Day 256 [Open]

[daughterofursa]

Who: Zuko and anyone
Open: Open!
When: Day 256, evening
Where: By the lake
What: A failure to meditate
Format: I'll match
Warnings: Honor

Zuko knows she's always been hard on herself, but she's never really considered it to be too hard. But some of the things people have been saying about her... Well, people in the Bastion have always expressed a more positive view of her than she thinks she deserves, and she always figured it was because they don't know what she's come from, but she's finally starting to wonder. Maybe the flawed perspective is her own.

Which is why she is attempting something else which, like positive thinking, she is not very good at: meditating. Whoever really wants to can find her by the lake, sitting cross-legged with her eyes closed and... definitely scowling more than she ought to be.

Comments

[blackblooded]

Crona's gaze settles nowhere near Zuko, as far from Zuko as possible.

"I... I don't know. You were sitting here, you know. You were making a scary face. That usually doesn't mean people are fine."

[daughterofursa]

"That's just how my face is."

Zuko, Crona was probably not referring to the scar but the fact that you scowl a lot.

[blackblooded]

"You... um... you should try smiling sometimes." Crona fidgets with the hem of the skirt. "I... um... someone told me that smiling would help make me happier. It might help you."

[daughterofursa]

"Has it been working?" Crona doesn't seem especially happy right now. Not even smiley.

[blackblooded]

"I didn't try."

[daughterofursa]

"Great endorsement."

Zuko leans back on her hands, glancing away. "I'd rather feel like smiling than force it."

[blackblooded]

"Me too." Crona keeps fidgeting. Maybe this person doesn't want to talk. It's a mistake for Crona to keep trying to talk.

"I thought... maybe you wanted to talk. Do you want to talk?"

[daughterofursa]

"Why would you want to listen? We barely know each other."

Well, it's not an outright 'no.'

[blackblooded]

"I'm a good listener." That's why Crona would listen. Because Crona is able to listen, because people need other people to listen.

[daughterofursa]

"That's it? I don't think I'd want to listen to someone else's nonsense..."

Except Zuko has absolutely listened to other people's problems, she just doesn't think of them as nonsense.

[blackblooded]

"I think that maybe we're not the same person." That's the closest that Crona can get to actually saying that listening to Zuko's problems is an option.

[daughterofursa]

"No, we're not. You're probably a better one than I am. Maybe."

[blackblooded]

"I'm not." Crona knows that without having to think about it. "Why do you think you're a bad person?"

[daughterofursa]

"Because I've made so many mistakes. I thought I could redeem myself... I thought I had redeemed myself, but then the world ended. It doesn't feel like it made any difference." How does it count for anything if her actions helped restore balance for a matter of days before the world was completely torn apart?

[blackblooded]

"That isn't your fault. It isn't your fault that the world ended. People can't change that." It's the end of the world, and they're still alive on the other side of it. "Nothing matters but what you do now."

[daughterofursa]

"Yes, it does. It still matters. We don't stop being who we were before just because things are different now."

[blackblooded]

"But what you did doesn't matter. That's what getting a second chance means."

[daughterofursa]

"And you're okay with just giving everyone a second chance, no matter what kinds of things they might have done before? What if they screw up again?"

[blackblooded]

"People need a second chance." Maybe not everyone, certainly not everyone. "Sometimes people even need a third chance."

[daughterofursa]

"...and if I slip up again, do I get a fourth? You can't just keep wiping it clean."

[blackblooded]

"Two is enough." People don't deserve chances over and over again. "Now you have two."

[daughterofursa]

"What?" Zuko frowns in confusion. "I already had that third chance. That's the one I'm on."

[blackblooded]

"It reset. No chances from before mattered."

[daughterofursa]

"...just like that? It sounds too easy."

[blackblooded]

"It's not too easy. The world had to end."