Reborn In Water || ATLA

The Great Escape

The Great Divide- Fin

"Throw it away, forget yesterday, we'll make the great escape. We won't hear a word they say, they don't know us anyway Watch it burn, let it die cause we are finally free today." - Boys Like Girls

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"Zuko stop!" Aelita called out, trying to keep up with her friend. "Just talk to me!"

The Prince had left his room on the ship for the first time since his banishment had begun. His plan of avoiding Aelita was thwarted when he ran into her leaving the infirmary. The second he saw her he turned his back on her. He didn't think he'd ever be able to look at her again.

"I have nothing to say to you Aelita." Zuko kept walking. 

"Zuko please don't do this to me." Aelita grasped the Prince's arm just before he made it back to his door. "You're the only person I have left."

"Maybe we would be better off if I were gone."

"Don't say that." The young girl's voice sounded so broken. "It's supposed to be us against the world. I need you and you need me, remember?

"For what?" The Prince seethed as he jerked from her grasp, finally turning to face her. "What could I possibly need you for?"  Zuko stalked toward Aelita but she didn't budge. She refused to back down. She held her head high and kept her back straight, looking at Zuko as if she could see right through him. She was the only one who could. "To taunt me? To remind me how much of a failure I am?"

"Zuko you're not a failure," Aelita said softly, reaching her hand out to her Prince's face but he caught her wrist firmly in his own grip.

"Don't!" He said. His voice was soft and almost as broken as he felt. "Don't try to say I'm not a failure. As if wearing my shame on my face wasn't bad enough, how am I supposed to look at you like this?" Zuko used his free hand to push down the sleeve on Aelita's arm, revealing a set of white bandages that matched the ones he sported wrapped around his eye. "I promised to always protect you and I didn't. I'll never forgive myself."

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"So since you got hurt trying to protect him," Aang said from his spot across from Aelita, "Zuko blamed himself."

"Exactly." She explained that her first year at sea was spent traveling to the Air Temples with the Prince. "It took months for him to finally hold a real conversation with me and even then he stared at my arms the entire time. I'm sure the only reason he ever came back to me was because Iroh told him he was worried about me. I wasn't eating or sleeping much, I was training nonstop and not treating my body right because I was having a hard time accepting everything that had happened in such a short period of time. After that Zuko made it his job to make sure I was taken care of, I think it gave him something else to focus on when we were constantly meeting dead ends."

"You really cared about each other. "

"We did." Aelita smiled a sad grin at her friend. She even told Aang about their own encounter with Zhao and how tenderly Zuko had cared for her after the run-in. "You should've seen his face when I refused to go with him back at the river. First, he thought I was crazy, that you must've brainwashed me or something. When he saw me waterbending it finally made it real. I haven't seen him that hurt since he lost his mother."