Chapter Text
“ Please father! I only had the fire nation’s best interests at heart. I’m sorry I spoke out of turn.”
The crowd watched, a room full of people had never felt more empty as they held their breath in anxious anticipation.
“You will fight for your honor.”
A father’s words turned like daggers towards his child. His voice was venom as each syllable targeted the weak points of the boy he was meant to protect. A child that was supposed to be loved.
“I meant you no disrespect. I am your loyal son.”
A boy with a heart filled with love for his people and a desire to protect those who cannot defend themselves, froze before the man he loved and respected most of all. A man he feared with every inch of his being. A man who did not deserve the honor of the title of Father.
“Rise and fight, Prince Zuko.”
A boy who prostrated himself, weak limbed and frightened, hiding tears that were turned to the floor. The crowd stood by. No one dared to save him. No one dared to defy the man who claimed to be dispensing Agni’s justice. There was no justice in this duel. There was no honor when a child was judged.
“I won’t fight you.”
The words barely slipped off quivering lips, a voice hoarse and broken from the quietly smothered sob that worked its way up the child’s throat.
“You will learn respect. And suffering will be your teacher.”
Agni’s flames flared, flickering and earnest as they judged this fight. A century of fear had stolen this land, torn this beloved nation apart and divided its people from their spirits. They claimed to stand in Agni’s light, to dispense fair and just ruling, to bear witness to courage and compassion, but the boy who had shown so much promise with a heart full of love was punished for spreading Agni’s will.
He forfeited the fight in the ring, but Agni refused to allow its child to fail the fight for his life. Intermingling its spirit with the boy’s flickering soul before the fire could fizzle out and die, he breathed new life into the child and sculpted his fire to be just and righteous. His flames would do no harm, his hands would take no lives, and his heart would grow warm once more with time.
For this was Agni’s will.
The first time it happened, Zuko dismissed it as a fever dream induced from extensive insomnia and peppered with nightmares that refused to leave him be. Maybe, in some small strange capacity, it was more of a fantasy as he found himself standing before the banners of his nation, flickering in the winds as the oppressive blanket of night was made more stifling by the humid air all around. The cool lap of the water along the port shore was the only reprieve as the breeze skirted over the foamy white crests and tickled at the faces of the passing guards.
He didn’t fully register the temperature as he found his feet moving without reason or whim. The ghostly blue fire that licked at his heels left smoldering tracks behind that flickered and died out. The gravel beneath his toes and the dark sand pressed between his heels as it was scorched into a glassy imprint. He couldn’t recall how he got there, or even how he knew where to go, but he found himself standing inside the private office of the esteemed Commander Zhao, a man who earned his title with cruelty and pride.
The ache he felt in his face grew sharper, the phantom itch of fire on skin that felt nothing anymore became clearer, cleaner to his memories. He felt the fire lick across his scalp and curl like a lover’s whispers around his ear, pinching it with its forbidden secrets.
Zhao hadn’t noticed him at first, head bowed as he worked on his correspondences, his attention deepened with a frown before his lips curled into the slightest smirk, smug and inconsequential.
Something inside of Zuko broke at that, like a ship’s anchor giving under the pull of the ocean, prying the links apart, battered and weather worn until the promise of safe harbor was ripped away. He was cast into the sea, adrift and lost as the darkness of the ocean rose up to claim him but only fire remained, burning bright and terrifying in its wake as if his fury alone could evaporate the sea and force it under his control.
The flames that encircled the room were a quiet roar that grew, drawing Zhao’s pale face to gaze upon him. His expression haunted as his eyes fell upon Zuko’s, churning and burning with the same embers given birth by the sparks of a slight against him. They roared and the flames in the room roared with them as a voice that was not quite his own spoke from the thin pale lips, and a face that was not his own stared down upon the man and delivered an icy judgement.
‘Your crimes are vast, Zhao. Your heart had turned cold as your flames waged a war across the land. You sacrifice Agni’s children for a selfish future.’
Commander Zhao’s flames were quick to shoot in his direction, but Zuko felt his body move without his knowledge or his desire, as his hand absorbed the fireball and cradled it calmly in his grasp. The fire twisted and coiled around his fingers like a playful creature greeting an old friend. It moved free of its own will, like a serpent that wound around his neck and purred with a flickering groan. It stretched, like wings extended in a catlike arch as he turned to smile at it. The smile was measured and brief as he turned his gaze upon the commander.
