Frozen Heart, Melted Ice

Chpt 32 - Found?

Zuko watched Y/n from the saddle, they had been flying in silence for what felt like an eternity to the both of them - though for very different reasons - in reality it couldn't have been more than half an hour. Zuko had kept his eyes trained on Y/n the majority of the time. Throughout the flight she had been staring intently forward, her hands gripped tightly on the reins as she sat unmoving.

Zuko wanted to say something, but he didn't know what.

Finally, Y/n moved. It was just a slight shift in her position so that her head was slightly tilted down at her hip flask.

A few minutes later she moved again. Y/n slid the reins around her right elbow and pulled a slip of folded up paper out of the pocket her flask. Zuko couldn't see what was on it as she opened the small yellowed parchment up.

Y/n stared down the paper, holding it tightly on either side so that the wind wouldn't blow him away. It was the artwork of her, Yue, and her brother sitting in the snow drift. When Y/n had first left home the portrait was in pristine condition without so much as the tiniest crease on it but now it had a large cross down the center of it from its fold lines, the ink and paint around the lines chipping away. Y/n stared at Kenji's face, Y/n was 9 when this portrait was made so he must have been about her age in it. Y/n had always thought Kenji was so much older, that he looked so much older, but as she stared at him now she realized just how young her big brother was. How young she was.

"Is that him?" Zuko asked suddenly, finally getting up the courage to say something. He had silently moved closer a few minutes ago so that he could peer over her shoulder at the image.

Y/n jumped at the sudden noise, she had almost forgotten that Zuko was there. She stared at him stupidly as he moved to sit down on her right side.

"What?" Y/n finally asked once he had settled next to her.

"Your brother," Zuko clarified, nodding at the portrait, "Is that him?"

"Yes," Y/n turned from Zuko and back at the portrait.

"But thats not you."

Y/n turned to Zuko, he was making absolutely no sense. Y/n stared at him with her mouth slightly open and her eyes somewhere between a glare and the face a student makes in a class they don't understand. She tried to form some sort of sentence or question but she couldn't even voice her confusion at what he had just said. She was in the portrait after all.

"The girl," Zuko said sensing Y/n's - slightly hostile - confusion, "The one with the white hair. That's not you."

"I'm the one on the right," Y/n turned away again. Zuko knew Y/n's hair wasn't always white, he fought her back when it was still black, so why was comprehending this so difficult for him?

"Who is that then?"

"My friend Yue. She was the chieftains daughter."

"Was?"

"She's dead," Y/n said harshly.

"Oh," Zuko said as he panicked internally, what does one say to that? "I'm sorry."

"Sort of," Y/n added, looking up at the moon, it was that strange time of day where both the moon and the sun were in the sky. She wasn't listening to what he had said at all, instead she was in her own world as she thought about Yue.

"What?"

"She turned into the moon," Y/n said as if it was an every day occurrence.

"Oh," Zuko said again, "what?"

Y/n sighed and explained how Yue had a part of the moon living inside of her, which is why she had white hair, and that when the moon spirit died Yue gave her life to bring it back.