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Zuko feels their eyes long after the village is out of sight.
He feels the angry weight of them as he half-slides, half-falls off the ostrich horse’s back and staggers to a pitiful patch of scrubby brush and scraggly trees a short way off the path. The village is gone, and its people with it, but their glares linger, making the hair on the back of his neck stand on end and his shoulder blades tingle.
He feels Lee’s eyes in particular as he slumps at the base of a brittle, half-dead tree, cradling his ribs. The boy’s words echo in his mind in a loop, trampling over themselves as they repeat, again and again: I hate you!
Zuko knows the hatred of a random Earth Kingdom peasant, a child, should not bother him. Banished or not, he is still a prince. He is the son of Firelord Ozai and Lady Ursa. And he is heir to the throne. Once he captures the Avatar, outshines Azula, and returns home triumphant, Father will retract the bounty. He will welcome his son back with open arms, restore his honor and his dignity and his place at his right hand.
And yet, Zuko is haunted by Lee’s glare, and his words; he can’t help but remember the awe in the boy’s eyes just the night before as Zuko taught him how to use his swords. The way Lee had inserted himself into Zuko’s life, making himself a part of the prince’s journey, whether Zuko wanted him there or not (Zuko didn’t). Zuko hadn’t had anyone look up to him like that since … well, probably since he was five and Azula was three and he’d helped her build an elaborate sand castle on Ember Island. After that, her own powers had started to grow and strengthen, and their father had taken on her training personally, and she had never looked at her older brother with admiration again.
“I don’t care if he hates me,” Zuko whispers. He doesn’t acknowledge that he sees his sister’s face alongside Lee’s. He takes a deep breath, trying to shake the unwelcome memories of the past couple of days. Agony slices through his ribs, and he coughs, breathless from pain. As much as he doesn’t want to move, he recognizes this brand of pain. Along with a host of nasty cuts and bruises, Zuko had fractured two ribs when the pirates had blown up his boat before the North Pole. That earthbender must have hit him harder than he’d realized.
Zuko struggles to sit up. The ostrich horse watches him with baleful eyes and Zuko snaps, “Mind your own business!” The animal snorts and pecks at the ground. With great difficulty, the prince manages to navigate his upper body out of his tunic, gritting his teeth as each movement sends ribbons of fire through his torso. He glances down, grimacing at the mottled red and blue littering his abdomen. Though the bruises have just begun forming, he can tell they are deep and will grow much worse before they heal.
He leans over to grab his bag from where he dropped it near the ostrich horse’s feet, nearly passing out from the pain even that small movement causes. He sits still for a few seconds, breathing short, shallow breaths and waiting for the white spots to disappear from his vision. Even as it begins its evening descent, the desert sun bears down on him, the heat caressing his bare shoulders and seeping into his skin. He draws on that heat, feels it curl up somewhere near his heart like a crococat. It doesn’t take away his pain, but it grants him strength, and he starts rifling through the bag for what he needs.
Usually Uncle is the one who dresses the wounds when one of them is injured. One of the benefits of them traveling together, Zuko supposes. Uncle patched him up after Zhao had set the pirates on him, binding his broken ribs, cleaning his cuts with salve and applying healing poultices to his bruises. Of course, he’d given Zuko a lot of tea. It was only because of Uncle that Zuko had been well enough to infiltrate Zhao’s crew and sneak into the North Pole a few days later.
As Zuko paws around for the roll of bandages, he feels his uncle’s eyes on him, too. The image of Uncle’s expression as Zuko left him behind floods his mind, and he pushes it away. Uncle’s hurt had followed Zuko long after the two had parted ways. Sometimes at night, when all was quiet and he was trying to sleep beneath the stars or, on good nights, the slim shelter he’d managed to cook up, his uncle’s words from before the North Pole would worm into his thoughts and sneak into his dreams: Ever since I lost my son, I’ve come to think of you as my own.
