ᴺᴼᵂ ᴾᴸᴬʸᴵᴺᴳ -> part three of things left unsaid
->warnings / chapter summary: MNDI (finally) contains oral sex (fem receiving), don’t get ur hopes up too high it’s not w zuko…yet, light grinding i guess(?), this still loosely follows the plot of the movie but everything is over a series of days rather than just one, this is more centered around taga x reader but Zuko is there being tsundere still so yeah! this was like lightly proofread but lmk if smth doesnt make sense!
-> read note at the end for clarifications!
“Then you know I didn’t get to finish.”
The same words tormented your mind all night long. What more was there to say?
You lay there in the dark, staring at the ceiling of the airship, listening to the steady hum of it beneath you and the distant sound of the ocean, turning those eight words over and over like they'd mean something different the tenth time you thought it over.
You still didn't know what he'd been about to say twelve years ago. And at this point, you weren’t even sure if knowing would change anything. And somehow that was worse than the twelve years of assuming, because at least then you’d had something solid to be angry about.
Now, you just had a question with no answer, a headache, and about 3 hours of sleep.
You push yourself up from the surprisingly comfortable and spacious cot, rolling your neck until you finally feel that satisfying crack you were yearning for.
Thinking about this any longer is a waste.
Doesn’t mean I’ll stop, though.
You finally gather yourself enough to get ready for the day, fixing yourself to look at least somewhat decent before stepping out onto the dock.
It’s much quieter than it had been yesterday. The wind had decided to slow down, shifting into a much calmer rhythm.
You hear indistinctive chatter and mumbling behind you, the voices of everyone else who are still inside.
You inch towards the railing, it’s not the same place as last night, it’s on the opposite side and lets the cold air refresh you in ways your 3 hours of sleep couldn’t. A cool gust of wind gently grazes your face, you take a few deep breaths, taking it all in. As you’re becoming more entranced in the moment, you hear someone approaching. Him approaching.
Zuko comes to stand a few feet down the railing. He’s not beside you, but not too far either. He’s just there. Almost as if he'd decided this particular stretch of railing had nothing to do with you and he just happened to end up here.
Neither of you say anything.
The sky lightens incrementally ahead.
"You’re up early." he finally says.
"Couldn’t sleep," you mumble.
There’s another long, uncomfortable lull of silence between the two of you.
You glance at him from the corner of your eye. He looks exactly as fine as you feel, which is to say - not very. Dark shadows rest under his eyes that weren't there yesterday, and his jaw has that particular set to it that means he's been turning something over all night too.
Your eyes refuse to meet his, continuously tracing the outline of the horizon.
"About last night-" he starts.
"I'd rather not," you say.
Another beat of silence passes.
"I was just going to say-"
"Zuko." You turn to look at him then, fully, and something in your expression must land because he stops. "I know what you were going to say. Or- maybe I don’t. Either way, I don't want to do this right now. I’m not going to-"
"Please, let me finish. You didn’t let me finish then, I just wanna explain it now."
The quiet firmness of it stops you.
You close your mouth, looking at him expectantly.
He exhales slowly, like he's been rehearsing this and already knows it isn't going to come out right anyway.
"I know you don't want to talk about it," he says. "And I'm not trying to drag up something you've already decided you're done with."
"But you've been treating me like I'm someone you barely know since the moment you saw me in Republic City. And I just-" he stops. Jaw tight. Trying again. "I don't think I deserve that. Not entirely."
Something rises up in your chest- hot and immediate, and only partially fair.
"You rejected me," you say. Flat. Simple. "And then you said nothing. For twelve years, Zuko. Not a letter. Not a- literally, nothing! We were friends before, best friends, and you just—" you stop, because your voice is doing something you don't want it to do. You pull it back under control. "You didn't even try."
"That's it?" you say. "That's all you've got?"
"What do you want me to say?" And there's something in his voice now too - not anger, something more frayed and nuanced than that. "I was seventeen years old and I said the wrong thing and you were gone before I could-"
"You said no, Zuko." The words come out sharp, just as you’d intended. "It’s not wrong to feel that way Zuko, it’s just- it’s what you said. And that's fine. That was your right. But you could have still…" you exhale frustratedly. "We were friends. You could have still shown up as my friend."
