![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
200 word drabble: Wake
Oct. 14th, 2011 11:30 amWritten for![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-community.gif)
avatar_500 prompt #37, Feel.
Summary: There are nights when Zuko can feel what he should have done pulsing inside him.
Author's note: This is part of that mirrorverse I've been playing with in the commentfic memes, with eldritch abomination Aang. If you want to read it, click on the "meme" tag and all of the parts are conveniently linked in the body of the commentfic meme entries. There are also three drabbles, Fight and Flight, Stay his Hand, and Spirals Within Spirals
Wake
Sometimes, when he's lying next to Mai, he remembers the nights his father used to tuck him into bed with Azula, when Azula was too afraid to spend the night alone. He hadn't been the great coalition builder, world leader, great man, yet, just... their dad, just the Firelord's second son, never meant to rule.
Zuko feels the press of the night around him, and watches Mai frowning in her sleep, and his father's stories run through his mind. The next day, he gets a letter from Aang, or he send word that he will visit. Or he shows up unannounced. But there in the dark, with Mai asleep, the Avatar's wisdom is cold. What sounds like "using your resources to their fullest potential" when Aang says it starts to sound more like destruction. What sounds like "letting to weak fall by the way for a stronger tomorrow" sounds more like callus cruelty. What sounds like "hope" sounds more like despair.
It's those times that he looks over at her, and it's like he can see the tendrils of darkness coiled around her and closing in over her head, and he's the one who brought them. He's the one who...
avatar_500 prompt #37, Feel.Summary: There are nights when Zuko can feel what he should have done pulsing inside him.
Author's note: This is part of that mirrorverse I've been playing with in the commentfic memes, with eldritch abomination Aang. If you want to read it, click on the "meme" tag and all of the parts are conveniently linked in the body of the commentfic meme entries. There are also three drabbles, Fight and Flight, Stay his Hand, and Spirals Within Spirals
Wake
Sometimes, when he's lying next to Mai, he remembers the nights his father used to tuck him into bed with Azula, when Azula was too afraid to spend the night alone. He hadn't been the great coalition builder, world leader, great man, yet, just... their dad, just the Firelord's second son, never meant to rule.
Zuko feels the press of the night around him, and watches Mai frowning in her sleep, and his father's stories run through his mind. The next day, he gets a letter from Aang, or he send word that he will visit. Or he shows up unannounced. But there in the dark, with Mai asleep, the Avatar's wisdom is cold. What sounds like "using your resources to their fullest potential" when Aang says it starts to sound more like destruction. What sounds like "letting to weak fall by the way for a stronger tomorrow" sounds more like callus cruelty. What sounds like "hope" sounds more like despair.
It's those times that he looks over at her, and it's like he can see the tendrils of darkness coiled around her and closing in over her head, and he's the one who brought them. He's the one who...
