A wee bit on the angsty side. Feedback would be greatly appreciated.


Medicine

"I am like a machine, all that I really need is medicine and then I'll fall fast asleep"--The Classic Crime

Hate.

One of the strongest words in any vocabulary. One of the strongest of human emotions, even. Excluding love, its opposite.

But hate is probably stronger than love. It seems all negative emotions are stronger than their positive counterparts. Fear is stronger than bravery, sorrow deeper than joy, shame more crippling than pride.

And people doubt love's existence. But no one ever doubts hate. Hate, even on a slight scale, is fully apparent to the beholder. Love--and all its little layers of like and lust and passion--is hard to identify. Hard to sort out. Hate pierces through the thickest of emotional fogs. It boils up and seeps out around your pupils so anyone can see down into your depths and see how pained you are.

He knew hate well. He could prove that easier than he could prove gravity. Hate of that wretched girl. The way she slobbered all over him when they kissed, the way she always needed to grab his hand and feel rooted down to something. Her ugly, manly voice. Expressionless eyes. Why were they even together? He didn't even seem to like her. It was disgusting. Had she no modesty?

At first he thought that Mai's behavior was just annoying. Then it became infuriating, and at that point Sokka realized that it was because of Zuko. Had she been doing that with any other boy, Sokka realized he wouldn't have given a thought to her ostensible PDA. But the fact that it was Zuko she was all over pissed him off on a level he never thought possible. Was it jealousy? Envy paints a colorful picture.

He hadn't wanted to admit it, not even in the privacy of his own thoughts, but yes. He was jealous that Mai could kiss Zuko, and he couldn't.

Sokka's only comfort was in the world of mind-and-mood-altering substances. Whatever he could find he drank, swallowed, smoked, or snorted. Anything. They were his medicine. Then he drifted off to where his visions of Zuko were peaceful and wonderful. The essence of bliss. He'd lie there, his eyes drooping, his body seething with sparks of elecricity or rapids on a swiftly moving river. An agglomeration of fantastical sensations. Clouds of fire and smoke would linger in his veins throughout the day, making him sluggish and tired. But he was happy, always happy. So happy, and he hadn't been happy in a long time.

Slowly, he withdrew from his friends, becoming red around the eyes.


Their innocent puppy-love was sickening. Zuko watched them with a mild feeling of disgust bubbling in his stomach like acid. They were the perfect couple--the adorable couple everyone loved. The one that was everyone's friend. They didn't even fool around, or not that he saw--and he was glad he didn't--they just giggled with each other. Cute, adorable, lovable.

Sick.

Zuko thought Sokka could do better than her. She was alright in terms of appearance, and a pretty good fighter. Smart too. But an attractive boy like Sokka? Sokka, who was a brilliant inventor and strategist and funny as hell? Sokka, who could swing a sword better than anything Zuko had seen in a long time could only do as good as this chick from some noplace in the Earth Kingdom?

He wasn't sure when--but slowly Sokka's big blue eyes and slim, muscular body became a figure of beauty to Zuko. A muse, inspiring all manor of sinful fantasies. Sokka invented his own words, a lexicon of characters defining all his appetizing tributes; all his physical characteristics. Sokka made him a poet, a painter, a sculptor, a singer, a dancer. Whenever he was around, Zuko's thoughts went from placid to troubled. A storm of emotions, churning resentment and envy. All the things Sokka made him do, all the things he made him want to do. It put him into a rage, his hurricane psyche spinning itself out and leaving behind the ruins of a civilization once prosperous. Charred remains after a volcanous eruption. The strong winds of Sokka would pick Zuko up and then drop him into a bottomless well of depression, leaving him to drown in his own melancholic waters.

And late at night, when no one was alive, he'd take a knife to him. His inner thigh--he was not foolish enough to do it where they'd see. And when his well was particularly empty, he'd heat it. The burning blade's carvings in his flesh were his medicine; the scar tissue was just a side-affect.

FAG

The rounded edges of the word were difficult to do in the dark with his shaky hand and pounding heart. Hot tears of shame would blind him, his temperature rising and falling like the tides. Slashes, gouges, long traces and stenciling, blood rising to the surface and breaking over; his body desperately trying to heal itself of the self-inflicted mutilation. He'd bite back the cries his stomach wanted him to make, muffled squeaks and stifled sobs--he was ever so quiet. No one would know. No one needed to know.