Chapter Text
Prince Zuko was born on the new moon in the dead of winter. Bad sign, silently whispered scared servants. Bad sign, his mother's heart clenched. Bad sign, scoffed his grandfather, the man who ravaged the world for decades and gathered power and wealth like dragons, whom he once ordered to slay. Born without the presence of Lord Agni or even his sister, Lady Tui, prince was a weak babe without firebending spark in his eyes. His father, a cruel man hiding fierce flame in his eyes and cold chunk of ice instead of heart, was ready to kill him for this. But the absence of spark that was used to be in the eyes of all members of the royal family for many centuries wasn't the only difference between Zuko and others.
The boy's eyes were golden, a piercing bright color so intense that even the almost inhumanly light amber of royal family's eyes seemed to be dull in comparison.
For the young prince, this will be both salvation and curse.
****
One day, his mother took him and Azula in her chambers. It was late evening when she pulled them onto her bed, both heads on her laps, and started to tell a story in a low, gentle voice. Mother often told them many-many stories about the deeds of bygone days, about spirits and powerful benders, dragons and generals, life and death.
Zuko, however, felt that this time was different from the others. He heard it in the slight tension of her usually airy voice, saw it in the slight alarm of her warm amber eyes. So he laid on his mother's lap very still and listened to her with bated breath.
The mother's story told of a young noble maiden, whose beauty was unmatched.
A long time ago, before even the first Lord of Fire, a girl lived in one of the clans of Fire Nation's ancestors. She was unbelievably beautiful. Ivory skin, hair darker than a starless night, lips prettier than the petals of a fire lily. But especially enchanting were her eyes, which color was pure gold, shining as bright as the face of Agni himself. However, despite her amazing beauty, the girl had loving and humble soul, and more than anything in the world she valued her family. Her parents also treasured their daughter more than anything else. Many young men from all over the Fire Nation came to the girl's village to ask for her hand, but she refused to all of them. You see, the maiden was the only child of her elderly parents, and thus the only one who could rule their clan after their death. In those days, the Fire Nation did not yet recognize women, and if she married, she would have to leave her parents and clan. Leave everything that she loved so much behind.
(Here his mother's voice quivered strangely and Zuko suddenly felt pang of sadness that he didn’t quite understand.)
With time rumors about the incredible beauty of the girl reached the farthest places, until they attracted even spirits. One Spirit, young for the world but already powerful, followed the rumors and appeared before girl. This Spirit was incredibly proud, he demanded from girl to immediately marry him, promising that he would even make her an immortal spirit just like himself, so that they could be together for eternity. But the girl, even if frightened by the terrible appearance of the spirit, still wished to stay with her beloved parents. So she bravely refused his proposal too. She apologized before Spirit, and said that she wasn't able to see her future with anyone but her parents and her people.
It was a big mistake.
The Spirit, furious at her refusal, cursed the girl. He laughed terrifyingly, sounding like the rumble of thunder, and promised that her beautiful eyes would really see the future soon. But she won't like it. And no matter how hard she will try to change it, no one will believe her.
And so the curse fell on the beautiful girl. Her golden eyes started to now and then see not the kind faces of her elderly parents, not the respectful admiration of her people, and not the beauty of the meadows and fields around her village, but gloomy pictures of the future: the village was going to be attacked by enemies from other clans, the fields were burned and devastated, her parents died from disease and hunger, and her people got captured in slavery. But no matter how much she pleaded, how many people she warned, no one believed her. When rumors reached her ears that clans living around hers had heard of the heiress's illness, she realized that she had to do something, or all of her terrifying prophecies would come true while she will watch helplessly.
The girl begged for mercy. Day and night, she prayed to the Spirit who cursed her to allow people to believe her words. She promised him everything she had and even more. She promised him her life. As soon as those words escaped her lips, the Spirit reappeared before her. He wiped away tears pouring fron her brilliant eyes almost gently, and said that he indeed could return the power of her words to the girl and even leave her prophetic eyes so that she will be able save her people. But she insulted him and was no longer worthy to become his bride. Instead, she would have to pay for his forgiveness with her suffering. From now on, for every vision she will have to pay with pain.
