Burning the Candle at Both Ends [Milliways]
Zuko recovers; his color gets better, he moves more, gets more active.
Within a day or two, he's under his uncle's watchful eye again -- this time helping with the planning of the Jasmine Dragon's decor. He has a remarkably keen eye for aethetics, something that makes his uncle most pleased. (He does not realize that Zuko has merely learned his uncle's taste and repeating it without any inclination or emotion.)
They move out -- up, rather. Their tiny apartment, where the collected filth of the building sluices beneath their window, is left behind. The place they are shown is much large (suitable for a family says the guide Joo Di as she smiles at Zuko, one faker to another) and is furnished. None of this hand-me-down nonsense; no, the furniture that WAS here is gone now, and newness (but classical style, reminds Joo Di) can be seen in everything now there, from the mother-of-pearl inlay on the dancing cranes that decorate the divider screens, to the blocky patterns on the expensive rugs that reminds one of the rat maze Zuko finds himself trapped in.
Iroh and he have seperate quarters now. This is a blessing; the old man sleeps the deep and graced slumber of the innocent, and his nephew sits up at night, reading the daily news sheet that comes to their door every day. It is with a simple papercut that real feeling intrudes into his world again. The oozing blood is ignored, and a nail pressed into the wound. The hiss of pain is the first genuine expression of anything he's felt in days.
So, he supposes, this is how it is to be. How pathetic. A miserable wretch, born to falsehood and fakery, only to discover the only thing in his life is what hurts him.
The scar on his face, Zuko realizes, should have told him that.
It starts small. The slip of a kitchen knife, a broken glass. But Iroh will get suspicious, so that much stop. He has to be deliberate, he has to b cunning. He has to lie.
The old man's so in love with his new life, he misses it-- when Zuko sits up nights to read, he is studying more then simply the upper ring of Ba Sing Se's monotony, but the science of pain; what gets the best reaction. Would Iroh appreciate the irony of his gifted blade, (the inscription reads: Never give up without a fight) being the only real thing Zuko owns anymore? Or the blade being heated, applied to the bicep (the long robes cover everything; Ba Sing Se hides it's people's lack of uniformity with draping, heavy clothes) and the satisfied breath taken as tears prick his eyes at the scent of burned flesh and the heat of the blade against his skin.
Sometimes he cuts. Mostly he burns. Both are easy enough to care for; cloth for the former, and a little common medicine, honey for the latter.
Two days before the opening of the Jasmine Dragon, Zuko -- Li -- wonders when he became such a wretched animal, that even pain is better then nothing. But he realizes the already knows the answer, and swallows the selfloathing down with a smile.
Within a day or two, he's under his uncle's watchful eye again -- this time helping with the planning of the Jasmine Dragon's decor. He has a remarkably keen eye for aethetics, something that makes his uncle most pleased. (He does not realize that Zuko has merely learned his uncle's taste and repeating it without any inclination or emotion.)
They move out -- up, rather. Their tiny apartment, where the collected filth of the building sluices beneath their window, is left behind. The place they are shown is much large (suitable for a family says the guide Joo Di as she smiles at Zuko, one faker to another) and is furnished. None of this hand-me-down nonsense; no, the furniture that WAS here is gone now, and newness (but classical style, reminds Joo Di) can be seen in everything now there, from the mother-of-pearl inlay on the dancing cranes that decorate the divider screens, to the blocky patterns on the expensive rugs that reminds one of the rat maze Zuko finds himself trapped in.
Iroh and he have seperate quarters now. This is a blessing; the old man sleeps the deep and graced slumber of the innocent, and his nephew sits up at night, reading the daily news sheet that comes to their door every day. It is with a simple papercut that real feeling intrudes into his world again. The oozing blood is ignored, and a nail pressed into the wound. The hiss of pain is the first genuine expression of anything he's felt in days.
So, he supposes, this is how it is to be. How pathetic. A miserable wretch, born to falsehood and fakery, only to discover the only thing in his life is what hurts him.
The scar on his face, Zuko realizes, should have told him that.
It starts small. The slip of a kitchen knife, a broken glass. But Iroh will get suspicious, so that much stop. He has to be deliberate, he has to b cunning. He has to lie.
The old man's so in love with his new life, he misses it-- when Zuko sits up nights to read, he is studying more then simply the upper ring of Ba Sing Se's monotony, but the science of pain; what gets the best reaction. Would Iroh appreciate the irony of his gifted blade, (the inscription reads: Never give up without a fight) being the only real thing Zuko owns anymore? Or the blade being heated, applied to the bicep (the long robes cover everything; Ba Sing Se hides it's people's lack of uniformity with draping, heavy clothes) and the satisfied breath taken as tears prick his eyes at the scent of burned flesh and the heat of the blade against his skin.
Sometimes he cuts. Mostly he burns. Both are easy enough to care for; cloth for the former, and a little common medicine, honey for the latter.
Two days before the opening of the Jasmine Dragon, Zuko -- Li -- wonders when he became such a wretched animal, that even pain is better then nothing. But he realizes the already knows the answer, and swallows the selfloathing down with a smile.