Fire Lord Zuko’s Private Journal
I don’t know when the silence between us started feeling louder than a battlefield. There was no argument, no single moment where something broke cleanly in half. Just… small things. A night she didn’t come to bed. A morning where she left before I woke. Conversations that used to linger now ending too quickly, like we’re both pretending there isn’t more to say.
@stilettosout has always been quiet. I told myself that’s all this is, that I’m imagining it, that I’m letting old fears crawl back in where they don’t belong. Spirits know I’ve had enough of those. But this feels like she’s slipping through my fingers again. I keep thinking about the last time I lost her. Not just when she left—but before that, when I didn’t see it happening. When I was so wrapped up in my own anger and own need to prove myself, that I missed the way she was already drifting away. I told myself I wouldn’t make that mistake again.
So why does this feel so familiar?
She avoids my eyes sometimes. It’s subtle, most people wouldn’t notice, but I do. I always have. There’s something guarded there now, something I can’t reach. And I don’t know if it’s something I did… or something she thinks she has to face alone.
We haven’t… been intimate in a while. At first it was just timing; council sessions running late, patrol reports, ministers who never seem to sleep. I thought if I just pushed through it, carved out more time, things would settle back into place but now even when we do have time, there’s this invisible wall between us and I don’t know how to break it without making things worse. Part of me wonders if she prefers it this way. Mai has never needed much from anyone. Maybe… maybe I was wrong to think she needed me as much as I needed her or maybe I’ve just given her too many reasons to stop trying. I hate that my first instinct is to blame myself. I hate that it might not even be wrong.
I see the tense, careful way she carries herself lately, like she’s bracing for something. It makes me want to reach for her, to ask what’s wrong, to do something. But every time I try, the words die before they reach my mouth. I’m not even sure if she still wants me beside her. I don’t want to lose her again. But I can’t fight something I can’t see. I can’t fix something she won’t let me touch.
And maybe that’s the part that scares me most—that whatever is happening, she’s choosing to carry it alone… just like I used to. If that’s true, then I should understand it. I should know how to reach her through it. So why does it feel like I’m already too late?
