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Avatar the Last Airbender - family (more than blood, cut like knives)
Title: family (more than blood, cut like knives)
Pairing or Character: Zuko, Toph, Azula, Aang, Mai (Zuko/Toph; implied Zuko/Azula, past Zuko/Mai, Mai/Azula, Aang/Katara)
Rating: PG-13
Notes: Written for imadra_blue for avatarflashfic on LJ
Squicks/Spoilers: Character death; torture; no spoilers, as far as I know.
"You can't escape it, Zuko; you can't run from family," she says, and smiles, blood painting her mouth and chin.
-
She comes back for him on a sunny day. It seems horrifically inappropriate.
Zuko carefully steps over the rubble that litters the ground, the result of creating the makeshift door made in the stone wall of the prison, and he blinks. It's too bright.
There's a familiar figure standing outside, one that he's been expecting since feeling the unnatural rumble of the building and the ground.
"Toph," Zuko says, just to hear himself speak. His voice is gravelly and rough with the combination of use and overuse, and maybe her eyes narrow a little bit, but she doesn't comment on it.
She steps forward, and Toph reaches out her hands to inspect his face, his arms, his chest; her lips purse, and the hand that she has wrapped around his wrist (thin enough now that even Toph's tiny hands can wrap all the way around) tightens.
"You look like shit," she tells him bluntly, "Let's go. The Avatar is waiting for us."
-
Zuko dreams.
-
"Zuko, Zuko, Zuko," she chides him, her red, red lips curved in - a smile? It's filled with humor, albeit dark humor, so Zuko calls it a smile and then has to search desperately for something else to think of as the edge of the blade digs into his stomach. "You never do learn."
"Azula," he spits, and the twisted expression on her face fills with glee.
"Oh, you still remember me," she gasps, mockingly surprised, touched, and even goes as far as to place a hand - the one not holding the knife - over her heart overdramatically; "I was afraid our last... session might have addled your brains. You were so very incoherent afterwards. I was afraid I might have broken you."
'It'll take more than that to break me,' he thinks, but doesn't say; still, she sees the message in the hate in his eyes and laughs throatily as she drags the knife across his abdomen.
"Oh, dear brother, don't doubt my abilities; I can break you, and I will - unless you give me what I want." Azula presses her lips tenderly on his jaw, a cruel mockery of a lover's kiss, and Zuko recoils in disgust. She only leans in closer, and he feels her smirk against his neck.
"What are you doing?" he asks, and makes another futile attempt to pull out of his bonds, but the chains hold tight.
The knife drops to the floor between them, and Azula places a hand on both sides of his face. "Won't you play with me, dear brother?" she whispers in his ear, "A game. It'll be fun."
"Stop," Zuko rasps, "Stop, this is- this is wrong."
"Give me what I want, Zuko," she murmurs softly. A hand slides from his cheek down his neck, strokes his bare collarbone, slips down his chest and keeps going further.
It's times like this that he nearly tells her where (Toph) the Avatar (home) is.
-
"It's done," Zuko says, and the other man blinks at him, and sags forward as the tension leaks from his shoulders.
"Ten years," Aang says heavily, and lets his head fall forward, his forehead connecting with a dull thump with the table.
"Hm," Zuko grunts noncommittally.
"I should have ended it by now," Aang mumbles, or at least Zuko thinks that's what he said.
"Hm," he responds again.
"Could've saved a lot of people." Aang rolls his head to the side so that his cheek is resting on the table top. His eyes grow distant, and he stares thoughtfully at a picture frame hung on the wall. Zuko knows without looking that it's a sketch of four young children, all smiling idiotically at the artist; their faces are bright with innocence, with hope - with life. It's ironic, maybe, in a way.
"Maybe," Zuko says.
"Might've been able to save him," Aang muses, "Save her." He sounds wistful, but the jarring pain that used to come in his voice when he talked about his old friends is gone. It's both a relief and a shock to Zuko, and he glances at the picture.
"You think?" he asks. The eyes of a dead woman look back at him, but she's smiling.
Aang shrugs. "Maybe."
The picture reminds Zuko of three things; innocence, friendship, family. He looks at Aang, and is reminded of loss.
Zuko tastes ash in the air.
"I'm sorry," the Avatar says quietly.
He doesn't say anything at first.
"You should be," Zuko says finally, and walks out.
-
He wants to turn away from the sight, but he can't; the guard holds his head forward, makes sure his eyes are still open. Zuko knows in his mind that he left her, but his heart remembers that he loved her once, and it aches to see this; in that moment, Zuko has never hated Azula more.
His sister pulls away from Mai, and Mai can't look at him, her lips swollen from kissing - kissing Azula. Mai doesn't say sorry, doesn't even look sorry, just hunches her shoulders inward like she's trying to fold inward on herself and averts her eyes.
"She's mine now," Azula taunts him, and when he tries to look away again, she grabs his chin so they're looking eye-to-eye. "She's mine," his sister repeats, then smiles. "And you're mine too."
-
He wakes, and in the darkness, he sees the unmistakable outline of Toph leaning over him.
