Burning Ashes To Dust (Like A Funeral Pyre)

The first lesson Zuko ever learns about firebending is that power comes from anger.
Firebenders can draw power from their pain. His whole life, Zuko is told to use his old haunts to succeed, swiping fire from the nicks in his fingers and bursting angry flames from his left eye. Azula’s cold fire comes from the scars littering her arms and the phantom stinging of her father’s backhands. Iroh, too, has little marks on forearms and hands, long faded but still burning like new when he bends them with intense fury. The nature of firebending is not so easily boiled down, though, and throughout his journey, Zuko tries hard to truly understand his pain and power in life.

Notes:

hello hello! this took way too long to write but given the length i think i'm justified ^-^
infinite thanks to my lovely lovely betas plums and meech for pointing out the many plot holes i hadn't even thought of <33 ilysm
as always be sure to pay attention to the tags for warnings. there isn't a whole lot in here since it highkey turned into an angsty canon retelling halfway through but better safe than sorry!
if you're waiting for an update to the lost and found shh no you're not i'm still working on it
and last but certainly not least this fic is primarily centered around Hearts on Fire by Gavin James.

(See the end of the work for more notes.)

Work Text:

The first lesson he ever learns about firebending is that power comes from anger.

Zuko isn’t a hateful person, not at seven years old. He’s joyful and bubbly and jealous of his sister and a little bossy, but never hateful. Mother tells him all the time that hate is a strong word, so when his tutors tell him that firebending is fuelled with pain and hatred and anger, he just doesn’t understand.

Weeks pass like this. Azula has already started bending little tongues of orange flame into the first few katas, and she’s only five and a half. Zuko tries hard - he thinks about how he couldn’t save the turtle-crab from the falcon-hawk on the beach last time they went to Ember Island, or how he dislikes some of the vegetables Mother makes him eat, or how annoying Uncle’s confusing proverbs can be - but it’s never enough, and he can rarely make more than a candle’s worth of flame.

Father watches over his shoulder and Mother tries her best to shield him under her robes, but he’s not a baby anymore, and he’s only getting bigger. It won’t be long before Father can actually see what pitiful progress Zuko is making, especially compared to his baby sister. It’s bad enough he rarely sees his father these days, but he doesn’t think he could handle the disappointment.

Of course, it comes. Being ignored as they pass by each other in the palace halls, a comment about the poor reports from his tutors during mealtimes, a raised eyebrow when he sees Zuko sitting in the courtyard trying to produce more fire in his cupped hands. Like he doesn’t believe Zuko can do it.

“We thought you were a nonbender until a few months ago, Prince Zuko,” he remarks idly at dinner once. “You don’t want to prove me right, do you?”

“No, Father,” Zuko mumbles, hunched in on himself. “I’ll do better, I promise.”

Father huffs softly. “Good.”

Another week passes, and Zuko is desperate enough to start fishing for new fuel. He thinks about how he doesn’t like the harsh words of his tutors, and how mad he is at Azula for taunting him about his beloved turtleducks, and how he hates that she’s so far ahead while he’s stuck with Father’s disappointing stares.

It works. The fire in his hands flares just slightly, but it’s enough that when he shows his tutors, they decide he can start on the basic katas.

It’s hard to sustain that kind of feeling over the course of a whole kata, but it’s almost worth it to see that glimmer of satisfaction in his father’s eyes.

The night of the Summer Solstice Festival, the entire royal family is supposed to host a huge party for nobles in the palace, the grand finale of the week-long celebration of Agni. Every year, the stuffy banquet does hold the entire royal family, minus two young princes and a little princess.

Lu Ten takes Zuko and Azula out into the city, hidden under his hooded cloak down a servant’s passage. He swears all the time that the celebration in the city is so much more fun than the one at the palace, but this is the first year Zuko, at eight, and Azula, at six, are old enough to come along.

It’s also the first time in a while that they’re not fighting. Zuko likes that; he misses having fun with Azula. Ever since they started firebending, Azula’s taunts have grown meaner and meaner, and Zuko’s been more and more stressed and exhausted outside of lessons.

Lu Ten is right. The festival is beyond his wildest dreams. So many vivid colors he rarely sees in the palace are splattered across the city’s center square, and a band is playing boisterous music in the middle. Street performers do fascinating tricks on every corner, and the delicious smells of various home-cooked foods wafts through the air. Laughter and bells ring out as children run around, playing in the streets with sparklers.

Zuko never wants to leave. Not even when Lu Ten starts making gooey eyes at the pretty girl running the daifuku stand, or when he sulks for a little bit after seeing the girl performing with colored fire a few stalls down walk up and kiss her on the cheek.

At some point Lu Ten finds his friends, and Zuko and Azula immediately get bored with them. While the older boys goof off, the two children wander away, caught up in a game of chase with some local kids. It isn’t long before they get separated, and now it’s up to Zuko to go find Azula before she gets lost like a good big brother.

He spots her off to the side where there are less people, sitting with a skewer of crispy meats and vegetables coated in an aromatic sauce that makes Zuko’s mouth water as he comes closer. “I got tired,” she defends when he approaches.

He just smiles and sits next to her. “Me too, ’Zula. You wanna go find Lu Ten?”

“Not really.” She wrinkles her nose and points across the square to where they can see him and his friends with one of the street performers, trying to learn how to juggle to impress the group of girls next to them that are actually doing well. They watch as Lu Ten tosses a few balls into the air and proceeds to drop half of them. One of them lands on his head as he lurches forward to catch another, and they burst into giggles.

They’re so busy watching this newfound entertainment that they don’t notice the three drunk men stumbling towards them. Azula squeaks when one of them tries to walk past and accidentally kicks her leg. As she pulls her feet back into her, the man topples forward and faceplants on the cobblestone street with a curse.

He picks himself up and growls at them, and Zuko’s face scrunches up at the stink of alcohol on his breath. He puts his arm in front of Azula as a shield as they both stand up and back away, his other hand summoning a stuttering flame while Azula whips out her own.

“Ooh, baby’s gonna bend,” one of the other men mock them.

“You tripped me, girl,” the one that fell snarls, glaring at Azula.

“It’s not my fault you’re too clumsy to notice you’re walking over a person,” she sniffs, trying to maintain an air of confidence despite the note of fear in her voice.

The ugly snarl on the man’s face deepens. “You’re gonna pay for that, brat.”

“Leave us alone!” Zuko shouts. “We didn’t do anything to you!”

“Shut up,” one of them snaps. “I thought kids were supposed to be quiet. Listen to your elders, kid, and this’ll be quick.”

The one who fell steps forward, hand raised, and Zuko squares his shoulders, bringing his hands up. Behind him, Azula is trembling, but her hands are aglow with orange. As the man’s hand comes down, Zuko squeezes his eyes shut, bracing for the hit.

It doesn’t come. Zuko cracks eyes open to see Lu Ten standing behind them, arm outstretched and clutching the man’s wrist in a vice-like grip. His face is stony and his voice furious.

“And what do you think you’re doing?” he asks coldly. His friends stand behind him, wearing similar expressions. One of them nudges Zuko and Azula back gently until they’re standing behind Lu Ten, who still hasn’t let go of the man even as he scrabbles to release Lu Ten’s hold.

“Those brats need to be taught a lesson,” the man spits. “She tripped me!”

“No, I didn’t!” Azula yells. “You kicked my leg when you walked by. How is that my fault?”

“So in your drunken state, you believe my six-year-old cousin tripped you,” Lu Ten sums up flatly, “and your response to that was violence against two little kids?” His voice sharpens the longer he speaks. “What is wrong with you?”

One of the other men step forward. “Stay out of this,” he barks, taking a wild swipe at Lu Ten. With a scoff of disgust and the ease of several years of training in hand-to-hand combat, Lu Ten shoves away the first man’s wrist and ducks under the second man, pushing him as he stumbles past so he’s turned around the way he came.

“Listen, men,” Lu Ten says. “I will give you three seconds to get out of my sight, and you’ll do exactly that if you know what’s good for you. One.”

The men sneer at him, straightening up, and Lu Ten’s friends tense behind him.

“Two.”

And then Lu Ten swipes his right thumb against the thin scar across his left forearm like he’s striking a match, and Zuko knows there’s a scar there because every time he asks about it Lu Ten’s smile gets a little sad and he changes the subject. But now it’s like it ignites his hand for him with a flame far brighter and hotter than Zuko has ever seen it before.

For the first time, the men seem uneasy. As Lu Ten begins to shift into a firebending stance, the other two men turn tail and run, leaving only the man who fell.

Lu Ten looks him in the eyes, and there’s the hint of a vicious smile on his face. “Three.”

The man books it down the alleyway.

There is silence for a few moments, broken when one of Lu Ten’s friends lets out a loud whoop. Instantly the tension is broken, and the scary look on the older boy’s face vanishes with the flame in his hand as he relaxes.

“Are you two okay?” he asks Zuko and Azula, and they nod. Zuko still feels a little shaky, but it’s better now that Lu Ten is here.

They decide to head home after that. On the walk back up to the palace, while Azula sleeps in Lu Ten’s arms, Zuko asks, “Why did touching your scar make your fire stronger, Lu Ten?”

He purses his lips. “I don’t think you’re old enough to know about that, Zuko,” he says, his voice hushed.

“C’mon, please?” Zuko wheedles. Lu Ten laughs softly and ruffles his hair.

“You know how firebending comes from passion and emotion, right?” That doesn’t sound quite like what Zuko’s tutors say, but he nods anyway. “Well, sometimes you can get injured in something really emotional, or from something that you feel passionate about. And even once it heals, you still feel a lot of things about it. Touching the place where it happened, like where a scar might be, can help you channel how you feel about it into your firebending.”

“So why don’t people do it more often?” Zuko asks curiously.

Lu Ten gets that sad look in his eyes again. “It’s not healthy,” he says. “It’s not good to get consumed in emotion like that. You can easily get lost in negative emotion, and that one-track mind has made people hurt the people they love in the past.”

“Oh.” Zuko doesn’t quite understand how any old injury could be bad enough to hurt the people he cares about, but Lu Ten sounds so serious that Zuko knows it must be awful.

“But you did it,” Zuko says, half in question.

Lu Ten’s shoulders slump. “I did it because I had to,” he whispered. “I didn’t want to hurt them, even though they were nasty. It was better to just scare them. I had to protect you.”

The rest of the walk is spent in silence, broken only by the sleepy goodnight he gives Lu Ten before he enters his room, and the “Goodnight, Zuko! Remember not to tell Aunt Ursa we snuck out” he gets in return.

(Years later, as Zuko huddles under his blankets and cries, he thinks he understands. This grief is sharper than anything he’s ever felt before, and the pain in his heart would be more than enough to make his fire burn brightly if he wanted to use it.)

(He doesn’t want anything to do with it.)

When Uncle and Lu Ten were off at war, and Grandfather was too occupied with his affairs as Fire Lord without Uncle to take on lesser duties, Zuko started seeing little fingerprints burned on his mother’s arms.

She would always pull down her sleeves when she caught him looking, and she’d tuck him even tighter into her side or tickle him until he forgot what he was looking at. But the memory would come back to him later in the night, and he would try hard not to think about where she got them.

One day he saw her rubbing one on her wrist with her other hand, and even though she’s not a bender, he had said automatically, “Lu Ten says you shouldn’t do that.”

“What do you mean, Zuko?” Mother had asked, perplexed, and Zuko snapped his mouth shut, remembering he wasn’t supposed to tell her about it.

“Zuko?” she prompted again when he didn’t answer.

“Lu Ten bent with his scar once, and I asked him why, and he said if you had an emotional injury then touching the scar would make you stronger,” he burst out. “But he said it’s not healthy, and you can get lost in it and hurt people.”

Mother’s hands had stilled in shock, and her eyes tilted downwards even as she pressed her lips tightly together to suppress a frown. “Zuko,” she began, but then she trailed off, not knowing how to finish it. “He was right,” she settled on, finally.

Zuko did what she would do whenever he was sad, and he gave her a hug. She had folded her arms around him, sleeves draping over his shoulders like they could hide him from the ugly truth.

She doesn’t touch her scars anymore.

He burns three small funeral pyres built from sticks by the turtleduck pond under the hot afternoon sun a couple of days later, still dressed in his stuffy formal clothes from the banquet he just snuck out of. One for grandfather, whose funeral was today. One for Lu Ten, whose funeral was days ago but still feels like today. One for Mother, who didn’t get a funeral but Zuko thinks should get a pyre just in case she is dead like Azula keeps saying.

They smolder for a long while until they are nothing but ashes, blown away by the slight breeze and scattered across the pond like dust.

Mother is gone, and now Zuko’s arms are starting to look a lot like hers. He suppresses the urge to discreetly rub the hurt away the way Mother must have been doing, and he hates it, and he hates that he’s so pathetic he can’t even avoid his own father’s displeasure. (Mother wasn’t pathetic, and he can’t imagine why Father would be so displeased with her too.) He knows his firebending could improve if he used these scars and his anger to fuel it, but the thought of it makes his stomach curl. He keeps thinking about what Lu Ten said that solstice night, and even though Mother and Uncle and Lu Ten are all gone, and he would love to finally be as good as Azula for once, he doesn’t want to lose himself. Mother had told him to never forget who he is, and he won’t.

It sounds dumb when he thinks about it. Maybe Father’s right to be disappointed in him, but he doesn’t know how to do better. Surely his intention can’t be self-destruction for short-term power.

“Zuzu!” Azula trills as she skips into the garden where he sits, and Zuko sighs. “Are you really just going to sit here all day and do nothing?”

“Go away, Azula,” he grumbles.

“Aw,” she fake-pouts. “But then you won’t hear what Father wanted me to tell you!”

Zuko knows she’s probably lying, but it doesn’t stop him from lifting his head to look at her. “Father has a message for me?”

“Yeah,” she says smugly. “He says he’s really proud of you for mastering that baby kata last week. He wants to see you in the throne room to congratulate you! Maybe he’ll even promote you to level three. You might even catch up to me by your next birthday!” She laughs meanly.

Zuko is sure she’s lying, because when was the last time Father was proud of him for anything? But he would he stupid to ignore a direct summons from the Fire Lord, no matter what she pretends it’s about, so he stands up to go anyway.

As he walks by Azula, she sticks a foot and trips him, sending him crashing to the ground. “I was joking, Dum-Dum,” she sighs, shaking her head. “Will you ever learn?”

Zuko rolled onto his back, exasperated. “Why are you always so mean?” he snaps. “We’re supposed to get along!”

“We’re not supposed to do anything,” Azula retorts. “We’re royalty, for Agni’s sake. We don’t go around being sappy and weak.”

“It’s not weak to be nice,” Zuko protests. “Lu Ten wasn’t weak! Mom and Uncle aren’t weak!”

Azula scoffs. “Lu Ten’s dead, Zuko. It’s not like being nice ever got him anywhere. Maybe if he was meaner then people would be too scared to face him on the battlefield, and he wouldn’t have gotten killed.” She shrugs, and Zuko’s hands ball into fists as she continues. “Mother’s weakness got her chased away from the palace, and Uncle’s weakness lost him the throne because he was too nice to try to take it back. Grow a spine, Zuko, you don’t want to follow in their footsteps.”

“Well if you’re not nice then no one’s gonna like you!” Zuko shouts, and he instantly knows it’s the wrong thing to say, especially when her eyes narrow to disguise the glimmer of hurt.

“I don’t need people to like me, I need them to fear me,” she snaps. “That’s how you command respect and get the power you need to come out on top. Mother feared me, you know. But you never really did. Maybe that should change.” Her fingers light up threateningly.

Zuko pushes himself up onto his elbows, pausing to examine her pinched face. If he ignores the flaming hand, it’s almost like she’s five again, pouting because he took the last bean cake (even though they could always ask the kitchens for more, because it was the principle of the thing). Like this, it’s hard to say he hates or really even fears her, no matter what she tries. They grew up together, and they’ll be stuck together for a long time yet; he knows her well enough to know that as nasty as she can be, she doesn’t go too far. “I don’t fear you, ’Zula,” he says softly. “I’m your big brother. Mom said I gotta protect you, and that’s what I’m gonna do, even if you’re mean to me.”

Azula laughs again, sharp and a little…angry? “You? Protect me? Please,” she sneers. “I’m miles ahead of you in everything. What could you possibly do? I’m the prodigy. You’re just a useless little weakling !” Her hand brushes her cheek for a second before she scythes her hand down, and the fire flung from her fingers holds a lick of bright blue.

Both of them freeze in shock. Zuko’s eyes meet hers, then slide to her cheek where she had brushed it. Under a smear of light makeup he hadn’t noticed before is a slight darkness, like a bruise.

She instantly notices where he’s looking. With a sharp inhale, before he can even move, she turns around and stalks back inside.

Zuko tries to pay more attention to Azula after that, but it’s hard when their schedules never line up and she is determined to torment him whenever they’re together. Uncle isn’t even around to help him, because he went off on his stupid spirit quest - and that’s another thing to add to the list of things that make him angry. Uncle didn’t even want to stick around. But why would he? It’s not like Zuko could ever measure up to Lu Ten, anyway.

On top of that, Azula is learning much more advanced firebending than he is, and the gap between them only grows wider over time, so their classes are all different. Zuko’s getting scars from more than just burns, now, and the temptation to bend with them, to finally be good for once, is getting stronger and stronger. He knows Azula is definitely using the technique to impress Father with her blue fire every day.

Zuko tries once to explain to Azula what Lu Ten told him. “He said it wasn’t healthy to bend from your scar,” he tells her one day when she finds him by the turtleduck pond. “It’s easy to drown yourself in all those negative emotions. You don’t want to lose your humanity. You don’t want to hurt people you shouldn’t.”

She just scoffs at him. “Like I would ever lose control. Only babies like you do that.”

“You don’t know,” he argues. “Lu Ten was a good firebender, but he said you shouldn’t. At least not often. You only do it if you really really have to.”

“Well, he clearly wasn’t good enough,” Azula sniffs. “I see Father use his scars all the time.”

