words move on, his head dropping slightly. He looked down at his hands, his fingers tracing the rim of his paper cup over and over again, the exact same anxious habit you had noticed at Jet's party.
"She's right," Zuko whispered. "You shouldn't have to carry any of it. It was my mess. It's always been my mess."
"Then talk, Zuko," you said, your voice softening just a fraction, the anger from the previous week beginning to melt under the sheer, heavy sadness radiating across the table. "You told me you lied. Why? Why would you look me in the eye after three years and tell me I was a burden? Do you have any idea what that does to a person?"
A single, jagged breath left his lips, and when he looked up, his amber eyes were bright with unshed tears, reflecting the warm amber lights of the coffee shop.
"My father called me two days before I broke up with you," Zuko said, his voice shaking so violently he had to lock his jaw to force the words out. "He... he found out about the academic probation. He found out about the money I was trying to save to get our own place next semester. He told me if I didn't pull my grades up, if I didn't come back home for the summer to work at the firm, he was going to cut off my tuition. All of it. He was going to pull the apartment lease."
You sat frozen, your fingers curling into the pink fabric of your sweater. You knew Ozai was a CEO tyrant—you had spent years helping Zuko navigate the text messages that left him shaking in bed—but this was different. This was total economic and emotional leverage.
"I went into a panic," Zuko continued, a hot tear finally breaking free and tracking down the scarred side of his face. "I felt like the walls were closing in. Azula kept texting me, telling me how much of a disappointment I was, how I was going to ruin everything and to just come home during the summer. And I looked at you. You were sitting on my bed, studying for your finals, laughing at some stupid video on your phone, looking so... so completely pure and safe. And a sick part of my brain just clicked."
He reached out, his hand moving an inch across the table before freezing, remembering his boundaries, and pulling his fingers back into a tight fist.
"I thought about what my father does to things I love," Zuko choked out, his chest heaving under his dark jacket. "He destroys them. He uses them to hurt me. And I convinced myself that if I stayed with you, if I kept dragging you into my family's psycho-drama, my father would find a way to break you too. I thought... I thought I was being a martyr. I thought if I cut you loose, loud enough and mean enough that you’d hate me, you’d run away and stay away from me for good."
He wiped the tear from his cheek with the back of his hand, a frustrated, angry motion.
"But it wasn't about saving you," he whispered, looking directly into your eyes, his gaze raw and entirely devoid of pride. "It was cowardice. I was terrified of failing you. I was terrified of you seeing me lose everything and realizing I wasn't enough. So I broke your heart before my family could break us both. It was the most selfish, disgusting thing I’ve ever done. And the second I walked out that door... I knew I had destroyed the only good thing I had ever built."
The silence that settled over the table was heavy, suffocating, and deeply, profoundly sad.
You sat there, staring at the boy who had spent twelve months living in a prison of his own design. The anger you had nurtured like a shield for a year didn't feel like armor anymore. It felt like ash in your mouth. Suki had been right. You had been fighting a ghost—a cruel, unfeeling shadow from a year ago. But the boy sitting in front of you wasn't a monster. He was just a broken kid who had grown up in a house without love, trying to navigate a world he thought was permanently rigged against him.
You looked at his hand—the one flat on the table, the knuckles still white, a slight tremor running through his fingers.
The weight of the year—the loneliness of the parties, the bleaching of your hair, the digital ghost town, the tears shed on Suki's bathroom floor—it all seemed to converge into this tiny, wood-paneled corner. It was so sad. The entire situation was just a tragedy born of silence and fear.
Without thinking, driven entirely by an ancient, instinctual muscle memory that your pride couldn't stop, you reached across the wood of the table.
Your fingers, small and soft against the oak, slid forward until your palm rested over his trembling knuckles.
Zuko froze. He looked down at your hand, his breath stopping completely, as if he were looking at a miracle he didn't have the right to touch.
Slowly, gently, you turned your hand over, sliding your palm beneath his, threading your fingers through his large ones. His skin was freezing, cold from the winter air he had walked through, but as your fingers locked together, the heat of your body began to transfer into his.
"Zuko," you whispered, your own tears finally blurring your vision, turning the coffee shop into a smear of warm, golden light.
With a ragged, broken sob, Zuko collapsed forward, his forehead coming to rest on his free arm against the table. His grip on your hand tightened until it was almost painful, his fingers clinging to yours like a drowning man catching a rope in the dark. His shoulders shook violently under the dark canvas jacket, the quiet, suppressed sounds of a year’s worth of isolation finally breaking out into the open space between you.
You didn't pull away. You sat in the baby pink sweater you had chosen for him, your eyelashes wet and clumped together, holding his hand tightly across the table while the acoustic music hummed and the winter gray pressed against the fogged windows.
It wasn't a fix. It wasn't an erasure of the last twelve months. But as you squeezed his cold fingers, letting him cry into the dark wood of the booth, you knew the wall had finally come down, and neither of you had to freeze in the dark anymore.
The warmth of the coffee shop stayed with you even after the brass bell jingled behind you, cutting you both loose back into the sharp, gray winter afternoon.
Outside, the air was still bitingly cold, but the heavy, suffocating tension that had defined the last twelve months had finally lifted, leaving a strange, fragile quiet in its place. Zuko walked on the outside of the sidewalk, his hands buried deep in the pockets of his dark canvas jacket, his shoulder occasionally brushing against the soft wool of your cardigan. It was a rhythm your bodies hadn't forgotten—the instinctive way you slotted together when navigating a crowded street, matching each other's stride without a single word.
"Are you... do you have to get back to the dorms right away?" Zuko asked, his voice still carrying that low, gravelly scrape from the tears he’d shed in the corner booth. He wasn't looking at you; he was looking straight ahead, his jaw slightly tight as if he were bracing himself for you to tell him that the coffee was all he was going to get.
You looked down at your boots, watching your breath form a soft, white cloud in front of your face. "Suki doesn't expect me back until later. Sokka's bringing food, but... I have time." You paused, a small, tentative feeling fluttering in your chest. "We could walk. Go down by the lower campus."
Zuko’s head snapped toward you, his amber eyes wide with a quiet, disbelieving gratitude. "Yeah. Let's do that."
For the next three hours, the last year seemed to blur, dissolving into the familiar geography of a history you had both spent twelve months trying to pretend didn't exist. You didn't talk about the breakup. You didn't talk about the screaming matches, or his father, or your empty Instagram profile. Instead, you let the old spaces do the talking for you.
You walked down to the small, gravel-paved courtyard behind the humanities building—the exact spot where you used to hide between classes during your sophomore year. The stone benches were dusted with a thin layer of frost, but Zuko immediately pulled a spare flannel shirt out of his backpack, folding it neatly and placing it over the cold stone so you could sit down without getting your pleated skirt wet.
"You still carry extra layers everywhere," you noted, a soft, genuine smile tugging at the corners of your lips as you sat, pulling your knees up toward your chest.
Zuko rubbed the back of his neck, a faint, dark flush creeping up his neck, contrasting sharply with the pale skin near his scar. "Old habits. Sokka always forgets a jacket, and... well, I used to always make sure I had something for you in case the weather turned."
The admission was quiet, completely stripped of the defensive armor he usually wore. You looked at him—really looked at him in the clear, honest light of the winter afternoon. The platinum waves of your hair caught the pale sunlight, and as you tilted your head. Zuko’s eyes traced over your features, his expression soft, almost reverent.
"It suits you," he said softly, gesturing vaguely toward your face. "The piercing. When I saw you at Jet's, I thought... I thought you looked incredible."
"I needed to change," you admitted, shrugging, your fingers tracing the knitted pattern of your cardigan. "I felt like if I kept looking at the girl in the mirror who had dark hair and wore your old hoodies, I was never going to stop crying. I needed to build someone who could survive without you."
Zuko’s chest heaved with a slow, painful breath. "I'm sorry I made you feel like you had to rebuild yourself from scratch."
"Don't," you whispered, reaching out to touch his sleeve, the canvas rough under your fingertips. "We're not doing that right now. Let's just... let's just be here."
From the courtyard, you walked to the tiny, subterranean convenience store off the main quad—the one that sold the specific brand of sour gummy candy Toph always stole from your purse. The elderly man behind the counter recognized the two of you immediately, his eyes crinkling as he rang up a single coffee and a bottle of tea.
