milliways_bar | (no subject)

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Sometimes you just had to move. Zuiko was one of those people who, when met with a problem he couldn't order, bully, beat up, or otherwise surmount-- did not handle the stress of failure well. He was left with hands empty and shaking and a body sick with impotent rage and frustration and he could not stay still.

It was why he was out in the wet, not far from the lake, twisting and turning, his body trembling as he puts himself through a brutal routine; first the average firebender sets, and then through something quicker, more agile, light-- before it smoothed into a more steady flow.... and ended in the hard, powerful movements of another style.

Fire, Air, Water, Earth -- the Cycle of his World, the Avatar. Balance, his uncle said, could help him too, make him stronger. He did not feel any stronger; not even after losing his dinner in the snow, not even after putting himself through his paces....

Weakness was intolerable. Cowardice more so.

Yet here he was.

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At home the calendar's different and the moon is off by about a week, but here it pulls at him just as surely as it ever does- so Wells is waiting here at Milliways until the urge to tear things apart and get away from masses of people dies down. Besides, Ryan's about, and the last thing Wells needs is to know the man did something stupid because Wells wasn't there to keep an eye on him.

He catches a familiar smell on the wind as he goes out for yet another walk, and stops to watch.

Well, there's the smell of a purged dinner there-- spice and meat and greens and bile. And then there's the smellof heat and smoke and a Firebender stomping through heavier style then his normal, over-the-top Firebending.

He is not talking. He is bending. This is -- marginally -- good.

The first stack of smells gets a raised eyebrow; the second is normal. Not the style, the smell. Wells grunts a little to himself and starts moving around to where he'll be upwind; Zuko deserves a little warning of his presence, after all. Particularly in a mood like this.

If he can smell anything but steam and smoke with the motions and movement he's making, the mess of ash and slush?

Anyone's bet.

Regardless, he's not jumping at greeting or stopping his kata midway, either.

Wells wouldn't have expected him to. Any more than he'd stop in the middle of a clip on the practise range.

He'll wait until the cycle ends before coming forward into the moonlight.

His breath mists heavily-- like steamvents pluming in cold London nights, Zuko's breaths are great, hot gusts in the cold air.

He does not look over, though the tilt of his head, the good ear catching the noise-- that says that he has heard. Whether he cares or not is yet to be ascertatined.

He turns his head, spits; it sizzles in the slush.

Nothing wrong with that. Wells's done it often enough himself after a work-out.

"Summat's come up, hasn't it," he says from a few yards away, and it's not really a question.

"Some things never go away," Zuko says, breath hot in the air, words heavy. "Don't bother yourself."

He doesn't want a father. At least, not this one.

Settling, he shifts stance-- back to tradition, back to something he knows as well as his first steps. Firebending, pure and wild and wicked.

There was a dream (http://milkbonesoldier.livejournal.com/8967.html), once. "A different appearance, a different tone of voice, but you're still-"

He wants to say it's no bother, it's a chosen duty, but the words are suddenly dry as ashes in his mouth. So he nods instead and lets himself be silent this time.

Father.

No, he isn't. He's something else, something invasive and alien and welcoming and warm. He wants him to have a place at his table and under his roof when other doors are closed to him.

He's making him weak.

Zuko's bending goes on-- wild, violent, full of hate and hunger.

"And you took so much trouble to get here, only to find- what?"

If he spoke now, Zuko wouldn't hear. This isn't the shouting match in the cells. This is something else; this is something he can't put a name to, not exactly, but he knows it when he sees it.

Once- years ago- he read a book about Theseus and his time in Crete, and all the things that happened to him. On the way home, he remembers, the youth who overthrew the Labyrinth through cleverness and strength of mind encountered a year-king on the night before his sacrifice to the oldest, wildest gods. He would have brought that other youth away, but... There was nothing in his eyes that a man could speak to. That was the phrase.

There's a sick little knot behind the scars on his stomach that says to Wells, there is nothing here you can speak to at all.

Fire consumes, and Zuko is hungry.

The dogs curl in the snow, their bodies overlapping -- there is safety in the places where they connect, and warmth; but there is fear too, because even they know soulsickness when they see it.

He goes through the set without stopping, breaking, sweat on his brow despite the chill of the air, creating clouds of steam where flame and snow collide; it mingles with vent of his lung, obscuring.

He stops.

"Don't you have something better to do? This can't entertain you."

The memory is of smells, now. Sharp sharp sharp hot black (Eddie, poor fucker, triggered an anti-tank mine)

He shakes his head rapidly to clear them away. "I'd go elsewhere if I wanted entertainment," he says roughly. "Thought I ought to see how you were faring."

blazing red (circle a hundred meters across)

Flame is floating in the air, freeform, curling off his skin, burning oxygen with no other source.

In the height of ecstatic bending, the Firebender runs the danger of consuming the oxygen in their lungs as fuel. Light headedness is a dangerous-- fainting, too. In some situations, that'd be danger. A rock does not throw itself, but fire rages without a hand to guide it.

But it is wet and Zuko is not thinking and he is arched, his eyes half-lidded as he exhales flame.

"I'm fine."

Bollocks he is.

( "You might as well give up, you know." )

"You're scarin' the dogs," he points out. No more than that.

He -- is almost shamed by that; they -- like Xu Ning before them -- give him love without asking anything in return. That is to be valued, appreciated! He should be grateful.

But he finds himself resentful, and he looks down at his hands, and has no answer to that.

Wells looks down at the dogs, then up at Zuko again.

"I dunno what's eating you," he finally says. "I expect you won't tell me. Fine. But take care of your dogs, if nothin' else."

There's only so much he can say. Only so much he can ask Zuko to hear. Right now.... right now he's pretty sure anything he wants to say will only get ignored, or thrown back in his face. But he can at least ask for that much of a response.

It made Zuko stopped, and he said, "Nobody takes care of you forever, Wells."
Everything I have done, I have done to protect you.
Everybody left in the end.

Wells goes very still at that.

The Infantry takes care of its own.

"I suppose not," he says at last. "Reckon I could argue the point, but- I suppose not."

It's killing him to say it. If it were up to him he wouldn't be saying it at all. But it's not up to him. Zuko's got to decide, even if he decides wrongly.

Even if it means Wells is going to have to watch from a distance, and wait, and not step in again until some time of need too dire to do otherwise.

The boy stops fighting the air for now-- the pocket of heat and steam he's created is starting to evanesce into winter's chill.

The dogs perk a little, he goes to them, but only become obligation demands. He cannot simply turn them out; he took them on, they're his responsbility. He cannot abandon them as he has been. Yet.

Wells nods.

"I'll be about," he says, to boy and dogs alike. "You know where to find me."

With that, he heads back towards the Bar. He's suddenly got an absolutely enormous need for a drink.

Stephanie emerges from wandering the forest, but it only takes one glance to know that interrupting this kind of mood really - not so much a good idea.

She slinks around silently and vanishes inside. She'll be there when he's calmed down, and ... she's not sure what she'll do. (What can the dead do for the living? What can she offer that will help him live his life?) But she'll be there. If he wants to see her.

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