The expression on his face is complicated enough that you have to look away from it.
"I didn't know how," he says quietly. "After. I didn't know how to be around you and not-" he stops himself. Cuts it off clean.
The unfinished sentence sits between you like something physical.
And, honestly? You're not ready for the answer at seven in the morning on three hours of sleep with the sky stretching out endlessly in every direction.
"I'm going inside," you say.
"Right," he says. And this time it doesn't sound like dismissal. It sounds like defeat.
Which is somehow so much worse.
You get three steps toward the door before his voice follows you. Quiet. Not calling you back. Just- saying it. Like he needs to say it even if you're already leaving.
"I thought about writing," he says. "More than once."
"I just never knew what to say that would actually fix it," he says. "So I said nothing. And then it had been so long that nothing felt even more useless than it did before." A pause. "I know that's not an excuse."
The wind moves between you.
"No," you say quietly. "It's not."
The brief interaction circles restlessly in your mind. You rest in the dim morning light, feeling the words sit wrong and right at the same time in the specific way that means you're going to be thinking about it for the rest of the day whether you want to or not.
“I thought about writing.”
Good to know there actually is a brain up there.
You push open the door to where the others are and decide, firmly, that you're done thinking about it.
But, of course, you’ll think about it for the rest of the day anyways.
You find Katara reorganizing the supply packs, which means she has something on her mind and nowhere to put it.
You drop down beside her and start helping without being asked.
A comfortable silence stretches between you for a few minutes.
"He asked about you this morning," she says. Very casually. Very suspiciously casually.
You don't look up. "Who."
You sigh through your nose, trying to hold back an eye roll. "Katara—"
"I'm just saying," she says, with the tone of someone about to say considerably more than just something. "He came and found me specifically. Asked if you'd slept. Asked if you seemed okay." A pause. "Tried to make it sound like he was asking about everyone."
"He was not," she says. "He asked about you and then walked away before I could respond properly." "Very him."
“Zuko? Not communicating properly? Shocking.” You mutter dryly.
Katara fights back a quiet chuckle before she goes quiet for a moment, folding something with more precision than necessary.
"I'm not trying to make it worse," she says, gentler now. "I just-" she glances at you. "I remember what it looked like. After. When you came back from the Fire Nation that night."
"You didn't say anything," she continues. "You never said anything. But I knew." A beat. "And then you were just... distant. For so long."
"I'm not bringing it up to be dramatic," she says. "I'm bringing it up because I can see you right now. And I know that look." She looks at you directly, and there's so much warmth in it even as she says the hard thing. "Just don't forget what that felt like. Okay? Whatever he says, whatever loaded silences happen on whatever deck at whatever hour - don't let it make you forget what twelve years of nothing felt like."
You look down at what's in your hands.
A beat of silence passes.
“Trust me, you’ve got nothing to worry about.”
Katara pauses her folding, and her eyes begin to trace your facial features, obviously trying to gauge whether or not there’s any truth behind your statement.
She goes back to folding.
Neither of you brings it up again.
The attack comes without warning.
One moment the sky is clear and unremarkable, and the next there's a sound like the world splitting open and the airship lurches so violently you grab the nearest handhold just to stay upright.
Sokka's dramatic voice cuts through the chaos as everyone scrambles. You're already moving toward the deck before you've fully processed what's happening, cold air hitting you like a wall as you push through the door.
The Denied's ship cuts through the clouds to the left. Dark and fast and angled directly toward you.
"They found us," Taga says. He's already on the deck, completely still amid the chaos, watching them approach with an expression you don't have a name for yet.
There's no time to push it. Another impact rocks the airship and then everything happens at once. Katara pulls water from the air itself, thin as it is up here, weaving it into something sharp and fast. Toph plants her feet like she's trying to bend the ship itself into fighting back, and somehow, inexplicably, it half works. Sokka is already calculating, already talking, already three steps ahead in the way he always is when things go sideways.
You move without thinking.
It's like that sometimes in a fight - the body just knows. You're waterbending before the thought fully forms, sending an arc of water across the deck to intercept a blast of air that would've taken Katara off her feet.
