Blow Away The Ash- Part Two
Pairings: Sokka/Zuko, Azula/Zuko
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: self hatred, self harm, incest, sexual abuse, rape, victim arousal, eating disorders.
Summary: Every night, Zuko cries in his sleep. Sokka, who shares his tent, attempts to ignore it, but eventually he cannot, so he wakes Zuko to comfort him. Zuko tells Sokka all about what happened to him when he was young, and Sokka yearns to help him to heal.
Blow Away The Ash
Part Two
Whilst Zuko speaks, he has to pause often to steady his breathing or choke back his tears.
Sokka has to do the same more than once, feeling incredibly ill and tearful at what he's hearing, his mind flickering to Katara and being unable to even imagine what he would feel if she did such awful things to him. Eventually, Zuko sinks down to lie on his back, his speech becomes slower, and his eyelids droop, and he starts repeating himself and losing his thread. At last he is totally silent, and Sokka lies down next to him and lets him sleep.
"Sokka! Sokka, get your lazy ass out of bed and help with breakfast!"
Sokka is woken with a start by Katara's voice, glad of the escape from disorientating dreams about running from something, and not being able to speak. He looks over next to him to see the place that Zuko slept is now empty, and then sits up, running a hand through his hair and yawning. He crawls out of the tent and stands up, scraping his hair up into its little ponytail and then brushing down his clothes. Katara marches up to him, glaring.
"Nice to see you up, mister," she scolds right in his face, dumping a load of firewood into his arms, "Start a fire."
Sokka raises an eyebrow.
"Surely Zuko would be the best for that job?" he suggests scathingly. Katara looks at him witheringly, and Sokka notes that she looks tired, and that she probably isn't in the best of moods today.
"He's disappeared off into the woods; he said he was going to steal some birds eggs for us to eat, but he's been gone for ages now."
"Maybe he's terrible at finding nests," Toph suggests from on top of a little mound of rock she has seated herself upon. At that, Katara rounds on her, and begins to berate her instead, so Sokka starts the fire quietly, then yells behind him,
"I'm gonna go and look for Zuko," and runs into the woods before anyone can stop him.
He's walking along through the forest for a few minutes, whistling, before he hears a rustling above his head. He looks up to see Zuko, settled high in the branches of a tree, a nest in his hands. Not without considerable effort, Sokka climbs the tree until he is on the branch below Zuko.
"You must be a good climber," Sokka tells him, out of breath.
"It seems cruel, to steal the entire nest," Zuko says, ignoring the compliment, "Because what if the mother comes back, and thinks that she is looking in the wrong place? So she searches the trees for her babies, but she can't find them, and she'll never know if it was her fault or not."
"Er," Sokka says with a frown, "To be honest Zuko, I don't think that birds are capable of that level of thinking. She'll probably just build a new nest and lay some more eggs. And we need to eat."
Zuko laughs, a short, harsh bark, and it makes Sokka feels uneasy.
"I guess," he replies, looking down at Sokka, "Think you can get down?"
"Of course," Sokka scoffs, and begins to descend; but his feet slip and he has to wrap his arms and legs around the branch, shrieking involuntarily, to stop himself from falling. Zuko laughs again, but fondly, not unkindly.
"How about I leave the nest here, carry you down, and then I climb back up to get the eggs?"
"Uh. Okay," Sokka says. Zuko gracefully descends to Sokka's branch, and turns away from him, offering his back. Sokka puts his arms around Zuko's neck, and his legs through the nooks Zuko makes with his arms. Zuko climbs down the tree trunk as though Sokka weighs nothing at all, and deposits his passenger on the ground, before shinning back up to get the eggs. Sokka finds himself blushing, and doesn't know why. Zuko descends, and they walk back to the camp together in silence.
Katara seems less agitated when they return, and Sokka supposes that she spoke to Aang, who calmed her down. The water bender, the earth bender and the Avatar are all sitting around Sokka's fire, Aang cooking some fish that Katara caught, and Toph handing out the plates she quickly sculpted with her earth bending. Zuko hands the nest to Katara, who rewards him with a smile. Aang, Toph and Katara chatter whilst they eat their breakfast, but Zuko is silent, and Sokka keeps glancing at him nervously.