Zuko finally finds the roll of bandages and his hand emerges from the bag, triumphant. He glares at the white cloth as if it is what wounded him in the first place. Zuko’s never had a hand for healing. He’s never wrapped broken ribs before, and certainly not his own. He can do this, though. He doesn’t need Uncle (something inside of him deeper than the pain twinges at this thought, he locks it away before it can fester).
The first thing he needs to do, he decides, is to try to figure out what ribs are fractured, if any. He has a pretty good feeling that there’s some real damage beneath the rapidly bruising skin. He shudders as he remembers the boulders that made it past his defenses. Nausea brews in his gut as he recalls the column of earth slamming into his ribs. He’d blacked out from the pain, had woken up seconds later, nearly drowning in memories, and…
He had lost control.
Stupid.
Uncle always told him he was too reckless. Too brash. Too quick to anger. He probably would have been disappointed in the way that Zuko let his rage control him today.
Zuko shakes his head – these distractions are getting him nowhere. Focusing on the task at hand, he steels himself for what he’s about to do. His heart pounds in fearful anticipation as he remembers when Uncle did this, after the pirate attack. One by one, he’d felt Zuko’s ribs, pressing the bruises, relentlessly feeling for any give. The pain had been unbearable on the bruises themselves, before he’d found the broken ribs. Zuko had almost passed out when Uncle hit the fractured ones and the bones had shifted beneath Uncle’s unyielding fingers.
Zuko doesn’t want to feel that kind of agony again. The only thing worse had been when his father…
Furiously, Zuko shoves that memory into the depths of his mind. He’s been wading in a pool of memories all day. Normally, he’s good at parsing out all of the bad ones into separate boxes and tucking them away, out of sight, but something about being hungry, thirsty, and exhausted from days of travel through a barren wasteland has weakened his resolve.
He can’t stop seeing their faces. He can’t stop feeling their eyes.
“Stop it,” he orders himself out loud, and starts feeling along his battered ribs for any indication of a break. The first few are painful, but he doesn’t feel anything shift or grind.
And then he does.
The fourth rib down on his left side flares with white-hot agony, and something shifts beneath his searching fingers. Zuko’s ears ring, his vision narrowing to a pinprick of fading sunlight. He grinds his teeth, takes the deepest breath he can muster, then presses on, ignoring the ringing, pretending that his hands aren’t trembling and tingling. Smoke coils from his nostrils. He goes to the next rib.
He screams . A rough, hoarse yell, muffled as he jams his hand over his mouth. His breaths come in short, desperate bursts and the pain is so acute he thinks he might be dying. He waits it out, black spots prickling the world around him, the ringing in his ears more solid and real than the rest of the world that’s fading away…
He waits for the dizziness to fade. It does, somewhat, but nausea takes its place, and he swallows heavily, defying his lunch – his wonderful, home-cooked, desperately needed lunch – to betray him. It doesn’t, and he moves on.
In the end, he has five broken ribs. After each discovery, he has to sit and breathe and wait for his vision to clear just enough to see what he’s doing. By the time he’s finished assessing the damage, his head feels as if it is floating above his shoulders, the pain of his broken ribs squeezing the very air out of his lungs. Zuko’s heart thunders against his battered ribs, his vision whites out, then fades, and the ringing crescendos into a muffled chorus.
Zuko’s eyes slip shut but he forces them back open, knowing what he’s going to see if he gives into the darkness. Who he’s going to see.
Mother .
Those painful memories that he had so carefully put away escaped the day before, and he’s been trying to wrangle them back into their holes ever since. It’s not that he doesn’t want to think about her every day, but he can’t. It hurts too much. She’s too much of a distraction. He let her out this time, and look what had happened! He’d become weak, lost focus on his mission. He’d let some peasant Earth Kingdom family past his defenses, if only barely, and he’d fought a fight that wasn’t his. He’d risked everything . Not that he had much to lose anymore.
He’d saved the boy and they’d spat in his face.
No, he can’t think about Mom. She holds the key to the floodgates that let everything else through the cracks in his armor.
The darkness comes in waves, pushing at the edges of his consciousness, testing his barriers. With each new wave, he fights harder to stay awake, but he feels himself fading.
