Mirth

Icy blue eyes haunted him. That startled expression he found so amusing, it was all because of her eyes. They were nothing special, just ordinary blue eyes, but they stuck in his head.

"I'll save you from the pirates."

His own voice, it was low with annoyance, but he knew that it held faint traces of his own dark mirth, and her jaw dropped just slightly, before she stuttered a shocked: "Y-you…", and her eyes widened until it looked painful.

Even now, his lips twitched upwards near-imperceptibly, but otherwise he was as still as the dragon-head statue he sat in front of. His own gold eyes were just boring holes into the metal walls of the ship, but anyone who looked in them would know that they betrayed him. He wasn't meditating, he was lost in his musings.

Really, it was disgusting. This common, annoying, screeching peasant girl—this little peon… made him smile. Nobody made him smile. He smiled when he won a good battle, and could stand and survey a charred, blistered, and conquered battle-field. That was it, excepting the occasional instance he knew he couldn't control in his sleep.

Dreams evaded him—they always did. He never understood them, and never really wanted to, because his were strange. Just …strange.

But he digressed from his digression.

It was alarming. She made him—Zuko, Banished Fire Prince, 'Sir Sulks A Lot' (according to Iroh)—she made him want to smile.

I mean, it wasn't that he was happy. It was that she was so… so… damn amusing! Every time he saw her, he had to squash a tiny—but growing urge to roll his eyes and let out a small chortle.

It confused him, it frustrated him, but above everything else, it infuriated him.

The candles flickered ominously, because the cold, metal wall suddenly had a face etched on to it, and she stared up at him in absolute shock, a moment frozen in time that made him want to smirk.

"Why the hell do I keep thinking about you?", he finally snarled in confused exasperation.