No Rest For The Wicked.

[princeinexile]

[This occurs between Episode 2x6 (The Blind Bandit) and 2x7 (Zuko Alone)]

There was no softness to the ground, not anywhere; Zuko was beginning to discover that the Earth Kingdom was very hard, which was not what he expected. When he thought earth he thought of soft black soil, rich and fertile, good for planting. What he found was scorched rock, barren and dry.

The Fire Nation, he realized dimly, had salted the Earth. It would be time before anything, anything at all, grew here again, in the hearts of the people or the soil they bent to their wills.

He thought of the scarred girl's garden -- what was her name? San? Song? -- and wondered as he grew drowsy, if he had left salt in his wake. Curled against his stolen mount, it's blanket beneath him, he realized he was too tired to care.

Exhaustion dragged him down past hunger and thirst, and he welcomed sleep.

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[alwaysroomforhope]

It's a Bar, at the end of the universe. People come and go, fading in and out; a mass of movement and colour and noise. There's a whole roomful of swirling shapes between where he's standing and the window that shows the death of everything.

In front of it, one figure's standing still, her back to him, bright hair and blue jeans and the echo of laughter in the air around.

[princeinexile]

He hates the window.

He always has; when he is at his most masochistic, the most upset, that's where he goes. That's where he fought with her, too, brooding on things he couldn't yet change, obstacles he could not yet surmount.

He hates it all the more for meeting her before it.

But he approaches anyway.

[alwaysroomforhope]

"I'm pretending to be alive," she says, and her eyes are fixed on the dying stars. "What are you doing, Prince Zuko? What are you doing here?"

[princeinexile]

He is taken aback by her frankeness; but then that's what attracts and repells him, there is nonsense but none to her, contradictions galore.

"I don't know," he replies, the words thick in his mouth, falling gracelessly from his lips. "I don't know what I'm doing anymore."

[alwaysroomforhope]

There are turtleducks swimming at their feet, circling, a mother and two babies, around and around and around. Although they're standing by the window still it's the lake at their feet, murky water rippling around her ankles and catching at the trailing ends of her hair when she crouches to hold her arms out to the turtleducks.

"The mother, she'll bite you if you hurt the babies," she says, and the turtleducks come right to her, beaks open. "You didn't hurt them, this time." She looks up, suddenly, eyes catching his. "Once you hurt them. Now you're kind. You're doing something right."

[princeinexile]

He kicks at the water; not his element [soothing; cool; enveloping; engulfing; suffocating; he's drowning] and he does not want to be near it, not anywhere near it.

"Shut up," he says, and there's a breadloaf and it's such an easy projectile; one padding turtleduckling abruptly bobs beneath the water with the impact.

"I hate them. And I hate you too."

[alwaysroomforhope]

She looks at him patiently, and the mother turtleduck snaps at her knees, fastens onto her calf, quacking angrily.

She didn't throw the loaf. He did.

"There's always hope," she says, and the ducks are gone, and the window too; now there's nothing between them and destruction, and the winds of dying stars catch his sleeves and her hair and whirl around them. "There's always another chance."

[princeinexile]

Sometimes, the wrong people are punished; that never meant that Zuko enjoyed seeing misjustice laid, the innocent flogged while the guilty skipped free.

Infuriating.

There is the feeling of exhaustion at this subject; the weariness that takes him makes him, old, bends him some. His hand are as gray and wrinkled as his uncle's, if not as broad as the master Firebender's palms.

"No," he says and his voice is reedy. "No there isn't. You can run out of anything. Air to breath, water to drink, food to eat, hope... for anything better. Sometimes you have to accept that there is no hope now, and commit yourself to your fate."

Destiny is a bitch; especially when fate played a card trick when you weren't looking. Now you see it [home; throne; respect; father's love] now you don't.

[alwaysroomforhope]

"No." She shakes her head, and steps closer, hands at her sides. "Only if you're weak. And that's not who you are, Zuko. You're someone who never stops fighting, even when it's hard."

She's bright and blonde and glowing and nothing like his mother. But she has faith in him, and it shows.

"There's always hope. You just need to find it."

[princeinexile]

She's not his mother; so when the words come from her, like sacrilige, like spit on his mother's epitaph, he strikes, open palm.

[alwaysroomforhope]

She flinches, and her cheek reddens, splayed fingers leaving their imprint in white and then scarlet across her skin; but she steps in again, closer still, eyes fixed on him.

"You're wallowing," she advises him. "It isn't pretty."

[princeinexile]

He brings his hand back, slides both up against his face; under the left, his scar feels thick and strange beneath his fingertips.

"I can't be pretty, stupid. Look at me. Look at me."

[alwaysroomforhope]

She looks, and her hands follow his, sliding lightly against his skin, cool and slow.