Zuko doesn’t know, because he doesn’t see his father often enough outside of training supervision to actually see him bend more than the wall of flames in the throne room. (Privately, though, he wonders if the reason his father is so distant isn’t just because of his poor firebending, but also because bending with his scars has been eating away at him bit by bit. It’s a treasonous thought, and he kicks it as soon as it appears.)

“Just…try not to,” Zuko finishes in the end. “You gotta focus on the positives.”

She laughs at him. “I’m positive that I’m better than you,” she taunts, prompting another round of arguing.

Zuko would never betray his father, but he’s starting to ask himself if that loyalty is worth twisting himself in his father’s image. If it’s worth losing everything he’s ever loved.

(He has no choice now. Father’s gotten tired of waiting for Zuko to perform better. At least the new face he’ll see in the mirror is a permanent reminder that he can always be stronger if he stops acting like a coward.)

Iroh sets a cloth on his nephew’s forehead, mopping up the fever-sweat while skirting carefully around the bandages wrapping Zuko’s face, and sighs deeply for the umpteenth time that night. There’s a deep pit in his stomach, the dread and horror having made a permanent home there.

He sets the cloth aside and links his hands together, staring at the faded scars from blades and light burns from training accidents lacing across his pale skin. Looks back at Zuko’s own arms, and how different - how much more deliberate - the young boy’s own scars look. Iroh hates that he noticed this before and did nothing. He hadn’t wanted to believe Ozai to be capable of such a thing until it was too late, and Zuko had nearly died for it.

The thought is maddening enough to make him think about burning something down. He had given up on using hatred and anger for firebending years ago, when he first met the dragons, but the visceral fury he feels for his brother is enough to make him want to bend with his scars. The only reason he holds back now, on this tiny ship, is because it will terrify Zuko, who still trembles around even a candle flame.

Zuko. Iroh has no idea what to do for him now, except be here when he wakes, the way he never was before. At least now he’ll have the chance to help his nephew without Ozai in the way. Will Zuko accept him, though, after he spent so long looking the other way?

Zuko whimpers in his sleep, and Iroh re-soaks the cloth to place it on his forehead again, trying to draw away some of the heat. Maybe he won’t bend with his scars around Zuko, but if he ever sees Ozai again…gone is the little brother he had chased through the palace halls as a child. Only a monster is left, and he has to burn.

Zuko runs himself ragged trying to find the Avatar, and no one has the heart to tell him it’s not worth it.

Iroh still calls him a prince even though he’s banished, and the crew try their best to keep their patience in the face of an injured, angry teenager, but things are strained on the tiny metal ship.

Iroh had tried his best to handpick the highest members of the crew, but even a run-down ship needs a lot of people; most spots were filled by navy officials Iroh rarely ever spoke to, and no doubt some of the crew were spies of Ozai’s to keep the Fire Lord’s brother and son in line. When the bandages had first come off, they discovered exactly who they were.

Iroh had walked up on deck one cloudy morning to Zuko, tears and betrayal in his eyes, running his fingers lightly over the left side of his face, while a crewman stood in front of him with a smug look. Even before Iroh could ask what was going on, Zuko’s face morphed into a fierce scowl, and he swiped his hand out, a short burst of flame exploding into the space between them.

Zuko had looked almost as startled as the crewman. Iroh had intervened, then, before it could get worse, and the crewman was promptly let go at the next port, but even then, Zuko’s demeanor seemed to have changed.

“I’ve never bent with my scars before,” Zuko whispered when Iroh had taken him aside later and asked if he was okay. “Lu Ten said it was bad, but no one ever listened to me. Azula was always using hers, but I thought…” he trailed off.

Iroh ignored the stab in his chest upon hearing about his son. “What did you think, Prince Zuko?” he prompted.

“It’s nothing.” Zuko shook his head, dismissing it.

He had never given Iroh an answer, but Iroh did get some insight, after that. He recalled how uneasy Azula’s bending had made the boy, but he had always attributed it to jealousy. That Zuko had known she was tearing herself apart to get to that level of power, and he had not come to anyone for help, was concerning. Though, who could he ask? Not his father, certainly, who no doubt does the same. Not Iroh, who was barely around.

Now, though, it seems Zuko is incapable of asking for help. He forces his way through his fear of fire at a frankly unhealthy pace. His pride and blistering anger manifests almost all the time, and he is determined to kill any vulnerable part of him. The sweet little boy of his youth is gone now, replaced with someone who is burning from the inside out.

Zuko’s first brush with bending using scars seems to have opened the gateway, and the twisted emotions surrounding his situation give him more than enough fuel for his fire. He still knows it’s unhealthy and doesn’t do it often, but Iroh can see him use it when Zhao makes another rude comment about his banishment, or someone in the port market starts gossipping about his scar, or someone says something against the Fire Lord. Iroh wants so badly to deconstruct that blind faith he holds for his father, to beg Zuko to stop destroying himself, but the few times he tries, Zuko resists him so staunchly that he almost turns away from him entirely. It is a long and delicate game, but Iroh has all the time in the world.

And then he doesn’t.

The Avatar has returned. Zuko stalks down the gangplank, and he’s so elated at finally being granted a chance that he doesn’t even think about bending with his scar to intimidate the villagers. His face already does that even without his fire, anyway.

They get the Avatar, and then they lose him. Zuko is frustrated and furious, but he hasn’t even touched his scar.

“If my father thinks the rest of the world will follow him willingly, then he is a fool!”

Zuko can see Uncle wincing out of the corner of his eye, but he meant what he said. Zuko may be loyal to his father, and of course the Fire Lord would know best, but if he has learned anything in the last few years, it is that the people of Earth are stubborn and unyielding. They will not hesitate to fight, and Father will not hesitate to slaughter them in the name of justice, just like he didn’t hesitate to sacrifice his own people in the name of victory three years ago.

Zhao just smirks at him. “Two years at sea have done little to temper your tongue. So, how is your search for the Avatar going?”

Zuko tries his best, but he can’t lie to save his life, and everyone knows it. Zhao knows he lost the Avatar, and he tries to take Zuko’s mission from him, his only shot at going home, but Zuko refuses to let it go.

“You can’t compete with me,” the commander taunts. “I have hundreds of war ships under my command, and you? You’re just a banished prince. No home, no allies. Your own father doesn’t even want you.”

“You’re wrong!” Zuko snarls. “Once I deliver the Avatar to my father, he will welcome me home with honor, and restore my rightful place on the throne!”

There is triumph in Zhao’s eyes. He loves exploiting this weak point, and Zuko hates that it gets him every time. “If your father really wanted you home, he would have let you return by now, Avatar or no Avatar. But in his eyes you are a failure and a disgrace to the Fire Nation.”

“That’s not true,” Zuko snaps. And even if it were, this is my chance to redeem myself. He’ll take me back when he sees how much stronger I’ve become.

Zhao’s smirk adopts a cruel twist. “You have the scar to prove it.”

With a furious cry, Zuko lurches up out of his seat. “Maybe you’d like one to match!”

“Is that a challenge?” he mocks.

Zuko refuses to fail again. “An Agni Kai. At sunset.”

Zhao is the picture of satisfaction. “Very well. It’s a shame your father won’t be here to watch me humiliate you.” He straightens up and turns to leave. “I guess your uncle will do.”

Uncle frets behind him. “Prince Zuko, have you forgotten what happened last time you dueled a master?”

It wasn’t really much of a duel. “I will never forget.”

And he won’t. This time, the scar makes him stronger.

Zuko might not have the power to fight a combat veteran head-on, but Uncle has drilled the basics in his head every day for the last two years. He fights with a visceral energy, a smoldering anger and contempt for the man in front of him. Zhao is cruel and disgusting, and Zuko hates him with a burning passion.

Bending from his scar, from his anger, has gotten much easier since his banishment (and Father had to have known that it would, it was the only reason he could have done this to Zuko, to make him stronger), but what he feels for this man makes it the easiest thing he’s ever done in his life. It’s more than enough to break Zhao’s root and send him crashing to the ground.

But when it comes time for Zuko to burn him, he can’t do it. His hand pulls flames from the reddened skin of the left side of his face, but they land a few inches from Zhao’s head, leaving scorch marks in the metal.

“That’s it?” Zhao spits, clearly embarrassed. “Your father raised a coward.”

Zuko’s business with him is over, now. He’s clearly holding the upper hand, and he won’t give Zhao the time of day. “Next time you get in my way, I promise, I won’t hold back,” he vows, turning to leave.

It shouldn’t surprise him that Zhao is a sore loser and a dirty cheater. Uncle stops the attack before it happens, and Zuko’s hand is creeping back up to his face, poised and ready to fire, but Uncle stops him too.

“Even in exile, my nephew is more honorable than you,” Uncle growls, and it pierces Zuko like a knife to the heart.

Uncle tosses Zhao aside and turns to leave with a comment about the tea, and Zuko follows. “Did you really mean that, Uncle?” he asks tentatively.

“Of course,” Uncle responds easily, without hesitation, like he hadn’t even considered that it might be false. “I told you ginseng tea is my favorite,” he tacks on the end, but Zuko knows what he means.

Even though Zhao is now a competitor in his hunt for the Avatar, and by all accounts that should make him angrier than ever, Zuko still lies awake that night and thinks about what it really means to have honor.

Lieutenant Jee has seen a lot in his years as a navy man. From active combat to the unyielding horrors of the open ocean to the ports and wonders of the world, jumping from ship to ship has shown him all of it. The last two and a half years on the prince’s ship has shown him some of the same, but some different things too.

At first, most of the crew held pity for the young boy, but in that distant way you felt for a stranger you knew was suffering. No one knew what happened to leave the prince banished and bedridden with injury, but they all knew it wasn’t anything good. When he emerged, a timid little kid with bandages wrapping the entire left side of his face, all their hearts had gone out to him.

Especially so when the bandages came off. The ship’s true crew was willing to throw hands with whoever ate out of Ozai’s palm, the truly contemptible ones who would shame a teenager for an accident he suffered.

Over time, though, the boy’s attitude hardened. He ran himself into the ground looking for a myth, and he dragged the rest of them along with him. His short temper grated at everyone, and on a ship this small for this many years, there’s only so much they can handle. Whatever landed him on this ship, in Jee’s opinion, didn’t excuse the way he acted towards everyone else.

No one actually expected him to find the Avatar. When they finally see the little airbender, the crew doesn’t know what to feel. They’re all longing for a chance to end this prolonged, monotonous assignment, but are they just going to look the other way as they hand a little boy, an enemy of the nation simply for being born, to the Fire Lord?

They end up not having to make that choice, but they also learn that it’s time to stop underestimating little boys. Especially this one. Still, he’s so bright and cheery that in any of their encounters, the crew finds it a little difficult to actually hurt him or his Water Tribe friends.

Prince Zuko, on the other hand, gets more and more difficult by the day. One would think he’d be a little more bearable now that he’s found his Avatar, but it only seems to have spurred him to push harder and harder, consequences be damned.

It boils Jee’s blood one day to hear the prince say the safety of the crew doesn’t matter, but it doesn’t take a genius to recognize the uncertainty in the prince’s eyes when he says it, a stark contrast to the scowl on his face even as he turns to leave. Somewhere in the back of his mind, a voice which he refuses to acknowledge reminds him that the prince doesn’t really put his own safety above theirs either.

“He doesn’t mean that,” Iroh tries to reassure him, but even he has a note of doubt in his voice. “He’s just all worked up.”

Jee can admit, though, that sometimes he loses sight of the fact that Prince Zuko was a boy raised in the viper-nest that is Caldera, and they all know this kid can’t keep up a false appearance to save his life.

He can’t resist a snarky comment about the storm when it rolls in, but it prompts Prince Zuko to start yelling at him about respect, something he hasn’t shown anyone since the day they left Caldera, and Jee finds himself reacting a little too much.

He’s not proud of himself when he realizes he’s heartbeats away from mutiny, about to challenge a teenage boy to an Agni Kai just for being a brat. So soon after Prince Zuko’s fight with Zhao, if General Iroh’s dramatic retelling is to be believed. Alarm bells trip in his head when he sees Zuko’s hands twitch, halfway up to his scar, and it distracts him from his anger for a moment.

It is enough hesitation for General Iroh to intervene. He lets the old man talk them both down, and he stalks away before he can do something he’s going to regret.

Regardless of his reluctance to fight the prince, Jee is so tired. Tired of the last two and a half years having to put up with a child he doesn’t even like. Tired of taking orders from someone who has no idea what he’s doing, tired of not knowing if he’ll ever return to his family back home. He misses his wife and parents, misses them as fiercely as the day he enlisted, and he’s so sick of chasing a myth for a kid incapable of even a thank-you.

He’s complaining as much to crewmates who are just as sick of hearing him talk about it when General Iroh appears. Hurriedly, he tries to backtrack, but Iroh dismisses it, opting to join them instead.

“Try to understand,” he begins, stroking his beard. “My nephew is a complicated young man. He has been through much.”

Jee’s first instinct is to scoff, but he holds back, thinking of the uncertainty he had noticed in Prince Zuko’s eyes when he denounced the safety of his crew. With an Uncle as kind as General Iroh, Jee was never sure where the prince had picked up that kind of contempt and disregard for the lives of other people, but now he wonders if the boy really believes it or if he’s just parroting what Caldera has taught him. Nobles who see them only as numbers on paper, to be used however they see fit.

As Iroh tells Prince Zuko’s story, everything starts falling into place, and Jee feels sick in a different way.

So this is where he had learned it. This was why he was on this ship in the first place. They had all wondered what could have happened to alienate a thirteen-year-old from his father like that, but his only crime was having a heart. He had cared about his people, and it had earned him some of the worst child abuse Jee had ever heard of. No wonder he was so angry; no wonder he tried to command through fear (even though he was kind of lousy at it). No wonder he was so affected when someone accused him of disrespect, enough to start bending from his scar, a serious taboo among firebenders.

It didn’t excuse his behavior, but at least now they understood.

“So that’s why he’s so obsessed,” Jee says finally. “Capturing the Avatar is the only chance he has of things returning to normal.”

Iroh’s voice is sad and speaks of a bone-deep exhaustion at the cruelty of the world. “Things will never return to normal. But the important thing is the Avatar gives Zuko hope.”

Jee vows to adopt a little more patience with the prince going forward.

The ship jolts, and instantly they are all out on the deck to see where they’ve been hit. The ship isn’t very strong, and in a storm like this, there’s only so much it can take.

“Where were we hit?” Prince Zuko yells over the howling wind.

“I don’t know!” Jee is hesitant to get too close to the railing, but he gets as close as he dares and chances a look over the side to scan for holes.

“Look!” Iroh’s voice cuts through his frantic search, and Jee follows his gaze up to where the helmsman dangles from the upper navigation cabin’s window, hands slipping against the metal slick with rain.

With a hoarse cry of “The helmsman!” Prince Zuko launches himself at a nearby ladder, nevermind that it’d be suicide to climb it in this weather, and that there’s no way this sixteen-year-old boy could catch a fully grown man hanging half off a slippery metal rung. Jee resigns himself to following, praying to every spirit he knows that they’ll make it out of this safely.

The helmsman loses his grip. As he plummets past them, Prince Zuko’s arm slashes out quick as a viper and grabs the man’s arm in a vice grip. Jee has to shake himself out of a stunned stupor for a moment in order to reach out and pull his crewmate safely to the ladder so they can descend.

As they reach the deck, lightning splits the sky, illuminating a distant white mass high above them. “The Avatar!” Jee hears the prince exclaim in shock beside him.

Jee curses his luck, and is about to start cursing all those spirits too. “What do you want to do, sir?”

For the first time in his life, the teen stops and thinks. “Let him go,” he decides finally, and Jee can’t help but breathe a sigh of relief, stolen instantly by the ferocious winds. “We need to get this ship to safety.”

Jee would be astonished at the sudden change of heart, but he can’t necessarily say he’s surprised anymore. He is glad, at least, to see that the bits of kindness that remain in the prince’s heart may yet survive this insane quest.

General Iroh directs them to head into the eye of the storm, and it isn’t too long before the weather calms down dramatically. The crew finally gets a breather from the adrenaline high, and Jee watches as Prince Zuko approaches his uncle.

“Uncle, I’m sorry,” Jee hears him murmur.

General Iroh takes it in stride. “Your apology is accepted,” he tells the boy, and Jee can see some tension leech out of his stance at the words.

Hunting the Avatar might be long, tough business, but it might not be too unbearable anymore, now that he had a challenge: keeping the stubborn prince alive despite his steadfast determination to throw himself into every dangerous situation under the sun.

The Siege of the North is an absolute shitshow.

Iroh doesn’t use this word often, but he feels that in this particular instance, it’s warranted. Not only is his nephew dead set on sneaking into an icy fortress to capture the Avatar after an assassination attempt, but Zhao turned out to be even crazier than Iroh had thought before. He always knew arrogance would be the man’s undoing, but threatening the moon spirit is way further than he ever thought the man would go.

His blood boils as he hears Zhao proclaim his “destiny” to destroy the Northern Water Tribe. “Destroying the moon won’t hurt just the Water Tribe,” the young Avatar tries to explain. “It will hurt everyone, including you. Without the moon, everything would fall out of balance. You have no idea what kind of chaos that would unleash on the world!”

Before Zhao can spit out a nasty retort, Iroh steps forward. “He is right, Zhao.”

The admiral turns calmly. “General Iroh, why am I not surprised to discover your treachery?”

Iroh pulls down his hood and discreetly pushes up his sleeves, exposing his scars. “I’m no traitor, Zhao. The Fire Nation needs the moon, too; we all depend on the balance. Whatever you do to that spirit, I’ll unleash on you ten-fold. Let it go, now!” For emphasis, he presses his palm against the broadest scar on his arm, a wide gash he had gotten from a shard of stone embedded in his arm by an earthbender on the battlefield.

After some hesitation, Zhao moves to release the fish back into the pond, and Iroh relaxes a little. He sees Zuko out of the corner of his eye across the oasis, struggling with the ropes around his wrists in the sky bison’s saddle. Dimly, he notes that the boy’s hood is somehow still up. “Keep your ears warm!” Iroh had told him as he left. It warms his heart to know that under that prickly exterior, the loving young boy he knew years ago is still there.

