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Shell Shock	By : Sumhope Category: Avatar - The Last Airbender > AU/AR - Alternate Universe/Alternate Reality > Het- Male/Female Views: 4422 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: I do not own Avatar: The Last Airbender, nor any of the characters from it. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
- 1-Shell Shock
- 2-Leaving
- 3-Ship
- 4-Igloo
- 5-Gran Gran
- 6-Fog
- 7-Sokka?
- 8-Watching
- 9-Dreams
- 10-Hands
- 11-Aang
- 12-Attraction
- 13-Trapped
- 12
- 13
Summary: I am drowning in a pool of hazy mist that coats a darkness over my eyes. A constant fog surrounds me. I feel as if I am hearing, seeing, speaking, all underwater. Somewhere submerged deep inside me something is screaming, hysterically crying, breaking, but it is so far down that I hardly notice. It is ever present, a nuisance to my hazy reality that annoys like a persistent gnat. Disturbing images plague my mind and memory, taunting in their familiarity... So I sleep.
Note: Zuko POV

----Trapped----

It seems strange, even now, after all that has happened, that fate, with its twisted humor, has brought us to this place where it all began.
I remember it clearly as though it was yesterday although it has been more than two years since the day of Sozin's comet. I can still taste fire in the air and smell the burnt flesh smoldering from the bolt to my chest. Some ways behind us, chained and flailing, Azula's screams reverberate and echo through the caverns of my ears.
She stands close beside me, solid and strong, supporting me with one arm curled around my waist. Tears are drying on her cheeks, fingers dripping. Tears she cried for me, water she healed me with. I lean heavily upon her. The wound to my chest has weakened me. The newly grown nerves scream in protest with each breath and my lungs still feel scorched but I can breathe none the less. She has given life to me. Standing there, with her at my side, I feel so many emotions surge and tangle within. I feel whole.
It was almost two years ago that I stood with her and awaited the avatars return.
I remember the foreign feeling of hope that rose and swelled within me. Hope that my father would be defeated, that the war my grandfather declared on the world would end and that an era of peace would begin.
Aang did return to us.
His limp charred body hung, draped in my fathers hands. Katara didn't make a sound but her hands around me went slack and I felt her sag against me, until I was the one supporting her now. I was afraid to look at her face.
Instead I stared at my father. I could see the bloodlust painted on his features. I could read the eagerness in his eyes. I could see he wanted to finish what Azula had started. I remembered thinking it was unfair that she would have to watch me die twice that day.
We were surrounded and it was hopeless. The power of the comet still sang through my veins but the Azula's blue fire had sapped me of my strength. Katara's water was all gone, evaporated by Azula's flames, the last used to fill the jagged hole in my torso.
Everything happened so quickly. They took her from me and I was powerless to stop them.
My fathers eyes mocked me... weak, weak, weak, they say.
I teetered precariously on my feet, the ache of freshly constructed nerves and skin screaming in my veins. The smell of burnt singed flesh lingers in the air.
In the end it was Azula's demented wailings that stayed his eager hand. I was not to die that day. He was hesitant. I was after all his only sane heir, now that Azula had been swallowed by the darkness in her mind.
I was forced to kneel at his feet, ruler of the fire nation, conquerer of the world, self declared Phoenix Lord... my father. And then came the weeks of interrogation and the endless questions. When I choose not to answer then the beatings started, they called it physical persuasion. Weeks turned into months. In the end I pledged my allegiance to him. There was no other choice, her life depended on my compliance. She was all I had left. I had long ago stopped caring about my own insignificant existence. Her well-being was all that mattered now.
And so I promise anything and everything, I promise myself.
After I am allowed to collect her and bring her with me to our new home. The cell they locked her in is dark, dirty, and bare and I am at once angry and alarmed. I expect her azure eyes to be filled with grieving sorrow or, worse yet, I fear they will glow with suspicious anger. What greets my eyes is far worse. All life has bled from her eyes, something else fills them now. She stares vacantly through me, through the prison walls that surround, through to somewhere only she can see. She holds her knees to her chest and rocks slowly, back and forth. I am afraid to touch her, afraid she will shatter in my palms.
She laughs, wild eyed, and calls me Sokka and if I thought I had know fear before it is nothing in comparison with what I feel now.
The ship we board reminds me of tea and music night and an uncle once mine. Only everything is different and at once the same. Our coarse is set and my fate sealed. She barely notices when we arrive at our destination, our new home and her old one. The South Pole.
The remains of the Northern water tribe have been rounded up and sent here and I am to be Governor of it all. And I must watch as her people, once fierce and proud, are made subservient, the Phoenix Emperors slaves. In that I envy her, that she has locked herself away and cannot see such things.
But the real reason I am here is not to oversee the water tribe peoples, I am just a figurehead, a puppet controlled by my fathers hand. The real reason I am here is because he is afraid the avatar will return. He still fears the boy he slaughtered, crazed with an obsession born from his youth he waits in fear for the rebirth of the avatar. The fire mages have assured him that the cycle has been broken and the avatar cannot rise again. But still he waits and watches and each child borne to the water tribe, the next element in the avatar cycle, is killed to ensure the avatar will never return. There is no hope. There is only a bleak future that stretches out into oblivion.
I would have left long ago, run far away, lost myself among the peasants I once scorned a lifetime ago. Perhaps I would have made a last stand, taken as many with me before I died. I would have done so if I was without a reason to keep living. She is my reason. She ties me here as surely as my lost honor once tied me to the avatar.
Something happened to her in the moment she saw Aangs corpse and the months she spent in the dark prison. Something that broke her, shattered, tore her into small pieces that she tucked away deep inside. She is helpless as a young babe, childlike in her incoherence and I do my best to watch over her. Sometimes though I think she remembers, about Aang and the rest. She dreams and when she wakes, tears trekking down smooth cheeks, I hold her and she holds me. I wait for her to return to this reality, it is all I hope for now.
When I found her in the tub, underneath, I was afraid. Afraid she was dead and gone, that she would leave me alone. When I realize she is alright it is not the only realization that strikes me. We have been here two years and she has grown and matured. She is no longer a girl but a woman, full and soft. I could no more stop my eyes from drinking her in than I can stop the want that rises within. I have to remind myself that she is not herself and even if she was she would never want me, not like I want her.
I must protect her. Above all else she needs me. It feels good to be needed, to have a purpose in this bleak future. I would sooner give my life than have harm come to her and my father knows this. He uses such knowledge to control me.
And so I remain, trapped as surely as if my father had chained me to a prison wall. Only this prison is made of ice and cold and cracked blue eyes and is far worse.
Hopefully you all enjoyed this Zuko POV chapter (it was really long) and it helped fill in some holes and answer some of your questions.
As always please review if you read and alert if you liked. Common make my day.
Next up - Gran Gran is revealed. Im really excited about this next chapter I think you guys will really enjoy who I cast as Gran Gran.
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- 13
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Shell Shock