Zuko is sixteen when he meets the boy from his dreams. The boy who’s still, miraculously, a boy. For a moment Zuko wonders if perhaps he’s dreaming and that’s why the boy looks the same. Nevermind the frosty air biting into his cheeks or the fact that he hasn’t seen the boy in his dreams in months.
What makes it possible to differentiate this moment from his nightly escapades is the way his brows pinch and his mouth is held in a downward tilt. He’s not looking at Zuko the way he always looked at Kuzon.
He’s not looking at him like he loves him.
He’s small…Zuko thinks. Staring down at the boy that Kuzon was always looking up at.
“Looking for me?” He asks, and Zuko wants to answer, wants to shout, yes, I’ve spent a lifetime searching…
The desire gives him pause. It’s not true that he spent very long searching, in fact, a mere two years was all it took when his grandfather spent the remaining years of his life on the sea traversing foreign waters and lands to find this boy.
Sozin died searching and Zuko was born to complete his mission.
“You’re just a child,” he says, but the boy simply tilts his head like the mention of it is strange coming from Zuko. He can’t imagine how until he responds, “Well, you’re just a teenager.”
The juvenile nature of the interaction should serve to fray Zuko’s nerves further as he stares hard at the boy in front of him. But the only clear thought on his mind is that he had been right. In all the years he spent dreaming the bleary image of a boy, he knew. Those eyes were grey. Grey like an early foggy morning at sea.
These thoughts are quickly shoved aside as he acts, summoning heat from his chest and sending it at the boy to watch him react.
He does. But only in deflection and almost immediately he ceases, the surrounding people’s cries staying his hand. Perhaps that’s why he doesn’t try an attack of his own. Whatever the reasoning, it works in Zuko’s favor when the boy says, “If I go with you, will you promise to leave this village alone?”
Zuko agrees to the terms easily. He has no further use for the village with this boy — his, his, his — finally within grasp.
