"You're so lost in your myopic self-righteousness you can't even comprehend what I'm saying, can you?" Your lips threaten to curl into a snarl—so you let them, baring your teeth so each word comes more bitten than said. "Nothing more than a hollow hypocrite, who ran from Lu Ten, who ran from Father, who ran and ran and ran and ran until he finally found enough children to hide behind. All you do is preach about peace and temperance and forgiveness and tea and hope someone else does the dirty work because it's easier than confronting the fact you failed your son, you failed your throne, you failed to stop Father burning Zuko, and after all that you even failed to stop me from taking him back home anyway."
Without wholly realising when it happened, you find yourself nose-to-nose with Iroh, glaring into his golden eyes—the only thing the two of you have ever shared.
"Why are you even here?" Each syllable shatters out like glass. "Too scared to let Zuko face me alone, too scared to fight me instead! What is the point of you, Dragon of the West? I'd almost think you were clever for managing to swan in at the very end, waiting in the wings because if Zuko wins he's young enough to need a regent and then the throne is yours and you've never even needed to lift a finger. But you're not, because I know what you are."
You dig your fingers into your cloak—the thick, heavy trappings of the Fire Lord.
"You're terrified. Of this. Of the Dragon Throne. Of the responsibility. Because deep down you're the same tired old fool who left Lu Ten to die under a ton of rubble and didn't even love him enough to burn Ba Sing Se to the ground for it and you think you're just going to do it again if you ever have to run anything more serious than your stupid little tea shop."
A smile splits your lips like a razor.
"So lie to yourself about destiny all you want, Uncle Iroh. Maybe if you say it enough times, you might even believe it."
In the silence that follows, you're not panting for breath at all.
Iroh's expression is—there's fury, and there's grief, and there's bewilderment, and there's a dozen other things you can't place at all. The air around him smokes and shimmers, but not a lick of flame curls from his mouth or hands.
"You make it easy to forget how young you are, Azula," he says eventually, quiet the way the battlefield is, once only corpses remain. "That is my error, to have believed the same lie you show the rest of the world. It does not forgive the words you have spoken, or the wounds you have tried to shove your fingers in so you can see how deep I bleed. But it does lend your approach a surprising… familiarity."
He sighs, and the Dragon of the West falls away like so many unwashed clothes to reveal the tired man beneath.
"And beyond that still: nothing you have said to me is something I have not said to myself. But where you think that is weakness, I have come to learn that it is strength." Before you can quite react, he reaches out a large hand and presses you back, firm but without violence. You slap his arm away almost immediately in the aftermath. "I am an old man, with an old man's regrets, and an old man's mistakes. Every day, I wake to them."
He smiles, small and worn and strong, like a stone ground clean by the weight of a river.
"That is not such a bad thing. It is how life reminds me that there are always more lessons to be found." Iroh folds his fingers over his stomach. "No single step paves the road, but it is only when you stop to look back that you may see how far you have come. I hope that when you stop, Azula, you look back and feel as proud as I have learned to be."
