"Many things that seem threatening in the dark become welcoming when we shine a light on them."

—Iroh

The first time I saw Ozai firebend, it was to bully another person.

To mortify.

To terrorize.

That summer, Azulon forbade me from going to Ember Island. He claimed I had too many "duties to attend to." Despite Ursa's initial protests, I convinced her to go with her family through much prodding and insisting. Because of my thirteenth birthday, she returned a month early, seeking to surprise me while I was the one to stun her.

For once, the prince wasn't in his palace. He wasn't in the villa. He was wandering the streets of Caldera City, leaving his crown at home. He never told me why. Perhaps he sought a friend. Perhaps he expected to see a performance; he rarely visite the city but to attend the Fire Days Festival.

He was probably just bored, looking for something to do. I was the only playmate of the restless boy who escaped his tutors and guards with ease.

None of his family members were there to distract him. Fire Lord Azulon was, well, being the Fire Lord. Princess Lu Sen was accompanying her husband—then General Iroh—on his latest campaign, but he would've avoided her even if she had been there. Playing with her inevitably meant exhausting her, which inevitably meant a fierce reprimand from her protective, lecturing Iroh. Ozai resented his sister-in-law because of this and because she detracted attention from himself. If it was anyone else, I would've scorned such petty jealousy, but Ozai I understood. He saw Iroh so rarely and, though he'd never confess to it, admired him so highly. Every moment spent with his brotherwasprecious—even adored—but not when the crown prince was so enraptured with Sen he didn't hear a word his brother said. They'd been married since I was nine, but their love for one another increased with each passing day.

So Ozai meandered alone. And somewhere along the way, he stumbled upon a boy being mocked by three of his "betters." A servant for one of the noble families, the confused nonbender struggled to ignore the others' taunts. In his hury to escape and finish his errand, he ran straight into the prince's chest.

He acted out, annoyed by the peasant's stuttering apology and egged on by the boys cries of "Insolence! Dishonor! Are you gonna let him get away with that?"And I found Ozai—my Ozai—shooting flames at a boy in an alley way, cheered on by stuck-up tyrants.

At a nonbender like me.

At a boy my age.

At a boy who did NOT deserve to shove his own face into a garbage-filled gutter just to prevent his back from being singed.

I was too horrified to speak for a few seconds. I could only listen to the other boys laugh and taunt, encouraging the ridicule. I could only watch as an unrecognizable expression tugged at my best friend's lips.

It was far from the first time I saw Ozai smirk. He'd mastered the infuriating-yet-gorgeous, almost unnoticeable lip curl by age seven. It wasn't a half-smirk. It was barely even a fourth-of-a-smirk, but it had always managed to light up his golden eyes even more, and that was all that mattered to me. This new smirk however, disturbed me.

The old one had been cocky, as it always would be, but it wasn't half so conceited as the new. It had never been enterprising or manipulative. It delighted in knowledge and reassurance but not in someone's pain. It had made those gold orbs bright and warm—not fierce or scorching. It had revealed his happiness. His sensitivity and soul.

This new fourth-smirk revealed only darkness.

It turned the fire in his eyes into something vicious and cruel. Something savage and burning cold. Something with more scorn and contempt than I knew possible for anyone, least of all my Ozai.

"Bully," a faint voice seemed to whisper, but it couldn't be real. It had to be a twisted memory. Her voice could never be so... broken. So horrified. So disappointed in, ashamed of, and... repelled by—

"OZAI, STOP!" Ursa screamed, extinguishing all the fire I had in an instant.

I turned around to have my heart pierced by her gaze. I could feel my chest rip apart and bleed.

Repelled by me. She was repelled... by me. Her glare was more than an accusation. It was a conviction. It was a sentence.

It was condemnation.

"LOOK at him, Ozai," she ordered so I did.

And for once, I didn't see what my tutors would have—what my father would have. I didn't see weakness in the peasant's wide, teary eyes. I saw his pain, his fear and confusion...

And I felt it.

I empathized with a nonbending peasant.

Iroh never knew his brother to regret anything, but I knew. And I knew he never regretted anything so immediately as he did that day.

