attackfish

Disclaimer: If I owned Avatar: the Last Airbender, it would never earn a TV Y-7 rating.

Summary: Zuko is now Firelord. That means confronting his father again after three long years.

Author's Note: Written for ultrasanaposts on Tumblr. More information for this AU can be found on my Tumblr at the tag: "#Half Feral Firebender verse": [Link].

Warnings: dark themes

Set in the same universe as Brave Soldier Boy.

On the Outside

He was still in his corronation robes when he went to his father’s cell in the the prison tower. In fact he had only slipped away from the celebration, possibly because he was crazy. Partygoers still thronged the streets, but the tumultous roar in the city below didn’t penetrate the tower’s chill gloom. It added to the feeling of strangeness that had settled over him as soon as the crown had touched his head, that he was now somewhere apart, the way the prison was apart, separated from the world.

He waved his guards away at the door to the cell and stepped inside. A shadowed figure sat hunched on the floor. “So the fake prodigal son, uh, ‘returns.’”

“There isn’t anybody here for you to pretend for,” Zuko told him. “We both know who I am.”

His father sneered, teeth glinting in the darkness. “The only pretender I see here is you.”

“I’m here because I want you to tell me something.” Zuko swallowed. “My mother. She disappeared just before you were crowned. What happened to her?”

“How should I know?” he spat. “I don’t even know who your mother is.”

Zuko ignored him. “Did you have her killed? I always thought you did. Azula always thought you did. She tried to act like she thought it was funny. You tried to have me killed and I was your own child. Why not do the same to your wife?”

At the mention of Azula, Zuko saw his father’s eyes widen, if only fractionally.

“You almost got what you wanted,” Zuko pressed viciously. “I was lucky to survive. The same way I was lucky to be born.”

He fought hard not to close his eyes, not to remember the press of the bodies all around him, the way there was too little air and all of it putrid. He had seen so many things since then, things that should haunt his dreams, but what woke him up sweating and shaking was crawling out of the pile of bodies in the silence after the battle, and knowing, inescapably that his father really wanted him dead.
He fought hard not to close his eyes because he needed to see his father’s face instead. He needed to keep his eyes open as his father’s expression faltered, and then as his sneer redoubled. “Am I supposed to say I’m sorry?”

“I don’t think you’ve ever been sorry for anything in your entire life.” And that was everything really. His father had never been sorry and never would be. He was just the same as he had always been, and Zuko was just tired, and disgusted, and there was only a very small piece of him left to mourn something that he had never had to start with. “The only thing I want to hear from you is what you did to my mother.”

His father laughed. “No.”

“You don’t have to tell me today,” Zuko replied simply. “You have all the time in the world.”

Brave Soldier Boy