"Ah, the long-distance travelers return," the old man chuckled, entirely unaware of the twelve months of wreckage that had transpired between his last sighting of you. "I haven't seen you two together in months. I thought you forgot about my shop."
"Just busy with finals, Mr. Chen," you said quickly, your heart doing a strange, aching flip in your chest.
Zuko didn't say anything, but as he handed over a crisp five-dollar bill, his hand was steady, his eyes catching yours in a silent, shared understanding. It was a bittersweet sting—realizing that the world had kept a space reserved for the two of you, completely unchanged, while you had been busy tearing each other apart.
By the time you reached the edge of the campus, the gray dusk had deepened into a dark, bruised violet, the streetlamps flickering to life one by one along the avenue. The wind was picking up, rattling the bare branches of the oak trees overhead.
"The shuttle should be here in five minutes," Zuko said, standing beside you at the exact same bus stop where you had confronted him a week ago. This time, however, there were no headphones shielding you, no green scarf pulled up to your chin to act as a barrier.
When the large, white campus bus rumbled up to the curb, its air brakes letting out a familiar, heavy hiss, Zuko didn't step back. He let you climb the stairs first, and then he followed you, his heavy boots clicking against the rubber matting of the aisle.
The bus was nearly empty, a ghost ship sailing through the final evening of the semester. You picked a row near the back, sliding into the vinyl seat beside the window. Zuko sat down next to you, his large frame instantly making the cramped space feel warm and secure. He didn't crowd you; he kept his hands folded in his lap, giving you the space you had fought so hard for over the last year.
As the bus pulled away from the curb, shifting gears with a low groan a heavy, incredibly comfortable silence settled over the two of you. The interior lights of the shuttle were dim, casting a soft, yellow glow over the rows of empty seats. Outside, the storefronts and university buildings smeared into long lines of neon and shadow against the dark glass.
The steady, rhythmic motion of the bus, combined with the emotional exhaustion of the afternoon, made your eyelids feel impossibly heavy. Your head began to loll slightly with the swaying of the vehicle.
You didn't think about it. You didn't debate the pride of it, or the boundaries Suki had outlined on her bed. You just let your body weight shift, leaning sideways until your cheek pressed softly against the thick, dark canvas of Zuko’s shoulder.
Zuko stiffened instantly. For a terrifying half-second, you thought you had made a massive mistake, but then, you felt the air leave his lungs in a long, shaky sigh. The rigid tension in his frame completely melted away. He shifted his weight slightly, leaning into you, his head dropping down to rest against the top of your head, his shoulder forming a perfect, solid cradle for your head.
Your eyes drifted shut. The scent of him—old smoke, cedar, and the sharp, clean winter air—enveloped you completely, a familiar blanket that instantly quieted the restless ache that had lived in your chest for a year. In the quiet, dark space of the moving bus, you let yourself believe, just for twenty minutes, that the wreck had never happened.
The bus ride ended too quickly. When the driver announced your stop over the intercom, the sudden halt of the vehicle made you blink your eyes open, the bright street-lamps outside the window scattering the shadows.
You pulled your head back slowly, feeling a sudden, sharp coldness where his shoulder had been. Zuko looked down at you, his eyes incredibly soft, a quiet sadness lingering in the amber depths as he realized the sanctuary of the bus ride was over.
He walked you out into the night, down the short, concrete path that led to your off-campus apartment building. The building was quiet, most of the residents having already left for the winter break, some of the windows dark and empty.
He rode the elevator with you, walking you to your door and stopped in front, the yellow lights above casting long, stark shadows across the floor. You turned to face him, your keys heavy in your hand, the baby pink cardigan offering little protection against the biting winds.
"Well," you said softly, your voice carrying a strange, floating quality. "This is me."
Zuko stood a foot away, his hands still shoved in his pockets, looking at you as if he were trying to memorize every line of your face. "Yeah. This is you." He took a slow breath, his chest expanding under his jacket. "Thank you for today. Seriously. You didn't have to give me ten minutes, let alone the whole afternoon. It was... it was the best day I’ve had in a year."
"Me too, Zuko," you said honestly, the truth slipping out before you could filter it.
He hesitated, then pulled his hands out of his pockets. He stepped forward, his movements cautious, giving you ample time to pull away if you wanted to. When you didn't move, he reached out, wrapping his large arms around your shoulders, pulling you into a tight, heavy hug.
It was the same hug he used to give you when he came home from a long shift at his campus job—solid, grounding, and desperate enough to make you almost suffocate from the lack of air. You buried your face into his chest, your hands coming up to grip the fabric of his jacket, absorbing the heat of him.
"Have a good break," Zuko whispered into your hair, his voice thick. "Take care of yourself."
He began to pull back, his hands sliding down your arms, his fingers lingering on your wrists for a fraction of a second before he started to turn away, his boots pivoting to head back toward elevator.
The space between you instantly turned freezing cold.
You looked at his back, at the sharp lines of his shoulders beneath the dark jacket, moving away from you once again into the winter night. A sudden, violent panic surged through your veins—the exact same panic you had felt a year ago, watching him walk out on you, but this time, the door wasn't locked from the inside.
The ball is in your court, Suki’s voice echoed sharply. You get to decide.
Before your brain could formulate a single doubt, your hand shot out.
Your fingers wrapped firmly around Zuko’s left wrist, your grip tight enough to stop him in his tracks. Zuko froze, his head snapping back over his shoulder, his amber eyes wide with a sudden, breathless confusion as he looked down at your hand on his sleeve.
You didn't say a word. You turned around, slid your key into the lock of your door. Your hands were shaking so badly as you opened the heavy wooden door. The apartment inside was dark, smelling faintly of vanilla and linen, the blinds drawn against the city lights outside.
The door was slightly ajar, a sliver of yellow light from the hallway cutting a sharp line across the dark linoleum of your entryway.
You turned around to face him, standing in the threshold, the heat of the apartment rushing out to meet the cold air on your skin. Zuko stood right outside the line of the door, his breath coming in short, uneven bursts, his eyes searching yours with a raw, terrifying vulnerability.
"Zuko," you whispered.
You reached up, your fingers wrapping around the lapels of his dark canvas jacket, and pulled him forward into the dark room.
Before he could even draw a breath to ask, you leaned up on your tiptoes, tilted your head back, and brought your lips directly against his.
The impact of the kiss was a physical shock to both of your systems. It wasn't the slow, cautious reconciliation you had imagined during your walk; it was a desperate, starving collision of two people who had been living in a drought for three hundred and sixty-five days.
Zuko let out a low, ragged sound—a mix of a sob and a gasp—and his hands instantly flew out of his pockets. His large palms slammed against the sides of your face, his fingers burying themselves into the soft, tumbling waves of your hair, holding you against him as if he were terrified you would dissolve into smoke if he didn't anchor you to the earth.
The kiss tasted like the tears you had both shed at the coffee shop—salty, raw, and heavy with the profound sadness of a year wasted in silence. His mouth was hot, moving against yours with a frantic, trembling intensity that made your knees buckle beneath your pleated skirt. You gripped the rough canvas of his jacket, pulling him deeper into the dark entryway, your bodies slamming against the wall beside the coat rack with a soft, heavy thud.
The door to the hallway swung shut behind him, clicking into place, plunging the room into complete, velvety darkness, save for the blue neon glow of the city lights leaking through the gaps in the blinds.
Zuko’s lips trailed down from your mouth, his breath hot and frantic against your cheek, before burying his face into the crook of your neck, right beneath your ear. His chest heaved against yours, his entire body shaking so violently you had to wrap your arms around his waist just to keep him steady.
"I'm sorry," he sobbed into your skin, his hands gripping your waist through the baby pink sweater, his fingers digging into your hips. "I'm so sorry. I didn't think... I didn't think I'd ever get to hold you again. I've been so cold."
The sheer sadness of his voice broke something final inside you. You squeezed your eyes shut, letting your own tears fall into his dark hair, your fingers tracing the sharp, familiar lines of his shoulder blades through his jacket.
"I know," you whispered, your voice cracking as you pulled him deeper into the apartment, leading him toward the quiet dark of your bedroom. "I know, Zuko. Just stay."
And there, in the quiet, neon-streaked blue shadows of your room, the wall didn't just come down—it vanished entirely, leaving only the heat of two broken people finally learning how to piece themselves back together in the dark.
The first sensation that filtered through the heavy fog of Zuko’s consciousness was the heat.
