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the next time i see zuko he sits tied up in a ragged red prison uniform inside a cell with his head down. the uniform hangs off of him, but he’s still way less skinny than he was the last time i saw him. somehow i doubt it has to do with the amount of food. so i wonder. and i always wonder, but it always stops there. because that’s not my place.
“you could’ve at least looked me in the eye when you ripped out my heart,” i tell him, and it comes off with as much heat as i can manage. i feel nothing. i feel nothing.
we talk, and this seems to be the only real talk we’ve had in ages. the only real talk we’ve ever had. i ask him, “why are you here?” and i think of it again, how bad of a liar that he is.
“i’m with sokka,” he tells me, quietly, enough that the guards don’t hear, and i think about it, and i say nothing. i wonder why he’s telling me the truth. i ask him, and he says he trusts me, still. as an afterthought, he says, “not like that, though.”
i don’t know if he means he doesn’t trust me ‘like that’ because he isn’t attracted to me and he never was and he never will be, or if he means that he is not here with whoever sokka is ‘like that’, because he could potentially be attracted to him but he is not with him because of that, not at the moment, i suppose. because zuko is like that. i know, i always knew.
“i knew, you know?” i say. zuko knows. he tells me so. i feel nothing.
“i know, too.”
“know what?”
zuko looks awfully worn out, yet alive. more alive than he was at the palace. i dare say, even more than he was before he was banished. and there it is, something that eats me from the inside out since i have memory. the wanting. not in envy, or even ambition, or admiration. just wanting. it is lady mai, proper and poised, who should never want anything but what she’s given, but i want. i always have. i just don’t know exactly what i want.
i feel nothing. “you have no idea what you’re talking about,” i say, dismissive. “you’ve clearly gone insane. you’ve comitted treason, you’ve ruined your chance to inherit the throne, again. you know nothing.”
“i used to,” zuko tells me. there’s a certain air to him, of desperation. i don’t think it’s for me, it could be for this sokka guy, or it could be for anything else. maybe for something this sokka guy... represents, rather than is. or whatever. it’s not as if i know anything about zuko’s kind, for better or for worse. zuko is still so very uncharacteristically silent when he says, “but i think i’m better now. i think i’m good.”
“you’re out of your mind,” i repeat, and i don’t really believe myself. i feel nothing, nothing, nothing.
“i think i’m happier. no, not happier. i think i’m free. more than i was before.”
“why are you telling me this?” i say, and i notice my voice shakes a little and i get mad at myself for it. what would mother say.
(and i remember that time i had a fight with zuko, one of our last ones. i sat with ty lee after having untangled her braid and she was brushing mine with a certain care i didn’t expect of her.
it wasn’t so much the feelings from the argument as the memory of the feelings from the argument, because i don’t remember the argument but i do remember it reminded me a lot of conversations i had with my mother and my father and so i had raised a pointed and sharp eyebrow at the emotional disaster angry dog of a boy i had for a boyfriend and i left the room without a word.
“are you feeling suicidal yet?” ty lee asked in that earnestly mean way she only was to me because she only trusted me not to try to kill her for it.
i took the hair brush from ty lee’s hands in a less than delicate way and not in a boyish or aggressive way but in a desperate, trembling way. collapsing. tom-tom was getting angrier every day. i was getting quieter. i wanted to kiss ty lee really badly and that was really, really bad.
i said to ty lee, not even close to being numb, “i feel nothing.”
i let the hair brush fall. it made a flat sound as it collided with the floor of azula’s bedroom.
“if you feel nothing,” ty lee said to me, “then why are you shaking?”)
and in one moment, something outside seems to start. lots of footsteps, more than there should be at a prison, the unbearable heat roaming the atmosphere faster, in a way. as if it knew what’s coming. i wonder what’s coming.
zuko looks at me decisively, as if he, too, was having a revelation. “because when we win, i’m freeing you, too.”
then a useless scrawny guard arrives with orders to protect me. i tell him to suck it, and zuko laughs like the child he is. he makes an erratic oddly smart move and traps me and the guard inside the cell and he looks me in the eye. i can always count on him to take things literally.
i’m shaking. and when a guard comes to my rescue, i’m shaking, and i’m shaking, and i’m wanting. i wonder where ty lee is. i wonder if zuko has gone to meet that sokka guy. i’m shaking.
so i make a choice.