Stranger Tides || Twins AU || Closed.
“You will learn respect and suffering will be your teacher.”
The walls lit up and in a second, a horrific blaze ignited within the darkened room. Then there was the scream.
That awful, terrible scream.
Had one been blindfolded they could easily have mistaken it for the slaughtering of an animal. The sound of it alone was a life sentence of haunted nights and Mako felt sure that now he had heard it, he would never have another quiet moment again. He squeezed the hand of the man next to him tighter than he thought himself capable. The anguished crying and screaming that followed, accompanied by the crumpled figure of his nearest and dearest rolling on the floor, convulsing in agony, was a sight that (in the years that followed) he would always loathe to describe with words. It twisted up his stomach to the point he thought it might empty right there and then. Not any existing vocabulary in any existing tongue could have done it justice.
The only comfort he in that awful moment was that, despite his numbing grip, Uncle Iroh, without hesitating, squeezed back.
He looked frantically into the face of their Uncle, whose eyes were squeezed shut and averted entirely from the direction of that twisted stage, and that twisted man that commanded it.
Everything was going to change now.
Exile versus life at the palace had put the brothers up against some very black and white contrasts. To say it had been a culture shock would have been among the grossest of understatements and adjusting had been no easy feat for either party.
As time went by, turbulent journeys on the ship had become routine and Mako was now accustomed to being woken up by the raging of the sea, either having been thrown against the wall or out of bed entirely. But there was something even more unsettling that had been becoming increasingly common over time. Too many times now did Mako wake up in the small hours to be greeted by nothing at the opposite end of the room but an empty bed. There were nights when he could tell someone had passed hours upon tossing and turning in a restless but ultimately futile pursuit of sleep, while other times the sheets lay pristine with the last person to lay hands on them assuredly being the servant’s who made them up that morning. Tonight was the latter and while neither was ever a good sign, this was always the scenario that worried Mako the most. Not being able to sleep was one thing, but refusing it entirely was quite another. He and his brother’s interests may have been aligned and Mako may even have been almost as obsessed with achieving their goal as Zuko was. But Zuko’s sheer level of relentlessness scared him sometimes, as it did their Uncle. Although Iroh tended to be far more tactful about expressing it.
Quietly, Mako slipped from this bed chamber and headed for the deck below the helm. That was usually where he could find his brother, regardless of the hour. He would be brooding, training or both. And sure enough...
“Zuko...? Do you know what time it is?” He rubbed his eyes, groggy from sleep but promptly shivered when the wind hit him, “It's freezing out here. And you promised Uncle you would at least try to get some sleep tonight.” He stepped out from the doorway and into the open air.
“What are you doing out here?”