Finally, the world comes into more focus. It’s still fuzzy around the edges, but the ringing abates so that he can hear other things too – the ostrich horse as it scrapes at the ground with its talons. The call of a bird high above. Zuko bares his teeth in triumph. His mom’s words seep back into his mind – That’s who you are, Zuko. Someone who keeps fighting even though it’s hard. And his own words, spoken to an unconscious Avatar the one time he’d actually had a tentative grasp on victory: I’ve always had to struggle and fight to survive, but it’s made me strong. It’s made me who I am.
When his hands have stilled enough that he can unwind the bandages, he gets to work. He can barely articulate his fingers, clumsy with pain, but he manages, then slowly begins the frustrating process of binding his broken ribs. After three attempts (in the last of which he almost set the bandages on fire), Zuko finally manages to wrap the bandages tightly but messily around his chest once, twice, three times. It gets easier as he goes. He grimaces as he feels his ribs once more, not pushing, just feeling to make sure the edges of the bones are aligned so that they heal properly.
It takes far longer than Uncle would have, but at last Zuko leans back against the tree, sweat pouring down his face and chest, soaking into the bandages. He does feel more secure, though the pain hasn’t lessened much. With difficulty, he pulls his tunic back on and ties it loosely.
It’s getting dark in earnest now. The ostrich horse must have gotten bored of watching his struggle to treat his wounds, so it’s settled in for sleep, one wing tucked over its head and legs hidden beneath its bulk. Zuko decides to leave the saddle on tonight. The animal seems content as it is, and he’s not sure he can physically move any more tonight. He’s exposed this close to the road, he knows, but he is too weak, dizzy, and in far too much pain to find another spot to sleep.
He’ll just go without a fire, to avoid attracting any unwanted attention. He has his firebending if he needs to see or if he needs warmth. The ostrich horse will be fine, with all that plumage to keep it comfortable in the night air.
When Zuko puts the roll of bandages back into the bag, his fingers brush against a small package. He pulls it out, stomach grumbling in desire, as he realizes he still has the food Lee’s mom gave him. Before she decided that she hated him.
Zuko’s stomach twists itself into even more knots, and he shoves the tantalizing meal into the bottom of the pack. He’s not hungry anymore. His gut gurgles in protest, but he ignores it.
He can’t help it – as he settles in for a long, painful night, he thinks about the village. Lee’s face swims into his mind’s eye, then his parents’. He wonders if Lee’s father will be able to save his eldest son from the front lines. Flames spark at the end of Zuko’s fingers at the thought. The Earth Kingdom is our enemy, he tells himself firmly. What our armies do to those who are captured is their business. It’s just the way war works. But he can’t help but remember another group of soldiers sent to the front lines, these men new and untrained Fire Nation men. And what, Zuko can’t help but wonder, separates these two groups of loyal fighters sent to the front of the battlefield to be slaughtered? Their homeland? Ideologies? Is Lee’s older brother any less valuable than the men a young, foolish Zuko had spoken out for three years ago?
Zuko wraps his arms around his torso, shivering, though it isn’t cold yet. No, he orders himself. Don’t think about that .
He remembers the old man from the village, the one who had cheered him on so heartily before he knew Zuko’s true identity – Give’im a left! A left! He’s got a left sword, don’t he? Despite himself, in the middle of a fight for his life, Zuko had almost smirked at the man’s enthusiasm. The whole village had been watching. They’d been cheering him on.
Zuko hasn’t had anyone cheer for him like this since Mom disappeared.
Zuko thinks about Uncle, and his heart twists painfully. Even in exile, my nephew is more honorable than you, Zhao. Perhaps he’s had one person on his side since then.
What sticks in Zuko’s mind the most isn’t the people cheering him on. It isn’t even the pain of the soldier’s rocks striking him again and again, wearing him down. It’s the way everyone changed as soon as he revealed who he was. Zuko’s fingernails dig into his palms at the memory.
Not another step closer!
No! Go away! I hate you!
Liar! I’ve heard of you. You’re not a prince. You’re an outcast! His own father burned and banished him!
