"Aang... I understand. I really do. I wouldn't ask you to change your perspective. It's only sensible. I need you to see her with your own eyes. Maybe you can see things more clearly than me, I dunno," he says, his gaze fixed to the floor between his feet, an almost pleading tone in his voice. "I— worry sometimes that I can't trust my own eyes fully, to be honest. But I need to try. I don't expect you guys to be best buddies with Azula all of a sudden, but— just understand... she needs me now."

His voice is softer, ruminative, dripping in uncertainty and conviction at once. No matter how far apart, when or where or why, that much is still consistently true of Zuko, how he can hold both these opposites in some unique delicate balance he tightropes like a trapeze through life. He will always have some duality to make sense of. And being so close to Azula now, more than ever before in their lives, definitely guarantees that.

"And I know it sounds crazy, but... I need her, too."