044.Reality
As the old man fell to the ground dying, she realized something.
Zuko was human, too.
He was just a boy. A boy who once had a Mother, once had a Father, maybe once had a brother or a sister, too. A boy who had black hair and a sharp jaw and was five-foot, eleven inches and weighed less than when she had last saw him. A boy who had fire marked across his eye, and a boy who was desperate in everything he did.
Just a boy. Just a regular old boy, with two arms, two legs, ten fingers and ten toes.
It was just a boy, not the fierce, dangerous Prince she had fought at the North Pole, who kneeled on the ground beside that dying man in complete devastation.
"Zuko, I can help." Who was she if she could not help a boy save what little he had left that mattered in this world?
"LEAVE!"
And just like that, he was Prince Zuko; the Firebender, the dark, dangerous, inhuman bastard who took her mother's necklace and tied her to a tree and beat her at the North Pole.
She turned and left wordlessly, Zuko the Boy forgotten, and Zuko the Prince left alone to mend back what remained of the old man on the ground.
XXX
END
jak
