Author's note: I posted this story before, but took down because I was worried it was too dark for some readers, but I'm a writer and I write all types of stories and censoring myself didn't make sense, so I decided to put the story back up.
Trigger warning: domestic/child abuse.
Blue Flashing Light
When his father came through the front door on Saturday Zuko could tell that it was going to be a violent weekend. The first sign was his father was drunk. He must have gone from his office straight to the bar. The second sign was the way his father looked at him. It were as if he were making a mental list of everything he hated about his son, all of which Zuko would be told about in great detail through the night.
He didn't know what age it was that he'd come to the realization that his father hated him, but he did, and having to be made aware of that fact had robbed him of an innocence kids his age took for granted. None of them had a father whose reason for hating them varied by the hour. Sometimes just his breathing would send his father flying off the handle. So he had learned long ago that the best way to get through the weekends without getting beaten was to stay out of his father's way.
"Ursa, I'm home. Come and greet your Lord."
His mother came down from the grand staircase seconds later to greet her husband. She was so perfectly made up she almost didn't seem real. She was dressed head to toe in clothing picked out by his father. She cut her hair in the style he liked, and wore the perfume and make up he chose.
She kissed him on the cheek. "How was you day darling?"
"Profitable." His father sank down onto the couch and stuck his legs out. Without missing a beat his mother knelt down to pull her husband's socks off, and place a fresh pair of socks and slippers back on to his feet. She stood up and unbuttoned the first three buttons on his shirt then took off his watch, cufflinks, signet ring, and headed upstairs.
It was part of his father's coming home ritual. They didn't have servants because his father didn't trust them. Besides that's what he had a wife and children for. Even Azula was relegated to nothing more than a servant, but she didn't know that.
His mother went back upstairs to put his father's socks in the hamper and his jewelry in his safe.
Zuko had long sense grown accustom to being invisible to his father and used it to his advantage. He waited until his father poured his second glass of awamori and was engrossed in the stock exchange report on television before he tried slipping out the front door. There were enough things to see and do in the city to keep him away from home until curfew, or he could skip going home all together and spend the night sleeping on the park bench as he done many times.
"Where do you think you're going?" His father asked.
Zuko closed his eyes and cursed under his breath. He should have known his father would see him. Normally his father couldn't be bothered about where he went, in fact the more time he spent out of the house the happier Ozai was, but since Azula was spending most of her weekend's at her friends his father seemed to have more time to focus on him. Zuko felt that it was rather ironic that his father ignored him but always knew what he was up to.
"I asked you a question and I demand that you answer me. Where do you think you are going?"
"Out." He answered through clinched teeth. Talking back would just make things worse.
If it hadn't been for his mother, Zuko would have runaway from home a long time ago. Azula would be fine in their father's eyes she could do no wrong, but if he ran away he'd be leaving their mother at the mercy of their father, and he didn't like to think what might happened if he left her to fend for herself.
Not that Zuko could take his father. Ozai was a big man 6'3 and he worked out everyday. Zuko was only thirteen and scrawny, but sinewy like an alley cat, no, he couldn't take his father, but he could fight him long enough to make it not worth it to go after his mother.
"You need to ask my permission first. You need my permission to do anything including drawing a breath."
"Please leave him be and come upstairs." His mother called from the doorway of their bedroom.
Ozai ignored his wife and stood like a statue guarding the front door. Slowly he crossed his arms over his chest. "You can go outside as long as you can get past me."
For a moment Zuko contemplated whether it'd be worth it to take an ass whipping to get past his father he hated backing down to the man. He knew that his pain and humiliation was part of the fuel that powered his father's fragile ego. That same fragile ego had mandated a rule that he keep his hands down to his sides fingers straight when ever being spoken to. He wasn't allowed to do anything with his hands that might be considered an act of bending, but the more he thought about the situation he was trapped in the more he could feel anger building up inside him. He bit his lip but it wasn't enough to assuage his defiance. His hands twitched to life and his fingers curled as if they had a will of their own. He thought about how satisfying it would feel to punch his father in his face over and over and over again.
His father chuckled as if his act of defiance was being done for his amusement. "What are you going to do?"
The alcohol from his father's breath billowed out towards Zuko and lingered in his face like a miasma forcing him to breathe through his nose. The fact that the man was still compos mentis defied logic, yet never stopped him from fighting like a man Spirit possessed.
He stepped closer to his father not knowing what he was going to do, but knowing he wanted to do something. He wanted payback for every time he'd been punched, slapped, or kicked. He glared up at his father as his father smirked down at him.
Zuko bit down on his lip so hard he drew blood. His calves were taught and stretched out like rubber bands ready to dodge the moment fist started flying towards him or snap waiting for the blows to land on him. The moments before the beatings began were the worst. There was always the fear that one day his father would go too far.
