The Hidden Tale of Fire and Ice [Zutara]

Chapter 1 - Hidden Malaise

We are starting off in a time five years after the war.
Five years, since Aang and his friends have defeated the Fire Lord and his army.
To think that they could all go back to being children again would have been plainly naïve.

Come to think of it, their lives weren't exactly "normal" in the first place before the crack of the iceberg.

Three weeks after Zukos coronation Aang and Katara left together to rebuild the Southern Air Temple with the Air Acolytes, Sokka went back to the South Pole with his father to handle important business over there and Toph and Suki travelled to the Earth Kingdom. Toph was finally ready to sit down for a talk with her parents and had big plans for Eartbenders. Suki and the Kiyoshi Warriors were hired by King Kuei to guard him as he couldn't trust anyone anymore except for the Avatars friends.
Zuko, now being the Fire Lord of the Fire Nation, stayed here with Mai and prepared himself for this new chapter of his life. This was all he ever wanted, though he imagined it quite differently before he joined the others.
He always thought his fate was to capture the Avatar, make his father proud and return home to be the next Fire Lord with his sister by his side. It's funny how fate works, because now he is on the balcony in his enormous palace with Mai by his side, while his father and sister most likely rot in their cells.
Of course he wishes it were different. It was never his desire to reign alone in this gigantic palace.
Sometimes he wishes that they could have been a normal and loving family, like Katara and Sokka with Hakoda, but then he has to remind himself that this is their luck and not his.

You're lucky to be born

His life was never meant to be easy, his decisions never meant to be right and who knows how the end of his life will eventually look like.
But he doesn't mind, for now. Right now, all that matters is that they won and the war is finally over.

It is still difficult for him to trust his advisors and ministers though. With the big help from Toph, they have managed to select most of Ozai's followers out of the inner circle, but he knows that they're not done yet. There are still several, if not thousands, of followers of Ozai and his ideologies. It will be a long and hard ride, but he'll manage. He will win over the heart of his Nation and be the leader they needed and most importantly deserved for the last 100 years.

"Zuko, are you coming?"
Mai snapped him out of his thoughts and he turns around and looks at her.
The last five years Mai has been an amazing and very supportive advisor to him.
He knows that they barely had any intimate moments alone together, but she either didn't mind or just never showed it. Politics were always Mai's thing. She pretends to hate it, but he knows that she likes the control she has and the discussions with advisers, ambassadors or even members of the council. She pretends to hate it, but Zuko always catches the spark in her eyes.
But of course, she was literally born for this. She grew up with her father preaching about politics. Instead of reading tales before bedtime, he read her the old and new scripts of the treaties.

He looks at her and wonders if she's happy.
Truth be told, Mai and Zuko have never been the best at expressing their feelings. They would sometimes have their short moments of softness and tenderness, but those quickly disappear as soon as a guard knocks on the door and escorts the Fire Lord to his next meeting.
Being the Fire Lord isn't a job where Zuko can take off the crown after his shift and play happy family with Mai.
Wanted or not; it's his identity now and if she wants to be a part of his life, she has to deal with it somehow.

"Sorry," he says, "I've been having problems with this new robe. Does the string go under the back or the front? Does it even go under it? Argh, why do they always have to change everything," he mumbles as he fiddles with the string of his new robe.