Kuzon was thirteen when his Fire Lord killed his best friend. His mother told him it was for the good of the nation and that the Air Nomads were only savages, anyway. Kuzon only nodded and returned to his daily activities, which would have been happy enough apart from the haunting grey eyes of one boy who did not exist. The eyes followed him everywhere, which was frankly, a little unfair.

Kuzon was sixteen when his father announced that he was to join the army as an officer, due to some string pulling at the Court of the Fire Lord. Kuzon obeyed and trained to fight for Sozin, diligently, mechanically. He still kept his philosophy scrolls and, when he read them in the barracks late at night, remembered sitting in a garden when he was ten and discussing with a nine year old, what good, proper objective good, really meant.

Kuzon was eighteen when he first participated in an Earth Kingdom raid. The ground shifted beneath his feet, turning to liquid and he couldn't help but think, "This was never meant to happen," and he wonders what his friend would think of the nature of defensive violence, right now.

Kuzon couldn't kill the child of the mayor of Qua Lin, when he was twenty one, and so faced his death. He smiled at the little girl beside him and stroked her hand with his thumb, before looking into their executioner's eyes, which flashed grey for just a moment. When the ball of heat and rage hit his chest, Kuzon did not scream but merely let go of the girl's hand, as gently as he could, looking into an empty sky. Empty skies were always his friend's favourite and it is fitting in a way, to think they both died looking at the same thing. He lets go and smiles.

"Because," thinks an old monk who had died in a similar way, "He always was a good boy."


Author's note: I seem to be doing a lot of angst these days. Oh dear. Anyway, I wanted to write this to look at how the genocide of the air nomads might have affected people who had known them, at the time. So, whether you liked it or not, constructive criticism would be greatly welcomed. You know what to do.