Chapter Text
Zuko hadn’t planned on becoming a ‘supervillain’.
It had all started during exam week, where he'd spent more time studying than sleeping or eating. His uncle had told him multiple times this was bad for his health, but Zuko hadn’t been raised to care about what was good for him. The only thing he’d known and still knew at the time was the importance of results. That was why his life was in shambles, why he had been thrown away a year ago to be supervised by Iroh instead. Bad results meant bad times, and Zuko didn’t need an extra bad result in his life.
Not that he had any prospects for it. Any future plans he’d had would never be feasible now. Still, Uncle told him that good exam results meant good studies, which meant a good, peaceful life, and since that was the only thing he could hope to achieve right now, he had to do it. Perfectly. Flawlessly. By that point, he couldn’t deal with more failures.
He… may have overdone things, something that was more and more noticeable by the amount of smoke coming from his mouth. The heat was growing uncomfortable as he read through his notes for the fifth… sixth time? His whole body was getting jittery as his attention kept being dragged away by his fears of failing again, and god he did not want to fail again. He couldn’t. Trying to become a functioning member of society was the only thing that got him out of bed, if that also failed, he would truly be nothing.
When his notes started to singe, he knew he had to take care of the itch inside of him.
He grabbed his black hoodie, knowing that being too warm was better than being recognised, and locked his bedroom door before leaving Uncle’s small apartment through the window. There was scaffolding around the neighbouring building, making it the perfect place to jump on at night and run off for a few hours to blow off some steam. If Iroh knew about this, he never said. Zuko never talked about it. He didn’t want to in general, but he also didn’t want to give the old man more stress. He already had enough to deal with.
There was always a part of him that itched for action since his father disowned him, festering and anchoring itself deep within his bones, and the moment he arrived at the big vacant lot he’d spotted a few weeks ago, he made sure to take care of it. The buildings surrounding it were abandoned, and anyone spotting anything from him wouldn’t report to any type of authority since no one was supposed to be here. He took a few breaths, trying to keep them as even as possible as he watched his trembling hands. Glowing lines spread from under his sleeves to his fingertips, bringing heat begging to be let out. He cupped both of his hands together, and breathed a sigh of relief as finally, finally, a flame rose from his palms.
The action in itself already soothed him, but he needed more. He let the heat spread through every fibre of his being, felt the air warm around him as the fire in his hands grew brighter, its centre becoming whiter and whiter with each breath he took. Even though he was sweating bullets in his hoodie, it still felt good. It felt right.
People.
He closed his hands to extinguish the flame as he felt the body heat of four people behind him, slowly walking up it him. They didn’t make a lot of noise, so they were probably trying to jump him. Zuko didn’t know if them being the police or not would be worse. God, he didn’t want to deal with anyone tonight, and yet here he was, once again pushing down his need to burn because people kept bothering him.
“Hey you,” a man called from behind. “You lost or something?”
Well, that didn’t sound like an officer talking. Maybe this was a gang’s turf and he’d unknowingly walked in? Hopefully they wouldn’t take this too badly.
“Uh… yeah,” he mumbled, keeping his head lowered as he turned to face them. They looked to be in their twenties, but he couldn’t see much. “Sorry…”
The men’s eyes widened at the sight of him, with the one who first spoke letting out a long whistle. “Damn, nasty face you’ve got there.”
Even after all this time, he still hated people’s reaction to his scar. He didn’t know if being this upfront about how bad it looked was worse than the people who just stared and acted as if they didn’t. Still, the heat grew again as he felt the need to talk back, but he bit his tongue and simply lowered his gaze.
“You should leave, kid,” said another man. “Wouldn’t want you to come back home with an even worse mug, would you?”
A scowl pulled at his face, but he said nothing, simply nodding and walking away. But one of them grabbed his shoulder as he walked passed them and stopped him, making it clear that they were going to be more trouble than they were worth.
“You got a lighter?”
Zuko made sure not to look him in the eyes as he shook his head. “No.”
“Don’t lie, I saw you had some light with you. Give it to me.”
“I don’t have a lighter,” he said carefully, already feeling the heat spread through his centre and out into his limbs.
The man snickered as he grabbed Zuko by the scruff of his hoodie. “You trying to be difficult, kid?”
Zuko took hold of the man’s hand, trying to pry it off him. “Let me go, I don’t have a fucking lighter!”
The man laughed as he turned to his friends. “Look at that, guess scarface here wants to fi- AGH! ” he screamed as Zuko’s hands got as hot as a saucepan containing boiling water. This was his last warning.
Zuko ran as soon as the man let go of him, but was stopped as the first one to speak grabbed him by the arm and shoved him to the ground, slamming his face into the dirt in the process. He groaned, already knowing that his nose was broken. God, how many times had it been broken?
“Whatever the fuck you did, you’re gonna regret it,” he growled as he rolled Zuko on his back and prepared to punch him.