"Come upstairs Ozai. I'll give you a shiatsu." His mom said still trying to coax him into a less violent frame of mind.
"Shut your whoring mouth Ursa! I'm making a man out of our precious little Zuzu." He looked past the living room and into the kitchen; this thoughts changing like mercury. "Instead of yapping at me like some common bitch why don't you go earn your keep and prepare me something to eat? I shouldn't even have to ask. When I get home you should have a hot meal waiting for me."
It took everything Zuko had not to voice his contempt. His mother would be able to earn a living if it weren't for his father's unreasonable jealousy. His father put a lock on his mom's cell phone and made her ask for permission to use it. He'd taken her driver's license, car keys, and passport. He'd even gone so far as and having her tracked whenever she left the house, and he never allowed her to leave the house for long. He knew, as did Zuko, that his mother would leave with him and Azula and never come back.
"In fact you should get down on your hands and knees and thank me for not putting you and that waste of sperm out in the street." He crossed the living room in three great strides forgetting all about his anger at his son and raced up the stairs to address his wife.
"Don't just stand there get down on your knees and thank me." He gripped his wife's upper arm and dragged her down the hallway. He stopped at the top of the staircase to give Zuko a bird's eye view.
"Thank me!"
"Thank you, Ozai."
"For what?"
"For not putting Zuko-."
"Who?" His father interrupted.
"For not putting That waste of sperm and myself out into the street." His mother said as she crumbled to her knees. Tears were streaming down her face as she looked at Zuko.
He hated his father.
"Now go earn your keep." His father commanded as he released her.
Zuko could see his mother trembling as she walked into the kitchen. They never knew what was going to push him over the edge, but they could always feel it coming, and it was coming. Soon.
"Hurry up!" His father barked at his mom and shoved her straight down to the ground.
"Leave her alone!" Zuko shouted. He could feel the tension in the house grow like a living thing. He felt as if he had breathed in all of the tension and now it was growing inside of him.
"What did you say to me, boy?"
Zuko raced over to his mother and stood protectively in front of her. "I said leave her alone!"
"Is your mind so addled that you think I'd listen to you? The only reason you were even born is because I did not have the foresight to pull out. I'd of been better gifted by fellatio."
Disgusting! His father was disgusting and had no respect for his mother. Once again he had humiliated her. He lived to humiliate her. No more Zuko thought. Never again would he let his father hit his mother or make her feel unworthy.
Zuko reacted on pure instinct. He drew back his fist as far as it would go and slammed it into his father's stomach with everything that he had in him. Thirteen years of pain and suffering when into that punch. He heard his father give a groan as his fist hit him in the stomach. Zuko felt victorious, but his victory was not to be a long lasting one, Ozai's large and solid fist made contact with his not so solid stomach.
Zuko fell down to his knees and retched right there on the living room floor. The punch had left him feeling as if all of his internal organs had been liquefied, and before he could recover from that feeling his father jerked him up from the floor by the collar of his shirt and shook him around violently. The scenery of the room blurred as if he were on a ride at an amusement park. His mother's screams rushed in and out of his ears as his limbs purposelessly flailed around. When his father tired of swinging him around he dropped him to the floor like a piece of garbage.
"Please, please, please stop." His mom begged and Zuko wondered why she even bothered all three of them knew he wasn't going to stop. In fact he was just getting warmed up.
"If you'd taught the lowly cockroach some manners I wouldn't have to."
"FUCK YOU!" Zuko screamed. He was past the point of caring what happened to him, after years of having to repress his anger he was fed up. He wanted a showdown. No matter the out come he wanted things to be finished with his father once and for all. "YOU'RE A PATHETIC PIECE OF SHIT!"
Ozai didn't hesitate to retaliate. His foot swung forward catching Zuko on the cheek with the heel of his imported ming snake boot. The hard heel of the boot shredded his skin as it went.
Zuko struggled to get to his feet. He didn't care if he got killed in the process he was going to make his father feel pain.
"Don't try to move." His mom called out to him. Stay there and I'll come to you."
"Dinner, Ursa."
"You don't expect me to make you dinner without taking care of our son first. Not even you can be that cruel."
Of course he could. Zuko thought. The cruel train had left the station a long time ago and his father was going full steam ahead on the psychopath express.
"Do not make me ask you again." Ozai ordered.
His mother stifled a sob as she walked into the kitchen. There was nothing either of them could do. If his mother tried to come to his aid they would both be punished.
"I'm a Pathetic piece of shit, am I? He asked his lip curling up in a well practiced sneer; well you're a cockroach, and you know what people do to insects?" He lifted one of his massively booted feet.
