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Iroh came home from Ba Sing Se a broken man with a broken heart, missing his son, so newly dead, and selfishly wishing his dear departed wife was still here so that he wouldn’t be mourning alone.
And he was- alone, that is. His sister-in-law was the only one who might have cared, but she was gone now, and his ruthless little brother was firelord, and Iroh simply didn’t have the energy to care.
Well, maybe not the only one to care, the spirits were quick to remind him, as his sweet nephew came barreling into him with a tearful hug, almost the moment he’d reached the palace steps.
His niece was nowhere to be found (in private firebending lessons with her father, the servants informed him. Iroh had a sickening feeling that his brother was teaching his nine-year-old niece how to bend lightning, but he couldn’t bring himself to worry like he might have, once). But Zuko, sweet Zuko, had skipped his own firebending lessons to come greet his uncle, slipping through the palace with a silence he’d always been known for, but which had only become more pronounced in the past years, when ‘cultivating ninja-like sneaking skills for fun’ became ‘learning to be as silent as a spirit who nobody prays to, outside of public consciousness, clinging desperately to survival but still unnoticed.’
Iroh knew that his brother would not be happy that Zuko had skipped his lessons, and that Zuko would surely suffer for it, but Iroh was a weak man, and the only person willing to mourn with him was an eleven-year-old who had always been too kind for this world.
He should tell Zuko to return to his lessons, to hide his tears, to not show his emotion to the world for them to turn into a sword and wield it against him, cruel attempts meant to hurt, artless and contrasting the dance that his nephew and his now-dead son used to engage in on the lawn of Piandao’s home. But he couldn’t- or maybe he just didn’t- because he didn’t want to mourn alone.
So he said nothing as Zuko took him by the hand and dragged him to the private temple in the palace, where he’d made a little shrine for Lu Ten (there were scuff marks on the floor, like another altar had been set and removed, and he’d later learn from the sages that Zuko had been setting up and removing by turns a shrine for his mother, unsure whether he ought to honor her memory or whether it would be dishonorable to do so when she might not even be gone. Iroh thought, by then, that he had no tears left to cry, but when he heard that, he found more still).
He watched as his nephew lit a candle, and his bending was quiet but strong, and every candle in the temple shifted towards the boy in time with his shaky breaths, as if yearning for his warmth and his kindness that burned so brightly, gentle in the way of a hearth, a warmth forgotten in the blistering heat of a country burning itself and the world to ash. He turned towards Iroh, tears streaming down from his golden eyes (so bright, so soft, different from the rest of their family in that there was not an ounce of cunning or calculation in them, only naked emotion and raw sincerity).
He’d apologized that it wasn’t much- he’d had to hide it from his father, he’d explained, so it couldn’t be very big, but he’d adorned it with his favorite play scrolls and the very first practice sword Lu ten had given him, and his favorite sakura mochi that the servants had helped him make in secret, and the bright goldenrods that his mother had taught him to grow before she’d left (and oh, his Nephew’s shaking voice on the last word broke Iroh’s shattered heart a little bit more).
Iroh had grabbed his hand, and cried with him, and realized that he’d have to pick up the shattered remains of his heart and put them in the kiln and refire them into something semi-whole again, because he had to take care of the fire nation’s last gentle bloom.
His boy, his sweet, kind, caring Lu Ten was gone, and Zuko was now the last hope for their family, a rare winter blossom trying valiantly to reach for the sun. Iroh knew the old spirit-tales from before Sozin’s time, knew what was said about firebenders born in winter: that they would be strong and powerful, and that the survival of a sun-child in the winter’s cold was an auspicious sign.
He’d told those stories to Lu Ten, who was born just before winter gave way to spring, and they were in his mind on the night of the winter solstice in 84AG, when his Nephew was born on the darkest and coldest night of the year. Ozai had never bothered to learn them, had lapped up the propaganda from Sozin’s time that winter-born firebenders were weak, cowardly (Roku had been born on the winter solstice, Iroh knew, while Sozin had made his own entrance to the world on the summer solstice of that same year).
Iroh hadn’t the heart for stories now, or for saying much of anything, really. Instead, he took his Nephew back to his disused chambers, and called for tea for the first time since his son had died (tea had been something they’d shared a love for, once, they had shared it the last morning they’d seen each other, before Lu Ten had left to his own troops, and he hadn’t been able to stomach his favorite beverage in the months since then). He had fruit brought out, as well, and the servants knew his preferences, so they left it whole, with just a paring knife on the side of the tray.
