Disclaimer: I do not own Avatar: The Last Airbender, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.
"Zuko Alone" by Abraxas 2009-02-11
The animal crossed the path at a slow, deliberate walk.
Zuko would have been annoyed by the lack of progress, ordinarily, yet after those events at the village he sunk into a very peculiar state of mind. He did not want to stay and he did not want to go. Rather, he would have wanted to dissolve away, into oblivion without a hint of struggle. Such was the melancholy that even thoughts of the Avatar did not inspire determination.
Zuko was alone
At the edge of the forest the trail widened into a vista of a whole, other universe of Earth Kingdom heretofore unknown. A river, snaking across a plain, its course sparkling under the stare of the sun. The sound of its flowing, lapping against its banks, added a strange yet soothing timber. Beyond it were grasslands where the terrain resumed a jagged broken appearance. And then, further and further still, where the forest returned to carpet the earth, there stood the deep, violet faces of mountains.
The teenager gazed unsettled at the amber sky with its wisps of clouds.
Birds fluttered above. Animals foraged below. A few creatures too distant to be discerned stopped to watch the man riding the beast aimlessly.
It was not just that Zuko was alone. It was so, so infinitely worse. And now, with time to devote to thought, it suddenly fell upon him like a bolt of lightning. He realized the truth then and there - he was alone because he did not belong anywhere.
Gathering the reins, which lay lifeless atop his lap, he yanked the slack of it to urge the animal onward.
The beast did not alter its gait.
He did not belong with his family and he did not belong with the people of that nation. Where could he go? Where? What corner of the world could be accepting such a figure? He was exile in the truest sense of the word. He was the lord of the flies, the prince of the air, ruler of nothing. Only now, with every last trace of privilege stripped, was the truth obvious to the fallen star of the Fire Nation.
But...but no...it was not always so.
He recalled exactly two times when he felt whole. Two, short, fleeting moments. Two little triumphs bookended with calamity.
He imagined he was cursed, perhaps by birth, to witness the crumbling of every single pleasure of life.
It was so long ago, before he came to know anything of the Avatar.
Those days when he lived with his mother. His image of the woman was so idealized as to be imagined. No, she could not have been real. Surely, certainly, the idea that he could have come from such a creature. That his father would have married such a woman and, even, lived a few happy years together. It was impossible. Yet, at least a part of it must have been true. His uncle always spoke highly of his mother and that side of the family. And his sister always tormented him about his mother.
Yet she left him and so, afraid, he fled.
He tried to forget the events that surrounded the loss of his mother. He was so young and events happened so fast. No body knew their fate and he feared the worst.
He fled; a fact everyone knew but no body understood. It was his own little secret and he vowed to keep it so. Azula could not be allowed to know what he did and, especially, why he did what he did.
A fleet was ready to leave - to invade the Antarctic - so, in the middle of the night, he sneaked aboard. He lived within the shadows and darkness. Days and days passed. Eating scraps. Sleeping within vents. Hiding between the crates of cargo.
Somehow, someway, he jumped onto a patch of ice, wearing a parka five sizes too large, wandering into the blinding white landscape.
Zuko fled then, perhaps, the way he fled now - just to get away.
As far away as possible.
He wandered by a village.
Coming to rest at the river, filling a canteen with its water, he let the current wash through his fingers.
Water was such a mysterious and exotic element.
To be pure, that is, to be true to oneself. To be exactly what he was meant to be without hiding anything. Indeed, to be proud.
Water was like that.
Back at the village he tried to be clean but the people rejected what he offered. The truth was, however, only half of the confession he should have uttered. There was yet another layer of secret repressed. A truth about himself he could not utter.
Because, at the Antarctic, he was rescued by a boy.
That face - he could not forget it. Those water, blue eyes. Those hands holding his hands. Those lips kissing his lips. The days they spent together, a boy of fire and a boy of water, those were among the happiest moments of life. He felt at peace.
Maybe, could it be, maybe that boy still lived? Maybe, if they met again, face to face? Would it be possible to rekindle what the world of war tore asunder?
"Impossible! That boy," he almost wept, "that time together was the purest friendship I knew - there's nothing left of it now. There could not be! How could it be? After everything that happened..."
He could not return to that boy, to that village, to that time again anymore than he could have his mother returned. Surely, his Sokkie - a name he did not speak aloud in years - his water tribe warrior, would have hated him too. Just like everybody hated him.
The world was a vast wasteland of regret and Zuko was alone with its memories of what used to be.
"If only Uncle were with me," he sighed toward the beast, still lapping the water of the river. "He always knows what to say, doesn't he?"
END