legionworld | i'm colder than this home

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i'm colder than this home

Who| Saralegui and anyone else
What| A moment to breathe in all this strangeness, and an odd sight in this day and age.
Where| Saralegui's patch of the Habitat Deck
When| A few days after arrival
Warnings/Notes| Feel free to respond directly, or instead use this log for any other interactions if you want to use the setting for something else! Just specify whether a thread is intended for anyone in particular and whether it's open or closed.

Mixed in with all the rest of the habitat deck, scenic fields and familiar cities and whatnot, was a palace like something straight out of a medieval fantasy. The pale towers stretched up and caught sunlight with decorative patches of gold on the roofs, and great glass windows were set wherever possible.

Saralegui ignored the palace itself in favor of the gardens set at its base.

They were an orderly sort of thing, colorful and well-tended but neatly organized into rectangular sections broken up by smooth pathways. Ornamental trees grew in tidy lines, shading stone benches set at regular intervals. The staff and soldiers couldn't be replicated, of course, but the little white butterflies that were commonplace every spring still flitted about from one patch of flowers to the next. The sight of them sent a little pang through his heart.

This place, though home, had never held any particular warmth for him before. Emptied like this of the busy servants and watchful guards, it felt colder than ever.

In the oddly empty gardens, he stood out like a spotlight, long smooth hair falling like golden silk around his shoulders. And convinced of his solitude, Saralegui took the moment to relax, attention to appearances easing as he sighed heavily and dropped his face into his hands, elbows resting on his knees.

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If he wasn't royalty, he'd be...what? Still a tea boy in Ba Sing Se? A beggar?

Trick question, though, he was who he was because he was the Fire Prince. He wouldn't have been the same person if he'd been some random Earth Kingdom villager, or a tribesman from the Southern Water tribe, or even a random citizen of the Fire Nation.

He was Zuko, Prince of the Fire Nation, and he had been raised believing his nation was great, burned and exiled by his own father because he cared about its soldiers, and had gone out into the world and realized there were far more people he should also be caring about.

"If I wasn't a prince I'd still try to be kind." He'd try to. He wasn't really good at it. Mostly because he'd done far too little of it in his life, as far as he was concerned. "But there's a difference between kindness and having things you're supposed to do for the rest of the world. Compassion and obligation are two different things. When you're not royalty, the first one by itself is fine. When you are, you're beholden to both."

There were expectations. There was a higher standard, one his family line had neglected for far too long, because of their belief that everything they did was right by virtue of the fact that they were the ones doing it.

"That's a stupid question, though. If I wasn't royalty, I wouldn't be who I am now. I can't really answer whether or not I'd treat people differently because I wouldn't be me."

Saralegui's stare didn't ease up, but the corners of his mouth quirked up and his head canted curiously. He leant back and crossed his legs, relaxed and yet still somehow capable of making a stone bench seem like a throne.

"It's a rare person who cares so much about the rest of the world but can't imagine being like them." A pointed look, softened just slightly by a wry grin. "I don't know whether that makes you incredibly empathetic, or the exact opposite."

He had a manner that made it hard to tell whether he was teasing or judging. Generously, he added after a moment, "You're very honest, for a prince."

"I wasn't always this way," Zuko admitted and for a moment he directed his gaze away and there was a twitch of shame in his expression. "But I've seen enough of the world to understand it's the way a prince should be."

It was what he should be, especially. There was so much he had to make up for. Maybe he could never undo his past mistakes, but he could match the cruelty he'd tried to inflict on other people with compassion, and try to prevent his nation from causing yet more suffering. It was best for his people and the rest of the world to be the way he was now.

And it was the only way to truly regain his honor. His father had never actually taken it, after all, and that meant he hadn't given it back. No, Zuko had dishonored himself by acting the way he had -- by burning down a village, and trying to kidnap a 12-year-old boy, and hiring an assassin to finish the job, among other things. That meant the only way he could really earn it back was by acting honorably and the best way to do that was to stop a war that caused the Fire Nation to send away their sons to kill innocent people and die.

He looked back at Saralegui and his mouth twitched slightly, into something that wasn't quite a smile, mostly because you couldn't call an expression that was a mix of amusement and disgust a smile.

"If you knew my family, you'd understand why. Sometimes I think my sister forgot how to tell the truth."

His eyelids narrowed slightly as he took Saralegui in, considering everything he'd said so far. Sometimes it took time for things to really register with Zuko. That was why Azula so often got one over on him.

The other boy was very...careful. With his gestures and words. In a way that reminded him just a little bit of Azula. That meant he disliked it instinctively, but he was smart enough to know it didn't necessarily mean they were exactly the same.

"You sound surprised that a prince would be honest."