Loving and kind, brave and selfless, the girl, whose golden eyes burned with courage and defiance, agreed.
The Spirit returned the faith of other people to her, left her prophetic eyes and disappeared. The girl saved her people at the cost of cruel suffering, for each vision she paid in blood. But she was strong and brave, and until the very end of her life she played the role of the guardian of her clan.
It would be a happy ending. But the Spirit, so proud and cruel, was also a liar. Even though he said that the girl wasn't worthy of him, he still desired her with all his being. He hoped that the girl would continue to beg for his help from time to time, until one day he, having played with her enough, will ask for marriage as final payback. However, the girl was able to live a honorable life without his help. And even on her deathbed, when he gave up and appeared in front of her himself, offering to return her youth and beauty and make her his wife, she just looked at him with her eyes still shining like the sun itself and refused. Burning with rage, in a fit of petty vengeance, the Spirit cursed her descendants.
From that day on, all of her descendants who had her beautiful and always so full of determination and defiant golden eyes inherited her curse as well. All of them could see the future, but only at the cost of pain and suffering. However, just like her, many of them had truly stong heart, and curse of evil Spirit had no real power over them. Some of them made themself a sword out of it, using it to protect their loved ones, some chose to seal it, refusing to use its power and entertain despicable Spirit.
The mother continued to caress their hair even after she finished her story. Her gentle fingers carried affection and comfort, but Zuko hardly felt her touch. Lost in thoughts, he felt as if he was somewhere far from. The story lied as heavy burden in his mind, he felt that his mother had told it for a reason, but he was too scared to draw conclusions. He wanted to be distracted, so he whispered, "This it's just a story, right?"
"Of course not, dum-dum. Mother is trying to prepare you for the fact that your life will be full of pain and suffering." Azula snickered.
"Azula!" their mother sighed indignantly, but for a second she was silent, as if not knowing what to say, how to refute the terrible guess of his baby sister.
Feeling the tension that was starting to build up in his body, his mother gently cuped his cheek with her soft and warm palm.
"Listen, Zuko, my brave little son. No matter how terrible our misfortunes seem, only we ourselves have power over our fate. There might be someone to try to convince you otherwise, but no matter how much they persuade, lie or torment, the final decision belongs only to us. This girl's main strength wasn't her curse or beauty. It was her brave heart."
****
Zuko remembered his mother's story for a long time. Azula teased him by promising him a terrible life full of suffering, mocking him by the fact that, unlike the girl in history, he was absolutely useless.
"Maybe if you could see the future, our father would pay attention to you." His little sister laughed and then ran away to train with their father. Ever since it became clear that the little princess has an incredible talent in firebending, they started to spend a lot of time together. She also grew to be more and more violent.
Azula had always been different from Zuko, smart and cunning, she easily got bored in company of her mother and brother, both gentle in their nature. There were times when she used to entertain herself by pranking him. Recently, however, her jokes started to be way more cruel, and her pranks frustratingly violent and painful. In eyes that used to glitter with adorable mischief, now only burned cold contempt.
Zuko was beginning to fear his sister.
****
For several days before Lu Ten's death, Zuko suffered from a feeling of inexplicable pain. Something burned in his chest, but he didn't know why. His mother was close to despairing, not knowing which disease layed it's hand on her beloved son.
Pain stopped, when Lu Ten died. And when the letter with horrific news came, there was only hollowness in his chest.
The day before his mother disappeared, he felt nothing.
****
The first time Zuko saw future was when he was ten years old, just a month after his mother disappeared.
