So I haven't really written ATLA fic in years. I found this old thing sitting on my hard drive and figured I would post it.
Three times Zuko hid from the truth; one time it found him. \\
i.
His mother slaps his father while he crouches in the small crevice behind the door. The sting from her hand can be felt even all the way across the room, and the boy suppresses a desire to scream, run away.
"Don't you dare touch me," she spat, his hand with a death grip on her wrist. "Get away—"
Ozai forced his wife against the wall of the far corner, his glare menacing and tyrannical.
"You're my wife," he screamed at her face. "And you think that you could dishonor me like this? My brother is a fool, a weakling. It is not a surprise to me that the boy is an abomination!"
"I said I didn't know!" she cried out as his hand closed around her throat, his hand coming up to hit or slap her. Zuko's eyes closed painfully shut, he tried to cover his ears, but he could still hear them even when he didn't want to.
"That's not good enough!" he shouts above her strangled cries. "If you don't kill him, I will."
"No," Ursa says defiantly. "You can kill me, but I will never kill him. And I won't let you either. He's your son!"
Zuko tries to forget, to completely erase this night from his memory.
He can't face thinking that his mother could be the bad guy this time.
ii.
The night before the comet comes, he spends the entire night standing outside Katara's door.
Not because he can't sleep, but because he doesn't know what to say.
She sleeps restlessly, tossing and turning. And he tries to come up with a string of words that don't sound like he's desperately in-love.
Because he's not.
When he stands outside of Uncle's tea shop, watching as the Avatar collects the waterbender in a kiss, he feels empty, unable to think.
He pushes his own feelings away, tucked into a drawer that will never be opened.
iii.
"Quit it!" shouted his wife. "Just fucking quit it!"
He forces himself to look up from the paper work that demands his attention day and night. Mai is tired, pregnant, crying.
Zuko swallows, watching as she takes a seat across from him.
"When we were married, Zuko, you swore the uprisings were done!" He wants to intercede, but her tone and expression makes him do otherwise. "And I know some things are out of your control, but you and your government made me want this child!"
Her chest his heaving, her eyes blinking with tears. They are both tired, angry, spent. And Zuko doesn't know how to fix this.
"I can't do anything about it," is all he can think to say.
"Can't or won't?" she says, getting up and slamming the door without a glance back at him.
He doesn't want to know the answer.
iv.
It's Aang's funeral that he knows that the end isn't near.
Katara and Sokka stand by their own families and friends now. He watches as the monk's body is blessed with oil, and he bows respectfully upon being recognized.
This war they've been fighting for years, for centuries, just won't ever go away. It will always be there, no matter how hard he tries to get rid of it.
The prejudices built around blood and bending will never be broken. The bonds formed between his friends, they were all but severed. It anything, the war was more resilient than ever, harder to win than before.
He thinks of his son, the boy who he is supposed to be training to take over the nation, to lead the world into prosperity and ease.
Even he knows that will never happen.
Not as long as he lives.
Not mine.