The fight is loud and close and everywhere all at once. And in the middle of it, through the smoke and wind and the groaning of the Denied's ship against the force being thrown at it-
You see Taga raise his arms calculatedly.
The air around him pulls inward: compressing, building into something enormous and deliberate, aimed directly at the Denied's ship with the specific focus of someone who isn't trying to stop them.
Aang's voice cuts across everything.
Taga's eyes flick to him. His expression is completely controlled. That's what makes it frightening. It’s not rage, not desperation. Just cold, quiet calculation behind his eyes, like he's already run the numbers and come to a conclusion everyone else is too sentimental to reach.
"They won't stop," Taga says simply.
"They will keep coming. Every time. Until there's nothing left to come for." His grip on the staff tightens fractionally. "Let me finish it."
"No." Aang steps forward, and there's something in his voice you've never quite heard before. And it’s not anger - it’s something much older than that. Heavier. "That is not what we’re here for. That is not what Sonam would have wanted and you know it."
Something moves through Taga's face at that.
Fast. Complicated. Gone before you can name it.
The compressed air releases outward harmlessly, dissipating into the grey sky.
The Denied's ship peels away, damaged but whole, disappearing back into the clouds.
Everyone is looking at Taga.
He looks at no one. Eyes fixed somewhere beyond the horizon, jaw set, staff loose at his side like none of that just happened.
You don't say it out loud. But you feel it settle in your chest, small and cold and persistent, like a splinter you can feel but can't quite reach.
Zuko is standing a few feet to your left, looking at Taga with that specific unreadable stillness.
When his eyes cut to you, briefly, you know he felt it too.
The storm ends the way storms always do: gradually, and then all at once.
The wind drops. The rain thins to nothing. The sky ahead opens up into something dark and clear and impossibly full of stars, like the storm was a door and you've just walked through it into somewhere quieter.
Everyone settles with it.
There's a long moment where nobody says anything. All of you just catching your breath, taking stock, making sure everyone is still where they're supposed to be. Katara checks everyone twice. Sokka makes a joke nobody laughs at. Toph pretends she wasn't scared and fools absolutely no one.
Aang and Taga stand slightly apart from the group, something unresolved still sitting between them from earlier. Aang glances at you once -apologetic, complicated - before he goes inside.
Then Toph, who pauses long enough to say "don't stay up too late" in a tone that implies she knows exactly what she's doing.
Then Zuko, who stops at the door.
You feel him pause. Feel him consider something, standing there in the doorway with his back to you, the lamplight from inside catching the edge of his jaw.
He goes inside without saying it.
And then it's just you and Taga and the stars.
He doesn't say anything right away. Just stands at the railing, looking out at the water, letting the quiet settle between you the way he always seems comfortable letting things settle. Like silence doesn't unnerve him. Like he could stand here for another thousand years if that's what was required.
You lean against the railing beside him.
Your hands are still slightly unsteady from the storm. You're not going to mention that.
"Yes," he says. Then, after a moment, "Well. Not entirely."
"I didn't handle that well."
"Both." He exhales slowly. "I made decisions I believed were right. I'm still not certain they weren't." A pause. "That probably doesn't make it better."
"Not really," you say honestly.
Something shifts in his expression. Not offense, more like appreciation. Like he'd rather have the honest answer than the comfortable one.
"The thing with their ship," you say, after a moment. "That scared people."
"It scared me," you say. And you mean it more than you expected to, because it's true — not just the action itself but the look on his face while he was doing it. That cold, quiet certainty.
He turns to look at you at that. Really look at you.
"I'm sorry," he says quietly.
You hold his gaze for a moment
You don't know. That's the thing. You genuinely don't know, and you're not sure if it bothers you as much as it should that you don't, because he's looking at you right now like he means it completely.
Maybe that's something to think about later.
The sky is dark and still now, the storm's reflection is already fading. The stars are everywhere, more than you usually see, like the storm cleared something on its way through.
"Long day," you say eventually.
A comfortable silence stretches out. The kind that doesn't need filling. You're aware of how close he's standing - close enough that your arms nearly brush, close enough to feel the warmth of him against the cold night air - and you find that you're not doing anything about it.
