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The first time Aang sees sunlight touching his skin, it splits him open and leaves him splintered and burning like a bolt of lightning to his spine. Again.
He wants to laugh. He wants to scream.
He does neither.
The next day, when Aang lands barefoot against the earth, he doesn’t wince as barbs of sun-crisped grass pierce his skin.
Unlike yesterday, Appa did not protest flight at an altitude low enough to avoid detection. Today, he maneuvered effortlessly and quietly, hugging the speckled sage green peppering the roll of northern Fire Nation outskirts.
Zuko was unaware of Aang’s presence in the Fire Nation. In a friendship where secrets were a rarity, this made two.
Both feet pressed to earth, he squats down and thrusts a flattened palm into the ground between his legs; fingernails packing with dirt.
Some heartbeats Aang could recognize by cadence and tempo alone- enough exposure and he could close his eyes and divine the name of their bearers like a cheap party trick. The rest were indecipherable, ordinary- just muscle, moving blood.
Awareness slithered back through pebbles and chaffed wheat roots; delivering with it five heartbeats. Two- stationed near the cart gate of the wagon-rutted country road. Two more roaming the perimeter of the property. And one; infamous to Aang’s soul and those he carried with him. Whose curdled lifeblood had almost corrupted his spirit in a moment of total darkness.
Approaching the lone willow tree atop the hill overlooking the small complex, he crouches behind the stone embankment he’d silently- albeit sloppily- erected yesterday. White hot exasperation followed by anger, anger, anger coursed through him so recklessly he could barely control his chi.
Puffing a hot breath from his lips, he bit down as his eyes swept the valley.
It’s a modest parcel with two homes- one for him and one for the guards- a fountain in the courtyard and a few low chairs on a cobblestone patio. The half-hectare of land is mostly covered by an assortment of gardens. One with a small pond, a path, and a grove of willow trees. One smattered with tufts of orange peonies, pink camellias, and fire lilies. The last is dappled with rows of varied fruit trees and vegetable beds. At least one row, the one closest to the houses, drooped with sharp long green claw-like leaves clutching clusters of yellowish-green fruit.
He likes mangos ? Repulsion rakes down Aang’s throat with a dry swallow.
Once his eyes find him- he bites back the memories hurling forward like the swell of a red tide. Breathing shakily, he quiets the clamoring voices of the thousands he’d failed to the grave.
Shielding the man’s face from the crushing heat of the sun and the Avatar’s gaze is a wide-brim straw hat with a thin leather strap, knotted in a bow under his chin.
He looks so fucking ridiculous. Pathetic might even be a better word.
A cream linen tunic hangs mostly unbuttoned, bearing his pale chest to the sun. Gaunt flesh of his frail body drapes from his bones. With no reason to train combined with strict orders for the guards to not allow it, he isn’t strong anymore.
But the souls of thousands of dead scream forward to remind Aang: that he never really was.
He’s on his knees by a bed of flowers; hinged slightly and up to his elbows in a blood-red blur of fire lilies in bloom. Moving methodically, his hands slowly prune new shoots from the base of their stalks.
Aang’s eyes fall to slits.
Gardening?
If he mouthed the word long enough, it tasted like it would poison him and he’d die, choking on his disgust.
Backing against the willow tree, still just out of sight behind the dirt embankment, he tips his head against the splintered corrugation of bark and shuts his eyes.
Without dedicating effort to the expansion of his awareness, that heartbeat still crawls its way into him; menacing and imposing, as if beating behind his own ribs. It thuds with tranquility so unearned that it reminds Aang of his power to level the land with the slide of his foot.
Aang is tired. Down to his bones. Rage demands so much of him; so much energy he didn’t have before they’d ended the war. He was distracted then, too caught up trying to save anyone he hadn’t yet failed.
That’s over now. Now, 14 years after the end of it all, as he’s worked alongside the Fire Lord to put the pieces back together, his eyes are wide open.
As that hideous pulse slumps along between his ears, a centuries-old exhaustion sweeps into him.
Enough for today.
He takes his leave.
That night, by the light of the fire in the seclusion of the forest, he falls asleep with moisture in his eyes.
Opening them, he finds himself in a feverish hallucination that's visited him every night since he’d been informed of Ozai’s new life by the Kyoshi warriors.
Before him, an army of weeping dead marches through pitch-black nothingness. Skeletons clad in blue parkas, green tunics, and orange robes- stumble listlessly through the abyss. Their clattering bones, their hideous shrieks, it all wraps Aang’s skin like a burial shroud.
As it always did, a golden hairpin catches his eye at the head of the pack. Aang shoulders his way between deathless souls to see a flame nestled into a blackish sweep of hair that wraps around the tired face of a devastating, beautiful man. In his steps, this man carries the haunt of each soul marching behind him. It sags against his shoulders in the heft of his royal armor and wraps around his left eye like a grotesque handprint.
The sun is still low over the eastern horizon.
Obscured by a cascade of willow vines, Aang watches him wait by the gate.
Today is the fifth day he’s come. Each day has proved more disturbing than the last.
Right now, he stands with one hand on the fence, one in his pocket and he watches the road, looking just beyond the guard station. Aang sees his long wisps of black hair gathered in a bun at the nape of his neck and he notices the sandals he wears. They’re open in the back, allowing the dew of the morning grass to kiss the heels of his feet.
The observation surges through Aang’s veins painfully enough that, on the tip of his tongue, he can taste the power that whirs beneath the membrane of his mortality.
It tastes like he could speak a chasm into existence and let it swallow this entire valley.
It tastes like destruction.
He bites it back and narrows his eyes as a Fire Nation messenger approaches on ostrich horse. The man produces a linen sack filled with supplies and a pamphlet with a flame crest on the front- Aang recognizes the Fire Palace briefing made available to the general public once a month.
It was originally Aang’s idea- to keep the new government honest, to prevent a consolidation of power, and to help the world trust the Fire Nation again.
In a few exchanges of hands, the man waiting at the gate unfolds the pamphlet and walks the short distance back to the house. As he strolls, he reads. And as he reads, his lips curve into a genuine smile.
In his grin, Aang recognizes satisfaction- happiness even. Aang has never seen him happy- he wants to keep it that way.
That’s enough. Aang thinks as he turns, fists curled and chest tight.
Making his way back to Appa, the memory of that smile clings to him like the shadow shifting beneath him in the grass. It’s unnerving in its familiarity- because it looks just like one he’s seen and cherished thousands upon thousands of times.
Spitting image was the phrase Zuko liked to use when he’d let Aang close on tearful nights. You’re nothing like him, Zuko was never far behind.
Aang whips the reins and Appa takes to the sky. Vexation carts his mind from place to place. He isn’t surprised when it lands on the memory of the last time he said goodbye to Zuko.
