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Katara of the Southern Water Tribe (k_waterbender) wrote in mirage_rpg,
@ 2008-11-01 19:06:00

Entry tags:

complete, day 21, katara, toph bei fong, zuko

Day Twenty-One
Who: Katara, Toph Bei Fong, and Zuko
When: Day 21 ; Late Morning
What: Confronting Zuko once again
Where: Building E first, then to the meadow
Rating: PG-13
Status: Complete

Katara had been so upset and so bone weary the day before that she’d gone straight to her room to do some relaxing yoga positions before sleeping. She didn’t even eat dinner that night, and she definitely hadn’t gone to Toph with the information she learned about Zuko’s sudden loss of memory. She figured it could wait until she could better collect her thoughts.

She had dreamed about the confrontation between herself and Zuko over and over in a loop in her mind. Each time it was a little more distressed, a little more desperate, a little more insane. Sometimes his fire blast had singed her hair, and sometimes the candles exploded around her, burning her flesh. Other times she had to freeze him to the wall, and still others her voice would suddenly become high pitched and difficult to understand. Other times it all seemed to move in super slow motion, and she felt heavy like she was trying to walk through mud. The entire thing was so absurd that she could completely understand Zuko’s unwillingness to believe her, even if she knew she was right. He thought he was right, too, after all.

Katara didn’t awaken until mid-morning, and the waterbender was still upset about the entire ordeal when she regained consciousness. She went through some relaxing exercises, and they helped to calm her. By late morning, she knew Toph would be waking soon, so she bathed and dressed in her Water Tribe battle attire. She had taken to wearing this ever since the kidnappings occurred, and she wasn’t about to let her guard down, especially not now. She was also sure to strap two full water skins to her back as well before she left her room to cross the hall to Toph’s door. Her fists rapped upon the wood, and she waited for her earthbender friend to answer.

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fire_lord_zuko
2008-11-02 01:33 am UTC (link)

In his dream he'd just made such arrangements, and dealt with the usual annoying chatter that had accompanied it. Time schedules would be delayed, taxes wouldn't get to people on time. He was being selfish, he was throwing the whole kingdom into chaos. Zuko had heard it all before, and despite the fact that he shrugged the whole thing off as if he were still a reckless young teenager, in the depths of his heart he knew that his advisors had a point, and that there was a reason for concern with his trips out of the kingdom. If somethign happened to him, there was no clear successor to the throne, and he was risking all of the peace he'd made by putting himself in a position where someone might have him killed and take the crown for themselves. Were he actually going on a trip to have fun for himself, he might have considered their words more carefully... but he wasn't.

Zuko was leaving to go looking for his mother.

As he finished putting the last of his posessions in a sack, he reached up and undid his hair, setting the golden flame of the Fire Lord down upon his table, preferring not to travel with it, even though many people could recognize him if they saw his scar, especially now that the play about the Avatar had gained worldwide syndication. The ending had been changed, of course... but it was still a crappy play.

As he started to tie up his satchel, he heard the door opening behind him, and his golden eyes looked to a familiar siloutte cast on the wall by the light outside of his room. Of all the people in the Fire Nation, her prescence was the one he recognized the most easily, the person who had seemed to care for him in a time when no one else did...

"Hey there... are you getting ready for our big... date... tonight..." Mai's voice trailed from the slightly happy tone that she sometimes had to the usual dead tone he'd known all of his lifetime. It had been forged by a lifetime of disappointment, to the point where nothing had really begun to matter to her any longer. She tried not to be obvious about it, but Zuko could tell when he was hurting her. He'd forgotten something, a date he'd made with her, to go see the summer solstice festival...

"You're going to leave again, aren't you? On one of your little quests..." Mai's voice became harder, and though she was trying hard to make it sound as if she didn't care Zuko could hear the pain in her voice.

He stared at his shoes for a long moment, and frowned slightly, then slowly turned towards her, his golden eyes staring into her darker ones, his brow furrowing as he tried to think of what was best to say, what his uncle would say at a time like this. "I'm sorry." he admitted, realizing that there was nothing he could make up that would take the place of an honest apology. "I shouldn't have forgotten that we'd made a date to go to the festival... but there's a traveling merchant that's going to be in a town not far from here, and if I don't leave tonight he'll be gone-"

"And then you'll miss out on another wild goose chase to go after your mother." Mai replied in a deadpan tone of voice. She walked up to him and crossed her arms, staring at him as if she were trying to size him up, to see if there were any way to get him to change his mind, to reason with him, to make her see things as clearly as she did. Zuko's gaze on her was firm and unflinching, and as he took a step forward, she turned her back and folded her arms, her usual defense mechanism against him making her angry.

"I'm sorry, Mai... but you don't understand, I have -"

"No! You don't understand, Zuko... you DON'T have to do this. You shouldn't do this!" Zuko's eyes widened as Mai turned back around. It wasn't often that she actually raised her voice, and much less often that she did it to argue with him. It meant that she was actually fairly angry about this whole thing, which only served to make Zuko feel worse. "You're listening to your father, a man who lied and murdered his way to get to the top, and then tried to do the same thing to conquer the world... even if she's out there, he's not going to tell you where she is... and every time you go you're putting everything you fought for at risk all over again!"

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