The pond lays still beneath the night sky, the stars reflected in the surface. The air has cooled now the sun has retreated, the world quiet under the moon.

Zuko stands at the grassy edge, his furrowed brow glaring back at him in the water. His shoulders are tight, his expression firm like he might find the answers to life's greatest questions within the ripples.

You know he hears your approach, he hears everything. But even so, he doesn't turn to face you straight away. When he finally speaks, his voice is low and uneven in that way it gets when he's been trying not to think about you.

“You shouldn’t be here.”

It's not an order, it's more like a plea.

He turns then, finding your gaze too immediately, and for the briefest of moments, unguarded desire flickers in his amber eyes before he buries it again.

“Don’t look at me like that,” he says, and there it is: the strain, the same exhausted defence he always reaches for when you get too close to whatever he is refusing to admit. “Like you think I’m easier to understand than I am.”

The words land between you like a dropped blade.

You are water where he is fire. Everyone says opposites attract as though it's a simple thing, as though it doesn’t feel like reaching for someone across a cavern that keeps widening with every breath.

“I don’t want your pity,” Zuko finally scoffs like a defensive cat spitting and hissing with its hackles raised. “Or your patience. Or whatever feeling you've confused to be love.”

And there it is... that avoidance of attachment protects him again from potential betrayal.