Written up on Tumblr as a ficlet; the interesting possibilities of Zuko and Marceline's friendship give me a lot of ideas, particuarily them comparing notes on their childhoods.

...Ozai is FAR more evil than Hunson Abadeer, I will remark.

"So," Marceline asked Zuko one lazy day as the crew's ship flew aimlessly through the Astral Plane, periodically taking potshots at space pirates. "I hear your mom left when you were a kid?"

"…Yeah," Zuko said guardedly, turning so that she faced the side of his face that wasn't a mutilated horror. "There were complications. I…" He hesitated. No point in having friends if you couldn't be honest. But honesty was dangerous. Tip around the words, nudge at the truth, it would be close enough. "My family's not exactly normal."

"I know the feels," Marceline said airily. Her posture matched her tone, her body drifted off the floor and floating into midair until she was hovering right over Zuko's head. "So. I was on the phone with your buds and I heard you were raised by your dad."

"Technically I was raised by my uncle," Zuko said. "Dad-" He stopped. "I mean, Father…Father never really paid attention to me unless I upset him or he decided to instruct me directly."

Marceline frowned, perhaps at Zuko's odd phrasing, more likely at the way he winced when he corrected himself. A clump of her hair tweaked at the air for a moment. "…My mom was gone when I was a little kid too," She admitted, suddenly forthright.

Six months was a long time to spend in a ship together, them and Zim and Calvin and Hobbes and Sierra and Kamina and Scyala; a degree of fraternity was expected.

"It was just me and my dad for a while." Marceline looked evenly at Zuko, her teal-blue eyes meeting his eyes, yellow and sun-bright and scarred for life. "I was just thinking, what if we have more in common than just that? What was your dad like?"

Zuko thought for a moment.

("Get up," Father says in the distant past, as cold as the heat of the furnaces blazing all around them. "You are shaming yourself."

Zuko, barely nine years old and such an embarassment to his Firebending instructors that Father is sickened enough to take a hand to the matter himself, sits on the floor and his knees are aching where they've been struck and his hand hurts nearly as bad as all of him did when Mother vanished and no one would tell him why-

"Get up," Father demands again, voice low and silky and patience rapidly turning to dust.

'Don't make your father angry', Zuko has heard from the handmaidens that like him and the servants who are always so happy to tend to him and not Azula; they like him, favor the polite and happy prince over the bratty and horridly cold princess and rumors are spreading about the screams people hear from her quarters and the skinless animals found in the trashheaps and Zuko can't bear to lose any more pets now. The people who work under Zuko can't bear to see him hurt anymore.

"Father," Zuko whimpers, and the open furnace in front of them is a demon with it's jaws open, and the heat of the fire is maddening; it's evil and welcoming at the same time, and his heart breaks at the thought that something so good as fire could be so hateful to human flesh. "Father, I can't-!"

Father's face twists into something like digust and hate mixed, even worse when Zuko bat-squirrels back just a bit. "You will," He says gravely and grabs Zuko's burned hand by the wrist, and Zuko is too small and too weak to resist, or do anything more than a brief squalling whimper at the heat of Father's grip. "Pain is weakness leaving the body, Prince Zuko, suffering is enlightenment, and hear me now, you will learn."

Ignoring the cries of his child, Father thrusts Zuko's hand into the furnace as he has done six times this hour, hissing the lessons on absorbing the heat, and it's a long time before the scars heal or Uncle comes home and never finds out.

But Zuko does learn to dissipate fire. It's the only way he manages to keep his hand, and when Uncle does return, Zuko throws himself into his hug and cries and cries for hours, and Uncle holds him even through this shameful weakness, and Zuko begins to understand what it means to be loved-)

Zuko flexed his hand, thinking of long-gone burns that had healed a long time ago. He weighed his thoughts, thinking of what was appropiate and was not, and eventually said, "My dad wasn't very good at being a parent," he said lamely. He thought for a moment. "Come to think of it, he was kind of a jerk."

Zuko. He's a master of understatement.