BUTTERFLIES! ━ prince zuko

𝖛. The Beginning

𝖙𝖍𝖊 𝖇𝖊𝖌𝖎𝖓𝖓𝖎𝖓𝖌
the beginning
volume i, chapter v

( of the end )

❄️🦋💦

     THERE'S A RAINBOW AROUND EVERY CORNER — at least, that's what Princess Akiara likes to think.

     At least, that's how she used to think.

But she used to think a lot of things, she's starting to realize. She used to take in the world with wide, innocent eyes and a sunshine smile because she was always doing good, really, she was always doing good, right? But things are different now. She's grown, she's changed. She doesn't think like that anymore.

     Like how she used to think grief was a feeling.

     A heart-wrenching, drowning, suffocating feeling. But you know what? It's a thing. A living, breathing thing. Something that can consume you. Like a terminal illness, an eternal despair, an everlasting blanket of misery that can suffocate you, threatening to snuff you out. With teeth and claws and sadness so sharp that it can tear you to pieces until you feel nothing at all.

Cold, empty nothingness...

Akiara used to be a girl that felt too much.

Now she feels nothing at all.

     It's unbearable, she won't think about it, she can't stand it... there's a terrible hollow inside of her that she doesn't want to feel or examine, a dark hole where Yue had been, where Yue had vanished; he does not want to have to be alone with that great, silent space, she can't stand it...

      So she goes to her father. And they grieve together, for a while. Only a while. Because it's when he tells the story of Yue that Akiara finally feels something.

     He'd had a vision, when Yue was born. Of her destiny. Of how she'd one day become the Moon Spirit. Of how she'd one day give her life to save the tribe.

     And for Akiara, it's too much.

     She can feel white-hot anger lick her insides, blazing in the terrible hollow that Yue's left behind, seething in the terrible emptiness.

     "You knew?" Akiara's shaking now, staring at her father. "You knew?"

     "It was the price I had to pay — "

     And the anger overflows.

     "YOU HAD TO PAY?" Akiara roars and her father stares at her, shock swirling in his eyes. She doesn't care. She can't care. Not anymore. Her heart hurts. Oh, it aches. "YOU MEAN THE PRICE YUE HAD TO PAY — THAT I HAD TO PAY! ALL BECAUSE OF YOUR SELFISH DECISION — !"

     "It was so that Yue could live — !"

     "It was an insurance policy!" Akiara yells and she seizes a delicate little sculpture of ice from the spindle-legged table and flings it across the room; it shatters into a thousand pieces. "The Moon Spirit knew it wasn't immortal and you — and you let it take her like that! You let it own her — !"