Someone is screaming, and Zuko can't figure out if it's coming from him or one of his companions.

Judging by the horrified looks worn by Sokka and Aang, Zuko assumes he is the one responsible for the gut-wrenching cries that are ripping the night sky to pieces.

Azula blasts another stream of fire at his burned and broken body, succeeding in drawing another shout of agony as the flames lick across his exposed torso and left arm. Zuko struggles to roll to one side, to avoid the infernoterror that is racing thirstily toward him, but only manages to get his face completely clear of the blaze before he is wrapped in a blistering anguish that sends him writhing and wailing.

He returns to himself after the initial torture sweeps up and down his body, eliciting unearthly cries as it goes. Clawing the ground with his right hand, he drags himself a few feet further, attempting to call out for help—hear their voices—from Sokka and Aang, but discovers in the time it took him to recover, they have been struck down by Azula's malice-charged flames.

Sokka lies curled in on himself, looking infinitely smaller than he does on a regular basis, where he is filled with bravado and dry humor. No evidence remains of the cocky yet fiercely loyal man Zuko has come to be good friends with. Now he is gaunt, emaciated by the wall of fire that has just consumed him. Burns still bubble and swell on his visible skin.

Aang has fallen prey to the conflagration in much the same way as he confronted it. His hands are still positioned in the telltale stance of an airbender about to deflect the enemy, still set on protecting anyone he can even into death. He jerks and shudders on the ground as the last vestiges of life leave his body. Zuko wonders why he didn't go into the Avatar state.

Suddenly Azula is upon him, and Zuko doesn't have mind space to question anything aside from how he is going to survive to fight another day. But as her blazing fist rushes very quickly to meet his disfigured facial features (not yet, he's never had the experience of a night spent with friends without a care in the world), he finds his world exploding in a rush of white-hot pain. Stars burst in front of unseeing eyes before everything goes black.

…

"Spirits, Zuko, if we even stood a chance of finding any meat, it's fled over the hills with your hollering."

Zuko awakens abruptly with a curse, flailing wildly to disentangle his deadened limbs from where he has inexplicably wound them tightly enough in his sleeping roll to ensure a cutoff of blood flow. Slamming his hand down to give himself a bit of leverage, he twists violently, succeeding only in flipping himself over on to his belly and eliciting a snicker from Aang, who comments on his "distinctive sea-slug-ness."

Irrationally aggravated by Aang's statement and more relieved than he cares to admit at the thank-Agni-alive-men, Zuko reverts back to his surly teenage days and snarls, "If some people wouldn't scare the living sh—"

Sokka flings a sock casually in Zuko's direction to stop him talking. "Calm down, Jerkbender. Aang was just observing. I mean, it's not like you're really from a family of sea-slugs. Though that wouldn't be a huge surprise if you were."

Stretching carelessly, Sokka flops back on to his bedroll and tucks his arm under his head. He never sleeps beneath a blanket on these warm summer nights; growing up in the frozen wasteland (not that Zuko would say that in front of him) he called home could do that to a guy.

Aang has pivoted to one side and is picking at some grass, weaving it between his fingers. He sends it flying upward into the clear sky toward the stars with a lazy gust of wind from his palm before he drops his hand to his side and pulls his light blanket over himself.

Zuko huffs angrily and turns on to his side, facing away from the other two. Scrunching his eyes shut (wrestling with the tears that threaten him) and pulling his knees to his chest, trying to appear like the next individual to disturb him will lose an arm at the very least, he instead garners the concerned attention of Aang.

"Was it really that bad of a nightmare?"

Zuko and Sokka both heave the same exasperated sigh.

"Aang," Sokka explains patiently, "we're twenty-two-year-old men. On a hunting trip. We don't have conversations about nightmares. We leave that to Katara and Suki and Ty Lee."

Aang laughs in his childish way. He manages to sound like a man while still maintaining his naïve belly laugh that will never be replaced. He has innocence that Zuko will never get back. "I'm eighteen. Therefore I am excluded from the generalization and subsequently allowed to ask, was it a bad nightmare, Zuko?"

Having permitted himself to briefly hope that this talk wasn't going to happen, that he could just return to his heated nightmares where long-gone challenges scorn his every move and choke him to death,Zuko deflates where he lays curled in a ball, his legs drifting away from his body. At least he isn't constricted in his bed any longer. "It wasn't great."

Zuko hears Sokka's, "No kidding" and the quick, hard punch (Aang learned well from Toph) that follows. He smiles slightly, but doesn't roll back to face them.

Aang has long since learned that it takes multiple prompts to get Zuko really talking, not collapsing in on himself. So he presses, "Who was in it?"

"The three of us." Zuko pauses. "And Azula."

"What happened?"

Zuko folds both arms under his head as he flips on to his back. "Fire. Lots of it. I think both of you died. I died too."

He doesn't dare turn and look at his companions, because he knows that he won't be able to keep down the emotions that are swirling just beneath the surface, just behind his eyes. It's burning like the fire in his dream, but this burn is almost worse, because he doesn't know how to fight this kind, doesn't know how to escape it and return to a better place.

He expects Aang to break in with another question, but Sokka is the one who speaks next. "Why does it bother you?"

Zuko can't help himself, can't stop the derisive snort from leaving him and cracking harshly through the peace of the night. "I'm dying in an inferno after watching my friends meet their end the same way. Why wouldn't that bother me?"