Zuko scrambled backwards as fast as he could. A half second later his father's foot came down so hard it caused the windows to rattle. Ozai didn't give him a chance to get up. He let his fist fly.
There was a bright flash of light, a ringing noise, and then intense pain. Zuko was knocked flat on his back and the pain spread like fire. He screamed not understanding how a punch could hurt so badly. He'd been punched plenty of times in his life, but it had never resulted in this level of pain. Perhaps his eye socket had been broken.
His mother ran out of the kitchen and began to scream.
"Be quiet Ursa!"
"I'm calling the police!" His mom shouted.
"Not another word. Get up stairs before I drag you up by your hair."
Zuko lie on the floor spasming in pain as a sick smell filled the room. The smell was coming from him. The smell was him! It was his flesh burning. Now he understood why the pain was so intense. He hadn't just been punched he'd been burned. His father had used his fire bending to burn him. The pain was so awful so all consuming that he wanted to die to get away from it.
"No! I will spend the rest of my life to make sure you stay in jail for the rest of yours."
His father spun around and bent a huge fireball at his wife. The flames narrowly skirted past her. "Next time I will not miss."
Ursa ran past Zuko. She didn't even chance looking back at him. She raced up the stairs to her bedroom. A few seconds later the door slammed.
"You're not going to do anything you couldn't survive without me." Ozai climbed the stairs stomping louder and louder on each step. "You're nothing, you come from nothing, and without me you'd be absolutely nothing. Where would you live? Who would protect your precious little Zuzu, because I'd have you killed before I let you take my children away from me."
Zuko had managed to crawl over to a corner and sat huddled there. His entire face felt as if it were melting off. He couldn't see out of his left eye. He stared up at the ceiling with his right eye and he could feel blood trickling down his face. The blood that poured out of him felt cold in comparison to the hot bed of lava the was now the left side of his face, or what remained.
Upstairs his mom continued to scream her voice partially quieted against the backdrop of his father's heavy handed fist raining down on her flesh, and then she stopped screaming all together.
The house went silent.
His rage sated his father came back down stairs and sprawled out on the couch still somehow managing, with the exception of his knuckles, to look like he should be gracing the cover of a high fashion magazine.
At that moment Zuko forgot all about his hatred towards his father. He forgot about his pain. He forgot that he'd ever been burned. His heart seemed have arrived at the top of the stairs before he did even though he raced up them three at a time. His hand shook as he opened the door that may as well have been made of lead for how long it seemed to take to swing open.
The lump in his throat felt like it was strangling him, and he didn't even realize that he'd been walking around with his right eye closed until he whacked his shin on the vanity. He opened his eye.
"Mom?"
In the middle of the floor lie his mother looking like a broken porcelain doll. His heart felt close to stopping.
"Mom?"
She didn't move. He couldn't see her chest rising and falling.
"It's me, Zuko." A cell phone that he did not recognize as his mother's was smashed into pieces beside her.
Finding his mother lying bloody and broken in the middle of the floor had happened more times than Zuko cared to remember, yet every time he saw her this way he was scared to check on her, but also too scared not to. He didn't dare shake her. Carefully he knelt down beside her.
"Mom, mom, please be OK."
He gently turned her on her side and softly pushed her hair from her face some of it got stuck in the blood that poured from her. A sob caught in his throat almost choking the breath out of him. Never before had his father hit either of them in their faces, but tonight he had destroyed both of theirs. His mother's eyes were wide open, but didn't see. Her bruised face was like a mask. The last scream she'd been screaming hadn't left. "No, no, no." He kissed her forehead and hugged her close to his body and wept. "Please, mom I need you. I love you."
Downstairs his father was still on the couch sleeping with a careless look on his face. It would be so easy to set the couch on fire. His father probably wouldn't even wake up, and if he did set the couch on fire by the time his father woke up it would be too late.
He began to creep towards the couch.
His father half opened his eyes and laughed as he watched Zuko creeping across the living room. "Go ahead boy. Creep like the cockroach you are, but you better make sure whatever attack you have planned kills me instantly." He didn't even bother to ask about his wife.
Knowing his opportunity to take his father out was gone Zuko turned around and headed upstairs. He knew that his father would not go to jail. He never went to jail. He was far too important of a man. He owned Sozin electric, Sozin shipping, and Sozin refinery. He was one of the wealthiest men and landowners in the Four Nations. He owned Fire Nation prisons he didn't get thrown into them.
"Tell your mother I still don't have my dinner." His father ordered.
Blood and tears streamed from his eyes; the tears from his left eye burning like lava on their way down. The police weren't coming, and there was no one out there who could save him. He may have only been thirteen but he already knew money could buy anything or anyone. He was a rat, his home was a cage, and he was trapped.
