it's (mostly)NSFW bitch

Through a set of doors, he steps out of the palace’s inner light and into the courtyard, wincing briefly against the slap of the sun. Up ahead, the pond is a mirror for the sky, distorted by ripples where the turtleducks paddle across.

The royal gardens have always been a haven, a promise of solace from the thoughts and scrutiny that haunt him in relentless pursuit. 

But today, even it is humming with people both familiar and otherwise. Ozai veers smoothly as heads turn at his presence, this time rendered momentarily blind by the sudden dimness on re-entering the palace through another, quieter wing.

A gaggle of courtesans rounds a corner up ahead, their pace and conversation dwindling as they approach, and recognition skims their faces. Setting his teeth, Ozai fixes them with a look that succeeds in stuttering them to a halt before slipping through an adjacent set of doors.

It moans closed and at once the white noise of living spaces is snuffed out, replaced by the blessed hush of the library, wrapping around him like a blanket. It is one of two that the palace boasts, decidedly more modest, and by that token, draws less traffic than its grander counterpart.

It is not so much a craving for aloneness that drives him, not explicitly. Agni knows Ozai had more than his fill those two years in prison, and a regular nightly ration since being transferred. 

But a man can feel more alone in a sea of people than in his own company, and solitude, he has found, takes on a different flavor when hedged by those who waft scorn or unease or curiosity like a noxious perfume. 

Keeping only to his quarters would taste of forfeit, somehow, an admission that they’ve achieved something, and Ozai refuses to concede it. So he wanders freely, as Zuko intended, gritting his teeth against the taste it leaves in his mouth and buoyed on by pure spite.

He exhales in the stillness and begins a slow turn about the library, running a fingertip along the edge of a shelf as he drinks in the solitude, savors it.

There is scarcely enough time to register the sigh of a floorboard, the wavering contour of a shadow out of place, before he nearly collides with a dusky-skinned man rounding a corner.

“Sorry, I—” The words cut off with a blink, surprise yielding to something else as the man’s jaw tightens, a flintiness hardening his blue eyes.

At first, they stand there as if deadlocked. 

The foreigner must know who he has happened upon, and it takes Ozai but a moment to realize he recognizes him from absent glances during his wanders this week. 

Hakoda, the chief of the Southern Water Tribe. 

Former chief, if word is to be believed—now Elder after passing on the title and headship to his daughter. That waterbender who had defeated Azula and allowed Zuko to seize the throne.

Long-festering anger is skinned raw, froths anew.

“Watch where you’re going, snow savage,” Ozai growls.

Hakoda tilts his head with just the barest flattening of his lips. The words are cool, shot through with irony. 

“Or what?”

The insinuation hangs thick as fog. Ozai flashes a cold, close-lipped smile, sharp enough to whet the other man’s edges.

“You must be lost. Whatever you’re looking for, you will not find it in here. Too many big words, for one.”

He relishes the flicker in the other man’s eyes and shoulders past to one of the towers of shelves. They march along the walls and curl around nooks and studies, legions of scrolls, bamboo tablets, leather books meticulously hand-bound. 

Ozai slides one from its row, leafs through with slow intent, feigning interest in hopes the hint will land and the intrusion will see itself out.

Regrettably, it does not, as it appears the tribesman does, in fact, have claim to literacy, deliberately perusing the library, strolling two towers over to skim a shelf of scrolls. Only the brief tightening of his fists betrays the ease he wears so effortlessly.

“How lucky you are your son did not take after you,” he says, one finger pausing to hover over a scroll. “That you weren’t banished to the dunes of Si Wong… or the underside of whatever rock would have you.”

Ozai grits his teeth but only slides the book back into place, drifting on to a different row. 

Affording him not so much as a glance, he replies, “You might try the children's primer scrolls. Lots of illustrations. Perhaps less of a challenge.”

At last, that earns him a scathing snort. 

In the corner of his eye, the scrolls are forgotten as Hakoda turns to face him, his gaze like the cold tip of a spear on his neck.

“Funny thing. I hadn’t realized that when the Avatar took your bending, your power and status, he stripped you of all civilized dignity as well.”

The words are acid, corroding the wound past the point of pain to incandescence. Ozai rounds on him with a snarl, but Hakoda dodges the blow meant for his jaw, intercepts the next with a strong hand around his wrist as Ozai seizes a fistful of embroidered tunic.

