milliways_bar | Lake Party Water Post Day Two

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Lake Party Water Post Day Two

Sunshine Dust, the golden squid, frolics closer to shore today. There were so many people to play with in the lake yesterday! And squids need love and attention too!

There's a soft breeze coaxing the water into gentle waves, playing around the Black Pearl's sails.

If you didn't get a chance to swim yesterday, there is only today.

Tomorrow, it will be February again.

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"You can't help me," he retorts without energy. "To do that you'd have to give up your own mission, and you won't."

And honestly? At this point, he'd never ask. It'd be as insulting as asking him to lay down and give up... like his uncle often does.

"Zuko, that you think I'm talking about me helping you, while we're in Milliways, with all these people," she waves her arm out over the expanse of the lake - Wells was here once, and Steph, Rachel had passed through, and perhaps even Hephaestus had enjoyed the sun at one point...

This is home to his friends, his allies, the greatest collection of people who love him. And he thinks she is offering her help.

He flinches, and looks away.

"My problems-- my world is not theirs. I can't -- ask anymore then I already have," he says lowly. He's already too weak. He can't ask anymore.

Idiot, isn't he?

Yes.

Scowling, Katara isn't thinking of Zuko - she's thinking of all those people who have passed under the sun, who have taken a chance and cared about him.

Wasted their cares.

"Then you're putting the rust there all on your own," she snaps, turning from him finally to walk away.

Maybe there had been someone to blame in the past, but now? It's all on him.

"I've already taken too much," he says. "I-- can't take everything that's offer without something to give back."

He honestly doesn't understand unconditional love.

But he doesn't stop her. He just lets the dogs paddle up, and flop beside him. They make for good, soggy cuddles. Not that he needs one. Never.

Right. What he needs is tough love, hard blows and sharper tongues.

Isn't that lucky? Since Katara's coming back to yell at him.

"You're just-- you're so--" She struggles for words, turned back toward him, hands up and fisted, brain not working and she's so angry at him and so-- tired of being angry at the same time.

"Sometimes people just love you and the worst thing you can do, the most ungrateful, cruel, thoughtless, selfish think you can do is ignore that love and treat it like something to be paid back with something other than loving them back!"

Zuko flinches, blinking up at her with a -- bewildered look.

He-- seriously doesn't get it. Everything demands a payment, doesn't it? He's never gotten anything for free. Not in a long, long time.

"That's not enough," he says quietly. "If it was, I'd be home."

If it was just enough to love his father, to try hard in his name, to love his people... he wouldn't be here. He'd be home, they'd be happy, and... and that'd be perfect and good, wouldn't it?

But it doesn't work that way.

Not for Zuko.

"It is enough, so long as--"

Someone loves you back.

But even Katara really just can't-- quite-- say that. Not to Zuko, not to anyone.

"...You're too obsessed with home as a place," Katara says quietly after a very long moment, her gaze down on the grass rather than him, the dogs, the people around them-- everything. "You're ignoring all the other things that make a home a home."

"That's where my family is," Zuko says sharply, an edge of desperation there. "THey're waiting for me." Waiting for him to fail, so they can forget him.

"That's why it's home."

They're not a real family. They can't be.

Look at his sister, look at how she hit his uncle, without a moment's thought. Automatic.

Katara just looks at the grond-- but her gaze rises a moment later, without pity.

Just intense sadness.

"...they're not your only family."

The tribe was her family, but so were Sokka and Aang and Toph-- and Steph and Jet. She had several homes.

Why couldn't he?

"Wells has his own children. So did uncle," Zuko says, his jaw set. "I'm not their son; Phillipia isn't my sister -- Azula is. Susan is not my niece. They-- it-- Uncle was never home when I was small. I didn't meet Wells till last year. It is not the same."

He doesn't like that look on her face. He can't stand the sticky feeling of pity.

"You think blood means everything? --No, don't answer that," she sighs and crosses her arms over her belly, looking away from him and back toward the water. "Of course you do. A family isn't a family without blood to tie them to it - born a family, born a prince...

"All that bullbearshit."

"The alternative--"

The alternate is too horrible to contemplate.

"The alternative means I'm nothing. Lower then trash. We burn our trash, you stupid-- miserable--"

He'll turn his rage on her, if she lets him.

"Right. The alternative that someone who isn't related to you by blood, that someone who has no obligation to feel anything for you would fall in love with you... that would never happen.

"Except that it did, over and over again in this place, and because you're stupid you had to make everyone miserable!"

"I have to go ack to where I belong! To my obligations! I will not be a bad son!" Even to a worthless father. "If they can't understand that--"

Then do they really love him?

"The problem is that they do understand, it's why they keep coming back to you to help you, even though it kills them because you spit on them every time they try!"

"So why are you still here?"

Fighting with him tooth and nail, still. Trying to make him see.

'Helping' him.

"Because I can't get away from you!"

Why not help him if he's there, every time she turns around, hurting someone she loves without thinking? At home, in their world, at least, she was certain he wasn't in Ba Sing Sei.

Haha. Funny, right?

Hilarious.

"So sorry," he drawls, and mock bows. "I forgot, I'm only allowed to have places you don't?"

Bitch.

"Spirits, did I say it was your fault?!" she snaps, angry, so angry at him, her hands finding her hips now. Why is everything a fight, why can't he grasp the most common of human decencies?

And sometimes... why can't everything just be his fault and let that be the end of it?

"You're just-- always there! So why shouldn't I try to help if I see you all the time?!"

"Because you don't want to help, you just-- want me to-- to accept! Accept defeat, accept -- this -- filthy little life I have, playing at -- at living like a peasant, living like some refugee! That's not help!"

Human decency? Whose shown Zuko that? Even when he was at his best, most compassionate and understanding -- he was rewarded with spit at his heels and rocks in the hands of peasants.

"Stephanie is filthy?!"

You are in the realm of the Best Friend, Zuko. Tread carefully.

"Stephanie is dead!" Zuko shouts. "There's a difference. But--"

He realizes he's said too much. "It's -- not. Here. This -- at least... I have a fraction of respect. No army of beaten and hungry peasantry have lined the road, waiting with rocks, here, at least."

Not yet. Maybe sometime they'll tire of him here, and they'll shut the door forever.

Her hand is up before she's stopped to think, her face twisted into something ugly and hating, nothing that sits well on Katara's loving face--

But then, she doesn't much experience with slapping people across the cheek either.

"If you think that makes her any less of a person, if you think that makes her feelings worth any less than anyone else's then you don't deserve her or any of the other love and respect you get here! You're a selfish brat sitting up on a pedestal you put there for yourself and you won't rest until you're back on the throne or everyone who's made the mistake of caring for you is broken with regret!"

The scar is now flushed-- the cheek below it pinkening, making it look that much bigger.

"It means I couldn't take her with me," he says numbly; it's hardly the first time he's been struck in disgust -- for, really, if he sees Katara and not Ozai, it will be a miracle here. "I tried. I tried to find a way. But it can't be done. That cannot be denied. But neither can our world."

And that's all he needs to say, isn't it? But maybe it won't matter-- that he can't accept that failure, and what it means for them.

Lake Party Water Post Day Two

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