Saralegui was both an observant sort of person, and a tactful one. He noted those subtle shifts in expression, the shame and disgust and odd amusement, and quietly files the information away for the moment. A nice person wouldn't prod at such things with an acquaintance. And Saralegui put a great deal of effort towards at least looking like a nice person.

He smiled again, but the expression was tinged with sadness. Like a pleasant person trying to keep a depressing topic light.

"You just said yourself that your own family had issues with honesty," he pointed out. "And in my experience, power and politics breed liars. Decent people using their position to help those under their rule are an extreme minority."

Zuko watched the other teen carefully as he spoke -- the smile tinged with sadness, the attempted pleasantness. He wasn't ready to decide what it all meant but he was at least...aware. Filing away each little gesture, too.

But then he called him decent and Zuko bristled.

When Saralegui had talked about the things that kept a person decent before, he'd been talking about a hypothetical person. This was the first he'd said he personally was a decent person.

"Honest" was true. ("Blunt" was probably more accurate.) In any case, "honest" wasn't really a value judgement. But decent was...

It still felt like too positive a description. He hadn't done enough good yet. He still had so many bad things he'd done to make up for. And that was just...not being terrible. Being a genuinely good person would take even more work -- if he could ever be one at all. Sometimes it felt like he never would be, that he had too many stains on his honor, that he'd made too many mistakes. And sometimes he was even terrified that someday he'd turn out like his father.

Could evil just be in your blood? It was something he thought a lot about.

Even if they did manage to take down his father and Azula, even if he did take the throne, there was a part of him that worried about what he'd do when he actually got it. There was a part of him that had been mulling over the idea that if he did become Firelord, he needed some kind of contingency in case he turned bad, too...

"I'm not a decent person," he said, almost combatively. "You assume too much."

Saralegui was good at dealing with people when he could guess what they would do. And for the most part, he was very good at reading and predicting people. That, however, was definitely not a reaction he would have expected, and so the king is thrown for a moment, pleasant mask slipping.

He frowned, blinking and staring at Zuko like that would explain the bizarre agitation. The other boy had implied he wasn't always so decent, seemed ashamed of it earlier, but then shouldn't the compliment be welcomed? Who didn't like hearing good things about themselves?

The pause stretched on just a little too long for Saralegui's comfort., and so pressing on was inevitable.

Carefully, almost like a person dealing with a spooked animal, he said, "...That's an odd thing to get offended over."

Zuko could be called many things but "predictable" wasn't really one of them. He was very easily agitated and not always the most rational and that meant his moods sometimes vacillated back and force between pleasant and offended and irritable in the blink of an eye.

"You wouldn't think that if you actually knew me."

There was a reason for previous glimpse of shame Saralegui had seen. There was a reason he was trying so hard to be compassionate, a reason he chose honesty over deception.

Zuko didn't like hearing good things about himself because most of them weren't true.

A pause, and the frown only deepened slightly. How to respond to this...?

"To be fair," Saralegui said, still with that careful tone, "That could be said of almost anyone."

(It was certainly true of him.)

He would have said anyone, but. Well. He met Yuuri. And for a terrifying demon king, that boy really was as good and pure as he seemed.

"Maybe it can be said of almost anyone but not the same way it could be said of me."

There was a difference between what he was and people seeming decent on the surface and being petty or less than admirable underneath the veneer of decency. Zuko knew how people were. They were sometimes greedy or selfish or cruel. But there were degrees and the degree to which he'd fallen was more than some average person presenting a fair face and being some selfish cretin underneath.

Especially with what he'd been willing to sit there and let his nation do. His father and his generals planned a genocide and he'd simply sat there, his silence a horrible, tacit approval.

And that was just one small, terrible thing he'd done on a very long list.

"There are degrees. And I've made...mistakes. Bad ones."

Something he would openly admit -- had to openly admit -- even if he didn't want to go into detail.

Edited 2016-01-17 08:31 (UTC)

"That's a little self-obsessed, don't you think?"

Saralegui leaned back on his seat to give Zuko a very flat look, apparently unconvinced. "Perhaps in the opposite way people usually are, but still. You think your mistakes are so much worse than anyone else's that it makes you special somehow?" A beat, and a wry smirk crossed his face. "If I wasn't convinced you were a prince before, I am now."

He'd made some mistakes himself, after all. Some mistakes, and some other things he still wouldn't apologize for having done even knowing how other likely felt about it. And Yuuri still offered blanket forgiveness for all of it, remorse or no. It was hard to imagine there was anything anyone could have done that no one could forgive at this point, and only years of ingrained manners kept Saralegui from rolling his eyes at Zuko's self-pity.

That got under Zuko's skin. He narrowed his eyes. Time for a nice little outburst.