Now is not the time to dwell on it, however, as Zhao’s face contorts in anger and disgust. Iroh is frozen as the man whirls around and slices fire down at the koi, burning a blackened stripe across its gleaming white scales. Iroh recoils with horrible anticipation as the moon goes dark above their heads.

Iroh hasn’t felt this kind of rage in three years, not since the horrible Agni Kai that had finally opened his eyes for good. With a fury he normally reserves only for his brother, he launches himself at Zhao, swiping across his scars with the swiftest, deadliest moves he knows, a type of precision he hasn’t had to use since Ba Sing Se.

But Iroh is old, and Zhao hasn’t gotten his position through favoritism alone. His nephew may have been able to beat the man with his basics, but Zhao has clearly trained since then. He’s gotten cleaner, more controlled, while Iroh is near-blinded with anger and desperation. Zhao dodges his blasts and slips away, but Iroh sees Zuko pull out of his binds and take off after him, a similar contempt on his face.

Satisfied that his nephew will handle it, he shakes his sleeves back over his arms and turns to address the resident spirit crisis.

Hours later, he drifts with Zuko on a wooden raft they had strapped together (read: several soggy planks of wood they had dried with firebending). Iroh thanks the spirits for his nephew’s safe return; they were immensely fortunate to make it out of this alive (unlike Zhao, as he has gathered from the broken bits and pieces Zuko told him during their escape, and unlike the thousands of soldiers whose bodies now drift past them in sickening clumps), but Iroh knows now that there is a long journey ahead of them.

He doesn’t mean to set his nephew back on this self-destructive path, but Zuko is uncharacteristically quiet as they watch the bodies drift by, and Iroh wants to reanimate him somehow, if only to keep the boy’s mind off of the residual trauma this experience will leave behind. He is definitely not averse to figuring out where Zuko stands on his loyalty to the Fire Nation, after what just went down. “I'm surprised, Prince Zuko,” he says cautiously, “surprised that you are not at this moment trying to capture the Avatar.”

Zuko’s voice is small, so very unlike him that it worries Iroh. “I’m tired,” he admits, and Iroh sees his hands trail up and down his arms, tracing countless scars from his childhood.

…That is answer enough, for now. One day, the quest will wear him down enough for him to stop like he does now, and Iroh will be there to support him when it happens. He has to be. “Then you should rest,” he suggests as they drift out into open ocean for spirits know how long, patting the wood in the space beside him. “A man needs his rest.”

Azula kneels in front of her father’s throne, the tiles awash with tongues of orange flame licking across the floor. They reach toward her, ever hungry, but she has long since perfected the ability to hold still and stay silent in the face of fire and pain and all-consuming anger. She is nothing if not perfect, after all.

Her father watches her from above, and she doesn’t dare to lift her head and meet his eyes. “Iroh is a traitor, and your brother Zuko is a failure,” he says finally.

A chill shoots through Azula as her father’s eyes continue to bore into her. No doubt he is thinking what she would, in his place - how long, exactly, before she follows in their footsteps? Azula thinks of the scars and bruises, however few, that she couldn’t avoid, and of how many more Zuko had always gotten. How they’ve appeared on her arms more and more frequently, and how many more sticks of concealer she’s run through in the past few months. How Zuko couldn’t avoid the worst scar of them all, and how if she isn’t careful, she won’t be able to either. She knows, too, that Fire Lord Ozai is not a man who uses the same trick twice; her imagination alone keeps her up at night with that knowledge. Her hand curls around a faded burn wrapped thinly around her wrist under her robes.

Apparently his eyes do not detect any treachery, for the tiles remain cool under her fingers, and the flames do not flare forward to singe the edges of her bangs. “I have a task for you,” he finishes, and Azula finds the courage to look up and smile as relief courses through her. Her smile adopts a victorious edge as she notes the satisfied gleam in her father’s eye, and her hand falls away from her wrist.

She will not fail her father. She will not betray her nation. She will be nothing less than perfect, no matter what she has to do to stay that way.

Azula lies. She always lies, and Zuko knows that, and he should have listened to Uncle, he was so, so stupid-

Like Father would ever want him home. The embarrassing failure of the family who could never bring them honor. Always the weakest, certainly not fit to be the ruler of a nation someday. Why did he even bother hoping they cared?

He blows the guards aside like dust and ashes when they attempt to stop him from going after his sister. They’re not his concern right now. He hears Uncle call behind him, but his gaze has tunneled on his perfect little sister, standing smugly by the rail with her back to him like he isn’t even worth paying attention to. He doesn’t want to hurt her, but in this moment, after she’s hurt him so, so much, he wants to scare her.

(He wishes he did hate her. It would have made things so much easier. But he doesn’t, and he never will. He’s just not that type of person.)

As he fights her with his fire daggers, she dodges expertly, like she’s been doing it since the day she was born. “You know, Father blames Uncle for the loss of the North Pole. And he considers you a miserable failure for not finding the Avatar!” she taunts, echoing his thoughts. “Why would he want you back home, except to lock you up where you can no longer embarrass him?”

Fury roars in his ears, and he pulls his sleeves back to expose the many scars crisscrossing up his forearms - from training, and fighting…and Father. He brushes the inside of his hands against the opposite forearms as he summons his next fire daggers, making them blaze a light orange-yellow. Azula’s eyes are trained on him, but just for a split second, they flicker to his arms, tracing the scars, and something shifts in her eyes.

The fight continues, and it’s gone. Zuko ends up on the ground at the bottom of the stairwell, watching as Azula trails her fingers over the backs of her hands where faint white marks linger (and of those three categories, what could those be from, he wonders) and generates lightning - lightning! - to spin towards him. A far cry from that day in the garden, but Zuko can’t help but be reminded of how she first discovered her blue fire. What a way to go out, knowing you were just as much a failure at stopping your little sister from hurting herself as you were at everything else, and now it would be your undoing.

And suddenly Uncle is there, grabbing ahold of her extended hand and sending the lightning harmlessly into the air. He dumps her overboard, and Zuko hears a splash as she hits the water. He knows she’ll be okay - she always is - so he absconds with Uncle, leaving the bemused soldiers and one very annoyed teenage girl behind.

As a child, Zuko had always wanted to see the untainted sky.

The stars, never visible from the center of a bright capital city, were a distant fantasy for him, known only from his mother’s tales of the starry spirits that roamed the woods, the constellations that blessed the worthy youth, and the tiny dots of light that graced her simple village hometown in multitudes, out where the light of flames and the thin layer of smoke didn’t block out most of the sky’s light at night.

When Zuko was banished, he saw it for the first time out at sea, and for a moment, he thought he must be dead. The bandages had just come off, and the novelty was slightly ruined by the blur of his left eye, but it dazzled him all the same. Trillions upon trillions of points of light speckled across the sky, dark shades of blue and brown and purple splattered underneath into a gorgeous medley that painted the expanse above him - it was like something out of a spirit-tale, and that was when Zuko knew why the great spirits always seemed to reside up there, impossible to reach but fascinating to watch.

He had spent many nights out on deck, watching the gorgeous stars and tracking the constellations as they moved and eyeing the occasional comet or planet or other heavenly body as they traveled along. He looked up at the universe in all its glory and suddenly all his problems seemed small, and it was like everything would be okay, because how couldn’t they be, when the universe just kept moving along the way it should no matter what happened down here in this tiny little space?

For three weeks on that raft, it kept him going. Uncle’s calm voice and gentle snores kept him from enduring the agonizing quiet, and the stars guided him, just as comforting a presence as they’d always been, these last three years.

He sits on Song’s back porch now and looks up at the stars as the ant-crickets chirp in the grass and the cicada-moths shriek among the trees. It is calm, it is peaceful, and it is much-needed in the wake of Zuko’s awful lies.

Not just awful as in, he’s a terrible liar (of that, no one has any illusions). No, it grates at him that he must lie, that he must cheat and deceive and hide behind other people’s pain as if he had any right to be able to say it. He wants to scream to the skies, now, every grievance he’s ever had with the spirits for his life to turn out this way - on the run from his own country, forced to pose as one of those whose lives his people have plowed through. He, who was once a prince, the most Fire Nation of any, now an Earth Kingdom refugee who shared pain from different circumstances.

The door clicks, and Song steps onto the porch, wood creaking under her feet. “Can I join you?” she asks softly, and at his nod, sits down next to him.

Zuko continues to stare out at the yard and trees, hoping she is just here to admire the world with him, but to his dismay, she begins to speak. “I know what you’ve been through. We’ve all been through it.”

His throat feels tight, and he turns his head to Song in shock. “The Fire Nation has hurt you,” she says, a hand extended to his scar, and he pushes it away on instinct.

Her voice is soothing, telling of a healer who’s worked with spooked patients. “It’s okay. They’ve hurt me, too.” She reaches down and pulls up her pant leg to reveal a crisscrossing of old burn scars lacing up her pale skin, and something clicks in Zuko’s mind.

He hides behind a refugee’s pain because he shares it; it is not a lie, because he has suffered the brutality of the Fire Nation and this war just as they have. He, like Song, bears the scar of one driven by inhumanity, something they should never have had to know. He, like everyone in this world who has been torn apart by this war, is just so tired of it all. I haven’t seen my father in many years , he had told Song and her mother.

Is he fighting in the war? they had asked, and he had lied, but it wasn’t really a lie under the surface. He has lost his father to the war as well; a war, not just among the world, but among their family. A line of cruelty that ran deep through their family line, a legacy of pain that is now being handed to him. His father fights in both wars, and in both…he might not be in the right.

Lee hacks away at the tree with the swords, and Zuko has to hold back a wince when he thinks about what Master Piandao would have said about the treatment of those blades. But Lee is just a little kid, and he’s eager to learn, so Zuko will indulge.

“You’re holding them wrong,” he says, startling the boy. When he stands and holds out the swords to Zuko in shame, he takes them and swings into a demonstration. “Keep in mind, these are dual swords. Two halves of a single weapon. Don’t think of them as separate, ’cause they’re not. They're just two different parts of the same whole.”

And how many divides in him can that speak to? Good and bad, peace and anger, fire and steel. There are countless splits in him, in the world, that are never so easily resolved. But for him, all have hurt him in some way or another. His dichotomy is his burden to bear alone.

But steel, at least, has not carved a soul-deep chasm into him. Steel has made its own nicks and scratches against his skin, but never the way fire does. Never the way peace has taken root in him only to be torn away, never the way anger has cut through his heart time and time again until he feels he can never be anything but angry ever again. Steel gives him a calm, clear head; out of all the scars his dilemmas have given him, those from steel were never ones he could bend with. They simply didn’t hurt enough.

As he watches Lee stumble through his own attempt at the same demonstration, he has to smile. The gap-toothed grin he gets in return reminds him painfully of his younger self, not yet so scarred and broken - but that ache feels like a scar in itself, being stretched. His pain hasn’t been healed, not by a long shot, but the slight burn in his spirit just goes to show what he’s been through to get here, and how he still stands here today, passing on what he knows to a kid who will hopefully never have to know more horrors in this world. He survived, and he has the scar over his heart to prove it.

But steel isn’t enough.

Zuko lies on the dry, hard-packed ground. Steel has been his comfort for so long, but it’s still not enough. His fire alone, as weak as it is, won’t be enough either. In order to truly bring down the establishment of fear, he will need both, playing different roles.

No matter how things may seem to change, never forget who you are . Would his mother be proud of where he is now, defending those who are being taken advantage of? Or disappointed, to see how he’s turned away from every member of his family? Things have changed over and over and over again, and each time, he seems to forget who he really wants to be.

This is who I am, Mother. And I won’t forget again. He stands, fire wreathed around his hands, and the fight resumes. It isn’t even a challenge, and he’s relieved; he would hate to have to taint a fight like this bending with scars. Out here, he doesn’t want to be consumed by anger; he ran from his problems before, but now it’s time to face them without the detriments he’s been supporting himself with for years.

“My name is Zuko,” he proclaims finally, standing over Gow. “Son of Ursa and Fire Lord Ozai. Prince of the Fire Nation, and heir to the throne.”

“Liar!” an old man calls out from the side. “I heard of you! You’re not a prince, you’re an outcast! His own father burned and disowned him!”

Zuko has spent his whole life being told he was worthless to his father and family line, and the last three years being scorned as an outcast. This is nothing new, and Zuko ignores him the way he ignored every taunt he’s ever received.

(It’s subpar compared to Azula, anyway. Even Zhao could come up with worse than that.)

But he can’t shield himself against the sting of rejection from Lee and Sela. He understands why, but a small part of him still whispers that he is the problem, that he has done something wrong, just being born as a prince of the very nation that has hurt them time and time again. It is not the first time he has been told that he causes problems just by existing.

Even as he leaves with the village’s ire on his back, though, he looks back up at the stars that twinkle at him from far away. He hopes, wherever his mother is, that she would be proud of what he’s doing now - glad, at least, that even though he invited anger, he could at least leave the relative peace of a family intact.

Aang is tired. More tired than he’s ever been in his entire life, and not just physically.

He’s hoping beyond hope that this new person will want to talk, because he really, really doesn’t want to keep fighting. He hasn’t even faced the Fire Lord yet, but he’s already so sick of having to fight, and run, and fight again, and run again, and he just wants to go home, dammit-!

“So what now?” he asks when the girl finishes her poor impression of Zuko, and Aang decides she must be related to him in some way. He’s really hoping her answer will be negotiation or something, but he can already tell that won’t happen.

“Now? Now, it’s over. You’re tired and you have no place to go.” She smiles triumphantly. “You can run, but I’ll catch you.”

Aang sighs internally and stands with his staff, determination written across his face. “I’m not running.”

“Do you really want to fight me?” she asks, faux sympathetic, but Aang still desperately wants to answer no, I really don’t! even though he knows her solution, like Zuko’s, would be to cart her back to the Fire Lord.

He’s saved from having to reply by Zuko’s sudden arrival. “Yes, I really do,” he snarls, jumping in from a side alleyway to face the girl.

“Zuko?” Aang yelps, and isn’t that a first. Zuko wants to fight this…girl who is somehow related to him? Sister?

“I was wondering when you’d show up, Zuzu,” Azula purrs.

Aang is overcome by the sudden urge to giggle. “Zuzu?” Yep, probably a sister. At least a cousin.

“Back off, Azula!” Zuko growls, pushing up his sleeves to expose countless scars, and wow that looks painful, how has Aang never noticed them before? “He’s mine!”

Azula shifts into a fighting stance, shaking back her sleeves a little to expose scars of her own, though a lot less than Zuko’s and much smaller. “I’m not going anywhere.”

The three of them shift into fighting stances, all of them enemies, and the chase is afoot once again.

As they fight (or dodge, in Aang’s case), Aang can see huge differences in their fighting styles. Where Zuko is bold, throwing all his effort into every punch and sweep, Azula is quick and efficient, with neat strokes and short jabs, as if every second she saves using her moves is another second she can use to make another attack. A smart strategy, actually, and one Aang could see an elder at the temple using if they actually did fight.

(He carefully sections away that line of thinking. He doesn’t want to imagine his elders fighting for their lives.)

Aang doesn’t know what the big deal is with touching their scars before they firebend, though, because they only do it occasionally throughout the fight. He hopes it’s not an essential thing, because he’s never seen Zuko use it before, and he doesn’t have a lot of easy-to-reach scars, nor does he want any more.

His friends show up soon, and finally they all have Azula cornered. She is surrendering, and Aang relaxes, certain he can just sit her down and talk things out, but Zuko is tense, and she’s stepping forward again, and she hasn’t touched her scars but she’s still about to-

Iroh falls, Zuko screams, Azula disappears, and Aang feels so, so lost.

“Lightning is a pure form of firebending, without aggression,” Uncle says, sipping his tea and trying not to wince as the movement pulls at his days-old wound. “It is not fueled by rage or emotion the way other firebending is. Some call lightning the cold-blooded fire. It is precise and deadly, like Azula. To perform the technique requires peace of mind.”

Zuko nods along, trying not to grimace at his own cup of tea. He knows his is extremely substandard compared to Uncle’s, but most tea still tastes the same in his opinion.

Uncle keeps talking about balancing energies, and Zuko tries really hard not to tune him out. Cold fire seems…well, cold. It’s not the warm, comforting bank of a campfire, or the fiery rage of a furiously fast flame. It’s frozen, it’s death, it’s…cold-blooded.

Azula is fourteen. Cold-blooded.

Zuko knows he should be thinking about how she tried to kill him, and burned Uncle, and tormented him throughout most of his childhood, but he still hears her laughter as a young child, still sees her trying to copy Father’s movements at the dinner table, still sees the day she discovered her blue fire by accident . That Azula, he knows, could never be cold-blooded.

But she is dead and gone. Nothing is left of her but a scar, one that the new Azula keeps locked away deep, deep within her where nothing could ever draw it out.

Azula is fourteen. Scarred.

Lightning should scare him. It actually kind of does, but he needs that power if he ever wants to survive in this world. If only to stop people from coming after him and Uncle, in a world where no place is safe for them.

Zuko tries. But as much as he tries to deny it, he is far from calm. How could he be, when he always has to be on his guard?

When it blows up in his face for the third time, he tries a scar. Specifically, the one that wraps a thin trail around his fingers, from when he deflected one of his tutor’s attacks wrong. He doesn’t know if it’ll be strong enough, but he’s willing to give it a shot.

Uncle grips his wrists before he can. Lightly, but firmly, like he’s trying to stop a thieving hand in the cookie jar. “Zuko, do not use your scars,” he says mournfully. “You have relied on this form of pain for too long. Left unchecked, it twists you. Scars you, in a way that is not visible to the naked eye. I am begging you, do not choose this hatred. It is not healthy for your fire, and it certainly will not work for your lightning.”

Zuko doesn’t protest. It’s all the more jarring when someone else confirms it for him, someone he knows he can trust more than his own thoughts and hazy memories. Lightning, suddenly, feels like its own form of treason - not to his father or his nation, but to himself. Not pure, just deadly.