Iroh poured Zuko tea and watched him make a face at the taste that he tried valiantly to hide, and he got the closest to smiling that he’d gotten in months (even if he wasn’t quite there yet), and he picked up a straw-persimmon and carefully extracted the leafy green top and cut the soft, seeded flesh into uniform chunks, placing them in front of his Nephew.
It wasn’t what he’d wanted to say, but it was all he could do for now.
Zuko didn’t say what he wanted to either, and instead of telling Uncle that this was more kindness than he’d seen in a long time, he picked up a piece and nibbled it slowly, ignoring the salty taste that didn’t come from the fruit.
____
Iroh and his Nephew had tea many times over the next two years, although it perhaps wasn’t as much as either of them would have liked, because it was done in secret. Zuko never told him that his father didn’t approve of their spending time together, but Iroh didn’t need to ask.
There were many things he didn’t ask. There were bruises he only inquired about in passing, believing Zuko when he said he’d fallen from the wall he’d been climbing (ignoring, for a moment, that Zuko never fell. But Iroh convinced himself to believe it, and unlike Zuko and the wall, there was no-one to push Iroh off of his comfortable delusions).
Occasionally, Zuko wore long sleeves even in the heat of the summer, and sometimes a bit of burnt skin would show when the fabric shifted upwards as he reached for a cookie (far too ravenously, Iroh pretended not to notice, the same way he didn’t hear the way the servants whispered among each other that the firelord has withheld the crown prince’s dinner again, and he refused to eat what we brought him because he knew what it would mean for us if we were caught). The burns were shaped like fingerprints, and they were always either very large or very small, but they were never the same size as Zuko’s own little hands.
He asked once, when there were more than usual, and Zuko had shrugged. Azula was trying to help me learn, he had said. It’s her own way of caring. Really, I don’t mind.
Like a coward, Iroh said nothing, and called for more fruit, peeling and cutting for hours until Zuko finally left, belly full of Iroh’s labor.
___
The infection, besides robbing Zuko of the hearing in his left ear the way that his father’s flaming hand had robbed his left eye of his sight, left Zuko burning with fever, and unable to keep anything down. In his delirium he squirmed away, rejecting congee and broth and all his favorite foods. Dekku took it as a challenge, to make something that their new little brat, brave soldier, broken child captain would be able to keep down, but all the efforts in the world weren’t worth much when Zuko could barely keep down water half the time.
Uncle, pulled from his Nephew’s bedside only when he had been too weak to resist, and forced to the mess hall to eat all of Dekku’s failed attempts to feed Zuko as his crew watched like mother turtle-ducks, reached for the bowl of fruit out of pure habit. The crew had taken all his own weaponry, the first night on board, afraid not of him but for him, so he made clumsy attempts to peel it with his shaking fingers until Hanako took pity on him and handed him her own navy-issued pocket knife.
Iroh, too focused on his task to remember his manners, took it but didn’t thank her. Instead, he peeled and pitted the peach-plum with a single-minded determination Hanako had not seen outside of battle. But then, she supposed this was a battle of its own, in a way.
A peach-plum staying securely in the prince’s stomach wasn’t all that much in terms of calories or nutrition or strength, but it was the first real sustenance he’d managed in days, so the whole crew counted it as a victory.
____
Iroh’s Nephew wasn’t who he used to be, on the surface. Zuko was shouty and angry and his scar stood starkly against his pale skin not as a reminder of his own failures like he thought, but rather of Iroh’s own.
It was… hard, raising a traumatized teenager, but Iroh had promised himself he’d never look away again, so he didn’t. But a lifetime of his own trauma being thrown back into his face by his own failure at protecting a second child didn’t exactly make it easy to say what he wanted to.
What he wanted to say to Zuko was that even at his shoutiest and angriest, Uncle still saw the good in him, the honor in him. This new rage in his Nephew might be the first thing that people saw, but he was still Zuko- still the one that gave his coins to homeless children and was the only one that their komodo-rhinos wouldn’t try to maim on sight, still too good for this world.
And sure, maybe he shoutily told the crew to mind their business when they asked where he’d gotten the money for their holiday bonuses (the ship’s budget was tighter than their shouty prince’s tensed muscles, and there was no way that he’d come by that much extra coin honestly). And yes, he was absolutely, obsessively opposed to any suggestions that they do something other than try to find the avatar (but he still called for them to pull into port when Satomi got the seasonal monsoon sickness after nursing the rest of them through it, even though it meant losing a potential lead on an old story-teller who had been speaking tales of the avatar three ports away).