"Can you not stare at me?" Zuko says flatly, without looking up, quiet enough that only Sokka can hear, "Eating is unpleasant enough without such an attentive audience."
"Sorry," Sokka says, quickly looking away, kicking himself mentally. He feels strange about the conversation that transpired the night before, like it wasn't real, only another one of his unpleasant dreams. He's not sure if he was expecting Zuko to mention it this morning, but he knows that what the prince told him was not all of the story, by a long shot. Zuko leaves a considerable amount of his breakfast, and leaves to go and sit on his own by the edge of the river, and Sokka can't help but feel guilty.
The five of them already know that there was no necessity of movement today: they are in a safe place, and they can't yet attack, so they might as well remain stationary for a while and regain their strength. Sokka, having no element to master, sits and sharpens his sword, then takes out his dagger and attempts to practice whittling: but he realises he has been absent-mindedly carving the fire nation symbol, and gets frustrated, throwing the circle of wood away from him into the trees. There is an "ow!" from the direction he tossed it, and he realises with an internal groan that he's hit Zuko. He gets up and jogs to where the noise came from, and finds Zuko rubbing the back of his head with one hand, and holding the wood chip in the other.
"You do know I'm on your side now, right?" Zuko jokes good-humouredly.
"I'm sorry," Sokka mumbles, embarrassed, "I didn't know you were there."
"This is pretty good," Zuko says, inspecting the carving, "Though you've missed the indent in the centre part of the flame."
"It's nothing, destroy it," Sokka says, and Zuko shrugs and then sets it on fire, turning it into a little pile of ash in the palm of his hand. Sokka sits down next to him, and they look out through the trees for a few minutes, before Zuko speaks again.
"I'm sorry about last night," he says quietly, "You shouldn't have had to hear that."
"Hey, no," Sokka says, turning to face Zuko and frowning, "It's okay. You needed to talk. You still do. You can't go on keeping this all inside."
Zuko raises a hand to gently touch the scar over his eye.
"I deserved what my father did to me," he says in a quiet his, full of self-contempt. Sokka grabs him by the arms and it's all he can do not to shake him.
"What the Hell, Zuko? No, you did not."
"I needed to be punished. Not for speaking out of term. But I was fucking my little sister," he spits, his voice thick, "She was younger than me, she was vulnerable, and I was fucking her."
"She was raping you," Sokka says forcefully, "She was not vulnerable. She abused you, you're the victim."
"I'm clearly sick enough to have liked it," Zuko chokes, tears falling now, "Given the fact I was turned on every damn time."
"Man, Zuko, no," Sokka murmurs, "That's not your fault. That's just the body's response to… to that. Azula was entirely at fault, no matter how young she was."
"She wasn't," Zuko whispers.
"What?"
"It wasn't all her fault. She'd been… she… it wasn't."
"Explain?" Sokka asks, "Tell me. You can talk to me."
Zuko sighs, wipes his eyes with his forearm, and continues the story.
*
Zuko isn't banished straight away. He is allowed time in the palace infirmary for his red raw skin to heal over, and for his sight in that eye to return, if indeed it's going to return at all. He will then have twenty four hours to pack what he needs before he leaves with his uncle to search for the Avatar.
Whilst in the infirmary, he is under almost constant watch. He isn't sure if this is Azula's reason for not coming to him in the night, or if the burn is so disfiguring that she wants nothing more to do with him sexually. But one night, he waves up from his bad dreams to find her sitting at the end of his bed, no nurses around. He starts to draw himself away from her, until she looks up and she looks so pensive.
"Don't worry," she says calmly, "I don't want to have sex tonight."
He hates the way she says it, like it's the most normal, natural thing in the world. Pain sears through his eye and he wants to be sick.
"Do you want to know how I always knew what to do?" she continues. He just stares at her and doesn't say a thing. She looks back, and shrugs. "Well, I'm going to tell you anyway. Father loves me." Zuko blinks, not understanding. She rolls her eyes, and goes on, "Father loves me the way he would love another woman. The way he loved mother, before we were born."