"That doesn't change anything." The words are distant, tired. "I have scars too. You think that makes you special? You think you deserve to be miserable, because you're scarred?"

Stars swirl around them, bursting in strange shapes against the black - a badly-drawn rhino, an ostrich-horse, a turtleduck, a mug of hot chocolate; beneath their feet, wooden floorboards, scorched and buckled, and from nowhere comes the barking of Xu Ning, anxious to protect him from a perceived threat.

"Everybody matters, Zuko. Even if you are a jerk."

[princeinexile]

He flinches from a caress like she does from a slap. He does not want to be touched, no, not--[there are knives somewhere; heavy chains]-- not that, please not that, he'll be cold again.

He draws back.

Xu Ning wouldn't bark if she wasn't dangerous. She's very dangerous. She makes him think that someone might-- value him, want him, care for him. She might light the spark, make him burn.

But she's not the only one.

Wells is there, the pervasive scent of loam and the wild. Zuko remembers the smell of him more then the sight of him, the underlying odor of wet dog [Don't you dare shake] musky and thick. "You always have place under my roof."

They all want a piece of him. But when he looks for his father, turns his face from them, there is nothing but the yawning empty black, stars perishing on the horizon.

"You're not my mother. He's not my father. I don't-- I don't have those things anymore. Stop-- trying to confuse me," he says, but it is with out emphasis.

"This changes nothing."

[alwaysroomforhope]

She lowers one hand, only one; the other stays outstretched, reaching towards him. She doesn't move closer, this time, but Wells and Xu Ning fall in beside her, and they just look at him, girl and man and dog, all silent now.

[princeinexile]

"It changes nothing."

Because nothing ever changes. It's the same old fucking fight, time and and time out. His hand are still ragged and old, gray and wrinkled and he feels so damn old.

"Stop offering me things I can't have."

[alwaysroomforhope]

"I can't give you back what you should have," she says, in a softer tone than any she's ever used to him. "I can only give you what's mine to give."

(This doesn't change anything. This changes everything. This changes nothing. The shape of the dream shifts, flickers, shapes whirling every which way; but her hand stays, outstretched arm pale against the darkness, and her eyes never leave his.)

[princeinexile]

"You're dead," he says with the same flat finality as he has ever said it. [There are knives again; the glinting is in his eyes, he cannot see past it] "The dead have nothing. In time, not even names."

Azulon. Liu-Ten. Ursa. Stephanie. What do they have, now, but words associated with their names? Grandfather, Cousin, Mother, That Damn Girl.

He turns, and faces into the void.

[alwaysroomforhope]

"Playing dead girl's games," she echoes, the words a sigh. "I still make people smile."

[princeinexile]

He does not smile; not that she can see it -- with his back to her, and his face forward.

He starts to walk [heaviness around his neck; ankles; wrists; chains are heavy; they slither when they drag; clink, clink] away, into the unknown.

He cannot move fast enough to ecape her voice. It keeps coming to him.

[alwaysroomforhope]

"Everyone matters."

"There's always hope. Always."

"You're wallowing in your own selfish misery."

"Plenty of places could use a guy like you."

"Why are you such a jerk?"

Words from everywhere at once, surrounding him, no source immediately identifiable in the gloom. It's a forest, thick and black and old, mud-sticky leaf litter he's trudging through, no gleams of sunlight piercing the murk; but perhaps, perhaps that was Xu Ning dodging behind a tree ahead, perhaps that was a flash of golden hair vanishing into the canopy of leaves, perhaps that's a wolf howling in the distance. He walks alone, but he can't leave them all behind.

[princeinexile]

He can't outrun them. But he can try.

[He wants the wolf; the freedom; primal; untamed; unmastered; four legs will run faster from his problems then two, fangs will fell his monsters faster then fire will burn them]

He lopes now, running lazily, easily, quietly -- until the forest gives way to a small cave, littered with the belongings of refugees, past and present.

A tin cup holds tea; his uncle sits, cradling the Blue Spirit mask in his palms.

Zuko stops running -- but only because he has lost his way. Was he not trying to leave this place? Was he not trying to find what he was supposed to be?

[alwaysroomforhope]

"What are you doing?" she echoes, still just a voice, hidden in the forest. "You don't even know. You don't know anything..."

[princeinexile]

Maybe he doesn't. Maybe he really is a fool. He can consider that a legitmate option.

But he knows this isn't real.

It's very simple; the thing that rattles him hardest comes from the one he loves best: Iroh never knew about the Blue Spirit, let alone dare to put the mask over his own face.

He jerked awake; the ostrich-horse was breathing against his ear, trying to eat his hair again.

Goddamn animal.

Goddamn dreams.

He rolls over, buring his face aganst the beast's ribs and swallows down queasiness. He has nothing to throw up, after all.

That would imply he eats.