(Zuko will not find out until years later that it is her forced detachment from her true emotions that ever allowed Azula to use her own scars for lightning. The everyday harms she faces in those short nicks and scratches are not a conflict for her; it’s the memory of hurt that she draws power from for her fire, after all. Most of her scars are not fuel for anger; they are entirely centered around her unyielding belief that they are deserved, necessary in order to excel.)

It’s not like he really has a choice, though. He grits his teeth and tries again. No matter how long it takes him to master it, he will do what it takes to protect those he loves.

But Uncle gives him an out. Instead of generating it, he could simply redirect it - take the apathy of another and turn it to strike their own hearts.

It seems simple enough, but Uncle’s refusal to put him in any danger to perfect it leaves him at an impasse. Father and his tutors wouldn’t have hesitated. They would’ve called Uncle a weak, sentimental old fool who could no longer stomach hard work for perfection. But what did it say about them, that they would deliberately harm a child, scar them, to make them more powerful? What did it say about firebending, to get stronger only off of pain?

What did it say about Zuko, to think this?

Uncle told him to draw inspiration from multiple sources. As he rides out, he contemplates this, and decides to do just that.

He stands in the pouring rain, watching all the elements rage together around him, and he learns.

“You know, as soon as I saw your scar, I knew exactly who you were,” Jet says, and Zuko’s heart nearly stops.

“You're an outcast, like me,” the boy continues, and Zuko holds back an audible sigh of relief. “And us outcasts have to stick together. We have to watch each other’s backs. Because no one else will.”

Maybe so. But if Zuko isn’t going to rely on raw power anymore - no more scars, like Uncle said - he can’t go chasing this “outcast” narrative Jet has spun for himself.

Besides, he’s never been strong enough to be able to just strike out on his own and expect to be fine. He always ends up burned, some way or another.

“I've realized lately that being on your own isn’t always the best path,” he rasps instead.

Zuko can hardly believe it, but things are…weirdly quiet after that.

Not peaceful, no, never peaceful. Zuko will still always be on his guard, especially if there’s more stunts like Jet pulled in his future, but just…slightly less on guard, maybe.

It’s a different kind of quiet than the palace. There’s no listening for Azula’s cruel laughter, no pounding of his heart as his father draws near, no soft quacking of turtleducks amidst his ear-shattering silent grief. Instead, there’s the quiet of focusing on brewing tea, of weaving around chatty customers in the shop and streets, of lighting lamps late at night to watch a girl’s eyes light up after a night of disappointment. It’s…not a bad quiet, if he forces himself to sit down and think about it. After he frees the bison and recovers from his illness (and it wasn’t an angst coma , no matter what Uncle wants to call it), and the Dai Li don’t show up to lead him out in chains, he’s beginning to accept that they might be okay. What a novelty.

But the city is still suffocating, more and more so when Zuko considers just how easy it is to blend in. He’s the Fire Prince , for Agni’s sake, he shouldn’t be able to do this! He shouldn’t be able to pass as a common refugee, shouldn’t be able to let people make assumptions about who he is and where he came from. The scars that should mark him as an outcast for his wrongdoings are, in the eyes of others, outlining him as some sort of survivor. Running from the very violence his existence perpetuates.

The Upper Ring, somehow, is even more suffocating than the Lower Ring. The nobles there are pampered and snobby, people who have never seen a lick of real combat in their lives. They avert their eyes and turn up their noses and oh Agni is this what it’ll be like if Zuko ever goes back to the Fire Nation?

(Not home, not anymore. Ba Sing Se isn’t home either. Zuko’s not sure if he has one, or even deserves one.)

How could he have been so stupid?

He lets his guard down for just a little bit and through an unlucky chain of events finds himself back-to-back with Uncle surrounded by Dai Li and facing off yet again with his little sister. Agni, there’s no way his garbage luck can get worse at this point - or maybe it isn’t luck, and Azula is just following them around. Now that he thinks about it, that does seem a little more plausible.

“I’m tired of running!” he yells to Uncle, and it’s true. He’s so, so tired of all of it. “It’s time I faced Azula!”

Azula tuts. “You’re so dramatic. What? Are you going to challenge me to an Agni Kai?”

A few months ago, he might’ve said yes, hotheadedly issued the challenge, and lost - if Azula would even accept in the first place. But as his fingers dance up and down the scars on his forearms, and hers are constantly poised to brush her own at a moment’s notice, he stops. Thinks.

It’s an awful feeling, to always remember how you were hurt. To always be braced to relive it, to tear open the wound, so you can be physically stronger even as it eats away at your spirit. Ever since Zuko stopped using his scars, he’s become more consciously aware of the difference, remembering what it feels like to be free of that kind of weight. He wants Azula to feel it too; she’s been shackled by the agony of obsession the same way he has, and for far longer.

“It doesn’t have to be like this, Azula,” he says instead. “We don’t have to be enemies. And we don’t have to be Father’s puppets anymore.”

Her gaze sharpens. “So you really are a traitor. I expected this from Uncle, but not from you. You’ve always been so unflinchingly loyal. What changed?”

He laughs humorlessly and gestures to his face. “What do you think? It just took a few years for the realization to catch up to me.” He spreads his arms out, letting his fingers fall away from the ragged skin. “This war is wrong, Azula. They told us we were spreading our greatness, but all we’re doing is making people fear and hate us. They’re starving and suffering because of the Fire Nation; I’ve seen it with my own eyes! I’ve felt it, as a refugee these past few months. It needs to end.”

She scoffs. “Fear is how you rule the world, Zuko,” she tells him. “I’ve been telling you for years, fear commands respect and loyalty. Why would Agni give us the power to make ourselves stronger through pain if not to invoke fear in our enemies?” She smiles in triumph. “That is what makes us great, brother. It’s time you learn it.”

“What good is this war if all we’re doing is making people suffer?” Zuko shakes his head. “Instead of commanding through fear, try commanding through love. I told you before, I will never fear you. Maybe I fear some of the things you can do to me, but not you. You’re my sister. You’ll always be my sister, no matter what. Even if I spend another thirty years in exile.”

Instead of brushing it off, Azula’s expression twists almost unnoticeably. “Is that why you try so hard? It’s not getting you anywhere, I hope you realize that.”

Zuko shrugs. “Mother feared you and Father, and now she’s gone. I fear Father, and here I am defying him. You fear Father, and here you are entertaining me. I care about you, and that means I will never stop trying to be there for you, no matter what you say or do to me.”

She turns away with a wave to the Dai Li, who begin to converge on him. “Disgusting, Zuzu. Do try to keep that sappy, traitorous mouth of yours shut when you’re on your knees in front of Father. Again.”

Her voice lacks its familiar bite, and as Zuko is wrestled into restraints by the trained earthbenders, he can only hope at least some of what he’s said has gotten to her.

Katara fumes as she paces the area most illuminated by the glowing crystals. How did Azula take out the Kyoshi Warriors and get into the city? Ooh, she and Zuko must be having a nice evil reunion right about now-

-or maybe not, considering how their last reunion had gone in the abandoned town. But still.

The grinding of stone moving far above echoes through the chamber, and she hears a distant growl of “You’ve got company!” before someone is bodily shoved down the chute.

She recoils at the dark scruff of short black hair and the bright golden eyes that meet hers as the familiar face lifts. “Zuko!”

He looks to the side awkwardly, fingers playing with the edges of his sleeves as Katara’s fuming ups another level. “Why did they throw you in here?” she demands as he turns around and sits with his back to her.

He says nothing. “Oh, wait, let me guess,” Katara scoffs, “It’s a trap. So that when Aang shows up to help me, you can finally have him in your little Fire Nation clutches!”

Why isn’t he doing anything?

“You’re a terrible person, you know that? Always following us! Hunting the Avatar! Trying to capture the world’s last hope for peace!” She’s really getting worked up now. “But what do you care? You’re the Fire Lord’s son. Spreading war and violence and hatred is in your blood!”

That gets a reaction out of him. He clenches his fists and twists around to glare up at her. “You don’t know what you're talking about!”

“I don’t? How dare you!” she growls. “You have no idea what this war has put me through! Me personally!” Her fingers find the smooth carving of her necklace, the same one he once dangled in front of her like bait, and she plops on the cold stone floor, fury giving way to the weight of the grief that blankets her shoulders. “The Fire Nation took my mother away from me,” she says, trying to keep the tremble out of her voice.

Zuko turns around fully as she sobs silently, and she hates that he’s seeing her in this moment of vulnerability, tries to wipe away her tears before he comments on it, until he stops her with, “I’m sorry. That’s something we have in common.”

She stills, shocked. After a long pause, where she stares at him and he ducks his head, shooting furtive glances at her with no elaboration, she asks, “What happened?”

He hesitates, constructing his story slowly. “I’m not really sure. Azula said something about our grandfather ordering our father to kill me, and then our mother disappeared and no one killed me…obviously. And our grandfather died.” Katara is still trying to put that all together when Zuko stops, blinks a few times, and gets a strange look on his face. “In retrospect, my mother probably killed him, and then Father must’ve killed her. How did I not see that before?”

“She- what?” It sounds awful, and Katara is very lost, but she doesn’t really see how this connects to her mother being murdered by a Fire Nation commander.

He shakes his head as if to clear his thoughts. “My point is, the Fire Nation’s cruelty extends inwards as well. My mother tried to stop it from happening to me, and I lost her because of it.”

That makes more sense. Katara’s heart sinks as she puts it together: Zuko’s own grandfather ordered his father to kill him, for some reason, and his mother probably killed his grandfather to protect him, then disappeared or died. Maybe it’s not quite the same, but it’s still awful that the Fire Nation royal family is so messed up as to allow that. That’s probably the reason Zuko and Azula don’t behave like normal siblings, either.

“I’m sorry I yelled at you before,” she offers.

“It doesn’t matter,” Zuko replies simply.

“It’s just that for so long now, whenever I would imagine the face of the enemy, it was your face,” she murmured, thinking back on the nightmares that tormented her, the constant watch they had to keep in case he popped out of the underbrush yelling about the Avatar.

She actually forgot about the scar for a moment, but she feels so guilty when Zuko turns away, hand lifted to his scar. “No, no, that’s-that’s not what I mean,” she backtracks, stepping forward.

“It’s okay,” he reassures her. “I used to think this scar marked me. The mark of the banished prince, cursed to chase the Avatar forever, too weak to use even a fraction of the power I was given. But lately, I’ve realized I’m free to determine my own destiny, even if I’ll never be free of my mark. It was never really a gift, anyway. I’m free of the burden of using it, and I don’t have to be plagued by guilt for not choosing it.”

Katara’s not really sure what he means by using his scar, but she thinks it might have something to do with the weird firebending Aang had talked about after the last time they’d seen Zuko and his sister. For the first time, she lets herself think about how Zuko might have gotten such a terrible wound, but the way he talks about it being some sort of twisted gift from someone hurts her heart.

“Maybe you could be free of it,” Katara realizes, feeling for the vial’s string around her neck.

She tries to explain her healing abilities, but Zuko shakes his head. “It’s a scar, it can’t be healed,” he says in resignation, and he sounds like he’s already given up and it’s not okay.

“This is water from the Spirit Oasis at the North Pole,” she explains, grasping it and pulling the vial out. “It has special properties, so I’ve been saving it for something important. I don’t know if it would work, but…” She lifts her hand to feel and the rough, uneven skin, and Zuko closes his eyes in anticipation.

A rumble interrupts them, and she whirls around to see none other than Aang. As she embraces her friend and Zuko reunites with his uncle, the two boys bicker, and Zuko seems to have rediscovered his temper.

Iroh stops him as he gears up to start yelling at Aang. “Zuko, it’s time we talked.”

As Iroh sends them off to find Toph and Sokka, Katara can’t help but wonder who Zuko could have been if he had grown up anywhere else.

“You’re not the man you used to be, Zuko,” Uncle tells him. Zuko blinks, taking it in. It’s true, he has changed a lot over their time in the Earth Kingdom, and what he said to Azula - and to Katara - proves it.

“You are stronger and wiser and freer than you have ever been. And now you have come to the crossroads of your destiny.” Uncle smiles at him. “It’s time for you to choose. It’s time for you to choose good.”

And this is what stymies Zuko. If there is anything he’s learned in his life, it’s that it’s not so easy to outline good and bad and just choose one. Some people are obviously good or obviously bad, but it’s never come as easily to him, and every time he’s tried to choose, it’s always just blown up in his face. To him, trying to choose was what got him into hot water in the first place.

There are countless divides in him and in the world. Good and bad, peace and anger, fire and steel. One alone is not enough; they require a balance to be truly strengthened. To choose is to play a losing game.

Before he can figure out what to do, Uncle is trapped, and Azula steps out of the shadows. “Are you really going to do this, Zuko?”

“Release him immediately,” he growls.

“It’s not too late for you, Zuko. You can still redeem yourself.” It seems almost like she’s pleading, in her own apathetic way, and that almost pushes him over the edge.

“The kind of redemption she offers is not for you,” Uncle warns, and he’s right, he’s right , but Zuko doesn’t know, it’s like his heart has been set on fire and he doesn’t want to choose-

“Why don’t you let him decide, Uncle?” It’s like a breath of fresh air, but it only fuels the flames. “I need you, Zuko.” She really doesn’t. “I’ve plotted every move of this day, this glorious day in Fire Nation history, and the only way we win is together. At the end of this day, you will have your honor back. You will have Father’s love. You will have everything you want.”

“Zuko, I am begging you,” Uncle pleads with him. “Look into your heart and see what it is that you truly want.”

But he looks into his heart as it burns and burns and he asks the question of what do you want, who do you love, how can you love when you are burning from the inside out?

Azula leaves him with the choice and he wants to leave with Uncle, he wants to chase her down, he wants to have her back and he wants to stop her before she goes further and he just-

His hand finds the thin ring of burned skin that laces his left forearm. He doesn’t remember the day it was made, but he knows how it probably would have gone. His fingers are longer now, his hand larger, and he fits it around his arm, right over the scar.

He had left Azula alone with that monster. Not just when he was banished, but before too. He would be well within his rights to leave with Uncle now, or even to fight her after everything she and the Fire Nation have done to him and the world, but he is not the only one who has changed.

He told her he won’t stop trying. It’s time to prove it.

He makes his decision. The shadows envelop him, and he won’t take it back.

The Avatar is dead. Uncle is in chains. Is this the price he has to pay for his sister’s safety and his father’s love?

(He asks himself his question, but he still knows nothing will change his desire for either of them. The former, though, is a more attainable goal than the latter. Father’s heart was set on fire long ago, and it burned and burned until there was nothing left inside him with the capacity to love.)

Azula is lounging on the Earth King’s throne, preening. “We’ve done it, Zuko. It’s taken a hundred years, but the Fire Nation has conquered Ba Sing Se.”

Zuko feels hollow. He is still burning. “I betrayed Uncle.”

“No, he betrayed you.” She stands. “Zuko, when you return home, Father will welcome you as a war hero.”

“But I don’t have the Avatar,” he responds, because he knows Father will try to deny him on some stupid technicality like that when the Avatar is actually dead, and he can’t let that happen if he wants to truly be there for Azula. “What if Father doesn’t restore my honor?”

“He doesn’t need to, Zuko.” Azula puts a hand on his shoulder, and while that’s terrifying, her words do offer some comfort. “Today, you restored your own honor.”

He lets himself sink into that feeling. The strangers in his head, telling him too many things until he couldn’t tell right from wrong, kept making him forget where he came from. Now, he can silence them all. He is going home, even if he had to lose everything he built up to do it.

It still hurts. With all these shadows surrounding him, how can he take it back?

Mai joins him on the deck as they approach Caldera City. “Aren’t you cold?” It’s kind of a useless thing to ask, considering he’s a firebender, but he understands the real point of the question.

“I’ve got a lot on my mind. It’s been so long, over three years since I was home. I wonder what’s changed. I wonder how I’ve changed.” What would he say to the rambunctious, pure-hearted, unblemished child that haunts the palace hallways of his memories?

“I just asked if you were cold, I didn’t ask for your whole life story,” Mai yawns. Maybe she did mean the useless question, then.

She giggles at his frown and cups his face in her hands. “Stop worrying.”

It’s not so easy, he thinks as they slide into a short kiss. In a few short hours, he will be walking into the throne room and kneeling before his father. Would he keep walking as the flames in the dais grew higher? Would he stay and listen, or join the countless funeral pyres his father has ordered people into?

Azula finds him by the turtleduck pond days later, the way she has countless times before. “You seem so downcast. Has Mai gotten to you already?” She pauses, thinking. “Though actually, Mai has been in a strangely good mood lately.”

“I haven’t seen Father yet. I haven’t seen him in three years, since I was banished.” His heart is on fire, and he is trying so, so hard to love him the way he should, but it doesn’t feel like enough. Is he meant to burn out like a dying candle the way Father already has?

“So what?” Azula shrugs.

“So, I don’t know how he’ll react to how I’ve changed.” He tears off another piece of the bread loaf in his hand and tosses it to one of the ducks floating lazily at the edge of the pond.

Azula sits in the grass next to him, and it’s oddly peaceful compared to how their conversations in the garden usually go. “Just don’t go spouting that nonsense you were telling me in Ba Sing Se, and I’m sure you have nothing to worry about.”

“But that’s the thing.” Zuko is treading in dangerous waters now. “I still believe that. I came back because I’m loyal to our nation, but that doesn’t mean I don’t think we’re wrong.”

The corner of Azula’s mouth turns downwards. “You’d better not say that to anyone else, Zuzu,” she warns, and it’s so uncharacteristic of her to actually look out for him that he blinks in surprise. “Father will kill you, and then I’ll be in trouble for bringing you back.”

Father. There lies the crux of most of their nation’s problems. He commands the war and feeds their people lies, marching them with a forceful hand to commit atrocities in the name of greatness. There’s madness in his eyes from decades of unchecked greed, and the rest of them are too blind to realize just what they’ve done until it’s too late.

And suddenly he feels anger taking a hold, the fire rushing through his bones at how devastatingly unfair it all is. The cycle of cruelty grips them all in a vicelike hold, and anyone who tries to break it ends up simply burning ashes to dust, efforts wasted and useless and going up in the flames of their own funeral pyre.

