- zuko is a tapestry of gray marks. everyone he has ever loved has betrayed him.
- he has a dragon mask for his mother on his right shoulder, and a flame for his father on his left. he doesn’t know how he got them. most parents fondly cherish their memories of their marks appearing on their children, but zuko wonders if his parents even know he has them.
- the one mark he remembers from his childhood is a bolt of lighting surrounded by blue flames: at the centre of his small torso. he feels it burn when his little sister, three weeks old, bubbling in the royal nanny’s arms, sneezes when he touches her nose.
- zuko, who has so much love to give. zuko, who loves so deeply even his marks form a triangle around his heart. zuko, who is ten years old and has no idea what his mark looks like because not one of them have shown it to him.
- his father burns half his face off. his father sends him on what his uncle calls a hopeless quest. the mark doesn’t fade, because his father hasn’t betrayed him. zuko knows this. his father has taught him a lesson. he knows this. the mark is not gray.
- his mother leaves him, but the mark isn’t gray. she is coming back. it isn’t a betrayal, because she loves him and she will come back. the mark will not go gray.
- eventually, they do. zuko doesn’t know when they go gray, because he refuses to look at his marks anymore. he’s practicing his bending (never good enough) in the higher temperatures of some Earth Kingdom port they’re docked at, when his uncle points it out.
- he huffs and moves into his next stance with ease, but the fire at the end of his fist burns a little hotter. he searches for something in himself: anger, apathy, sadness, acceptance. all he feels is shame.
- he spares a moment to wonder why azula’s mark is as blue as ever, and he thinks of his sister, poisoned by their father. he wonders if he has a mark on azula, and if it went gray when he left Caldera.
- his uncle is the one who shows him what his mark looks like. they’re standing on the deck of the ship and iroh lifts his sleeve to show him a patch of angry skin, shot through with a gold slit. it looks like his left eye.
- he laughs, but nothing is funny. his mark of love is the ugliest part of him, because loving zuko is not a gift: it’s a curse. the laugh sounds wet, even to his own ears.
- “it means those who love you... they love you even knowing what you think are your deepest flaws,” his wise uncle says and zuko thinks it sounds overly valorous even for him. zuko doesn’t have flaws. his father made it abundantly clear that zuko was the flaw.
- he feels the burn of a mark at the meeting point of his two collarbones. when he pulls his collar down, it shows a jasmine plant growing out of flames. he doesn’t need his uncle’s wisdom to know what it means: inner peace. strength through chaos.
- after he betrays his uncle, he has nightmares of the scar on his face turning an ashen gray. he wonders if he has ruined the only mark that belongs to him in the world with his selfishness.
- the mark is not gray. his scar looks almost a part of iroh’s skin. he cannot take his eyes off it, scared that it is a dream. his uncle never lost faith in him.
- zuko has resigned himself to carrying his uncle’s mark on himself as the only proof of his love. he only wonders why azula’s mark hasn’t faded yet: she tried to kill him enough. never would he have expected five other people to carry it.
- his mark fits like a puzzle on each one of them. after their experience with the dragons, aang lifts his right arm, streaked with colour over his arrows: katara’s droplet on the back of his hand, toph’s ring around the wrist, suki’s fan on his bicep, sokka’s weapons on the back of his arm, and zuko’s scar. zuko’s horrible, ugly, scar, the reminder that he was never wanted. zuko’s scar on his forearm, fitting in the middle of all those other beautiful marks. he blinks the tears away.
- he takes off his shirt to find a blue arrow swiping from under his left armpit and pointing to his heart.
- toph asks him to spar the next day, and she seems to be winning. she sends out a rock that catches him in the right side, but the pain is punctuated by a cold burn. he knows there will be light green seismic rings surrounding that bruise for a while.
- what he couldn’t have bet on knowing was toph’s hand pushing him up onto his knees, or the way she lifted the hem of her pant and demanded to know what the complete band of five marks around her ankle looked like. his scar almost blends in with aang’s arrow, and he has never been more glad that toph is blind except then.
- after they break in and out of a goddamn prison, sokka sits next to him in the airship. he takes zuko’s hand and places it on his left bicep, where his scar wraps around it, horrifyingly disfigured. he wants to apologize for it, but he looks at sokka’s smile and he doesn’t.
- instead, he asks how he completed sokka’s set, and listens to him explain the zig zag of marks across both his arms: suki’s fan on his left wrist, toph’s rings on his right forearm, zuko’s scar on his left bicep and aang’s arrow on his right shoulder. katara’s mark is the apex of the pattern- high up on his collarbone.
- zuko lifts his shirt to show sokka the crossed sword and boomerang he felt form on his right pectoral, above toph’s rings.
- sokka gasps at suki’s golden fan, framed under aang’s arrow on his other side. he calls suki over, and zuko is infinitely glad no one mentions how odd his marks are: not on arms or backs as most are. no, all on his torso, like a freak.
- suki regards him calmly, before turning he right wrist to show him his scar. “this doesn’t mean i forgive you for burning my village,” she says, but sits down with them and jokes about how all the boys were on her right side, and all the girls were on her left.
- zuko knows where katara’s mark will turn up. by know the pattern is crystal clear: the space on his midriff, just above azula’s mark and caught between toph’s rings and suki’s fan. it forms as soon as he decides that he will help her avenge her mother.
- after it is all done, katara regards him with cool eyes and pulls away from the hug. she twists to her right, showing the entirety of shoulder covered in his scar. he sees the symmetry it forms, sokka’s mark on the back of her neck, aang’s arrow on her forehead, toph’s rings around her neck, suki’s fan on her other shoulder.
- he wonders if they all felt as unbalanced as he did without the set of five, and he decides he doesn’t care. six people. six people in the world love him, and that is enough.
- he never worries about azula’s mark going gray because she burns it off him herself with her lightening. he does worry about the small remorse he feels looking at his scarred skin after the battle.
Other parts: 1: Sokka and Katara | 2: Aang | 3: Suki | 4: Toph | 5: Zuko
Extras: Ty Lee, Mai and Azula | Ozai