The words tumble out of Sokka's mouth before he has time to censor them, to consider what he's saying. "Well yeah, I guess that sucks, but Katara's killed all of us in a few dreams of mine, and I just kind of assume that if that's not how she is in real life, then I probably shouldn't worry about it."

Sokka stops breathing halfway through the sentence, so the last words are higher and less powerful. Zuko glances over at the warrior to find him slightly openmouthed, like he wants to take back his statement, but his eyes hold a defiance that suggest he's ready to defend himself too.

Jerking to a sitting position, Aang manages, "Katara…kills…people?"

Sokka gives the younger man a half-amused, half-apologetic smile. "I think you're the only one of Team Avatar who hasn't killed anyone, Aang. In real life, that is."

Falling backwards on to his mat, Aang grumbles, "A record I intend to keep." And he leaves it alone.

Zuko, however, is not satisfied with Sokka's answer and is also dead set on turning the attention away from his own nightmare. "Why do you dream about her killing us?"

Sokka laughs then, and Zuko is vaguely annoyed again before he remembers that Sokka isn't trying to offend him; Sokka is just being Sokka, and that includes laughing at things he thinks aren't worth the energy to worry about. "She's a waterbending master. She could kill any one of us any time she wanted. The same goes for all of you." He's not laughing any more. "You're all masters. You hold more power than you think."

Drawing a breath to apologize, Zuko stops midway and wonders what he's really going to say. He's not going to ask forgiveness for an ability he was born with, an ability that defines him where it used to mock him from every direction he turned. That's like apologizing for being born with two hands. He snaps his mouth shut.

Sokka grins knowingly at him. "I figure if none of you have come and taken me out yet, I haven't got anything to worry about. Besides, I like to think I could do some damage before it was lights out."

Aang is looking at his hands and seems to be trying to understand how anyone could kill another living being. Zuko wants to give a little input, but quickly recognizes that no words can convey the massive rush of adrenaline just before the fatal blast is released, nor the torrent of emotions that accompanies that action. He also wants Aang to stay childlike in that particular area.

A rock landing beside him startles Zuko. He looks up to find Sokka watching him. "You didn't answer my question. Why did your dream bother you?"

He catches the underlying message in Sokka's tone. Zuko's not getting out of this one, so he should stop trying.

"I don't know. I guess I'm just sick of seeing people die. Sick of seeing all the fire and feeling the heat. It's so real…I have a hard time separating dreams from reality sometimes." Zuko feels all the awkwardness of the situation, because he doesn't know how to verbalize the complete helplessness that he feels in his dreams, where his feet won't comply with his mind and his bending is stripped from him. He doesn't have any idea how to articulate the fact that he would be lost without these people he's identified as friends, doesn't know how he would survive another day if he was left on his own. These select individuals define him, make him a better man, tell him if his flaming fire flakes are a little too flamey. He frowns slightly at Sokka, trying to make him understand the unspoken.

Sokka has always been intuitive. He nods once in comprehension, a small dip of the chin and a crease between his eyebrows saying more than words could. "I suppose I'd get tired of watching that happen. Most of my dreams are about food eating people. I'm not too concerned."

Aang gives a short bark of laughter. "You used to be!"

Another sock ends that conversation.

They settle slowly back into their beds. The night stretches over them in all of its impressive majesty, the silence extending between interspersed cricket chirps to settle comfortingly in all the gaps left by their conversation.

Zuko can feel the tendrils of sleep slithering over his mind, wakefulness receding until it is only a myth, something to be marveled at but never understood. He hears Aang's voice break through the stupor.

"Are you okay?"

Maybe it's the skewered nighttime emotions, but this touches Zuko like few things have before. He has a sudden rush of feelings and he's not quite sure how to vocalize any of them. There is the not okay, because he just had a dream about his sister killing them all and that is the most vivid and wrecking nightmare he has had in a long time, and it has made him suddenly worried for what is to come and how he can get through any of it if he doesn't have these people by his side. But then there is the okay, which swells and flows with loving sentiment, quiet peace at the fact that he has friends and no matter what the next day brings, they will not leave him despite his shortcomings and failings, that they love him too.

He replies with, "I am."

Aang releases a sort of breath that endears him all the more to Zuko, because the noise signifies that the Air Nomad was waiting on his answer, cared to hear his answer.

They drift back into the melded world between sleep and consciousness, where the possibilities are endless and the infinite imaginings dance around the edge of their vision. Here time loses all meaning, and daytime biases and differences fade into nothingness.

"How would you choose to die?"

The softness of the question, the beginnings of the words barely enunciated, leaves no doubt in Zuko's mind that he can respond to this with confidence, that it's just another part of going to sleep, one more thing to be accomplished before rest can finally transpire.

Through the haze, he sifts through all of his memories, into the beyond and back again. He considers saying that he'd like to go down fighting, but that is the wish of his youthful body, not the meditative mind within. "I'd like to go quietly. While watching the stars."

"Why the stars?" Aang's words are punctuated with a gaping yawn.

"I want to go out after being reminded that I'm not so great in this world." Just because he's the Fire Lord doesn't make him omnipotent. He's glad he's not omnipotent.

Aang chuckles lightly, speaking quietly. "Maybe not great like super-powerful great." Another yawn. "But you're a great man, Zuko. I wouldn't be able to make the world right with anyone less than you."

His breathing evens out. Zuko opens his eyes a crack just so he can have one last glimpse of the stars, let some of his thoughts drift up and be lost amongst the fiery masses of the heavens. His heart warmed by Aang's statement, he lets his eyes slip shut as a last thought escapes his lips.

"Pretty okay."