Prompt: Bright
Characters: Iroh
Pairing: None
It was fire, yes—but it was also so much more.
As Iroh stood beneath the whirling flames, he finally understood something he'd never seen before. The light swirling around him was broken up into so many colors—gold, red, green, and even blue—yet somehow, he knew that if not for the vision the dragons had granted him, the light would have looked white.
Balance. That was what he was seeing in the fire—four colors for four nations. If even one of those colors had been absent, the fire would not have been nearly as bright, would have flickered out into dull mediocrity. The elements needed each other—all of the elements.
What are we doing? he wondered. The Fire Nation seeks its own glory, but look at what it is costing us—what it already has cost us.
Iroh had come here with the intention of killing the last dragon—to prove his own glory in the eyes of both his family and his nation. Now, however, he knew that he couldn't. It would be a dark victory indeed to take something this beautiful—this bright—out of the world for his personal gain.
If it gets back to anyone that I failed, someone else will come here—someone thirsting to prove that he can do what I could not. His younger brother immediately came to mind.
He was left with no choice, then. No one else must ever know.
It was a shame that such a beautiful experience had to end in a lie—but hopefully, it also meant that Iroh would not be the last to learn the true meaning of fire.
A/N: Aaaaaaand we're right back to where we started. At least Iroh wasn't wrong in his thinking.