"I don't think I'm special!"

That wasn't what he meant. He just meant that the ways a lot of people weren't as good as they seemed were just petty. They rarely were the kind of people that burned down villages or hired assassins to kill twelve-year-olds.

His fingers curled into fists so tight that his knuckles turned white.

"I just mean..." He didn't know how to articulate what he was thinking. "The way you stop making mistakes is you look at the ones you made and don't forget how bad they were."

The outburst, unsurprisingly, didn't appear to sway Saralegui.

"You don't wallow in self-pity over it either, though." He said it dispassionately, even and smooth with a slight frown. "What's done is done. You learn your lesson and move on. As long as you aren't repeating the same mistakes, what's the use in fixating on how bad it was?"

He'd tried to kill his mother in a fit of rage and nearly gotten the demon kingdom destroyed as a result. That, admittedly, was a pretty huge and embarrassing mistake. And perhaps it was because he'd rather not think about such things more than necessary that he advocated for moving on, but still. Nothing to be done about it, so let it go.

"It's not self-pity. Self-pity means it's about you and not about what you should do."

It wasn't about his feelings. His many, many feelings.

"Some people need ways of keeping themselves in check. I don't always know when I'm -- I don't always know the right thing to do. But worrying about it as much as I do makes it easier to not lose sight of it."

He was sure his uncle would say something about everyone needing to find redemption their own way. Or something. He frowned at the ground.

"If I think about it all and keep things straight here, it's easier to make different choices," he tapped his head and looked up at Saralegui again. "I can't look at myself as a decent person until I earn it. And not losing sight of how far I still have to go helps me keep myself asking questions about what's right."

Maybe that explained it better? Maybe.

Or not.

But not everyone had a clear view of right and wrong. Despite wanting to do right now, he still struggled with knowing what the right thing was sometimes. And avoiding the idea that he was a decent person, that he'd already redeemed himself, meant he questioned his own judgment until he found his way.

Or at least that was what he was telling himself.

"...I think you're making excuses to wallow," Saralegui said, cool and even with that same probing stare.

He let that hang in the air for a moment before very suddenly shrugging, getting to his feet with a casual air and the faintest hint of a smile playing about his mouth.

"But I suppose it's really none of my business how you deal with your past errors."

"It's really not," said Zuko, gritting his teeth slightly. "You barely know anything about me."

He crossed his arms.

"And I don't know why you expect me to take anything you have to say seriously when I barely know anything about you."

Royalty or not, respect had to be earned. He wasn't about to let himself be judged by a stranger. There were plenty of people in the universe Zuko owed an explanation to, but as far as he was concerned, Saralegui wasn't one of them.

Saralegui's eyebrows arched delicately, a perfect expression of polite dissatisfaction and mild confusion at all the hostility. Like he hadn't just been prodding at old wounds.

"You haven't asked anything. It's hardly as if I'm keeping secrets."

"Why are you so curious about other people?"

He wondered if he was like Azula, wanting to know about others to know the right buttons to push, the right places to apply pressure to have leverage.

Or maybe he was just naturally curious.

Maybe he wanted to know about people for possible leverage and manipulation but didn't necessarily want to use it for sinister purposes. Sometimes political hobknobbing was like that. Delicate wording and understanding the atmosphere of a room was an important skill. It had never been Zuko's forte -- hence him questioning a general's plans in his father's war room. (And look where that'd gotten him.) But Uncle was very good at it and he didn't do anything bad with that understanding.

Even if Saralegui lied about his answer, what he chose to say might tell Zuko something about him. Sometimes lies were less a cover up for the truth and more window dressing for it.

Zuko's suspicions weren't exactly wrong. Knowledge about others was useful for all those reasons, leverage and button-pushing, understanding what best appeals to certain people to better deal with them. Whether all that was "sinister" or not depended on one's interpretation of things. It certainly didn't make Saralegui feel sinister. Just better informed.

And besides all that, sometimes people were just interesting. The people here especially, all from entirely different universes with such odd worldviews. Of course he would want to probe deeper, understand more, dig out more intriguing little tidbits until the novelty wore off.

He barely knew Zuko, as things were. It was hard to say what sort of answer would be best for him specifically. So Saralegui fell back on wide-eyes earnestness, a perplexed little frown on his face.

"How else do you expect to get to know others?"

Zuko opened his mouth and closed it again, and for just a moment, he looked cagey and confused. The truth was he didn't really know how most normal social situations went. He didn't know how people usually handled meeting each other.

He'd grown up somewhat sheltered in the palace with his playmates (Mai and Ty Lee) basically being chosen for him and his sister from the aristocracy. And when you were at that young of an age you didn't take time to get to know someone. All you needed was "Do you want to play fire frogs?" and you were friends.