A palace attendant finds Zuko at about the same time Appa’s dull roar floats through the open window of his study. Disoriented both by the oppressive summer heat and his surprise at Aang’s arrival, he nods impatiently as his attendant tells him, “The Avatar is here, your grace.”
“Yes, it appears so.” Zuko returns; worried and admittedly a bit embarrassed to be caught off guard by a visit from Aang. As Zuko paces down the hall to the main gates of the palace grounds, he flickers through the possible reasons Aang- his most powerful ally, his dearest friend- is here without warning. Aang never comes to the Fire Palace without writing first. Unless, of course, there was a dire emergency.
Turning the corner to the courtyard, Zuko watches Aang's partially exposed back flex slowly and catch the sun as he feeds Appa a few apples from the canvas bag at his feet.
Nothing frantic in the calm of him. No emergency, it appears.
“Aang! You’re here?” He calls out.
A few steps close the distance and then Zuko’s staring at the side of his face, measuring the patch of shadow beneath his cheekbone that grows darker with every passing year. Zuko lifts a hand to Appa’s head and an irritated smile to his lips.
As immediately as Aang turns, Zuko reads him; distraught, urgent, distant, all while pretending not to be.
After 14 years of this, they are as attuned to one another's expressions as surely as a hunter knows her prey. One millimeter’s rise in a brow here, one degree’s downturn of a lip there- and they were made.
In return, with barely a flicker of anything across his face; Aang notices Zuko, noticing him. Almost imperceptibly, he lifts one eyebrow, as if to say in a language only Zuko can understand: go ahead, read me, please. The challenge ripples across Zuko’s frame and settles heavily in his chest.
“I’m here,” Aang returns and smiles small anyway but doesn’t move to embrace him.
It's cold and it’s strange and it makes Zuko miss the smell of his skin.
“Unannounced?” Zuko asks, “Don’t tell me that means bad news.”
Curiously, Aang’s face twists in a way that betrays his irritation. Strange , Zuko thinks. Aang was usually better at this. Certainly better at it than Zuko.
“Let’s talk in private,” Aang says before running his eyes over him briefly, then flicking his gaze over his shoulder piece to his attendants standing a few paces behind him. “Now.”
He’s spinning from the rare sight of Aang’s heat- his eyes, his urgency, his pain. It only unfolds in brief thunderheads between long spells of sunshine. But, still, Zuko’s seen it many times- and certainly more than anyone else.
In Aang’s darkest moments, somehow, someway, always, Zuko is the one to hold it. The one he writes, the one who holds him as he shutters under the weight, the one he doesn’t hold back for. The one Aang shows the regret, the shame, the grief, the grief, the fucking grief of it all.
Nodding once, Zuko gestures to the entrance of the palace and says, “After you.”
“Do you want to tell me why you’re here?” Zuko says, eyes on the ground as he pushes the door shut.
If today were any other day, when the door closes behind Zuko, he would settle into a cushion on the floor while Aang bends water warm for jasmine tea next to him.
They’d regale each other of their lives since their last visits. Certain topics they’d always cover– updates on their friends, politics, and festivals. Then some they’d always avoid – how their knees usually ended up closer than they’d started and how the lonely nights made them remember one another's eyes.
Today, Aang leans against Zuko’s desk, unfamiliar and so far away as his tattooed hands clamp hard into the edge of the wood.
“Isn’t there something you want to tell me first?” Aang snaps.
“So you’re angry with me?”
Raising his eyebrows in a curt fit of amusement, Aang taunts, “The Fire Lord can read minds, now? What an interesting development in the powers Agni has bestowed upon you, your grace .”
Zuko’s face curls quizzically- disbelief and offense sprawl across the twist of his frown. Irreverence- even in sarcastic, bitter jest- wasn’t like Aang at all. He’s the Avatar, he is reverence, the spirits’ love and justice made flesh.
“I know sometimes you need to be cruel to get it out of your system. You know I can handle that, Aang.” Zuko swallows, suddenly aware of how very hot and how very stiff it is in this room. “Just tell me what’s going on, at least.”
“Cruel?” Aang bites out, arms folding. “ ’It’s not cruel if it’s deserved’,” Aang quotes Zuko from years ago, stuffing his pause so potently, that there’s no possible space for an interjection. In Zuko’s silence, he chooses each next word with malicious accuracy and takes aim. “That’s what we agreed on when your father was sentenced, wasn't it?” And, from the flush of provocation across Zuko’s face- bullseye.
For dozens of terrible heartbeats, they stare; unmoving. The dust particles aglow in the suspension of the summer sunbeams around them seem to halt their swirling. Holding fast, they regard one another callously- in a standoff of betrayal, of ‘after all these years I thought I knew you’, of ‘ I thought we were a team’, ‘I thought we- ‘
“How did you find out?” Zuko whispers. He’s the first to look away.
"How did I find out?” Aang’s voice is low and cold and his eyes are distant, it sends a grim shiver down Zuko’s spine. Then, Aang stands and takes a few steps. Zuko holds firm and suddenly Aang is breathing his air through clenched teeth, “Not from you, for some fucking reason. ”
“Aang-”
“Why didn’t you tell me? Why did you-” Aang looks up and down Zuko’s body, in search of what's changed about the man who called him his closest friend, his closest confidant. “He doesn’t deserve-”
“Aang,” Zuko interjects. “He’s weak and he’s harmless, you’ve seen him. I’m assuming, at least. And he’s my father.”
A strangled noise curdles on Aang’s tongue and he turns to slam a fist against the nearest surface he can find- a bookshelf holding cubbies of scrolls. It rattles with a violent force, a few scrolls clattering to the floor. Zuko watches, tightness pooling around his eyes.
“Your father!?” Aang can barely scrape the words past the repulsion gathering in his throat. “He’s a war criminal, Zuko! He’s a monster! He exterminated human beings like rat pigs! And as for being your father?! ” Aang falters off, his face contorting as he eyes the evidence of Ozai’s fatherhood burned into Zuko’s skin.
Lifting his eyes inch by inch from the scrolls at Aang's feet up his frame and to his eyes, Zuko says calmly, “It’s been almost fifteen years. He’s not a danger to anyone anymore. He’s barely there, he can’t bend for Agni’s sake. For anyone, even for him- rotting in a cell... it’s inhumane, Aang.”
“Inhumane?” Aang says flatly. He almost laughs as the dead that haunt him crowd forward- their shrieks deafening his ears and their bones clawing against the inside of his ribs. “Listen to yourself! You say that like I’m being unreasonable! Like I’m somehow the one to blame. I'm inhumane ?! Do you hear yourself, Zuko!?”
Zuko wants to tread lightly, but beneath the surface of his skin, he feels a madness coiling in his belly. All of a sudden he wishes for contact, he wishes he could subdue Aang in the crush of his arms, to unburden him of the unsolicited call of his messianic birth- until he’s stark and raw and enough.
“I’m not blaming you, Aang. No one is.” Zuko sounds exasperated, “Maybe you are, but I’m not.”