Zuko’s left hand reaches up as if of its own accord. He feels the wrinkled, leathery ridges of his scar, feels once more the screaming agony of flames meeting flesh, of a father’s touch, once something he’d craved – for his father to wipe away his tears or rest a strong, safe hand on his shoulder – bubbling his flesh, melting him, disfiguring him. He’s gotten so many openly curious, pitying looks during his exile from people who don’t know him, could never understand him, would hate him if they knew. No one has asked him directly about the scar, because that would be rude . Zuko wonders if it’s any less rude to openly stare.
But this old man – he knew. How did he know ? Zuko doubts that his own crew, before Zhao had stolen them and everything had fallen apart, had even known the true reason behind this mark. There had been people gathered for the Agni Kai, certainly – but only the elite, the generals. His family.
But not his mother.
Thank Agni Mom hadn’t been there to see that. That was the only solace he could find in her disappearance.
Fury replaces the desperation, bubbles within him. How dare that Earth Kingdom peasant, that stupid old man, speak about Zuko’s banishment this way? So callously, when he doesn’t know the first thing about what Zuko’s been through. He doesn’t know how hard Zuko has fought to gain back that honor. He doesn’t understand what it feels like to know you’ve failed and to struggle and fight and claw for a chance at redemption. That old goat gorilla has probably never had to fight for his father’s love or acceptance.
The rage builds, an inferno that causes smoke to curl from his feet, his fingertips, his nose. That old man was ungrateful. The whole village was ungrateful. Why did his identity matter when he’d just saved Lee, saved them all , from the men who had been terrorizing them for so long? Hadn’t Zuko fought for them? Hadn’t he come back to rescue the boy?
The second he’d revealed his true identity, he’d become the enemy.
Zuko hates them. Every single one of them.
He feels Lee’s eyes on him again, first bright and curious, then angry and sullen.
Zuko reaches into his bag and draws out the pearl-blade dagger. Never give up without a fight .
“I’m trying,” he promises it, his voice weak and strained.
The dagger doesn’t respond, but all of Zuko’s anger drains out of him as quickly as it rose up. He re-sheaths the dagger and returns it delicately to his pack, then closes his eyes and rests the back of his swimming, aching head against the brittle tree.
He is tired, and every breath hurts. He’s hungry, but he cannot eat. He can still feel their eyes, all of them – the villagers’, his father’s, his uncles, Lee’s… his mother’s.
He hears her voice then, in his mind, but it feels so real – Is it really the villagers that you hate, Zuko? Or is it someone else?
Zuko scoffs, squeezing his eyes tighter even as his fingertips find his scar once more. He hates its roughness. He hates how he has no feeling in the center of the burn mark, even when he presses as hard as he can. The flames damaged the nerves, the physician who had attended him had said. Who else would I hate? Father? Never! Myself?
He doesn’t linger on this line of thought. He can feel consciousness waning, but this time it is sleep that calls on him, not some greater, deeper darkness. He knows that their eyes will follow him into his sleep, but he doesn’t care anymore.
He’s too tired to care.
The pain follows him along with their eyes, but still, he slips into a fitful sleep. He dreams of his mother, and he dreams of his uncle. He dreams of Lee and his parents, and of Lee’s older brother.
He dreams of home.
He wakes in the darkest hours of the night, tears streaming down the right side of his face, and since there’s no one around to see his weakness, Zuko doesn’t brush them away. He curls into himself as far as his ribs will allow, and he cries. Tonight, he isn’t a prince. He isn’t a soldier. He’s sixteen years old, he’s injured, he’s hungry, he’s alone, and he wants his mother.
When morning arrives, he gently places his mother back into her box and pushes her into the darkness. He scrubs the tear tracks off his face with a few precious drops from his water skin and staggers to his feet, teeth gritted against the pain that’s only grown worse since last night. He eats the last of the food he was given, waters and feeds the ostrich horse with what little seed he has left, and, hurting too much to even think of mounting the beast, he takes its reins and leads it, hunched over and hobbling like an old man, away from the village.
Away from their eyes, but they follow him anyway.