Azula snaps him out of it by standing up and dusting herself off. “Don’t do anything drastic, Zuko. Father will speak to you eventually.”

She turns to leave, but Zuko isn’t done. “Azula!” he calls out, and she stops.

“If Father ever hurts you,” he begins, and he doesn’t mention protection because he still remembers what happened last time he said that, “you’re allowed to be upset about it. You’re not his puppet.”

She is silent for a long moment. “Father does what is best for the nation,” she replies stiffly. “If he punishes anyone, it is because doing so will make them stronger and better suited to serve the nation.”

Zuko sighs. “You know how I turned out, Azula. All he did was give me a permanent disability.”

“He made you stronger,” she insists, somewhat bitterly. “You’re just too much of a coward to use it. A scar like that gives you so much power.”

It does. He’s seen it. But something about being home again, walking the same hallways that lost young boy cries in, holds him back once more. He allows himself to remember Lu Ten, who on those very same steps in the distance told him how wrong it is, and Zuko wonders why he ever let himself forget the heartbreak in his beloved cousin’s voice.

It makes him sad now, that Azula actually believes this. But he’s determined to wear down this conviction bit by bit, and he understands a lot more than he did three years ago. Zuko and Azula may have gotten separated, but now it’s up to Zuko to find Azula again before she gets lost like a good big brother, the way he would years ago after a game of chase at the festival.

“Hatred is exhausting, Azula,” he confesses. “Inefficient,” he tacks on the end, because he knows how much she prides in her efficiency. “It consumes you. It’s ugly, and painful. Are you really going to let it rule you? Or are you going to be stronger in spite of it?”

She doesn’t respond, and Zuko turns back to the turtleducks. He doesn’t hear her leave, but as the sun sets and Zuko stands, the loaf of bread long finished, she is gone.

In the end, his father’s words sound so empty, devoid of any emotion at all.

Zuko doesn’t understand why he feels this way. He’s been waiting to hear those ten sentences for three years - that actually sounds a lot less worth it when he says it out loud - but it changes nothing. He still feels guilty. He still gets mad. People still get hurt and die in a pointless war. His heart is still on fire.

Azula wants something from him, he knows she does. She never does him favors out of the goodness of her heart, and this one is because she knows Zuko is hiding something, aside from his treasonous thoughts. Katara would move the entire Spirit World for the Avatar, and with that spirit water of hers, she just might. Azula is just…covering all her bases, Zuko guesses. It’s not like Father would be mad at her for bringing him Ba Sing Se, if Zuko got to the Avatar before her.

A small part of him wonders if she actually wants him back. If what he said in Ba Sing Se actually got to her a little bit. After all, she didn’t have to bring him back as a prince, didn’t have to put in a good word for Father. She even sought him out non-maliciously. That part of him aches for the closeness they had as little children, before they grew up and all the divides were drawn so that they ended up on opposite sides.

On top of it all, Uncle refuses to speak to him. He knows he deserves it, but it still hurts. When he restarts his firebending training, he shows Father and his tutors his new strength, the pain manifesting as spiteful rejection of his Uncle’s words.

Father actually looks somewhat impressed. Somehow, Zuko feels like he’s done something terribly wrong. Azula doesn’t like it either, but for different reasons - he suspects that she underestimated exactly how much progress he’s made in his banishment, even with the scar, and she doesn’t like how he’s starting to upstage her.

Zuko feels like he’s drowning and burning at the same time. All of his problems are piling up and up and up, and he doesn’t know how to handle them. He pays the best assassin he can find for the Avatar, and the shadows around him just keep growing and growing and growing, and he can’t take any of it back.

Master Piandao sits across the table, quietly sipping from a teacup and sifting through letters while Sokka practices his Fire Nation calligraphy. The letters are curved differently from Earth Kingdom script, and some of them have multiple different meanings for the same character, and he keeps accidentally putting them in the wrong combinations or adding the wrong stroke to make it a completely different character - safe to say, it’s pretty slow-going.

Difficult though it may be, it is also fairly tedious, and Sokka finds his mind wandering. “Master Piandao,” he says slowly, “I heard in the village yesterday that you once defeated a hundred firebenders with just your sword and fighting skills.”

Piandao nods in confirmation, a question in his eyes. “How’d you do it?” Sokka finishes. “If bending is so powerful, how’d you manage to fend off a hundred magic fire guys without getting burned? I mean,” he flails around for a way to explain what he’s thinking. “Fire is hot!”

Eloquent as always, Sokka.

Piandao seems to get what he means anyway, though he is clearly amused. He sets down his teacup and lays the letters flat on the table. “The nature of firebending is not so easily boiled down, Sokka,” he begins. “They learn, here, that it must be driven by anger and hatred. It can be, that is true, but that is not all. It is like if I told you to fight with a rotting wooden sword covered in coal dust - set alight, it is a fuel that makes your weapon more powerful, but only as long as you can keep your sword from falling apart in your hands. That makes it easy to find weak points in their defenses if you know where to look, because they forget that rotting wood is weaker than steel.”

“So then why do it?” Sokka questions. “If there’s another way to do it without hurting themselves, surely that would be better for them in a fight.”

Piandao sighs. “Passion and strong emotion, yes. Happiness and love can fuel a fire just as well as their opposites. They are balanced, as all things should be, and a good firebender is able to use both in moderation. They are the drive of anyone who fights, including you.” He sits back. “But being content with what you already have does not drive a war. The Fire Nation isn’t fighting defensively, Sokka. Soldiers will not be strong off of protectiveness for their families, because they are not the ones in danger.”

“But the Fire Nation is struggling too,” Sokka reasons. “Just in different ways.”

“Yes,” Piandao agrees. “And the soldiers are taught to be angry at the world, rather than to love the people they are supposedly trying to save.”

If Sokka were actually Fire Nation, that would probably sound a lot like treason. But Sokka is Water Tribe, and he knows what it’s like to be angry at the world sometimes, but he can’t imagine feeling that way all the time.

Tui and La, is that why Prince Angry Jerk is always - well, angry? “That sounds like a miserable way to live,” Sokka confesses.

Piandao closes his eyes in resignation. “Things need to change, Sokka. We’ve known that for a long time. But it is hard to do anything about it. And when you love your country, and you are doing whatever you can to keep your people safe, it’s hard to change the only things holding them up. People in distress are highly resistant to change.”

“Is that why you fight?” Sokka asks. “Or, don’t fight?”

A chuckle. “I fight because I love my people, and I want them to be happy without relying on a rotting sword. I don’t fight because I don’t want to hurt people who need help, no matter where they are from. Why do you fight, Sokka?”

He thinks about this and sets his brush down. “I fight to protect the people I care about,” he says. “My friends, family, and hometown have all suffered from this war. I want to help them.”

“An admirable cause, Sokka.” Piandao picks up the letters again and begins to read. “Now, can you stick to it?”

Ember Island is a different kind of disaster. The laughing child follows Zuko here, splashing water and playing in the sand and running to a mother who is no longer there. He feels aimless and lost, doesn’t know what to do with himself when he has nothing to do. It’s painfully obvious that he’s changed a lot; he doesn’t know how to interact with any of the girls he came here with, and any attempt falls apart miserably.

His only consolation is that the others seem to be fumbling almost as much as he is. Azula doesn’t know how to dial down her intensity, Ty Lee doesn’t know how to say no, and Mai…actually Mai is fine, and completely right about him overreacting to everything.

Fury is an ugly thing.

His blow-up at the campfire brings it all to a head. “I’m angrier than ever and I don’t know why!” he yells, pacing back and forth.

It creeps up in your ribcage, constricting your lungs. It holds your shoulders tight and muscles tense. It makes your eyes burn and your breath heave. It’s a tunnel you can’t escape, slowly closing around you until the anger is all you know.

“There’s a simple question you need to answer, then,” Azula reasons. “Who are you angry at?”

You can fight and fight and not move an inch.

(There is a small child who stands at the shore.)

“No one.” He can’t tell if that’s a lie. “I’m just angry.”

And no one really hears you. You scream and cry and do whatever you can to get catharsis, but it is always there under the surface, ready to be unearthed.

“Yeah, who are you angry at, Zuko?” Mai repeats, and this time his answer is different.

Hatred is in your blood, flowing in your veins, waiting for activation, and it always just drips, drips, drips.

“Everyone,” he growls in frustration. “I don’t know.”

You scream bloody murder at the top of your broken lungs and yet no one can hear you. Can never see what you’ve become.

“Is it Father?” asks Azula.

Every layer stripped away and yet you are never truly rid of it.

(The child is dancing among the waves.)

“No, no.” Yes.

And it is fury that you’re facing, fury that twists your mouth in a snarl and catches in your throat and brings tears to your eyes.

“Your uncle?” asks Ty Lee.

Fury that makes you want to curse the spirits, to every one that may exist, because where are they? Why do they allow this? This is no balance.

“Me?” Azula interjects.

Can you hear me now, universe?

“No, no, no, no!” Zuko clutches his hair, trying to sort himself out as the girls press him for answers.

I stand proudly atop my mountain of hatred, whispered from the lips of a child that believes the word too strong.

(The water closes above the child’s unruly head of hair.)

Finally, he bursts. “I’m angry at myself!”

I kick and bite and climb above the crowd and I howl my fury, and nothing changes.

Azula frowns at him. “Why?”

The blood pours through my fingers and I laugh, because the world is so broken and my fury is but one miniscule atom on the grand scale of suffering, that which helps no one when no one can hear me now.

Zuko’s shoulders slump. “Because I’m confused. Because I’m not sure I know the difference between right and wrong anymore.”

(The child is drowning, and no one is coming to save him.)

Fury is ugly, and painful, and a tragedy the universe can never fix.

And that is the crux of it. The world has wronged them in so many ways, and none of them know how to deal with it in any way but what they’re already doing. Zuko has done so many things, made so many mistakes, but he’s still trying to figure out what they were.

His life has always been contradictory.

As they retire for the night, off to ruin Chan’s party, Zuko can feel the first of the ashes falling from his burning heart. But he won’t let it stay that way. He might not know if they can love with their hearts on fire, but spirits damn him if he doesn’t try to find the truth.

(Zuko leaves the ocean at his back, and the child stops moving. Waits a few seconds, then steadies himself and swims back to shore.)

The truth is this: hatred is a poison. It means You have wronged me, and I want you to pay for what you’ve done. But there is no one left to pay, except you. So you pay and pay and pay and hate, forever atoning for someone else’s sin.

Zuko doesn’t want it anymore.

“What do you think of the war?” he asks the servant girl who combs his hair.

Her hands don’t freeze. She’s far too practiced for that. “What do you mean, my prince?”

He’s well aware that if she tells anyone he said this, he’ll be dead faster than he can say “loyal”. He doesn’t care. “Do you think the war is right?”

There’s a long pause, and for a moment he isn’t sure she’s going to answer. He’s just about to let it drop and change the subject when she hums lightly and says, “That’s a very complicated question, sir. I wish for our nation to prosper. But,” and it is clear from her hushed tone that she is dearly afraid; whether for herself or for others like her family, he doesn’t know, “my nieces have no fathers or brothers, my son does not enjoy firebending, and my best friend’s parents are struggling without their children to care for them or money to help them.” He hears the unspoken question: is our nation prospering?

No. It isn’t. “Thank you for telling me this,” he rasps as she smooths out the short strands.

She doesn’t respond, but her touch is gentle.

Zuko doesn’t even want to go to the war meeting, but it still stings that no one told him about it. Even after fighting so hard for his father’s favor, after showing so much strength, he is still overlooked. He sulks with Mai, even though it makes him feel like a child. He’s not going to go when he knows he’s unwanted.

And then, suddenly, he isn’t. Unwanted, that is. The servant informs him that the meeting is waiting on him, and he is bolting to the war room, baffled by this newfound consideration. What made his father change his mind? So much so that he would not start without Zuko at all?

He enters the room and everyone’s eyes turn to him, watching him, judging him. He knew it would be like this, knew it ever since he faced the same stares on the open ocean and from the Earth Kingdom’s high society, but under the slightest glimmer of warmth in his father’s eyes and Azula’s smug grin at his left side, he doesn’t care anymore.

The meeting is still disastrous in a different way than before, but Zuko says nothing. He is the perfect prince. The authority figure who projects the strength Ozai has coveted for so long in his eldest child. But even in the face of such injustice, he is too scared to open his mouth. How can he talk when the words just won’t come out?

The dust swirls around his heart. The smoke threatens to choke him inside.

He can’t live like this anymore.

His mother’s eyes gaze forlornly out of the frame as he kneels in front of where the photo sits at the foot of his bed. “I know I’ve made some bad choices,” he rasps, “but today, I’m gonna set things right.”

He hopes she’ll approve. She once told him that hate is a strong word, when he was young and naive and innocent and blind to the ugliness of the world, but where he once used it, he now denounces it. She once told him to never forget who he is, and though he did for a time, he’s remembered again. It’s not forgetting for good if he can regain it, right?

Sticks of incense burn on either side of her photo. They smell nicer than the crude pile of sticks he made for her as a child.

(The child stands behind him, holding the pile in his hands as it smolders to ashes. The flames wash over his hands, but they do not burn his fragile skin. They crawl over the ashes of the pyre instead, reducing them to fine dust.)

(But that’s okay. Mother had always liked the idea of her ashes being scattered in the garden instead of spending eternity in an impersonal urn locked away in a stuffy old basement.)

The tips of the incense glow brighter, as if they know they are honoring someone long gone.

But Mother doesn’t need a funeral pyre. She never did.

Zuko puffs handfuls of fire into the balloon and thinks about his father’s voice.

It’s funny. His whole life, his father had been a larger-than-life caricature, always looming over his shoulder or snarling menacing things in his head or absent when Zuko needed to hear him most. He was horrifying, and cruel, and Zuko’s worst nightmare, and still his father.

But standing in front of him today, telling him things he’s never wanted to hear, showing him how terribly he’s failed his children, Zuko can only see his desperation. It’s almost pathetic. He projects this aura of confidence, tries so hard to inspire fear. And it works, sure. But even though Zuko’s heart nearly burst out of his chest, even when his father lifted steady fingers to the sides of his neck to trace the thin lines over his jugular that generated hot white sparks, it was still exactly the way he told his sister. He feared his father, and denied him.

But Ozai is still his father. Zuko hates him, and loves him. And that enables him to see what he never could before: his father is a lost man, trying too hard to latch onto power that was never really his because he is so afraid of being overlooked.

Father had scorned Uncle for following the ways of “tea and failure.” He will never know how wrong he was, because he refused to see and grow and change. He will never understand how Uncle became a better man, or why Zuko is proud to follow in his footsteps.

Zuko knows Fire Lord Ozai has to be defeated. He might even have to die, to ensure peace. But he hopes that someday, his father can still find the right path.

The worn off-white temple stone under his feet bring back memories of harsh words, despair, and a vow he never should have made. But, he reflects as he rappels down the side, he was right. The only way he was able to regain his honor, his true honor, was to find the Avatar. Not to capture him, but to join him. To help him. Zuko only wishes he’d realized it before.

Now, Zuko is no wordsmith. He knows this. He may spout dramatic lines at random, but they’re all things he’s been ruminating over for hours, days. Sometimes he even steals them from a play he knows by heart. But he spent so long thinking over what to say to his father that he hasn’t even considered what to say to the Avatar’s group. If he gives voice to the deepest recesses of his mind, he might even admit he didn’t expect to live longer than that.

The badgerfrog gives him a pretty accurate preview of what’s about to happen.

He tries to imagine Uncle Iroh’s voice, to drown out the one in his head that calls him doomed. “Zuko, you have to look within yourself to save yourself from your other self. Only then will your true self reveal itself.” It’s just as stupid and nonsensical as it always is, but even in his exasperation, he still manages a gleam of fondness for the old man.

He tries Azula too, because there has to be some reason for her to always get what she wants. “Listen, Avatar, I can join your group, or I can do something unspeakably horrible to you and your friends. Your choice.” …So she would just threaten them to let her join. Boy, would that go well.

The badgerfrog croaks. Given how his practice is going, he might soon do the same.

It’s all his fault.

Aang is kicking himself internally as he sulks in the main room, dodging his friends’ questions and concern. This was his big chance to beat the Fire Lord before Sozin’s Comet, and he botched it. He let himself get sidetracked, and now he’ll never be strong enough to fight Ozai at full strength.

It’s almost a relief when Zuko shows up to distract them all. Sokka and Katara start getting riled up, letting out weeks of frustration in the face of Zuko’s startled stumbling.

Maybe that’s why Aang doesn’t join in. As much as Zuko’s done to them, Aang still has a lot of mixed feelings about the guy. Especially when Appa rumbles over and treats the fumbling teenager like his new best friend. (Besides Aang, of course.)

Zuko wants to teach him firebending. Given how Aang has seen people firebend, and him especially, he doesn’t particularly want to learn anymore. But his friends are right; how else is he going to get strong enough to stop the Fire Lord from conquering the world?

He can’t even summon enough anger when Zuko accidentally reveals that he sent Combustion Man after them. He thinks about the fearful glint buried deep in Azula’s eyes as she stalled them in the dim bunker hallway, when she had no weapon but her words. How easily she slid on her mask of calm. Aang can’t imagine having to learn how to do that in his own home, in front of Gyatso. He can’t imagine being desperate enough to feel like hurting or killing someone is the only answer to his problems.

What the Fire Nation has done, what Zuko and Azula and Ozai have done, makes him angry, yes. But above all, it just makes him sad.

Zuko appeals to him last. “Why aren’t you saying anything? You once said you thought we could be friends. You know I have good in me.”

And that’s the issue. Zuko wasn’t ready to accept his offer, back then. Now, Aang isn’t sure if he’s ready either.

Nevertheless, his friends clearly aren’t comfortable with this at all. If Aang has learned anything in his wild journey across the world, it’s that they are a team. They work in tandem, and if one of them disapproves, the machine will fall apart. (Sokka’s metaphors seem to be getting to him.) If they don’t like this, there is nothing Aang can do but say no.

He still feels bad about being the one to cause the dejected look on the older boy’s face and the hopeless slump of his shoulders. He knows how much that stings, even if they have perfectly good reason to deny him.