“Don’t do that.”
“Why? Isn’t that what this is about? Do you really want a miserable man to rot in darkness for the rest of his life? That isn’t like you! You’re better than that. You taught me to be better than that,” Zuko realizes he’s panting from effort and oppressive heat and takes a few breaths, “ ’Revenge is like a two-headed rat viper, while you watch your enemy go down-”
“Zuko.” Aang pleads to lull the rage flickering in his bones before it splinters through him. “Stop.”
In the silence, the room contracts and expands with a force so potent and so volatile it feels like they’re falling- it feels like they’ve been falling for a long, long time.
“Maybe now you understand why I kept it from you,” Zuko says, but just barely.
Aang collects his ragged breath and exhales, “You don’t have to protect me from myself, Zuko.”
Zuko opens his mouth, but the knock at the door robs his response.
“Your grace,” Hanae, one of Zuko’s royal attendants enters the study, “The courtyard and instructor are prepared for your scheduled training spar.” Noticing Aang with scrolls scattered by his feet, she tilts her eyes to the floor and continues, “Unless your grace is presently occupied. Avatar Aang,” she says politely and dips her head in Aang’s direction.
“Thank you, Hanae,” Zuko smiles, “Will you let the instructor and attendants know that I’m dealing with urgent matters? And, please deliver my deepest apologies.”
“Nonsense,” Aang interjects, “I think we’ve reached a perfect stopping point for a spar. You and I haven’t trained together in months,” Aang smiles with an unsettling warmth, “If you’d allow me to step in, I’d love the chance at a good match.”
Zuko stares at him, eyes simultaneously blank and thrashing. In the hard line of Aang’s body, Zuko knows that a no won’t suffice. Even if he declines, this duel will only find them another way, another time.
“Great idea.” Zuko turns to Hanae, “Please see the Avatar to the datsuijo to dress for the sparring yard.”
“Yes, your grace.” Hanai bows and Aang follows her out the door without a glance.
Zuko attacks, Aang dodges. In glances of skin and breath and fire, they dance.
Through all these years, they were always a team.
What changed?
Zuko wasn’t sure. But, perhaps, like a slipping memory of a past life, he did know. Whatever it was, it was here with him, now. Whatever it was, it scoured the diplomacy from his skin, rid him of strategy, and left him with nothing but rage.
The last time they sparred—no, fought—like this, like enemies with everything to lose, Aang was 12. Aang was nimbler then, but weaker. Now, Aang’s bare chest was broadened and his muscles taut with the full realization of all four elements.
Aang had him. He always did. Zuko knows. But he comes for him in flamed burst after burst anyway.
In every jut of his fist and messy spin on his heel, Zuko pours himself out. He pours out his confusion, empties his haunting, and drains his unanswered questions. All of it, strangely, feels as if it is at once because of Aang and somehow meant for Aang. He deals blow after blow with the fury of everything he’d never let himself ask—and Aang slips past each one, deft as a snake.
Flashing a smile, Aang taunts.
One specific thrust of Zuko’s fist finds itself locked in the grip of a strong hand. In a blur of marigold and blue and sun in his eyes, Zuko’s been pinned.
The seemingly endless scope of the Fire Lord's world narrows in and tilts on two axes—where Aang’s thighs crush against his lap, and where Aang’s forearm digs into his sternum to keep him from retaliating.
Frayed breath heaves from Zuko’s chest. Aang peers into him. Their bodies are frozen, soaked in salt and sun and fury as a horrible silence reigns with an iron fist.
Zuko scoffs. He can feel Aang’s ire seeping into his skin. He can feel it—he can feel him —everywhere—raking fingernails across his spirit, hard enough to mark. Hard enough that Zuko breaks.
“It’s easy to do nothing. But, it’s harder to forgive?” Zuko shouts, head jerking forward to propel each word through the stifling heat between them. “ You said that!”
Eyes falling to slits, Aang presses harder into Zuko’s chest, making him cough. Every palace attendant’s eye snaps to them.
Surely the Avatar wouldn’t harm Agni incarnate in broad daylight, in the heart of the caldera?
Aang knows he’s being watched.
Yet, he doesn’t concede. Instead, he leans in, crams in so close they can feel the friction between bones beneath skin and muscle and tendon. Zuko groans in pain.
“I was a child then, Zuko. I didn’t know what I know now.”
“What is it that you know now?” Challenge drips from Zuko’s tongue. It trickles straight down Aang’s throat and into the thrashing flame in his core.
“I know enough. ” Aang grimaces and holds Zuko’s unwavering gaze.
It’s crushing. It’s thrilling.
“I thought you would want me to forgive him.” Zuko spits.
“How do you know what I want?” Aang asks, eyes harsh and strange and dark.
Zuko blinks in silence, his words gummed beneath the cotton lodged in his throat. The husk of Aang’s voice and the bulk of his muscled body digging into his skin fogs his clarity.
“Why don’t you just tell me what you want?” Zuko finally manages. And after a few more breaths in unanswered silence, Zuko whispers, “Or do you just need someone to punish?”
At his own words, Zuko’s internal flame roars with carnal heat. ‘Me,’ ‘let it be me,’ flashes over and over in his mind and dances at the back of his tongue.
He wants – no, he deserves Aang’s punishment, his fury, his rage. He wants what no one else can have- what's his and always had been: the debt he'd incurred the day he let Aang die. He wanted to scrounge every pocket in every royal garment and withdraw every gold piece from the Fire Nation treasury to repay his due. To empty himself, to pour everything into Aang’s being. He wants to empty Aang until he’s nothing, to release him from the cage of his prophetic calling. He wants what curls around his hips as Aang flickered behind his eyes in the middle of the night. He wants to plunge into this ghastly, beautiful muck of them; this mess of touching knees, and missing each other, and living, and dying, hating, forgiving, saving.
Aang’s sharp whisper pulls Zuko back to reality. “I want justice.”
“For who!?” Zuko’s voice felt so frail, yet altogether too loud as it tore its way through his windpipe. “Which one of us did you come here to discipline?”
Aang’s grimace deepens, and sweat trickles from his chin and falls onto Zuko’s neck.
“Is it him? Is it me?” Zuko laughs at what he’s about to say next. His eyes narrow and he whispers, “Or is it you?” He almost smiles, but instead, he swallows it, and it goes down rough.
The slits of Aang’s eyes tighten and his breathing grows to something approximating anguish with every messy heave.
But, Zuko doesn’t back down. “That’s it, isn’t it? You could have stopped him.” Zuko whispers now, something has broken in Aang and he can feel it in the way his breath has changed. “If you never ran away.”
“That’s not what this is about,” Aang growls as he presses into him with his full weight- lap and arm- and Zuko can feel it in the tips of his toes, his fingers, the follicles of hair standing on end at the back of his neck.
