𝑺𝑬𝑬𝑫 𝑶𝑭 𝑰𝑪𝑯𝑶𝑹 •𝒃𝒙𝒃•

24 ~ of love and grief

AN: HEHE

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"...then I'll love enough for the both of us!"

He...was too young, wasn't he? To understand his father's words. All that mattered to him were the tears on his mother's face and the way his father yelled at her. His father made her cry. He made her cry. Guren hated it when his mother cried, or when she looked sad. He always found ways to blame others for her state, even if the other person was his own father.

A thing he regretted now.

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"Yeah, Mommy loves you as well."

With her eyes peeled to the doorway, as if waiting for someone, her response took too long. He still remembered the fear that gripped him, the unease he felt when she didn't answer. When she finally did, he felt like he could breathe again. He held her in such high regards that he didn't even suspect a thing. Too...filled with love and adoration and everything a child should feel for a parent.

Everything he should've felt for his father.

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Yet all Guren could focus on was his mother's smile, and wish it was directed at him.

Even with all the signs, the most obvious ones, he didn't see it. It...never dawned on him, did it? The fact that his mother always looked at his father the most. It didn't matter that Guren was starving for her attention.

He wondered what he was to her.

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But she wasn't looking at him; her silvery-blue eyes only saw honey gold.

Over and over again, he'd be too blind to see. Throughout all of their years together, from his first memory of her to the last, he should've known. He should've...seen, right? But no. He...didn't. He chose not to see and bound himself to her, for his dislike of his father left him with no one. His mother was the only one for him, wasn't she? Someone he could direct all his love at, and want nothing in return. Yet he wanted it all. He wanted and wanted and got nothing in return.

His father selflessly gave him his everything.

_

He never thought that everything would be flipped upside down like this. One thing right after another.

Zuko.

Aang.

His father.

And now...his mother. He always thought her to be faultless, that she got the short end of the stick in life, that she never deserved anything that happened. That she'd stay by his side. That she'd never leave him. That he'd be able to depend on her.

That she loved him like he loved her.

But it wasn't meant to be, it seemed.

His father's words; then I'll love enough for the both of us! He still remembered the way they sounded. So...tired. Tired more than anything else. For how...many years did he deal with such things? With everything? How much of his past was unknown to Guren? How much pain...did he go through? He said that he'll love enough for the both of them, so did that mean his mother didn't love enough...or at all? Were all of her warm looks and touches a façade? Did she...put up a front in front of Guren?