your love is my oxygen - Zuko x reader

Journey Apart

Zuko's POV
The next few days hadn't been easy, I was sat on the back of the ostrich-horse, alone with my thoughts and the blaring sun.

What will uncle do now that he is alone?

Did Y/N stay with him?

Does she hate me now?

The last time time I saw to her, I yelled for her not to follow me.

I'll probably never see her again.

—

When I finally did find a town, the two bags of feed that my money was able to buy were stolen from me by some Earth Kingdom soldiers; whilst I was buying it, there was some kid who had thrown an egg at them, and when they asked who did it, I pretended that I didn't see.

In return, the kid ended up taking me to his house to feed the ostrich-horse; I ended up spending the day helping around the barn, in exchange for a meal.

The kid, Lee, had climbed up behind me whilst I was working on the roof, "You don't seem like you're from around here."

I shook my head, pulling the hammer up, ready to hit the nail into the roof tile.

"Where are you from then?"

"Far away."

"Oh! Where are you going?"

His father interrupted him, "Lee, give it a rest. Stop asking the man personal questions, got it?"

He sighed, "yes..."

I took that as my cue to continue hammering the nails in, but then the kid piped up again, "so how'd you get that scar?"

Caught off guard, I accidentally slammed the hammer into my thumb, "AGH!"

His dad scolded him, "it's not nice to bother people about things they might not want to talk about. The man's past is his business."

—

I slept in the barn that night, and just when I had finally gotten some peace, the barn doors swung open.

Lee had taken my dual swords and snuck off into the sunflower field, waving them around and stabbing them into a barren tree.

"You're holding them all wrong."

He crashed into the ground at the sound of my voice, before slowly holding them up for me to take back.

I took them from him slowly, "keep in mind, these are dual swords, two halves of a single weapon, don't think of them as separate, because they're not. They're just two different parts of the same whole."

When I handed them back to him, he mimicked the way I had just held them, before turning back to me for approval.

I smiled and nodded, earning a chuckle out of him.

"I think you'd really like my brother, Sen Su, he used to show me stuff like this all the time."

—

Lee's mother had given me food for my journey, before the same soldiers delivered the news that his older brother had been captured. His father decided he would leave to the front lines to bring his son home, and Lee asked me to stay.

I obviously couldn't stay, so I gave him an important gift that my uncle had given to me a long time ago.

"Here, I want you to have this. Read the inscription."

He pulled the knife from it's case, "made in Earth Kingdom."

"The other one."

"Never give up without a fight."