"He's abused you?" Zuko gasps.
"Hush!" Azula commands at once, "The gash I gave the guard won't keep your nurses for long. And no, he has not abused me. I wanted it. He loves me. I love him," she insists, but her voice is rising hysterically, and her eyes are wet, and Zuko thinks it's herself she's trying to convince, "We make love."
"That's sick," Zuko murmurs in horror, "Azula, you were a little child, you're his daughter-"
"And you're my brother, but your cock seems to like the attention, doesn't it, Zuzu," she hisses, "Don't be bitter just because you know I can attract him more than your precious Mama ever could."
At that, Zuko roars and flings himself at his sister, grabbing a fistful of her hair and pulling as hard as he can. She squeals, but then laughs, and reaches out a hand to scrape a single fingernail down his scar. He wails and instantly shifts back, wriggling into one corner of the bed, as if he's safer there. She looms over him, and hisses,
"You're disfigured, and fat, and a failure. But you're a decent fuck, Zuzu. Kiss. Me. Back."
And she presses her lips against his, and he has no choice other than to kiss back, their cheeks both wet with tears.
*
"Zuko-" Sokka starts, but Zuko waves a hand.
"Sorry," he says, before leaning away from Sokka to be sick on the ground. The little amount of breakfast he ate is brought up, and Sokka grits his teeth and furrows his brown in worry.
"What do you think happened to your sister after you left?" he asks, when Zuko has stopped wrenching and regained his composure.
"I think that my father kept on- doing what he was doing. And that she, having told her herself for years that he enjoyed it, eventually did. When I went home after Azula thought she'd killed Aang, she never once came to my bed, or even mentioned those days. So I assume she was getting… getting satisfaction elsewhere."
"When you went away, with your Uncle; it was three years before you even met us. What happened in those three years?"
"I took control," Zuko mutters. Sokka's hand finds the small of Zuko's back, beginning to rub small circles there, and Zuko rests his head against Sokka's shoulder.
*
Rating: NC-17
Warnings: self hatred, self harm, incest, sexual abuse, rape, victim arousal, eating disorders.
Summary: Every night, Zuko cries in his sleep. Sokka, who shares his tent, attempts to ignore it, but eventually he cannot, so he wakes Zuko to comfort him. Zuko tells Sokka all about what happened to him when he was young, and Sokka yearns to help him to heal.
Blow Away The Ash
Part Two
Whilst Zuko speaks, he has to pause often to steady his breathing or choke back his tears.
Sokka has to do the same more than once, feeling incredibly ill and tearful at what he's hearing, his mind flickering to Katara and being unable to even imagine what he would feel if she did such awful things to him. Eventually, Zuko sinks down to lie on his back, his speech becomes slower, and his eyelids droop, and he starts repeating himself and losing his thread. At last he is totally silent, and Sokka lies down next to him and lets him sleep.
"Sokka! Sokka, get your lazy ass out of bed and help with breakfast!"
Sokka is woken with a start by Katara's voice, glad of the escape from disorientating dreams about running from something, and not being able to speak. He looks over next to him to see the place that Zuko slept is now empty, and then sits up, running a hand through his hair and yawning. He crawls out of the tent and stands up, scraping his hair up into its little ponytail and then brushing down his clothes. Katara marches up to him, glaring.
"Nice to see you up, mister," she scolds right in his face, dumping a load of firewood into his arms, "Start a fire."
Sokka raises an eyebrow.
"Surely Zuko would be the best for that job?" he suggests scathingly. Katara looks at him witheringly, and Sokka notes that she looks tired, and that she probably isn't in the best of moods today.
"He's disappeared off into the woods; he said he was going to steal some birds eggs for us to eat, but he's been gone for ages now."
"Maybe he's terrible at finding nests," Toph suggests from on top of a little mound of rock she has seated herself upon. At that, Katara rounds on her, and begins to berate her instead, so Sokka starts the fire quietly, then yells behind him,
"I'm gonna go and look for Zuko," and runs into the woods before anyone can stop him.
