thecrazyalaskan | make good and finally make you proud of your boy

Title: make good and finally make you proud of your boy
Author: fireweed15 / TheCrazyAlaskan
Fandom / Setting: Avatar The Last Airbender
Characters / Pairings: Zuko
Word Count: 751
Recommended Music: Proud of Your Boy — Aladdin Original Broadway Cast
Warnings / Notes: TW: references to past emotional / physical abuse; Written for Round XIII of Hurt / Comfort Bingo: Lost Childhood
Summary: Zuko takes care of one last thing before joining the Avatar.

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It should have been easy to leave.

Should have been.

His pack was simple, military in nature—surplus from the army's stores, stuffed with rations and a single change of simple clothes. The things that a foot soldier would carry. How fitting for him to carry the same pack that those who he'd defended all those years before did. Before all of this happened. Before…

Zuko pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes. The skin around the left eye was taut, healed but permanently scarred—a sensation, a memory that underscored why he needed to do this. Steeling his resolve, Zuko pulled up the hood of his cloak and shouldered his pack... then paused at the foot of his bed, in front of the chest there.

He hesitated for a moment before dropping the pack and pushing back the hood. It would have to be quick—but better to be quick than to not do it at all.

He dropped to his knees in front of the chest and felt around the gap between the floor and the elaborate carvings, feeling for—aha! A small groove, clumsily carved as a boy, in which he stashed the key. Moving with speed and stealth that spoke to years of practice, he twisted the key in the lock and lifted the lid. The key carefully hidden away once more, Zuko started to shift through the contents of the chest—folios, heirlooms, broken toys the boy he once was couldn't part with (thanks for nothing, Azula)…

There. A portrait... With immense reverence, he opened the folio to look at the image inside. A portrait of Her Imperial Majesty, Lady Ursa.

Such fancy words for a woman he knew simply as Mother…

Zuko opened the folio and set it atop the chest. Content that it would stand on its own, he bowed to his mother's image—deeply, with the reverence she was due. "Mother..." His voice was hoarse, the words almost sticking in his throat. He swallowed hard and tried again. "Mother... It's been a long time."

That was something of an understatement. He'd been a little boy when she disappeared—tired and not understanding and terrified when he learned the next morning that it hadn't been a bad dream. Look at him now. "I'm grown now—well, I think I am. Everyone thinks I am, but I'm... lost. Without you or Uncle—"

Tears bit at the back of his eyes, and he blinked them away. Now wasn't the time to lose his nerve or to cry, even in this moment of privacy. "I've done terrible things, Mother. All these years I've wanted nothing more than for Father to welcome me home with open arms, for my honor to be restored... and now that I have it, I realize that it was never what I wanted."

It was all too easy to imagine to imagine the way his mother would reply—if he closed his eyes, he could see her kneel beside him, adjusting the lay of her many voluminous robes and looking at him with kind eyes. "What do you want, Zuko?"

"I want to do the right thing." Zuko swallowed hard. He'd made the decision, he planned to stick with it, but verbalizing it always felt so… risky—but it was Mother. If he couldn't be his honest self with her, he was truly lost. "I'm joining the Avatar, and I'm going to help him defeat Father."

He could imagine the delicate, almost microscopic can't of her head—the expression she wore when she was thoughtfully considering something. Mother always spoke to us like a counselor to a ruler, Zuko mused—training them to be the wisest Fire Lord she could, in the subtlest of ways. "You're sure that's what you want, my son?"

Up to now, Zuko had kept his gaze down, giving his mother's spirit the deference to which she was due; now, he looked up, eyes glinting with low torch light and determination. "I've never been more certain," he vowed. "The people of the world are terrified by the Fire Nation—rightfully so. I want to bring the world to a better era. I want…"

His time had come to a close. With great care, he took up the folio and tucked it back into the chest through the crack, whispering. "I want to make you proud of me."

"Oh my son…" In the silence and solitude, it was easy to picture—Mother kneeling before him, her cool hands on his cheeks as she brushed her lips against his forehead. "You already have."

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Can I just take a minute to geek out / cry about Zuko's character arc / glow up?

My favorite character type is definitely "asshole with a heart of gold and underlying trauma" and great goddamn, does Zuko fit that bill! I mean honestly, he was practically just a baby when he lost his mother, the woman who instilled in him the values of kindness and compassion—the values his father loathed, the values that made him speak out to save a troop of new recruits and that caused him to have to face his father in a fight that got half his fucking face burned off. Call me a softy but I look at him and I see a little boy who lost his mother and hurts for it.

ANYWAY. Zuko's character arc is fucking legendary and I wanted to explore the idea that his mother would no doubt approve, a concept that was helped along with the song "Proud of Your Boy" from the Aladdin musical.