"The one with the scar," Taga says after a while.
"Something happened between you." Not a question. Not prying. Just stated, plain and unhurried, leaving the rest entirely to you.
You're quiet for a long moment.
"A long time ago," you say finally.
"And not so long ago," he replies.
You open your mouth. Close it again.
Because he's not wrong, and you don't know how to argue with someone who is just quietly, plainly right about something you've spent twelve years refusing to look at directly.
"It's complicated," you say.
"It usually is," he says. "When it matters."
You huff softly. "That's very wise of you."
"Trust me, I've had time to think," he says, and the faint dry edge to it makes you glance at him sideways. He's looking at the water, the ghost of something almost like humor at the corner of his mouth.
Despite everything, you almost smile.
"I told him how I felt," you say, before you've decided to. "A long time ago. Back when we were all still… when things were simpler. And I thought he didn't feel the same way. So I left." A pause. "I've always been good at that. Leaving before things can get worse."
"And did they?" he asks. "Get worse?"
You think about twelve years of careful distance. Katara dragging you to dinner. Letters you didn't answer. The specific way your stomach dropped when you saw him in Republic City, older and steadier and still somehow exactly the same.
"No," you admit. "They just stayed the same. Which is its own kind of worse."
Taga is quiet for a moment.
"Now he says he didn't get to finish what he was saying." You exhale. "Back then. When I left."
"And what do you think he was going to say?" he asks.
You stare at the water for a long moment.
"I don't know," you say quietly. "I've been trying not to think about it."
"Because if I'm wrong about what I think it means, I don't know what to do with that. And if I'm right-" you pause. "I don't know what to do with that either. So."
"You're afraid," he says. Not unkindly. Just plainly.
"I prefer practical," you say.
"Those aren't mutually exclusive."
You make a sound somewhere between a laugh and a sigh. "You're kind of annoyingly perceptive, you know that?"
"I've been told," he says.
The space between you has gotten smaller without either of you moving. Or maybe you moved. You're genuinely not sure. The cold air presses in from every direction and his warmth is right there and you've had approximately five hours of sleep in the last two days and you almost died twice today and he's looking at you like…
He's looking at you like that.
And you noticed him the moment he woke up in that tent with his whole chest out and the light catching his shoulders just right, and you're only human, and it's been a very long day, and sometimes the heart and the brain and the eyes all want completely different things and none of them are exactly wrong they're just–
"You've been watching me," you say. "Since you woke up. You notice everything about everyone. Why me specifically?"
He considers that. Actually considers it, like the question deserves a real answer.
"Because you stayed," he says finally. "When everyone else left. You stayed and you were calm and you looked at me like I was a person rather than a weapon." Something shifts in his expression, quiet and almost careful. "I haven't had that in a very long time."
The honesty of it lands somewhere soft.
You think about what it actually means - waking up a thousand years later, everyone gone, the world unrecognizable, and the first face that just looked at you like you were a person belonging to someone who made a joke about wall throwing and then stayed to make sure you were okay.
"That's a pretty low bar, Taga," you say softly.
"Maybe," he says. "It didn't feel low."
"It's cold out here," he says then, and his voice has shifted into something slightly lower, slightly more deliberate, in a way that doesn't have much to do with temperature.
You look at him sideways.
He nods firmly before his reply. "You should come inside."
It's a perfectly reasonable thing to say. Completely innocent on its surface. Practical, even.
But there is nothing innocent about the way he’s looking at you.
You should absolutely go to your own room. Say goodnight. Go to sleep. Be a person with good judgment.
When have I ever been a person with good judgement?
His room is small the way all the rooms on the airship are small - narrow cot, low ceiling, the constant hum of the ship beneath everything. A lamp turned low in the corner throwing the space into something warm and dim.
He closes the door behind you.
Neither of you says anything for a moment.
It's different in here. Closer. The cold from the deck is already fading, replaced by warmth and the specific quiet of a space that belongs to just two people now.
He's already looking at you - that steady, unhurried attention that started all of this back in that tent when he first opened his eyes. Like you're something worth paying attention to. Like he's in absolutely no hurry.
"You know," you say, "you could've just said you didn't want to be alone."
"I didn't want to be alone," he says simply.