For twelve months, he had slept in a bed that felt permanently frozen. No matter how many heavy blankets he dragged from Sokka’s couch, no matter how high he cranked the radiator in his cramped, off-campus apartment, he had spent three hundred and sixty-five nights shivering beneath the sheets, his own skin feeling cold and hollow. It was a phantom winter, a perpetual chill that had settled deep into his marrow the moment he let you walk out of his life.
But right now, his skin was burning. A deep, radiating warmth enveloped him, thick and heavy, pressing down on his chest like a weighted blanket.
Zuko blinked his eyes open, his long eyelashes brushing against a pillowcase that didn't smell like his cheap, unscented laundry detergent. Instead, the air was thick with the gentle, unmistakable scent of vanilla, linen, and the faint, crisp tang of the winter air that had clung to his clothes the night before.
He didn't recognize the ceiling.
He lay perfectly still, his heart instantly doing a sharp, panicked flip against his ribs. The ceiling above him wasn't the water-stained, cracked plaster of his own bedroom. It was smooth, painted a soft, muted cream color that caught the pale, silver light of a winter morning leaking through a set of closed blinds.
Slowly, deliberately, Zuko turned his head on the pillow, his amber eyes scanning the unfamiliar room. There was a small white desk in the corner, a stack of textbooks neatly arranged beside a laptop, a plush rug on the floor, and a duffel bag sitting open near the closet.
And then, his gaze landed on you.
The breath left his lungs in a sharp, silent gasp, his entire body locking up as the reality of the previous night rushed back into his brain like a tidal wave.
You were asleep beside him, lying on your side, your back turned completely toward him. The heavy duvet had slipped down to your waist, exposing the smooth, bare expanse of your back to the warm morning air. In the dim, silver light, your skin looked almost translucent, a flawless canvas framed by the tumbling, messy waves of your platinum blonde hair.
Zuko stared, his eyes wide and unblinking, a terrifying wave of vertigo washing over him.
He was convinced, with a sudden, agonizing certainty, that he was still asleep. This was a nightmare disguised as a sanctuary. He had lived through a dozen variations of this exact dream over the past year—dreams where he would wake up, reach out, and find you breathing beside him, only for his fingers to pass through empty air as the morning light dissolved the illusion, leaving him utterly alone into the silence of the shared apartment.
He felt a desperate, almost violent urge to pinch himself, to dig his nails into his own palm until he bled, just to force his brain to wake up before the crushing weight of the reality could destroy him again.
But then, he felt the weight on his arm.
His left arm was completely outstretched across the mattress, acting as a cradle. Your head was resting perfectly in the crook of his elbow, your platinum hair spilling across his bicep like spun silver. And beneath the heavy covers, your small hand was wrapped tightly around his, your fingers threaded securely through his large, scarred ones, holding on even in the deep vulnerability of sleep.
He could feel the slow, rhythmic pulse of your blood against his palm. He could hear the faint, soft whistle of your breath escaping your lips, your chest expanding and contracting against the mattress.
It wasn't a dream. You were actually there.
A heavy, incredibly aching sorrow mingled with a profound, terrifying joy in his chest. Zuko swallowed the massive lump in his throat, his eyes welling with a sudden, hot burst of tears that blurred the image of your bare back into a soft, glowing smear of silver. He didn't deserve this. He knew, with every shred of his being, that he didn't deserve to be lying in your bed, holding your hand, absorbing the heat of the body he had willfully cast out into the cold a year ago.
Yet, you hadn't pushed him away. Last night, in the dark entryway of your apartment, you had pulled him into a kiss that had entirely obliterated the twelve months of wreckage behind them. You had led him into this room, your hands frantic as you stripped the heavy canvas jacket from his shoulders, your lips never leaving his as you both collapsed onto the mattress, desperate to burn away the isolation in a fire of tangled sheets and whispered, tearful apologies.
Slowly, carefully, as if trying not to disturb a fragile glass statue, Zuko shifted his weight.
He slid his body closer across the mattress, the sheets rustling softly in the quiet room. He closed the tiny, gap between them, pressing his chest directly against the bare skin of your back. The contact was an instant, electric shock of warmth. He curled his larger frame around yours, tucking his knees behind your legs, slotting his body into yours like a missing puzzle piece his muscles had remembered perfectly.
He buried his face into the soft curve of your neck, right beneath your ear, where the scent of vanilla was the strongest. He let his nose brush against the short, soft hairs at the base of your skull, his eyes closing as the absolute reality of your presence anchored him to the earth.
As the heat of his breath hit your skin, you stirred.
You let out a low, soft, incredibly contented hum—a small, sleepy sound that vibrated through your throat and straight into his chest. You didn't pull away. Your fingers tightened their grip around his hand beneath the duvet, pulling his arm just a fraction of an inch closer against your stomach, anchoring him to your side.
Zuko squeezed his eyes shut, a single, hot tear slipping past his lashes and vanishing into the waves of your hair. He held your hand tighter, pressing his forehead against the space between your shoulder blades, finally letting himself believe that the winter was over, and he was finally allowed to come inside as he fell back asleep.
An hour later, you blinked your eyes open, the silver-gray winter light filtering through the blinds and painting the bedroom in quiet, muted tones. For a long, disorienting second, your brain tried to latch onto the usual morning routine—waking up alone, checking your phone to see a blank screen, adjusting to the hollow ache that had lived beneath your ribs for three hundred and sixty-five days.
But the air was warm. The scent of vanilla and linen was entirely compromised by something heavier, darker, and devastatingly familiar.
You felt the solid, radiating heat before you even shifted. Zuko’s chest was pressed flush against your bare back, his large frame curled around yours so perfectly it felt as if your muscles hadn't spent a single day apart. His breath was a steady, warm puff against the nape of your neck, a rhythmic reminder of the reality you had voluntarily pulled into your bed the night before. Beneath the covers, your fingers were completely locked in his, your hand wrapped around his knuckles with a desperate, sleeping grip.
Slowly, carefully, you untangled your hand from his, the sudden absence of his skin leaving your palm feeling instantly frozen. You shifted your weight, rolling over on the mattress to face him, the duvet rustling softly in the quiet room.
Zuko didn't wake up, but as you moved, his brow furrowed slightly, a faint, anxious line appearing between his eyes as if his subconscious were already panicking that you were slipping away. His left arm remained outstretched where your head had just been, his bicep bare and marked by the faint shadows of the room. Without the heavy canvas jacket, without the defensive, rigid posture he used to navigate the campus, he looked incredibly vulnerable. The puckered, uneven skin of the old scar on the left side of his face was pressed into the pillow, his dark hair falling in messy, jagged strands across his forehead.
You lay there, resting your cheek on your hand, your eyes tracing every familiar line of his face.
You didn't regret it.
The thought formed in your mind with absolute, unshakeable certainty. You knew what Suki would say when she found out; you knew the entire communication major cohort would think you were insane for letting the guy who broke you back into your bed after a single afternoon. But looking at him now, in the honest, unfiltered light of the morning, you knew last night hadn't been a mistake. It hadn't been a weak lapse in judgment or a cheap attempt to seek comfort. It had been an exorcism. You had needed to burn down the wall you spent a year building, and you had needed him to be the one to help you do it. Sleeping with him wasn't a regression; it was the first time in twelve months you had felt entirely alive, entirely embodied, rather than just surviving behind a mask of platinum hair and silver piercings.
But as the initial warmth of the morning began to settle, a cold, heavy knot of anxiety started to tighten in your stomach.
You looked at the sharp line of Zuko’s jaw, your eyes dropping to the way his lips were slightly parted. A familiar, terrifying question began to circle in your head, peckish and cruel: Does he regret it?
Your heart did a slow, painful twist. Zuko was a creature of intense, agonizing guilt. You knew him better than anyone else in the world, and you knew how his brain functioned in the aftermath of a crisis. He had spent the previous afternoon crying into the wood of a coffee shop booth, pouring his heart out about his father, his cowardice, and the protective, twisted lies he had told to keep you safe from his family's wreckage. He had been raw, bleeding, and entirely defenseless.
What if he woke up today and realized he had crossed a line he shouldn't have? What if the gravity of sleeping with his ex-girlfriend—the girl he had spent a year trying to save by destroying her—felt like a mistake? Zuko’s savior complex was a living, breathing thing, and you knew how quickly his comfort could curdle into self-loathing if he believed he had hurt you again by dragging you back into his orbit.
