Peace had not made the Fire Nation quiet. It had only changed the kind of noise Zuko had to endure—less shouting, more waiting; fewer battles, more decisions that stretched on for days and still felt unfinished.
“Fire Lord,” an advisor said, careful as ever, “the envoy from the western provinces—”
“I’ve read it,” Zuko cut in, not unkindly, but with the impatience of a man who had already decided something and was bracing for the argument. “Send for her.”
A pause. The sort that had begun to follow that particular order.
“This will be the second summons this season,” the advisor ventured.
Zuko’s jaw tightened. “Then we must need her twice as much.”
When she arrived, there was no fanfare. There never was anymore. She moved through the palace like someone who had long ago stopped being a guest but had never quite become anything official either.
Zuko did not wait on the throne.
He stood near the lower steps instead, arms folded, as though he had only just happened to be there. It was a poor lie. He knew it. He did it anyway.
“You came quickly,” he said.
It sounded like an observation. It wasn’t.
His eyes searched her for a moment, brief but thorough, the way they used to after a fight—counting injuries, measuring whether she was truly all right. Old habits did not die. They settled in the bones.
“I didn’t think the matter warranted delay,” he added, too quickly.
There was a silence, not uncomfortable, but not empty either. It held years in it.
Zuko exhaled through his nose and looked away first. “I suppose you want to know why you’re here.”
He gestured vaguely toward a stack of scrolls that neither of them cared about. “There are disputes. Trade routes, minor border tensions. Things that could be handled by any number of capable people.”
A beat.
“I asked for you.”
He said it plainly this time.
Zuko shifted his weight, restless in a way that had nothing to do with politics. “You’ve been… busy,” he went on. “The Earth Kingdom, the colonies, the Water Tribes. You’re everywhere at once.” His mouth twitched faintly. “I don’t know how you do that without getting lost.”
Another pause.
“I thought it would be… useful to have you here. For a while.”
The excuse hovered there between them, thin and transparent.
Zuko dragged a hand back through his hair, frustrated with himself. “Spirits, I’m bad at this.”
He let out a quiet breath, the kind that scraped past old pride. “You remember when I first joined you all,” he said, glancing back at her. “No one trusted me. Not really. I didn’t expect them to.”
His voice steadied, softened by memory. “I didn’t trust them either.”
A faint huff of humor. “I barely trusted myself.”
His gaze sharpened slightly. “You didn’t hesitate. Not even once. You stood between me and the others more than once, actually. Toph was ready to throw me into a river. Sokka kept watch like I was going to set something on fire in my sleep.”
A brief flicker of something warmer. “Aang believed in me. That’s who he is. But you—” He stopped, choosing the word more carefully than he would any political decree. “You decided to.”
That difference mattered to him still.
Zuko’s expression grew quieter, more open than most ever saw. “I didn’t understand it at the time. I kept waiting for you to change your mind.” A small shake of his head. “You never did.”
He looked down at his hands, then back up again. “After that, I started… noticing things. Where you stood in a fight. How you moved. When you were about to do something reckless.” A faint, self-aware grimace. “Which was often.”
His voice dipped, almost rueful. “It was easier to keep an eye on you than to admit I was worried.”
A longer silence followed, one that carried the weight of battles fought side by side, of unspoken promises kept in the heat of them.
“That didn’t stop when the war ended,” Zuko said quietly. “It just… changed shape.”
He gestured faintly toward the palace around them. “Now it looks like this. Letters. Summons. Convenient reasons that aren’t really reasons at all.”