In the pulse of a moment, locked there, something happens. Hakoda blinks, a shift behind the blue eyes now tracking over his face, as though chasing a ghost that just skirts his vision. Ozai has the sudden and disquieting feeling of nakedness. That the man has skimmed the surface of some kind of knowing Ozai had thought long since out of reach.

The discomfort is a blow, mirrored in Hakoda’s face, and it catches him wholly unprepared.

The blue beads in the tribal man’s hair click as Ozai wrenches free of his grip, or perhaps Hakoda pushes him away. Either way, there is suddenly a stride’s length between them, a narrow but impassable chasm. 

They glare across it.

“Is there a problem here?”

At the familiar voice, both men turn.

Zuko stands just inside the doorway. In his elaborate royal robes and headpiece, the mantle broadening the newfound bulk of his shoulders, he is no longer a teenage boy playing dress-up, but every bit the part of Fire Lord.

His gaze settles squarely on his father. Ozai returns it with steady coolness.

“I’ll remind you that this arrangement is on a trial basis. It can and will be annulled the second I give the word. So, maybe think twice before harassing my political guests.”

Ozai scowls and opens his mouth, but it is Hakoda’s voice that speaks.

“I’m afraid the fault was mine, Fire Lord.” 

Ozai blinks, skates a furtive glance his direction. 

“I… may have misconstrued a remark and, in a moment’s haste, escalated it by responding in a manner I’m not proud of. As your guest at this summit, I hope you will accept my apology.”

Hakoda’s tone is convincing enough. But spoken words are clumsy things. Ozai can hear the snag in his steady cadence, the halting pitch. But Zuko hasn’t seemed to notice. He isn’t quite listening. 

Rather, his eyes are dragging from one man to the other and back, coming to rest this time on the Water Tribe man. 

“Erm… of course. Apology accepted, Elder Hakoda.” He skewers Ozai with a final look. “I have full confidence my father will not bother you again.”

“I’ve no worry of that. Truth be told, I think it's an honorable thing you are attempting on his behalf.” He clears his throat, squares his shoulders assuredly. “It so happens I was on my way to the koi gardens. In keeping with your vision behind this new trial, I wonder if it might prove beneficial for your father to accompany me.”

Again, Ozai’s mouth is parting to speak when he is cut off.

“Actually, I think that could be a great idea.”

A spark of indignation skitters through Ozai's veins. As though he is a precocious teenager whose decisions need be made for him. As though he isn’t standing right here.

“In fact,” Zuko continues, “more time in the company of chaperones other than guards might be a good thing. We could start a rotation. I would be grateful for you to be among the volunteers while you’re here, if you’re willing.”

“Certainly.” The elder bows hand in fist, and Zuko returns it, then angles toward the door.

“Thank you, Hakoda. I’ll see you back at the summit in an hour.”

Ozai simmers in the silence left behind, near to boiling as Hakoda clears his throat.

“Well, seeing as how we’re stuck together for a little while—”

“You wove a nice story, Elder,” he cuts in, the title knitting a sour curl into his lip, “but I see no reason to perpetuate it. My son is out of sight, there are no other witnesses. So kindly go on your way, and I will go about mine.”

He makes to brush past him when Hakoda bars him with an arm across his chest.

“That’s an interesting way of saying thank you to the one who just took the fall for your embarrassingly disagreeable behavior.”

“I don’t believe I asked you to.”

Ozai succeeds in breaking past him. The air at his back stirs as the other man takes up after.

“Are you this insufferable to everyone, or is the pleasure all mine?”

“You flatter yourself if you think you are special in that regard.”

Hakoda snorts. “That would imply you disparage everyone equally, and somehow I doubt that.”

This time, Ozai does not respond. He is within paces of the exit when Hakoda rounds in front of him to stand before the door. 

Ozai glowers but yields to a stop, looking him hard in the eyes.

“Listen,” the tribesman begins, taking a steadying breath. “The truth is, I had been looking to be alone with my thoughts as well. More and more I find I prefer it that way. I can’t understand or know what you’ve been through. But… maybe you’re not the only one who might do well for some company.”

Ozai searches his face, trying to turn out the act, but comes up empty. It seems he is serious.

“Why would you want that?” he ventures, cautiously, as if inching out onto thinning ice. Yet in spite of it, something he had not even known was tangled in the pit of his chest seems to loosen faintly.