“Are you sure?” Zuko whispers back because he wants to see it all. He wants to crack Aang wide open, He wants to rip off the layers and see what’s underneath. He wants his soul naked before him until there’s no more room to pretend. Until he knows, at last- that despite what Aang believes, his rage and his grief have never amounted to more than Zuko is prepared to hold.
Instead of a response, moisture gathers in the rims of Aang’s eyes, and Zuko notices.
Zuko stills the urge to wipe Aang’s tears away as they begin to fall against his skin. Instead, he keeps on it, he wants to see him.
His voice comes softer now, “Tell me what this is about, Aang. Please.”
Aang removes his hand from the hot burn of stone beneath Zuko's back and presses his fingers into the horror of skin under his left eye. Zuko gasps, stunned by the sudden contact.
The last time someone touched Zuko’s scar was the night Aang died. The touch sends him spiraling back in time- he sees Aang’s tiny frame convulsing, shimmering with electricity like a nymph of death. Suspended in the air, welcoming Zuko across the threshold of damnation.
Aang’s chest- his very alive chest with a heart still beating, expands and contracts as his face contorts with disgust so helpless and so protective, and it’s now that Zuko begins to see.
“Look what he did to you!” Aang spits, “You were a child!” gasping for air he cries, “You were just a fucking child, Zuko!” His brow draws together and the tears are coming faster now, plinking heavy against Zuko’s neck.
Zuko pales as he looks back into the face of immortal grief. The hand of the spirits weeping for him, for his loss, for his irreversible pain, for the mark he carries as proof. In the heat of him, the strange volatility of the Avatar holding him still and washing him in his tears- there was something else.
Something much stickier, dirtier. Something possessive, needy, and utterly human that chases Aang’s immortality from his veins.
Aang’s tears subside and his breathing slows. He wasn’t yet bodily aware of what he had admitted, but it was a confession, nonetheless. As Zuko looks back into Aang’s softening eyes, he wonders how long he's been waiting to hear it.
Now, Zuko understands what Aang wanted , what- who- it was all interwoven. He saw just what Aang would descend into insanity to avenge.
But what about Zuko’s unforgivable sins? What about the filth of his darkness, the souls he’d marred, the damage he’d wrought? What about the lives he’d taken- one of them pinning him against the scalding ground right now?
Suddenly, Aang feels Zuko’s leg hook around the back of his knee- and the contortion twists his entire body around until his bare chest scrapes into the ground and Zuko holds him down- back and arms- between his knees. His palm presses against the warped pink memorial of his own guilt.
“Then what about me?” The dry shake of Zuko’s voice is so far away, and so wild, so mad. “Weren’t you just a child when I betrayed you? When you died?!” A wet sound crawls up his ribcage and lands hard and cold against Aang’s ears. Zuko’s fingers rove against the evidence of his disgrace. Nails raking down its center, sending an unnerving, numb tingle plummeting downward from Aang’s mouth to the bottom of his abdomen.
Zuko leans down, and for their public spar, his lips are obscenely close to his neck. “Will you bring your judgment down on me, too?” He whispers and it surges like electricity in every place their skin touches.
The side of Aang’s face is pressed to stone, he exhales and softens against the scratch of pebbles prickling his cheek. Aang watches him from the corner of his narrowed eye.
"Go ahead. I’m guilty. Punish me as I deserve. I welcome it.” Zuko says, his fingers pressed into Aang’s scar and his lips nearly brushing the side of his neck, “ I want it.”
This was his confession in turn: that in every way, from death to life, from vengeance to forgiveness- his judgment, his life, his body; he was Aang’s. He had been since the day he allowed Aang to die. Since the day blue wisps of electricity etched a permanent dark mark into the matter of his soul.
Zuko was irrevocably his from that day forward, and he couldn’t imagine a day when he wouldn’t be.
In the way Aang looks at him and the wash of his cheeks, there is discovery. There is acceptance of penance, an absolving of sin. Reserved for Zuko, and Zuko alone.
As Zuko’s weight eases and shifts, Aang lays beneath him so exposed it fries every one of his nerves raw.
Everything unsaid had already stumbled into the light, their admittance burned away all shadow.
Aang shifts under Zuko’s legs and Zuko lets him turn around to free his arms. With Aang’s back still against the ground, they face one another- hard breaths slowing in tandem. Zuko leans over him, blocking the sun from Aang’s eyes and curiously absorbing the fresh air between them.
Each stray hair on Zuko’s head crowns him in illumination, a resplendent halo for the patron saint of fire and vindication.
A tattooed hand- perhaps by a mind of its own, perhaps by the pure heat of it all, drives up to rest against Zuko’s solar plexus chakra- his center of worth, clarity, expression. Now, tough and garbled by his graze with death. Right now, under Aang’s curious fingertips, it feels strangely supple. Like the lines Aang presses into it could undo- as if they could smooth like jagged stones worn soft by the relentless rush of a river in time.
Instinctively, Zuko’s hand finds Aang’s wrist- not to stop him, but to feather his fingertips into the blue of his lines. He traces the place his people, their traditions, and their memories live under Aang’s skin. He can feel every cell of Aang’s body vibrating with life like it’s flowing through his own chi, and it’s so addictive, so electric he never wants it to end. He wants to stay in this collision of spirit and he wants to take all of Aang, he wants to let their energies dance, he wants to, he wants—
Aang swallows, trying to find Zuko’s gaze to discover some grounding in this peril they'd spent the last 14 years shirking in eloquent, dodging steps. The truth between them is now too alive and too unmistakable to deny.
A truth so bright and dangerous, staring it in the face washes Zuko pale with alarm.
So, instead, he fixates on the knot of Aang’s Adam's apple as it hitches with his swallow, the dip between his clavicles pooling with sweat. And in one pathetic attempt to appease the heatwave rising between his hip bones, he glances at Aang’s lips.
Like rapid bursts of light illuminating the night in a heat storm; carnality bores through every one of his senses in succession. He tastes blood, smells the musk of their bodies in the sun, hears air whooshing through willows, sees the muted pinks of Aang’s dry lips, and feels the outline of each mound of Aang’s abdominal muscle pressing against the inside of his thighs.
Suddenly he is very aware of his body in space and his body against Aang- so aware he can feel the prickle of every palace attendant's eye stabbing the salted, damp skin of his back.
“Zuko,” Aang groans. It's quiet and wrecked with pent up questions.
Aang’s whisper is so raspy, that it sounds too close to begging that Zuko can't let himself hear it any longer.
Zuko pulls his fingers from Aang’s wrist and lifts his hips forward, unpinning Aang but still looming above him.
“Aang," The sound of his own voice startles him. He stands up without offering Aang a hand, his eyes unreadable as he says, “I think we’re done here.”
Then he walks away. But he knows he can’t walk away, not really. He knows he’ll carry this moment with him until this madness returns to haunt them once again. This time, as he shakes his head and tries to card away this flash bang of shared insanity, Aang’s voice stops him dead.