He's walking along through the forest for a few minutes, whistling, before he hears a rustling above his head. He looks up to see Zuko, settled high in the branches of a tree, a nest in his hands. Not without considerable effort, Sokka climbs the tree until he is on the branch below Zuko.
"You must be a good climber," Sokka tells him, out of breath.
"It seems cruel, to steal the entire nest," Zuko says, ignoring the compliment, "Because what if the mother comes back, and thinks that she is looking in the wrong place? So she searches the trees for her babies, but she can't find them, and she'll never know if it was her fault or not."
"Er," Sokka says with a frown, "To be honest Zuko, I don't think that birds are capable of that level of thinking. She'll probably just build a new nest and lay some more eggs. And we need to eat."
Zuko laughs, a short, harsh bark, and it makes Sokka feels uneasy.
"I guess," he replies, looking down at Sokka, "Think you can get down?"
"Of course," Sokka scoffs, and begins to descend; but his feet slip and he has to wrap his arms and legs around the branch, shrieking involuntarily, to stop himself from falling. Zuko laughs again, but fondly, not unkindly.
"How about I leave the nest here, carry you down, and then I climb back up to get the eggs?"
"Uh. Okay," Sokka says. Zuko gracefully descends to Sokka's branch, and turns away from him, offering his back. Sokka puts his arms around Zuko's neck, and his legs through the nooks Zuko makes with his arms. Zuko climbs down the tree trunk as though Sokka weighs nothing at all, and deposits his passenger on the ground, before shinning back up to get the eggs. Sokka finds himself blushing, and doesn't know why. Zuko descends, and they walk back to the camp together in silence.
Katara seems less agitated when they return, and Sokka supposes that she spoke to Aang, who calmed her down. The water bender, the earth bender and the Avatar are all sitting around Sokka's fire, Aang cooking some fish that Katara caught, and Toph handing out the plates she quickly sculpted with her earth bending. Zuko hands the nest to Katara, who rewards him with a smile. Aang, Toph and Katara chatter whilst they eat their breakfast, but Zuko is silent, and Sokka keeps glancing at him nervously.
"Can you not stare at me?" Zuko says flatly, without looking up, quiet enough that only Sokka can hear, "Eating is unpleasant enough without such an attentive audience."
"Sorry," Sokka says, quickly looking away, kicking himself mentally. He feels strange about the conversation that transpired the night before, like it wasn't real, only another one of his unpleasant dreams. He's not sure if he was expecting Zuko to mention it this morning, but he knows that what the prince told him was not all of the story, by a long shot. Zuko leaves a considerable amount of his breakfast, and leaves to go and sit on his own by the edge of the river, and Sokka can't help but feel guilty.
The five of them already know that there was no necessity of movement today: they are in a safe place, and they can't yet attack, so they might as well remain stationary for a while and regain their strength. Sokka, having no element to master, sits and sharpens his sword, then takes out his dagger and attempts to practice whittling: but he realises he has been absent-mindedly carving the fire nation symbol, and gets frustrated, throwing the circle of wood away from him into the trees. There is an "ow!" from the direction he tossed it, and he realises with an internal groan that he's hit Zuko. He gets up and jogs to where the noise came from, and finds Zuko rubbing the back of his head with one hand, and holding the wood chip in the other.
"You do know I'm on your side now, right?" Zuko jokes good-humouredly.
"I'm sorry," Sokka mumbles, embarrassed, "I didn't know you were there."
"This is pretty good," Zuko says, inspecting the carving, "Though you've missed the indent in the centre part of the flame."
"It's nothing, destroy it," Sokka says, and Zuko shrugs and then sets it on fire, turning it into a little pile of ash in the palm of his hand. Sokka sits down next to him, and they look out through the trees for a few minutes, before Zuko speaks again.
"I'm sorry about last night," he says quietly, "You shouldn't have had to hear that."
"Hey, no," Sokka says, turning to face Zuko and frowning, "It's okay. You needed to talk. You still do. You can't go on keeping this all inside."
