Okay so I was rewatching Zuko Alone and I got to the “Azula always lies” scene. I hadn’t given a ton of thought into it before, but I realized something upon rewatch.
When the scene cuts from Zuko saying the line in the flashback to him saying it lying down on the grass after he left the farm, I always thought it was kind of weird that he was just saying it out of no where when he hasn’t seen Azula since the beginning of the season. But then I realized just what he’s referring to when he first said it:
Right before this scene, Azula tells Zuko that Ozai was going to kill him on Azulon’s orders. He yells at her that she’s lying. That “dad would never do that to me”. But then he’s just saying it in a field to no one and it sounds like it’s something he repeats to himself on a regular basis.
And in this episode, shortly before this scene in fact, Zuko watched Gansu decide to go to the front so he could find and save his first born son. He’s been watching this loving and supportive Earth Kingdom family for the past few days and can’t help but think about his own. He sees this father decide to risk his life for his son and can’t stop thinking about his own family at the time when everything went wrong, when Ursa left and the person who was always there to love, support, and protective him wasn’t there to do that anymore. Zuko didn’t have a father who would risk everything for him, he has one who would have killed him under his own Azulon’s orders, according to Azula. And a part of him knows that.
He’s still referring to the “dad would never do that to me”. He’s still trying to convince himself that Azula was lying about Ozai wanting to hurt him. Still holding onto the idea that his father’s love is something he can earn if he works hard enough. There’s no part of Zuko that’s willing to accept that Ozai doesn’t care about him.
Zuko’s still trying to convince himself that “dad would never do that to me”.