I can't stop writing these things. Fcuk I have work to do. Eff eff eff.

The last two were pretty heavy—time for a stupid comic interlude! I love abusing Zuko, I admit it. It works so well for pathos. And HILARITY.

Takes place slightly before episode 2.15 (Tales of Ba Sing Se).

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"This may be the most perfect metaphor of harmony amongst all the elements I've ever found," Iroh said, regarding the object in his calloused fingers with a sage's eye.

Zuko swallowed a bite of his perfect metaphor of harmony and gave his uncle a blank stare. "It's a sweetbean bun. It's not even a good sweetbean bun."

"No, no, hear me out," Iroh said, and cleared his throat to begin reciting the embryonic proverb in the proper tone. "The fruits of the Earth give us flour; with Water it becomes dough; it is leavened with Air to feathery lightness; and finally placed over Fire to become…this expression of delicious unity!"

"Just eat it, uncle," Zuko said, without a trace, speck or even iota of humor. He'd spent the entirety of the last two years in a bad mood, finely honing his ability to suck the fun out of any conversation.

His tolerance for his uncle when he was feeling proverbial was never very large, and the events of the day had lopped it in half. Even by his high standards, today just sucked the back end of a buzzard-wasp. He could remember a good deal many days that were worse, objectively speaking, but few compared to this one in terms of the sheer volume of unrelenting annoyance. Rare was the man with the coordination and skill to wield two wicked broadswords in deadly unison. Rarer still was the one who could manage to do that but still cut himself shaving (twice), shut his thumb in a drawer, splash hot tea all over his hand when the lid fell out of the pot into the cup, and trip over a crack in the floor because that weird girl with the pigtails and huge rack had been staring at him his entire shift.

"Did something happen at the—" Iroh started.

"No," he growled, and picked up his soup bowl and commenced to stab a piece of flat noodle to death with his chopsticks in an attempt to get it from his bowl to his mouth. Picking it up and drinking it would have been admitting defeat, and Zuko never gave up, even in the most idiotic of struggles. He continued stabbing.

"Let me make you some tea. I found the most delightful peach-blossom oolong—"

"NO."

"Really, Zuko, I think…"

"My hands smell like tea and my clothes smell like tea and my room smells like tea and my…" he trailed off, muttering angrily at his soup. His voice had the faintest hint of pathological emotional instability that makes people afraid that someday they're going to find you cackling outside the charred remains of your place of employment at two in the morning with an empty cask of gunpowder in your hands.

"Better than how you'd smell otherwise," Iroh observed, always ready to see the best of any situation. "Ah, bathtubs. How I miss them." Zuko glared, but Iroh had gone to work on his own bowl of noodles and didn't notice.

So he sat there and fumed a little. Since Firebending was now off-limits, his favorite method of stress relief, igniting any highly combustible items at hand (and when he was really angry, not-so-combustible items) was no longer available. He stared at the pot of dried flowers on the shelf above his uncle's head and tried to make it burst into flames by thinking at it. It didn't work.

"I'm done. I'm going to bed," he said finally, and stalked to the washbasin to deposit his dishes in it, then stalked to the door of his tiny bedroom. There wasn't much space to get a good stalk going, but Zuko managed.

"It's barely sunset!" called Iroh from his place at the table.

"I don't care. Wake me up when it's tomorrow," he said, and slammed the doors closed behind him.

Or he tried to. The tip of his finger was in the way.