You bit your inner lip, a sudden, sharp panic making your chest tighten. You couldn't handle him waking up and looking at you with apology in his eyes. You couldn't handle him pulling the blankets up, scrambling out of your bed, and retreating back into that defensive, silent shell because he thought he had compromised your healing. If he looked at you with regret today, it would break you in a way the initial breakup hadn't even managed.
As if sensing the sudden spike of adrenaline in your system, Zuko’s eyelids fluttered.
Zuko froze. The sleep instantly vanished from his eyes, replaced by a sudden, breathless intensity that made your heart stop. He didn't move a single muscle, his gaze locked onto your face.
"Hi," you whispered, your voice small, cracking slightly in the morning quiet.
Zuko swallowed hard, his Adam's apple bobbing. He reached out, his large, calloused hand trembling slightly as he lifted it from the mattress, his fingers hovering just a millimeter away from your cheek before he hesitated, his knuckles tensing.
"Hi," he rasped, his voice incredibly deep, rough from disuse. He looked at his own hand, then looked back into your eyes, his expression twisting into a look of such intense, concentrated worry it made your stomach drop. "Are you... are you okay?"
The question was loaded with a year’s worth of fear. He was checking the damage. He was looking at you as if he expected you to start crying, to tell him to leave, to realize that the previous night had been a catastrophic mistake.
"I'm okay, Zuko," you said softly, shifting slightly closer to him, trying to close the emotional distance that was already threatening to open between you. "I'm really okay."
Zuko didn't look convinced. He let his hand drop back down to the mattress, his eyes falling to the space between you, his jaw clenching. "You don't... you don't have to say that just to make me feel better. I know last night... I know we didn't plan on this. I know you’ve been trying to move on, and I don't want to be the reason you feel like you took a step backward."
There it was. The guilt. The immediate, suffocating assumption that he was a disease and you were the patient he was infecting.
"Zuko, look at me," you said, your voice firmer now, reaching out to place your hand flat against his bare chest. The heat of his skin was instantaneous, his heart thumping a frantic, rapid rhythm beneath your palm. "Do you regret it?"
The question hung in the quiet room, sharp and heavy as an axe.
Zuko’s head snapped up, his amber eyes wide, flashing with a sudden, fierce desperation that took your breath away. "What? No. No, absolutely not. I could never regret last night." He reached out blindly, his fingers wrapping around your wrist where your hand rested on his chest, his grip tight, almost bruising in its intensity. "I've spent a year wishing I could wake up like this. I've spent three hundred and sixty-five days dreaming about holding your hand in the dark. I could never regret a single second of being near you."
He stopped, his eyes searching yours with a raw, pleading vulnerability that made your own eyes well with tears.
"But I’m terrified that you do," Zuko whispered, his voice cracking completely, a sudden, heavy sorrow breaking through his defensive shell. "I'm terrified that you're going to look at me today and realize that I'm still the same broken guy who ruined everything. I don't want to hurt you again. I’d rather walk out of this room right now and never touch you again than be the person who breaks you twice."
A hot tear slipped past your lashes, tracking rapidly down your cheek and pooling on the pillowcase. You let out a small, wet laugh, a mix of pure relief and the deep, aching tragedy of how much you both still carried. You shifted your body forward, sliding your arm over his waist, burying your face into the warm, solid crook of his neck.
"I don't regret it, you idiot," you choked out against his skin, your fingers gripping the muscle of his back, pulling him down against you until there was absolutely no space left between your bodies. "I don't regret a single thing. I just... I was so scared you were going to wake up and tell me it was a mistake."
Zuko let out a long, shuddering sigh, a sound that seemed to come from his soul. His arms came around you instantly, wrapping around your naked back, his hands large and warm against your skin as he pulled you into a tight, desperate embrace. He buried his face into hair, his chest heaving as he let out a trembling breath.
"It wasn't a mistake," Zuko murmured, his grip tightening until your ribs ached, his voice sounding surer, stronger than it had in a year. "It's the only thing that’s made sense in a whole year. I'm not going anywhere. Not this time."
Zuko’s hands remained splayed across your back, his fingers tracing the dip of your spine with a slow, almost disbelieving tenderness. The frantic, desperate edge of his morning panic had settled into something thick and heavy, a profound quiet that seemed to pool in the space between your chests. He didn't move his head from your hair for a long time, just inhaling the scent of vanilla and the clean, warm musk of you, his chest rising and falling against yours in long, steady increments.
For a moment of silence, he finally spoke. "In my apartment... the light is always gray. Even in the summer, it feels like the sun doesn't quite reach the floorboards. I used to wake up at three in the morning and just try to remember what color your skin looked like when the sun came through the window."
You tightened your arms around his neck, pulling him a fraction of an inch closer, your fingers tangling in the messy, dark length of his hair. "It’s just cheap blinds, Zuko."
"It’s not the blinds," he whispered, finally tilting his head back to look at you.
The proximity was intense, almost suffocating. His amber eyes were clear now, the glassy film of sleep entirely gone, replaced by a dark, concentrated focus that made your skin prickle with sudden, localized heat. The scar on the left side of his face was flush against the white pillowcase, the red, puckered tissue soft under the morning light. Up close, you could see the tiny silver flecks in his irises—the ones you used to count when the two of you were trapped in his bed during summer thunderstorms.
He looked down at your mouth, his jaw clenching slightly, a muscle tensing in his cheek. His hands slid down your back, his large, calloused palms smoothing over the curve of your waist, his thumbs pressing into the small indentations above your hips. He didn't pull away, but his movements slowed, becoming heavy with a sudden, deliberate hesitation.
"Can we..." Zuko started, his voice cracking slightly before he cleared his throat, his eyes rising to meet yours with a raw, almost painful vulnerability. He swallowed hard, his fingers tightening against your skin. "Last night... it was so fast. I felt like I was losing my mind, like if I didn't touch you right then, the floor was going to open up. I want... I want to remember it this time. Without the panic. If you're okay with it."
The question was entirely him—clumpy, honest, and stripped of any game-playing. He was asking for permission to stay inside the boundary you had opened for him, his eyes pleading for a reassurance that he wasn't overstepping the fragile peace you had negotiated.
In response, you didn't say a word. You gave him a small, slow smile, the anxiety that had lingered in your stomach completely dissolving under the fierce, unwavering heat of his gaze.
You shifted your weight, the heavy down comforter rustling loudly as you pulled your legs out from beneath the sheets. In one fluid, deliberate movement, you slid your knees along the mattress, lifting yourself up and straddling his waist.
Zuko let out a sharp breath through his teeth, his abdominal muscles contracting instantly beneath your thighs as you settled over him. You were already bare from the night before, save for your black lacey thong, your skin completely exposed to the warm morning air, while Zuko was back in his dark boxer briefs, the thin cotton doing very little to hide the rigid, heavy length of his arousal.
You sat back on his lap, your knees pinning his hips to the mattress. From this height, you looked down at him, your platinum hair falling forward in soft, silver-blonde waves that shadowed your eyes.
Zuko’s hands found purchase immediately. His palms didn't slide or hesitate; they locked onto the plush, soft skin of your hips, his fingers digging in slightly, his thumbs tracing the line where your thigh met your torso. His skin was incredibly hot against yours, the heat of his palms transferring through the thin lace of your underwear like a brand. He stared up at you, his chest heaving under your hands as you rested your palms flat against his sternum, feeling the rapid, concussive thud of his heart.
"You look so beautiful," Zuko choked out, his eyes darkening until the gold in his irises seemed to catch fire. His thumbs pressured the fullness of your waist, his knuckles turning white against your skin. "You look like a dream I'm not supposed to have."
"I'm not a dream, Zuko," you whispered, leaning down slowly, letting your hair fall across his cheeks like a silk curtain. "You can touch me."
He didn't need the invitation twice. His hands slid up from your hips, his fingers tracing the outer curve of your ribs, his palms rough and warm as they slid beneath your back, lifting you slightly. He didn't even bother pulling his boxers down; instead, his trembling fingers reached for the button fly, parting the dark cotton. With a low, ragged breath, he took out his cock at the hole of his boxers, the thick, fully erect length springing free, slick with a bead of pre.
The sight of him, thick and heavy between your thighs, made a sharp, electric ache flare in your lower belly. You leaned forward, pressing your chest against his, the contact of your bare skin against his warm, pectoral muscles sending a violent jolt of adrenaline down your spine. You pressed your lips against his, capturing his mouth before he could say another word, before his brain could cycle back into the guilt that always threatened to tear him apart.
