Trying to get you out of my head and off of my skin.

Part 4 - Mirrors - Shard 2/11 - Can't Forget You

Hakoda hears the commotion outside of his tent and finds his men looking to the sky. Following their gaze, he spots the sky bison approaching the beach and it feels like his heart could burst. His children have returned. He rushes across the sand to greet them but as they dismount the furred beast the smile dies on his lips. Sokka helps a small girl in Earth Kingdom green out of the saddle depositing her on shore, Katara follows and Sokka is last. It's then that dread fills the pit of his stomach, something has gone terribly wrong. In Sokka's arms is the broken body of a boy, the Avatar.

The light in Hakoda's eyes dims at the sight of the group of bruised and beaten down children. Clothes, dirty and torn, their heads hang, barely hiding the tear tracks he finds streaking down their cheeks, even on the face of his eldest. Sorrow hangs heavily from their shoulders, the Avatar is down, their hope for peace has died.

He carefully gathers the pieces of each broken child and brings them back to camp. He cleans them up and gets them fed as if all four are his own.

His eldest refuses to rest, needing to plot and plan, to do something to turn the tide of this endless war.

The youngest named Toph is blind but he quickly learns not to underestimate her. She is the picture of indifference, cracking jokes with the rest of his men, but within hours he finds her sitting in the Avatar's tent. Fresh tears streak down her face as she asks him to wake up.

He hasn't seen his daughter so devastated since he had to lay his beloved on the ice. She like her brother refuses any respite, choosing instead to push her healing as far as she can. He can only sit in awe of the power his daughter wields but even it, is not enough. The loss of the Avatar is not her burden but she tries to shoulder it alone. Even after two years apart she is cold toward him. It breaks his heart but he understands, he gives her the space to come around. So he doesn't know when Katara, under the cover of darkness slips quietly away from camp.

That night under the fractional moon she walks down the empty beach and finds what she is looking for. An hour past and she sits alone in a secluded tide pool. The tears in her eyes reflect the soft white glow of her own hands against her skin. She had erased his marks only days after he scorched them into her skin. Reduced them down to nothing but a barely-there discoloration, but now they're all she can see. Like irremovable stains, she can't seem to scrub from her skin. No matter how much she tries to heal them away she can still feel his hands on her.

/|\

It's been a week since they left the Earth Kingdom in the hands of Joo Dee. Long enough that his initial excitement at going home has worn off. In its place is a mild trepidation that he finds himself having to push down over and over again. That is until he sees her, Mai makes him forget the twisting anxiety in his chest, and keeps his constant wondering at bay. A few words, a loving look, a soft touch, is all it takes to distract him from the growing turmoil inside of him. Yet it still grows, slowly, quietly, eating at his insides, lurking in the corners of his mind. He's going back, he has regained his honor, his crown, and his home. It will all be fine once he gets home he tells himself. Until then he loses himself in her over and over again. She obliges each time moving his feelings of like into something more. This thing that grows between them, he leans into it, maybe it is all finally over, and happily ever does exist.

They lean against the railing in silence as the ocean waves crash against the hull below them. He wraps his arms around her slim waist and she leans her head against his scarred cheek. She doesn't shy away from it as others have. She acts as if it's not there, sometimes making even him, forget its presence. Under his hands he holds Mai's slender frame, the awkward press of countless sheaths hidden in her robes has become familiar to him, almost endearing. The fractional moon is high, illuminating the night while they look out to sea. Its ethereal silver light reveals to Mai four pale crescent scars etched into his skin, clearly made by the hand of another. Mai questions it and he falters. Silently the memories crash over him. He had made her a promise, he had laid his claim upon her and these marks were her claim upon him. So much had happened in those few hours, between the dusk and the dawn. He tries to ignore it and only gives Mai two words.

the waterbender

Her disgust and ire for the back-water peasant are quiet but palpable. It's almost worse than the men who had chased them down, alley after alley in the dim night. But honestly, how dare some commoner idly lay hands upon a noble, the Fire Prince no less. Zuko is only slightly taken aback by her muted anger. He does not understand it but does not dispute it either.

That night somewhere between consciousness and slumber tear-filled cerulean eyes find him and jolt him awake. In the quiet darkness, he finds nothing, but the sound of the ocean and a circle of moonlight painted on the floor. He wraps his arms around his raven-haired and alabaster beauty, pushing away the guilt and uneasiness pooling in his chest. Seemingly of their own accord one calloused hand slips around Mai and falls just under her ribcage, the other finds her shoulder pulling her closer to his chest.

It's not her

The whisper of a thought is lost as sleep pulls him back under.

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