excerpt from in-progress "timebending with Zuko" fic
Zuko wakes up and everything hurts.
Most specifically, his scar hurts.
That . . . doesn’t make sense, he thinks, and reaches for it automatically. A strong hand catches his wrist before he can touch it, which seems–fair, yes. Probably a good idea, anyway, because spirits does it hurt. Just . . . so much.
“Uncle?” he asks reflexively, attempting to open his eyes. It’s surprisingly difficult. And Uncle is in Ba Sing Se, of course, but he’s on his back on a futon or bedroll or something similar and someone’s sitting beside him and his head is swimming and he’s injured, clearly, so options for who said “someone” might be are limited, really.
So it’s not Uncle, obviously, but . . .
“Nephew,” Uncle says, very quietly, and Zuko . . . blinks.
At least, half-blinks. The one eye’s in too much pain to open.
The ceiling is metal, he notes absentmindedly. That’s . . . odd. He was in the palace, wasn't he?
“What happened?” he asks, vaguely bemused. Uncle pauses in a very concerning way, and Zuko has about three heart attacks about just how badly he doesn’t want to know what he’s about to say before–
“The Agni Kai,” Uncle says, very carefully. “Do you remember it?”
Zuko frowns–just with the one side of his face, because again, his scar hurts right now. To the point that his whole body feels wrong, does his scar hurt right now.
“Um–which one?” he asks, because there’s been about a dozen this month alone, and frankly he’s getting really sick of fighting them at this point but if the old guard of nobles are just going to keep dragging everything out like this–
“With your father, Nephew,” Uncle says, very carefully.
“Oh,” he says, vaguely perplexed. Uncle never talks to him about that. “Yeah, I remember that. What about it?”
“Do you remember what happened?” Uncle says.
“The part where I disgraced myself or the part where he burned my face?” Zuko says, because it’s so fucked up and awful and horrible that he can’t even get upset about it anymore, except when he’s really upset about it. But if Uncle’s bringing it up, presumably he has a good reason to be, so . . . “Or the whole ‘go find the Avatar who no one even believes exists anymore or you can never come home again’ part?”
“. . . all of that, yes,” Uncle says, still sounding very careful. Zuko frowns a little–again with just the one side of his face–and then looks over at him. His body still feels weird and wrong, but . . .
They’re on a ship, he realizes. A Fire Nation one.
Well, explains the metal ceiling.
It doesn’t explain why Uncle is wearing red armor and a topknot like he hasn't in years, though, or why he looks so unspeakably sad.
“Um,” Zuko says, and attempts to sit up. His head immediately starts swimming even worse, and Uncle catches his shoulders and keeps him pinned against the . . . futon? Looks like a futon, yeah. “Where are we, exactly?”
“We are aboard a ship,” Uncle says. “I . . . may have slightly commandeered it.”
“. . . you paid for it, right?” Zuko asks, a little skeptical at that idea.
“Yes, Nephew, I did,” Uncle says, giving him a very tired, pained smile. Zuko doesn’t feel much better, seeing it.
“Is someone dead?” he asks, because he can’t think of anything else that would make Uncle look that way.
“Ah–no, no one has died,” Uncle says.
“Then what’s wrong?” Zuko asks warily.
“. . . you are injured, Nephew,” Uncle says, slowly. Zuko frowns, bemused. “And your father . . . I did not know he was going to do this. I am so sorry.”
Zuko . . . pauses. Looks around the room again, and then realizes: he knows this room, doesn’t he. He knows this ship.
This is the same ship he woke up on after the Agni Kai.
“Hold that thought, Uncle,” he says, then lifts his hands and looks at them. They . . . well, they are his hands, obviously.
But they’re not his hands, obviously.
“Huh,” he says, frowning in bemusement at them; turning them around like he half-expects them to stop being a thirteen year-old’s or something equally ridiculous. They don’t. They are very definitely a thirteen year-old’s hands.
Specifically, his thirteen year-old hands.
“You don’t have to be sorry,” he says after a moment, putting his hands back down and glancing back to Uncle, who’s obviously the more important concern. “It wasn’t your fault.”
“I took you into that meeting,” Uncle says, his voice tight. “And I watched the Agni Kai. And I did nothing to stop any of it.”
“I know,” Zuko says. “But it wasn’t your fault.”
“It was,” Uncle says, his smile a sad and terrible thing. “You were there because of my actions. My mistakes.”
“You’re not the one who wanted to sacrifice all those soldiers,” Zuko says. “Or the one who decided to throw fire at my face.”
“You were there because of me,” Uncle repeats, his voice tight and his smile no less terrible. It occurs to Zuko, briefly, that Uncle must be thinking of Lu Ten.
He only ever looks like that when he’s thinking about Lu Ten, so . . .
“Uncle,” he says. “Really. It’s not your fault.”
“Nephew,” Uncle says, and his voice is somehow even tighter. Zuko tries to get up again, and his head swims again, and Uncle moves to stop him again. This time he grabs onto Uncle’s wrists and uses them to pull himself up, and then . . .
Well, then he’s sitting up, at least.
He tilts his head and his hair slips into his eyes. It’s loose, and long. Not shaved on the sides yet, like he wore it the last time he was thirteen. He supposes he should cut it, but then again, why should he? He's not changing anything, after all.
Except for this conversation, he supposes, because that went very differently last time.
"Uncle," he says one more time, and reaches out for him. Uncle doesn’t seem to understand what he’s trying to do, so he has to reach out a little farther, and then Uncle makes the connection and leans in and lets him wrap his arms around him and alright, yes: that’s better, Zuko thinks, and clings to him.
Just a little, perhaps, but . . .
Uncle wraps his arms around him in turn, very carefully, and makes an awful sound.
“My boy,” he chokes. “I’m so–I’m so–”
“I forgive you,” Zuko lies, because of course there’s nothing to forgive.
But of course Uncle doesn’t understand that, does he.
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