The kiss was entirely different from the desperate collision in the hallway last night. This was slow, heavy, and drenched in a deep, agonizing luxury. His mouth opened beneath yours, his tongue tangling with yours in a rhythmic friction that made it dizzy for the both of you. Zuko let out a low, vibrating groan into your throat, his arms wrapping completely around your torso, his large hands flat against your shoulder blades, pulling you down until the entire weight of your body was supported by his chest.
His hand moved down to the space between your thighs, his fingers calloused and warm as they slid along the sensitive inner skin of your legs, making your thighs tremble against his ribs. When his hand found the damp, covered aching heat between your thighs, your eyes squeezed shut, a low, gasping breath escaping your teeth as his thumb found the small, sensitive bud of your clitoris, slicking your own moisture over your thong in long, heavy strokes.
"Look at me," Zuko rasped, his voice breaking on the syllables. His free hand reached up to grip your chin, his fingers firm but gentle, forcing your head up until your eyes met his through the blur of your tears. "Please. Look at me."
Your vision was swimming as you stared down into the golden intensity of his gaze. He was breathing through his mouth, his cheeks flushed, the scar over his eye looking dark and stark against his pale skin. He was watching your face with an intensity that felt almost holy, his thumb continuing to stroke you until you were dripping, completely slick and ready for him.
He slid his hand away with a wet, heavy friction that left you shivering, gasping for the space to be filled. Zuko gripped your hips again, his large hands guiding your body upward. You lifted yourself, pulling your panties aside, feeling the tip of his hot length brushing against your wet opening. The heat radiating from him was incredible.
Slowly, you lowered your weight.
The sensation of him entering you was a slow-motion rupture, a thick, stretching fullness that made your breath catch in a choked gasp. Your head fell back, your throat exposed to the silver light as you took him in, inch by inch, your body tight and resisting for a fraction of a second before your muscles remembered the exact dimensions of him, melting around his thickness until your pelvis clapped against his with a soft, heavy thud.
Zuko let out a long, ragged groan into the quiet room, his head throwing back into the pillow, his back arching off the mattress as he buried himself completely inside you through the parted cotton of his shorts. His hands on your hips tightened until his nails left small, white crescent marks in your skin, his eyes squeezing shut as his jaw locked in pure, physical agony.
"Oh my god," he whispered, his chest heaving beneath your palms, his voice a broken, trembling thread. "You're so tight... you're so warm. I forgot... I forgot how perfect it is."
The ache in your lower belly had transformed into a driving, relentless friction that demanded movement. You lifted your hips, sliding up his length until you almost cleared the tip, before pressing down again, the wet, sliding heat of the motion making Zuko let out another low, guttural groan.
You established the rhythm, your hips rolling in long, slow circles that utilized the plush fullness of your thighs against his hips. Every time you dropped your weight, the friction of your bodies created a soft, wet sound that filled the quiet spaces between the sleet against the window. Zuko’s gaze was fixed on the way your breasts moved with the motion, watching how the platinum of your hair whipped against your shoulders as you moved over him.
He couldn't stay passive. His hands moved from your hips to your waist, his arms locking as he began to meet your descents, his hips thrusting upward with a sudden, powerful intensity that drove him deeper against your cervix, hitting the sensitive back wall of your vagina with a force that made your vision go white at the edges.
"Faster," you gasped, your hands flying from his chest to grip the wooden headboard behind him for balance, your fingers slick with sweat. "Zuko, please—"
His thrusts became shorter, harder, a relentless, concussive rhythm.
The friction built rapidly, a tight, coil-spring tension gathering at the base of your spine. Every stroke of his length felt like a match striking against dry wood, the heat spreading through your thighs, your stomach, your throat, until your entire body was shaking with the approach of the cliff.
Zuko was close, too. His breathing had devolved into short, ragged hitches, his teeth bared, his neck muscles tensed as he drove himself into you over and over again, his movements frantic, desperate, as if he were trying to dissolve the last twelve months through the sheer, physical force of his collision with you.
"Look at me," he gasped out again, his eyes wide, wild, and swimming. "Look at me... while I finish. Don't look away."
You forced your eyes open, your breath coming in small, pathetic squeaks as the tension inside you snapped.
Your orgasm hit you like a physical blow, your walls contracting around his length in a series of violent, involuntary spasms that left you entirely breathless. Your head fell forward, a cry tearing out of your throat as the pleasure rippled through your hips, your body shivering against his chest.
The tight, crushing grip of your climax was the final straw for him. Zuko let out a low moan, his hips lifting off the mattress in one final, deepest thrust. He froze there, buried to the absolute root, his body shaking violently as he came inside you, the thick, hot pulses of his release filling you up, a heavy, radiating warmth that seemed to anchor your souls back to the center of the bed.
He stayed inside you for a long time, his chest heaving, his heart hammering against your ribs like a trapped bird. Slowly, the tension left his muscles, and his arms came around your waist, pulling your limp, sweaty body down against his chest as he rolled the two of you over onto your sides, never breaking the connection between your hips.
The duvet was dragged over your shoulders by his large, trembling hand, shutting out the cool morning air once again. You buried your face into his neck, your skin wet with sweat and tears, your legs tangled with his beneath the heavy covers.
The metal-on-metal scraping of a wire whisk against a ceramic mixing bowl was the loudest sound in your apartment, entirely drowning out the soft, muted patter of the snow outside.
You stood at the kitchen counter, wrapped in a plush, oversized cream-colored shirt that swallowed your frame. Your hair was pulled up into a messy, structural topknot held together by a silver hairstick, a few loose, tendrils falling around your face and sticking to the faint sheen of sweat on your neck.
You added a splash of buttermilk to the batter, a small, involuntary smile tugging at the corner of your lips as you worked. For the first time in a while, the heavy, suffocating static in your head had vanished. The apartment didn't feel like a digital graveyard anymore. It felt grounded. It felt real.
From the hallway, the heavy, distinct sound of a floorboard creaking perked up in your ears.
Zuko emerged from the bedroom, his tall frame cutting a striking silhouette against the narrow corridor. He was shirtless, his chest and broad shoulders bare, exposing the hard, clean lines of his muscle. He was wearing only his dark canvas pants from the day before—wrinkled, slightly rumpled from being cast onto the floor, and riding low on his hips. His long, dark hair was an absolute disaster, completely uncombed and sticking up in jagged, chaotic directions from the pillows, falling over his eyes and shadowing the puckered, red tissue of the scar on the left side of his face.
He looked incredibly soft, entirely stripped of the rigid, defensive armor he usually wore to face the world.
"Smells good," Zuko rasped. He walked into the kitchen with slow, heavy steps, his bare feet silent against the linoleum.
"Buttermilk," you said softly, setting the whisk down.
Before you could even draw your next breath, Zuko closed the remaining distance between you. He slid his large, warm arms around your waist from behind, pulling your back flush against his bare chest. Through your shirt, you could feel his skin emit a sleepy warmth that enveloped your back. He buried his face into the side of your neck, his nose brushing against your skin as he let out a long, shuddering sigh of absolute contentment.
"Stay right there," you murmured, leaning your head back against his shoulder, your fingers coming up to rest over his large, calloused hands where they were locked across your stomach. "The griddle is hot. If you crowd me, I’m going to burn the first batch."
"I don't care about the pancakes," Zuko mumbled into your skin, his grip tightening just a fraction of an inch, his thumbs tracing the plush curve of your hip through the thick fabric of the robe. "I just want to stay like this. I feel like if I let go, the room is going to change again."
"I'm not going anywhere, Zuko," you whispered, turning your head just enough to press a soft, lingering kiss to his jawline, tasting the faint, familiar salt of his skin.
Knock. Knock. Knock.
The sudden, aggressive pounding on the front door shattered the quiet of the apartment like a brick through a glass window.
Zuko stiffened instantly, his chest locking up against your back, his eyes flying open. His hands dropped from your waist, his jaw clenching as his head snapped toward the short entryway.
"Who is that?" Zuko muttered, his voice instantly dropping into a low, territorial hiss. "It’s barely nine in the morning."
You blinked, your brain scrambling to catch up with the sudden intrusion before a memory from the previous night hit you like a bucket of ice water. Sokka’s coming over with Thai food... No, that was last night. Suki and Sokka are coming over to help you pack the rest of your duffel bags before the building shuts down.