It wasn't so much a vision as a sensation, a strong sense of pressure that something that was going to happen, almost an instinct. It happened during firebending spar with the students invited from the Royal boys' academy (invited, because Zuko wasn't a student himself. Father thought that he would only embarrass himself and royal family, and therefore Zuko only studied in palace with tutors, occasionally participating in spars with students, whose families taught them well to keep quiet about Crown Prince's pathetic bending)
Zuko was more or less close to victory (he actually frequently won when his opponent wasn't Azula. Not like his father cared about it though. Zuko was the Crown Prince, it was expected from him to not yield to anyone. And yet he still was pathetic enough to lose time from time), when his opponent - teenager couple of years older than Zuko, his peers' program way too easy to fight with him - seemed to have regained a second wind. Zuko had already defeated two students before, and even before this spent unholy amount of time practicing new katas, so he was on the verge of exhaustion when teenager began to press him. Zuko's muscles ached, he was slightly dizzy, and the sun just couldn't stop beaming right in his eyes, tired after repeating history until well into night. For one miserable second, he felt that he was going to lose.
But then something seemed to snap inside him, and Zuko just knew where his opponent would hit, felt on which leg he would put his the weight, saw what form he would use. It felt like an epiphany.
And just like this, he managed to defeat his opponent in three accurate blows, as if anticipating his actions.
Everyone: the defeated teen, Master Gonjo, and even other boys he had fought with before, gaped at this.
****
So, Zuko indeed can see the future. Mom told him and Azula not just a strange old legend, after all.
The premonition helping him repeated himself several more times - usually when he was on the verge of collapsing from exhaustion - and Master Gonjo reported the strange coincidences to his father. For the first time in a long time, he was interested in his son and ordered to make a research. Royal historians have done a long and thorough work and found rare evidence of old cases when golden-eyed people experienced visions about future.
(It's not like that really required such thorough investigations, a lot of old people who still remembered pre-war tales told to them by their own parents could tell stories about the unfortunate children of fate, whose golden eyes always predicted and maybe even attracted trouble and destruction, whose blood and tears paid for the survival of those who sought salvation from fate in their curse.)
Royal historians weren't convinced that the stories of blood and suffering as a payback for the work of the "curse" were plausible, and cautiously suggested that perhaps it will be better if Fire Lord continue to trigger son's visions in the same way as before.
Ozai doubled Zuko's lessons.
Zuko felt disgusting, he was constantly pushed to his limits, but... it worked. The foreboding never left the boy now, he was constantly on guard, knowing with some part of his subconscious just how people around him would move, where they would hit, what face they would make, what they would say.
There was also a positive side. His firebending and fighting skills in general were now improving with incredible speed. If earlier he won 7 out of 10 sparring matches, now it was 10 out of 10.
The only one he still couldn't defeat was Azula.
The young prodigy may have sensed danger in how quickly Zuko improved, in how special he became for their father after discovering his curse, because for a while their fights stopped being a game of mockery, she stopped wasting time by humiliatung him or laughing, was no longer showing off during their matches. Now she watched him with tenacious eyes, focusing entirely on victory.
After some time Zuko guessed, that while he was trying to see her future actions, Azula, with her sharp cold mind, read him. And apparently she was good enough to overcome nonsense like spiritualistic curses.
Such a surprise, yes. Wow.
After a while, she got the hang of it enough to return her taunts and mockery and subtle insults in their spars, no longer seeing him as a threat.
Father was dissapointed.
****
Ozai was busy finishing burning his son's wrists (the usual punishment for them. And not too heavy, considering that burning a firebender was harder than normal people, and their burns also healed faster and easier. Which also meant that for punishment to happen it was necessary to burn longer, but it was a detail that very few was willing to focuse on), when the boy screamed (usually he only whimpered softly) and passed out.
Ozai would have left him lying down as punishment for weakness, but something in his head clicked as he looked at his son's unconscious face. At golden irises shining fevereshly under half-closed eyelids. Prince Zuko looked like he was seeing the hell itself.
Ozai called servants.
