I don't own any of the characters in this drabble below. But oh how I wish I did.

Light in the Dark

The dark of night was still deep with the stars and moon visible; around him, they slept, curled into their bedrolls. They were still braced against the chill, and he was too. But past a certain point in the night, when it had reached its darkest and coldest, he could feel the shaky, slow drag of the sun from far below the horizon and the shift in temperatures, even by a few faint degrees. The slightly less brittle breeze woke him up and while the others burrowed deeper within themselves, it brought a faint smile to his mouth. He sat up, the night humming its normal sounds around them. No wonder they shivered, the fire was low. There was no rustle of fabric as the blanket was pushed aside; suddenly, he was crouching by the pit, where the fire welcomed him. He placed a palm up, and the small flames bent closer to him, harmlessly licking against his skin. When he curved his hand, some of the fire separated from the larger and leapt into the bowl he had created. He brought it closer to his face, letting it singe the fine hairs on his unscarred cheek. It hadn't always been this way – he had been so scared as a child of fire. While Azula ran towards it, always wanting to experiment, always pushing her control of it ("How high and wide do you think I can keep it, brother?" and laughing as he cringed from her), he had avoided it. Standing near it made his skin feel crackled and the warmth was too focused. Later, he learned to control the panic welling up inside of him, to feign indifference, even bury the light in his eyes. But that was after his mother disappeared, taking away with her useless sentimentalities like patience, gentility, and kindness; after Ozai had witnessed Azula mercilessly chasing him with a flame in her hand. As much as he hated the way Azula taunted him, it was nothing compared to the way his own father exploited his faults. So he had learned, very quickly, it was better to bottle his weakness.

Though Ursa's bloodline was high, she possessed no firebending abilities; and it was assumed that since her son resembled her in every other way, so it was with Zuko. He hadn't recognized the signs – no one had told him, after all – the way his temperature erratically spiked, the bloated feeling which seemed to uncoil from his gut and the taste of smoke in his mouth. The way he woke to find his clothes and bedsheets singed. With his mother gone, the palace suddenly seemed much too small – behind every corner he came to expect his father or sister lying in wait for him. She'd pushed him too far, a month after Ursa's unexplained absence. He had been in the garden – at that point, he still wrote letters with the naïve hope that his mother had just abandoned him, and if he plead enough, she would come back. Azula had found him there, and even though he was older, she was faster, stronger. She'd laughed at his tearing up after she forced him to watch her burn his letters – all of them – in her hands. "Deal with it, brother, Mommy's gone. You're all by yourself now." He blinked, humiliated at the hot tears which spilled from the corner of his eyes; just one more thing she would hold against him.

When he heard her tinkling laughter, something inside of him boiled over. "I... I hate you!", he shouted at her, involuntarily raising his palms out. In the moments where the heat pooled underneath his skin and released itself out in the form of flame towards Azula, a strong emotion passed through him, almost akin to joy, shaking him to the core. The fire was a stream, and the stream ran in parallel lines; but Azula had already started her training and she shifted enough that they passed her, singeing just a wisp of her bangs on either side of her head. Zuko stared at his hands, their palms now facing him. He wanted nothing more than to saw them away from him, and fling them into the ocean, to be consumed by the first group of hungry fish which happened by. Instead, however, he ran. He ran and hid in his room and knew that the part of him which had been nurtured by Ursa had been burned and he wondered how much of that innocence remained intact.

Of course Azula told Ozai. It was the first time Ozai had ever looked at him with any sort of pride. "Maybe you'll make something of yourself after all", was all he said, when Zuko was summoned before him. Protesting was useless and within a day, he was assigned a Firebending Master, two years behind Azula in training. He should have been tutored by one of the Aunts, but Azula had had a temper tantrum and Ozai, as always, indulged his favorite child. Instead, he was passed from one instructor to the next; and because he hated this ability which resided in himself, he was a difficult student. To the outside world, he was still the Fire Nation Prince, heir presumptive. But in three years which followed, he had managed to go through five masters. That was when Ozai finally called in his brother. Iroh, who had been living outside of the palace ("squandering his life studying plants and playing pai sho") since Lu Ten's death. Though he remembered feeling fondness towards this uncle, it didn't stop Zuko from setting the antique silk curtains which hung in the room on fire during their first meeting. He had finally embraced the fire which he had been so averse to for so long. Iroh, however, was not deterred and did not give up, despite the infamous reputation Zuko had now built amongst the teaching community. After three months, he had started to maintain some control over his pupil nephew, had started to make him see that firebending was as much a gift as it was a curse. Who knew, Zuko often wondered, what would have happened if Iroh had been his Master for a little bit longer. Would he have ended up speaking out of turn in that war meeting on that fateful day? Would he have been banished, with a visible scar to mark him?

He poured the fire in his hand back into the pit – it slide like water – and then added more fuel to intensify its flames. The night was still dark and cold and deep; he concentrated again and the heat swirled higher, pushing outward. His companions – so strange to call them that, even now – slumbered on, but he watched as they unconsciously unfurled themselves. Aang, who slept buried in a pile of blankets, his blue arrow gleaming against the reflection of firelight; Katara and her mess of dark curls; Sokka, slackjawed and clutching his boomerang; Toph, whose sightless eyes moved rapidly underneath shuttered lids. Since he joined this ragtag army of rebels, he frequently awoke in the middle of the night – so still and dark and deep, waiting and watching over them, feeling the gradual progression of dark to light, of warmth, of dreams, of certainty, and awed by the faint flickers of hope shuddering within his chest.