Carved In Rock || ATLA

Bring Me Back To Life

The Guru

"I'm breathing in and breaking down, I feel my time is running out, the fire in my heart will burn me to the ground. I did my part, I tried my best, the things I'm fighting to protect always shatter into pieces in the end." - Extreme Music

🌊 ⛰ 🔥 🌪

Three was a terrible number. Zeztu was certain it was cursed or unlucky.

Ursa had loved to tell her twins the story of their dramatic births, claiming that Zetzu had only let her listen to three whole heartbeats of his brothers before he charged into the world himself. Three short, little heartbeats were all that had damned Zetzu to chase after Zuko from the very start.

Ozai had only granted his second son three years to prove that he could be the Prince that was expected. Three years had been all he was allowed to show his then unmarked face to the public. Three years to attend school alongside Zuko before the abusive prick ripped him back into a life of shadows, silence and solitude. The young Prince had been educated sure, private tutors coming to him at the palace to teach him at the same pass if not faster than that of his brothers' teachers and the entire country knew of his existence but before Zetzu could even hope to prove his worth, he was labeled a disappointment and largely confined to the palace, never attending the same formal outings his siblings did.

Three days. That's all that it had taken to change Zetzu's life forever. Fire Lord Azulon damned both his remaining grandsons to death and three short days later the boys knelt beside one another as the old man's body burned instead of theirs. And in those three days, Princess Ursa disappeared from the palace under the cover of night, never to be seen or spoken of again. With Ozai crowned Fire Lord, Zetzu had suddenly gone from sixth in line for the throne to third behind his siblings, Azula placed before him as she had been the day her firebending began to show seeing as a nonbender had yet to ever rule. His sister had never shied from throwing the fact in his face before, and she hadn't stopped then either.

After their father's coronation, it had taken only Azula three weeks to grow bored with the changes in their family and turn her attention back to tormenting her brothers. She had always claimed it to be more fun to torture Zuko than it was him since Zuko fought back and Zetzu didn't, but it certainly hadn't kept him safe from her targets. Without their mother there to save him, Zetzu had been damn near defenseless from her onslaught, too afraid to stand up for himself the way his brother did, and Zuko sure as hell hadn't been concerned with taking care of his little brother. All the attention was suddenly on Zuko now, the next heir to the throne and subsequently that attention trickled to his betrothed, often keeping Aelita too busy to be able to step in their mother despite how hard she had tried to. Zeztu couldn't remember what exactly it had been Azula had been doing or saying to him the day he snapped, but he certainly remembered the fear in her eyes the moment she realized he had been the one to blow the room to bits less than shadows length away from where her head had just been the moment before. It was the first time he could recall someone or something shouting at him with glee inside his mind, reveling in that very terror aimed at him instead of being the one cowering himself.

Three fucking voices. Three terrible demons that battled for dominance within the shadows of his mind. Three separate agendas, three slightly different desires and three completely opposite morals. And now three bodies.

Zetzu had never planned to hurt anyone let alone kill them. His first combustionbending teacher had been an accident when the Prince was still learning to control who and what he was. The ship captain had been the result of a momentary lapse in that control. And today, the body at his feet lay there based on pure animalistic instinct and the primal desire to survive. After all, a cornered animal was sure to attack and Zetzu couldn't deny there was something the slightest bit predatory inside his entire family. He had barely had time to react when he realized that the face staring back at him in the shadows had been purely Earth Kingdom.