"That was easier than I expected."
"Most honest things are."
You're not sure which one of you moves to close the distance.
Maybe both. Maybe neither. Maybe it's just the night and the stars and the aftermath of a storm and a very long fucking day and the fact that he's warm and steady and looking at you like you're worth paying attention to, and honestly? Sometimes that's enough to make a person careless in ways they usually aren't.
His hand comes up to your jaw first- slow, unhurried, just like everything else about him, giving you every opportunity to move back.
It starts soft. Careful. A question, like everything with him tends to be, leaving the answer entirely up to you.
Your hand finds the front of his shirt without thinking about it, fingers curling into the fabric, and you feel him exhale through his nose, it’s quiet and controlled, like he's been holding something in and this is the first crack in it. He kisses you like he has time. Like there's nowhere else either of you needs to be. One hand still at your jaw, the other coming to rest at your waist, steady and unhurried and warm through the thin fabric of your clothes.
Just slightly. Just enough to breathe.
His eyes open and find yours immediately, and there's something in them you haven't seen before - something less composed than his usual steadiness, something that makes your pulse do something inconvenient.
The thought arrives distantly. Like something heard through water.
His thumb traces along your jaw. Once. Slow.
A horrible idea, some other part of you agrees.
Neither part of you does anything about it.
"You should go," he says quietly. His voice is lower than usual. Just slightly.
He doesn't move his hand.
The warm air presses in from every direction and the room suddenly feels much smaller. And you're very aware of how little distance exists between you right now, of the warmth radiating off him, of the way his eyes haven't left yours since you pulled back.
You're not sure what he knows exactly. But the way he says it - quiet, certain, like he's already three steps ahead the way he always seems to be - does something to the last remaining sensible part of your brain.
His hand slides from your jaw, slowly, deliberately, to the back of your neck.
Not exactly pulling you in. Just resting there. Delicate, warm and patient.
I’ve made worse decisions, haven’t I?
You finally close the distance again.
This time it isn't soft. This time it isn't careful. This time it's needy, desperate, and all-consuming. You can feel the adrenaline humming under your skin as his warm hand rests at the back of your neck. It’s been too long since you’ve simply allowed yourself to want like this.
He makes a quiet sound against your mouth - one that only makes you want this more. His other hand is resting on your waist and begins to drift lower, pulling you onto his lap. You can’t help but to start grinding against the thick, hard, bulge resting below you. Almost immediately, you feel him start to thrust his hips up into you, choking out deep groans at the sensation. You pull away from the kiss briefly to see his darkened, half-lidded eyes resting on you.
“Fuck… don’t move,” He forces his words out through groans as he trails his hands to your hips, attempting to still them, but failing miserably, overtaken by the pleasing sensation.
“But it feels s’good” you keep grinding against him, his length strained against the soft material of his garments, each roll of your hips rubbing him addictingly against your needy clit.
You hear him let out another deep groan before the grip of his hands finally tighten around your hips, stopping your movement.
“Just let me make you feel good.”
Well, that’s all I needed to hear.
You nod gently as a response.
Before you can fully register what’s happening, he flips the two of you over, leaving him resting between your legs, right in front of your slick cunt. You were dripping, slick already beginning to leak through the cloth of your panties.
His dick twitches at the sight, and he gently grips the hem of your underwear, tugging them off as you lift your hips to aid him in the process.
You swear you can see his eyes start to water as he takes in the sight of your dripping cunt.
“You sure this is what you want?”
“No, I need you to tell me you want this.”
And then he dove in like he was starved.
His large hands gripped your hips, his tongue flicking out to taste the slick dripping down your soaked folds. A few more groans escape his lips while he begins to slide his tongue in and out of your leaking cunt. Your greedy cunt couldn’t help but gush around his tongue as you thrust your hips relentlessly against his mouth.
You briefly open your eyes to look down at Taga and see him rutting his hips relentlessly against the bed, letting out shaky groans with each thrust of his tongue, perfectly synced with the movements of his hips.
Must’ve been a long 1,000 years.
Your focus is redirected to the burning sensation between your legs, and the knot building up in your lower stomach.
