Chapter Text
The sun shining on the whiteness of snow all around is too bright for my throbbing scarred eye to tolerate today. The blistering headache won’t go away, no matter what I try. Now, one day away from anywhere even mildly important on my quest to find the avatar, I’m trapped indoors in my tiny metal box of a room I’ve grown to call home, which is utterly ridiculous because I’m the prince of the fire nation, and my ‘home’ should be in my rightful place beside the fire lord on the throne. Instead, here I am. The crew outside are blaring Tsungi Horn music, and there is some guy, I believe his name was Takeshi singing along. His voice isn’t even that bad, but it’s grating on my nerves like everything else seems to these days.
I try to roll over so that my bad ear faces up, and maybe I can actually get a nap in before the sun starts fading into the dark blue hues of evening and I spend the rest of the night on deck, watching the ocean waves separate beneath the hull of the big rust bucket and roll away in bubbles that carry pieces of my soul out to ocean with it.
In a way, I relate a lot to the ocean. The water adapts, and the deeper you dig, the darker it gets. Maybe it’s being at sea for so long thats made me go crazy like this, but there is a strange comfort in watching the way the waves part and separate as my ship dances over them. In a way, it’s just like what I do, when things get tough, I leave. In a way, that’s what I did back home, in the Fire Nation. The water can be dangerous, too. It’s heavy in large doses, and it can be deadly when someone gets too close. In a way, we are the same. Yet in many ways, I am the same as no man.
In the end, I end up just rolling right back over. It’s unbearable, being unable to hear properly out of one ear. Immediately, I’m being assaulted by the crash of waves all around me and the crew having their fun on deck. I sigh and roll flat on my back, the feeling of drowning in overwhelming misery and self-pity is all-consuming. It eats its way into my heart and picks away all the good memories, leaving only a single-minded goal; capture the avatar and go home. And every time I spiral like this, it seems the only thing that soothes the ache inside me is a nice conversation over tea with my uncle.
Of course, sometimes, it only ends up brewing up that rage inside me more by talking to him. Sometimes the things he spews just feel like plain nonsense.
Now, with the distant crash of waves hitting the metal sides of the ship filling one ear, and the loud hymn on repeat in my other, I can only muster a heavy groan and an attempt to try and fight the anger boiling inside me. I don’t want to be mad today, I never really do. It always just seems to happen. It boils inside me until someone pushes just a little farther, and then I snap. It’s like a rubber band inside me. I can go days without getting truly upset, but each day that passes the anger just boils and boils, until eventually, it blows the kettle and rings out loud for the world to hear. And then they hate me. I know the crew hate me. They think I don’t know their names, or don’t pay attention when they’re telling Iroh about their families back in the fire nation, the families they had to leave behind because I was stupid enough to open my big dumb mouth. Then again, I guess it’s better that they’re still alive, though a full three years trapped in a metal tin can with me would probably make anyone wish they weren’t.
They don’t like me? Good. If they don’t like me, that means they won’t miss me when I’m not around to boss them around anymore.
I sigh and dig the palms of my hands into the sockets of my eyes, it sends a jolt of pain up through the tender flesh for just a moment, and when I pull them away again my vision is clouded by black spots that fade as I blink them away. I finally pull myself out of the thin roll-up mattress on the cold metal floor and hoist myself towards the sliding door. The floor is cold beneath my feet, and I know the warmth from the sun will have made it scorching hot out on deck
I’m not entirely sure which I would prefer. I pull my classic fire nation robe on over my trousers. Dark red, patched at the corner from where I had burned a hole through it on accident once. It’s one of my last memories from home, of course, in the three years it’s been since I was thirteen, I’ve grown a little. I’m taller, at least. Granted the robe was big back then, now it fits fine, and even if it didn’t, I didn’t exactly have the rights or the supplies to be picky about it.
And so, I drag myself out into the sunlit warmth of the deck. The crew stop their singing and celebrating when they see me. I can only imagine what I must look like now, my hair is probably to my ears at least and messed all up from my pathetic attempt at sleep. It was more rolling from one side to the other than sleeping. I don’t keep mirrors anywhere I can see them anymore, when we’d first received the ship, there were mirrors on nearly every hall. A cruel punishment to the boy who’d just had half his face burned to hell. I only broke three before Iroh suggested perhaps we should take them down before I seriously hurt myself.