Hakoda considers him for a moment, but when he speaks, it is not in answer. 

“The choice is yours, either come with or don’t. If you prefer to keep your companions to the human equivalent of a brick wall,” he says, nodding toward the armored figure that has materialized in the corner, “don’t let me stop you. We simply crossed paths as the summit took a brief adjournment, and I thought, perhaps foolishly, you might welcome the opportunity. A break from…” he gestures vaguely with a hand, “…all this.”

There it is again. That intuitive sense in the other man’s gaze that lifts the hairs on Ozai’s arms, like the feather-light graze of a finger on bare skin. 

He bristles and snaps tight, forces his way past.

“No.”

“No?” Hakoda’s voice follows him, hard and clipped. “That’s all?”

“No, thank you,” he sneers without looking back. “Enjoy the riveting time with all your thoughts. I don’t expect it will last long.”

+++

The faint drone of music is wafting through the corridors.

It is late, later than Hakoda has ever stayed as a guest in the Fire Nation palace. But tonight, he had been asked to remain behind on a select committee of trusted consultants to Fire Lord Zuko. 

He wonders, as he walks the halls in route of the exit, eager to sink into the comfort of his guest house, whether it is some nightly ritual, this distant serenade. But something about it feels wistful and deeply intimate, and somehow, he doesn’t think this is an ordained affair.

Hakoda reaches the corridor that leads to the exit. Faltering only long enough to glance down its stretch, he keeps going instead, following the music to the next wing and down another hall.

Unbidden, his mind strings itself back to the fortuitous confrontation of last afternoon. One that had been equal parts uninvited, exasperating, and bewildering. Even now, something about it continues to gnaw at him like a woodworm through timber. A tiny thing dithering in the back of his mind, almost impossible to grasp the breadth of.

“You pity him?” Tulimaq had asked harshly.

The delegate from his sister tribe had stopped him privately, after word of his brethren’s encounter with the fallen fire lord had leached its way to the summit. 

Tulimaq’s face had ruddied with the effort to compose his expression, his fists nearly trembling.

“You had better pity the thousands who perished by his order on bloody battlefields, who were reduced to cinders at his hands and scattered scornfully to the winds.”

“I do. And I never claimed to pity him. But we must take care not to forfeit our humanity in the name of comeuppance, which I’d say he has well and truly received.” Hakoda had paused, hoping to see the rage stewing in the man’s face start to cool. “We should never stop trying to see ourselves in others’ shoes. Can you imagine what it must be like, to be him?”

“No,” he had spat. “I cannot.”

The sound is billowing now, filling the air as he nears its source. Finally arriving before a set of doors, ajar, and he peeks through the gap to catch hints of vaulted ceilings, tapestries, sculptures set into the walls. Glimpses of glossy, well-kept musical instruments. 

A shadow shivers in the lantern’s flickering light.

Even now, Hakoda’s thoughts drift back to that moment, when he had extended the invitation for the deposed tyrant to join him.

He still isn’t sure what had possessed him to do it. But it has etched itself in his mind, that instant, barely more than a breath’s span, when all the light had gone out of him. All the heat and the fury. And in that moment, Hakoda had glimpsed a man forlorn and tired and broken. 

Almost as quickly, Ozai’s face had slammed shut again, leaving Hakoda to question whether he had really glimpsed it at all.

But, as he drags open the door and steps into its frame, every doubt is swept away in the current of haunting notes and the sight that resolves itself before him now.

At first glance, it might have been an apparition, bowed so far forward over a guzheng he looks nearly headless. But a yurei wouldn’t be able to pluck the strings, let alone coax such music forth, and when the man moves, the lanternlight falls on firm and broad shoulders, limns the edges of onyx-smooth hair. He is solid enough.

Hakoda shifts in the doorway, and the movement draws Ozai’s notice. He glances up, meeting Hakoda’s gaze in the grand, gilded mirror stretching along the far wall. For a moment his fingers stop, the melody suspended, and Hakoda holds his gaze, waiting for the bitterness to flash across Ozai’s reflection.

But there is no anger in his shoulders this time. No annoyance in his jaw. Only weariness. 

He looks back down and starts again. 

The notes are smooth and melodious, drifting through the air like shimmers of dust in sunlight. 

“Do not hover,” comes his voice at last, a ribbon of dark silk weaving through the notes. And in it, an invitation, to come in or to go. 

