Chapter Text
People of the Fire Nation tend to forget the true nature of the Caldera throne. The written history of the Fire Nation makes that clear. Sozin’s decrees only show the most recent of incidents.
The Fire Lord began as the leader of the Fire Sages. The Fire Lord is supposed to be the living enforcer of Agni’s will, spiritually guiding the Fire Nation and ensuring the prosperity of Agni’s people, physically and metaphysically. Agni takes vessels from the Royal bloodlines for a reason .
When Raava is reborn close to the Royal bloodlines, Agni’s Will takes a backseat to the delusions of mad men. Sozin uses Agni’s blessing to overturn the balance of the world for far more than the century that the Air Nomads cease to exist.
After all, without Air, Fire cannot blaze.
Azulon, the next of the lost Fire Lords, twists his father’s dream of simply subjugating the other nations into the brutal attacks on the Southern Water Tribe. Some say he intended to ensure the breaking of the Avatar cycle, carrying out his father’s last goal; others say he intended to bring them under Fire Nation rule.
The Northern Tribe retreats and cuts off trade and communication in response.
After all, if Water is lost, Fire loses control.
He sends his son to eliminate the last of the dragons. Iroh brings back bloodied teeth and scales, and earns his title with his strong bending. The Dragon of the West.
Iroh puts Ba Sing Se under siege for six hundred days, chipping away at the Outer Wall until he loses his son. It is that day when Agni takes a member of the royal family under his favor again.
If it takes losing family to Earth to learn the Will of Fire again, Agni will not hold grudges and simply reclaim His children.
Ozai takes what he can, picking up crumbs of power and influence from his father and brother. He does no good to Agni’s people. The least he does is tie Raava’s reborn bloodline into the Royal bloodline.
Zuko is lucky to be born. He is also born under the wings of Agni, already destined for greatness. He will bring back the spiritual nature of the Fire Nation, and carry her back to balance. Azula, born lucky, will carry Agni’s will out from the shadows, bringing light back to the darkest corners of Agni’s people.
Banishing his vessel and harming his protected will only shift Agni’s favor farther from the Caldera throne.
The braziers burn warm only when Azula sits in the Heir’s seat; even then they burn low, in anticipation of Agni’s vessel. Ozai lights them every day, but the flames burn cold and cast only shadows.
Agni takes Zuko to the last of his first children. To those who first learned to bend fire. To those who will raise his vessel properly.
Ran and Shaw are not surprised when his flames bear a child, simply curious. The child, scarred despite Agni’s flight, recoils at the sight of them, afraid for his life and theirs.
They take him to their den. He sits in a corner, confused and afraid. He does not eat that first night, suspicious of their motives. He curses at the wind, calling out to someone, anyone, to tell him what happened.
His scar forms the shape of a flame pulling away from his left eye. Agni caught him quick enough to save his vision and hearing; the superficial damage, while healed, is prominent.
When he finally collapses in the opening of the den, they pull him in, towards the warmth of their bodies, for it will not do for a vessel of their Father to waste away in the cold.
Zuko wakes to unfamiliar surroundings. He wakes to the warmth of daylight and the content rumbling of dragons. He opens his eyes to the sun shining down upon him and the dragons flying joyfully around him, falling into a dance they have known since a time before humans.
He tries to flee at first, hoping to return to the Caldera and apologize for his misdemeanor. Ran catches him as he nearly pitches himself off the lip of the cave and settles him back in the den, where he had been pulled to the center the night before. She tucks him under her wing and does not let him escape. Shaw enters later, bearing the spoils of a successful morning hunt, the carcasses of two boar-q-pines carried in his front paws.
Zuko pouts as they strip the boar-q-pines of their quills methodically. He tries to wriggle his way out of the cave, to little avail. Ran and Shaw are bound and determined to keep him there.
“Why are you doing this? Why are you keeping me here?” He finally asks after they have eaten and summarily fed him. They do not answer aloud. Why would they? Their purpose has been given, they do not need mortal tongues to know.
Shaw presses a claw to the top of Zuko’s head and shows him an impression of his time with them. Zuko sees himself appear in a whorl of flame, the flames themselves telling the dragons that he is their duty now.
“Why now? Why me ?” Shaw stops sending him visions and instead responds with the raw truth. Because you are our Father’s vessel. Because you are strong, and have been strong, but you are a mere child. It is our duty to care for you when those entrusted with it betray the principles of our Father.
Zuko, overwhelmed by the past days’ happenings, simply sits down. Everything makes less sense than before, for who would expect this?
Spirit-Touched are infamous legends across the world. Companions of the Avatar, one or two scattered into the history of nations, revolutionizing bending and sometimes nations. The problem here is that the Avatar has been gone for decades, nearly a century by now. Why would the spirits have any reason to take hosts?
The answer, of course, is that Raava hasn’t been present for decades, and the world needs to be rebalanced, with or without her influence. The imbalance leaks into the Spirit Realm, making harmless spirits malicious and aggravating those like Koh into more action.
Not that Zuko needs to know that now. Now, what he needs is care, and rest, and time. Time to learn and grow and become who he is meant to be before taking on the world.
The next few weeks fall into a routine of Zuko trying to escape and the dragons keeping him there. There is very little that Zuko cannot get into, but this he cannot get out of.
Eventually he starts to slow down his escape attempts, because while they’ve been keeping him in a cave, they haven’t been doing anything to him outside of holding him down as he tries to wriggle his way out. The beasts seem almost amused at his attempts to leave and get back to his home. They do not attack, simply letting him exhaust himself and pulling him back into the cave each and every time he tries.
They give off the same warmth that he has been looking for since he was young. The warmth he could only ever find flashes of in the capital. The kind of inner fire that promises passion, but not obsession, warmth, but not burning heat, life, and not destruction.
Perhaps he can learn to trust them.
Soon after, he meets the Sun Warriors. The descendants of a civilization that birthed the nation of his birth, who can give him a new purpose.
He gets along well enough with them, given their reverence for the old masters and his status as their ward. It is entirely unlike his time as a Prince, when people fled at the sight of him and his family.
Zuko has never had friends of his own, only Azula’s friends, and they were never especially close to him. He has never been given the chance to meet people for himself, always kept in the palace where Azula got to go to the Royal Academy for Girls.
Maybe here, he can take a chance and make new connections, with people he knows see him as a person, and not just a Prince.
Whenever he approaches the Eternal Flame, his inner fire blazes a little warmer, as if recognizing kin. He is told that It was the first fire given to humans to bend, and they have kept it burning ever since. Somehow, he knows that isn’t the whole truth.
When Agni first gave fire to humans he gave a part of himself too. The elements have always been the domain of spirits; when humans are given them to utilize, the spirits must give their elements through free will. Only then can the natural energies they preside over be used.
The murmur of flame in his chest roars brighter in the presence of the First Gift, as if to say, This is us. This is part of us and who we are, and who we are meant to be.
When he carries it to the masters who have cared for him for the first time, and sees the true power of dragons’ fire, his heart and flame rejoice in the passion of the True Masters Of Flame.
Zuko knows this in his soul, even as his body is young and untrained. He knows the passion and true peace of pure firebending, surely as if he had been taught from the day of his birth.
Who better to teach him now, than the last Children of the Sun?