The fear in his eyes were dwarfed only by the self-righteous justifications he routinely fooled himself into believing and tried to persuade those around him into praising despite the raw and erring truth. They were the actions of a desperate coward who stood behind his men as they were sent forth to their inevitable deaths, convinced these orders were just, in the name of Agni’s sacred light. They bore the sun in their hearts but only felt the cold embrace of death in the end. With Agni’s flames, they were returned to the winds to sail towards the sun’s mournful smile once more.
Zuko extended his arm towards the desk that stood between them. The serpentine flames yawned and stretched, growing as it encircled his arm, coiling around the bare bicep and over the pale tight skin of his forearms until it rose upon his knuckles like a viper prepared to strike. And strike it did, slicing through the desk with a sudden overwhelming and yet precise burst of flames. Zhao jerked to his feet, but the boy was upon him. His palm, still warmed by the fiery creature’s fond presence, began to glow and radiate with a searing heat that melted through the protective breastplate and the thin fabric, evaporating it cleanly and with the same careful but determined precision as the last attack.
Zhao was helpless to defend himself as the draconid of a serpent curled around him, immobilizing his arms as the commander was forced to kneel. The weakness of his legs gave easily under the boy’s pressing touch and the heat of his palm settled over the center of his torso, marring the pale scar speckled skin, leaving a perfect handprint burnt into the flushed canvas. Zhao’s mouth hung agape, drawing wider until the skin started to split at the corners, blood trickling from cracked lips in the silent impression of a scream that would never be heard.
‘Redeem yourself or succumb to the fire that will inevitably consume you. This is Agni’s will, the will of the sun and the dragon, the will of the land and the justice it seeks.’
The prince lifted his gaze from where the burnt print was left, his eyes sharpened to find his reflection staring back at him, only it wasn’t himself he was looking at. A boy, much younger, roughly thirteen he estimated, stared back. His hair was dark and neatly tied back in a phoenix tail, and he wore an expression of indifference that accompanied the traditional garments of an Agni Kai participant. The most striking detail that frightened him was where his scar had been, raw and angry in an obscene display of his shame, was now the melted flesh and sun bleached bone of a young boy’s eye socket. A blue fire bled over it, flickering calmly as it curled across his cheek and whispered its many dark forbidden secrets into his ear like an old friend.
Zuko didn’t remember how he escaped that place, or how he returned to his ship. It felt like a fever dream, but when he woke the next day, nestled into a huddle of blankets on the Pygmy Puma , he lacked the burning heat of fever and only felt the phantom caress of fire tightening the skin around his eye. His fingers probed the scar thoughtfully before lowering his hands and inspecting the calloused palms. These were his hands, this was his scar, and as Zuko ventured to borrow Uncle Iroh’s mirror in his private quarters, he found his own face staring back at him. His head shaved neatly still with the diamond base growing into the phoenix tail.
The boy he had seen in his dreams was much smaller than himself. A fragile youth with long limbs he had yet to grow into but a strength and precision that would put even Azula to shame. He pondered on this thought for many days to follow. He considered it, dismissed it as being nothing more than a dream. A minor fantasy of wishful thinking and a hope that Zhao would be punished for his past transgressions.
Zuko didn’t feel as satisfied the next time he and the commander crossed paths, and Zhao showed no sign of having been burned in any way. He carried himself with the same confidence and haughty pride that was fitting of a commander who acts as spoiled and entitled as a child. Zuko bristled and hoped that such a fate would eventually befall such a horrible, dishonorable and disgusting man. Maybe that Agni Kai hadn’t taught him enough of a lesson. Maybe Zuko needed to take a cue from his dreams and burn his fist into the man’s chest himself.
Yeah, maybe it was just wishful thinking, but the dream was something he held onto tightly. He wasn’t certain whether it would offer him any consolation for his struggles, but the thought was enough to inspire him to never give up and to never let anyone stand in his way. If he could stand so boldly like that boy, then maybe he will see this mission to its end and find the confidence in himself to face the avatar. Maybe….someday.
It isn’t until several weeks later that Zuko notices a painting in a shrine devoted to Avatar Roku. The image of a boy who is beyond familiar draws a phantom nagging of kinship to his thoughts. He thinks back on the boy in his dreams but he wasn’t quite the same as Roku but he also wasn’t quite Zuko, in some funny way. He could maybe be mistaken for a mix between the two, but what qualities would that bear fruit of? Zuko was nothing, and were he to be compared to the avatar in such a way, it would only be an insult to a man of legend and respect.
Even Zuko wasn’t so bold as to imply he was good enough for that. No amount of training, no amount of practice and hard work would ever take him to that point, and so with bitterness in his chest and a frustrated clear of his throat, he throws the thought aside and focuses on the avatar he does know about. One who he may actually have a chance at taking and defeating, once and for all.