Half an hour later, Prince Zuko regained consciousness, and in a voice shaking with sobs, spoke of the fire raging in Saito province. If asked, his history mentor would have said the prince was just too tired and simply had a nightmare about the province they were exploring this very morning, before the boy went off to practice the firebending. His physician would probably have thought the same and prescribed a sedative and rest for him. Yes, that's how it all would ended if it hadn't been for the order of the Fire Lord to report anything that prince said.
After briefly listening to about his son's "nightmare", Ozai came to visit his son personally.
Looking frightened, but at the same time timidly happy with unexpected care, the boy in details recounted his dream to his father. He told him everything about how a bandit group who called themselves Sarukami had started up in the Saito province, and how they, while robbing city's market, would accidentally set it on fire; how in dry summer weather the fire will spread throughout the city, devouring houses, fields and even forests. How hundreds of people will die a terrible death, because the most of their firebenders capable of extinguishing the fire aren't present, all gone to the war.
Ozay hummed.
Four days later, no one was sent to stop the robbery of the central market in Saito. Thouhg all firebenders of the surroundings areas were ordered to gather within it's quarter. When the fire started, they were here to put it out. The people were so happy to escape the worst, that the sixteen dead were mourned only by their families.
Nobody knew how the firebenders knew that there would be a fire. Nobody would dare to ask.
But right before all this, after his very first vision, the young prince was allowed one day of rest. He spent it in his chambers, where, refusing to talk to anyone, drink or eat, he covered himself under his sheets and blankets and cried quietly in his bed. The picture of people burning alive refused to disappear from his head, he felt really sick.
Zuko really wanted everything to stop. He wanted normal eyes. He wanted his father to look at him with love and not predatory interest. He wanted his mother to come back.
In the evening, someone slipped into his chambers. He was laying with his back to the visitor and didn't show that he wasn't sleeping, instead he opened his eyes very slightly, just enough to make out the shadow of his sister falling on the wall opposing entrance. He immediately closed his eyes and tensed, expecting another batch of mockery, this time about how pathetic Zuko was, to let a small punishment from his father and the death of some commoners brought him to the state of sobbing mess.
That didn't happen.
Azula stayed near his bed for a couple of really long minutes, her quiet and calm breath the only indicator that she was still here. She stayed and then she left, all without saying a single word.
****
When evidence that Zuko's visions were brighter, better, longer, and more accurate with pain rather than fatigue finally occured, his studying schedule changed once more.
Now, twice a week, after his exhausting studies, Prince Zuko was escorted to the little room in distant wing of the palace, where even servants couldn't overhear or find out anything. There the royal guards, handpicked by the Fire Lord himself, burned young prince's thin wrists, his forearms and ankles. The result was minor but painful burns. The very process of making them also was deeply unpleasant, it usually took a lot of time since although the prince was young and lagged far behind in abilities from his sister, father or uncle and cousin, he was still a royal firebender. His skin didn't burn easily.
At first, those burning sessions resulted in scattered, incomprehensible visions. However, gradually, Ozai figured out some kind of system by which the boy saw the future.
Focusing on certain things before inflicting pain, made it very likely that visions after it would be about those things. Make the boy think about some province for an hour, burn him, and his vision will relate to it. Show him the portrait of the battalion commander, burn him, and he will tell them if commander will survive tomorrow's battle (after puking out his guts). Show him the map of the Earth Kingdom, and he will tell you on which corner of it the enemy ambush is waiting for your troops.
The boy, so useless since his very birth, has suddenly turned into incredibly useful tool. With eyes burning with rabbitdog-like devotion, the boy swallowed his sobs and groans of pain, and talked, talked, talked.
His visions were still vague in details, limited in time and unclear in the date (the latter, however, thanks to throughout experiments was cleared out. The prince couldn't see anything further than a month), but Ozai intended to squeeze every possibilty out of such an unexpected gift of fate nonetheless.
Thus, prince's lesson schedule has been redone once again. The firebending hours had been cut to the shortest since the boy summoned his first flames. Ozai no longer cared about boy being terrible firebender. After all, now his death wasn't awaiting for him on the battlefield.
