AN: Turns strictly AU after Zuko's banishment.

Part 6: Kasaihanaa

6. Atonement

The sixth arrow grazes him, cutting into flesh as he bleeds out the memories of that last sunrise. How he promised, how she breathed her agreement back in return and yet they never met beyond Omashu's walls. He wonders if she waited, did she walk out through the gates, escape through a passage and wait as the winds of the canyon blew him further and further away.

Waiting, always leaving her waiting.

Was she angry? Infuriated knowing she was left alone yet again. And for what? Selfish, selfish ambition, clouded with hatred of a troubled past. He is left here, among the forest leaves covered in arrows that now look like quills embedded in his skin, alone, he forges their memories.

He goes back to how the new beginning went. His ventures from the river bank plucking splinters from his skin, nursing gashes from the metal.

Cutting ties was the easiest part, and freedom came from the pearl dagger grazing his scalp, and then watching as the hair swept away with the current. He was dead-some of him, but even then his hands were still his hands and his scar was his scar and those old wounds would not let him die in that explosion. They remain etched in all of their memories, the boy who fell victim to his failures, just as they'd hoped. But would they mourn? Or would they rejoice, or would it be a mix of wails and cheers as an empty casket is lit aflame? Dwelling has gotten him nowhere and Zuko knows it doesn't matter in the end.

From the bank he wanders until he finds a village, where a girl offers him treatment. The ointments burn, and the leaves she adds underneath the bandages don't soothe well enough.

"We get injured travelers like this all the time." She says, her hands reaching for a needle and thread, carefully threading it through his skin, "They stray from the front lines, or they're coming home because they can't go on."

"It's a war, what do you expect?" His muscles tense as he watches her sew through the wounds, "You're patching up the lucky ones."

"I don't think anyone's hurt more or less in this situation."

"Why's that?"

"Fighting or not, everyone is suffering."

Once she's finished up, he tries to repay her by working the small field. There isn't much, and it's easy work-pluck the herbs, bring them to the clinic, where she grinds them down and adds them into ointments or keeps them ready to use in storage jars.

The village is quiet like that, routine, and tranquil despite the raging war cries that go on just a few miles from their borders. The only disturbance is the muffled whispers of those who wander in and out, some occupying the silence longer than others. For a while, he wonders if Mai would have liked it here, if they could have traveled together to a place like this. The thought is too distant, too far too take back, and he figures he won't ever get the chance to find out.

o.o.o

Sunrise, Mai thinks. But by sunset she's alone on the terrace. She remembers the draft of the canyon just beyond the walls, looking down and trying to find just how deep it goes. And she waited-waited for him and for things to change, and they did. They changed like rolling tides, beautiful as they rose, until they crashed, leaving her beached on the same rocky shore from which she came. Alone again, she thinks-abandoned with his promises.

Zuko's gone again, and this time, she won't think to mourn. No petals will be thrown into the canyon, not a single wish for his return.

"It's a bit chilly tonight, hm?"

Mai sighs, inhaling and letting her grip on the stone railing lessen. Instinct from practice causes her to adjust her expression, turning to her mother without a frown or a smile, not a sliver of emotion hanging from her tongue. "It's been chilly every night in this dreadful place."

"All the more reason for you to adjust." The other woman smiles, carefully stepping forward to run her 'inspections,' adjusting her daughter's posture and tilting Mai's chin upward, further neglecting to notice the subtle tremble in her bottom lip. "If you only tried, you may like it here. You have everything you could ask for. Just like royalty."

"Because royalty is exactly what i've always wanted. Right, mother?"

The older sighs, tucking her hands into her robes, her expression dropping slowly as Mai's chin descends.

"Forget it. Get out." Mai sighs, and knows she's right. It is colder.

o.o.o

Zuko stays three days, sleeping in the hay stack in the barn.

"I never got your name." The girl says on the last day, stacking a few bento and tying them up so they'll make it through the ride.

Zuko gives a nod of thanks, carefully setting the food into a bag. "Uh, Li. Yours?"

"Song."

"Song." He repeats quietly giving her a nod. "Thank you, for the help, I mean."

As he rides off he tries only to think of Song. The few nights exchanging stories, or rather, the made up ones on his end, account of things that weren't real, at least not for him. He remembers her showing him the burn on her legs, how the tendrils of the injury curled up and down her skin. It's one of many things that remind him that he's not the only one hurting in this. Not the only one to wish things were different and, not the only one to cause pain.

The desert pushes him more. A punishment, he thinks, as he runs low on water and his throat burns more and more the further he goes.

In the next town the family Zuko stays with sings quiet war songs after dinner. The little boy named Lee sings along in broken tune as his father strums the pipa. There's something peaceful about the way they hum in unison, how the woman's eyes flutter closed as her husband plucks the strings.

Earlier when they offered a place to rest to his head, they told him how their older son went to war. How they're proud of him. And for a moment Zuko thinks if they would change their songs for him, for the banished prince, had they known.

"So, where do you come from?" Lee asks, and Zuko's head jerks upward hardly realizing the strumming had stopped.

"Like I said, far away."

"Did you run from Omashu or somethin'?" Lee says, his head tilting to the side.

"Something like that.." Zuko sighs, brushing a few bits of straw off his pants.