Then when he was thirteen he'd been exiled and and spent three years without making new friends. He'd bypassed the entire process of a child turning into a teen and mastering more complex social situations entirely. It'd just been him and his Uncle and a bunch of grizzled soldiers on a ship, and any interactions he'd had outside of that had usually been hostile and involved threats or, well, burning down villages.

If he had ever known how normal social interaction and meeting people worked, he'd almost certainly forgotten it. Things like his tense talk with Song and awkward date with Jun had made that abundantly clear. Things like his disastrous first attempt to get Aang and his friends to accept him had made it even more clear.

"I'm not very good at talking to people," Zuko admitted, crossing his arms. It seemed less like he was crossing them to show off an attitude and more like he was protecting himself.

Not that he realized it. It was an unconscious gesture. Then his body language grew more awkward still as he tried to do the very small talk they were talking about.

"What's it like where you're from?" he asked, looking away from Saralegui and up at the castle walls. "I mean...besides this palace. You know. Outside it."

Edited 2016-02-03 06:53 (UTC)

Obviously, was the unspoken answer to that little explanation. And unspoken, of course, because Saralegui was nice like that.

(It didn't need to be said out loud anyway. The slight curve of his lips said it all.)

"My country, or my world?" Satisfied with this social upper hand, Saralegui let his smile go a bit gentler, nothing but friendly teasing. "The weather or the people or the political state of things? You really need to be more specific."

Now Zuko was frustrated again. Why was this so hard?

He threw his hands up in the air.

"Both! Either! Just...say something that isn't asking me questions."

What part of it all he chose to talk about would be telling, wouldn't it? Did he care about the people of his nation? Its culture and history? Its place in the world?

Zuko crossed his arms again. "I'm interested in all of it."

He genuinely was. It was strange finding out about these other worlds -- other ways things could be. His world had been entrenched in a war for a hundred years, his nation had shamed itself with a hundred years of travesties. It was reassuring to find out there were worlds that weren't that way -- and also that there were other worlds that were.

Apparently in this universe, from what he'd been told so far, there had been many wars between many nations -- and even many worlds -- and it had all resolved into...something that was an attempt to be better. He wanted to know that it was possible in more than one place, that other worlds had dragged themselves out of that kind of darkness and imbalance.

"...You're shy." Saralegui said it like it was a fresh revelation, with a delighted grin. "Fine, fine. No more questions for you."

Mildly disappointing, actually. He was interested too, after all, and he still had plenty he wanted to ask about. But such things could come later, he supposed.

The young king frowned thoughtfully, for a few moments just staring out over the gardens while he chose. Between the vast number of directions he could take that question and the different effects choosing any one of them could have on his image here, there was a great deal to consider in the few moments he could reasonably decide before appearing too calculating.

"...We were very close to achieving some real peace, I think." It's a good choice, Saralegui thinks. A nice direction to take things, and something he's even genuinely proud of. "Before I woke up here, anyway. A few more months, and I think we would have done it. Something solid and lasting."

"I'm not shy!" Zuko insisted defensively. "Like I said, I'm not very good at talking to people."

Now he was in a full sulk, arms crossed, shoulders hunched. He hated having his awkwardness pointed out. But the rest of what Saralegui said had gotten to him so he couldn't stay mad long.

"Was your world at war?" he asked. "Or was there just tension between the nations there?"

Even the latter was something miserable, always having to dance around conflict. Not as bad as open war, but still not the peace and balance that should exist between nations.

Edited 2016-02-06 09:50 (UTC)

"It used to be. And there were always warmongers pushing to return to it. No open fighting, but we'd come very close a few times."

Like Lanzhil's naval attack. Or his attempt at it, anyway, which Yuuri had conveniently put a stop to (with a bit of persuasion from Saralegui). Only luck and quick thinking had prevented things from returning to open war.

"But my friend ruled over almost half the world -- half of the part that had always been involved in the fighting, anyway -- and I was very close to having control over all of the other half. Between us, we could have put a stop to all the fighting for at least the rest of our lives, if not for good."

A beat, and Saralegui smirked in the most self-deprecating way, shrugging almost pitifully.

"But I'm stuck here, now."

Zuko looked thoughtful at that.

"They said that they think we'll go back to when we left. When they manage to free us and send us home."

His eyebrows creased into a look that was more than concern. Genuine fear made his brows knit up and it wasn't fear for himself. It was fear for his world and his nation and the friends he'd left behind.

If he didn't go back to when he left, that meant Katara would have to face his sister alone. That meant his friends would be short another one of their number because of spirit world nonsense (because this had to be spirits, right?).

"Provided they're even telling the truth."

It was possible they were being lied to, after all.

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