#thcbluespirit

The caravan that Zuko had promised didn’t come, and Azula’s pain tolerance was being seriously tested -- along with her patience. 

It wasn’t as though she had not experienced prolonged pain before, but this particular deep, throbbing, variety didn’t mix well with early mornings and her brother’s penchant for being exceedingly trying. 

She’d managed to perch herself on the roots of a tree near to the road, watching as Zuko paced back and forth, waiting for his entourage. If she hadn’t seen them for herself the night before, she might have believed that he was lying about them.

As it was, Azula wasn’t entirely certain she hadn’t been delirious. 

“These roads are rough,” she said after a time, “could be they ran into some particularly nasty bandits.” Even the Imperial guard wasn’t infallible. 

“We may want to travel off of the road if you really want to reach that town.” It would be rougher going, with her injury, and the two of them would more than likely get tired of one another rather quickly, but Azula knew it to be the safest thing to do.

Escape, at this time, was still not an option. 

thcbluespirit:

[x]

“The people of the Budo province down south may disagree with you.” He laughed remorsefully, pushing away the paperwork. Another summer’s end, another series of island-wrecking typhoons. And this year’s had been particularly bad.

Enough of that. Zuko peered up at the slender figure in his doorway, smiling. It seemed he wore a permanent frown these days, though he could never keep his face straight around Mai. He trusted her to do enough of that for the both of them, anyway.

“Come in, Mai. I’m sorry-” irritated, sleep deprived eyes met the ticking clock upon his desk. “Gods, when did it get to be so late?”

@thcbluespirit

Zuko was absorbed, as of late, in the mountains of paperwork which passed across his desk on the day to day. Mai didn’t really need to make her way through the mostly deserted halls to her husband’s study to know that he would be huddled over his desk, squinting his sore eyes at the surface of some scroll or other.

His joke elicited a twitch out of the corner of her mouth, and the Fire Lady pushed herself away from the dark wood of the door frame, wandering further into the quiet candle light of the room. She came behind Zuko’s hunched back, lowering herself to her knees next to him, a hand bracing gently against the curve of Zuko’s spine. 

She gathered in close, her shawl pulled a little tighter around her shoulders. 

“What are you reading,” she inquired, resting her chin on Zuko’s shoulder, blinking sleepily herself. She had grown unused to having the bed next to her being empty. She wouldn’t get any more sleep than Zuko without him beside her for the night. 

“Maybe I could help you speed things along?” She’d been hoping to have Zuko at dinner, truth be told. Her tongue pushed at the backs of her teeth, willing her to say what she had meant to at the evening meal.

thcbluespirit:

[x]

“I don’t care what you were trying to prove.”

His pulse pounded in the hollow of his chest. He was across the room in three strides. He’d come at a run, at her attendant’s request, assaulted by panic. His daughter hurt, his daughter bleeding, scarred-

Zuko swept away the raw carcass. He took her jaw in his fingers. If he didn’t know better, he’d think that she was exceptionally cool- but it wasn’t her, it was him, his fingers burning with worry as he examined his daughter’s face.

A cut traversed horizontally across the planes of her cheek. It was shallow; it had long since stopped bleeding.

It still made his gut clench.

She wouldn’t meet his eyes. He angled her jaw towards him.

“You know you have to be more careful when you train,” he told her, voice flattened of the adrenaline that still ricocheted through his veins. His gaze fell upon the raw steak, dripping a steady stream of staining blood onto the wooden floorboards. “Agni’s sake, you could have seen a Waterbender rather than treating it the old way, Izumi.”

His hands, though gentle, did little to settle the smarting in her face, and Izumi winced as her father turned her jaw this way and that to inspect the handy work of her sparring partner. It had bled a lot, and looked far more serious than it was. 

It had taken little to stave the bleeding once a healer had been on hand. 

“There were no waterbenders nearby, one of the fire sage healers saw to it instead.” Izumi looked sidelong at her dad, matching gold for gold. Worry tugged at the fine lines by his eyes, and folded down his mouth into a familiar scowl. 

“And the old way is perfectly fine.” She huffed. Izumi rolled her lips inward, chewing on the insides of them with her teeth. “If I don’t push myself during training how will I ever be prepared if something happens out of nowhere? I can’t always be safe or careful, dad.”

thcbluespirit:

[x]

“Then how about you just trust that it’s there?”

His eyes slammed shut as another wave of pain wracked his temple. It had an electric quality, traveling down the tendons of his neck and into his shoulder.

He would know.

Zuko leaned into the cool feeling of her fingers, shameless in his desperation to ease the hurt. His eyes peeked open, watching her. Beseechingly.

“Can’t you do anything for it at all, legendary healer?”

“Mmf...” Normally, she would snap right back at the Fire Lord, but it was pretty obvious from the fluctuation in the heat coming off of his skin when he leaned into her touch that he was in real pain. 

“Well, I’ve never worked on a headache before,” she told him, smoothing her hand down the side of Zuko’s face so that her palm lay flat against it. “I could make you some herbal tea..?” 

Her time in the Fire Nation had, thus far, been rather unorthodox. The moment that Aang had left the South Pole to seek out Toph in Republic City for his earthbending training, Katara had felt...empty and useless again. 

Never mind that she missed Aang, but she had hated the idea of going back to domestic work alone once her only student had absconded into the wind. 

Zuko’s standing invitation that they were all always welcome had seemed like just what she needed. Several months on a boat later and here she was...Treating the Fire Lord’s headaches...

