memories' betrayal

Walking down the empty corridors of the fire nation palace, his footsteps echoing hollowly back to him, the prince of the kingdom cursed the darkness for bringing back memories he had wished to lock away. As he walked, the red and gold painted walls turned darker into a shade of sickly green, and he could almost hear the soft drops of water falling from the ceiling, down into the puddles that gathered on the floor. If he didn’t know that the monsoon hadn’t arrived yet, he would have sworn that the walls were gathering moisture.

His shoes didn’t echo back with the dull thud of wood, but from strong stonewalls, endlessly thick to prevent the water from the lake to burst through. He was walking down that familiar path again, eyes used to the darkness because he was the Blue Spirit, silently creeping around in search of his goal, the Avatar’s bison. Then later on, he was running down that way again, this time looking for the exit.


The images came quicker than he could shut them out, causing him to grab his head with one hand, and use the other to support him leaning against one of the walls. Slowly he sank down to the floor, eyes unseeing but for the memories flashing in his mind. How he ran down the corridor, past countless doors that all looked the same, desperately looking out for a ray of light, as a sign of the exit. Then came the only open door, and his eye caught a glimpse of a shadow, making him screech to a halt and backtrack as fast as he could.

There he laid, a small puddle of a dark substance flowing out from under his limp body, eyes closed, lips as pale as his face. A serene air was around the young freedom fighters dead features, but it still shocked the prince to see the boy, who had once been his enemy, not much older than himself, dead on the cold stone floor underneath a lake. Something wasn’t right, it just wasn’t right for a freedom fighter to lay dead in a place that was more like a prison than anything the prince could think of.

He didn’t know what had moved him to do it, but somehow, he had the urge to reach out and touch that pale face, once full of life and now silent, as if sleeping. Yet, now it was cold and clammy, the very opposite he wanted to remember of this boy, who had clung to life, and lost the battle.
His uncle wasn’t watching, as soon as he had reached out, the older man had left him alone under the pretence of looking for the exit. As he bent down, he felt a wave of sadness wash over him, and the coldness seeped through his skin and chilled him to the bone, and soul. He would never forget the feel of the boy’s clammy skin.

Resting his forehead on top of the freedom fighter’s, he lowered his lips to meet the icy cold ones, pressing them against each other, allowing a single tear to fall from his eye and onto his counterpart’s face. There it slid down the pale skin, slowly downwards, creating the illusion of him crying.

Without a backward glance, Zuko got up and walked away, locking away this memory to the back of his mind, meeting his uncle as if nothing had happened. Ignoring the worried look he got. He would forget the body of a teen who deserved to live.


And now the memory was rushing back to him, in the very place he had fled to, because he had hoped to erase all thought of a grey-eyed freedom fighter, if he where in a country were the dominant colour was the complete opposite. Where nothing would remind him of all the colours the boy had had while he lived. But fate was unforgiving, coming back at him, making him crumple to the floor, holding his head with only the memory of grey eyes and cold lips.