In place of firebending lessons, was put intense studies in geography, social studies (for the first time in the last 60 years, member of the Royal family studied traditions of the other nations), botany, zoology, fast deductioning - everything that could help identify places, people and time from his visions.
The young prince hadn't been feeling very well for a very long time.
****
One night he makes up his mind and burns his thigh as hard as he can.
Servants find him in the early morning, half-delirious and crying. Everyone thinks it’s because of pain. Servants and guards feel sorry for him, he can see it in their eyes. Azula's eyes are distant and cold. Father doesn't even look at him, only slightly curls his lips in contempt. Father doesn't cancel his sessions, and Zuko meekly lets guards burn him, even though his leg already throbbing in pain more than enough.
No one knows that Zuko didn't cry because of pain.
Zuko was crying, because before burning himself he was thinking about his mother, but saw nothing after.
Nothing.
****
When Uncle Iroh returned from his spiritistic journey, Zuko was happy.
It was selfish happiness, because Zuko shouldn't be overjoyed by the sight of his suddenly aged, gray-haired and absent-minded (grieving) uncle. Zuko shouldn't have felt so glad that with his return, noon visits, peaceful hours of sipping delicious tea and games of Pai Sho which he had never ever won, returned too. He shouldn't enjoy such hours, full of laziness and selfishly leaching sense of peacefulness out from his poor old uncle like some disgusting parasite.
But Zuko was a disgusting person, and an even worse prince, so he was happy.
(And when Uncle was glancing over the long sleeves that he wore in any weather, over his pale face and black circles under the eyes, over sunken cheeks of his still gentle childish face, over everything that the Crown Prince of world's greatest nation shouldn't have had, but had, and never said anything, just smiled sadly while pouring him a new cup of tea, Zuko was happy too. He was grateful for his uncle's sense of tact. He wasn't sad. He wasn't.)
****
It was two years of quiet tears into the pillow, aching small burns under his clothes, that don't have time to disappear before new ones will cover his skin, endless hours of studying and countless words, hundreds saved lives and thousands of enemies deaths, and, most importantly, a handful of his father's approving smiles, before Zuko ruined everything.
Everything.
He persuaded his uncle (now more cheerful, looking almost like himself again) to take him to the war meeting. He ignored familiar pounding migraine in his temples, ignored burning pain on his shoulders - the burns on his forearms lately started to take longer to heal than usual, and his session's guards (torturers) had to switch to new places - ignored dizziness from a sleepless night.
Zuko ignored it until he couldn't anymore.
General Anno told about his disgusting plan with a pleased grin, and, suddenly, Zuko couldn't breathe. His eyes were no longer seeing the gloomy room of war meeting, but the battlefield. A familiar, but every time still shocking picture painted with violence, blood and tears. The smell of burnt flesh and metal hit his nose, his gaze fell on the mutilated bodies, smashed by a ruthless stone into mess of blood and meat. The ground was soaked in blood and ash and vomit, and Zuko's stomach curls up tight at the sight and smell. He doesn't know where to look, he wants to close his eyes, but he can't. Never ever he could close his eyes during a vision. Finally, his terrified gaze falls on a face — young girl, Agni, she is hardly older than Zuko himself — or rather, on it's remains, her left eye pierced by a well-shot stone not bigger than Zuko's fist, her brain splashed all over her pale face, and light amber right eye looks unseeingly into the sky—
Zuko screams.
He screams in horror. He shouts at the general. He screams at the servants who gasped in shock when they looked at his scarred body, while giving him a garmet for Agni Kai.
Zuko screams, a second after his father gently cups his cheeks, because he knows — he sees what will happen next.
He chokes down, sobing, when his father's strong warm hand holds him in place by the shoulder, while the other — terribly, terrifyingly blazing hot, Agni, father, why — lies on his face.
Burning it.
Destroying it.
Branding it.
For a couple of long, infinitely long seconds, nothing but pain exists in the world, and then Zuko screams once again again.
