[Gokudera isn’t so dead-set on trying to quit anymore. He’s not stressed enough to need to be chain-smoking alone in his apartment, but the occasional cigarette feels familiar and oddly… comforting.]

I know that Aurora didn’t want to leave, so I can’t be mad at her. But… Zuko has a whole kingdom to get back to… He didn’t want anyone here to know his standing there, or for me to talk too much about him. I think while he was here, he just wanted to lay low.

And all of his friends left him at one point. But right around the same time one of them showed up, he was gone. Right after that invasion… which I’m not grateful for. [People got hurt, and he’s not happy about that. Not happy that they were targeted because some idiot tried to resurrect/wake-up/exhumate someone.]

But it was a good distraction for a minute…