Your eyes widened in pure, unadulterated panic. "Oh my god. It’s Suki. And Sokka."
Zuko blinked, his expression completely blank for a fraction of a second. "Sokka? Why would Sokka be—"
"They're helping me move the last of my things to Suki’s place for the holidays," you scrambled, your hands flying out to push against his bare chest, trying to steer his massive frame back toward the bedroom. "Zuko, you need to hide. Go to the bedroom. Put a shirt on. Go out the window—"
"I am not jumping out of a second-story window in my pants," Zuko countered, his stubborn, rigid pride flaring up instantly as he resisted your pushing, his boots—no, his bare feet—planted firmly on the floor. "Why do I have to hide? We’re adults. We talked."
"Because Sokka has the emotional processing power of a teaspoon and Suki thinks I spent the last twelve months building an impenetrable wall against you!" you hissed, your face turning bright red. "If they see you like this, they’re going to think—"
Knock. Knock. Knock.
"Hey! Open up!" Sokka’s booming, cheerful voice cut straight through the wooden door, entirely too loud for the quiet morning. "We brought the big rolling cart from the dorm lobby! And Suki has bagels! The good ones from downtown, not the cardboard ones from the dining hall!"
"Just open the door, Zuko," you groaned, throwing your hands up in complete defeat as you realized the battle was already lost. "But for the love of god, pull your pants up."
Zuko rolled his eyes, a faint, dark flush creeping up his neck as he walked out of the kitchen and into the tiny entryway. He didn't look back at you. He reached out, unlocked the deadbolt with a sharp, metallic click, and pulled the heavy wooden door open.
The silence that followed was absolute, heavy, and loud enough to be cut by a knife.
Sokka was standing mid-knock, his hand holding the handle of a blue plastic rolling cart filled with empty cardboard boxes. He was wearing a ridiculous, bright yellow University beanie pulled low over his ears and a heavy winter coat. Beside him, Suki was holding a brown paper bag that smelled intensely of toasted garlic and cream cheese, her green eyes going wide.
The second the door swung back, revealing Zuko—shirtless, hair completely wild, wearing only his rumpled pants from the day before, and looking thoroughly, unmistakably like a man who had just crawled out of your sheets—Sokka’s mouth remained perfectly open, the words dying a violent death in his throat.
Suki's eyes darted from Zuko’s bare chest, down to the low-riding waistband of his canvas pants, up to his messy hair, and then shot straight past his shoulder into the kitchen where you were standing, frozen like a deer in high beams, holding a wire whisk.
Safe to say, they were thoroughly, entirely, and completely SHOCKED.
"I—" Sokka started, his voice squeaking a full octave higher than normal. He dropped the handle of the rolling cart, the metal bar clattering against the linoleum hallway with a deafening bang. He pointed a trembling, gloved finger at Zuko’s chest. "You. What? Zuko? Why are your... why are your nipples out?"
Zuko crossed his arms over his chest, his jaw clenching as he tried to maintain an aura of dignity while being completely bare from the waist up in front of his roommate and his roommate's girlfriend. "Good morning, Sokka. Suki."
Suki didn't say a word for a full five seconds. She just stared at him, then slowly turned her head to look at you in the kitchen.
"You," Suki said accusingly, her voice dangerously quiet, carrying the exact same tone she used when she caught Sokka trying to eat raw cookie dough from her fridge. "What happened to, talking it out?"
You let out a small, pathetic squeak from the kitchen counter. "Suki, it's not what it looks like."
"It looks like he slept here," Sokka accused, his eyes practically popping out of his skull as he stepped into the apartment, completely bypassing Zuko and slamming the front door shut behind them. He grabbed his own head with both hands, his yellow beanie shifting crookedly. "Zuko! You told me you were going for a walk on Tuesday night! That was three days ago! I thought you were dead in a ditch or doing something else weird! I didn't think you were... you were here!"
"Sokka, shut up," Zuko grunted, his face turning an incredibly dark, bruised shade of crimson as he rubbed the back of his neck, his defensive pride finally crumbling under the sheer absurdity of the interrogation. "We talked. We met at the cafe, and we talked."
"And the talking involved losing your shirt?" Sokka yelled, his arms flailing wildly. "Because when I talk to people, Zuko, my shirt stays firmly on my body! Suki, tell him! Tell him about the rules of communication!"
Suki didn't look at Sokka. She walked past Zuko, her boots clicking sharply against the floor, and stopped at the threshold of the kitchen. She looked at the preheating griddle, looked at the bowl of buttermilk batter, and then looked at the faint, unmistakable red mark on the side of your neck that your shirt hadn't completely covered.
A slow, knowing, and incredibly smug smirk began to spread across Suki’s face, her green eyes twinkling with the absolute satisfaction of a best friend who had been proven entirely right, even if the execution was chaotic.
"Well," Suki said, leaning her shoulder against the refrigerator, crossing her arms. "I did tell you to give him a chance to explain himself. I just didn't realize Zuko’s explanation was so... persuasive."
"Suki, please," you groaned, burying your face in your hands, the warmth in your cheeks hot enough to cook the pancakes without the griddle.
Zuko looked between Sokka’s frantic flailing and Suki’s smug expression, letting out a long, defeated sigh. He looked over at you, his amber eyes catching yours through the chaos, a tiny, subtle glint of a smile finally breaking through his stoic expression.
The wall was definitely down. And apparently, the entire apartment building was about to hear about it.
A little bit after pancakes, the heavy plastic rolling cart sat in the center of the living room like an awkward monument to the sudden shift in the apartment’s atmosphere. Sokka was currently wrestling with a roll of packing tape, the loud, aggressive shhhk-shhhk-shhhk of the adhesive tearing echoing off the walls as he tried to construct a cardboard box with maximum structural integrity.
"I’m just saying," Sokka muttered, his voice slightly muffled because he was holding a pair of scissors between his teeth, "there is a proper way to do this. If you don't tape the bottom joints with a cross-weave pattern, the whole thing loses its integrity. And when your shoes fall through the bottom in the parking lot, don't come crying to the guy who literally has an engineering minor."
You let out a soft laugh, shifting on your knees beside a stack of sweaters. "Sokka, they’re just shoes, not bricks. If the box breaks, they’ll just fall softly onto the concrete."
"It's the principle of the thing!" Sokka spat the scissors out into his hand, pointing them at you dramatically. "We are packing for winter break. This is a strategic operation."
You smiled, but your eyes kept flickering toward the closed door of your small bathroom. Zuko had finally been banished there to put on a shirt—specifically a clean grey University hoodie he’d unearthed from the bottom of your laundry hamper—and to do something about the wild, static-induced bird's nest that was his morning hair. Suki had vanished toward the back of the apartment, ostensibly to "check for loose scarves" in your bedroom, but her sharp green eyes had given you a look before she left that said everything.
When the bathroom door finally clicked open, Zuko stepped out. He looked significantly more put together, though the dark circles under his amber eyes were still prominent. He caught your eye across the living room, a brief, silent question passing between you, before Suki stepped out of the hallway, intercepting him neatly near the entrance to the living room.
"Zuko," Suki said, her voice dropping into a calm, authoritative register that instantly made Sokka freeze mid-tape-rip. "Walk with me to the lobby. We need to grab the extra luggage dolly from the front desk."
Zuko blinked, his shoulders tensing under the grey hoodie. He looked at you, then at Suki’s unblinking green gaze. He knew exactly what this was. It wasn't about a luggage dolly.
"Yeah," Zuko said, his voice gravelly. "Okay."
The heavy wooden door of the apartment clicked shut behind them, leaving the living room in a sudden, thick quiet, save for the hum of the old refrigerator.
The metal walls of the elevator was freezing, the damp chill of the winter morning rising up from the lower levels.
They reached lobby, exiting the elevator and walking towards the extra dolly but Suki stopped, turning around to face Zuko. She crossed her arms, her expression completely unreadable beneath her auburn bangs.
Zuko stopped two steps away from her, his hands buried in his pockets, his chin tucked slightly into the collar of his hoodie. He looked like he was preparing for a physical blow.
"I don't know the full context of what you two discussed at the coffee shop," Suki began, her voice quiet but carrying an unshakeable weight that reverberated softly against the lobby walls. "I don't know the details of why you did what you did a year ago, and honestly, Zuko, I don't care. That's between you and her. But I was the one who spent the last twelve months watching her try to put herself back together. I was the one who sat on my kitchen floor with her when she couldn't breathe because she saw an old photo of you on her phone she thought she deleted."
