attackfish ([identity profile] attackfish.livejournal.com) wrote in [personal profile] attackfish 2010-10-17 03:40 am (UTC)

Iroh dies in s2: Crossroads of Destiny, Pt 1/? (Damn it!)

Katara was in the house, no one else. When they were all there, it was different. When they were all there, Zuko didn’t have to talk to anyone. No one prodded at him, or tried to get him to talk. They could talk to each other and leave him alone. Only Toph wouldn’t let him hide, and he couldn’t do anything about that. But he couldn’t be alone in that house with Katara.

His feet wound their way through the garden lined pathways without his direction. It was easier just to wander aimlessly than to find somewhere to go, or to go back to the guest house, or to face anyone.

The red palace wall rose beside him, and he looked at it, startled. At least he knew where he was now. He might as well go in. It wasn’t like he had anything better to do.

It was... easier talking to Kuei. Kuei never looked at him with that horrible look the Avatar and his friends had every time they looked at him, the look that said they kept seeing him chasing them. Kuei had a hard time remembering he was supposed to be an enemy at all.

The guards didn’t even look at him as he slipped through a side door. Deep inside, he wondered if they were laughing at him. It didn’t matter. The hallways were empty, except for a handful of servants. The servants in the Earth King’s palace were bizarre, inhuman, like the Joo Dees, or the clockwork soldier he had seen in a play with his mother, and Zuko tried not to look at them as he shuffled past them.

His fingers slid on the door handle. He gripped it tighter and pulled it down, and it opened out to him. The Earth King wasn’t even there. Figured. There were just three Kyoshi Warriors kneeling on the ground. They weren’t like Kuei. They would have that look in their eyes when they looked up.

He moved back across the threshold and started to close the door, but one of the girls got to her feet and looked straight at him. “Oh no, Zuzu. Stay.”

Zuko’s hands fell off the door handle, and he fled down the hall. He heard his sister’s voice behind him, and Ty Lee’s high trill following just behind him, but he didn’t turn around to look. He couldn’t slow down. If he could just get outside, he’d be safe; whatever Azula was doing, she wouldn’t risk getting caught before she had to be, and...

And that was the wrong way. Azula rounded the corner behind him and backed him against the dead end. Zuko spun around, away from the wall. “Okay Azula,” he shouted, hands filling with fire. “Fight me.”

Zuko blocked the fire that sped for his face. It filled his eyes until he couldn’t see anything else, not even the knives that caught his clothes and dragged him into the wall behind him. The fire died. Azula stepped forward through where it had been. “No thanks.” She folded her arms and glanced back at her companions. “Ty Lee.”

Zuko snarled, snorting fire out of his nostrils. Ty Lee leapt forward, hands behind her back until she balanced on her toes in front of him. Her fingers jabbed hard into his arms, legs, and stomach and he slumped against the knives, breathing hard against the numbing stillness sunk deep into his body. As Mai came to pull her knives out of the wall, Zuko closed his eyes.

~*~

“You’ve got company.”

Zuko looked up as the rock wall opened, and Katara rolled down. He unfolded himself as she yelped, bouncing off the stones. “Katara!”

Katara put her hand to her head, over a large, purpling bruise. “What happened?”

“I walked right in on them,” he told her dully. “They were right there, in the throne room.”

“I was in the apartment...” She squinted her eyes and grimaced. “I need water.”

When he tried to give her his hand, she swatted it away, stumbling to a slimy puddle in the middle of the cave. “Great,” Zuko mumbled, sliding back to the floor and knocking his elbow into the cave wall. “How are we going to get out of here?”

“We?” she shot back. The water in her hand blazed blue as the bruise faded away. “Why did they even put you down here anyway? Why aren’t you upstairs getting cozy with your sister and her friends?”

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