Hakoda strolls forward.

Vaulted ceilings arch above the expansive room, reverberating each sonorous chord. Stately pillars rise up to meet it, tapestries and gold-plated moldings adorning the walls. In a far corner, half-obscured by the girth of a pillar, stands a guard in silent watch.

Hakoda slows to a stop alongside the ornate table where Ozai stands, his eyes tracing the path of opulent carvings to where they disappear beneath the zither’s polished body.

“Do you play?” he asks without looking at him. 

Ozai’s sturdy, porcelain fingers pluck and pull the strings with fluid ease, as if the song is engraved in his soul.

“No,” responds Hakoda simply.

He is certain that, having been Fire Lord, Ozai possesses a wealth of cultural knowledge outside his own, but after a moment’s pause, he elaborates anyway. 

“Our instruments in the Southern Water Tribe are different. The strings are smaller, wooden boxes with a hole cut into the top, and usually played with a whalebone bow rather than fingers.”

Ozai takes a long, slow breath and gives a barely perceptible gesture Hakoda takes for a nod. 

He is silent for so long that Hakoda wonders if he intends to dissolve the conversation there, when he says, “My mother taught me. When I was a boy.”

It comes as something of a surprise, both the divulgence and the sudden, impossible imagining of a boyish version of the once-fearsome man before him. Still tempestuous, no doubt, still surly and petulant, but perhaps shades less world-weary. A spark that might yet have been nurtured to a life-giving flame rather than brutal destruction.

Hakoda follows Ozai’s hands, incongruently gentle in their ministrations.

“My father loved to hear her play. I wanted to learn, too, but she didn’t know how to teach. By then she was too ill and couldn’t remember how she had learned herself. So, she sat me down one day and said, ‘Watch and listen, you will learn.’”

His left hand never stops, but his right drifts up the strings, plucking out three notes.

“Like this,” he says as his hand retreats again, and Hakoda brings his own to the strings, mirroring Ozai’s placement, his motions, and starts to play.

It is not playing so much as making a loop of sound, he knows, but Hakoda feels the tug of a smile, caught up in the melody.

A throat clears. 

Hakoda looks up just as Ozai does. The guard that had stood before in the corner, half-hidden by the pillar, is now standing several paces away, his bearing stiff and straight. Hakoda hadn’t even seen him approach.

The guard gives a stern nod to Ozai. “Curfew.”

The air almost palpably tightens with the indignation that settles over Ozai’s shoulders. 

But then he sighs quietly and gets up without so much as a parting word or glance, escorted by the guard toward the doors.

Hakoda watches them go, something he can’t quite name knitting a solemn crease into one corner of his mouth. 

They are almost to the exit when Ozai slows to look back. His amber gaze lingers, and Hakoda holds it, blue and steady, a moment before the guard ushers him through and out of sight.

+++

The stars are bright tonight.

For two years, Ozai had not seen the sky. He had not seen a bird, or a cloud, or a tree. Not the rain nor the glitter of leaves nor the caldera’s rim silvered in moonlight.

Now, he stands at a window set with iron bars, watching the night’s velvet curtain fall to reveal a shimmering spill of stars.

And he feels nothing.

Nothing, and everything.

He is so angry.

He is so lost.

He is soul dead, empty, a dry riverbed bereft of rain.

He is eviscerated, numb, lonely, tired.

Ozai’s hands close around cold iron and he steps back from the window, catches his murky reflection in the mirror. The solitary candle casts half his face in a weak glow, the other half wreathed in shadow.

The man who stares back is no longer one he recognizes. A stranger with new lines in his face, haunted eyes once lit by an inner fire gone cold. Pride that had filled his chest now shredded to gossamer, barely concealing the shame over which it is draped.

He is a monster.

He is a man.

He is in agony beyond escape.

He is desperate.

A guttural sound boils over through clenched teeth, and Ozai smashes a fist into the glass. 

His reflection splinters in a hail of silver knives, blood oozing from the glass embedded in the valley between two knuckles. He extracts it numbly, bends to scrape up a long sliver from the mirror’s remains, its jagged edges keen and bright.

Black silk whispers as he hikes up one sleeve, eyes following a faint path of blue down to the slow, insufferable pulse beneath the skin of his wrist.

His sigh of relief is deep and profound as the delicious, immediate pain chases away all else.