Zuko flinched, his head dropping. His jaw clenched so hard the muscles along his scar twitched. "I know."
"No, you don't," Suki countered cleanly, her green eyes narrowing. "She gave you a chance to explain yourself because she has a good heart—too good, if you ask me. But I swear to you, Zuko, if you hurt her again—if you pull that defensive, self-sacrificing martyr act because things get heavy with your family and you decide she’s a burden—I won't just be disappointed. I will do everything in my power to keep her so far away from you that you won't even remember the sound of her voice. Do you understand me?"
The threat wasn't delivered with anger; it was delivered with the absolute, chilling certainty of a best friend who had high-school-level roots of loyalty.
Zuko looked up, his amber eyes locking onto hers. The defensive, stubborn pride that usually flared up when he was challenged was entirely absent. Instead, his face was dead serious, his posture straightening.
"I swear on my honor," Zuko said, his voice thick. "I don't intend on ever hurting her again. I was a coward a year ago. I thought I was protecting her from my father, but I was just protecting myself from failing. I've spent a year realizing that the dark doesn't go away just because you push the light out of the room. I’m not letting her go again."
Suki searched his face for a long, agonizing five seconds, looking for any trace of the old, volatile boy who used to slam doors and disappear for days. All she found was a tired, fiercely determined man who looked like he had finally grown into his own skin.
Slowly, the tension left Suki’s shoulders. The terrifying, protective older-sister aura faded, replaced by a soft, weary sigh.
"Good," Suki said, a small, faint smirk returning to her lips. "Because Sokka really likes having her around, and if you screw this up, he’ll try to fight you, and we both know you’d destroy him, which would just make my weekends very annoying."
Zuko let out a short, surprised breath—a ghost of a laugh—and rubbed the back of his neck. "Yeah. Okay."
Back up in the apartment, the atmosphere had shifted into something lighter. Sokka had finally managed to tape three boxes, and he was currently sitting on one of them, using an empty cardboard tube like a telescope to watch you fold a blanket.
"So," Sokka said, his voice echoing slightly inside the tube. "Are we, like... official again? Is the Zuko-and-[Y/N] dynamic restored? Am I allowed to invite you back to group chats again?"
You rolled your eyes, tossing a balled-up pair of socks at his face. He caught it with his telescope tube, grinning. "Sokka, we’re just... talking. We’re figuring it out."
"Right, right. 'Talking.' With the shirts off and making pancakes session," Sokka nodded sagely. Then, his expression softened, the goofy, flippant mask slipping away to reveal the genuine, fiercely loyal friend underneath. He set the cardboard tube down on the box beside him. "Honestly? I missed you. Like, really missed you."
You stopped mid-fold, looking up at him.
"The last year was weird," Sokka admitted, looking down at his sock covered feet. "When you left, it felt like this huge chunk of our high school life just got deleted. Zuko was a miserable zombie, which, you know, is his default setting, but it was worse. And the rest of us... we felt like we had to choose sides, even though nobody wanted to. Katara was mad at him, Aang was stressed, Toph kept complaining that the vibe was ruined because nobody was there was no one to steal the good snacks in between classes."
He looked back up, his blue eyes bright with an honest, puppy-dog earnestness.
"If you guys are actually doing this—if you're letting him back in—it means you have to come back to the group," Sokka said, a massive, genuine grin spreading across his face. "You have to come hang out with me, Aang, Katara, and Toph. We’re doing a big reunion thing at Suki’s place next week before everyone flies out for the holidays. You’re coming. No excuses."
A heavy, incredibly warm wave of relief washed over your chest, the final lingering shards of your isolation turning to dust. "Yeah, Sokka. I’d love to come."
The front door clicked open, and Suki walked back in, followed by Zuko, who was carrying a completely unnecessary second luggage dolly with an expression of intense focus. Suki caught your eye and gave you a single, subtle nod.
A week later, the silver-gray sleet had turned into a thick, heavy blanket of snow that quieted the entire city.
You had spent the last seven days settled into Suki’s apartment, which was significantly larger than your own place and smelled permanently of cinnamon tea and the lavender wax melts she kept in the living room. It had been a week of quiet transition—texting Zuko at night without the notes app, cheesy texts, clumsy photos of his morning tea.
Tonight was the night. The reunion.
You stood in front of Suki’s bathroom mirror, adjusting the collar of a soft, dark green sweater you’d chosen—a subtle nod to the color that used to define you without letting it control you. Your platinum hair was pinned back with two simple silver clips, and the hoop in your eyebrow glinted under the warm vanity lights.
"They're downstairs," Suki called out from outside the closed door, her voice accompanied by the muffled sound of Sokka shouting something about calling dibs on the bean bag chair.
Your heart did a quick, nervous flutter against your ribs. You hadn't seen the entire Gaang in one room since the night of the wreck a year ago. You had seen Suki, obviously, and Sokka occasionally through her, but Katara, Aang, and Toph had been distant figures, names you avoided on socials and at school.
"Ready?" Suki asked, when you left the bathroom. She was wearing a comfortable flannel shirt, her auburn hair tied back in a low ponytail. She reached out, giving your shoulder a reassuring squeeze. "They’re practically vibrating through the floorboards."
"Ready," you said, taking a deep breath and following her down into the living room.
The front door was already wide open. Sokka was in the middle of welcoming Aang and Katara, who were completely bundled up in heavy winter coats, their faces flushed red from the walk up the stairs.
"The queen has arrived!" Sokka announced dramatically, stepping aside and pointing a hand toward you as you descended down the stairs.
"Oh my god, [Y/N]!" Katara’s voice broke the air first. She didn't even take off her gloves before she lunged forward, bypassing Sokka entirely and throwing her arms around your neck. She smelled like the cold winter wind and expensive body lotion, her dark curls brushing against your cheek as she squeezed you tightly. "I missed you so much!"
"I missed you too, Katara," you whispered, the warmth of her embrace instantly melting the last bit of ice in your stomach.
Aang was right behind her, his bright gray eyes crinkling as he gave you a huge, enthusiastic hug that nearly lifted your feet off the floor. He had a massive knitted scarf wrapped three times around his neck, looking exactly like the golden retriever of a human being he had always been. "It’s so good to have you back. Seriously. The group chat hasn't been the same without your specific emoji usage."
"Yeah, yeah, enough with the emotional sap," a sharp, raspy voice cut through the room from the couch.
Toph was sitting cross-legged on Suki’s oversized beanbag chair, casually tossing a small rubber ball up and caught it—exactly the way you used to do. She didn't look up, but a massive, rare smirk was plastered across her face. "Took you long enough to come out of hiding, Sparky's girl. The vibe in this circle was getting dangerously boring without someone to balance out Katara’s mothering."
"Missed you too, Toph," you laughed, walking over and nudging her shoulder with your hand. She reached up, giving your hand a quick, affectionate slap before returning to her ball-tossing.
The apartment door opened one final time, and the room went completely quiet for a brief second.
Zuko stepped inside. He had walked over from his own apartment, his nose and cheeks flushed a dark red from the biting cold outside. He took off his heavy black coat, revealing a simple black sweater that fit his broad shoulders perfectly.
He stood in the entryway, his amber eyes instantly scanning the crowded room until they locked onto you.
A year ago, a moment like this would have ended in a defensive comment from him or a sharp, hurt look from you before he retreated to the kitchen to wash dishes alone. But tonight, Zuko didn't hide. He walked straight through the living room, navigating past the shoes near the door until he was standing right in front of you.
He reached out, his large, warm hand finding yours in the space between you, his fingers threading through yours with a quiet, unshakeable certainty.
"Hi," he said softly, his voice a low, gravelly rasp that was meant only for you.
"Hi," you smiled, your fingers tightening around his knuckles.
"Alright, everybody!" Sokka shouted, clapping his hands together and breaking the spell as he dragged a massive box of pizza onto the coffee shop table. "The Gaang is officially back together! Nobody talk about finals, nobody talk about GPA, and for the love of god, someone give Toph a soda before she starts throwing something!"
The apartment dissolved into a loud, chaotic symphony of laughter, shouting, and the familiar, beautiful noise of the people who had known you since the beginning. You sat on the couch beside Zuko, your shoulders touching, his hand a constant, radiating source of heat against your thigh. The winter was still cold outside the glass, but inside, the fire was finally burning exactly the way it was supposed to.