“Aren’t you tired of this?” Aang calls out. Zuko turns, and Aang demands with a look in his eyes that leaves nothing to refute. It brings all the electricity back, thrumming beneath Zuko’s skin.
“Tired of what ?” Zuko asks, taking a step closer to Aang’s body propped up by his elbows on the ground. “What is this? Give it a name.” He commands, he dares. He is tired, after all. Tired of hoping, tired of pretending, tired of the burden of his unpaid debt.
“I can’t,” Aang whispers, and then he’s on his feet and he’s so close to Zuko that it hurts, it makes his throat feel like sand.
Before Zuko notices Aang’s fingertips tangled in his, his hand is already pressed beneath Aang’s- placed right over the Avatar’s beating heart. Zuko takes an uncertain look into Aang’s eyes and it calls forth more than he’s ready for in the center of the palace yard. So, he closes his eyes and he breathes. Aang breathes with him.
Breath mirrors breath until Zuko feels Aang’s hand slip against his sternum to feel his heart beating in turn. Breath comes. Breath goes. Awareness slips away along with every onlooking eye, every betrayal, every death, every redemption, every denial, every unforgiven trespass.
And then, it’s just this.
Thud. Thud. Thud. Only this.
After what feels like many lifetimes of sharing a heartbeat, Zuko’s eyes open to Aang’s whisper, “This,” Aang presses Zuko’s hand further into his skin and swallows him in the chasm of his eyes, “How could I give a name to this?”
There's nothing left to say. In the silence between them, this is as loud as a crack of lightning and as raw as a dragon’s flame. That when they’ve reached the ends of themselves, when their souls have poured their last drop, when they have nothing; there is still this. It is death, it is life, it is fear, it is desire. It is darkness, it is light, and everything in between.
The door closes behind them and here there is no point in ‘ what are we doing’ or ‘ are we sure’. There is only this, two energies stripped down to finality; moving in lockstep with the eternal refrain of mirrored souls, of give and take, damnation and redemption, push and pull.
Zuko pushes Aang down on the edge of the bed and spreads his legs apart to stand between them. Aang’s hands pull at the curve of Zuko’s waist and his lips and teeth gnash against his stomach. And the sound, the fucking sound that spills from Zuko’s lips. Each ragged moan tugs at the thread that holds Aang together and it feels like he’s already falling apart.
Zuko settles both hands on the sides of Aang’s jaw and tilts his face up, desire painting softness over the grief-hardened lines of his face.
Aang looks back and their few shared heaves of breath ring inescapable.
Fate has come for them today. And today, unlike any other day, they find the courage not to deny her.
Without looking away, Aang's fingers set to the laces of Zuko’s trousers.
Before he can work them below his hips, Zuko forces Aang back into the sheets. Zuko climbs on top, and his lips find Aang’s throat- they press and bite and suck hard enough to mark until his hands have wandered past the prickling new growth of hair above Aang’s waistband. His fingers hover, tugging gently, momentarily frozen in a silent question.
"Of course,” Aang whimpers, one hand fisted in Zuko’s hair, the other carving lines into his back.
Zuko pulls back for a moment to spit into his palm- and then his lips are back on Aang’s pulse and his fingers are tight around Aang’s cock. His hands are so fucking warm that Aang has to turn his head to muffle a scream in his shoulder.
From one stroke to the next Zuko searches for absolution in the press of lips and the heat of skin. Purging the trespasses of his soul at the altar between Aang’s thighs.
“ Zuko,” Aang moans, so heady and dark and perfect that Zuko bites his own lip hard enough to taste iron.
“Say it again,” Zuko begs like his name in Aang's mouth could erase lifetimes of iniquity. “Say my name again.”
Aang’s eyes widen with a wash of pleasure that rakes over every inch of his skin. “Zuko,” He whimpers, “Zuko, Zuko, fuck, fuck me just like that, Zuko, Zu- .”
Aang’s pulse rages beneath Zuko’s lips and Zuko doesn’t dare rip his mouth from the proof that Aang’s still here, this side of existence. Still, he’s breathing, crying, moaning, laughing, demanding. He wants every shred of Aang’s being to tear into his flesh, take his breath, and steal his blood until it courses through Aang’s very veins. Aang's body slackens and sputters and stiffens in erratic bursts and against Zuko’s skin it feels like salvation, it feels like wholeness- sacred and carnal and perfect.
Aang's breath rises to an irregular, familiar rhythm and Zuko thinks for a moment that he’s never wanted more than he does right now. He wants to chase Aang to his end, where there’s nothing left to prove and no one left to save.
He beckons Aang towards it with every slide of his fingers and every shuddering whisper against his pulse.
His sweat and tears run together against Aang’s neck as he laments shakily, “You have me, I’m yours. You can take me. You can let go, Aang.” Zuko slips his tongue against the tightening tendons rising from the column of Aang’s neck. “ Let go. ” As Zuko’s whisper lands against his throat and his hot fingers work him in time, the dry panting of Aang's lips peter out in a sharp convulsion that jolts his body in Zuko’s arms.
“ Zuko! Zuko, fuck, Zuko, zuko, zuko.” Aang gasps over and over and over.
And in his name, Zuko is baptized. In his flood, he is washed clean.
Zuko pulls back and they look at one another, eyes wide, wrecked with lust, adrenaline pounding through their veins- furiously awake and too complete to turn back.
Mouths dry and lips still unkissed, they just look- examining what they’ve done. Zuko’s hand still around Aang’s cock and Aang's fists still curled in Zuko’s hair, applying a steady sprinkling of pain and pleasure.
“On your back,” Aang whispers, unfurling his grip on Zuko’s hair- one hand dipping fingers beneath the waistband of Zuko's trousers, his other hand pushing against his shoulder until he’s spread out beneath him.
Lips and tongue and teeth rove hungrily down the ivory planes of Zuko’s chest and the maroon hills of his scar in search of the penitence of Zuko’s heat filling his mouth.
Aang leaned over him, murmuring his own name into his skin as he trails down him feels like more than enough to drive Zuko over the edge of sanity.
Freeing Zuko’s cock from the fabric that holds him, Aang takes him into his mouth; with an urgency more jealous than the grave he takes what's his, what’s rightfully his. Zuko curses softly under his breath and Aang moans around him at the sound as it drips from him like poetry and honey.
Writhing beneath him, Zuko slurs Aang’s name- drunk and delirious. He can’t stop repeating it like a wretched soul, finally unburdened of his wrongdoing, knelt at the feet of his god.
Zuko’s hips begin to stutter in Aang’s hands and Aang isn’t ready yet. He wants more of him. He pulls his lips from Zuko’s cock, and with his hands still holding the curve of Zuko’s waist, Aang’s eyes rake over his naked body. With his brow knit together, from the corded muscles of Zuko’s legs to the mess of black hair beneath his head- Aang drinks in every detail of him in awed silence.
