Note: This was written for the ATLA/LOK 2017 Pro-Bending Competition currently happening here on .

Word Count: 911

Prompts Used:

-"Main" Prompt 2: Separation

-Bonus Prompt: Green

-Bonus Prompt: Ba Sing Se

-Bonus Prompt: Use of fire (my bending element)

Bright bursts of fire spread across the night sky, sprinkling color between the web of stars surrounding the bison and his passengers. Conversation had grown quiet around them, a stark contrast with the pulsing crowds of Ba Sing Se residents cheering below.

Folding his arms atop the saddle, Zuko's eyes scanned the sea of green below as it shifted in waves with the stir of the people, their Earth Kingdom banners peppering the celebratory scene. Fire had raged across these lands for generations, charring the soil and scarring its people.

His own family had led the march to make it burn.

Time had strengthened the Earth Kingdom's spirits, just as time had forced Zuko to reevaluate his own. The last time he was in Ba Sing Se, he and his sister had stood side by side, the green crystals of the catacombs surrounding them and the opposing Team Avatar as blood-orange flame and azure lightning gleamed on the crystals' surface. They were united, linked in concert for the first time in years, desperately seeking their prize. (The death of the Avatar. The validation of their father.) Together they had been strong, destructive, devastating. Together they crushed, and they clashed.

Yet every step was out of sync when he was around Azula, catching every crack in the stone, shining light on every stumble. Theirs was a childhood of clawing competitions Zuko could never win, but life had dealt them an unexpected hand. She had crumbled to ash in blazing fury, swept from the scene to a secluded hospital where they could hold her down, smother her, extinguish that deadly blaze - and now Zuko, the failure, the disappointment, the mistake was ascending to leadership, wore the crown of the Fire Lord, would sit upon that fiery throne.

She had known it was coming; even as the agni kai raged, Zuko had seen it in his sister's amber eyes. Azula was ruthless, went for the throat, never backed down. She had had nearly killed Katara - had nearly killed him, when he jumped in the way - yet it was a sense of a loss and pity that clenched in his chest, not hatred for the terrible things she had done.

She was lost. His little sister was lost.

Zuko had been lost, once.

"Hey, Your Fieriness, the fireworks are over here now!" Sokka said, clasping Zuko's shoulder and pulling the older boy from his thoughts with a jarring shake. Sokka's arm was extended to a point in the opposite direction, and it was then that Zuko noticed he was still staring downward at the waves of green and yellow below.

"I knew that," Zuko remarked, unfolding his arms from the line of the saddle and shifting upright and around to lean with his back to the saddle. (Actively, he made every effort to inot/i think about the drop below, should Appa jolt in mid-flight and knock them backwards, spooked by an errant firework…)

Subtly, Zuko extended out an arm along the edge of the saddle, tapping his fingers and ready to grasp.

"I don't know, you guys. I think what Zuko was looking at was every bit as interesting as these fireworks of yours," Toph remarked drily, still holding fast to the section of the saddle she had rooted herself to from the moment they boarded the air bison.

"There's no way-" Sokka started, and beside him, Katara waved a hand in front of her own face in the way Toph so often did to indicate her own blindness, eyebrows lifting meaningfully. Sokka stopped short. "...Right."

A face-splitting grin cut across Toph's face.

"Wow, Sokka, look at that one!" Katara said, pointing up to a bright blue explosion above them. "It looks like an arrow."

"I don't know, Katara, I think it looks more like a fish."

As the two went back and forth in their debate, trying to pull Aang in as a reluctant mediator, Zuko pulled his knees up near his chest, feeling that subtle twinge returning. For all their bickering, Katara and Sokka made it look easy to be related. Protecting each other, relying on each other, supporting each other, endlessly mocking and riling each other up in a way that didn't result in burns or electrocution.

It was...different from what he'd known, to say the least, and the starkness of that contrast was as painful as it was uplifting. Within this group, within this ragtag team, he had witnessed the way a sibling relationship could work. To see what maybe, just maybe, he and Azula could have had under different circumstances. What maybe, just maybe, he and Azula could someday…

...She was far gone, he knew, too dangerous, too angry, too unpredictable, too manipulative to trust. There was more at stake than his own personal feelings: As Fire Lord, Zuko had to protect his nation from the suffocating and blindfolding rule of dictatorship. Alongside the Avatar, he had to help protect the world from the destructive path of single-minded selfishness in the seat of power. They had to rise from these ashes, become something newer and stronger and more beautiful.

His sister, too, was smothered in ash, burning from a childhood that set her up for ruin. Though he had swept away the dust covering his own heart, the burns looked him in the mirror every day, and in that, he and his little sister were not so far apart.