i'm colder than this home

[enthraller]

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.

Comments

[enthraller]

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."

[failbender]

"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.

[enthraller]

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?"

[failbender]

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."

[enthraller]

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."

[failbender]

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.

[enthraller]

"...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."

[failbender]

"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.

[enthraller]

"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."

[failbender]

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.