His exit doesn’t stop the Water Tribe siblings’ tirade. Even when Aang reluctantly corroborates Zuko’s claims, Sokka’s voice of reason still makes him hesitate to accept the prince. Toph is right too, though; given what they know about the Fire Nation, and especially the royal family, Zuko could have done a lot worse to them. Aang is sure the firebender knows that too, and just never wanted to.

Not to mention, if this isn’t some sort of elaborate trap (which Aang doubts, because he trusts Toph’s skills and knows Zuko is a terrible liar no matter what Katara says), it takes a lot of guts to leave your nation to back a twelve-year-old and his teenage friends against your own father, even more so when they just lost an entire invasion.

Aang still decides to err on the side of caution for now and keep Zuko at arm’s length. As much as he wants to welcome a potential new friend, he’s made too many mistakes, and he can’t afford another one.

Zuko’s second attempt at reconciliation goes a lot better. Even though he was utterly useless in stopping the assassin from attacking again, they could at least see that he was committed to what he told them. It’s heartening to have gained the Avatar’s approval, if not everyone else’s. He appreciates Sokka’s indifference more than he probably should, and even Toph’s steady presence despite her (warranted) wariness of him.

He makes a note to stay away from Katara, though, especially after she corners him in his room later that night. Azula’s threats were always more snide and smug than Katara’s protective words, but Zuko has never really had good luck when it comes to younger sisters. He may be dedicated to his own, but that doesn’t mean he has no sense of self-preservation.

(Usually.)

The first thing Zuko does on the morning of his first day as a firebending teacher is meditate.

He had lost his chance time and time again at the palace as more and more people demanded his attention, all clamoring for the opportunity to suck up to the dangerous, powerful prince they had all mocked in his childhood. Father and Azula declared it weak and lazy to, quote, “sit and do nothing,” so Zuko was often unable to do it at all.

The sun has risen a substantial amount when Aang stumbles out into the light, rubbing the tiredness out of his eyes and blinking against the sudden onslaught. “Good morning, Sifu Zuko,” he chirps.

Zuko blinks, but doesn’t comment on the nickname. “Good morning, Av- uh, Aang,” Zuko rasps, quick to correct his slip-up. The boy had insisted the night before that Zuko call him by his name, and now that Zuko is no longer chasing him around the world, he sees no problem with the familiarity.

He pats the space next to me. “Come join me in meditation,” he offers. “It’s important to firebending, and it’s a good first step to learning.”

Aang deflates. “Breathing? But I already know how to breathe! It’s so boring,” he groans, and Zuko has to stifle the pang of inadequacy at Aang’s disappointment.

“Firebending comes from the breath,” he reminds his student. “A good breathing routine can mean the difference between a candle flame and an uncontrollable inferno.”

Aang folds down next to him hesitantly. “Jeong Jeong tried to teach me about breathing,” he admits, and Zuko does a double-take, because isn’t that just the kind of bombshell he would receive completely out of the blue? “I didn’t really get the point, though.”

“Back up.” Zuko switches out his meditation breaths for standard, but no less routine, breathing exercises, and pinches the bridge of his nose. “Admiral Jeong Jeong the Deserter tried to teach you to breathe?” Not only is that a sentence he had never thought he’d say in his entire life, but also how does a teacher screw that up so badly that their student ends up afraid of fire before the day is even up? (And yes, he knows it only lasted a little over a day - he liked to keep up-to-date on Zhao’s incompetence so he could laugh at them where the man couldn’t see.)

Aang nods. “He was a little scary about it, to be honest. He kept going on about how firebending is a curse that dooms firebenders to cruelty and hatred. He acted like learning it would taint me somehow.”

Zuko lets out a small sigh and places his hands on his knees, tilting his head back up towards the sun. “It’s true that sometimes firebending can be scary. The nature of firebending as it is taught in the Fire Nation is corrupted and spiteful, but that’s wrong.” He searches for the words Lu Ten told him, all those years ago. “Fire is fueled by energy, and passion. It can be bad, but it can also be good. That’s something I’m actually still learning myself,” he admits softly, ducking his head. “Jeong Jeong probably didn’t know this when he deserted, or he might feel differently. They don’t teach things very well under my father’s regime, or even my grandfather’s.”

Aang sits on those words for a moment, mirroring Zuko’s earlier position with his face up to the sun. “What do you use to fuel your fire, Zuko?”

He takes a minute to reflect. For as long as he could remember, he was prodded towards negative emotion to firebend. Little annoyances were never enough, but Zuko couldn’t comprehend how any child could muster up the level of hatred and anger necessary for it. He had always known, deep down, that something wasn’t right, but everyone had always convinced him that it made him weak. Like anything positive, including kindness, made him weak. Even on his hunt for the Avatar, he refused to let himself stop and consider that he was right until it was almost too late.

“I’m still figuring that out too,” he murmurs finally, after it’s been so long that Aang has started fidgeting where he sits. “I used to fuel it through pain and suffering, the way my father tried to teach me.” Suffering will be your teacher. “But I know there’s a better way. There has to be.”

Aang seems concerned at this, but he doesn’t comment. They sit and meditate together for a little longer, as the sun climbs higher in the sky and Katara yells at Sokka for almost knocking over the breakfast pot, and Zuko’s shoulders feel just a little bit lighter.

This is stupid.

Zuko takes another deep breath that feels more like an angry inhale and throws another punch forward. Another puff of smoke and the tiniest kata flame he’s ever seen spout from his fist.

Aang gets up from where he’s seated atop a broken pillar. “That one kind of felt hot,” he offers, even though he’s several feet away.

“Don’t patronize me!” Zuko snaps. “You know what it’s supposed to look like!”

“Sorry, Sifu Hotman.”

Zuko groans, shifting out of his stance and throwing up his arms in frustration. “And stop calling me that!” Aang has taken to the ancient slang like a mosquito-fly to honey, and Zuko doesn’t have the heart to tell him that they’re actually just expletives.

The resident idiot chooses that exact moment to show up, a cherry-apple in his hand. “Hey, jerks! Mind if I watch you two jerks do your jerkbending?”

“Aargh!” Zuko yells, pointing to the side. “Get out of here!”

“Okay, take it easy, I was just kidding around,” Sokka shrugs, dropping his fruit. “Not like there’s a lot of fire going around anyway. I’ll come back when there’s less yelling.” He chuckles to himself. “Jerkbending. Still got it.”

Zuko lets his rigid stance drop as he groans again. “I’m trying not to use anger. Maybe that’s it.” Maybe he should readopt that style to teach Aang to use something better, just for demonstrative purposes, but it makes his stomach twist whenever he thinks about it.

Sokka frowns. “Master Piandao said you don’t have to,” he pipes up. “He said that happiness and love can be good too.”

“You met Master Piandao?” Zuko gapes at him for a second. “When?”

Sokka is clearly very smug about this, though he tries to play it cool. “Oh, I just trained with him for a few days while we were traveling undercover in the Fire Nation, no biggie. I forged my own sword with him, too. Cool, right?”

Zuko shakes his head to clear it a little. “You? Trained with Master Piandao?”

Sokka is back to frowning. “Yeah, why’s that so hard to believe?”

“I heard Katara shouting about the cook pot this morning,” Zuko deadpans. “Not exactly the picture of grace, there.” Sokka splutters, unable to form a response.

Aang ignores both of them. “Happiness and love?” he muses. “I guess I could do that.” He takes a deep breath, then holds it again, pushing out his open palm. All he receives is another puff of smoke.

Zuko walks over and pokes him in the stomach, forcing him to release the air he’s holding in in surprise. “Don’t hold your breath like that. Like I told you before, steady breathing is essential to firebending.”

“This is boring,” Sokka announces, standing and dusting off his clothes. “Call me when things get fiery.”

Zuko rolls his eyes as the younger teen walks away, half-eaten cherry-apple long forgotten. “Let’s try again.”

Toph’s suggestion has merit, but there’s only one problem: the source of firebending is completely gone. Zuko has no doubt that the dragons would’ve taught a different method; he knows the wrath of dragons is but one aspect of the majestic beings. Maybe that’s why Sozin and Azulon sought to wipe them out so desperately - if they wanted people to follow their ideologies, they needed to eliminate any competition. It makes Zuko sick to think about.

The Sun Warrior ruins are their last chance. After that, he doesn’t know what he can do.

They’re still around.

How are they still around?

(Uncle had lied. Zuko doesn’t know how to feel about this, and he decides to shove that fact in a box deep in the back of his mind until he figures out what to do with it.)

Aang is still buzzing the whole way back, and Zuko is still trying to comprehend what he just saw. The colors swirling around him were richer and brighter than anything he’d ever seen at the Summer Solstice Festival, flowing unrestrained through the air even as it burned nothing. It spoke of something he’d never heard before, of love and protection and strength the likes of which he’d never seen in the people he’d always tried to emulate.

He has seen it, though. In Mother’s kindness, in Lu Ten’s guard, in Uncle’s steadiness, in his crew’s consideration. In Song’s empathy, in Sela’s determination, in Jin’s understanding. It’s a natural goodness that exists in people who try to help, not hurt.

As they soar over the open ocean, Zuko breathes in the familiar salty scent and cups a small flame in his hands. It may be weaker than it used to be, but Zuko has plenty of time to learn how to make it stronger. To learn how to truly love again.

So Sparky is a can of worms that most people don’t want to touch.

Not Toph, though. Toph has a can opener.

So she attacks the problem in her typical fashion: with brute force. Toph barrels into a firebending lesson just before lunchtime, ignoring Zuko’s protests and Aang’s thinly veiled relief, and drags Zuko away for some good old-fashioned sparring.

He gives in eventually, because they’ve become more familiar in the two weeks or so that he’s been here. She’s been using him for piggyback rides around the temple even after Katara healed her feet, and just two nights ago she found out that he’s a portable heat pack but won’t complain if she and Aang latch onto him like pentapi (and, if she’s not mistaken, he even seems to enjoy it a bit).

She’s glad that he feels comfortable with her now. If she’s being completely honest, she feels more comfortable with him too. She loves her friends, but Zuko has experiences the rest can’t offer her; he knows what it’s like to have your abilities discounted and ridiculed at every turn - and contrary to Katara, he knows what it’s like when there’s no way to prove them wrong. Toph and Zuko both risked everything they had to be their true selves, and sometimes even now Toph feels like she’s losing everything when she thinks about what all she’s left behind. Her friends are a reminder that it’s still worth it, but it’s Zuko, someone who still loves his family after all the shit they’ve put him through, who truly shows her that she’s allowed to grieve it too.

So they spar. Toph brings up great pillars of earth, flings crude metal daggers, and uproots the entire training floor. Zuko, agile as he is, evades all of them with practiced ease, moving quickly and surely in a way that tests the limits of her earth sense. He is a challenge, and she enjoys it.

Zuko clearly gets a thrill out of it too. A skilled sparring partner he can trust not to hurt or patronize him - this is where his prowess and practice really begins to shine. On the training field, Toph can often find him learning to strengthen his newly blossoming fire, adapting his style to her bold strides, Katara’s smooth versatility, and Aang’s light-footed strokes.

Toph wins eventually, but it’s very close. She’s only ever fought earthbenders before, and the occasional firebender or nonbender when the need arose on their journey, so sparring with new people and fighting styles like Aang, Katara, Sokka, and Zuko teaches her things she never knew before.

They’re laughing afterwards as Zuko tries to extricate himself from a very complex rock structure she has entombed him in, and they both head to the side where they keep their waterskins. “Your face when I flipped over all those knives was priceless,” Zuko snorts between sips of his water.

“What kind of sneaky ninja training did you even have in that palace?!” Toph exclaims, also laughing. “Did you become a secret airbender between the opening bow and my first move? I could hardly sense you!”

“I grew up with Mai,” Zuko reminds her, pointing with his waterskin. “She’s been training with knives since we were kids, and Azula usually made Mai and Ty Lee practice their skills on me. I spent a lot of time learning to dodge knives and chi blocks.”

Another thing Toph likes about Zuko: he’ll drop fucked up childhood details in conversation with her without fear of repercussions, and he won’t treat her delicately when she does the same. Both of them are able to remind themselves and each other that they deserve better.

“That’s fucked up,” she comments idly, mostly on principle because she can tell from the tone of his voice that he probably already knows. Sure enough, he makes a soft affirmative noise and moves on.

“Plus,” he adds, “I was always a fan of the Yuyan Archers, who are famous for being a silent, super-skilled army. I used to sneak around on the rooftops of the palace all the time so I could practice stealth and find places to do stuff where Father and Azula wouldn’t find me.”

Toph nods appreciatively. “I kinda did that, I guess,” she says. “Except I was less ‘quiet and deadly’ and more ‘giant underground tunnel’.”

Zuko chuckles along with her. When they’re done with their water, she clambers up his back like a kitten-owlet and lets him carry her back to the main room of the temple, only smacking him once lightly on the side of his head when he pretends to drop her (she knows he never will).

Aang knows there’s something Zuko isn’t telling him.

They train and train and train, and Zuko is relentless in running him through katas and sparring sessions. He’s got Toph’s roughness and Katara’s uplift, and his own criticism helps Aang get faster, stronger, and more precise. Zuko may not be the best of the best, but Aang appreciates his patience immensely.

But the older teen is definitely holding something back. He can see it in the way Zuko rubs the thin ring around his wrist, or how his fingers keep twitching over his scars. Aang dimly recalls watching him fight his sister in the abandoned town, how they both produced sharp bursts of fire from their scars. He doesn’t understand it, but he wants to.

He brings it up one day after a particularly intense spar. “I keep seeing you touch your scars,” he notes gently, and Zuko freezes. “You did it once while fighting Azula. What-” Aang swallows nervously. “What does it do?”

Zuko closes his eyes, and for a long few moments, Aang thinks he won’t answer. “That isn’t something you should worry about,” he rasps finally. “It’s a dangerous technique that relies heavily on negative emotion to make you stronger. It’ll eat you from the inside out. I don’t want you to learn this or feel like you need to use it to defeat the Fire Lord.”

Aang nods along, even though he doesn’t quite get it. He supposes if it’s really that bad, then he probably shouldn’t want to learn it, but shouldn’t he take every tool he can get to fight the Fire Lord?

Prison breaks as a high-profile criminal in very secure places are a terrible idea. Zuko should know, because he’s done more than he can count on his fingers over the course of his exile.

In the end, he knows what Sokka will choose. It is, after all, exactly what he would do.

The difference is, Zuko was alone. Sokka won’t be.

Sokka feels like he’s about to lose everything. Zuko’s been arrested, his dad’s not here, and he has no way to get either Zuko or Suki out yet.

Even when they hatch a plot that makes Sokka feel guilty to the core, things go sideways immediately. As he is pressed against Zuko inside the freezing cooler, the other boy’s skin alarmingly cold despite the steady stream of heat flowing from his mouth, he is torn with indecision. Does he stay, and risk the safety of his friends (yes, friends plural, you don’t do a jailbreak with someone and not become friends in the process), or does he go, and risk missing his dad?

Later, Zuko tries to back him up a little as he stalls. “You can’t quit because you’re afraid you might fail,” he says. Given that he’s kind of the king of falling and getting up again, Sokka can’t help but trust the guy’s faith.

In the end, he’s glad he stayed. Chit Sang and his buddies get caught halfway across the lake, and the plan is busted. Sokka feels a bit guilty, but Chit Sang did threaten his own way onto the mission, and it’s not Sokka’s fault they gave themselves away after taking their escape plan.

Not only that, but it pays off. It isn’t long before Hakoda is safe and sound in his arms on the war balloon, heading back to the Western Air Temple with them. Sokka is still riding the high of successfully pulling off the most dangerous impromptu plan he’s ever had in his life, and getting his dad back in the process.

As they all settle down for the night, he takes a moment to check in with Zuko, who is busy shoveling palmfuls of flames into the burner. His hands are shaking slightly, and his eyes are a little hazy and unfocused.

“You good, dude?” Sokka asks, approaching his right side. They had all learned pretty quickly that it was a bad idea to approach him from the left.

“Yeah, fine, fine,” the older teen mumbles, head half in the burner as he roots around for stray coal. “Go sleep, Sokka. It’ll be a while until we get back.”

“Are you sleeping too? You haven’t slept since we left,” Sokka reminds him, now more than a little worried. “You seem a little feverish, too. Don’t want you falling sick.” Now that Sokka looks closer, he can see the bags under Zuko’s eyes, and the haunted look he wears. He’s suddenly struck with the realization that the other boy must be drowning in guilt over Mai right now.

Zuko waves him off again. “I’ll be fine. I’ve done more with worse.”

Sokka raises an eyebrow. “Not only is that extremely concerning, it is also super self-destructive. How are you gonna teach Aang if you’re sneezing and falling asleep on your feet every ten seconds? It can’t be easy to firebend when you’re tired.”

“I have to keep the balloon going,” Zuko argues, but Sokka is already manhandling him away from the burner.

“I’ll call Chit Sang to do it,” he says over Zuko’s halfhearted protests. “Do you really want to deal with Katara if you get sick? She’s cool and all, but clearly you two do not have the best relationship.”

That shuts him up. It seems that Zuko, too, is reluctant to approach Katara in a bad mood - and she’s been in a bad mood ever since he joined. Sokka isn’t sure what Katara says to Zuko on a day-to-day basis, but it’s enough to put off even this bold fireball.

As promised, Sokka sends Chit Sang up to the boiler for the night. As he forces Zuko into bed in the soldiers’ barracks and lies down in his own next to his dad, the wave of sudden contentment threatens to overwhelm him. He blinks back tears - of what, he doesn’t know - and basks in the happiness of his success, his throat closing and a soft smile pulling at his mouth for the first time since they started this insane adventure.

As exhausted as Zuko is, he can’t stop his mind from replaying the fight on the gondola.

Azula had seemed extra furious with him. So had Mai, but he understood that. Azula, however, had never let her calm, collected mask slip that much. She had also never hid her dislike for Zuko, so he can’t help but wonder why this specifically would ignite her so much. He…didn’t actually think she’d care if he was digging his own grave.

