ZW 2017 Day 2: Underwater
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Black and Blue
Zuko can see her in the ice as his vision turns dark.
They say your life flashes before your eyes just before you die. Zuko is not convinced. As he wills heat into his hands, into the ice, the twin fires blur into twin eyes, shifting from red to blue. Clamping his mouth shut, Zuko's eyes swim as he forces his head back and forth in the water, a slow moving shake. He needs to clear his head. He's looking at water. At ice. Not eyes.
And if he is seeing eyes, they should belong to the Avatar, the being that will open or close all the doors ahead of him in this pathetic life. Zuko has no interest in this half-baked waterbender. He's not chasing her.
"Yet," comes the whisper, like distant crashing waves, in his ear. The edges of his vision are becoming murky as swamp water.
Zuko panics-he's lost it now, completely lost it from oxygen deprivation, and he's going to die without ever seeing home again or his father or his mother or his uncle. He opens his mouth to shout for help and swallows water. Nothing but salty water, but then he pushes and his hands are through and there's air up there and he's sucking in short hot desperate breaths through the tiny hole, and then he's burned through enough to pull himself up.
He slumps into himself for a moment, lungs filling greedily, eyes burning, as the ocean crashes in his mind. It fades as he picks himself up, but the gentle waves echo in his mind long after he can no longer hear the voice.
Yet.