And he definitely still huffed when they tried to ruffle his hair, but he’d never punished them or hurt them or burnt them (even when he was no longer afraid of his own fire, and when he sparred with them daily on the deck of the Wani). But he still danced through his katas with his dao and he still read theater scrolls under the covers after Iroh told him to go to bed.
His Nephew might be lost, but he wasn’t gone. So when things got hard, Iroh squared his shoulders and smiled at his Nephew even when he felt like crying at his own failures to protect him from this, and he cut fruit.
And Zuko, no matter how angry or shouty or desperate or hopeless he was clearly feeling, always ate it.
___
The night their ship blew up, and Iroh thought that he had lost his second child until he realized (with a feeling too great to fit in his tightened chest, let alone to give name to) that he had somehow, improbably, impossibly survived.
He hugged his Nephew, and he sobbed, and he yearned with a desperate, manic intensity for some fruit, any fruit, to cut and feed his exhausted, injured child.
But there was no fruit, so he grabbed the back of Zuko’s head with aching tenderness and whispered into his good ear that he thought of Zuko as his own.
__
Iroh’s fingers itched for a knife and some fruit to prepare with it as they floated, dehydrated, on a raft that was barely more than driftwood. He eyed his Nephew, terrified that he was fading before his own eyes. His Nephew had always been on the slimmer side, and he hadn’t the fat reserves that Iroh did to keep him going.
He was so focused on his fear that he hadn’t noticed the tiger shark approaching until it was nearly too late, drawn by the blood leaking from Zuko’s cracked skin as his scar ached and split and stung in the salt air.
And his Nephew, his amazing, impossible Nephew who Iroh should have known was too stubborn to die, even when he was too weak and dehydrated to even summon a flame, killed a tiger shark with his bare hands before it could take a bite out of Iroh.
Iroh, his own flame shaky, cooked the beast, slicing it into bite-sized chunks with the flame daggers he’d learned from watching his Nephew’s innovative uses of bending.
There was no fruit, but as Iroh forced his Nephew (who had saved him again) to drink from Iroh’s own hands the blood of the shark to slate his thirst, refusing his pleas that Iroh drink first, and presented him with the messy, unevenly cooked bites of meat to feed his hunger, he hoped the message came across anyway.
____
Every day, before Iroh opened first Pao’s and then his own tea shop, he cut fruit for Zuko’s breakfast. When he closed the shop, he cut more fruit and sat it in front of Zuko and didn’t let him pick up the broom until the bowl was empty. Even though he was slightly better now at expressing verbally his love for his Nephew (after he’d almost lost him, too many times to count), it was still a battle sometimes, to show his emotion. For every word of love he did say, there were ten more that he held back, afraid (of what, he did not know, but afraid nonetheless).
But he could always cut fruit. Fruit was safe. Cutting fruit was so simple, so easy, the motions muscle-memory by now, and the results were tangible. Zuko, Iroh knew, was like him (but to a far greater extent) when it came to placing value in tangible things, especially when there are so many things that he cannot say.
Iroh makes lots of food for Zuko, to feed his growing body (a body that had been malnourished for far too long, food held from him, sometimes even back in his father’s house, when it had been plentiful, an act of cruelty and control that had deprived Zuko physically of what he needed, because for Ozai, starving him emotionally apparently just hadn’t been enough). He made jook and ramen and udon and bao and whatever the butcher had on sale that day. But there was always fruit. Zuko probably ate more fruit than anyone in the lower ring (or maybe anyone in all of Ba Sing Se. Collectively), and never by his own initiative.
But Iroh had so much love, and he could barely express with words even a fraction of the ocean inside him, this love that he felt for this last good thing that he had in the world. So he cut fruit, and Zuko ate it, even when his firebender metabolism had long since been sated.
____
Iroh couldn’t say a word to Zuko, even when he begged and raged. Zuko thought he was angry with him, and Iroh hated that he thought that, but even with all his own healing that he’d done these past years, he just couldn’t bring himself to admit to his Nephew the honest truth: he was angry with himself.
He saw the burns hidden under Zuko’s long sleeves when he visited him (and some of them were bigger this time, but they were all still either smaller or larger than Zuko’s own hands), the tightness in his shoulders that had only recently started to fade in Ba Sing Se, the war in his golden eyes (still, after all these years, there was no cruelty in them, no cunning. But there was pain, and far too much of it).