"You're not okay," she tells him, voice slightly slurred from exhaustion, "You fuckin' retard."
Zuko closes his eyes again.
-
"You had Mother," Azula hisses, "You had Mother - she loved you best, loved you only - what about me?"
"You had Father," he points out, and she laughs.
"You're such a fool," she says contemptuously, and Zuko screams as lightning erupts from her fingers and courses through his body.
-
Toph insists on sparring with him first thing in the morning.
"Is that all you've got?" she taunts him, and laughs, the sound high and exhilarated. "C'mon, dumbass, I know you can do better than that-" Zuko growls in frustration, and his next jab makes it past her defenses for once, but there's too much behind this hit, and his fist connects with her ribs harder than he'd meant to, so Toph's words end with an "-oomph."
She topples backward, winded, but Zuko's there, arms wrapped around her carefully, muttering, "I'm sorry, I'm sorry," before she can hit the ground. She's probably about to smack him, because (he can practically hear the thoughts streaming through her head) fuck it all, he's only been gone four (long) months, she hasn't turned into a porcelain doll or anything in that time - but she doesn't resist as he lets his arms tighten around her anyway and tries to muffle his sobs into her shoulder, apologizing incoherently for something, everything, and he thinks his tears are probably soaking through her shirt.
"What the hell, Zuko?" Toph asks, but her arms are wrapping around his shoulders, letting him take whatever comfort he can from her.
-
"I'm sorry," Zuko says abruptly one day, and the finger trailing across one of the scars on his back pauses.
"Don't be," Azula tells him, and digs her fingernails into his skin.
He wonders what she thinks he's apologizing for, even as he has to clench his jaw painfully to keep from screaming.
He wonders what he thinks he's apologizing for.
-
"Toph," Aang says, and because they're so intimately close, Zuko can feel her body stiffen in surprise at the intrusion. His voice is cool, professional; nothing in it belies the fact that they were once close friends.
Zuko releases her, and moves away just in time to see Toph's throat working as she swallows down the automatic responses that she wants to spit out. She's told him about it, angry whispers in the dead of night about how she's going to tell him exactly what she thinks of the Avatar, but even though Toph is brash and rough around the edges, she can't stand to hurt her friend, no matter how much he's hurt her.
And Zuko remembers how much it hurt her when the Avatar froze her out, too preoccupied with his own guilt and shame and grief to remember that she'd loved the watertribe siblings too.
Toph straightens to face Aang. "Yes?" Her voice is clipped, professional. It makes Zuko want to wince and he turns his face away from the scene.
He ignores their voices as they continue their conversation, the tone of their interaction polite and strained. His stomach roils.
Toph's hand curls around his, and he sighs quietly to himself. They're broken, but they can sooth each other's ragged edges.
It's enough for now, but Zuko feels it in his gut; this can't go on forever.
-
There's blood, everywhere, on the walls, on the floor, on his clothes, and there's a word for this; Fratricide, he thinks, and feels sick. Zuko clutches his stomach with one hand and places one hand on the wall to keep himself from toppling over as he retches empty air.
Azula chuckles darkly, the soft, rippling sound broken by her hacking and uneven gulps of air. He turns back around to look at her, takes a few staggering steps forward, and then collapses to his knees by her broken body.
She laughing at him. "It's in the blood," she says, and one shaking hand raises to stroke his cheek, smearing her blood over it, and Zuko flinches when her fingernails catch on one of his open wounds. "It's in the family."
"No," Zuko says, shaking his head, "No, I'm not a part of this anymore, I left you-"
"You think that matters?" she asks, and hisses in pain when her hand falls to the ground with a slap. "You can't escape it, Zuko; you can't run from family," Azula says, and smiles, blood painting her mouth and chin.
He jerks away from her, crawls away, shakes his head 'no, no, no,' and she's laughing at him again, but chokes, and then her gasping chuckles fade away to wheezing.
Zuko feels sick. "I didn't mean to," he whispers.
"Don't worry, brother," Azula rasps, smirking, "We'll see each other again on the other side, won't we?" She starts to chuckle again before she draws in one deep, shuddering breath, and her body stills.
Zuko turns away in revulsion.
She's right.
Fratricide earns him the same special place in hell that parricide does.
-
"Goodbye," Zuko whispers, and slides a note into her fingers. She mumbles quietly and, asleep, Toph clutches her fingers around the note and turns over, curling in on herself and then promptly starting snoring. She won't be able to read it herself, but he knows there are people in the camp more than willing to help her.
He presses his forehead against hers, just breathing; it's not loving, and it's not romantic, but it's intimate - it's just sharing warmth, and comfort, and Zuko just stays there for a few more seconds, reluctant to leave.
Finally, Zuko steps away, and walks out of the tent. Maybe they couldn't be saved, but he can try to save her.
There is wetness on his face. It's not raining, and Zuko touches his eyes, just to confirm that he isn't crying. He's not.
The liquid he swipes from his cheek tastes salty, and inside the tent, Toph's even breathing turns ragged with quiet grief.
And still, Zuko walks away into the night.
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