@imiqq || cont. from here.
The atmosphere went out of its way to thicken when it was just the TWO of them.
Of course, Zuko had never blamed her for her CALLOUSNESS, nor felt he deserved anything but that glacial leer at every opportunity: those eyes like frigid stakes of ICE pricking wherever they touched. As much as he desired acceptance—repentance festering in wounds that hadn’t yet healed—part of him... actually RELIED on Katara’s behavior. Part of him needed it, whether that was to PUNISH himself or remind him that he couldn’t slack off, couldn’t slip up, couldn’t give more reasons to be viewed as a monster bred on Fire Nation soil.
He’d spend every day for the rest of his life ATONING for his blind and rash actions of his past—if he had to. If that’s what was NECESSARY: for the people he hurt, for a nation he loved... for himself, which he had only just begun recognizing was IMPORTANT. People like Katara—people who had suffered all the more under the cruelty of a nation infected by their tyrannical leader’s influence—proved how much that poison spread to everything with which it came in contact.
She herself was RUTHLESS, now. Because she had to be. Because she had been given no other choice, at the time, when it came to SURVIVAL, but—
At one point, she had been just a kid. Just a little girl who cared a WHOLE LOT.
He knew—somewhere—that kid still existed.
“Great,” Zuko acknowledged, conveniently ignoring her latter QUESTION into his intentions to focus on the rest of what had been said. “Long ago, you decided your purpose in life was to fight the Fire Nation, cut down any in your path, and eventually aid the Avatar in ending a war that shouldn’t have even started at all.” His attention tarried on the idle kick of her feet, and he shuffled his cross-legged position to tuck his hands into his lap. “But that’s right now. That’s your DRIVE because it can still be your drive; what happens when the war’s over?”
Only then did his molten stare graze off to the side, meeting a STONY profile. “What then? What do you plan on doing with all that ANGER?”