“Aang?” Zuko whispers.
“Let me kiss you before this is over.”
Zuko nods and then sits up to place his hand on Aang’s chest, thumb stroking the coarse shadow of his shaved chest. “You can have me, Aang. Anything. Everything,” Zuko’s thumb trails up Aang’s chest to pad over Aang’s bottom lip as he whispers, “I’m yours.”
Aang’s grey eyes are dark and damp all of a sudden and his head bends in acceptance.
“I have been for a long time. And I will be, for however long you’ll have me.” Zuko whispers against Aang’s jaw, eyes searching his features. “You know that, right?”
Taking Zuko’s face between his hands, he finally captures Zuko’s lips between his own and in it, there is nothing but surrender. In the joining of their lips, they can taste the spinning of the ether above and below. It surges up to meet them, swallowing them whole in divinity, in darkness, in finality.
“Yes.” Aang says between nips of tongue and teeth, “Yes,” he whispers again, “Yes, I do,” urgently this time. “I know,” his lips are against Zuko’s jaw, “I’ve known.” Aang mouths the delicate skin of his neck, “I’ve known you’re mine,” he growls, “you’re mine, mine, mine.”
Aang’s teeth scrape against Zuko’s neck and he arches forward with a jolt, a pleading whimper breaks forth as his still-stiff cock brushes against Aang’s leg.
At the desperation, the willful giving in scrawled all over Zuko’s body- another levy, further down and further back, coiled with severity and barred by a lifetime of restraint, bursts open in Aang’s chest.
Eyes closed, Zuko feels Aang’s fingers tighten suddenly, both around Zuko’s throat and his cock. His eyes fly wide to meet the dark parts of Aang’s soul surfacing in the grey expanse of his gaze. A crushed moan gurgles from Zuko’s throat. Aang watches a carnal urgency flash across Zuko’s face as he pumps his shaft with a warmed hand.
Between their eyes, there is an acknowledgment of power, an acceptance of submission. Zuko gives, Aang takes. For every breath Aang steals, Zukos desire grows more desperate.
Heady groans fight their way out of Zuko’s lungs as his fingers wrap around the arm that crushes against his neck, Aang’s muscles tense and tight with effort.
“Fu- Aang-,” Zuko gasps, strangled and wrecked.
In every stroke and in Zuko’s blood struggling beneath his fingertips, Aang lays claim to his endowment. He savors every jerk of Zuko’s hips and the unabashed arousal sprawling across his body.
Aang can’t take it anymore, he wants- he needs. He primes Zuko’s body to commandeer his everything, to sunder his power and take, and take, and take. He pushes Zuko down by the neck into the sheets until he’s prone.
Removing his other hand from Zuko’s cock, he pulls one of Zuko’s hands from his arm and sucks two fingers into his mouth, tongue curling around them. He jerks Zuko’s hand from between his lips and places it, palm up and two wet fingers pointed to the ceiling against his stomach, just below the purple mess of his scar.
“Fuck me open,” Aang demands as he swings one knee over Zuko’s stomach to straddle him.
Zuko jerks his head in a nod and Aang lowers himself onto the dewy slide of Zuko’s thick fingers- a humming of pleasure rattling behind his ribcage.
“Zuko,” Aang moans as Zuko curls his fingers.
Between his fingers enveloped in Aang’s warmth and the restriction of blood, Zuko thinks he very well may lose consciousness soon. He welcomes it, he wants to lose himself completely to Aang’s demand, he wants Aang to take him- body and breath. One of his hands covers Aang’s to encourage the blue-adorned fingers to crush further into his neck.
Aang grinds against Zuko’s fingers messily, seeking more sustained torture against that rough spot inside him. Zuko obliges, pressing harder and deeper, grunting under the press of Aang’s grip.
“Another,” Aang weeps as he rocks against Zuko’s hand.
Zuko manages something like an mmhm between gasps for air.
He slides in one more and Aang moans at the stretch from the depths of his chest and fucks himself harder on Zuko’s stiffened fingers. As he does, he reaches behind him to spread the wetness dribbling from Zuko’s tip around.
“Everything,” Aang says, unseating himself from Zuko’s fingers, guiding Zuko’s pleading erection up to his swollen entrance. Aang leans down to trail his tongue along the shell of Zuko’s ear before whispering, “Give me everything.” Aang sits back up, sliding down to take Zuko in. He moves painfully slow as a burst of red blooms across his cheeks. “Understood?” His voice is raspy and dark.
Zuko keens in agreement, Aang moans, low and garbled and wrecked. Zuko begins gradually, his hips bucking up off the bed in a gentle, wordless question as he meets the lust-shattered look in Aang’s eyes.
Aang nods and Zuko starts in earnest, searching for a rhythm and a depth that’s answered with a sound from Aang’s lips that pleases his ears.
Once he has it, he can’t imagine he’ll ever want to let go- of this completion, of this insanity, of this possession of soul and body. He fucks helplessly up into the nearly limp body of the man he’s loved for what feels like lifetimes, and as he does, he can feel the winding fire inside him twisting and sputtering.
Oxygen becomes scarce in the constriction of blood. Black and white speckles take shape in the edges of his vision, casting a mesmerizing vignette around the sublime picture of Aang’s naked body as it grinds and slams with an artistry both fragile and brutal.
“ Aang-” Zuko pleads in equal parts fear and desire. His vision narrows further, static creeping apace.
In the way Aang’s grip loosens- just barely- he understands. Ease, perhaps he will. But relent? Certainly not.
His hips meet Zuko’s thrust for thrust until each slide envelops him completely and his beloved friend beneath him is nearly past his limit. He rides furiously- his free hand steadies him on the headboard of Zuko’s bed as he watches him unravel beneath him.
Zuko pants frantically as Aang surrounds him, as he takes him, takes everything he has, everything he’s owed.
He willfully gives Aang blood, breath, power, and awareness until his vision nearly closes in and his chest jolts forward, stars bursting behind his eyes as he comes with a delirious cry. He moans Aang’s name as his whole frame stammers, pain and deprivation and pleasure in equal measure ripple through every cell of his body in wave after wave after wave until he slips away into total darkness.
Zuko comes back to himself to the feeling of warm water rushing against his lower abdomen and between his legs. He opens his eyes to find Aang bending him clean.
“How long was I out?” Zuko whispers, his throat sore and hoarse.
“Ten minutes, maybe.” Aang smiles as he flicks his wrist and the whip of water snakes its way back into the basin on the side table.
He climbs into bed, facing Zuko with one elbow propping him up, the other brushing long brown bangs from his face. Aang’s eyes follow Zuko’s fingers as they rub at his neck.
Aang draws water that circulates and illuminates the cradle of his palm. With a single-minded focus, he soothes it over the blossoming bruise on Zuko's neck, chi gathering with a rush that makes Zuko wince.
