The night after Zuko's mother disappeared, a dragon broke his bedroom window. Zuko sat up, startled into awakeness by the crash. He lit a small flame in his hand and used it to look around his bedroom. A dragon's head was sticking through his window, the splintered wooden shutters sticking out around it. Zuko was startled speechless.
The dragon was dark blue, long and sinuous. A ridge of white spikes ran down its back, and powerful wings branched out from its shoulders. It clutched the splintered window frame with its claws.
"Hello," Zuko whispered. There were still tear tracks under his eyes from when he had cried himself to sleep, missing his mother. The dragon snorted, breathing deeply to smell him. Zuko could feel the force of its inhale ruffling his hair.
Zuko extinguished the flame in his hand. The moonlight coming through the window was bright enough to see by.
"Are you real?" he asked softly. The dragons were all dead; everyone knew that. Uncle Iroh had killed the last one. The dragon snorted again and wiggled, trying to squeeze more of its body into Zuko's room. Zuko didn't move. He had been scared at first, when he had first heard the crash, but now that he saw the dragon he knew that it was just a dream, because dragons weren't real anymore. He didn't mind dreaming about dragons. It was better than the other dreams he'd been having.
"Can you understand me?" he asked.
The dragon nodded its head. Its head was now almost completely in the room, and its claws were visible gripping the edges of the window frame. The dragon pulled at the wood with its claws. The wood creaked and groaned, and the dragon wiggled a little further still into the room. It snorted at Zuko, and pulled its head back in a "come here" gesture. Zuko crawled out of bed and over to the dragon, running a careful hand over the spines on its head. "What an awesome dream," he whispered. The dream he had previously been having, of pain and death and fire, was now forgotten.
The dragon rubbed its nose against Zuko, nuzzling him and almost knocking him off his feet. Zuko laughed.
From outside came the sound of sudden shouts and running feet. An alarm fire on one of the towers was lit.
The dragon growled and nudged Zuko again before wiggling his back. "Do you want me to get on?" Zuko asked. The dragon nodded.
Zuko grabbed one of the spines and pulled himself up, struggling over the span of the dragon's neck before settling astride, right behind its head. "Is this alright?"
The dragon nodded. It wiggled backwards out of the window, still hanging to the edges of the window frame. When it was free of the constricting window, it spread its wings and took off, soaring over the caldera and over the walls, away from the palace. Zuko spread his arms out, feeling the resistance from the cool night air. Below them, the caldera was stirring, woken up by the yells and alarm fires. Unnoticed by the scurrying humans, the shadow of a dragon and rider, framed by the light of the moon, flew over them all.
When Azula awoke the next morning, it was to uncertainty. Zuko was gone, and no one would tell her what had happened to him, or why she wasn't allowed out of her room for a few days. When she was finally able to see Zuko's room, it was completely bare: everything was gone and the blank walls were barren and lifeless. The window frame was new, though. She didn't know what to make of it.
Zuko fell asleep on the dragon's back, lulled to sleep by the swaying motions of the great wings flapping behind him as they flew into areas unknown. The sun woke him up in the morning, warming his face. He stirred and sat up, stretching.
He didn't know where he was. He'd had a strange dream the night before, with a dragon, and then he was flying on the dragon—except now he didn't know where he was, or how he'd got there. Had it been a dream? The dragons were dead; it had to have been a dream.
But then, how had he gotten here? He sat on a beach with silver sand, still in his sleep clothes. The waves lapped against the edge of the sand, and there was no other land in sight, no matter how he strained his eyes. Behind him rose a sudden forest, vibrant and green and filled with the rustling of unknown animals.
Looking around again, his eyes fell on the sand beside him, and the giant claw marks left by some giant creature.
The dragon, he remembered. There were even wing marks in the sand next to the claw marks, where the dragon's wings had brushed against the sun as it took flight.
There was a whoosh above him, and wind brushed against his face. He looked up, shielding his eyes from the sun with his hand.
There was the dragon, just as he'd remembered it from the night before, flying directly in front of the sun to land in front of him. He scrambled to his feet, not knowing what to do. Should he try and defend himself? Should he run? What did it want from him? The dragon landed in front of him, right on top of the marks it had left earlier in the sand. It pulled its wings closer to its body and tilted its head, looking Zuko in the eyes.
Something in the dragon's eyes—some spark of intelligence—stopped him from running or trying to fight with his meager fire. The dragon leaned its head forward. Zuko held still, not even daring to breathe. The dragon's head nudged gently against Zuko's, coming to a rest there. They were so close that Zuko had to look up, into the dragon's eyes, and then all of a sudden the dragon was roaring fire at him, the flames colors Zuko had never even known fire could be. He flinched back, but the dragon was too close and the flames enveloped him. A wave of color washed over him, colors of life and growth, beautiful colors that fascinated and entreated him. Then Zuko fell into a vision and the fire, dragon, and beach were gone.
Scattered images flew past him—he saw the airbenders and their temple in its glory, and then he saw them killed and their temples turned into deserts; he saw his people, the Fire Nation, caught up in eternal warfare, thousands of soldiers dying for Sozin's glory, and then Azulon's glory, and then Ozai's glory. He saw the dragons being hunted almost to extinction, and he felt the grief and anger and the dragon's determination to do something about it.
When the vision the dragon had given him was over, Zuko fell back onto his knees as the connection between the two was broken.
He looked up at the dragon. "Why me? My grandfather started the war. My uncle killed the last of the dragons. Why have you come to me to right these wrongs?"
The dragon cocked its head, examining Zuko closely. Zuko felt like the lizard-beetles Azula stabbed with pins, caught under the dragon's gaze. The dragon didn't answer Zuko—he got the impression that it wasn't capable of speech, that its methods of communication were more along the lines of emotions and images.
He swallowed and bowed again. "I will make myself worthy of your choice, oh Great Dragon."
And then Zuko trained with the dragon on the island, away from everyone else, and when Appa landed there years later he joined up with the Gaang and taught Aang firebending and everyone was happy except for Ozai.