A/N: Remember the episode the Fortune Teller, where Katara is told she'll marry a very powerful bender? Yea, I subtly ship her and Zuko no matter what, okay? Haha.
Disclaimer: Not mine!
"What do you see?"
His mother's anxious voice surprises Zuko. He looks over at her, his large eyes watching her worriedly. He is only six years old, but Zuko is so close with his mother he knows when she is scared.
Right now, she is scared.
"Hold on a moment, your Highness," muttered an elderly man, wrinkled hands shaking as he struggles to light a candle with a small match. Zuko's mother suddenly looks at him imploringly.
"Zuko honey, can you help him out?"
Zuko stares up at her. Oh. She wants him to be a Firebender.
"I don't know how," he whispers, looking at the ground, suddenly embarrassed. He can feel his mother's gaze crumple, but seconds later she is composed again and kneeling with her hands folded royally in her lap.
The old man finally gets the candle lit. "All right, Prince Zuko…" He kneels in front of Zuko, and unrolls a strip of cloth in from of him. There are all sorts of strange things on it, Zuko realizes, his small hands itching to reach out and touch them; dried plants, stones, little animal bones, bottles with cream and perfume. What is it all, he wonders? What is this man trying to do to him?!
"Why are you here?" he asks in a grouchy princely voice, just like Azula. He tries so hard to be like Azula. "Get out of my chambers!" he commands, suddenly afraid of this old man and his odd trinkets.
"Zuko!" hisses his mother, and instantly he is abashed. He looks down, ashamed, but will not apologize.
"It is perfectly all right, your Highness," coos the old man in his cracking voice. Zuko looks up to notice that the man has a long beard. A really long beard. He stares at, fascinated, while the old man sprays some things in the air, mutters some words, holds his candle out. Finally, he looks at Zuko's little hand. He squints.
"I cannot make anything out," he whispers, and Zuko flinches when he hears his mother's little gasp for air. He looks at her, confused, but the old man puts a hand on the side of his head and directs his gaze toward him again.
"I will use the cards." He whips out a deck of card from his pocket, and Zuko watches, amazed, as the man concentrates and flips cards over, in a pattern, upside down and colorful, with numbers and names and look! That one has fire on it!
Finally, the man breathes out. The tense air in the room that Zuko doesn't even notice is gone.
"No need to worry, your Highness. He may not have shown any signs of bending yet, but the cards do not lie. He is going to be a very powerful bender."
Zuko hears a light laugh escape his mother. He feels proud that he can make her happy. He stands up, feeling strange from all the perfumes. "Mother, are you better?" he asks, running over to her and hugging her tightly. "Are you happy now?" He buries his little head into her shoulder as she strokes his dark hair and murmurs in his ear that things are perfect now, she is feeling wonderful thanks to her handsome little son.