And Fex joins a new fandom! Oh, dearie me, I hope this doesn't become an obsession...
Well, here's some Zukaang angst for you :3 hope you enjoy, and don't forget to leave a review! I'm sure there's some kind of karma involved for reviewers somewhere.
Zuko wondered how it would feel to burn the forest down.
A skybird cawed, screeching its elegy to the sun, which shouldn't have been there. How could the sun shine ever again? How could the universe dare to stop raining, ever?
He had met the new incarnation. A blibbering fool, he thought as the fire in his limbs burned. He crushed his fingers together, remembering how the touch of different fingers had felt, creeping between his hands, his hair, around his neck and over his back. He shuddered involuntarily, feeling his muscles spasm, contract and expand.
It wasn't fair.
A wry smile touched his lips. Of course it wasn't fair. Nothing in this world was fair.
Something had been fair, once, though. Something to do with air and fire and silken sheets stained with desire; scorching kisses and sweet ones falling through clouds.
He remembered being hungry, remembered being on the run, and knew that hadn't been fair. It hadn't been fair that Uncle Iroh died not of old age, as he should of, but of a mysterious medical condition. It was suspected one of his exotic teas had caused it, but he had drunk it up until the end.
But something had been fair.
Zuko traced his scar. Katara had offered to remove it, but it was part of him. He wondered where she was these days; probably at one of the poles. She shunted supplies back and forth between them when things got hard, since she was the most successful Waterbender of the age.
He wondered if she knew.
She had to have been informed; after all, she had been his best friend. He bowed his head, hidden under a hat. His left eye was unable to cry; the burn had damaged his tear ducts, but moisture dripped from his right, trickling down his chin.
They had come here, once, during the war...Zuko trailed his fingers across the dusty, dusky ground, wondering if his mask had once lain here. Aang had jumped from that tree...to that tree...to that one...until he was out of sight, the only sign he had been there at all the dying echo of his voice.
Zuko had personally ended the assassin. It had been a quick, bloody death for the rebel leader, and then the rest of the rebellion. Hell hath no fury, he recalled a line of poetry, like a woman scorned. The line had zinged around in his head until the "wo" fell off, shedding its feminine skin into something masculine, something definite and with sharp edges.
He swallowed the screams he wished to unleash upon the world. They went down like ice cubes, all corners. The trees did not care.
The mind was a curious thing, he thought. Because he had told himself in the weeks after Aang's death that the new Avatar would be nothing like him, yet when he went to view the reincarnation...
...his first feeling had been of disappointment.
What had he expected? A picture-perfect copy of Aang? A baby with large ears and and those tattoos sweetly blue against pale skin?
No, he hadn't expected that. But he also hadn't expected the gurgling baby girl, plump and happy, raising a fist in the air like she was already prepared to beat any rebellion, run the kingdom with sweet disposition and justice.
Baby girl.
He snorted in disgust.
The bird crowed again, and Zuko jumped, dirt digging under his nails. He felt his upper lip curling with revulsion as the fire rose up inside him, begging to be released, to destroy, to burn.
Zuko considered it a personal punishment to restrain the fire, not let it burst out as it was wont to do. It would never be enough, but it was a small fraction of the price he should pay for letting Aang be killed. He should have protected him better; should have assigned his guards more carefully, should have left their bedchamber window shut that night...
A spark jumped from his fingers. He stamped it out with the toe of a boot.
There would never be enough atonement. Never.
He remembered feverish days, days spent under covers, days spent eating and days spent flying. Air and fire could not coexist, but air could make fire stronger. Could make it burn even brighter. Could make it better.
But they had coexisted. For a while; a long time. Defying nature, defying physics, defying society, defying air and fire and the elements in general.
Zuko's mind seemed to operate on a switch; when it was flicked on, memories, colors, fabrics, snippets of heat and feelings and blacked-out-pleasure-vision, swirled through him. When it was flicked off, he was numb.
And when it was flicked on, the force of the sensations was powerful enough to knock him over, back onto the forest floor. He found himself on his back, staring up at the canopy of leaves, exposed. Vulnerable. If anyone tried to attack the mighty Fire Lord now, it would be all too easy.
But he supposed he deserved that too.
He thought about ending it. Ending it right there in the earth, an undignified death for a firebender. It would be easy enough; let the fire overwhelm him, instead of bending it to his will.
A bird called from above.
Zuko's eyes opened. He had become long-accustomed to one lid sliding further than the other, but sometimes it occurred to him how strange it felt.
It was the same bird, clawing and cawing and circling overhead. It seemed to be looking at him, mourning with him.
Zuko smiled at it. If he squinted, he could almost see Aang, floating on his glider over the trees.
Almost.
But not quite.
He let his head fall back to to the forest floor, and turned the switch off.
Sometimes, numbness was better.