“Come back with me,” he thought he’d heard her say over the whistling wind and the clangs of feet on the metal roof.

He’d responded with another flashy fireblast. He was done with false platitudes. If he went back, he’d be killed.

He’d left her again and again, but she’d made her own choices too. He’d said his piece; now, he’s just waiting for her to accept it.

(He hopes she will.)

The pile of ashes in his heart grows ever higher.

There’s something up with the firebender.

Don’t get him wrong, Hakoda is overjoyed to be out of prison and back with his family, as much as he wishes his men were out too. But even in his short time with the group of children, he can tell that something is off.

Not in a sinister way, no - after the boy accompanied his son on a suicide mission to save a man he didn’t even know, Hakoda is fully inclined to trust him with his life. But he can see the way the dazed firebender skulks at the edge of the group, hardly speaking while the rest of the children bicker and laugh by the fire. He can pick up the side glances Zuko keeps shooting his way, and how he seems laser-focused on Sokka and Katara whenever Hakoda moves near them.

He doesn’t do this for Chit Sang, or for any of the other children. Toph is actively socking him in the arm and he doesn’t even flinch. His focus is just the three of them.

Hakoda’s heard some things in his years at sea. There’s only so much you can tell is true, but one thing he knows about the Fire Army is the way they treat their scars. The soldiers reject them, but the higher-ups treat them with a revulsing sort of reverence.

Zuko’s father is the highest a higher-up can get. Hakoda puts together the pieces and feels sick.

He resolves to speak to Zuko in the morning, when the boy is in a better state of mind, but he doesn’t get the chance. The boy’s sister swoops in with a few war balloons to blow up the temple, another child twisted with false promises and abuse. He watches Zuko charge out to fight his own sister, imagines Sokka and Katara trying to kill each other like that. He sees how Azula’s hottest blasts come from swipes down her arms and light wisps against her cheeks while Zuko’s burst angrily from brushes against his left eye, and he suddenly wants to cry at how unfair it all is. How their power comes so attuned only because they endured so much that forced them to be far better than they ever needed to be.

How these children were hurt so badly and they still called it love, because they had nothing else to put that name to.

As much as it kills Hakoda to separate from his kids again, to stand back and do nothing, he knows there isn’t anything he can do. His kids are strong, and they all support each other; they can push through challenges together, he knows. He’s best where he is, protecting children who do not want to fight (Tui and La, Teo’s paralyzed and the Duke is eight!), but it hurts all the same.

He hopes, at least, that they can keep protecting each other until he is able to do it himself.

Zuko doesn’t mean to use anger. He’d told himself he would never let that out again, but he’s not strong enough to beat his sister. Not even strong enough to stall her, without the extra firepower the scars give him. He’s still learning to power his bending with love and life, but not fast enough to get to the level he used to be at.

So he lets himself fall back on the familiar anger. He’s tired, though, so tired; it’s weaker than it used to be. Still, it’s just enough to keep Azula occupied until he sees Appa soar out from under the collapsing temple. He pushes a little extra firepower in Azula’s direction to distract her from the bison.

Her hands lift up to her cheek next, and suddenly they’re kids in the garden, and Azula is accidentally wiping away the makeup that covers Father’s vicious backhand.

Zuko sees red.

His next burst of fire isn’t even aimed at her; it’s a ring that extends outwards, hot and bright with a burn in his chest and heat building in his throat. It’s just blinding enough to throw her off, and they both stumble back, falling into open air. His heart leaps into his throat, not just because they’re falling but because his loss of control has pushed Azula off as well.

Zuko is too furious and scared for his sister to process what is happening, but he is dimly aware of hands pulling him into Appa’s saddle. His eyes seek Azula’s, and even though he can’t pinpoint her amber eyes, so much like Mother’s, he can tell she watches him curiously as she hangs off the side of the cliff and they fly away. He lets out a breath he didn’t realize he was holding, but the fury at their father does not subside.

“-uko? Zuko, can you hear me?” Zuko snaps back to reality as Sokka waves a hand in front of his face. “Earth to Zuko, hello!”

Irritated, Zuko bats it away. “What do you want?” he grouses, crossing his arms and huddling in the saddle.

“Are you insane?!” Sokka bursts out, gesticulating wildly. “You could’ve gotten killed!”

“I didn’t, though,” Zuko retorts childishly.

“Sokka’s right, Zuko,” Aang adds from the front where he is piloting Appa. “That was reckless. If we weren’t there to catch you, you would’ve fallen to your death.” The young boy’s voice trembles, and Zuko is struck with a pang of guilt.

He starts as Toph punches him in the shoulder hard. “Don’t ever do that again, you dunderhead!” she yells. “How am I supposed to save you with my awesome earthbender skills if I can’t even tell where you are?” She latches onto his arm, squeezing it tightly. “You’re not getting this back until I know you won’t pull any more stupid stunts like that.”

Zuko’s eyes are watering now, and it’s definitely from the wind, shut up. His emotions are giving him whiplash, but he supposes it’s not the first time. From the pain he felt for his sister and the fury at his father to the fear at losing Azula for good, and now to the overwhelming love that his friends - his friends - are giving him now, he doesn’t know which to focus on, but he lets himself sink into the kindness they are offering now. Even Katara and Suki, who haven’t said anything, are giving him appraising looks, even if the latter’s is significantly warmer than the former’s.

“I can’t promise we’ll never be in danger again,” he mumbles, eyes tracing patterns in the faux-leather saddle, “but I’ll try not to do that, next time.”

It seems to be good enough, and they all settle back in the saddle, satisfied. Still, Toph doesn’t let go of his arm, Sokka keeps shooting glances at him, and Aang soon retires from his post at Appa’s head to flop on top of Zuko and claim his other arm for warmth.

Zuko isn’t about to firebend up in the air, especially not near Appa, but he’s sure if he tried right now, it would be stronger than ever before.

Aang pretends to be asleep as he clings to Zuko’s right arm, and he can tell by the older teen’s slower heartbeat and even breathing that Zuko actually is asleep. Aang is supposed to be sleeping - he’s still tired after being woken up early by Azula’s attack - but he keeps thinking about the fight.

This fire is some of the strongest he’s seen from Zuko. Not the strongest, but certainly stronger than anything he’s ever shown in practice. The only comparable incident he’s seen is that day in the abandoned town. This, he figures, is what Zuko must have been hiding from him - the swipes of fire from the left side of his face, sweeping outward in a wide semicircle, and his face contorting in an expression of pain and rage at the world. Even Azula, he saw, had sparks tingling up and down her arms as her fingers pulled more and more from pain that didn’t scar but was still there, the memory everlasting.

Zuko was right. This isn’t something Aang would ever have wanted to know.

Katara doesn’t know how to talk to Zuko.

She knows she hasn’t been making a whole lot of concessions. As reluctant as she is to admit it, he really is changing; he took Aang to the Sun Warrior ruins alone and didn’t try to capture him, he helped break Dad and Suki out of the Boiling Rock even when Sokka tried to go alone, and he even lets Toph bully him into various requests to make up for accidentally burning her.

She wants to forgive him, now. Really, she does. They might not talk a lot, since Katara doesn’t really go out of her way to approach him and he’s too scared of breaking the fragile peace to try broaching any topic with her, but Katara finds herself slipping into a sort of complacency. The Gaang is more or less back to normal (well, as normal as they can be right now), and with the yelling about honor and the Fire Nation out of the way, the quiet, heartfelt Zuko that Katara saw in the catacombs begins to surface.

If that was the only thing she saw whenever she looked at him, forgiveness would be easy. But their whole journey, he represented the cruelty of the Fire Nation and those in power. She knows, now, that the whole country is not to blame for the actions of a few, and even Zuko is not at fault for all the crimes of the shadows that loom behind him. Nightmares aren’t easy to shake, though, and Katara finds it very hard to swallow the distinction between the former prince and her mother’s murderer, profound as it may be.

She knows she’s not trying very hard to hold back her anger. She’s spent too many years suppressing her feelings to start doing it again now, even if she feels a little guilty whenever she snaps at Zuko and sees his shoulders jump minutely or endures awkward silences from the group. But she already reached out to him once, and he tore that second chance in half; Katara does not owe him a third, whether he deserves it or not. She is not ready to forgive him yet.

At its core, she does not understand fire. Water, she knows intimately; it flows and changes course swiftly but easily, and carving a new path takes time and dedicated force but can wear down even the toughest of stone. Air is similar, in that it flows uninhibited, but it desires to go anywhere and everywhere. Earth, too, is known; it is solid and dependable, and when it is not cracked or unsteady, it can be trusted to support the pattering of young feet and the supple roots of the living. Fire, though, is all-consuming and eager; Katara knows it only as the desire to spread and grow and take energy even if it hurts others.

And then Zuko surprises her again, this time with a gift. “I know who killed your mother,” he says, “and I’m going to help you find him.”

Zuko and Katara are fundamentally different. He was raised in a society that told him it is his right to enact whatever justice he pleases, and that murder is okay if he believes the victim deserves it. Katara was raised to value human life as non-expendable and treasured - but the village knows what to do with corrupted souls, out on the tundra.

Katara doesn’t know what she’ll do when they find the man, but she knows she needs to face him. To see him one more time, and convince herself she is not unreasonable in her vehemence. That she is not a monster for carrying this anger half her life, even as she says horrible things to the people she loves.

This is something Zuko understands, and it is why she tolerates him tagging along instead of wringing the answer out of him and going by herself. She can see it written in the eyes that scrutinize everything with suspicion, hear it woven in the words he thinks she does not listen to, feel it in the roughness of scars that have been scratched at far too much every time she brushes past him. He has spent years pushing people away with his fury the way Katara is doing now. He has also faced those who dared harm him, the way Katara wants to do now.

She doesn’t know what compels her to spill her story to him. After so long keeping it locked away deep in the recesses of her mind, it’s almost soothing to tell it to someone with no strings attached. No false platitudes about how it will get better or endless patronization from those who do not believe in her strength. Zuko calls her mother a brave woman, and he is right, but he offers no more and no less. Katara may not like him, but she can appreciate this.

She knows he’s also in it for his own form of catharsis. If he gets it, good for him. She doesn’t particularly care, as long as he doesn’t get in the way of whatever she needs to do.

The light of the full moon shines on her face through the ship cabin’s window as she seizes control of the Raider’s wrist, taking the flow under his skin for her own. But as he contorts to lift his face, Katara feels sick. Not only is it far from the face that haunts her day and night, but she was so consumed by her fury that she is now turning into the monster she fears.

She turns away to hide her tears as Zuko slams the man up against the wall and demands a name. It’s too late to turn back now, but Katara is starting to wish they’d never left. She feels like she’s losing everything, being here.

They find the man anyway. He totters along the old dirt path as rain begins to fall, juggling a basket of vegetables in his arms. The two teens watch him from the bushes, and Katara gains a newfound appreciation for and several questions about Zuko’s unexpected stealth skills.

“That was him,” she confirms, lining up the drooping skin, square jaw, limp grey hair, and narrow eyes with the face she has studied too much. “That was the monster.” She is aware of the irony, but she pushes it away for now. This is the moment of truth, and she cannot afford to be distracted.

For a moment, she could almost think him peaceful, changed in retirement. A cog in the machine, forced to do a job he never favored. But the slightest rustle leaves the nearest set of bushes alight with his paranoid jets of flame, and any trace of sympathy vanishes. She doesn’t feel even the slightest bit guilty when he trips facefirst over their wire trap.

Zuko steps out first. “We weren’t behind the bush,” he deadpans, and Katara would laugh if not for the gravity of the situation. “And I wouldn’t try firebending again!”

“Whoever you are, take my money,” Yon Rha whimpers, cowering on the ground. “Take whatever you want. I’ll cooperate.”

This is the feared leader of the Southern Raiders? A man who led the murders and captures of countless, a man responsible for the decimation of an entire culture, afraid to fight back against two random teenagers?

(Katara knows they are much stronger than him. He, however, doesn’t. They haven’t even done any bending yet.)

She yanks her mask down. “Do you know who I am?” She doubts he’ll say yes - it’s been six years - but she’s trying to prove a point. She doesn’t know if a yes will hurt more or give her vindication; it would mean he remembers her as the scared, powerless little girl she was before, but it would be an acknowledgement of his crimes as well. Katara wants so desperately for it to not be just another day for the man that ripped her mother away from her family.

As predicted, he doesn’t know. Katara decides that this will piss her off. “Oh, you better remember me like your life depends on it!” she yells.

Terrified, Yon Rha squints at her. “Yes, yes, I remember you now. You’re that little Water Tribe girl.”

So he does recall. Katara lets the jagged bolts of lightning that cut through the thick grey sky illuminate her scowl. “She lied to you,” she snarls, turning away. “She was protecting the last waterbender!”

The man stills. “What? Who?”

The time is now. “ Me! ” Katara whirls back around, snapping her arms out to suspend the rain around them. Gone is the little girl of his memories; before him stands a formidable waterbending master who would like nothing more than to shred the meat off his bones. The droplets in the air echo her thoughts, sharpening into thin ice daggers that launch themselves towards the quivering fool.

Time seems to slow down for Katara as she watches the man cower. Suddenly, she is taller, and her mother’s face sits before her. It is not the same; she knows it’s not. She deserves retribution for the harm this man has wrought upon her and her loved ones, and he deserves punishment for his crimes that he has never received. But killing a miserable, sniveling coward isn’t worth it. This is not a monster she wants to become, not for him. Not even for her mother, a gentle soul who would mourn the fact that she ever needed to do this in the first place. What would it even accomplish?

Leaving him will not be a mercy. Katara will always hate him; he is a poison in her mind, and there is no cure, only treatment. She will always want him dead or suffering, and it will never be enough. But she will not give in to the monster for him, in mind or in body. Not everyone who kills is a monster or will ever be a monster, she knows; but just as she used an attack she had forbidden for herself before, she also knows that killing in cold blood can be far easier the second time, and that if she allows herself this, she will ruminate upon it for the rest of her life. Nothing is off-limits when she is on the warpath; she knows herself well enough by now to admit that. And she refuses to spend her years thinking about someone as disgusting as Yon Rha. If she is to kill, it will be to protect the living.

So she stops. She breathes. She lets go.

His eyes meet hers as the water soaks back into the mud. “I did a bad thing!” he insists. “I know I did and you deserve revenge, so why don’t you take my mother? That would be fair!” (It really wouldn’t.)

Katara sighs. “I always wondered what kind of person could do such a thing, but now that I see you, I think I understand. There's just nothing inside you, nothing at all. You’re pathetic and sad and empty.”

“Please, spare me!” Yon Rha cries, not listening to a word she says.

Katara lowers her head, letting herself relax and feel the rain pattering against her back, soaking her clothes. “But as much as I hate you…I just can’t do it.”

The truth is that monsters aren’t angry. They’re careless. She doesn’t know if that makes it better or worse.

She doesn’t check to see if Zuko is following her as she turns and leaves. She doesn’t care if Yon Rha feels relief or guilt; he will be miserable regardless. Her own weight isn’t gone, but it is less, weathered away in the aftermath of a violent storm.

Appa rumbles softly as they approach, and Katara cards a hand through his sopping wet fur, drawing out the moisture until it is voluminous and fluffy again. Zuko doesn’t speak as she climbs up into the saddle and he scrambles up after her. Katara is afraid, now; without vitriol to linger around their every encounter, she does not want him to see her as a coward. She does not want him to open his mouth and say that she should have done it, that she did not love her mother enough to avenge her, that he would have done it for his.

But he says nothing. For hours they ride in silence, and Katara is grateful for it. The night waxes and wanes, but it isn’t until the early dawn light breaks across the sky and tinges the horizon the slightest shade of purple that she gathers the courage to turn around and look at him.

He seems a little surprised as he looks up at the sudden movement, but his pale gold eyes lock with hers, open and sympathetic. That is the good thing about Zuko - he does not judge her. He knows what it is like to be angry and gentle. Regardless of his past, Katara isn’t sure if he would’ve done it either.

No one but Toph is at camp when they return. “Welcome back, Sugar Queen, Sparky,” she announces from where she is stretched out on a flat stone slab of her own making, basking in the warmth of the midday sun. She sounds relaxed, but even she cannot hide her anxiousness. For all her bravado and experience in the ring, she is still young, and she has yet to learn many truths about the world.

“Thanks, Toph,” Katara breathes, voice smooth and a small smile forming under the cloth mask she had pulled back up to ward off the altitude’s chill. “Where are the others?”

Toph senses the smile in her voice and the calm rhythm of her heart and the tremor drops off her words. “They went to the market, which basically means Aang wanted to get good vegetarian stuff to cook and Sokka wanted to tag along because he’s bored. Suki went to supervise and hold the money so as not to fund Sokka’s shopping habit. They’ll probably be back soon.”

Katara laughs softly. That sounds about right.

While Zuko talks briefly with Toph and heads off to some part of the beach to practice, Katara wanders aimlessly until her feet lead her to the pier. She sits at the edge for a while, dangling her feet over the edge and watching the ocean.

The moon is not high in the sky right now, but if she squints, she can see a white semicircular smudge in the distant sky. The water ripples softly below her shoes, as if to say, I know you know her.

Not as well as I would have liked to, Katara admits. Not for the first time, she wishes Yue did not have to give up her life, her mortality. She was supposed to be family, and Katara mourns that loss like she mourns all her losses: quietly and without fuss. This is the way the world is, and she must accept it, as awful as it is. It will never matter if she could have healed Tui, if she could have hit Zhao before he killed the spirit, if she could have found her dad before Yon Rha killed her mother. It only matters that she couldn’t, for a variety of reasons that are hardly as simple as incompetence and culminate from decades of history and events that cascaded together in all the wrong ways. She could never do any of those things, and she can never change that past or the certainty it has created for them all now.

All she can do is dedicate herself to righting the wrongs of the past. They are all part of a massive chain effect in the making - one that never really stopped and won’t stop for centuries to come - and she will do her best to make it a better one if it kills her.

Yue did her best, too. Katara will always admire her for that. In the end, she did make a profound difference, even if she should not have had to. Even if none of them should have to.

