Prompt #95: Found. Continuation to #94: Lost. Inspired by a href=.com/watch?v=PVzAF0e4Ks0 this/a song. It just really fit Zuko's fatherly love for his young, innocent daughter. It's kind of a musical portrayal of how he feels when he sees her interacting with the world. At least in my eyes. :3

Hide and Seek

"No peek." Suzume frowned up at him with furrowed brows, a tiny finger pointing in accusation. She looked so serious, as if she truly expected him to be the type of person to cheat.

From beside him Mai laughed and put a hand on his shoulder. "Don't worry, Suzume," she said. "Mommy will make sure your father doesn't peek." Soon her hands were on his face, covering his eyes, and he blinked behind his new mask of soft fingers. Then he smiled.

"I promise," he said, holding his hands up in surrender. "No peeking."

A small giggle and then the sound of tiny feet rushing across the wooden floor and out of the room. When the sound of retreating footsteps could no longer be heard, Mai slid her hands away from his eyes and he stared at the now-empty room.

"How long was I supposed to count for again?" he asked. As crazy as it sounded, he missed Suzume already. He wanted to eat up as much of her laughter as he could, soak it in like the sun's rays. He wanted to simply hold her in his arms for hours and marvel at her shining golden eyes. But she had wanted to play hide and seek.

"Doesn't matter." Mai edged closer to him on the end of their daughter's bed and followed his gaze. "I usually give her about thirty seconds. Just make sure to shout out random numbers if you hear her running around nearby."

"What if I can't find her?"

"Zuko, she's a two year old, not a chameleon-gecko."

"Right." He looked restlessly around at the room, taking in the stuffed dragons on the floor and the other various toys scattered about. A year ago, this room would have felt foreign to him; filled with things of a childhood he'd never had, but now it brought warmth and loving memories, even pride for the life residing that resided in it.

It had been thirty seconds now, hadn't it?

Probably because she noticed his fidgeting hands and wandering eyes, Mai laughed softly and nudged his arm. "Come on," she said. "Time to look."

He was up in an instant.

The palace halls were strangely silent as they walked through them. He kept his eyes open for anything unusual, but so far there was nothing. Mai seemed to know exactly what to look for, barely glancing at the giant porcelain pots that could so easily fit a two year old and that Zuko went out of his way to glance into just in case every time they passed one.

"Think," she finally said with a sigh when he stopped to look into what felt like his hundredth pot. "How could she be in one of those? They're taller than she is."

"Well, I don't see you finding her," he huffed. "We've searched the nearly the entire hall and—" Mai held her arm out so quickly he walked into it with a loud grunt. "What was—"

She put her finger over her lips in a shushing motion, then pointed at something a few feet away, which he immediately glanced at.

Two small bare feet were poking out from under an unnaturally lumpy curtain near the end of the hall. As he and Mai neared it, the curtain shifted a little and the feet rolled back onto their heels with the little toes curling inward.

Just the sight of those little toes, of the innocence his daughter had in thinking she could not be seen, made his heart swell inside his chest. So this is where she had been hiding this whole time. Mai might have been right in saying their daughter wasn't the best of hiders, but he still saw this as one of the best hiding places in the world for the simple fact that Suzume had picked it.

He went to grab her, to pull the curtain back and smother her with the love he felt this very moment, but a hand on his shoulder stopped him. He turned to see Mai looking at him with a frown, though her eyes were twinkling.

"Great, Zuko," she said in her usual monotone, though slightly louder than usual. "You led us all the way to the end of the hall for nothing. I told you we should have gone down the servant's quarters." And with that she turned and started to walk away, leaving him standing there in mild confusion.

It was only when she turned back to him, brows raised in a "Well? Are you coming?" sort of way, that it dawned on him what she was doing. "Oh! Uh.. yeah. I guess I was wrong," he said.

As he walked away, he could hear near-suppressed squeals of excitement from behind the curtain, and he felt his heart melt at the sound.