For the Love of Him -or- The Betrothal
•Bows repeatedly to reader• I'm soooo sorry it took me so long to get around to doing this one! Usually I'm much better about updating...I've been uber busy lately and when I'm not running around like a headless chicken I'm really tired...I'm finally getting back into the rhythm of things now, so I'm gonna try to get back to this a little more. Hope you enjoy!
This chapter is dedicated to...erm...uhh...well, I dunno! Nope, can't think of anyone in particular to dedicate it to! Sorry y'all!
Disclaimer: •Facing down a raging pack of lawyers• Really now, after all these disclaimers, I'd have thought you'd have gotten the idea that I don't own this show! For shame people! I thought lawyers were smarter than this! •Is pounced on by one of the lawyers, all of which are foaming at the mouth by this point• AHHHH! Get it off! Get it off! LAWYER GERMS!
Chapter 4- Invisible Fantasies -or- Daydreaming Nonbeliever
Dodge! Left, right, righ-OOF! Prince Zuko suddenly found himself being hurled backwards a good ten feet. He landed hard and rather indignantly and a half sheepish, half infuriated expression slid onto his face as he hurriedly scrambled back to his feet. "Where is your focus today Prince Zuko?" His uncle shook his head at him, one eyebrow quirking in curiosity. "This is an easy drill. Most days you could do it without a single flaw. What is so different about today that you are so distracted?" Zuko just shook his head and attempted to look like he was concentrating as he ran the drill again, perfectly this time. Something was most certainly distracting Iroh's teenage charge today, and though he was interested in what could be more fascinating to Zuko than training, the old general didn't bother to press the question. Even if he had, Zuko wouldn't have answered him anyway. As Iroh mumbled something about tea and shuffled away, Zuko found his thoughts drifting back to the events of the previous night.
•••
After that strange dream with the flowers, Zuko had woken up and found it nigh unto impossible to go back to sleep. Every time sleep seemed at last imminent, some curious aspect of the dream would come back to him, imposing itself onto his mind's eye, forcing him to think about it. Eventually he'd just given up all hopes of getting more sleep and had tried to think of a way to amuse himself for the remainder of the night. At first, when nothing came to him, he just sat back and let his mind wander. Somehow though, it all came back to that dream, though he tried to ignore it.
It was a very odd dream, and it had seemed so real. More like a forgotten memory than anything he could have made up solely in his mind. It was finding the journal that had brought it on, he decided. Dredging up old history must have done something to him. Hadn't Uncle once said that dreams were just bits of what you'd experienced that day jumbled with what you were thinking about when you fell asleep? Yes, that must be it. Concluding this did nothing to console Zuko though, and he couldn't seem to put it out of his mind. Finally aggravated to the point of almost causing something to burst into flame, he had lunged foreword, grasping the offending book in his sweaty hands and yanking it up for him to see.
I should burn it. He glared furiously at the journal. If it's going to keep me from sleeping, then there's no point in keeping it. Eventually though, his curiosity overcame his ire and instead of toasting the book he found himself flipping anxiously through the pages. The tops of the pages all were dated, and he mentally calculated how old he would have been if the dream had been real, and what year that would be. Five...Five and a half...Six...Six and a half... He thought to himself as he flipped through the corresponding years. Just as he was about to turn to the pages for his seventh year, something small and flat slipped out from the page he had just flipped to, tumbling down to land on his knee.
Zuko gasped, and slipped one hand down to lift the pale item. His breath whistled out shrilly as he gazed at it, a million questions whizzing about in his head. It was the flower petal from his dream. Paler and wafer-thin, but distinctly the same one. "But...how could that be?" his voice quivered a bit, from both fear and excitement. "It was just a dream...it didn't happen! It couldn't have!" He was working himself up into a frenzy by that point, and his hand was shaking so badly that his fingers began to pinch the fragile petal a bit too tightly and it started to crumble. Realizing that he was beginning to panic, Zuko quickly took a deep calming breath and tried to focus himself. He'd never figure anything out if he was worked into a wild rage.
A few minuets of deep breathing later, he set the book down and rose smoothly to his feet and strode over to his desk. He pulled one of its many drawers open and reached in, withdrawing several small glass vials. He selected one and dumped the bits of petal into it. He set the other vials back into the drawer and withdrew a tiny cork and a long strip of leather. He worked the cork into place and wrapped it with the cord, tying the ends tightly and slipping it over his head. "I have to know if it really happened or not." he stated firmly as he spun and walked back to his futon. He lowered himself back down and sat for a moment, breathing deeply again, making sure he was fully in control of his emotions once again. Finding that he was, he cautiously lifted the book from where he'd left it and flipped it open to where he thought he remembered the petal falling from.