Visions flash before him about a boy, a child, who must save the world— a girl whose eyes filled with power that Zuko never had— a young warrior who has nothing but his mind and heart, and somehow that's enough— a little girl who is bigger than mountains— a girl who painted her face with war, but still able to smile so gently it hurts— about the moon, about minds bending under the lights beneath both water and earth, about lightening cutting through the cold darkness, about flames, shining and bright, warm and great, but never bringing any pain, so different from the ones that was on his face just a second ago—
Zuko screams and screams and screams.
****
The Avatar is alive, Prince Zuko whispers, as the Fire Lord Ozai finally removes hand from his disfigured, half-melted face.
****
The Avatar is alive, Prince Zuko whispers as the royal doctors desperately treat his wound.
****
The Avatar is alive and he will come here, groans delirious and feverish from infection Prince Zuko when he gets transported from infirmary to underground cell. When sorrowful whispers about deceased crown prince starts on the streets of Fire Nation. When Fire Lord Ozai paces in front of his cell bars, waiting for his awakening, any satisfaction of depriving his too weak offspring from the title of the crown prince long gone.
****
"The Avatar is alive?" gasped Prince Zuko, when the man who put him in his sickbed bends over him, waiting for answers and geting nothing.
****
After a month of non-stop torture, it becomes clear that the vision of the Avatar won't be repeated. They didn't touch his face, fearing of the risk of face wounds getting an infection and it's spreading to his remained eye, blinding it and removing his curse. They didn’t mutilate his body too much too. Maybe out of some perverse pleasure of prolong suffering of their victim. Or perhaps they feared that after losing his limbs, he would commit suicide. Or both.
A month later, spent on healing the wounds that began to threaten his life, the torture resumed. He is no longer asked about the Avatar, only about Earth Kingdom army movements, about the loyalty of the Fire Nation nobles and peasants, about the loyalty of his uncle (Zuko didn't want to see anything even hinting at his uncle’s disloyalty, and probably this is the only mercy that spirits eved allowed him. Or Uncle Iroh really is loyal to father. This thought makes him sick. This is a very treasonous feeling.)
Then he again given a month to rest and heal.
And then another one goes full of tortures and pain.
Once a month he is allowed to spend one day and night in the upper levels of the prison of Caldera. They lock him in cells that have windows and Zuko spends the whole time plastering himself to small square of light falling through them. His inner flame eats at the sun warmth with savage hunger, panting with despair.
"Your punishment will end when I decide that you have done enough for the glory of our Nation." Father responds to his pleas for ending this, looking distant and indifferent.
Zuko was constantly cold and in pain and scared, so very scared.
After half a year spent in meditation and frightened stupor in face of even the tiniest sparks, Zuko began training again. He can't really firebend, not so far from the sun, not after his father—
He just can't do it. Yet. But he can practice kata, he thinks. And swordfighting. Even if his swords are imaginary.
It eases his mind just a tiny bit.
His inner fire that otherwise flashes constantly in anxiety becomes a little more stable too at such moments.
They noticed what he was doing at the end of the first year. His ration got cut.
He continued a month later, after getting used to diminished food and energy. This time he tries to be even quieter. He was always good at being quiet and invisible, and maybe it have been just a little bit more difficult to do it in the cell, but for a while he managed.
They noticed again nine months after. They stopped giving him his month to rest and heal. His portion is cut to the minimum necessary for survival. Memories of satiety feels like a distant dream. His whole life before Agni Kai feels like one.
At some point, Zuko realizes that he no longer wants father to forgive him. He realizes, with cold and somehow distant clarity, that it's impossible, always been. Zuko will never do enough. Zuko will never be enough.
****
He just wanted pain to stop.
****
Sometimes Zuko hurts himself. He scratched his skin, which was already always covered with bruises and burned half-healed wounds to make them even more painful, and thinks. Doing this, he thinks about the mother, her gentle face and hands; about Azula, who was left all alone with their father; thinks of his father, hoping to see the death of the man at the hands of World's spirit; thinks of Uncle, somberly crushing any flickers of hope that, maybe one day he would come to save him. Zuko thinks and thinks, and sees nothing but thick darkness.