"It's getting better. Dad says after the Fire Nation took over, the people waited, then they took the city back! Isn't that cool?"

He looks up then, brow furrowed, "What do you mean-took it back?"

o.o.o

For months she spends her days tracing her knife marks in the tables. scratching out what she can and carving away at anything else. Pining, always pining, and it infuriates her.

During the afternoon she watches some of the Earth Kingdom citizens bury one of their children, caught for stealing from the military and shown no mercy. She can't help but wonder if when they got the news back home. did they do the same for Zuko? Did they light the pyre, sprinkle flowers over his grave, did they even weep? Would they do so if it was her?

She draws interest in the mother's cries, how her broken sobs seem to shatter her frame, all the while she's never seen her own mother budge over anything, not unless it ruined her reputations or her father's.

Her thoughts are discarded as the guards step in, disbanding the memorial and prying the woman from the makeshift grave. She screams and mouths curses, her eyes glossy and sullen as she's pulled away.

That's all she can remember later, the screaming, the curses and the unchanged expressions from the guards as they tugged her off.

When Mai passes by later, she sets a flower on the grave stones.

By nightfall she feels numb. Again, emotions are suppressed and she can hardly bring herself to sit at her bedroom table. All she can see are her hands, the subtle rise of her veins and shift of her knuckles as they reach up her sleeves to extract blades.

From sleeve to metal, and still she can hardly feel the wind gusts of wind that blow through the terrace. Once she runs out the wind carries her to the door, devoid of thought of sense, just trying to be free of it-of him.

She pushes back so much that she can't even make out the sounds of the clatter down the hall, hardly take in the rest of her own family's screams. What she does make out is muffled, and it reminds her of nothing but the woman. The woman who never got to sprinkle flowers over her child's grave, the child taken from what she was trying so very hard to be numb from.

The unfeeling ends when the intruders find her. From her wounds she can feel everything she'd been hiding, the wind from the empty canyon that morning, the sound of his voice when he said 'sunrise,' and every silent 'I love you., gushing out of her chest and onto the floor.

And for a moment she thinks, as her frame begins to feel lighter, and all of the emotions pouring out of begin to seep into the tile, this must be what it feels like to be free, and for the first and last time she breathes in, knowing this is just what sunrise should feel like.

o.o.o

When he hears of the coup he can't speak of her. As they sing their war songs the next night, he can only think of funeral hymns and how she will not get one. After a while they speak of their son again, how he's fighting on the front lines of the same war. They continue to speak proudly of him, stating his accomplishments in honorary rhetoric, while Zuko holds back from re-describing her ragged death to explain what she really was.

He wants to tell them how he knows her. He wants to speak of her soft collarbones and the calm monotone that was her voice. But it's worth nothing. Swirling sentences around what he imagines is her frame will not create her a hymn.

By morning he leaves, giving the boy his pearl dagger, forgetting the meaning as he rides off until he finds the trees. If nothing else, he has to find it for her, find the cottage and the boardwalk with the blossoms, the paper doors and gold plated rooftops. Everything he owed her.

Leaning against the bark an odd feeling takes him, one that feels like a lack of solitude which he covers up by looking for water and straining out what he can from a small stream in a makeshift sieve. Drinking from the pouch, he makes his way back to a wooded road, mistaking the patter of steps against wood for his own.

When the first arrow hits the pain shoots up his shoulder blades and down his back, triggering his instinct to run. His right arm won't move but he feels the blood trickle down and finally pool in his palm spreading as it drips from his fingertips and onto the leaves, leaving a trail of red paint for them to follow.

Moments after, the second comes, digging into his side and causing him to topple, scrambling for balance along the thick layer of leaves. And then the third that knocks the wind out of him, back to his halcyon days and the beach, back to his father and sister and the life he knew. But when he wakes, they're gone, replaced by blood coughed up in the palm of his hand and for a moment he thinks to call out for his uncle.

The fourth whizzes past his head, but is followed by the fifth that obliterates his lungs. As the blood level rises and his throat burns he begins to watch his vision blur, sweeping back into his dreams. Zuko dreams of her living, breathing, singing, until the pain sets in and he dreams of the rebel's advances. As his lungs fill, he dreams of her screams, and how he destroys everything he touches. How funeral pyres could raise up in every life he's encountered. How Song won't be able to save the injured travelers if she can't save herself, how Lee, just a boy-won't give up fighting even when everything is lost until finally he loses himself.

But, mostly, he dreams of he could've saved her. Had he met her in the canyon and not left her with nothing but wind, could he have changed how it ends? But this death, and this life is not enough to harvest his own atonement.

Zhao steps out from the shadows, speaking of the Prince Zuko who once was and never will be again, leaving him to the fade out, until he wakes on shore.

Water laps at his cheeks, causing him to flutter his eyes open and watch the scene come into focus. There's a shell around his neck but this time it feels weightless, dangling as he pushes himself up.

For hours he wanders, watching the sun graze the horizon as he walks the edge of the sea. It's here, he knows, as soon as his feet hit the wood paneled boardwalk and become covered in petals, he sees their cottage, the gold trimmed roof tops, and the rice paper doors. Zuko knows, as soon as he hears, that this death is not a punishment, but it is his chance to atone, and finally-finally he's finished leaving her waiting and Mai's voice welcomes him home.