Iroh gets to his feet, I discover in this time that he was not the one playing the horn for once, he was instead playing a game of Pai Sho with the helmsman.
“Uncle.” The word comes out harsher than intended, but the man only smiled that friendly way he always does, and placed a hand on my shoulder.
“Prince Zuko, how good of you to join us. How are you feeling, this heat must be getting to you.”
I resisted the urge to brush his hand off, and try and fight the scowl off my face. Neither end up succeeding, and so I brush him away and the scowl only deepens.
“I can’t sleep with all this noise. What are you idiots even celebrating?” My voice is stern and more agitated than I feel, but all my efforts to tone my emotions down only seems to make them worsen.
Uncle Iroh only smiled again and returned his hand to my back this time, guiding me to the table he has been playing Pai Sho at. He turns to look at me, saying.
“Sit, prince Zuko, care for some tea? It’s jasmine.” He says the flavor like it will make it sound any more appealing. It does. I found that the only type of leaf-water I can drink in large quantities is Jasmine, and I end up with uncle pouring me a cup of the steaming hot fluid, which I eagerly sip at.
“Uncle, when will we be out of this cold?” I say, already sensing the apparent softening in my rough grating voice. It tends to do that around uncle. The tea soothes my throat and the burn makes the heat of my bending pulse within my veins. Uncle smiled gently and took a sip of his own cup, frowning briefly at the unsatisfactory of the temperature and heating it with a small flame in his palms.
“Patience, my nephew. We will be out soon. Before the sun sets tomorrow, I reckon.”
And just like that, the scowl is back, spreading like the plague with no cure to be found.
I decide against sitting here a moment longer and watching my foolish uncle win Pai Sho against any member of my crew, and leave them to it, instead making my way to the upper portion of the ship and watching the ocean roll away in waves from the little slit of a window.
The hours pass in a slow tick, eventually, it gets too bright up here to last another moment, and I make my way back to my chamber. Flopping down on the chair to the desk in the corner, I take a quill and some ink and began jotting down notes. This has been my habit since my nation sent me away. Now, it feels rather silly, but it’s helped a lot with all the stress of being on my own in the unknown, and tracking down the avatar, which is beginning to feel like an impossible task, because the avatar must be dead by now, surely. It’s been 100 years that nobody’s seen him, he is either very old and no real threat anymore, or a pile of bones hidden somewhere far away. Maybe he’s back where he belongs, with the rest of his air-bending friend back in the southern air temple. Reading about them in history books always made me feel rather bad. The drawings were graphic, and horrible, so of course my sister adored them. I resent her for it.
I think of her sometimes, I doubt she thinks of me though. I may be older, but in her eyes I am weak and pathetic and lessor than her in every way. Which is funny, because she’s just a 14 year old girl. Or maybe it’s not funny, and it actually makes me want to cry every time I think about it. Everyone keeps telling me my father must feel the same way, but I refuse to believe it. He must want me back, I’m his son, his first born, I may not be as strong as Azula, or as cruel and manipulative, but I must mean something to him.
When I come home to him with the avatar, everything will be alright again. I’ll live in a real house, eat real food that I don’t even have to pay for, and supplies that never end, control over entire fleet, they’ll finally hang my portrait on the wall beside my fathers, and for once I’ll be ahead of my sister. I’ll have a father who may actually accept me, and a sister who might be a little less spiteful, and my honor. I’ll be back in my nation, and eventually, I’ll even have my throne. The people will love me, they’ll worship the ground I walk on. I’ll have all the power.
I’m jolted out of my thoughts by the sudden noise of a flare being set off into the air. I jump back out on deck, discovering my uncle has retired to his chambers after his Pai Sho match. I command a crew member to go fetch him, and tell him I found the avatar immediately, and the man rushes off hurriedly. I lean forward as far as I can, seeing in the horizon a tiny village, I recognize this as what must be left of the southern water tribe. I command someone to change course for the southern water tribe to catch the avatar, and off we go, back to regain my honor.