And what does it even means, he wondered. That he can't see the future of his own family? But the girl from the legend could. Was Zuko that pathetic? So weak that even his curse doesn't work properly, useless for what he cares about the most?
Zuko never tries to see his own future. If he... if all of this pain destined to actually be endless, he will lose his mind.
****
About three years after his imprisonment (Zuko doesn't know for sure, the days have merged into an endless mud of suffering for a longer than he can remember), something changed.
Father appeared in his cell for the first time in a long while. His eyes, always so cold and full of disdain, burned with rage. He walked in front of horrified Zuko with the fluid grace of a predator preparing to tear apart his prey.
The Avatar is alive, Zuko was right.
The World's spirit lurks under the child's skin, but it was smart enough to slip out of their hands.
He is ready to forgive Zuko, give him a real chance to prove himself. An actual condition for his return to the world of the living. Salvation from all the pain.
All he needs to do is help catch the Avatar.
And Zuko knows he shouldn't do this. The Avatar is kind and noble and painfully young and he will save the world from a war that tears it apart, that tears Zuko's heart apart every single time he peeps into the future.
But then, who will save Zuko?
He just...
He's so tired.
****
They tortured him harder than ever. He wasn't allowed to sleep more than a couple of hours, constantly awakened by cold water and heavy punches, and given even less food than usual. Drugs gets poured into his water, the ones from which he screams, tearing his throat til bloody cough, shaken from nauseously realistic horrifying hallucinations and pain setting his whole body on fire, twisting his insides. They dislocated his joints, broke his fingers and wrists, burned skin, rip off the half-healed crusts on his wounds and poured them with salt water.
All for the sake of him seeing clear picture, for the sake of words that he can hear as if they were spoken to him, for the sake of dates he will name accurate to the day.
Zuko withered away in agony as predictions of incredible precision bursted from his long damaged by screeming throat along with the screams and sobbing. (Only once he did manage to restore a tiniest grain of his honor, when father taunted him with image of the burned corpse of his mother on steps of the throne, right under Ozai's feet. Zuko collected the last remnants of his will then and stayed silent. The avatar didn't get captured in the Pohuai stronghold.)
At some point, the hands of two out of the four his torturers began to tremble.
"The Avatar is desperate." His father smiled as he watched Zuko (he visited him almost every day now). "The boy doesn't have even a minute to breath."
You are doing your work quite well.
At this point, Zuko just wants to die.
****
Something in him deteriorated, collapsed, broke and rot. They tormented his flesh with all the same incessantly, relentlessly (although now already three of them have their hands shaking) cruelty, but Zuko just... can't... anything?
His remaining eye that until the very last days, despite the eternal semi-darkness of his cell, shone as if there was a ray of sunshine, trapped into precious stone of his iris, was dull now.
Zuko's visions started to be crumbly, fuzzy at the corners and essentially useless. He started seeing random things again, not just the Avatar and his companions. He sees backs bent in fear and humiliation, dying fields and burning forests and sometimes the walls of the Impenetrable City behind which something growls and rumbles ominously. He looks at his torturers and sees their aged faces, small children hands in theirs, stained with Zuko's blood, the kind smiles of their wives, slightly trembling with fear when they share hints about their work. Never mentioning Zuko, never specifying what it is that they do for their job. And Zuko is still too afraid to hate or be angry with his father, but he them he despises with all might of one who can experience feeling this dark and suffocating.
He still clung with his weak, many times broken fingers to the sleeve of one of his tormentors, the only one whose hands always remained calm and confident, never hesitating, never shaking. Whose indifferent eyes probably didn't saw Zuko as a person at all.
Zuko told the man not to let his only daughter go alone to the october Festival of Golden Leaves because that was right thing to do.
****
Zuko sealed his lips once more and the Avatar escaped Crescent Island to the North Pole and Fire Lord Ozai was enraged.
