Azula Flickering Hope

Masks

Zukos POV

The past few days feel like they've been all blurred together I haven't even been able to really process anything I've been to busy organizeing the ceremony and keeping up with my other fire lord duties.

It's all the same thing " we're so sorry for your loss"
" It's really such a shame she had so much potential" The same thing every day while all I can muster is a thank you and a nod.

I'm tired I want to forget everything for a moment and quiet the world for just a hour. The world carries on and nobody is seems to care all that much how could they not how can they not be thinking how awful and cruel the world is and how unfair it is that she's gone.

They whisper cruel things behind there hands as if I can't hear them. "she was better of dead this way then what we all know she was heading for"

I sign the papers the world doesn't stop throwing problems at me. Multiple criminals escaped crime gangs and starvation don't cease just because I'm tired.

The people in my life I need most treat me like cracked glass like anything they say could break me into peices. They avoid topics such as siblings and anything in relation to her at all. Nobody is the same not even Aang who's so quiet now I haven't heard him speak in days.

Sokka hasn't made a single joke but to be fair it's hard to be humorous when the tension in the palace could be cut with knife. Mais being nice to me all the time wich is strange, no sarcasm or small jabs. She's grieving to she just won't talk to me about it.

I feel like the world's turned upside down. I get it, its my fault, I know it's my fault I'm tired of everyone acting like I'm the victim when I'm the sibling who survived.

I left her crown with my mother who carries it with her at all time I don't think she's washed the blood off the rim. I hope it wasn't painful I hope they didn't torture her she didn't deserve that.

I had to come back to the hospital but I couldn't bring myself to go back into her room. Some servants gave me her books and pillows everything in her hospital room. I haven't touched them I put them in her old room and shut it so they remained untouched.

Mother hasn't left her room she's heart broken. I can't get her to eat or to leave her room longer then an hour we take small walks with Kiyi in the garden but then she returns to her room where I can hear her whimpers through the door.

She's in pain I don't know what to say to her or how I can make it better. Kiyi is still to young to understand whats going on. Iroh has been watching over her while mom grieves.

" Why is mommy so sad? Is it because Azula left"

Iroh and mother talk the most or sometimes they don't say a word to each other and just take walks around the palace.

It's hard to think that she's really gone it's painful to look in the garden and think of the days when we were just children a time when we actually got along.

Father has gone missing just another thing to add to my plate. He's mostly harmless without his bending and I can't bring myself to look for him to much. I haven't told mother he escaped they don't know how he did. Some of my advisors speculate he may have been killed from the very assassins who killed Azula.

And you know what I hope they did, I hope that he's gone and can never hurt someone ever again. I'm Angry that he never saw how awful he was he died thinking he was a good person and he doesn't deserve that.

Sokka Aang and Suki have been going out on searches to look for him but even the prisoners said they didn't think he left his room.

I roll myself out of bed and I can hear my shoulders pop as I rise forward.I shuffle atound until I reach my closet and start getting dressed. Today is going to be hard but I hope I can just go through the motions.