Zuko took one final steadying breath and began to read, his eyes darting back and forth across the lines of writing. Every now and then, he found he would need to stop and make sure he'd read something right. He hadn't had the nicest of handwritings at that age, and it was difficult going here and there. Still, the more he read, the more he couldn't help but be amazed. He hadn't opened to the right page after all he shortly discovered, but he couldn't stop reading the entries one after the next for some odd reason. As he read, memories matching the entries began to flood back, and after a while, he noticed he was anticipating what he knew would come next. He smiled to himself as he stopped to flick to the next page. "I remember this now...I must have been so upset when I had to leave that I forgot..." he trailed off, feeling his mood begin to darken. He quickly looked back to the pages, wanting to keep the good mood he'd obtained from them.
Zuko had spent most of the night in this fashion, reliving his childhood through his own written words. If anyone had happened upon him during this, they would have been quite surprised at the strangely emotional Zuko they found. As he read, he found the moods he'd felt when he'd written the entries coming back to him with the memories, and he began to display many emotions that no one had ever seen him display in known memory. Several entries he read about one happy week when the capital had played host to a famous circus full of things that had enthralled him at such a young age suddenly stirred him into a fit of laughter, the likes of which Zuko couldn't remeber ever happening before. Other entries brought the prince to tears, from remembering the day his treasured pet Komodo Rhino had died to an occasion where he'd gotten lost for three days in an unused wing of the palace and was informed upon his return that his father hadn't even noticed he was gone. Did he really care so little for me even then? Zuko couldn't help but wonder.
Sighing to himself, he flipped the page, hoping the next entry would be a slightly happier one that would raise his spirits. The entry started out happily enough. It was a week or so since the getting lost incident and the young Zuko who'd written the entries seemed to have completely forgotten about the horrific experience. Only when Zuko reached a paragraph describing how Little Zuko had decided to pick some flowers and told about the little cut he'd gotten when retrieving the silver ribbon did Zuko realize that this was indeed the very entry he'd been looking for in the first place. His eyes widened and he leaned in, as if getting closer to the pages could compel them to be read faster.
Moving closer blocked his light though, and he unconsciously waved a hand to wave a bit of energy at his solitary candle, causing it to roar up and throw off a few sparks before dying down to a suitable light. Now with the right light for reading, Zuko plowed forward through the sentences, racing to get through the entry, to see if it really was just how his dream had been. "Impossible...How could I dream about something I don't even remember?" he asked himself, his forehead knotting in confusion.
He'd reached the end of the entry, and it had indeed matched up with his dream. So it really did happen...That means Ajuna was real...he leaned back and let himself topple backwards into the futon's soft cushions. He'd had a friend after all. The concept was totally foreign to Zuko. "I had a friend." he stated to the ceiling, seeing if saying it aloud would make it seem any more plausible. Oddly enough, it did. "I had a friend named Ajuna." he said it again, reveling in the newfound idea. He smiled to himself and sat back up. He wanted to read the entry again. It was his evidence; his proof that at one time he'd had a companion.
He thumbed through the book, stopping at the correct entry this time and began to read it over again. And again. And again. He read the same passages an even six times in all before he knew the words all by heart. With a feeling of accomplishment, he yawned and shut the book, placing it reverently next to his pillow. A quick glance out the window told him that it was probably getting close to morning. He should try to get at least a little more sleep before the day started.
Once he laid down though, he found he just wasn't tired anymore. He rolled over from one side to the other and then tried to lay still on his back. Nothing doing. He just couldn't drift off with the excitement of his discovery buzzing around in his head. "I can't believe I really had a friend." he sighed as he rolled over again, onto the side facing towards the little book. "What was her name again?" he thought for a moment, frowning when he didn't think of it right away. "A something...Ab..An...Ar...damn." he growled the last word as he pushed himself back up. He found he had a friend and within moments he'd forgotten her name? Some friend he was going to be. If he ever got back to the fire capital. And if she still wanted to be friends by then.
Determined to at least learn the name of the girl he'd once had for a friend, he scooped the book up again and flipped through the pages. He was in such a rush to find it, he accidentally skipped it and kept flipping a few entries too far. Realizing he must have missed it, he stopped turning through the pages and went to turn back when something caught his eye. A few lines down one the page, dated a week after the one with his dream in it, was a question that, when he read it, froze Zuko in his seat.