A crooked grin pulled at Zuko’s mouth as he felt blood roll from his nose. “You want fire?” he asked, voice getting rougher as smoke escaped through his teeth.
The man barely had time to look confused before Zuko spat the flames clawing through his throat straight into the man’s face. He fell backwards before any real damage could be done, but did start screaming as he realised that some of his hair was on fire. As he ran around, desperate to find a puddle of water, his friends stared at Zuko and took a step back.
The only one who hadn’t spoken yet took out a switchblade and held it out in front of him as Zuko got back up. “What the fuck are you?!”
He had a few responses he could choose from, none of which he wanted to disclose. Instead he glared at them while wiping his nose, feeling the pain dampen like it usually did while wondering if he should walk away or keep fighting. If he kept fighting, should he kill them or let them live? If he let them live, how much should he maim them?
Uncle would say that this wasn’t the type of reasoning a normal seventeen-year-old has in his head. Zuko wasn’t raised to reason like a normal seventeen-year-old.
He still wanted to fight. The fire inside of him really wanted to be let out.
But he was stopped from actually making a decision as more people walked into the lot, clearly wondering why one of the four men had his head plunged into a puddle. The man who was clearly the leaded asked this very question.
“It’s this kid,” the one with the switchblade answered. “He has some sort of flamethrower or something. Burned Garry’s hand and Mark’s hair instead of leaving when we told him to!”
Odd, just a few seconds ago this guy was wondering if Zuko was even human. Either he convinced himself that he’d just been seeing things, or he thought that it was too outlandish to tell his boss, or whoever the guy was.
“So you think you can attack some of my guys scot-free?” the leader asked in a collected yet threatening voice, like a very poor imitation of Father. “You know, I’m getting tired of kids like you thinking you can mess with my business and not receive any consequences.”
As he finished his sentence, one of the men behind him dragged someone up before throwing them at his feet. Their groans were muffled by a gag, and their attempts to sit up were rendered quite difficult by the zip-tie cuffing their hands behind their back. As they shuffled, half trying to get up, half trying to get away, Zuko caught a glimpse of their face and recognised him as one of his classmates.
“Alan- ugh!”
In his surprise, he had failed to notice the man behind him until he kicked him behind the knee, forcing him to the ground and keeping him there by pointing a gun at the back of his head. To that, Zuko stayed absolutely still, despite the inferno burning up his insides, like he had been trained to. He wouldn’t be able to heal from a bullet through his skull.
“Ah, you know him?” the leader asked as one of his goons grabbed Alan and sat him up, kneeling just like Zuko was. They didn’t use a gun to keep him still, just a hand placed on his shoulder. To his credit, despite his clear fear, the guy kept his trembling to a minimum. His eyes widened as he recognised Zuko. “I know him too. He owes me money that I generously lent him for family affairs, and despite having given him a way to pay me back three years ago, I’ve barely gotten my share.” A barely audible whimper came from Alan, and the man immediately kicked him in the side. “But that’s not what brought you here, is it, Lehman? No, instead of keeping up your work for me and paying your debts like you should, you decided to become a nark. Thankfully, you were stupid enough to telegraph it to us, but that still leaves the problem of you wanting to blabber. I’m sure you and your friend here can understand why this whole situation pisses me off.”
Zuko internally sighed. He’d walked in on a fucking gang execution. Great, yet another thing to add to the ‘this doesn’t happen to a normal seventeen-year-old’ list. If he weren’t already failing at being normal, he would have probably freaked out. By now, it was old news.
The gun behind him wasn’t as close to his head now. Just a bit longer to wait.
“I was just going to kill you, Lehman, get this over with and deal with being one man down, but your friend here may be your ticket for a second chance.” One of the men knelt down and cut the zip-tie holding Alan’s hands before forcing him up. The guy barely had any time to get his balance before getting a gun handed to him. “I’m giving you one chance to wipe the slate clean and prove to me that you’re worth keeping alive and around,” he said while taking off Alan’s gag. “Shoot him.”
Alan’s eyes widened further as he looked at Zuko, badly griping the gun because of how much he was trembling. Zuko could understand that, what little he knew about Alan told him that while he was a bit annoying sometimes, he wasn’t the type of guy to get into serious fights. Right now, he just stood there, gun half-raised towards Zuko, looking horrified. Zuko stared back impassively as he wondered what he would do if he were Alan. With none of his abilities, he would probably shoot the classmate in front of him and wait until these people dropped their guard before going to the police since that was what Alan had planned to do, but he didn’t want to be shot, so he hoped that Alan would refrain. A part of him was disgusted by this answer, but it had been beaten down so much throughout the years that he barely registered it.
“Well?”
Oh, right. He was about to get shot. The good news was that this theoretical question was just that. The other good news was that the gun behind him wasn’t trained on him anymore. Zuko took a deep breath, fuelling the fire inside of him ready to burst. Alan’s tearful eyes flickered from the leader to Zuko, apology clear as day as he raised the gun towards Zuko’s head.