The Jasmine Dragon was uncharacteristically loud for a Tuesday night. Iroh had long since retired to his personal quarters upstairs, leaving the tea shop—which doubled as the Gaang’s unofficial headquarters in Ba Sing Se—to the rowdy remains of the world’s saviors.
Now in their mid-twenties, the group didn’t get together as often as they used to. Between Zuko’s grueling schedule as Fire Lord, Aang’s nomadic duties, and Sokka’s tireless work with the United Republic Council, "leisure time" was a myth they only occasionally managed to make a reality.
Tonight, however, the Cactus Juice was flowing (courtesy of Sokka’s questionable "private stash") and the premium Fire Nation sake was disappearing fast.
At the center of the rowdiness of the Gaang sat Zuko. He looked every bit the Fire Lord—broad-shouldered, regal, and wearing his hair in a topknot secured by the Flame Headpiece—but his posture was relaxed. His arm was draped over the back of the chair occupied by his wife, (Y/N).
(Y/N) was, by all accounts, the "grounding wire" of the group. She was a woman of few words, known for her sharp wit and a impassivity that rivaled Zuko’s own. While Toph and Katara were currently engaged in a loud argument about the best way to steer a sand-sailer, and Aang was trying (and failing) to teach Momo how to juggle berries, (Y/N) usually sat back with a small, knowing smile, sipping her tea.
Usually.
But tonight, the tea had been replaced. Sokka had been "testing" a new batch of fermented plum wine, and (Y/N), being the polite guest she was, had finished three glasses before anyone realized she hadn't eaten dinner.
Zuko felt a soft weight lean against his shoulder. He glanced down, expecting (Y/N) to be tired. Instead, he found her staring at him with wide, glassy eyes, her cheeks flushed a deep, dusty rose.
"Zuko," she whispered, her voice uncharacteristically high-pitched.
"Yes, love?" he asked, his voice softening. He adjusted his arm to pull her closer.
She blinked slowly, her eyelashes fluttering. Then, with a sudden jerk, she pulled away, staring at his hand on her shoulder as if it were a strange spirit. "Oh! Excuse me, sir."
The table went silent. Sokka paused with a chicken skewer halfway to his mouth. Toph turned her head, her milky eyes scanning the room as if she could "see" the shift in the air.
"Sir?" Zuko repeated, a confused smile tugging at the corner of his lips. "Is this a joke? Did Sokka put you up to this?"
(Y/N) smoothed out her robes, her movements exaggerated and clumsy. She looked him up and down, her gaze lingering on the gold headpiece and then the golden eyes that usually looked at her with such adoration. She let out a soft, dreamy sigh that made her sway on her stool.
"You’re... you're very handsome," she murmured, leaning back in toward him, but then catching herself and snapping upright. "But I shouldn't be saying that. A man of your... fire-ness... probably has a lot of ladies waiting for him."
Sokka let out a muffled snort. Katara’s eyes widened. "Oh, no. Zuko, how much did she have?"
"Just the plum wine," Zuko said, his brow furrowing in genuine concern. He reached out to touch (Y/N)’s forehead. "Honey, are you feeling okay? You’re acting a little... displaced."
(Y/N) batted his hand away with a pout that could have melted a glacier. "Don't 'honey' me! You don't even know me! We just met... in this very loud building with the blind girl and the bald monk."
"I’m sitting right here, (Y/N)!" Toph cackled, leaning back. "This is gold. Sparky, she’s gone."
Zuko looked back at his wife. She was currently staring at his wedding band—a simple, elegant gold band that matched the one on her own finger. She looked at her own hand, then his, and her lower lip began to tremble.
"Are you..." (Y/N) started, her voice breaking. She looked like she was on the verge of a tragedy. "Are you... married?"
Zuko took a deep breath, trying to suppress the urge to laugh. He knew how sensitive she was, even when she wasn't tipsy. If he laughed now, she’d never let him live it down. "Yes, (Y/N). I am very happily married."
The reaction was instantaneous.
(Y/N) let out a tiny, heartbroken whimper. She slumped forward, burying her face in her hands on the table. "I knew it! All the good ones are taken by some... some Fire Nation duchess with perfect hair and a mean streak!"
"Actually, she’s quite kind," Zuko said, leaning in close to her ear, his voice dropping to a teasing rumble. "She’s a bit of a lightweight, though. And she’s currently crying into a plate of dumplings."
(Y/N) lifted her head, her eyes rimmed with tears. "Is she pretty?"
"The most beautiful woman in all the nations," Zuko said earnestly.
(Y/N) wailed—a soft, pathetic sound. "It should have been me! I saw you first! Well, I mean, I saw you just now, but I felt a connection, you know? Like... like Agni himself told me, 'Hey, look at that guy with the grumpy face, he’s the one!'"
Aang let out a chuckle, "Zuko, I think you should tell her."
Zuko sighed, rubbing the bridge of his nose. He turned back to his distraught wife. "(Y/N), look at me. Look at my face."
She peered at him through her fingers. "I am. It’s a very nice face. Even the part that looks like it had a run-in with a dragon. It adds... character."
Zuko chuckled. "Thank you. Now, look at your left hand."
She lifted her hand, staring at the ring. "I know! I’m married too! That’s the worst part! I’m a married woman pining after a married Fire Lord! We’re both terrible people! We’re... we’re star-crossed! Like that play in Ember Island!"
"Please don't compare us to that play," Zuko groaned. "(Y/N), I am the person you are married to."
(Y/N) paused. She squinted at him, her brain clearly trying to connect the dots through a fog of plum wine. She reached out, her small hand cupping his scarred cheek. Her thumb traced the edge of the burned skin with a familiarity that survived even her intoxication.
"You have a very soft voice for a King," she whispered.
"I’m a Lord, actually," he corrected gently.
"Whatever," she huffed, her pout returning. "If you’re my husband... prove it."
The Gaang leaned in. This was better than any theater performance.
Zuko felt the heat rise to his cheeks. He wasn't one for public displays of affection, usually preferring to keep their romance behind the closed doors of the Caldera palace. But (Y/N) was looking at him with such genuine, drunken suspicion that he had no choice.
He leaned in, closing the gap between them. He kissed her deeply—not a quick peck, but a lingering, sweet kiss that tasted of plums and home. He pulled away just enough to whisper against her lips, "You have a birthmark on your inner ankle shaped like a turtle-duck. And you hate it when I leave my boots in the middle of the room because you trip on them in the dark."
(Y/N) froze. Her eyes cleared for a split second, a spark of recognition lighting up. Then, just as quickly, the fog rolled back in.
She let out a gasp and pushed him back, her face turning a shade of red that rivaled the Fire Nation flag. "You... you scoundrel! You're a mind reader! You've been spying on me and my husband!"
Sokka finally lost it, falling off his chair in a fit of hysterics. Katara was clutching her stomach, laughing so hard no sound was coming out.
"I give up," Zuko muttered, though he couldn't stop smiling. He stood up and scooped (Y/N) into his arms, bridal style.
"Put me down! Unhand me, you handsome tyrant!" she yelled, though she immediately snuggled her head into the crook of his neck. "I’m a married woman! My husband is going to... he’s going to firebend at you! He’s very powerful! And very grumpy! He’s like a big, warm heater with legs!"
"I'll be sure to watch out for him," Zuko said to the group, nodding toward the door. "I think it’s time to take the 'other woman' home."
"Good luck, Sparky!" Toph shouted. "Try not to let her 'husband' catch you!"
As Zuko carried her through the cool night air of Ba Sing Se toward their carriage, (Y/N) continued to grumble.
"You know," she whispered, her voice trailing off as sleep finally began to win the battle against the alcohol. "You smell just like him. Like cinnamon and... and smoke."
"Do I?" Zuko asked softly, stepping into the carriage and settling her onto his lap.
"Mmhmm," she hummed, closing her eyes. She reached up, fumbling for his hand and interlocking their fingers, their matching rings clicking together. "I guess... if I can't have him... you’ll do. But don't tell him. He gets jealous."
Zuko leaned his head back against the carriage wall, watching the moonlit streets pass by. He looked down at the woman in his arms—the fierce, brilliant, reserved woman who usually ran a ministry and advised him on international policy—now fast asleep and convinced she was committing a scandalous act of infidelity with her own husband.
"Your secret is safe with me, (Y/N)," he whispered, kissing the top of her head. "I think he’ll forgive you."
jacobvanloon
turnnoffyourmind
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