Memories from Western Airtemple

Memories from Western Air Temple
Chapter 11
Tormented

When Zuko woke up with a jolt, it was to his own dark room. His eyes met the stained ceiling as the fog of his dream began to fade. Usually nightmares faded away along the returning of consciousness but with Zuko the events of his dream became clearer when he woke up properly.

The thing with normal people was that their nightmares were images created by their imagination, unidentifiable fears with no real form. Zuko’s nightmares, however, were based off of real memories, he dreamed of real events, betrayals and failures that had happened at one point.

With a groan Zuko rolled to his side, wondering just how humble he needed to be in order to stop feeling so ashamed of himself. But his mind turned completely blank when his eyes fell on a shadow that looked like a real person leaning against his wall. Zuko knew it was nothing but a trick of light and his mind playing tricks on him but that did not stop him from jumping out of bed and rushing out of his room within the next few seconds.

Zuko’s running steps took him outside of the Air Temple, where the teen stopped in the middle of the moonlit yard to take a deep breath. He breathed slowly and carefully, determined to bring himself back under control. Concentrating solely on the path of air going in and out, Zuko’s thoughts drifted away from his nightmare and the visions of death and disappointment.

Pride is the cause of shame, had Iroh told Zuko once. Well, Zuko had forsaken his pride already so what else could he do to stop those shameful visions from haunting him? These were the thoughts that came to Zuko’s mind after his breathing had evened out. The teen did not understand what was wrong with him. He had apologised, he had apologised until he thought he had forgotten all other words. He worked to redeem himself until he collapsed from exhaustion. What else did his soul want from his mind?

Letting his weak knees finally give out Zuko sunk to the ground and stared at the grey stones with a defeated air. He was so tired of fighting and now all that was left was running. He could no longer do anything more than run from his dreams, the light from the moon the only comfort and security he could get.

Perhaps it was not a matter of shame at all, Zuko wondered as his palms pressed against cold stone. Maybe the feeling that was slowly choking him to death was something else. And Zuko was fairly certain that he knew what emotion was tearing at him.

When a certain word did not match an emotion, a new term had to be found in order to avoid confusion between two different feelings. And the one other word for lack of self-worth that Zuko knew was guilt. He knew that he could only blame himself for everything that had gone wrong before and only after everything was fixed could he finally let it go.

To be continued...
Ending Notes: Some replies to reviews that I thought really needed one.
To Kairan: Thank you for reviewing. I actually am aware of Toph's eyecolor being green rather than blue. I noticed it later on and just never remembered to fix it in this story.
And to Anonymous: Thank you for the kind words. I have received a couple of comments about my phrasing. The turth is that my first language is Finnish, which is probably the farthest from English one can get with European languages. I'm working on improving in the area, though.