None of his neighbors ever called the police despite seeing the numerous bruises on him throughout the years. They convinced themselves that he was a clumsy kid who had a lot of accidents.
Even if his neighbors called the police nothing would change.
The police would show up with their hands out waiting for his father to pay them off to not report the abuse. His teacher's would blame his bruises on the fights he got into despite the fact that he had far more bruises and broken bones than fights. The doctors would look at him with pity as they patched him up knowing full well the hell they were sending him back to.
His father's pet lawyer had convinced the judge that Ozai was merely disciplining his son. If his son hadn't of been incorrigible and insolent, or if his son did not talk back then he wouldn't get hit. Ozai's work was stressful and the last thing he needed to come home to at the end of the day was a surly son who didn't respect him, and if Zuko didn't respect his father could he be blamed for disciplining him? No. It wasn't his father's fault for losing his temper it was Zuko's fault for making him lose his temper in the first place.
The pain was starting to come back, but Zuko ignored it the best that he could. There was someone else he had to take care of before he could take care of himself. He always knew his father would go too far one day, but he figured that it would be his body that his mother would be sobbing over.
He didn't care if it was tampering with evidence, this was his mother, and he wouldn't let her be seen like this by anyone. He bent down and lifted his mother up into her bed. The crime scene photos would get out and they would be spread all over the world. His father had a lot of influence over the media between that, and his team of lawyers, his father would ruin his mother's reputation. The ultimate and final power move in a marriage where his mother had none. He refused to let his father ruin the only thing she had left.
Zuko went to the bathroom, got a washcloth, and ran it under the sink. He made sure the water wasn't too hot before using the washcloth to clean the blood from his mother's face. He worked as gently as he could taking care not to press down too hard wherever there was a bruise. He closed her eyes with his fingertips so that it looked as if she was sleeping. He brushed her hair and fanned it over her shoulders. Then he sat down beside her and held her hand. She didn't speak. Not even to tell him that everything would be all right as long as they had each other like she always did. She didn't move. Not even to give him one of her super special huggy hugs. He closed his eyes. He'd never been so tired in all of his life.
Something was stuck to his face and automatically Zuko reached up to remove whatever it was. As soon as his hands touched skin the whole left side of his face throbbed and burned. His right eye snapped opened as the events of the day flooded back into his brain.
What did he have to live for now?
The house was still silent. Zuko realized that the pain had caused him to blackout and he had no idea of how much time he'd lost. He could feel dry sticky blood on his face. He tried rubbing some of the blood away but that only sent a rippling wave of pain over him and blood started running down his face again. He popped off of the bed not wanting to stain the sheets. They were his mother's favorite.
He needed something to wipe his face on but didn't want to use anything in his parent's room. Zuko thought of it more as his mother's room because it was the only room in the entire house that she'd been allowed to decorate. It was the only room in the entire house that had her personal style. Every time he came into his parent's room he was reminded of how much she loved him.
"I love you too mom. I'm sorry that I couldn't protect you." He wanted to say more to his mother but he didn't have the right words.
The pain from the burn was getting worse it seemed to grow more intense every time he drew a breath. He dropped to his knees, but he refused to let the pain incapacitate him, teeth clenched and hands gripping deep into the carpet he pushed himself to his feet. He staggered to his room and fell back down lying half in and half out of the doorway curled up on his side like a shrimp. Blood and sweat ran into his face and eyes stinging like a snake bite. Some of the blood ran into his mouth and he turned on his side to spit it out. He needed to clean himself up.
He smiled when he spotted his curtains. Gathering his last reserve of strength he crawled until he lie beside his window. He had always hated the damn curtains. His father had paid a Fire Lord's ransom for them because they were genuine artifacts from the Fire Nation Royal family. Through his father he was a direct descendant of Fire Lord Sozin. Zuko couldn't have cared less, but his ancestry obsessed father made sure that everyone who knew him never forgot.
Zuko used the curtains to wipe the blood off of his face. Despite everything that had just transpired he was still going to get the living shit kicked out of him because of the curtains. His father would absolutely lose it when he saw that they had been ruined. Only they weren't ruined, not beyond repair, not yet. He held out the bloodstained curtains and threw back his head in laughter. Of course!
Moments later car doors slamming and blue flashing lights indicated that help had arrived. He could barely see the billowing black smoke that poured from his room, but the smell choked him until tears streamed out of his right eye. The noise of the roaring flames sounded like music to his ears. Tonight it was all over. After thirteen years of mental and physical abuse the neighbors had finally gotten involved, and all it had taken was setting his curtains on fire. He wondered who would reach him first the fire department or his father?