“I mean it definitely doesn’t help that you spend half your day hunched over this desk. Or that that time is all spent staring at documents that would make my eyes go crossed.”

She crossed her arms and frowned in disappointment. “They didn’t mean it like that?”

Sure, not understanding the language of the nation can be bothersome for the locals. But why the demeaning tone? “Their finger pointing told me something quite meaningful if you ask me.”

𝐃𝐄𝐀𝐓𝐇𝐋𝐄𝐒𝐒 /  𝐒𝐄𝐍𝐓𝐄𝐍𝐂𝐄 𝐏𝐑𝐎𝐌𝐏𝐓𝐒. // accepting.

@thcbluespirit // zuko.

      “Not really.” Perhaps words sound too sharp, perhaps crossed arms and gaze that avoids his golden eyes does not help making her seem more suave. Azula was a complicated matter. Mai did understand, somehow, his desire to reconnect; and with any other sibling, that may have been just fine, but this was Azula. Trusting her was a mistake — couldn’t he see it?

      Zuko of all people should know better.

      A soft sigh, arms uncrossing; no longer as defensive as she had grown to be as he spoke. Zuko of all people would be willing to give his sister a chance, of course. Mai only hoped he would be careful, that his feelings wouldn’t get the best of him; if Azula alone made her guarded in ways she was trying to no longer be, the possibility of him getting hurt did not make her any less defensive. It wasn’t her place to tell him what to do or not do, surely --- it didn’t mean she wouldn’t worry regardless. “It isn’t like she has done anything to earn back your trust.”

My Darling Zuko,

It’s been a month since your boat has made an appearance at papa’s harbor, and the sound of your voice still fills my head. It is such a tease, making me feel so selfish that letters alone cannot satisfy these urges. Does that make me selfish? If so then spoil me one more time with the sight of you. I have not spent a day without thinking of you; Nor have I not so much as drunk a single cup of tea without cursing the pride and ambition of our nation which forces me to remain separated. I still carry your handkerchief close to me, clinging to it tighter recently knowing you will come back to me soon. 

I can’t wait for you to come home. Papa keeps talking about your encounters during your shared hunt of the Avatar and it pains me I miss seeing you every time. It’s sincerely taunting to know you’re so close, and yet so far. I believe in you, soon you’ll be home and we can have the future that was meant for us. We can continue with the life that was meant for us. We’ll have each other, and that’s all we could ask for, right?

Chaldera, and the court in general, is quite boring without you. I made an appearance at the palace yesterday and couldn’t help but remember our childhood here. The 5 of us, Mai, Ty Lee, Azula, and us two. I wish that we could go back to those days. Not worrying about what the future of the war will bring. Not stress ourselves over the action of a menace like the Avatar. When you return we will have to have a massive party in your name. You will play the Tsungi Horn for us that night, yes? I would happily sing along. 

I know though that the end of this war is nigh, and from the ashes of destruction a new world order will rise. When the time comes, you will be the ruler that it needs. I trust you to make our nation great. 

Do say hello to your uncle for me. Until then, I shall await with faded breath your next letter. 

Until then, my heart will always burn for you,

@thcbluespirit

After the war, Zuko had invited Kisara to join a small council. A collection of people meant to help work towards what the airheaded Avatar was calling a movement towards a “great big, beautiful tomorrow.” Agni, could he be any more sickening? She had no idea how people could stand all his optimism. It was interesting that Zuko had extended a membership invitation to her, however, considering the old ideals she considered herself to represent. The Fire Nation was the most advanced, the best, and they needed to show their successes. Zuko recommends they share them instead. How odd. Yet so kinglike of him. He had been fulfilling the role given to him quite well. Kisara would most certainly give him that. He did his job so gracefully and knew exactly when he needed to change his actions. It was refreshing.

This council meeting had been going nowhere though. This months meeting had taken place in the palace, thank Agni. While her job did require a lot of traveling, she wouldn’t lie, last months trip to the North Pole had been particularly hard on her. Everywhere she had gone was a reminder of her father’s mortality, even if it was such a foreign land to her. Not to mention the harassment she had received just carrying his name. Counsel meetings were always massive messes though, especially since there was such a diversity of characters amongst each other. They had been trying to think of ways to dispel racism of the other nations throughout the Fire Nation. Fingers were pointed and names were called. It was ugly. 

What ended up being decided on was a cultural hub incorporated into a Fire Nation tradition. Different nations would bring performers, food stands, and information booths, and share their goods with others. It’s minuscule, a pitiful attempt, but something. Kisara had been somewhat proud, as it had sparked from her idea

Once the meeting had ended, Kisara found herself in the palace courtyard, taking a seat on a bench and enjoying the sun. Memories rolled through her head of the wonders of her childhood. What a wonderful place to play. A smile on her face as she could almost hear the ghosts of memories past. She closed her eyes, feeling the warmth on her skin and humming a tune familiar to her from childhood. Her head bobbing to the tune. The lyrics which rolled through her head telling the story of a sailor receiving a letter from his beloved. As a child, it served as a lullaby and as she got older, spending time amongst the men of her father’s crew, a sea shanty, becoming much crasser than Kisara’s mother would have preferred for an almost future Fire Lady. Her father had claimed that it would make her more relatable.

She’d never know now. Her chances of such an influence were now far from gone. She was not meant to be a queen. That was obvious by now. Pushing herself off the bench she walked closer to the palace, the song still playing in her head. A smile on her face spotting the king by a familiar pond. Her features softening.