Just a few moments ago, in a wanton, demanding heat- the same hand took. Now, it gave, it restored.
So they were, now- as they’d always been. Harm and heal, give and take, fear and trust.
“I hurt you.” Aang whispers.
Zuko sighs and meets the indignity coloring Aang’s eyes. “No more than I wanted,” Zuko’s fingers are soft against Aang’s forearm, “I can handle it, I promise.”
Once the bruise has disappeared, Aang whips the water back into the basin and it glimmers gold through the late evening dusk.
“And I can handle you,” Zuko whispers, “Every side you’re willing to show me.” Zuko turns to face Aang’s uncertain eyes, thumb and forefinger cradling his chin as he leans in, breath puffing hot against Aang’s lips, “So, thank you.”
“For what?”
“For letting me see you.” Zuko closes the distance and presses his lips to Aang’s.
Aang presses back, overwhelmed with a slurry of feelings too complex to parse. Is it the gratification of an ache, long shrouded and overdue, coming into focus? Is it grief for everything he’s lost? Perhaps loneliness, being the last of his people? Is it rage for the injustices he failed to prevent? Or the mighty burden of his inescapable calling?
Who could say?
Whatever it is, it rises and expands until it stains his cheeks and he’s holding onto Zuko’s body like a buoy that floats over dangerously open water. He kisses deeper, burying it all in Zuko’s lips, pulling Zuko on top of himself until the weight of his body feels like enough to smother the voices that cry out to him from beyond the grave.
When they part, Zuko wraps Aang in his arms like the deep purple cloak envelops the night sky.
Tear-stained and spent, cracked wide open in Zuko’s arms- Aang closes his eyes.
And, for the first time in weeks, sleep takes him and brings no haunting. Instead, he finds only the solace of pitch-black nothing.
As the early sun explores every corner of sky in the bloom of dawn, so too, Zuko’s hands wander in quiet reverence over every divine plane and sacred line of Aang’s sleeping body.
The curve of his pec, the soft cup of his waist, and that sharp angle with which it arcs up over the taught mound of his ass. With soft fingers, he supplicates, with repentant eyes, begs mercy. Zuko feels a stirring past his perception- his entire body pools with warmth.
Soon enough, Aang is awake.
His eyes meet Zuko's and in them, there is nothing left unsaid.
Wasting no time, in a mess of sweat and gasps and skin beneath fingernails, they scream one another’s names louder than befitting for men of their specific titles within palace walls.
Neither of them cares.
Aang presses sweaty lips to the edge of Zuko’s scar; mouth slack against his cheekbone and heart undone in his hands.
“I won’t tell you to forgive him,” Zuko whispers as fingertips trail up and down the blue line curved around the back of Aang’s head. He waits, filling his lungs with the smell of Aang’s skin.
“And? You want to say something else, so say it.” Aang murmurs against buckled flesh before resting back against the pillow. His eyes drink the sun-lit fire speckling the gold of Zuko’s. In all their years, this is the closest he’s been to Zuko’s eyes. Yet, he looks without haste.
It won’t be the last time.
“I have nothing else to say,” Zuko whispers, a hint of a play in his eyes.
Aang smiles at this, at the ease of it, of them. At how quickly acquainted they’ve become with being naked and pressed together from knee to shoulder. It feels so obvious in its inevitability, so unassuming in its simplicity.
“He doesn’t deserve it.” Aang means the house, the garden, the pleasure of knowing his son rules the nation well, but most of all- forgiveness. His smile fades as his thumb traces the ridges of Zuko’s throat. “Any of it.”
“But you do.” Zuko turns to face Aang fully. “You’re haunted, Aang. You deserve to be free.” Zuko fits a calloused palm against the side of Aang’s neck, thumb stroking the evidence of Aang’s life thumping beneath his skin. “I want you,” Zuko replaces his thumb with his lips, mouthing gently, “to be free.”
The moan that Aang releases is so sinful, so addictive Zuko thinks of a royal decree to have it outlawed for everyone in all four nations except himself. Before his desire sweeps him into Aang’s body and away from his point, he pulls his lips from skin and rests his head against the pillow.
Aang smothers his arousal and settles back, eyes on the ceiling. “I’ll be fine, Zuko,” he inhales and exhales with a measured slowness, “I’m always fine.”
“I know,” Zuko furrows his brow, watching Aang resume the burdens of his duty right before his eyes. “Isn’t that the problem?”
Aang blinks. Zuko’s right. He’s been shouldering mountains when other boys are only ever expected to carry pebbles. He’s been burdened by all of it since the day he emerged and last night was one out of occurrences he could count on one hand where he’d allowed himself to release it all. Even if just for a moment.
“Let’s make a deal,” Aang whispers, pressing his lips to Zuko’s- anchoring what they’d done before it inevitably floats away into the real world.
“I’m listening.”
“I’ll free myself if you do.” Aang pulls Zuko’s hand by the wrist, dropping it in the center of his back. Zuko’s fingers run over the bumps of his lightning scar. “You don’t owe me anything, Zuko. I hope you know that I forgive you.”
Zuko’s eyes are heavy and dark, he swallows. “My selfishness almost kept the world at war for who knows how long. If Katara hadn’t brought you back…” Zuko’s gaze trails Aang’s naked body in his sheets. “You wouldn’t be here.“
“I know. But she did, and I am.” Aang whispers. “Everything I want from you,” he looks straight into his golden brown eyes, fingers against his lips. “I have. And it’s more than enough.”
Zuko nods softly, the rounded tears in his eyes spilling from the motion. He pulls Aang by the back of his neck to fill the space between his chin and collarbone.
“Okay.” Zuko whispers against Aang’s temple. “I’ll try.”
“Okay.” Aang murmurs.
The quiet of the morning settles over the tangle of their bodies, a few rays of sunlight steal into the bed to illuminate their bared skin.
Moment after moment slips by without haste until finally, Zuko tucks his chin to meet Aang’s eyes and whispers, “Your turn.”
The sun is high when Appa’s shadow passes low over mango trees and fire lilies in the outskirts of the Fire Nation.
They touch down just outside the gate. Aang dismounts and hands the royal guards a letter sealed with the five-pronged flame indicative of the Fire Lords’ personal communication.
The gate swings open.
He runs a lazy hand through the soft blush of blood-red fire lilies as he meanders down the stone-lined walkway to the courtyard. Pollen clings to his fingertips, coating them in sticky crimson. Running his thumb over his fingertips in silence, he evaluates the dewy red staining his skin. His eyes snap up to see a spindly ghost of a man waiting at the end of the path.
Once Aang’s shadow falls over him, without turning his head, he speaks.
"I knew I was being watched. But, the almighty Avatar? What an honor.” comes Ozai’s frail grumble. In his voice there is still the sharp echo of power, now hidden by years of mundanity.
Aang doesn’t respond. Instead, he takes a seat across from Ozai, folding his hands over his chest.
