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Grief

Zuko tugged his hood lower down over his eyes and slouched deeper into the bench. On the subway it was easy to pretend he had somewhere to go, and somewhere to return to. An announcement came on over the loud-speaker, but he didn't bother to translate it. The medication he was taking made his brain fuzzy around the edges, and even though he wasn't tired, he drifted between wakefulness and sleep.

The rocking of the train was soothing. It was bitter-sweet and it felt like being home again; when he opened his eyes it would be just another day after class going from Keio to Shibuya with friends. His mind drifted further down into sleep and Mother was taking him to the seaside on the bullet train. They must have gotten there already because she was trying to wake him up.

It wasn't Mother. A dark, foreign face loomed over him, made darker by the stark lighting of the subway. He wore a crinkled uniform and spoke down to him. Eventual, Zuko connected the noise the man was making with 'Get off my train, go sleep in a homeless shelter.' Muddled from pain-killers, three days unwashed, and dressed for the biting New England cold in sneakers and a hoodie, he must have looked more like a junkie than the son of a leader in the Japanese Parliament. But the conductor? guard? was standing over him with a heavy flashlight, and was clearly in a foul mood. The almost adult rolled to his feet and tried not to cause a scene, no matter how much he wanted to.

"But that's why he sent me here, for appearances." It was a bitter, unbecoming thought. Father had done what was necessary. He had done all he could while the legislature was still in session. Ozai had arranged for his son's medical care in one of the best hospitals in the world. "On the other side of the planet." Father had arranged for him to have the best suite in the Plaza hotel. "At Uncle's insistence." He had been given a generous allowance. "With out anyone to spend it with." Trudging up the cracked concrete steps from the metro to the surface, he let loose every curse in every language he knew.

He only spoke two languages, but he felt better for having those gaijin eyes watching him for something other than his dirty clothes or the bandages smothering half his face. It made him long for a cigarette. The laws here were strange, would he be allowed to light up on the street? There were fewer Caucasians here. By a stroke of badly needed luck, he had gotten off the subway in an Asian part of the city. There were paper lanterns in windows, and signs everywhere in a dazzling display of mismatched languages and characters. Biwa music filtered out from a doorway decorated with a multicolored display of dragons, some of them even motorized.

The stale smell of frying tofu and snow-peas wafted toward him, and Zuko remembered food. He'd not bothered to eat yesterday. He'd kill for some Okayu right now. But food was a memory here, not a promise. It was too late for any but the least appealing restaurants to be open. What time could it possibly be that in New York City, the only places to eat were dripping in spoiled grease? He still had a little bit of pride left and was not going to become part of the fast-food chain. He walked on. The shops turned into apartment blocks. He kept walking until the people stopped disappearing into them. Then he walked some more until the streets turned into garden paths. A hand lettered sign labeled the space he found a Community Garden in the Bronx borough. It was a strange mix of vegetable plots and meditation corners. It wasn't enough like home to be comfortable, but the calm, growing greenness of the place was comforting.

There were chrysanthemums. White chrysanthemums growing in a broken pot next to an old graffitied bench. Their petals shown in the low light of the street lamps; oranges, blues, and white with the painful familiarity of a funerary shrine. When had been the last prayer he made for Lu Ten? Or for his Aunt or Mother? Had he said one for Azula yet? Uncle would have, Father might even have at her funeral last month.

Zuko hadn't been at her funeral and could only guess. The doctors had spent that first week treating smoke inhalation, consulting optical specialists, setting half of the bones in his face and managing a dangerous swelling in his brain left by impact trauma. But if he knew anything about Ozai, he had been at the funeral presenting a good example of grieving fatherhood.

"Hey! I didn't know that anyone was out here!" The sudden voice was vulgar in the in early morning hours. Zuko turned on instinct towards the intruder and saw the last thing he expected in America. A Monk. A yellow clad, shaven headed Buddhist Monk. With really weird tattoos and a smile that was trying to take flight off of his face.

A/N: I apologize to anyone who has been to, or lives in New York. I haven't and so must make do with Wikipedia.