Chapter Text
“Bo Shing had a thing—” Zuko’s brow furrowed in shame and anger. He wished he could bite his tongue off, but that wouldn’t bring back the words that had already slipped from his lips. They sounded so alike—why did they sound so alike when he said them, hissing like a viper-rat, when they sounded so different coming from his father?
Zuko drew a deep breath, focused, and: “Bo Shing had a thing…”
His shoulders began to tremble, and he quickly pulled the quill away from the paper before his suppressed tears could smear the wet ink. His lips didn’t say what he wanted them to, and his fingers didn’t write what he wanted them to.
A shadow fell across his page, and Zuko lowered his head, already guiltily lifting his gaze to apologize to his father.
“Father, it’s difficult, the two characters are so the same.”
“Similar.” His father’s voice seemed to echo from every corner of the room, even though he had spoken normally. For him, normal.
“The characters are not the same, Zuko, they are similar. And that’s why you must not pronounce them the same. Do you not understand that?”
Zuko gasped for breath and began nodding before his father had even finished speaking. With a sigh, his father took the wooden ruler from the table, the same ruler Zuko had used to draw writing lines earlier, and with its edge began drawing the same characters in the air that Zuko had just struggled to put onto paper.
“And here”—his father jerked the ruler down sharply—“the character is clearly different from the other, isn’t it?”
The hairs on Zuko’s neck stood on end, like before a storm broke, and he nodded eagerly, even though he couldn’t see the supposed difference no matter how hard he tried. His father was angry because he was still so poor at reading and writing, and that made Zuko angry too, and anyway it was always better to agree with Father before he started shouting. When Father shouted, Zuko usually cried (even if he had gotten better at not crying). And that wouldn’t help him now at all.
Zuko dipped the quill back into the ink, carefully started a new line, and again read out loud while his small hands formed the characters. The wobbly lines on the paper seemed to dance and blur before his eyes, merging into one and becoming indistinguishable.
“Bo Shing had a thing—”
Zuko yanked his hands away with a scream as the paper in front of him suddenly went up in a bright flame.
“Are you really this stupid, or only pretending, Zuko? Azula is two years old and can pronounce it better than you!” his father snarled.
Zuko knew he was exhausting his father’s patience. The day before, his father had explained to him that he had much more important things to do than teach Zuko to read and write, because he should have understood it long ago.
The flame vanished as suddenly as it had come, and when Zuko dared look up, his father wasn’t even looking at him, but staring out of the tall window. Yet the ruler in his hand trembled, and his jaw twitched. He seemed truly angry now.
“Perhaps I overestimated you. If writing still eludes you, then at least try to pronounce the characters properly. Imagine the disgrace if the court learned that at four years old you speak worse than your little sister!”
Zuko nodded, but a lump in his throat stopped him from obeying at once. The painful words echoed in his head, each repetition pushing the tears closer to the surface. He drew a deep breath and glanced at his father, making sure he wasn’t taking too long. But Ozai didn’t seem to notice him, his gaze still fixed on the window. Zuko knew better than to believe his father wasn’t watching.
“Bo Shing had a thing—”
Zuko’s hand exploded in heat, and he froze. Time seemed to stop; his body refused to breathe, his eyes locked on his pale fingers, on which no red appeared. All he could think was: there was no fire. The fire was missing. Why was there burning and no fire?
Suddenly time surged back, and with it came pain. Zuko’s body still paralyzed in shock, the ruler slipped from his father’s hand and struck the table with a crack. By the time Zuko began to scream and cry, the door had already slammed shut behind his father.
The next day, though his fingers still hurt, Zuko spoke and wrote every single word perfectly. His father gave him a satisfied nod, and Zuko’s small body nearly burst with pride.