His tongue swirls unapologetically against your clit, and you feel yourself nearing release before you hear a series of not so deep groans fumble out of Taga’s mouth, his hips stuttering against the bed.
Before you can finish your thought, he brings his fingers to your entrance, sliding in effortlessly as he sucks and laps at your sensitive bud. His fingers curve up, almost grazing your cervix as it all finally becomes too much.
“I… I think m’gonna-” You feel that overwhelming sensation, taking your breath away as his digits thrust faster and faster until you can’t take it any more.
“Mhm, that’s it… let go for me,” He mumbles beneath you, hitting that perfect spot as you finally come undone on his fingers.
He gently pulls his fingers out of your messy cunt and licks them clean before he lies down next to you.
You stare at the ceiling.
The lamp in the corner has burned low, the room dimmer than it was, and the hum of the ship is the same as it's always been beneath you and everything is fine. Everything was fine. Is fine.
You sit with that word for a moment.
Taga breathes evenly beside you, still and composed the way he always is, like even now he's exactly where he intended to be. One arm resting behind his head. Eyes closed. Already somewhere far away behind them.
Your eyes stay focused on the ceiling.
You think about the deck earlier. The stars. The way he'd said most honest things are like he had the answer to everything already and was just waiting for you to catch up. The way his hands had been so careful. So precise. So exactly right in a way that you can't find fault with no matter how many times you turn it over.
So why does it feel like this?
Not bad. You're not going to say bad. Nothing was bad. He was attentive and warm and he looked at you like you were worth looking at and you'd wanted it, you'd actively chosen it, wanted it, nobody made you follow him inside.
There's a hollow thing sitting in your chest that wasn't there before. Quiet. Unnamed. The specific feeling of reaching for something and finding it slightly different from what you'd imagined. Not worse, exactly. Just… not quite the shape you thought it would be.
What did you think it would be?
You're very deliberately not answering that.
Taga shifts slightly beside you, and you turn your head to look at him. His face in the low light is smooth and unreadable, the way it almost always is. Even like this. Even now. Something in you searches his expression for something unguarded, some crack in the composure, some evidence that this meant something that landed somewhere real inside him.
Maybe it's there and you can't see it. Maybe he's just private. Maybe you're looking for problems where there aren't any because it's easier than sitting with the alternative.
You look back at the ceiling.
The ship hums beneath you. The lamp flickers once. Somewhere on the other side of the wall the airship creaks softly with the wind.
You don't sleep for a long time.
You tell yourself it isn't a big deal.
It's morning. You went back to your room. You slept. You're fine. You're going to walk out there and have a completely normal morning and nobody is going to make it weird.
Taga is in the corridor at the same moment, his door swinging open in the same breath as yours, and for a second you just look at each other in the dim morning light.
He looks exactly the same as he always does. Composed. Unhurried. Like he slept perfectly and woke up with all his thoughts already neatly organized.
You probably look slightly less like that.
And then you walk to the common area together because there's no graceful alternative, and you push open the door together, and…
Somehow the room does the math immediately.
Well, in all fairness… You two weren’t exactly quiet last night.
Sokka freezes mid sentence. Katara looks up, looks between you and Taga once, and looks back down with the careful expression of someone choosing not to react. Aang grins like the sunrise because of course he does.
Zuko is sitting at the far end with a cup in his hands and he looks up when the door opens and something happens to his face.
Not for long. Half a second, maybe less. Something unguarded and unpleasant moving through his expression before he catches it and pulls it back under and locks it somewhere you can't see.
You're fairly certain everyone saw it.
He looks back down at the cup in his hands.
"Morning," Aang says brightly, already moving. "There's food. Taga, I wanted to ask you about the northern passage-"
And just like that the room starts breathing again, conversation picking back up, Sokka recovering with impressive speed, Katara handing you something to eat with a look that says “we’re talking about this later.”
Across the room Zuko doesn't look up.
Fine. Everything is fine. You eat whatever Katara handed you and listen to Aang and Taga talk about the route and don't think about the half second on Zuko's face before he locked it down.
You're mostly successful.
"-If we adjust course slightly north we should make better time," Taga is saying, and Aang is nodding, and it's all very productive and normal until…
"That's what you said yesterday."
