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He pretends to be asleep. He keeps his eyes half-shut, watching Aang move the leaves. The Avatar shapes air between his fingers like molding spirits. He seems to cast a silver net across the canopies, stirring them awake. Green rains from the sky on him.
Zuko wonders what it’s like to bend nature without a mission. Just for something to do, just because you can. There seem to be no enemies here, in the space where the Avatar exists. Zuko feels a terrible sense of safety, and he keenly wishes to reject it, because he hasn’t felt this kind of peace in a long time, because this kind of peace is always treacherous, in his limited experience. Yet he knows as he lies here, completely vulnerable and open to the elements, that Aang will never hurt him. If he’d wanted to, the Avatar could have disposed of him already. But he hasn’t.
That’s what’s so maddening about this half-boy, half-elder. Every single time they meet, the Avatar greets him with surprise, as if he did not expect the violence. He does not return the violence. Zuko wishes he would.
When he saw him chained up in Zhao’s tower, he felt the full weight of his failure. Not because he had not managed to shackle him as effectively as the famed General. Not because he did not command such an impressive garrison and the respect of all his men. But rather because, even though his honor depended on his success, Zuko did not want to keep the boy restrained. He looked at Aang and imagined a different kind of submission. He wanted – foolish, faithless traitor that he was - for the boy to come with him willingly. To show his father there was another way to gain respect and make allies out of enemies. A nation grows strong with allies. And maybe – friends.
The Avatar sits down on the gnarled trunk above his mound. He folds his arms around himself protectively. He begins to speak.
“You want to know what the worst part is about being born one hundred years ago?”
Zuko does not move. He looks at the child-god, anointed and alien, and yet so close in this moment. Closer than he will ever be.
“I miss all the friends I used to hang out with. Before the war started I used to always visit my friend, Kuzon. The two of us, we’d get in and out of so much trouble together. He was one of the best friends I ever had…And he was from the Fire Nation, just like you.”
Aang looks down at him, his wide eyes dark and hopeful. Almost as if Zuko could give him something old and new, a piece of Kuzon that never was.
Zuko feels shivers run down his spine. He feels time slipping past them, ignoring their presence, like an island in the coursing river. He’s terrified, terrified of this unknown past, this freeing possibility. He does not have to be Zuko. He does not have to be anyone.
“If we knew each other back then, do you think we could have been friends too?” Aang asks, a smile on his lips like nostalgia. Because no matter what Zuko answers, the Avatar will always wear that smile.
It would be so easy for Zuko to tell him that he was thinking the same thing only moments before…but Aang’s offer feels boundless. Heedless. It lacks the purpose of diplomatic strategy. It guarantees no fealty. It is profitless, boyish affection, the most poisonous kind, the kind that traps you in his orbit forever.
Zuko clenches his fists. You cannot give so much water to a man dying of thirst or he will choke.
The fire burns the spot where Aang was sitting. It strips the wood bare and loses itself to the air.
Aang jumps lightly from branch to branch, seemingly undisturbed by Zuko’s outburst. Old friends know each other's hurts.
Zuko watches him, follows his light step until he cannot see him anymore.
He touches his face and thinks, I wanted him to unmask me, to know it was me.
And I wanted him to run.
And so he has.
Zuko lowers his forehead to the ground. The air is still alive with his bending. It rains leaves on him.
He lies down to sleep, to forget.
But in the dream, he does not burn.
There are other fires in dreams.
In the dream, he and Aang are lying next to each other on the forest floor, staring at the crowns of trees. The branches are shy, barely touching, leaving little channels of air between them.
The Avatar’s face is close and ghostly distant.
“Would you sit like this with Kuzon?” Zuko rasps, afraid of the silence and the peace.
Aang’s voice is sweet and playful and eerie. “Oh no. We never sat still. We were always trying to make trouble.”
Zuko feels the tightness of his burned flesh, feels the world shrinking to a pulse.
“No,” Aang continues in an ageless lilt. “I couldn’t do this with anyone else.”
Zuko swallows. “Why not?”
There’s an inhuman radiance to his smile, a sadness that turns into light as he gazes into the Prince’s eyes. His voice falters slightly. “I guess – no one’s lonely like us.”
Zuko feels that terrifying sense of unbelonging, but it does not scare him so much in the dream. He wants to fill his air with lungs. He does not reach forward. The Avatar is still too distant. They lie together in a strange, unseen embrace, the crowns of trees barely touching.
Katara watches Aang struggle with the nightmare.
But it does not look like a nightmare, exactly.
The boy lifts his arms towards the sky, as if he were trying to pull it down to him.
His lips part hungrily, but there’s no sound.
In his bed, Zuko shifts restlessly between sleep and consciousness.
His fingers shimmer with incandescent fire as he holds the ghostly face close to his and breathes him in.