“Did his holiness the Fire Lord send you?”
Clenching his jaw, Aang swallows. Silence.
“Or perhaps he doesn’t know you’re here.” Ozai whispers conspiratorially, eyes now searching Aang for something, “A lovers quarrel?” He laughs.
Aang is cold and plain and it unnerves every corner of Ozai’s dainty frame.
Still, silence. A motionless pond.
“Perhaps you’re here to kill me. Oh, powerful Avatar, bringer of peace, nonviolent messiah. Here to crush a weak old man who can’t fight back. Poetic. But, understandable. After spending enough time in the real world, I assume you’ve outgrown the pacifism of your youth. It was that same belief, after all, that led your people to their end. Like calves to the slaughter.” Something glimmers in Ozai’s eye as he eyes the last Airbender as a cat, toying with their food, “I used to ask my father to tell me the story of the attack on the Southern Air Temple before bed. Those were the deepest nights of sleep in my childhood."
Tilting his head, Aang leans forward and says flatly, “You wish for death.”
A sharp laugh echoes off the courtyard stones as Ozai shifts, “Now we’re getting somewhere.” He sits up straight and crosses one leg over the other. “I’ve had 14 years of solitude, Avatar. Do I wish for death?” He sits back, shoulders shrugging, “To tell you the truth, I welcome it.”
Aang smirks as he sits back to resume his persistent stillness.
Ozai purses his lips, disappointed in Aang’s retreat. “Well, if you are here to kill me, there is something I’ve always wondered.”
“Go ahead.”
“Was it my traitorous son who taught you how to redirect lightning?”
“Yes.”
“Mm,” Ozai hums, considering it for a moment, “And was he sucking your cock then like he is now?,” Ozai searches him, “A Fire Lord, unmarried at 30 years old? Long trips to small deserted towns, just the two of you. Any fool can read between the lines. I always knew he was depraved.”
Silence, again.
“You’re not giving much away. Very good, Avatar. You impress me, after all.”
Aang stares, blank.
“But, Zuko... tch, tch, tch,” He clicks his tongue, glimmer returning to his golden eyes, “He’s always been so soft. Such a disappointment. Such a waste of a child.”
Ozai goads, Aang knows. But, still, at the mention of Zuko, he feels a crack in his constitution. A pebble drops in his still waters.
“Look around us. My crimes are innumerable. I’m a murderer. A warmonger. And he still had pity.” Ozai spits on the ground, “Forgiveness was always his weakness.”
Aang’s fist curls hard enough to draw blood from his palms and in the reckless blink of an eye, Ozai is on the ground, eyes wide and gasping.
Aang kneels over him, one knee pressing into his ribcage. Breaths sputter from Ozais lips curled in a disgusting smile.
His still waters rage, ripples spreading as quickly as fire. Aang holds onto Zuko’s image from one breath to the next. He sees him in Ozai’s eyes, he clings to him like the edge of a cliff above a gorge that threatens his demise.
Behind Aang’s body, something crackles in his pointed fingers and immediately Ozai feels it- a ghost limb, a numb reminder of the flow of his own power. Static. Humming at a pitch he can feel down to each blood cell.
The Avatar can produce lightning.
And then he laughs. He laughs with a tenor so terrified and cheerful that it crawls beneath Aang’s skin. “Now this is poetry, Avatar.” He laughs at the fleeting memory of Aang redirecting his lightning when he could have killed him. When Ozai had been bested by a child. And it makes him laugh so hard he’s wheezing.
Aang sees it too, replaying in Ozai’s eyes. He brings his two pointed fingers forward, turquoise whips of light crackling around his fingertips.
“So you are here to kill me.” Ozai sputters.
Aang leans in, the voices of hundreds of dead a dull roar in his ears, tempting him with indulgent vengeance, only a heartbeat away. He whispers, “You’ve convinced yourself you’re not afraid to die. But you are, aren’t you?”
Ozai chokes on a breath, “What does an eternal soul know of fear of death?"
“You forget, I’ve died a thousand times. And, I’ll die a thousand more. Death is my lot, as much as life.”
Aang tilts his head to the side, bringing his fingers close enough that Ozai can feel the sting of electricity hovering, peppering his sallow cheeks. He pinches his face and braces for contact.
“I’ve seen you wait at the gate for the palace briefing. Greedily hoping to see what your disgraced son does. You read how he leads your nation better than you ever could. How he makes peace you couldn’t. How he sacrifices. How he’s nothing like you. How he’s good.” Aang’s breath catches then his face curls tight with coiled madness, “And it brings you joy, doesn’t it!?” Aang presses his knee further, eyes dark and unbidden, anger loosed, “I’ve seen joy on your hideous face. You hope he can right your wrongs as you await your judgment with nothing but your countless dead to keep you company.”
Ozai’s brow furrows as quickening breaths come ragged through suppressed lungs.
“Your 'traitorous son', your 'waste of a child',” Each word slices through grit teeth, “He’s the only hope you have left, isn’t he?”
Ozai's wide eyes frantically search before he gasps, “Is it repentance you want?” His breath gurgles as Aangs hand closes in and the sear of lightning burns the surface of his skin, he shrieks in pain.
Ozai writhes erratically, pathetically attempting to break loose. His terrorized image shines in Aang’s gray eyes and the Avatar's world narrows in with a ringing in his ears that sounds faintly like Zuko’s voice.
It’s easy to do nothing. But, it’s harder to forgive.
“No. Your vengeance isn't mine.” Aang shakes his head as he releases him. He extinguishes his lightning and removes his knee, crouching just above him. Whips of cuts and burns are spread out across his cheeks in a pattern as unpredictable as its source. Aang watches as dewy crimson rolls from open sores beneath his eyes like tears he’ll never cry. He sighs. “The pacifism of my youth taught me revenge is like a two-headed rat viper, when you watch your enemy go down, you’re being poisoned yourself.”
Aang watches as Ozai hungrily drinks air until his lungs are full. Aang reaches his fire lily pollen-stained fingertips to Ozai's broken skin, red running over red as Aang feels his blood between his fingers.
"So, plant your flowers and eat your mangos," Aang whispers, "Your son's 'weakness' has spared you. But I know the spirits waiting for you beyond our world." Aang stands, blood drying on his hand and fury dissipating in his chest, he turns and looks over his shoulder. "They won't."
The next morning, in the quiet gold of the dawn with Zuko sleeping in his arms, Aang watches the early sunshine illuminate their skin. Their bodies, both mangled by rage and marred by war, find their peace in the simplicity of sun.
In total silence, he traces soft fingers against the purple handprint wrapping Zuko's eye. No voices, no crackling rage curling forward.
In each beam of light, the souls of thousands of dead find their rest. The reminder of who he is in the touch of Zuko's skin splits him open until he’s finally empty. Because here, there is nothing more to repay, and no one left to save.
Because here, this feels like it could be enough.