Zuko's voice. Flat. Even. Aimed across the room like something deliberate wrapped in something casual.
He's looking at Taga now, cup still in hand, expression carefully neutral. "About the route. You said the same thing yesterday and we still ended up in the storm."
Taga looks at him with that same steady unhurried attention he gives everything. "The storm was unavoidable regardless of-"
"Was it?" Zuko questions.
"Zuko," Katara says carefully.
"I'm just asking." Still neutral. Still controlled. Just slightly too present, slightly too focused, for a conversation that's supposed to be about navigation. "He seems very certain about a lot of things." A pause. The cup turns slightly in his hand. "I'm asking how that worked out last time."
The silence that follows is thick enough to stand in.
Taga regards him with that calm, unhurried attention. "That's a fair question," he says, in a tone that somehow makes it worse. "I understand the concern."
Something tightens in Zuko's jaw.
He's not talking about the route.
You look down at your food.
"I'm sure you do," Zuko says. Still even. Still controlled. But there's something underneath it now that's fraying at the edges, something that's getting harder to keep underneath. "You seem to understand a lot of things very quickly for someone who just got here."
The room goes very still.
Taga tilts his head slightly. "I've had time to learn how to read people," he says simply. "It becomes useful. When you've lost as much as I have."
It's the right thing to say. Perfectly calibrated. Reasonable and human and just vulnerable enough to make pushing back feel cruel.
Which is maybe exactly why Zuko doesn't stop.
"Right," he says quietly. "The loss." His eyes stay level, steady, burning with something he's working very hard to keep in check. "You talk about that a lot. What you've lost. What you've been through. People tend to listen to that."
The implication lands in the room like something physical.
Taga looks at him for a long moment.
"They do," he says simply. "Is that a problem?"
"Zuko." Katara's voice has an edge now.
"I'm having a conversation-"
"You're really not," she says.
He exhales through his nose. Sets the cup down. Looks at nothing for a moment, jaw working, and you can see it - the exact effort it's taking him to stay on the right side of this. To not say the thing that's actually sitting on his tongue.
You don't mean to be. You just are. And the moment he feels it - because he always feels it, he's always known when you're looking at him, twelve years did nothing to change that - his eyes cut to yours across the room.
Just one unguarded second where it's not about Taga or the route or anything else.
Just him looking at you with something so unfiltered it makes your chest ache.
From the other side of the room Toph clears her throat.
"Okay," she says pleasantly. "This is fun."
"I'm just saying." She tilts her head, and the faint curve of her mouth suggests she's hearing exactly what she expected to hear and finds it deeply fascinating. "Interesting morning. Lots of feelings. Very educational." And then quieter, aimed at no one and everyone simultaneously: "Funny how the things we don't say take up the most space."
The room doesn't respond to that.
"I'll be on the deck," he says.
The door closes quietly behind him.
You stare at the space he just left.
Taga reaches for something on the table beside you, unbothered, composed, like the last five minutes cost him nothing at all.
But that’s not what bothers you.
Not Zuko's voice when it frayed at the edges.
Not the look across the room that lasted one second too long.
But the quiet words Toph let slip out underneath her breath.
Funny how the things we don't say take up the most space.
-> in case it was unclear, the Zuko line where he says that taga talks a lot about his “loss” that a lotta ppl listen to, he’s implying that taga is using his grief and loss as a way to manipulate y/n… which may or may not be true idk? but that’s just zukos emotional and angry opinion
-> smut scene is a little meh but it’s meant to be subpar bc obviously something isn’t clickingggg it’s obviously not righhttt duhhh
-> not this burger zuko thinking shit was rainbows and sunshine after rejecting reader an then ghosting for 12 years like mmm ok
-> CAN U SEE WHY I COULDNT STOP LAUGHING WHILE WRITING THE SMUT LMAOO
->also sorry it took me so long to update! i had finals and then got carried away watching s3 of jjk and playing tomodachi life when i got back home😭 and then i got sick!! and then i lost my laptop! and then i got sick again!! but I’ll be more consistent now bc im feeling better and remembered that i love writing!
-> REMEMBER TO COMMENTT I LOVE TO SEE UR COMMENTS GUYS
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