Perfect.
Before any of them could react, Zuko threw himself straight at Alan and tackled him to the ground, making sure that he was covering his classmate with his body. At the same time, a misfired gunshot rang, inviting a familiar piercing sound to once again enter Zuko’s ears. In the few seconds he needed, there were shouts and people closing in on them. But it didn’t matter, the air around them had already heated up way more than it should be.
He barely felt the hand grabbing at his shoulder before the energy inside of him burst from his body, wild and skin-melting at his back while cool and controlled at his front. There were screams of pain, but he couldn’t hear them. All he could hear were the wonderful sounds of fire .
Finally. The itch had subsided.
Eventually, he sat up with a satisfied sigh and took in the burning grass and corpses surrounding them. Alan also sat up, though far less calmly as he tried to push himself away from Zuko, eyes trained on him with incomprehension. Again, understandable. Zuko had seen pictures of himself after these types of outbursts. He had also found them a little disturbing at first.
“What… Wh…” Alan breathed erratically with tears forming in his eyes as he looked around them before looking back at Zuko. “P-please don’t kill me…”
Zuko blinked, wondering how Alan could have imagined that he’d wanted him dead. “If I wanted to kill you, I wouldn’t have shielded you,” he said simply. Alan swallowed as he watched the smoke come out of Zuko’s mouth.
“What are…” The question died as he probably realised that it was a stupid one to ask. “I-I’m sorry I aimed at you, I… I didn’t know what to do.”
He shrugged. “Don’t worry, I get it,” he said while getting up and holding out his hand for Alan to take. His skin wasn’t glowing anymore, so it was safe now.
Alan stared at his hand before gingerly taking it and getting up. “You… You’re really not gonna…” His eyes darted from corpse to corpse, looking more and more sick as he did so.
“If you’re gonna throw up, you should do it somewhere else.”
He nodded, clearly dazed, and Zuko took it as his queue to lead his classmate away from the dying human bonfire before he left any evidence of them being here. The moment they left the lot and found a bin, Alan ran to it and vomited while Zuko stood next to him. It felt off to see this type of reaction to dead people. He hadn’t seen it in a while.
Alan still looked pretty shaken as he stood tall again, looking towards the abandoned lot’s direction before looking back at Zuko with fear still in his eyes. “I… I don’t even know what to ask…”
He shrugged. “Then don’t.”
“You… I think your clothes are burnt.”
Zuko turned his head and pulled at his hoodie, finally noticing that yes, there was a big hole singed in the back of his shirt and hoodie. He sighed in annoyance. That had been his only hoodie. Oh well, at least he had more control than when he was younger, where he would just not have clothes anymore after this type of outburst. Having no control was one of the reasons Father had gotten rid of him, and while Uncle kept telling him that he had way more control than before, those reminders still stung.
“I’m sorry you got caught up in all of this,” Alan continued, looking far more sheepish and somber than he usually was in class. “And I’m sorry I almost shot… Oh god…”
“I told you, it’s fine. Just don’t go around telling people about… this.”
Alan nodded. “Yeah, getting on the bad side of a gang is one thing, but a, uh… human flamethrower? No thanks.” Well, that sounded a little bit more like him. “I’m guessing you’re not gonna explain to me how you did that…?”
“No.”
“Figures…” Zuko couldn’t blame him for saying that, he’d basically been the classmate who sits at the back and talks to no one and looks like they’re going to kill you if you ask them for a pen. Not that he would, but he didn’t know how to deal with people, so he had to make sure no one would want to in the first place.
“Do you need help going home?” he asked.
He cleared his throat. “N-no, I’m pretty sure you nuked all of… them.” He gulped, looking at anything but Zuko. Maybe this reaction came from the manslaughter by incineration. Whatever, they were both alive, that was all that really mattered in the end.
He frowned. “That wasn’t a lot of people.”
“It’s a very small gang. Either way, I should be fine… you know, physically. That smell…” He shivered. “I’m not gonna forget that smell.”
Zuko hummed, knowing the feeling. Sometimes, it was all he could really smell himself.
He was a little surprised as Alan took off his jacket and handed it to him. “I don’t think you can equate the massive hole in your back to fashion,” he explained. “You can give it back to me tomorrow.”
He stared at the jacket, not really understanding why Alan would do this. “Okay. Thanks.”
Alan nodded back with a hesitant and forced smile. “Thank you .”
He walked away, still alive. He was also alive the next day when Zuko gave him back his jacket which he had made sure to clean thoroughly. He stayed alive until the end of Zuko’s time in school, never talking about that night again. After that, he left town, so Zuko wouldn’t know.
That night wasn’t the one he became a supervillain, but it was the night he realised he could make a difference, that he could do something with what he’d only seen as a failed experiment.
That night was, even if he didn’t realise it, the one where his life finally started again.