The glass is dragging down the length of his forearm, red blooming along the line, when the door bursts open. 

The surging mayhem swallows the sound of his fury as one guard attempts to strike the crude knife from his hand, earning a sharp slice to his cheek instead, while the other seizes him from behind.

With the strain, Ozai can feel the warm throb of blood spilling free, slicking the guard’s grip around his arm and dripping to the floor.

“Alert the Fire Lord, call for a—” 

The orders cut off with a wet crunch, the back of Ozai’s head to the guard’s nose. He reels back only an instant before regaining his bearings, teeth stained red, but Ozai is already pressing the glass dangerously to his split flesh.

“You will not,” he growls, the threat ripping up his throat, stalling the guards in their tracks. 

The two share a harried look and for several seconds, no one moves. The room itself seems to hold its breath.

Ozai’s words when they emerge are low, hoarse as gravel. “Take me to Hakoda.”

It comes as unexpectedly to them as it does to him, the confusion of it sweeping over their faces.

“Wh…” the first stammers. “That is not within our—” 

“Take me there now, or I will finish it right here.”

Another glance exchanged, this one longer. Some unspoken accord seems to pass between them. When their gazes finally return to Ozai, the second guard gives a reluctant nod.

It is a short, tense weave through moon-washed paths, the night air humming with crickets and the distant scream of frog-bats as they arrive before a door. 

Ozai is flanked tightly on either side, his forearm haphazardly wrapped to staunch the bleeding. The guard to his right wavers before stepping forth to give a brisk, decisive knock.

Several moments pass. Finally, a lock scrapes and the door opens. In it stands Hakoda, bare-chested and hair sleep-mussed, wearing only rumpled, loose-fitting pants. 

He squints against the soft city backlight, and then blinks.

“Ozai.” Hakoda says his name like a question, quietly, almost as if he might be a figment of half-sleep still clinging like spidersilk.

Ozai’s stomach does something altogether strange. A sudden swoop, as if he has plunged off of a mountaintop.

“Our deepest apologies, sir, for the intrusion and the lateness of the hour,” the first guard begins.

Hakoda is taking in the scene, eyes flitting from guard to guard to the prisoner between them. Down to the bloodied cloth coiled from elbow to wrist, the red on his stained hands dried and cracking. Ozai closes his fists.

“We interceded before it was too late, but… he refused help from anyone but you.”

Hakoda's gaze rises to meet Ozai’s. 

Self-loathing is threatening to thin the air in his lungs, regret knotting his throat. But Hakoda’s blue eyes hold calm, steady, a sea anchor in a storm.

“We are prepared to stay and ensure he does no further harm, to you or himself.”

Hakoda’s gaze is pulled away by the words, sliding past him to address the second guard who speaks.

“Thank you. But I’m sure that won’t be necessary. You may assume your posts outside the door, but I can take it from here.”

The composure in his commanding tone leaves little room for argument. After a moment’s hesitation, the guards nod and disengage. Silently, Hakoda retreats into the shadowy recess of his guest house, holding the door open in invitation.

Ozai steps over its threshold. With a soft click at his back, he is submerged once again into the quiet dark of aloneness, simultaneously familiar and very much not. 

This time, it is not an aloneness lived safely from within the walls he had built, the anger that had crafted a second prison around him with locked doors and barred windows. If ever a scenario had played through his mind in which he might trust another with the key, a Water Tribe man would surely not have made it onto the list of plausibilities.

The question hangs between them, furrowing into concern that settles softly on Hakoda’s brow. But he does not speak. He only waits as Ozai glances down at his bloodied hands, the slowly deepening bloom of red beneath the cloth, and forages for words.

He should not have come here. They are not friends. He should have finished it while he could, or let them throw him to the healers, drown him in humiliation at Zuko’s feet. At least the cold iron cell they will no doubt return him to is familiar, survivable, a predictable end. Unlike this foreign roiling in his stomach, or the strange tremor in his chest at the other man’s gaze, his enduring silence.

But he is here now, and there hangs yet the unspoken demand for an answer. 

Ozai swallows, clears his throat quietly. And finally, rasps dangerously honest, in a way that only occurs to him as the words leave his mouth.

“I didn’t know where else to go, I…” He grimaces, chokes on what remains.

Daring to look up again, his eyes find Hakoda’s in the dark. They are a squall of blue and grey, rendered nearly monochrome by the shadows. 

