Well, what can I say? I'm tired. This is really kind of completely plotless, but one of my friends and I were imagining what the Gaang would do if they weren't fighting a war, and said friend was like - "Oh, they'd totally be in a band." We then spent the next hour arguing over who would play what instrument :D So this is a series of one shots about how all of the characters started playing their respective instruments. This one's about ZUKO! WOOT! And it's written in a long, rambling, confusing style because it's midnight and I DON'T CARE.
Zuko didn't know what had happened until later. He just knew that one minute he was in a corner and his father was screaming at him and he was bleeding and where was his mother- And the next he was in a hospital bed.
White walls white ceiling white sheets white skin... "You lost a lot of blood," the social worker's voice said, the words still echoing in his brain two months later. Gentle. Caring.
She lied, just like the rest of them. She said he was going to be okay. Was he okay?
Uncle Iroh examined the dent in the car door. Zuko had been holding a rock when he whacked it. "We need to get you something else to hit, nephew."
They tried karate. The instructor told him not to come back. They tried soccer. The coach threatened to get a restraining order. Too violent, they said. Doesn't interact well with others.
Well, what did they expect?
Zuko ran out of ideas and was reduced to throwing rocks at trees in the backyard and trying to breathe like the therapist said. Anger still boiled just beneath the surface, and beneath the anger, fear and shame and sadness and every other negative emotion in existence. He cried himself to sleep and woke up screaming from nightmares an hour later.
Almost a month after being kicked off the soccer team, he came downstairs in the morning and found a drum kit in the living room.
"I thought if you were going to hit something, I might as well get some pleasant noise out of it," his uncle said when Zuko asked. "No money for a teacher, though. You'll have to figure it out yourself."
So Zuko did. Every day he'd sit down and figure out simple beats, watching videos on youtube and taking out his anger on the instrument. He wasn't entirely sure if it counted as 'pleasant noise' - in fact, he was rather certain it didn't, the way he banged away at it - but Uncle would just smile and nod every time Zuko played, so he kept at it.
He played passionately, almost violently, beating on the drums the way his father had beat him, until one day he was surprised to discover that wait a minute, he was actually good at this. And, years later, he was even more surprised to discover that he wasn't angry anymore.
He realized it when he was walking onto the stage towards the drums - new and shiny and with the band name printed across the bass drum - and hundreds of fans were screaming and Katara, Sokka, Suki, Aang, and Toph - friends from Atla Music College and now his fellow bandmembers - were grinning and waving at the audience. When he raised his drumsticks in an informal salute and grinned, he could have sworn he saw several girls faint. Looking more closely at the audience, he could see several people with fake scars and Zuko t-shirts, and he realized with a sudden jolt that the anger was gone, replaced by a much more agreeable feeling: Happiness. He lived for these moments.
And for the first time in years, his playing was not fueled by rage, or fear, or hatred. He played because he enjoyed it, and the sounds of their fans cheering and clapping and stomping their feet after his drum solo were so loud he thought he would go deaf.
And he loved it.