Water, she knows intimately; it is in its nature to flow no matter what lands in its ripples and waves, and shift as it navigates through any terrain, but it does not hesitate to patiently carve new paths if it so pleases, regardless of the work and time it will take to do so. If it wishes to rage, it will; if it wishes to soothe, it will do that too.

As she hears loud voices by the large summer house behind her and a smattering of laughter, she gets ready to stand, preparing to head back, but she pauses, unable to take her eyes off the mesmerizing ripples in the water. They know her well, and despite Zuko’s quiet reassurance, the ocean will never give her the judgement she fears. It is the ocean, after all.

Aang finds her there on the pier, arms crossed and still watching the water. “Katara? Are you okay?” he asks.

“I’m doing fine,” she responds, and for the first time since Ba Sing Se, and perhaps even since before the North Pole, she is wholly and completely telling the truth.

“Zuko told me what you did. Or what you didn’t do, I guess,” Aang amends. “I’m proud of you.”

Warmth blooms in her heart for her best friend, even as she confesses, “I wanted to do it. I wanted to take out all my anger at him, but I couldn’t. I don’t know if it’s because I’m too weak to do it or because I’m strong enough not to.”

Aang puts a firm hand on her shoulder. “You did the right thing. Forgiveness is the first step you have to take to begin healing.”

Katara does stand now, still watching the water. “But I didn’t forgive him. I’ll never forgive him.” She turns, ready to head back with him, and sees Zuko lingering awkwardly at the end of the pier.

Nothing holds her back now. True fire, she understands, may not be temperate, but holds conviction and shields those who dedicate themselves to it, bringing a light and ferocity to even the darkest of paths. She knows Zuko to care, to be gentle. He is no monster.

Neither is she. Zuko has said nothing to her since the confrontation, and yet he still taught her this. From the look in his eyes the entire trip back, she can tell he’s taught himself too. Being angry does not make you a monster.

She approaches him confidently, seeing him grow confused with every step she takes. “But I am ready to forgive you,” she finishes, wrapping her arms around him and giving him a comforting squeeze. She feels him tense, shocked for a split second, before he hesitantly lets his arms rest against her back lightly.

She stays there for a few seconds - a little extra hug time won’t do him harm - before she lets him go with a soft smile, all traces of animosity removed, and they begin the trek back up the beach. This is a clean slate for both of them, and she can’t wait to see what the future holds now.

Nightmares keep them awake, as they always do.

The younger kids have long since gone to bed, but Sokka, Suki, and Zuko sit in the fine sand with the entire royal stash of summer wine, drinking and laughing.

At least, that’s how it starts. As the night waxes, they fall drowsy and drunk, succumbing to the sweetness of sleep. As the night wanes, they awaken suddenly, hearts pounding and burning away.

Tonight, Zuko’s nightmare is about Azula. She holds her hands to her own face and melts it off in thick chunks. Zuko blinks and it’s Uncle. He blinks and it’s Mother. Lu Ten. Mai. Lee. Zuko tries to get to them, to pull their hands away, but he is frozen, unable to move. They laugh manically.

Tonight, Sokka’s nightmare is about Katara. She stands in the pool of the Spirit Oasis and the koi fish circle her, sucking her down ever so slowly. Sokka blinks and it’s Aang. He blinks and it’s Toph. Suki. Zuko. Yue. He tries to get to them, to pull them out of the water, but he is frozen, unable to move. They lock eyes with him as they drown.

“Nightmares, huh?” he jokes weakly to Zuko after he jolts up in a cold sweat, eyes trained on Suki to make sure she’s still breathing as she sleeps soundly.

Zuko huffs softly, carding a hand through his already sleep-mussed hair, which is getting longer and longer by the day. “I don’t know why, but I thought they would go away once I made peace with myself.”

Sokka shrugs. “We all have old haunts and things to work through. It’s good that you’ve found a better direction in life that you’re content with, but it doesn’t mean all your problems are just gonna go away.”

“Yeah, I guess,” Zuko groans. “At least this beats the fever dreams I had in Ba Sing Se.”

“Fever dreams?” Sokka welcomes this as a distraction, fully aware of the strange and hilarious things he’s said when sick. “What were they like?”

Zuko grimaces. “I don’t remember much, but it was right after I freed Appa. According to Uncle, I was having a conflict in my spirit or something. I remember dragons, and Father, and Uncle, and…waking up with Aang’s face?”

Sokka takes a moment to process that. “Sounds weird as hell, man.”

Zuko brushes his hair out of his eyes and leans back on his hands, digging his fingers in the sand. “Yeah. It was. But at least when I woke up I felt better.”

“Last time I had a fever, I dreamt that I was an earthbender, Katara was royalty, and Appa had a great sense of humor,” Sokka muses, startling a laugh out of Zuko. “We were near the Ruins of Taku, and Katara and I both came down with sickness from a huge storm. Aang went out to find a cure, and Katara kept trying to get Momo to go get water, but obviously he didn’t understand and kept bringing back random stuff he found instead. We both woke up to find out that Aang stuffed frogs in our mouth as a cure.”

Zuko bolts upright. “I remember that!” he shouts, then ducks guiltily as Suki stirs a bit and mumbles in her sleep. “I saw you guys on Appa in the storm,” he continues quietly, “and at Pohuai Stronghold, Aang kept trying to catch a bunch of frogs that fell out of his robes. I always wondered what that was about.” He snickers. “I can’t believe that actually worked.”

“What, the stronghold or the frogs?” Sokka asks teasingly.

“Honestly, both.” Zuko launches into the tale of their ridiculous escape from the stronghold, and in return Sokka offers the story of the pentapox hoax in Omashu.

When they’re both over, they sit in silence, mesmerized by the gentle waves lapping at the shore. Finally, they settle down again, calm and cheerful, to sleep through the rest of the night. As they lie down in their sleeping bags again, Zuko pulls his hair back for the umpteenth time, and Sokka sits up.

“Here,” he says, brandishing the hair tie he keeps around his wrist. “It can’t be easy having all that in your face all the time. I have plenty, anyway.”

Zuko stares at him for a second before accepting it with a soft “Thanks,” tying his lengthening hair into the world’s shortest ponytail. A far cry from what he used to have, but that’s definitely a good thing.

Sokka lies down and falls asleep to the sound of his friends’ even breathing under the light of the quarter moon.

All of them collectively agree to never mention The Boy in the Iceberg or anything they may or may not have learned from it ever again.

(Zuko has never heard his father and sister sound so stiff. Even Azula would sneer at the poor acting and playwriting, despite her renunciation of theatre after Mother left.)

Zuko is seated on the front steps to the house with a fresh cup of jasmine tea, watching the sun tinge the sky and ocean pink, when Aang silently glides up and folds into meditation position next to him. A quick side glance at the younger boy reveals that he is clearly still haunted by the choice he has to make. Zuko does not envy his position; even Katara and Sokka, who would do what they need to to protect their loved ones, would hesitate. This very pacifist advocated for Katara to abstain just a few weeks ago, and yesterday’s reluctance to smash a melon proved just how averse to conflict Aang really is.

Zuko takes a slow sip of his tea, breathing in the flowery scent. “If there was any other way to end this, I would tell you to do it,” he rasps.

Aang’s shoulders slump slightly, but he does not open his eyes. “I know,” he responds miserably. “I know you would. And that’s the worst part. We don’t have time to find another way.”

This much, they agree on. Zuko sits with him quietly, both of them watching the horizon as the sun creeps upward. The beach is awash in golden light, silvery waves brushing up against the sand, and Zuko squints against the brightness of the sun.

Finally, he finishes the last of his tea. He sets the cup down with a light clink of the porcelain against the wooden steps and lifts his chin, letting the warmth of the sun bathe his face.

“There’s a more powerful technique that could help you end the fight earlier,” he says. “It makes your firebending stronger, using-”

“Scars,” Aang finishes glumly. “You said I shouldn’t learn it, and I didn’t get it then, but I think I do now.” He wraps his arms around his torso. “It’s…scary.”

“It is,” Zuko agrees. “I stand by what I said; you don’t have to learn it if you don’t want to. I didn’t, until” - his hand twitches up, and he forces it down before Aang can see - “I turned thirteen, but I didn’t have to.”

“Then why did you?” Now Aang does turn to him, curiously.

Zuko’s mouth twists into a bitter smile. “Because I thought I had an opportunity.”

Aang’s eyes drift to the side from their locked gaze, and suddenly he understands.

Before Aang can say anything, Zuko barrels on. “My whole life, people told me it was a bad thing. That it reminds you of terrible, traumatic memories and forces you to stew in negativity every time you use it. And they weren’t wrong.” Zuko looks down at his hands and the many, many thin white scars that lace across his pale skin, almost invisible in this light. “But they didn’t know it could be used for good sometimes, too. It’s a balance of two worlds.”

Aang reaches out and takes Zuko’s hands, turning the palms up and tracing over all the scars he can pick out as Zuko continues. “Being here with you all, training you and learning with you, has made me realize that there are a lot of things and people in my life worth protecting. That’s what these scars remind me of, now. Yes, they were traumatic, and given to me by awful people, but that’s not what they represent to me anymore.”

Zuko gently presses a finger to the thin line across the back of his right hand from when Father tried to discourage him from learning how to throw knives and draws it from one end to the other quickly, lighting a small yellow flame on the tip of his pointer. “Now it’s a reminder for me to protect the people I care about from someone who would harm them.”

Aang watches the flame solemnly as Zuko lets it gutter out on its own. “I think I get it,” he repeats. “I’m not sure I’m ready to learn that yet. But I get it.” He meets Zuko’s eyes. “It’s like when we were trying to find our source, our passion. Making the world safe for the people we care about is what guides and fuels us both.”

Zuko smiles at him, genuine and unrestrained, and Aang beams back. “Thanks for this, Sifu Hotman,” he says, eyes shining, and Zuko can’t even be annoyed when the kid looks this peaceful.

Aang still leaves in the night. Everyone is worried sick, but Zuko knows Aang will show when he needs to. The spirits - and Aang - won’t have it any other way.

“You…you can’t treat me like this!” Azula’s voice cracks desperately. “You can’t treat me like Zuko !” Her breath comes in short gasps that she tries to control. Zuko is pathetic, pitiful, and above all, an example. A reminder of what will happen to her if she fails, and here it is again, threatening to crash down on her for good.

“Azula, silence yourself.” Oh, how she has come to fear her father’s irritable tone. Not for the first time, she wonders if Zuko was actually the smart one, for leaving.

“But it was my idea to burn everything to the ground! I deserve to be by your side!” she cries, defiant. Damn it all to Koh if she won’t go out with a fight, unlike her useless brother.

“Azula!” Father snaps, and it strikes enough fear into her heart for her to shut up and duck her head. His voice softens, like he can sense her distress. “Listen to me. I need you here to watch over the homeland. It's a very important job that I can only entrust to you.”

“Really?” So Father hasn’t lost faith in me yet, Azula thinks hysterically. Yet, yet, yet.

“And for your loyalty,” he continues, “I’ve decided to declare you the new Fire Lord.”

Azula blinks, stunned. “Fire Lord Azula?” (Azula is fourteen. Young and unsure.) “It does seem appropriate, but what about you?”

“Fire Lord Ozai is no more. Just as the world will be reborn in fire, I shall be reborn as the supreme ruler of the world.” He raises his arms as the Fire Sages assemble his robes. “From this moment on, I will be known as…the Phoenix King.”

A tad dramatic, but who in this family isn’t?

Azula brushes off her robes and stands straight, hands clenched together to suppress any trembling, determined to make her father proud.

Zuko feels a panic attack coming on.

He kneels in front of his uncle’s tent, trying to force away the tunnel vision creeping up on him and breathing the way Uncle taught him years ago. He doesn’t even notice Katara coming up by his side until she speaks.

“Are you okay?”

“No, I’m not okay,” he confesses, and for maybe the first time in his life, it doesn’t scare him to say it. “My uncle hates me, I know it.” He knows Uncle will never hurt him, but his mind still conjures the memories of gentle hands white-hot against his skin.

The worst Uncle will do is get mad or be disappointed, but Zuko already knows how that feels.

Katara settles next to him and places a comforting hand on his back as he speaks. “He loved and supported me in every way he could, and I still turned against him. How can I even face him?” Shame floods Zuko even as Katara rubs slow circles on his back. He studies his hands; how many of these scars were from mistakes he made that were never forgiven? How many more will he acquire in the years to come, provided he doesn’t die tomorrow?

“Zuko, you’re sorry for what you did, right?” Her voice is steady and calm, and Zuko latches onto it.

“More sorry than I’ve been about anything in my entire life,” he says honestly.

“Then he’ll forgive you. He will.” Katara smiles genuinely at him, and her eyes narrow a bit. “But if he’s so stupid that he doesn’t, you know where to find us.”

Zuko exhales softly, amused. His heartbeat stops fluttering enough that he can take a deep breath and stand. Behind him, he hears Katara stand and leave, and he is grateful for the reprieve as he lifts the tent flap and steps inside.

Aang still doesn’t have a way. He feels like he’s about to lose everything again.

Fire Lord Zuko.

Fire Lord Zuko.

Uncle is right when he says he can’t take the throne. The nation - the world - needs a leader with clean hands who can negotiate for peace.

(Zuko’s hands are not clean, but they are cleaner than everyone else’s. The thought twists his stomach in knots, and his hands clench together to suppress any trembling, determined to make his Uncle proud.)

And suddenly, Aang has an answer.

Azula is about to have everything. So why, instead, does she feel like she is about to lose everything?

Momo stays perched on Aang’s shoulder as they watch the approaching airships sink and crash into each other. No doubt the doing of the other humans in their little group; Momo’s keen eyes can pick out tiny figures hopping from ship to ship. He hopes they’re okay, for Aang’s sake.

(Toph fed him berries when Katara wasn’t looking. He hopes she, at least, survives.)

“Momo, time for you to go,” Aang sighs. Momo chitters comfortingly; this is not a goodbye. He knows this deep in his tiny hollow bones.

He takes off, riding chaotic gusts of air to quieter pastures. He may not be strong enough to protect his loved ones, but he hopes he at least made a difference in their lives. He knows that Aang, at least, cares enough to keep him out of harm’s way.

(Oh, who is he kidding. Even Sokka, as annoying as his poor attempts to eat him were, made him cool toys on boring days. They all care.)

Mother is in her mirror and Zuko is in her courtyard and Father is in neither of these places. Of course she’s losing everything.

It starts like this:

Zuko stands in front of his sister. He says nothing.

Azula steps away from the Fire Sages. She gives a dramatic speech.

Zuko lifts a hand to his left cheek.

Azula mirrors him.

(It’s about understanding. It’s always been about understanding.)

It starts like this:

Ozai postures as a pompous tyrant. He shoots fire and aggression.

Aang pleads as a selfless reformer. He rides on air and evasion.

Ozai’s hands search for Aang’s face, and fail.

Aang’s hands search for his own back, and succeed.

(It’s about protection. It’s always been about protection.)

It goes like this:

Azula reaches for the crown.

Zuko reaches for his wrist.

Azula drops the crown.

Zuko lifts Sokka’s hair tie.

(It’s about caring. It’s always been about caring.)

It goes like this:

Ozai holds a death sentence. He wants to give it to his true enemy. He gives it to the Avatar.

Aang holds lightning. He wants to give it to the one who has hurt him most. He gives it to the sky.

(It’s about healing. It’s always been about healing.)

It ends like this:

Azula drops to her knees and screams.

Zuko drops to his knees and holds her.

Azula is exhausted. She lets him.

(It’s about choices. It’s always been about choices.)

It ends like this:

Aang hesitates in his actions. His gesture teems with meaning.

Ozai does not hesitate in his words. His sentence is hollow with emptiness.

Aang is exhausted. He takes Ozai’s pride.

(It’s about justice. It’s always been about justice.)

Zuko stands before crowds of people that cheer his name. To his right stands Princess Azula, dressed in pinks and reds, hair neatly trimmed and tied with short dark bangs framing her calm expression. To his left stands Avatar Aang, draped in traditional orange robes with a string of wooden beads around his neck, the way he was always meant to be.

Their friends cheer from the front row of onlookers, whistling and screaming and stomping as the Fire Sages fix the crown into his topknot. The weight tugs at his hair, and he resists the urge to reach up and adjust it. That can wait until he his out of sight, tucked away in his office with the mountains of paperwork he faces.

(Later, Azula will see him frowning in discomfort and pull him out into the hallway to fix it herself. Zuko would worry about the political implications, but he’s just glad she feels comfortable enough to do it. Besides, she’s probably thought about them enough on her own.)

But right now he scans the audience in front of him. Many have lost loved ones. Many will get them back in the coming months. Many have lost their lives, and many will find theirs anew. No more funeral pyres will be lit for a senseless war.

His heart is on fire, but no more ashes fall from it. They have all burned to dust, smoldering away in the golden light of the rising sun. This is home, as it was always meant to be, and he has finally found a way to love.

(It’s about peace. It’s always been about peace.)

Notes:

Some things I want to make absolutely clear:
- Zuko is under no obligation to forgive or help Azula in any way, shape, or form. Yes, she is suffering from abuse and manipulation as well. But many times she has also made the conscious choice to hurt Zuko, put him in harm's way, or push his boundaries, and that's not just forgiven by them being related or children. Zuko made the choice to reach out because he cares about her regardless, but he still acknowledges that he cannot always sacrifice himself for her sake, regardless of whether she deserves another chance or not.
- Katara and the Gaang are in the same situation. Zuko has shown clear intent to hurt them multiple times in the past, and while he may deserve a second chance for his efforts, they are not obligated to give it to him or forgive him. They're doing it because they want to recognize that he is changing and trying to be better.
- This fic is NOT meant to romanticize harm, whether through self-harm, abuse, or other means of violence. I know there is a narrative here that Zuko finds another way to use his scars for firebending that doesn't exact the same emotional toll, but it's about the processing of trauma and what it means to him, not the wound itself being anything other than harmful. I hope I've made that clear in my writing, but I wanted to reiterate it here just in case.
Anyways that's all for now! Thank you for coming on this little ride with me :) feel free to check out my tumblr @imaginealpha if you want

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