I'm really, really sorry for taking so long on this ! I promised the next chapter after three reviews and this now has... eight. Again, I'm really sorry. This chapter beat me up. I'll immediately begin writing the second chapter after I post this. Enjoy!
o O o
"Zuko, please, my love, listen to me. Everything I've done, I've done to protect you."
— Ursa, Zuko Alone
o O o
She's leaving him; walking away. Most likely, and he's not sure how he knows this, she's leaving him forever.
Who is she? He's sure he can… remember… right?
She's… she's…
Mom?
Gone. Like everyone.
o O o
He stares off into the darkness that surrounds him. The whole world feels foggy; like he's hearing everything from the other side of a thick pane of glass. Although… it's not glass. He turns his head around, checking his surroundings, but finds nothing. He sees nothing. It's not glass, it's a brick wall.
o O o
"Drink this, dear."
A bowl in pressed to his mouth and he's too tired to protest. He drinks the bitter liquid, all of it, and the bowl is taken away. He coughs, his lungs seemingly splitting in half.
He doesn't know what that stuff was, or who the person talking was, or why someone was feeding him nasty tasting beverages, but he's just… too tired…
...to think about that right now.
o O o
"Chief."
Hakoda turns to the woman, Iaekna, and inclines his head, his mouth a grim, straight line. "Yes?"
"He's awake," she states. She says nothing more; there's no need to. Hakoda knows what to do. Though the tribe had never been in any situation remotely similar to this before, somehow, he knows. It may be a chieftain thing, knowing what to do. It could be in his blood.
Whatever the reason, he silently nods to the healer and heads off towards his hut to gather something for the boy to eat.
o O o
He's gotten used to the darkness. It's quite soothing, actually.
Like when he was little — five, maybe younger, he thinks — and his mother would tuck him in for his afternoon nap. He would sit and stare at the back of his eyelids until eventually everything just went away.
When he slept, he escaped. Well, not really escape, so to speak, since afterwards he would just be back again. But, for what really only amounted to maybe an hour or two, he was gone. He slipped off into unconsciousness, let his mind drift into its subconscious, and would have gladly last the world move on without him.
He misses his afternoon nap.
o O o
The peripheral stillness subsides, the girth of the world fills into his senses. The whistle of the wind, the drag of his breathing, the itchy fluff teasing his cheek, the soft weight covering him.
Yet, the darkness remains.
His insides coil around each other as he sits up, his hands clammy and fingers twitching. Where is everyone? What's that noise? Footsteps? His heartbeat?
"Ah, Iaekna was right. You're awake."
Why does that sound so familiar?
His ears feel stuffed with cotton, but whatever's happening must be close because Zuko can clearly hear a rustle of fabric and an odd clinking noise — which he is going to assume is cutlery of some sort.
"I brought you something to eat." So, he was right.
He tries to respond to the strange voice, but all that comes out is a strangled gasp. His throat burns at the use, seizing up on him, preventing any further abuse.
"Shh," the deep voice soothes. "Don't speak. You've got a pretty nasty gash on your neck."
Shocked, Zuko moves an unsteady hand to his bandaged — what? — neck, but a hand grips his wrist and pulls it away.
"Don't touch it," he reprimands.
"Don't touch that!" she growls, fire burning in her eyes. "You'll ruin it like you do everything else."
He groans, wiping a hand over the left side of his face. What was that? He coughs, violently, sending waves of pain through his throat.
And then it hits him: where is he? He feels his eyes are closed, and tries to open them, but they're… constrained, somehow. He feels a right pressure on his face, too. Where is the man who's speaking to me?
He frantically shakes his head side to side, looking around him, but his eyes are only met with more darkness.
"Your face was burned," the man answers, somehow sensing his panic. "All across your eyes and stretching past your left ear. You can't see because of the bandages." A pause. "You've been asleep for about a week, now."
A week? How…?
Zuko hears more rustling and shifting. "Here." There is a tinking sound and Zuko feels heat below his face and smells salt. "I brought some soup for you. Careful, I'm going to feed it to you now, okay?" The rim of a cup or bowl presses against his lips and a hot liquid fills his mouth. He hums at the salty taste; the soup is hearty and rather thick, and made from some sort of meat, though the contents is mostly just broth. The bowl leaves his mouth and he swallows the food, loving the heat it leaves in his throat.
"Good, isn't it?" the man says. "Sekkena made it." Then, after a beat, "She's the main cook around here. Well, after my mother, that is," he laughs. "My name is Hakoda, by the way. I'm the Chief, here."
Zuko tilts his head at the man in question — or where his voice is coming from. "Of course," he breathes, like he was just now realizing something important. "The chief of the Southern Water Tribe."
Water Tribe? He's… the chief here? The Southern Water Tribe?
The man — Hakoda, he corrects himself — seems to sense his distress, placing a hand on his shoulder. "Calm down."
The smooth rim of the bowl of soup touches his dry, chapped lips and he drinks, and drinks, and they continue like that — Hakoda feeding him and him taking it; taking the charity of a Water Tribesman.
What else can he do? Hakoda said he had been burned, and his throat was cut. He… remembers that… kind of.
