It's sweet, that final sip of victory. So sweet, it's bitter against his throat. It burns, and he tears, tears, trying to get away from the burning acid, but it remains in his soul just as fire remains in his blood.
The Avatar has fallen.
And he has all that he needed, ever wanted, now – his freedom, his glory, his honour. But he does not feel so honourable – there's disappointment in his Uncle's eyes, horrible, wretched disappointment, and so he cannot bear to look at him anymore. He seeks her eyes, and there is such icy satisfaction there that he feels that ice creep in over his fingers, up his arms – into his chest.
And it burns like the fire in her eyes – the other girl's eyes, which had been softened moments before in that horrible, wonderful time of forbidden surrealism, but he had made his choice – or his sister had made it for him – and could not be swayed, even as she sparked and crackled, fire in azure eyes.
It is so different from the eyes of his sister, and in another state of mind he would have scoffed at the irony; the princess of water was the embodiment of flame, and the princess of fire, epitome of ice. And what was he, if not shades of humiliated grey? Never prospering, never bright, never needed. Yet without him, victory would have been failed.
Somehow, he thinks failure may have tasted better than the bitterness of defeat, the defeat that lies within victory. For now, he has no purpose, and his Uncle's eyes say so. His sister is of the same mind.
His heart burns, and for the second time in his life, that fire is not welcome.
This is another scar he will never escape.