Prologue:
The sunset's dying colors lit the hills of the valley with a soft pink light, illuminating the boy's face clearly.
"Where are you, Mother?" whispered the boy, not quite a man. "Why did you leave me?"
The boy looked over the hills with one eye, for the other side of his face was bandaged, for he had been burned. He stood, legs apart, confidence in his posture, if not his eyes. For in his eyes, Zuko could not lie. Zuko's honey colored eyes showed the depths of his heartbreak, the true extent of his longing.
For although Zuko was considered to be an unemotional statue, it was at times like these where he dropped the façade, and was free to be himself. For inside the frigid shell of a cold commander, there lay a boy. That boy stayed locked away, but Zuko couldn't keep himself hidden forever.
"Never forget who you are…"
Those were the words that his mother had said to him before she left, left… forever.
"Never…."
A/N: Well. That wasn't too bad for a starter. I plan on this being a Zutara fic, no doubt you guessed that, and I'm sorry if Zuko is a little OC at the moment, I'll fix that. R+R peeps, it keeps me going…
PLEASE!