Ozai responded in the only way he knew how. Princes of the Fire Nation did not apologize. They did not regret. Their words—their wills—were final. They never admitted their mistakes. They stood by their actions and accepted the consequences.

I glared right back, fists clenched, and began to defend myself.

"He—!"

"Is a human being," she replied as though we did not grow up in a world torn by war.

While others looked into those golden orbs and saw anger, I saw sadness. While they saw cruelty and hatred, I saw desperation. Insecurity. Loneliness.

I saw crippling fear.

Not fear of punishment. Not fear of pain or failure. Not even fear of abandonment really.

Fear of himself.

Fear of what he could do to others.

Fear of who—of what he could become.

One of the other boys, foolishly, addressed her.

"Listen, girl—"

Indignation vaporized all her shyness, and it took one lethal, infamous look from her to make all three nobles gulp and flee to save their own skins, assuming the intensity of her amber flames would beget real ones.

I couldn't blame them. I assumed the same thing.

As they bolted, I rushed to the servant boy, helping him to stand and wipe off the gutter grime. Save for some scratches, he was unharmed. Still confused and afraid, his babbling repeatedly alternated from apologizes to thanks and back again. My smile silenced him, and I turned to face his tormentor.

I stood there like the fool I was, dumbfounded as to what to do, feeling almost...

"Oh," she mocked in bitterness, holding the boy's hand. "Happy birthday, your highness."

He visibly winced.

Sending the boy on his way, Ursa stormed off towards her family home, fuming more than ever before. Despite my anticipation of steam blowing out of her ears, I chased after her and opened my stupid mouth yet again.

He wouldn't get out one syllable.

"Have you no honor?" I asked without it being a question, undoubtedly sounding like a righteously angered Iroh. "He is unarmed, untrained... powerless! He is Fire Nation. One o your own people! He is your subject, whom you are bound to protect. You are his prince."

Coming to halt, she spun on me to glower more properly, leaning forward with hands on her hips.

Ursa had always been tall for her age and, for most of our childhood, came to about my height. Give or take an inch. For the first time, my eye-line was at least two inches higher than hers, yet she'd never seemed taller. She'd never seemed more my equal—or more my superior.

Yet there was a great pain in her blazing gems. There was a crushing sorrow that asked, "How can you be so cruel? You? My prince. My Ozai."

"I know. Ursa, I'm..." he trailed off, unable to say it.

I blinked as I realized he'd never said it. In the seven years I'd known him, Ozai never once apologized. His eyes had. Our eyes always said what we could not. Whenever he really irked or upset me, the prince's eyes apologized so deeply I never noticed his mouth hadn't.

"Say it," I demanded, more out of awe than anger.

He bit his lip and clenched his fists, refusing to meet my gaze, everything in him fighting against the words.

His hesitation made me storm off again.

"Ursa, wait!" I cried, and she did, refusing to turn around.

I took a deep breath before walking up to her and letting everything else fade away. For a few moments, I let go of my pride, of my pain, of my bitterness and insecurity, of my need for power and certainty.

"I was wrong," he surprised me with another confession he'd never made.

When I spun around to express that surprise, I was so shocked that my already raised eyebrows shot up past my hairline and into the sky.

My prince—my proud, arrogant prince—bowed before me with enough humility to make General Iroh blush.

"I'm sorry. Please forgive me."

Did he just say please? He never says that unless I make him.

After several minutes of stunned silence, I managed to stop blinking and reply.

"I'm not the one you should be asking..." I trailed off as he tried to avoid my gaze, blinking rapidly, almost as if he was fighting back—

"I would ask him, but I don't know where..." Ozai looked up with tears shining in his golden eyes. "Please forgive me, Ursa. I know I'm a monster—"

"You are NOT a monster," she insisted, defending me with just as much force as she had defended the peasant boy.

I knelt down to his level and gave the stiff prince a squeezing hug. Just as he began to melt into the embrace, I broke it.

"You can be a jerk sometimes though," she confessed, only half-joking.

Mischief sparked in her amber eyes, and my heart soared to feel their warmth again. I should've been wary, but I was too—

"You're it!" she cried, punching my arm and running for it, laughing as I growled and raced after her.

It would be the last game we ever played as children, and the last game Ursa would ever play while she still had a mother.