The other man seems to consider this, the broken admission, the spaces in between, his eyes dropping briefly from Ozai’s to the floor. 

When they return, it is with that same ineffable understanding, and Hakoda tips his head, a silent command to follow as he starts down the hall.

And Ozai does.

Darkness thickens through the door he is led, scattered moments later by the spark of flint and the fluttering birth of flame as Hakoda lights a lantern. He disappears into a smaller adjoining room, and Ozai takes in his surroundings, straying slowly toward the disheveled bed, around the other side still neatly tucked.

A half hour ago he was trying to end his life. Now, he is in the care of a foreign man, swathed in tepid candlelight, sinking down on the edge of a bed that is not his, the sigh laden not only with weariness but confusion and relief. 

His eyes fall closed, elbows on knees, fingers kneading his brow when the mattress sinks under added weight. 

Ozai leans up.

Hakoda sits beside him, a shallow bamboo box on his lap holding a small jar of salve, a rag, and a fresh strip of cloth. There is a halting aspect to his touch, a question, as he ghosts a dusky hand over the blood-soaked bandage before taking Ozai's forearm, carefully unwrapping it.

The ruined spool of cloth falls to the floor and the room is suffused with the tang of copper as Hakoda’s eyes hover over the gash, still oozing generously. His thumb lifts to brush a barely-there path alongside it. 

Cobalt eyes rise to his.

“Why did you do this to yourself?” he asks, his voice reduced to the faintest roll of thunder between them.

A lump burns in Ozai’s throat. He tries to swallow it back with furious resolve. But he is splintering beneath the touch, the soft pressure of Hakoda’s stare, the unwarranted sympathy and the weight of being seen, and without warning, the truth surges and breaks free with all the force of a tide.

“You don’t know what it feels like,” he chokes out. “Like you are a dead man still walking, excised of some unseen, life-giving part of you—your lungs, your heart—and you want to tear out every follicle, scratch your skin to bone until the pain of its dearth is lost to something louder. You want to scream but you are drowning, suffocating yet still somehow alive, and no one seems to notice that you’re sinking. All anyone can see is a man unchanged, expecting you to go on as if you still have the strength to stay afloat.”

He sucks in a ragged breath, swallows suddenly, as if he might somehow take the spilled words back.

Hakoda draws a long, contemplative breath. Lets it out again slow as he stares down at the narrow stretch of floor between their feet. 

Ozai's gaze weaves along the small braids tied in his thick brown hair, lanternlight winking sleepily off the beaded ends.

“No, I don’t know what it’s like,” he concedes, husky in the quiet as his gaze lifts to touch Ozai’s. “I won’t insult you by pretending pretty words I might offer could ease your pain. But I can listen. If you don’t want to talk, I can sit with you. Your silence and grief are not threatening or uncomfortable to me. I can offer you a hand, help you pull yourself out of the water. You don’t have to drown.”

The longing for it crashes through him, sudden and traitorous. And in its wake, the realization. 

He does not want to die. 

For the first time in as long as Ozai can remember, he thinks he might want to live. 

Perhaps he had only wished to cease existing, and that, it turns out, is not the same.

Hakoda uncorks the jar, warms a palmful of salve between his hands. They are calloused but gentle as he begins carefully smoothing the ointment along the length of the wound. 

It is a pungent medley of earth and sour fruit, and it makes the breath trip in his throat. Ozai tries not to wince, fingernails carving halfmoons into his palms against the pain. Then, he tries not to shiver as the salve starts to tingle, dulling the edge of the sting beneath the tender graze of Hakoda’s fingertips.

When he is finished, he wipes his hands on the rag before skillfully wrapping Ozai’s arm in the clean strip of cloth, securing it at the elbow with a knot. His hands return to his lap alongside the box, but Hakoda does not make to stand or move away.

They sit there, staring down at their hands or the grains in the floor.

“I don’t… I cannot go back there. Not like—” The words fumble out and Ozai chokes them back again. 

If word has not already reached Zuko, he knows it will not be long. By morning, the palace walls themselves will be vibrating, and Ozai will be helpless to stop it. 

So instead, he forces himself to look up again at Hakoda, and finishes only with, “Not tonight.”

The edges of the tribesman's eyes soften. “I had no intention of asking you to. You can stay. Tomorrow will bring what it brings…” 

His fingers twitch up from his lap, as though he might reach out and touch him.