#you were incorrect...

28. something about [them]

Maybe it was that he had never been so close to him for any reasonable length of time, as to allow him to look. Maybe it was that, whenever he had been, anger and hatred had twisted his features into something now unrecognizable, here on the frozen tundra. Whatever the reason, Sokka found himself somewhat transfixed, despite himself, unable to look away from his pale, ghostly face.

There was something about him – something about the way he looked, silver moonlight reflecting off the snow, bathing him in its strange pale light. The deep purple bruising beneath his eye, tightly shut in fitful sleep, the slashes across his furrowed brow, the split lip Sokka was so used to seeing pulled into a sneer, here silent at last, lips chapped by the wind. He looked young. He looked tired.

It was then that Sokka realized - this boy could scarcely be older than he was. The prince of the fire nation, sent alone and unaided into battle to face his father’s fiercest foe. He should be grateful for that, surely. After all, they were in no way prepared to face the fire lord himself, at least, not yet. But he couldn’t help but wonder how it could be so. His own father had fought tooth and nail to keep his children from the war, even when it found itself on their doorstep, a beast with gaping mouth and large, gleaming teeth, ready to devour and destroy what little they had left. How had such a nation’s prince been pulled from his lavish finery, to find himself in such a lowly state?

Zuko groaned, and turned his head, and Sokka was faced with the gnarled scar which covered half the boy’s face, here in the low light as black as cinders and ash, and felt his stomach turn. How could he have allowed himself to feel sympathy for this boy? This was war – and war with a nation that would send its own wounded prince into battle. There was no room in it, for such humanity.