𝑺𝑬𝑬𝑫 𝑶𝑭 𝑰𝑪𝑯𝑶𝑹 •𝒃𝒙𝒃•

31 ~ glimpse of us

AN: IM NOT DEAD!!!! I just...had to take a lil break from this story! BUT IM BACK AND I HOPE I WILL BE UPDATING MORE OFTEN THAN ONCE IN TEN MONTHS!

He didn't think it would feel like this, visiting a place from his past.

It was summer then as well, in this seaside villa. The brightly burning sun, and the coarse sand beneath their feet, he thought he needed nothing else, that the four of them together was something everlasting.

Yet the sand kept on flowing.

Now, as he stood in front of the portrait, he wished he could walk into it. To stand where his younger self stood, careless and unknowing, with the ones he loved by his side. Three grinning children, and a man whose kind smile brought more warmth than the sun itself. Alas, going back would not have changed anything. Even with what he knew now, a fate as severe as theirs could not be avoided.

They knew nothing. Zuko still had his childish innocence, without a brand to serve as a reminder for disobedience. Azula...was kind, not defined by her father's unreachable standards. He was next, with the repressed love he bore for his father, drunk on the love he thought his mother held for him. And there was his father, who took it all upon himself to prolong their youth, to keep them as...just children for as long as possible.

It all fell apart without him.

"Reminiscing?"

Zuko was leaning on the doorway. Their eyes didn't meet, no, because he was looking over Guren's shoulder, right at the portrait.

"That would imply I enjoy remembering."

"You don't?"

Guren turned back towards the portrait. "Do you?"

"I do." Zuko's reply was quick.

So quick that Guren couldn't help looking at him. "Why?"

Slowly, Zuko approached him, all the way until he was right beside him. Thus he stared up at their forever uncorrupted youth with unblinking eyes. "We were happy back then. You were happy back then. Is it wrong of me to want all that happiness back?"

"You think we can get it back?"

Zuko glanced at him. "We could."

"Even after all that happened with Azula? You think we can...be a little trio again?"

A hand took him by the wrist. "We could."

Guren noticed how the hand that held him shook, the pressure increasing ever so slightly. "It will never be as it was, Zuko. Too much has changed. Too many...were lost," He looked him right in the eye. "To me, you are not what you were before. I don't think you ever will be."

The reaction was immediate. Zuko's grip loosened, pale hand pulling away.

Yet Guren chased right after it.

"You aren't Little Wolf to me anymore. You're just...Zuko now. And I don't want you to leave."

It was always him declining Zuko, always him pushing and pushing and pushing. And this time, when he reached out, Zuko was the one rejecting him.

Their hands separated.

"You...want me to stay, yet you want Little Wolf to disappear?"

Confused, Guren couldn't even reply.

"Just as you and Little Bird are one and the same, so are Little Wolf and I. So are Little Vixen and Azula." There came about a certain roughness to his words. "You can't have one without the other."