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Outside the wind howls, and the lightning cracks, and the thunder breaks.
Surrounded by darkness, alone, Aang opens his eyes. He lies on his bed, and listens to the loud patter of rain on the roof. There’s another flash of light, and his room is illuminated as quickly as it descends back into darkness. It’s the monsoon season in the Fire Nation, so it’s not quite a surprise, and he’s become quite used to the sounds and smells of rain.
He sighs and turns on his side, bringing his knees to his chest and shoving the pillow over his head. He might be familiar with storms, now, but it doesn’t make it any easier to try to go back to sleep. Squeezing his eyes shut, trying to quiet the thoughts in his mind, and imagining that through this he too can calm the weather outside.
This is not the first time he tries this. It never works.
He needs to do something. He can’t stay here anymore, lying down and curled up on his bed under his sheets. Aang slides off his covers and gently places his feet on the floor. Tightens the sash on his robe and makes his way over to the door out of his room, into the hallway. He doesn’t know where he plans to go, but just needs to go somewhere . The torches on the walls burn bright, cutting through the dark. He lets himself get lost within the palace, and hopes that he’ll end up wherever he’s supposed to be.
Angry rain batters the windows as he passes by. He keeps his gaze forward.
***
Soon enough, Aang passes the threshold of the training area. He stands still, for a moment, and then walks towards the center of the room. This will do.
He begins with the stretches, and then continues on to the simple airbending katas that he’s known since birth. When he feels ready, he moves on to the elaborate, the skillful, and the intricate. All that he remembers from his teachers, friends, and people.
He thinks that it’s beautiful. He knows that he’s the last.
(A flicker of light.)
Breathe in. Feet apart, firm on the ground. Pull arms close to sides, steady and calm.
(A roar of thunder.)
Right leg lifts, bring it forward. Both arms extend out, and a stream of air surging from his palms. Breathe out.
“Impressive.” The voice echoes across the room.
Aang smiles, coming out of the kata and dropping into a bow. “Thank you, Sifu Hotman.”
Zuko smiles back, leaning against the doorway with his arms crossed, his sleeping clothes rumpled and feet bare. The skin beneath his right eye is dark. “You’re welcome, Avatar.”
It takes a moment for it to register that Zuko’s alone. Aang’s grin quickly disappears, turning into a frown. “Where’s Suki? Don’t tell me you—”
“Snuck off again? As if—She would kill me.” Zuko laughs, walking towards Aang to where he stands in the center of the area. “No. I couldn’t sleep, and I think that going on the roof is out of the question.” He reaches Aang and waves his hand towards the door. “She walked with me here, and we saw you practicing. She was okay with leaving—no one would be dumb enough to try to fight both of us.”
Aang didn’t even notice anyone was there, watching him. He wants to laugh, and say something witty in return. It’s what he would do, anyways.
But, outside the wind still screams, and the lightning still flashes, and the thunder still crashes.
You couldn’t sleep either? Aang thinks.
“The storm?” Aang says.
“Maybe. Yes.” Zuko sighs and rubs the back of his head, looking back towards the door before meeting Aang’s gaze. “Want company?”
“Sure.”
“The Avatar and the Firelord, huh?”
“It’s not like we haven’t done this before. And for real .” Aang shoots back. “How will this be a fair fight?” Without waiting for a response, Aang takes the sash off his robe and ties it around his head, covering his eyes. “There.”
“You’re insufferable.”
And then they dance.
Aang feels Zuko move towards the right, the heat passing next to him and he dodges to the left. He flips backwards and sends a gust of air outwards. As he touches the ground, he shifts forward quickly, changing into an earthbending stance (Feet spread apart, breathe in and then breathe out, fists together pushed up towards the sky) to create a wall of earth. He hears Zuko easily avoid it and jump, kicking out with both legs. Aang rolls to the side and grins.
In this darkness, his darkness, they dance. Water drums against the palace walls. The ground beneath his feet is firm and steady. The heat spreading from their attacks is warm and strong. The wind screams and shrieks.
He doesn’t know anything, really, about how it even happens. He doesn’t remember how much into the fight that it struck. All he knows, all he remembers, is that he senses an opportunity when Zuko moves within arm’s reach of him, and he doesn’t hesitate to take it.
Breathe. Feet apart. Left arm is already out, the right drawn in. Bring arms to right side, feet together. Breathe. Arms to stomach, feet back apart, and right arm extending with heat—
Fingers tightly grasp his wrist. The sudden movement of it takes Aang by surprise. With one hand, he pulls down the silk and sees the other, reaching for Zuko’s face.
The red and dead skin taut around his eye. The rough and ribbed flesh over half his forehead and cheek. The ear, oh his ear so much smaller than the other.
A face that is still, a face that is calm, and Aang wonders— how.
(In this moment, there is no rain striking the walls. There is no break of thunder, no crack of light. All Aang can see is that he could’ve hurt his friend, where he’s already been hurt before. It makes him sick.)
