Chapter 1:
He can smell the smoke before he even notices the auburn glow, shimmering outside the window of his bed chamber. The blood red drapes billowed in the evening breeze, as he peers his head through the window frame for a better look.
"Zu Zu..." Azula whimpers, confusion and fear swimming in her yellow eyes. She's holding a decrepit looking doll close to her chest as she steps toward the window, her wobbly, toddler legs carrying her only a short distance at a time.
"Zu Zu," she repeats. Zuko opens his mouth to snap at her to get back, when the large cedar door crashes open. Azula screams. Zuko has more sense than that. He sees their mother, still in her night dress, as she comes barreling toward the two of them. She bends down and scoops Azula up into her arms before using her free hand to grasp Zuko's wrist. Pulling him through the corridors, she stays silent. The tightness and urgency in her motions makes him uneasy. But he mustn't panic. He wasn't a baby.
"Mother, what's going on?" His voice shakes, betraying any hope of sounding brave in front of his little sister. Ursa's eyes stay fixed on their destination; some far off place that Zuko couldn't see.
"Be still Azula," She chastises the squirming child in her arms, without bothering to address Zuko's curiosity. He can't help but roll his eyes as he is dragged through the halls. Even in the supposed urgency of the situation, it would have been nice to have been heard.
His mother pulls them past several open windows and each time, Zuko drags his heels to catch a glimpse of what was happening in the courtyard below. Shouts of terror filled the hazy air, sending chills up Zuko's spine. The rush of flames had a particularly vivid sound in his ears. It was distinguishable underneath the screams of the servants that scattered through the palace.
"Mother," he raises his voice over the commotion. Her eyes flicker to him for a moment before returning to their original position on no where in particular.
"Zuko, please," she speaks in a calming voice; the same voice she used when she read him to sleep, or told him not to fight with his sister. "Everything is fine." Short, precise words that meant nothing to him, had they been spoken by anyone else, but for some reason he believes her, and only her.
They weren't in any part of the palace that Zuko has ever remembered seeing before, as they make their way down a flight of marble stairs into a dimly lit chamber. Something was dripping from the ceiling that Zuko had no intention of examining.
"Mama!" Azula is crying now, her silhouette, wriggling against their mother's as she fights to be free, desperately trying to stand on her own. Ursa knows when to give up. She stops, placing the whiney child on the floor beside her, but all Azula does is cling to her leg.
"Can't you tell me what's going on?" Zuko hadn't meant for the words to be so harsh sounding, but why shouldn't he know? He was prince after all! And wasn't it a princes job to have everything under control? How, he wonders, could he manage that when there was no way of knowing what needed to be controlled?
The fire lady strokes Azula's hair until her eyes find Zuko's. They shimmer in the dull light that bounces off the walls of the unfamiliar chamber.
"The villagers down the road have made it clear that they aren't happy living like..." She hesitates, fishing for the right word.
"Peasants?" Zuko offers her his own, but she only shakes her head.
"They're taking it out on your father's men, hoping it'll change something."
"Do they really expect to win?" It was more of a jeer than an actual question.
"I don't think it's about winning," his mother sighs, absentmindedly playing with Azula's hair again. A loud crash from somewhere above them makes Zuko jump.
"Then what do they want?" He prods. "What's better than winning?" Ursa frowns slightly, her eyes shrouded in something Zuko can't quite understand.
"Equality."
It isn't but five seconds later that a cloud of fire and rubble come bursting down the steps, the flames lighting up the dark chamber. Azula's shrill screech nearly deafens Zuko. The heat sends him stumbling backwards, disoriented. Everything was fuzzy and it all blurred together. There are people on the steps, pouring into the room as it comes alive with motion. His face stings almost suddenly as a feeling of blindness grips him. Someone shouts his name but the pain from what must have been a rock hitting his face keeps him from calling out in response.
"Mother!" Zuko gasps, jerking upright in his bed, a cold sweat gripping his body. Everything around him is familiar. The deep maroon curtains that fell around his bed, the sand colored walls, the blood red drapes across the way that danced around the window. Nothing is wrong. He smells no smoke.
Everything is fine.
Zuko is more angry at the inconvenience of his fractured sleep than the dream itself. He has had the dream several times in the past, a reenactment of a nightmarish childhood memory that no longer frightens him, and yet his subconscious revisited it often enough to call it a nightmare. His fingers caress the the tender skin around his right eye. It no longer stung like it used to. The pain was gone but the flames had left a permanent scorch mark as a remembrance of that night nearly twelve years before. He groans. The sun hadn't risen yet, but thanks to his dream, Zuko can't picture himself falling back asleep.
Kicking his sheets to the end of his bed, Zuko throws his legs over the side of the mattress in defeat. A walk is what he needs, or at least that's what he tries to convince himself as he stumbles, barefoot across the stone floor and out into the corridor.
There hadn't been gaurds by his door for almost six years. When he turned twelve, he learned to control his night terrors to the point where he could stay silent through the whole ordeal. Rather than shout, Zuko sweat out his panic. It was uncomfortable, but he had never been bothered by heat after he was scarred.
The large windows that line the hall had all been shut by the servant women when he had gone to bed no doubt. They always complained about the chill brought into the palace by windows left open overnight. Each one Zuko passes, he pushes out, letting a cool summer breeze brush across his bare chest. Through the glass, he can see the palace wall; the large, concentrate structure that wrapped around the palace, the courtyard and the gardens surrounding the royal grounds. The wall that had been built just a short time after the villagers paid their little visit. A cynical smirk finds its way on Zuko's lips.
The rebels are all dead now. My father made sure of that a long time ago.
The Finishings. He can remember them pretty vividly. He had attended a few before his mother found out and forbade him from going on any more. It had been a heated debate between she and his father but in the end, Ursa had gotten her way. Zuko didn't care about it much anyway. He never wanted to burn down houses or kill the rebels in front of their families. He just wanted to prove to his father that he could. Because after all, what kind of a prince would want to say that they'd never killed a man before?
Zuko lets his mind wander as he does so himself trough the dark, twisting hallways. He catches his reflection in the foggy glass of a window he was opening and grimaces in disgust. Part of him wished that the rebels were still alive. He wanted to see them try to hurt him now, try to leave another scar where the pale skin by his left eye was a blank canvas.
At least then, he'd be symmetrical.
Author's Notes:
WOO! Finally! I wrote a tidbit of this fic on Zutara week this past year and I've been wanting to add to it for a while now. So here you go!
I'm hoping that angsty Zuko is a good angle here xD