He knew Zuko would make the right choice eventually- he hadn’t changed in that respect. Even now, he heard the servants whisper that he was kind to them, and that the turtle-ducks tried to follow him everywhere. But for now, he was suffering, and Iroh couldn’t help but think that he could have prevented it if only he’d been better, if he was able to say the words that he needed to say.
Even as he thought this, he still couldn’t say them. There was a trauma buried so deep within their nation, within their family, within his very being, that he simply didn’t know how. And with Lu Ten, he’d never needed to.
He’d given Lu Ten everything his own father had never given him, and Lu Ten hadn’t grown up thinking love was conditional the way that Zuko had. So even though he was broken and could barely ever say the words that he felt, Lu Ten still knew, and Lu Ten had said them easily and often, and know that his father was saying them back in the only way he could when Iroh’s eyes had crinkled in a smile and his hand landed softly on Lu Ten’s shoulder.
But Zuko wasn’t Lu Ten- Iroh’s second child was different, and he needed things that Iroh didn’t know how to give them. And now, when he needed him most, there wasn’t anything Iroh could do, no matter how hard he tried.
But he still fashioned himself a shiv and peeled and cut up the bruised, half-rotten fruit that Ming managed to sneak onto his food tray, and he pushed them through the bars towards Zuko. And Zuko, who shouted and pleaded and screamed at him as he sat there in silence, always ate it, even though there was much better to be had within the palace ( his father let him eat most days, the servants whispered, since he had killed the avatar).
___
His boy, his sweet boy , his idiotic, self-sacrificing, beautiful boy, had done it- he’d trained the avatar, and they’d won, and he’d successfully won the throne and saved a friend, and it was only through Master Katara’s expertise that he didn’t lose his boy for real this time.
The dam broke, and he thanked the water tribe warrior until his voice went hoarse, and he cried at Zuko’s bedside, and he told his unconscious sleeping child again and again how much he loved him, and he kissed his forehead and his cheeks and he wept over the new scar he’d received, this new badge of honor he should never have had to bear.
And he cut fruit. Lots and lots of fruit, feeding it gently to his Nephew in the few moments he’d roused to semi-wakefulness, groaning and burning with fever.
Behind him, Zuko’s new family shared a look. Things made a lot more sense now- the way that Zuko would always have a bowl of cut fruit ready to present to Aang when he finished his training, or how he left bowls of cut fruit out for Katara even that first morning at the air temple, after she’d threatened to kill him the day before (and how he’d never cut her any papaya, even when she’d said nothing about it). The way he scratched different notches into each type of fruit he cut for Toph, so that she could feel them and know what was what.
The way he somehow found fruits for Aang that hadn’t been seen in a century, fruits that they didn’t even have the names for until Aang told them ( I wonder how on earth he got these, he’d mused, staring at a bowl of cut moon-cherry lychees. They only grow one week a year, and they’re so high up Yanchen’s peak that only master airbenders were able to get to them. Sokka had suggested that maybe they grew down lower now. They didn’t). The way he randomly came into the house on Ember Island, soaking wet, and handed Sokka a cloth bag of his favorite kelp berries, the ones that you had to free-dive at least thirty feet to reach if you wanted them ripe and not dried.
The way he somehow figured out that Suki liked her coconut meat shaved and the milk thickened and boiled with sugar before being poured over it, even though she’d only mentioned it once, off-handedly, in a whisper to Sokka (and Zuko was deaf in one ear- he’d never told them, but they all knew anyway).
The way he never said I love you in words the way that most of them did as easily as breathing, the way they’d done their whole lives. The air nomads had never shied away from saying it, and the southern tribe was very open in expressions of familial love both verbal and physical. Suki had always expressed affection freely to her warriors, who were a cuddly bunch. Toph may rarely say the words, but her ‘I love you’ punch was different from the rest- gentler, but by no means gentle- and she did it often.
So yeah, watching Iroh cut fruit for Zuko cleared a lot of things up (not everything, though, like how in La’s name he found all that fruit, or when he had time to prepare it when they never saw him do either of those things, but somehow there was more fruit in their bellies than at a pre-sozin pride parade).
