Chapter Text
Prince Zuko comes into the world with eyes of gold, the surest sign of a strong inner flame in any descendant of Sozin.
Prince Zuko is born at midnight in the dead of winter. The sages who stand by whisper that there could be no less auspicious time for a firebender. His firebending will be late and weak, they whisper, if it ever even comes.
On Crescent Island, the ground below Avatar Roku’s temple rumbles, shaken by hidden tides of magma. No one notes them at all.
/
Loudly and to anyone who will listen, Father insists the sages are wrong. In silence, Mother prays they are. They wait for Zuko’s fire, as he meditates for endless hours before a candle, as he practices flameless katas and stumbles through the traditional forms, memorizing them diligently though they don’t feel like his own. Father watches him with intense interest and then none at all, his focus shifting to the little princess who sets her crib alight.
For one night, they have hope. Zuko stares at a steel candelabra. There are handprints still throbbing warm on his seven-year-old arms under the flaring crimson sleeves. He hopes so hard and breathes so stubbornly, and the flame jiggles in time with his exhales. He's not imagining it. He doesn’t know why it won’t happen again once Father comes in, why it worked in front of his mother but now there’s only fire that isn’t his, too close for comfort.
It’s too close, but Zuko’s too stubborn for his own good. It’s in his blood. So he stands his ground because the candle’s flame had moved, Mother saw it and he swears, he swears they’re not lying. He stands his ground and he stamps his foot, and his heel comes down too hard and somehow leaves a dent in the floor. He doesn’t even notice at first.
Father does.
They’re in an old part of the palace anyway, there must have been a weakness in the metalwork after too many winters, and Mother says all this and more in a plaintive cry, and it doesn’t stop the fire.
/
Father leaves bruises. Zuko does too, little dents in his bedroom walls when he smacks them harder than he meant to. He covers them up with tapestries, flowing red with the Fire Nation’s flame printed boldly. Exhausted, he falls onto his bed- a bed fit for a fire prince, with a mattress soft as clouds that leaves him sore and aching from the lack of support- and closes his eyes.
Sometimes, he can only calm himself by imagining the ground breathing steadily with him. Up. Down. In. Out.
/
At age nine, the doctors and trainers and sages all agree that it won’t happen, not for Zuko. He gave up hope before they did, snuffed it out like you have to with flames that might flare out of control. He turns invisible to his father. He’s always been invisible to his sister; before she could form full sentences she sized him up and judged that a non-bender’s no threat to her, and so she treats him only with cutting silence. Neither of them ever speaks to him. He could melt into thin air and nothing in their lives would change.
He digs his feet in instead, the way he digs his fingers into the garden soil by the turtleduck pond whenever Mother’s not looking.
It’s sheer obstinacy. He’ll never be a fancy firebender, he’ll never have flame at his fingertips or his father’s full regard, but there’s other ways to be worthy of a Fire Prince’s crown. He’s pulled unceremoniously out of firebending lessons at age nine and thrust into military training instead. With relish he seizes the opportunity. The lessons hold his interest, but for a time Azula still outshines him, until one of his tutors puts a sword in his hands.
Maybe it’s the years of practicing katas, but swordfighting comes to him easy as breathing. The blade they give him- half-sized, a dull, dinged-up practice sword that’s had a hundred users before him- feels like an extra limb the second it meets his palm. He trains all day. He barely breaks a sweat. For once, he knows how Azula must feel, how effortlessly prodigious, because after a few months the sword seems to move on its own, like it’s pulling his hand and not the other way around.
His trainers refer him to Master Piandao, a visiting swordsman from the countryside who brings a whole array of blades for him to try. After a single lesson on the process of forging your own weapons, Zuko’s adopted all the expert terminology, chattering away about chemistry and temperatures and proportions.
Piandao watches the boy carefully and lets him try out every sword he’s brought, even the longswords that should be too heavy for someone this young. The prince takes each with enthusiasm- with delight in his eyes that never quite overflows to a smile- and he brandishes each with unnatural ease. He swings even the largest as if it’s feather-light and hands it back with a bow. Piandao swings it once himself for good measure and frowns, because he made this blade himself and the point of balance was not this close to the hilt.
He at last bestows a set of twin dao upon Zuko, because a boy of his unusual skill can handle two blades, and he takes his leave. Upon returning to his manor, he makes a vague, discreet inquiry amidst the Order of the White Lotus about whether there’s any theoretical basis for metalbending.
(When the letter at last reaches Ba Sing Se General Iroh can’t make sense of it, burning up with both grief and fever.)
/
Zuko grows bolder when his father’s not looking. There’s whispers of power in his veins, red-hot and liquid. The military whispers that he’ll be the world’s greatest swordsman at his height, because he regularly achieves the impossible with a blade in his hand. He grabs his opponents’ swords from their hands without breaking his own skin, he slashes through armor like it’s only silk cloth, he throws the knife Uncle sent him with precision even Mai envies-
Grandfather still wants him dead, once the earthbenders kill Lu Ten. He still threatens to execute Zuko at eleven years old, not for any fault of his own but to teach Father empathy. Zuko wonders whether the Fire Lord would ever discard one of his own grandchildren if he fit into the family history the way they expected, if he could bend fire, and laughs hysterically at the thought. Of course not. His family’s not that warped.
He thinks of grabbing his dao and defending himself, of digging in and fighting his death, but Mother beats him to it, so silent and subtle he can’t know for sure.
