impromptu zuko fanfic idea:
(okay i always liked the idea of a soulmark and it being scarred over…i did find fanfics abt this on zuko and shoto,,,here’s my sleep deprived unfinished try)
zuko’s ashamed. well, not at first. no, not when he wakes up one morning, trudges with the maids on his heels into the dining room, and hears azula from her chair comment about “something on your face, zuzu.” no, because thats when his mom looks, pauses, and sits up from her chair to meet him on the royal carpet floor.
“zuzu,” is what she says, smiling, and brushing a thumb on his left cheek. somewhere up high on his cheekbone, neighboring his drowsy eye. “it seems you’ve gotten your soulmark.”
no, that is not the moment for zuko to be ashamed. he’s elated. he feels precious. it takes very little explanation from his mother, all the while azula sits and picks at her bowl of rice, to understand that he has someone somewhere with the same mark, and that one day he’ll meet them. so he feels proud. so proud he forgets to ask his mother about her mark—and if she says that she has one, and if he asks if she matches with his father, well, all of that is forgotten because zuko runs to the nearest mirror. the mirror in the hallway out to the courtyard, and over his shoulder his mother tells him that the royal prince portrait can be scheduled, so the very first painting of him can have his newly earned soulmark.
the shame comes later. months later. after ursa leaves, after azula’s grown farther from him, and after the five minutes zuko spent in the conference room. his mother is gone but that’s fine, he tries to think, because when he looks in the mirror he can see her in the mark still on his cheek, still with the faint memory of her thumb on his skin. but the shame comes, unknowingly, when he’s fallen on his knees before his father, begging to end the fight.
and ozai stares down at him, face twisted up in something zuko can’t focus on deciphering. the fire burns and it stings and he suffers alone, and it’s then that he’s ashamed; because he’s thought himself precious all this time, he’s thought himself to be proud, and now he’s gone and burned himself. and what has a done now?
he was proud prince zuko who had a soulmark, and it had become so natural for him, but now he’s exiled zuko with his regretful uncle. shameful zuko who covers the mirror in the room on his stuffy ship and has all his meals served in anything non-reflective. zuko alone, who curses himself because for some reason, after months of being aware of a mark so small on his cheek, one year into his banishment is all it takes to smear it as a faded memory.
he tells iroh, who says something about trauma. or something of the sort. something about healing and letting go. but zuko can’t, because even the cold air against his cheek strikes a panic, because he remembers ozai’s somber gaze while he stood over the only royal prince zuko’s portrait and burned it down to its molten golden frame.
zuko’s ashamed, because now mom’s gone, her memory is gone, now the turtleducks are lonely, now his room at the palace is empty, and now his soulmate will never find him.
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