He’d been telling them he loved them the whole time, and he apparently loved them a lot. A stunning amount, really. Katara’s heart swelled just a little bit more- she’d realized how much he cared for her (and how much she cared for him) when he’d taken Azula’s lightning in her place, but the new realization still had tears brimming into her eyes. She bent them away, and pushed them to glow, and gently pushed Iroh aside.
She’d had enough of a break, and was ready again to express her own love for her friend by getting him so goddamn healthy that he wouldn’t know what to do with himself, the dramatic, stubborn, amazing fucker.
___
Love was much easier to express these days. Iroh was healing along with his nation ( his Nephew was healing it, and Iroh was so proud he felt his heart could burst, crack right along the fault lines from where he’d put it back together the first time all those years ago, for Zuko’s sake). He said it often, every day, several times a day, whenever he visited his Nephew (once a month was probably too much, considering how nervous the rest of the world got whenever the Dragon of the West was near to the seat of power in the Fire Nation, but Iroh had ignored things he didn’t want to see for a long time, and this time he would do it for Zuko’s benefit instead of to his detriment. Besides, the Avatar spent even more time in the palace than he did, so that quieted the anxiety some).
He said it far more than Zuko did- his Nephew’s difficulty with words, Iroh knew, was not entirely a result of his trauma in the way that Iroh’s had been. Zuko had always had a little bit of trouble with expressing himself verbally, and it had never come quite as naturally to him, even before his mother had left. But that was perfectly alright with Iroh- his Nephew was perfect just the way he was, and he had so many wonderful and amazing talents. The people who knew him knew how much he loved them, and they loved him in return.
Still, for as many loving words as Iroh foisted upon his Nephew, he still foisted just as much fruit onto him. He still spent hours in the kitchen, peeling and cutting and chatting with Head Palace Chef Dekku (and laughing about Head Palace Hawker Genji’s fervent wedding planning along with the other man. They had all expected Zuko’s repealing of the ban on Same-Sex Marriage that Sozin had set, but it had led to a surprise amongst their family nonetheless- namely in the form of Genji being possibly the most neurotic wedding planner anyone on the Wani had ever met).
He still brought Zuko fruit in his office, even though he had plenty to eat these days- now that Ozai was gone, nobody could stop the servants from making sure that Zuko was fed and watered, and not even the crown on his head could stop even the lowliest of serving maids from glaring the Fire Lord in the eye and demanding that he would clean his plate before he read a single word more of that referendum, I swear by Agni’s light).
Except now it was accompanied by an I am so proud of you, my Nephew, you are doing so well. I love you. I love you I love you IloveyouIloveyouIloveyou.
And yes, Zuko still wasn’t quite sure how to handle it, even when some form of “I love you” was basically every third word out of anyone in the Gaang’s mouth (even Toph reserved her verbal I love you’s for Zuko almost exclusively. Even though he wasn’t so good at expressing his own love verbally, they knew that they needed to tell him often in the most explicit terms, so that his thick self would believe them). He still blushed red down his entire body the second anyone said a remotely nice thing to him.
But he always smiled, and he always ate the fruit. Even when the rest of the Gaang started taking after Uncle. The servants were quite sure that the Fire Lord didn’t even want all that fruit, and they made sure there was always a turtle-duck on standby ready to eat some of it while Zuko wasn’t looking, before his family accidentally killed him with love fruit.
Which is why, when the Gaang and the Dragon of the West were all sitting in the kitchen, sans Zuko, peeling a veritable mountain of mangos to bring the Fire Lord while he was in a meeting with local farmers to discuss how to make sure Sokka’s new invention (a Rice-Harvesting machine) made it to every farm in the Fire Nation for free, and Aang suggested starting a palace orchard, a servant ‘accidentally’ threw a custard tart at the avatar’s head.
____
Later, in the meeting, Zuko shared cut mango with his people (and his favorite Turtle-duck, Minister Fluffybeak, who was the official overseer of the palace gardens), and he didn’t ask why the Aang was covered in custard tart, figuring that he’d made the mistake of suggesting Begonia-Lilies instead of Tulip-Roses for the upcoming wedding.
Besides, he had bigger things to worry about as the meeting came to an end. Zuko had found an old woman who said that she was the daughter of Aang’s late friend Kuzon, and she was making the journey to the palace tomorrow morning to show him how to make airbender fruit pies.
He nearly skipped to the kitchen (and he would have, if it wouldn’t have upset Mister Fluffybeak’s comfortable seat atop his head). He had a lot of fruit to cut before the sun rose.