“Never deny who you are,” she tells him, before she disappears into thin air.
Zuko wishes, some days, that she’d taken him with her. He wishes he were in some foreign land, because the flame on every sign in Caldera taunts him, makes his so-called country feel like an alien land. But she didn’t, and he’s not, and he sees no choice but to face his future head-on.
He blocks out Azula’s silence and Father’s constant disapproval, safe behind an unbroken shield of rock.
He refuses to bow his head. He wields his dual swords openly, flashily, and the metal’s flickering in the sunlight is the closest he can get to firebending. The generals take notice of his strategic acumen. In time, his father does too.
He is Prince Zuko, a royal in line for the Fire Lord's crown, and he will not bow his head and shy away from probing looks and cower just because he can’t bend.
He is Prince Zuko, and so he curls up in dusty palace chambers now veiled with white sheets, in the disused rooms Mother had kept near the end, as far as possible from Father’s suite. He curls up and presses down the tides of fire forever shifting in his head. He opens drawers and cabinets, running his hands down her old gowns, loosing his top-knot to brush her old comb through his hair.
One day he opens a safe, protected by a metal lock that he breaks easily (isn’t it obvious, the whole mechanism rattles loud every time the tumblers fall into place), and he finds her crown abandoned inside. The wave of rage crests. He stuffs one fist against his lips and clenches the other around the golden hairpiece and sobs.
When the tides recede, he uncurls his body. Uncurls his fist. Finds the gold crown crumpled like paper, bent impossibly in his hands.
/
Zuko keeps his secret to himself and carries it around with silent delight, like when he and Mai palm pastries from the kitchens. It explains so much. The way the palace’s metal walls and floors always buckle under his rage. The way swords shift and float in his grip, drawn less by his limbs than his mind. He doesn’t know how or why, he doesn’t yet care, but he’s been blessed with metalbending.
He’s not perfect at it yet (and how could he be, with nobody but boring old firebenders to learn from). He tries and tries, but he can’t un-dent any of the surfaces he’s wounded over the years. He can’t mold Mother’s crown back into the correct shape. He can break things, but he can’t fix them.
That’s all right. All the Fire Nation wants its benders to do is break.
He contemplates the advantages of metalbending from a military perspective, once he reaches his full potential. He’ll be able to single-handedly crumple ships. He’ll repair catapults with a few waves of his hand. Ba Sing Se’s wall won’t stand a chance against him.
He’s not a firebender, no. He’s something new, something better, tempered by flames and hardened like steel. He’s a fitting leader for his country of iron and war machines. He fits. He can wear the crown. He can head a new age of unprecedented conquest.
He fans this new flame of hope.
/
Zuko is no firebender. Maybe if he was, he’d have an openly fiery personality to match and he’d shout his secrets immediately from the nearest available rooftop. Instead, he moves slowly, deliberately, strategizing at every step.
(He has no fire or lightning to protect him, so he builds walls upon walls.)
He means to claim his place in the Fire Nation’s kratocracy. To that end, he’ll indulge in theater. Father lets him sit in on military councils regularly so long as he says nothing, and he waits, a little shadow at his father’s side. The generals plot to invade Ba Sing Se by subterfuge, and he says nothing. The generals scheme to crush rebellious earthbenders in the colonies, and he says nothing, feeling oddly guilty in his silence.
The generals threaten to sacrifice a new Fire Nation division as bait for an ambush, and Zuko strikes while the iron’s hot. He rises to his feet slowly and declares his disdain for the general’s tactics. For a moment, there’s only silence. Father gapes, uncertain what to do with him.
He’s new, like nothing they’ve ever seen before.
“If you don’t agree,” Zuko tells the general calmly, “there’s only one way to resolve this.”
/
“Just to check,” Zuko says to the deputy legal secretary tasked with managing affairs of honor, “it’s entirely legal for me to wear armor of my choice, right?”
“It is,” she assures him, worry etched deep around tired brown eyes. “Firebenders prefer to dance lightly across the arena, but a non-bender may choose to wear their armor. But Prince Zuko-“
He looks quizzically at her.
“No non-bender has participated since before Sozin’s time. Surely you don’t mean to take on this challenge yourself?”
Zuko frowns. “Who else would?”
She pauses, tucking back a stray grey curl. “Your father consulted me recently on an obscure provision that allows someone to replace one party, if they were also disrespected by the initial offense.”
That gives Zuko pause for a moment as he dons his heaviest armor. It’ll be strong enough to keep him safe, even after he strips away the excess weight and bends himself a crude but usable sword on the field. He can win this battle. He’ll metalbend on the national stage, announcing his abilities in the most public fashion he knows. By metalbending, he’ll seize his place in this country.
He has his battle plan, but for a moment he hopes Father might intervene, might step in as his champion and fight for him in this Agni Kai.
/
“I meant you no disrespect, I am your loyal son-“
“You are no son of mine.”
Zuko thinks for an instant of fighting, but he waits too long. He waits, slow as rock, stupid and pleading and full of hope-
(He forgot there’s no point to hoping, for someone like him.)
He burns easy, the way non-firebenders always do, skin shriveling fast as the flame spreads like wildfire. Caught up in the drama of the duel, no one notices the earthquake- quiet, quivering like a child’s heart- as he screams. They don’t notice the narrow tendril of smoke, escaping from cracks in Caldera’s crater.