He remembers the pain, but, that's not all that new to him. Nevermind being too tired to really recall anything before now, Zuko knows that. He knows that the pain is a regular occurrence for him. Maybe not this bad, but, well… whatever.
This man is helping him for now, and Zuko may be young, but he knows better.
Why — how could someone like him care? Hakoda is Water Tribe. Zuko is clearly Fire Nation.
The Water Tribe is filled with backwards savages and ruthless barbarians. They only know death; to kill.
Zuko is a ten year old, Fire Nation boy, severely injured and weak. Though in firebending, he's a failure, they don't know that. Besides, he can't do much of anything to defend himself in his condition.
"Rest, now, little one," Hakoda whispers. "You'll need your strength."
What he'll need his strength for, he can't bother to ask.
Sleep tempts him, and he gives in.
He, most likely, won't make it to morning.
o O o
"Will he be alright?"
Hakoda turns to his other. "Iaekna says he will, and I trust her."
Bato hums in acknowledgement, nodding his head.
"What's the damage?" he asks tentatively.
Hakoda sighs, running a hand through his disheveled hair. "Almost half his face is burned off, Bato. More than, maybe. There's a wound on his neck, straight across his throat, his ankle is sprained… Iaekna says he's starved, too. Thin as bone, the poor thing."
Bato frowned, shaking his head. "His own people," he breathed.
o O o
Odd, he thinks. I'm still here.
Are those… footsteps again? He shivers. He's here.
"I brought you some soup. Can you sit up?"
Zuko turns his head to the sound, which is, by his estimation, coming from right next to him.
This is it, he thinks.
He nods his head, and, ignoring the pain, lifts himself off of the bed mat. He's shaking terribly; he doesn't need to see himself — if he even could — to know that.
"Are you feeling alright?" Hakoda — he recognized his voice — asks him, sounding oddly… concerned? No, he can't be. He must be delusional. The only person ever worried about him is his mother.
His mother? Mom?
He reluctantly nods his head yes, reaching up to right a few untamed tresses that are tickling his face. He tucks the strands behind his unbandaged ear, but his hand stills at the base of his head. He runs his fingers through his hair, feeling the newly cut locks.
"We had to cut your hair," Hakoda explains. "It was burned up pretty badly." He paused, seemingly hesitant. Then, "Iaekna."
"Coming, Chief."
What follows is the soft pad of feet on the ground and the quiet sound of someone sitting down on their knees.
"Stay still, son," Hakoda commands. "Iaekna, our healer, is going to take off your bandages."
Okay, this, and he'll admit it, is going better than he thought it would. Granted, he did think they were going to kill him, and it could only get better from there.
He senses the warm touch of the healer's fingers upon his face, untucking the outermost strip of cloth. The fingers move around his face, until only a thin layer of fabric clings to his face, the tease of release clawing at his closed eyes. The hands pull the last of the bandages from his face, and he immediately feels the cold prick of the wind on his newly exposed face.
"Try to open your eyes," the woman tells him.
He obliges, though not really knowing why. He pulls his eyelids apart, the skin almost fused together. He peeps one small eye open — his right one — and tries to differentiate the moving colors and silhouettes swirling around him.
Slowly, his left eye creaks up open as well, though not as wide, joining the other in attempting to decipher his surroundings.
"Boy?" He turns his head to his left and looks up. That's Hakoda. He's a blur of brown and blue to his left, accompanied by a smaller smudge of a similar color scheme. "Everything alright?"
Zuko turns to the direction of the chief's soothing, but stern, voice, eyelashes — correction, he has no eyelashes anymore, only eyelids — at the picture in front of him.
The room looks like one of those pretty chalk drawings his sister would make in the palace courtyard, or the pastel drawings his mother enjoyed painting.
"Fuzzy," he chokes, trying rapidly to blink away the film over his eyes.
And then it hits him.
"I… I can't see," he stutters. The smudges drift closer, louder. Suddenly, everything is too loud. The rustle of fabric on fabric, the flutter of eyelids, the soft whisper of hair, the hiss of the wind. "Why can't I see?" His voice sounds so small to his ears. "Why is everything," he coughs, "so blurry?"
"Calm down." That's Hakoda again.
"He's panicking."
Wait. Who's that? Think. Think. Oh, that's the healer woman. What was that? He'd stopped paying attention.
"—I'll go get her." Hakoda. Who is her? When did his head get into his arms? Why is he breathing so quickly? Stop. You're embarrassing—
Who? Who is he embarrassing? Father isn't here.
Father isn't here. Mother isn't here. Uncle isn't here. Azula isn't here, or Mai, or Ty Lee. I'm not there to embarrass them.
He hears muffled voices coming from… the doorway. From outside?
"—you, dear. He's freaking out." Who's he? "Iaekna just took off his bandages."
He turns his head, which is safely — safe, this is safe — rested in his arms. There's just more blue. Is the door blue? Light shines in his eyes. Is the door open now? That doesn't look like a door.
The light dims, line something is blocking it, and then disappears completely. The room grows hotter around him — he can feel it with his firebending — and the slight noise of cloth on floor his his ears.
"Hi," a feminine voice says. "I'm Kya."
o O o
I'm sorry.