“Zuko—” Aang tries to say, bile rising in his throat, darkness growing in the pit of his stomach. He is trembling, and wonders how Zuko is not. “I would never hurt you on purpose,” he stammers. “Zuko. I wouldn’t, I swear.”
“I know.” Zuko says, and lets go of Aang. How? How does he know this? How could he even think this? When Aang brought his hand, fire on his palms, to Zuko’s face? Zuko’s face? Aang falls to the ground and hunches over, bringing his head down to his knees and covering his ears with his hands. He squeezes his eyes shut. Everything, anything, to drown out the storm outside.
“I am so, so sorry.”
“It’s okay. You didn’t mean it.”
“I’m so, so— Zuko, I am so—”
“Aang,” Zuko interrupts firmly, kneeling besides Aang, hand on his back, and Aang cannot help but to think how it burns. Zuko doesn’t pull away. “I’m okay. You didn’t hurt me.”
Aang shakes his head, and tries to make himself even smaller. He is remembering the leaf, the river, and her scream. The fire from his hands, the burns on hers.
And, now, the fire from his hands again, the burns on Zuko’s face.
“I’ll tell you what happened to me.” Zuko whispers. “I want to tell you what happened to me.”
Aang cannot think of how to respond. He’s barely holding back tears as it is. Doesn’t want to say to Zuko that the moment he reached out to burn him, and Zuko grabbed his wrist, he knew .
There’s only two people who could’ve done this. That when they reached out towards his face, he wouldn’t be able to grab their wrist and stop them. Only two people in the world who could get away with burning the crown prince of the fire nation and Aang thinks that he knows exactly which one.
(After all, he is wasting away in a prison cell, and Aang is the one who put him there.)
“I was thirteen, and there was a war meeting I really wanted to go to. I begged Uncle to let me in. There was a general and he had this really horrible plan. It was wrong, and I was stupid and young enough to speak out against it. You know what? Honestly, the details are kind of irrelevant. At the end of the day, my father wanted to get rid of me, and he finally found an excuse. I refused to duel him. I begged for his mercy, on my knees. I cried. I was thirteen, Aang. Thirteen! I was just a kid. I was just a kid and he burned me. In front of so many people.”
Zuko says, my father wanted to get rid of me, as if he’s made peace with the thought. Aang wants to cry.
Zuko says, just a kid , as if they’re all not anymore. Aang wants to scream.
He wants to do something, anything. He chooses to listen.
“You know, after, I asked Uncle if people cheered— because I had convinced myself that they had. I had heard it, I insisted. The shouts, the praises, the applause. But Uncle told me that there was just silence. Nobody dared to speak. It’s funny how the mind can trick you like that.”
Zuko pauses. “But, really, nobody did anything. They all sat there, and watched, and did nothing. Even Uncle. That I remembered, and I will never forget. But that’s not what I want to tell you. What I want to say is this: before my father… did It , he said that I would learn. Learn pain, and suffering, and you know what, Aang?”
Aang slowly lifts his head, meeting Zuko’s gaze. Zuko smiles softly and continues. “I did. Yes, it took me years and being sent on an impossible quest and becoming a refugee and getting exactly what I thought I wanted— but I did. I learned. And I learned so much more than he thought I would. Who my true friends and my family were. And family does not, and would not, hurt me the way that that man did.”
Faintly, a flicker of light. The sound of thunder. The wind, crying. Aang can’t stop himself, and he raises his hand to his cheeks and wipes away the wetness there.
“Why did it take you so long?” Aang whispers. “Why didn’t you just leave when he did that? Why did you want to go back? How could you still love him?”
“Because I was a thirteen year old boy, and all I wanted was to go home.”
Aang understands. He really, really does.
(He is the last.)
Aang rubs his eyes and sniffles, leaning into Zuko’s side. Zuko is warm and Aang feels so, so cold. “How come you didn’t tell any of us? Why didn’t you tell me? ” He doesn’t mean it to be angry, or forceful. It surprises him a bit when he hears the bite in his voice.
“Tell you when? There’s not really a good time to tell people that your father burned half your face off."
“I don’t know.” Aang admits. “Before the comet—”
“Why?” Zuko’s voice is quiet, but still manages to echo throughout the room. “Would that have changed your mind? Would you have killed him?”
Aang finds himself, not for the first time that night, unable to find words.
Zuko sighs.“I couldn’t do that to you. It was already wrong of me to… push you like that. You didn’t deserve it.”
Aang throws his arms around Zuko and buries his head into his shoulder. “I love you.”
Zuko’s arms circle back, and there is a crack in his voice when he replies, “I love you too, Aang.”
Outside, the storm rages on.
Inside, they are safe.
***
“The sun is going to rise soon.” A hand reaches out towards another. “Would you like some tea while we wait?”
“Yeah, I would.”
They pull each other up off the ground, and walk away.
There will always be another storm.
(There will always be another sunrise.)