Zuko raises a hand to gently touch the scar over his eye.
"I deserved what my father did to me," he says in a quiet his, full of self-contempt. Sokka grabs him by the arms and it's all he can do not to shake him.
"What the Hell, Zuko? No, you did not."
"I needed to be punished. Not for speaking out of term. But I was fucking my little sister," he spits, his voice thick, "She was younger than me, she was vulnerable, and I was fucking her."
"She was raping you," Sokka says forcefully, "She was not vulnerable. She abused you, you're the victim."
"I'm clearly sick enough to have liked it," Zuko chokes, tears falling now, "Given the fact I was turned on every damn time."
"Man, Zuko, no," Sokka murmurs, "That's not your fault. That's just the body's response to… to that. Azula was entirely at fault, no matter how young she was."
"She wasn't," Zuko whispers.
"What?"
"It wasn't all her fault. She'd been… she… it wasn't."
"Explain?" Sokka asks, "Tell me. You can talk to me."
Zuko sighs, wipes his eyes with his forearm, and continues the story.
*
Zuko isn't banished straight away. He is allowed time in the palace infirmary for his red raw skin to heal over, and for his sight in that eye to return, if indeed it's going to return at all. He will then have twenty four hours to pack what he needs before he leaves with his uncle to search for the Avatar.
Whilst in the infirmary, he is under almost constant watch. He isn't sure if this is Azula's reason for not coming to him in the night, or if the burn is so disfiguring that she wants nothing more to do with him sexually. But one night, he waves up from his bad dreams to find her sitting at the end of his bed, no nurses around. He starts to draw himself away from her, until she looks up and she looks so pensive.
"Don't worry," she says calmly, "I don't want to have sex tonight."
He hates the way she says it, like it's the most normal, natural thing in the world. Pain sears through his eye and he wants to be sick.
"Do you want to know how I always knew what to do?" she continues. He just stares at her and doesn't say a thing. She looks back, and shrugs. "Well, I'm going to tell you anyway. Father loves me." Zuko blinks, not understanding. She rolls her eyes, and goes on, "Father loves me the way he would love another woman. The way he loved mother, before we were born."
"He's abused you?" Zuko gasps.
"Hush!" Azula commands at once, "The gash I gave the guard won't keep your nurses for long. And no, he has not abused me. I wanted it. He loves me. I love him," she insists, but her voice is rising hysterically, and her eyes are wet, and Zuko thinks it's herself she's trying to convince, "We make love."
"That's sick," Zuko murmurs in horror, "Azula, you were a little child, you're his daughter-"
"And you're my brother, but your cock seems to like the attention, doesn't it, Zuzu," she hisses, "Don't be bitter just because you know I can attract him more than your precious Mama ever could."
At that, Zuko roars and flings himself at his sister, grabbing a fistful of her hair and pulling as hard as he can. She squeals, but then laughs, and reaches out a hand to scrape a single fingernail down his scar. He wails and instantly shifts back, wriggling into one corner of the bed, as if he's safer there. She looms over him, and hisses,
"You're disfigured, and fat, and a failure. But you're a decent fuck, Zuzu. Kiss. Me. Back."
And she presses her lips against his, and he has no choice other than to kiss back, their cheeks both wet with tears.
*
"Zuko-" Sokka starts, but Zuko waves a hand.
"Sorry," he says, before leaning away from Sokka to be sick on the ground. The little amount of breakfast he ate is brought up, and Sokka grits his teeth and furrows his brown in worry.
"What do you think happened to your sister after you left?" he asks, when Zuko has stopped wrenching and regained his composure.
"I think that my father kept on- doing what he was doing. And that she, having told her herself for years that he enjoyed it, eventually did. When I went home after Azula thought she'd killed Aang, she never once came to my bed, or even mentioned those days. So I assume she was getting… getting satisfaction elsewhere."
"When you went away, with your Uncle; it was three years before you even met us. What happened in those three years?"
"I took control," Zuko mutters. Sokka's hand finds the small of Zuko's back, beginning to rub small circles there, and Zuko rests his head against Sokka's shoulder.
*