Zhao got promotion to go and wrench the Avatar out of there, since Zuko was so useless, he was told.
A month later, the moon turns red and just a moment after goes out, Zuko's eyes see nothing but black, and this is the worst thing that anyone did with him.
For a couple of long, terrifying minutes the only thing that he could feel was himself drowning, the whole Agniforsaken world drowning in cold cold water.
And then the moon returned, the Avatar destroyed their Nation's entire northern fleet, and that was Zuko's fault. Useless, blind to his own curse Zuko.
Ozai ordered his limbs to be burned off as a punishment. He probably doesn't see any use in him anymore. Zuko can understand. (Somewhere deep inside Zuko there is still a tiny part of him that wants to live. It drowns slowly in sheer relief from closeness of the end. Because he sure won't be able to survive this, not exhausted like that, right?)
The day before the execution of the order, a man whose hands have never ever trembled in his life, nervously scrawls uneven lines on a piece of parchment - a letter to the old Dragon.
****
Iroh had never experienced such happiness and fear as when he read a piece of parchment with couple of scrawled in clear haste lines, handed to him by a gray haired maid, whose face he didn't even remembered, but for whose loyalty he would thankfully pray for the rest of his life. His nephew was alive, not somewhere far far away with his cousin, not buried underground or in the sea depths, or scattered in the wind. He was alive, alive!
Iroh cried when he saw the boy: a broken doll, a near tralslucent ghost of a child that he couldn't save. That he didn't save.
He took him in his arms, as gently as he could, his heart wrenching and bleeding at the sight of tiny limp form. Was there even anything left to save? Porcelain, shattered into the smallest grains of sand, can't be glued back together with any gold. The heart of the old Dragon, tempered by countless battles, by the loss of his beloved wife and the son who was his whole world, broke when he looked at the destroyed child in his arms, the one whom he took under his wing as his own son, but didn't protect.
And then Zuko tensed in his arms, weak and weightless as a swallow-dove's feather.
He opened his good eye, which, instead of shining a radiant golden, gleams dully behind dense fog of pain and exhaustion. And despite all the suffering, despite all his betrayal and mistakes, the boy recognized Iroh.
His voice sounded scratchy and light like the rustling of sand, destroyed by unbearable agony.
"Uncle? You came... This is the best dream I can remember."
Iroh's eyes were foggy with tears and he could barely see his child's face. The face of the boy who managed to save himself long enough to wait for his useless father to come for him.
"I'm here, Zuko. I really am. This is not a dream."
"Not a dream?" the boy breathed out, sounding small and uncertain. There was confusion and fear and sadness in his voice. Iroh's heart broke once more.
"It's not. Zuko, I promise to you. That's why," he started and choked on the sob that he didn't have enough strength to trap. "That's why you shouldn't be afraid to wake up."
"But I'm so tired." Zuko whispered and Iroh could hear tears in his voice.
"I know you are. I know and I'm so very sorry." He started to cry freely at this point. His tears dropped down to his child's deathly pale face, tainting him with Iroh's shame and guilt.
Zuko closed his eyes tiredly for a second and Iroh’s heart contracted with fear that he won't ever open them again. That he will fall asleep forever, because Iroh was late, so close and still so terribly late. (Again.)
But then Zuko slowly opened his eyes, and although they had been reflecting weariness, so ancient and exhausted that even the Great Spirits would look away, ashamed, a tiny spark burned in the dull gold.
"It's okay. You came." whispered Prince Zuko, sinking closer into Iroh's embrace. "You came after me, and I won't give up without a fight."
****
Three months later, before Avatar Aang and his friends could walk to the passport lady and get their ferry tickets to the Impenetrable City, a boy stood up in front of them, his steps silent like a spirit's. There is a dual dao behind his back, a terrible scar on his face, and a fire, burning brighter than the sun itself, in his unnaturally gold eyes.
"Greetings, Avatar. I hope you believe in destiny."