“What does that even mean?” she demanded. “You say it because you have to. Because you don’t have any other reason. Like you have to convince yourself of it every single time,” he caught the tremble in her lip then, the one tell she had, “like you have to hear yourself say it. To test if you really believe it. If you’re even capable of it. Love,” she echoed, derisively. “Love. I love you. It’s just words, Zuko. It means nothing.”
Roughly, she scrubbed at her face, furious at herself. Zuko said nothing, watching her angrily wipe tears away with the inside of her wrist.
“What if,” she whispered, covering her eyes with her lightning-scarred hands, humiliated in front of her brother, “what if Izumi is like me? What if she’s - cruel? On purpose,” she insisted, because she was used to Zuko by now interrupting her, placing the blame squarely on the shoulders of their father. “I remember how I was. I remember how I treated you. And I remember that I liked it, I liked how it felt - to make you feel small. And I was born with that, you know. It’s always been there. It still is.”
He reached out to take her hands away from her face, but she slapped him away, refusing his touch. Her shoulders did not shake with sobs, but she still refused to look at him.
Always clumsy when it came to expressions of genuine emotion, Zuko didn’t know what to say. He knew that instinct in his sister, that utter refusal when confronted with someone who cared. He remembered it well: remembered the confusion and anger when the Avatar rescued him from Zhao’s troops, made him a bed of leaves, and wondered aloud if, maybe, they could have been friends. He remembered the hot shame of his uncle begging him to imagine a destiny he could forge for himself, and he remembered the hope which curdled into fury after Katara told him about the Spirit Water in those caves beneath Ba Sing Se. He had let himself believe that her kindness might be real. But afterwards he saw it for what it was. Nothing but pity.
“I’ve been thinking about that a lot, too,” he found himself saying, sitting there beside his sister. He felt almost as if it were someone else’s voice, unfamiliar, without. “I never really understood why Uncle…why he didn’t hate me. Why he wasn’t so ashamed he couldn’t even look at me. I wanted him to be angry with me. At least when…”
Distantly, he lifted one hand, brushing his fingers against the scar on his face.
“At least when Dad did this to me,” he said, quietly, “I understood why. Of course he hated me. I hated me too.”
Outside, the waves continued to wash against the shore. The night was warm but the breeze was cool, the fabric of Azula’s bare mattress rough beneath them. When she looked at him, her eyes were dark but clear.
“Then Izumi was born,” he continued, simply. He looked at his sister, and he offered her a small, rare smile. “And suddenly I understood. It doesn’t matter what she does. It won’t ever matter. I’ll love her anyway. Always.”
This time when he reached out towards Azula, she did not slap his hand away. He held her wrist, because he didn’t know if she would let him hold her hands, and he didn’t want to irritate the lightning burns on her knuckles. His fingers pressed against the delicate skin on the inside of her wrist, which felt cold underneath the warmth of his touch.
“What if Izumi is like you?” he asked. “Then I’ll love her anyway, Azula.”
tangentwithtanner
romaincrisis
jacobvanloon
2087
origamiaround
titsay
dailybridgerton
turnnoffyourmind