'What's a fiancée?' It read. 'Uncle told me Ajuna was mine. Maybe it's a fancy word for friend. I wonder if she knows what it is. I know! When I see her tomorrow, I'll ask her if she knows about it. Or maybe she'll think I'm silly if I ask. Maybe I should pretend to know. If it is a special word for friend, I should ask her if she wants to be mine. Yeah, that's it! I'll bet it does mean friend! I'll ask here tomorrow when she gets back from Urankaa1. I bet she'll say yes too! This will be fun!'
Zuko was speechless, his eyes glued to the page. Ajuna...his fiancée? For some reason the concept wasn't at all surprising to him, and that was what had really stopped him in his tracks. "Why would I assume that she was my fiancée?" he wondered aloud, almost not believing what the journal was saying. But it had been right up until now. "And why does that sound so familiar?" And then it hit him. The picture! The one that had fallen out of the book when he'd first went to read it! The caption at the bottom had titled her 'Zuko's betrothed, Lady Ajuna'. That was why the concept had seemed so familiar!
Suddenly things began to make sense. In the dream, Ajuna had seemed hesitant to call Zuko her friend. Maybe she already knew about being promised to him then. And maybe that's why Uncle hadn't been upset after Zuko told him where he'd been that he missed his morning lessons. But no one had told me! No one even asked! His mind was spinning wildly. But they did tell you! Another part of his mind answered back. You just read about it! Iroh must have told you after you told him about meeting her. Realizing that this was right, Zuko dove back into the book, almost tearing the page off as he scrambled to see the next entry. Maybe it would clear things up. "She couldn't really be my betrothed...could she?" he almost pleaded with the book, hoping to see that it wasn't true, praying that she had just been his friend. He couldn't handle the concept the idea was raising. He'd only just managed to accept that he'd had a friend. To find that he'd been engaged to her would just be far too much for him to handle that night.
To his dismay, and strange delight, the next entry didn't disprove the claim that they were betrothed. The entry was short, and the writing jumped about on the line, as if Little Zuko had been bouncing up and down in glee as he tried to write it. 'I'm still not sure if fiancée means friend...but I guess it must because Ajuna said that I was hers too!' was all it read.
•••
Zuko sighed and went back to his training, trying in vain to wrench his thoughts away from the swirling whirlpool of emotions that were warring within him. He'd been too stunned to sleep the rest of the night, and had spent the rest of it pacing back and forth around his room before he'd have to stop and reread the entries again just to make sure he hadn't missed anything. He sighed mentally as he dodged, left, right, left, the correct pattern again. Iroh smiled to himself as his nephew completed the run without error. He's still distracted, I can tell, but it looks like he's doing well enough without needing to focus too much. That's a good skill to have, if an unorthodox one.
Zuko passed most of the rest of the day in this manner, his body in one place, his mind in another. Somehow he managed to complete his training flawlessly after that first accident even though he wasn't at all focusing on it. He had accepted that he was betrothed- to a point. True, he wasn't sure if he really believed it or not, but he was allowing his mind to wonder about the possibilities. If I was betrothed, it's probably been called off now that I've been banished...he thought as he completed yet another exercise and strode away to the edge of the deck and leaned over the edge, looking up and watching a gull swoop by. But what if it wasn't? Do I really want to...marry? Does she still want to? He couldn't help but wonder. He knew that wasn't a question he could answer lightly, even in his head to himself, and so he didn't. It was something he could write about in his journal. He'd found some empty space in the back that called to be filled. After dinner then...I think I'll actually eat for once.
He smiled to himself as he turned and headed for the door that led back down into the ship. But before he could even take two steps, there was a loud clang and two of the ship's soldiers came tearing out of the hold. They glanced about and when they spotted Zuko, they made quick time over to him. Both bowed before him, but Zuko could tell they were excited about something by the way the one kept fidgeting and the other was mumbling frantically to himself. "Well? What is it?" the prince demanded, slightly irate because of the delay.
"Your highness!" the first one nearly shouted, he was so excited. "We've located the Avatar2!"
1- Urankaa- The made-up city where Ajuna used to live before her family moved to the capital.
2- Yes! Aang and the others ARE IN THIS! I can't very well leave them out, now can I? Zuko's supposed to be chasing him after all!
Nyaa! Well, that'd be it for chapter 4! The endings a bit wonky, but I'm having a bit of trouble accessing my vocabulary/grammar skills at the moment...Anyways, please R&R! Reviews make me really really happy, and we all want me to be happy, right? •Listens, hears silence• RIGHT? •Cricket chirp• Aww...you guys are mean!