In His Element(s) || avatar / bnha

Fire: Both Without and Within

Aang had never quite broken his habit of rising with the sun.

He'd spent a year barely getting any sleep at all, tensing at every shadow and sudden noise and stealing naps when his friends were awake enough to keep watch for him. When Zuko had joined their party, his early mornings had adapted into following in the firebender's footsteps.

We rise with the sun , Zuko had flatly explained to him. Just as the waterbenders rise with the moon.

Breathe in. Breathe out.

The morning air was crisp and cool against his skin, the slightest edge of wind whispering through the grass beneath Aang's feet. It was enough that he'd have to mind his flames if he was actually firebending through this kata.

Dragon's Dance. Aang grinned slightly as he moved through it. It was the first real firebending form he learned and thus the one closest to himself. No matter how much Zuko grumbled about it's name - its not dancing, Aang, its an ancient and traditional form the Masters honored us with- he always joined in when Aang asked him to. It was done better in a pair, anyways. It was best to do it with Zuko.

And if it made their esteemed Fire Lord quietly smile every time they'd completed their sparring, washing away some of the tension and aggravation he bundled up so tightly inside- that was all the more reason to keep insisting on his friend's company.

Two sides of the same coin , Hakoda had once said thoughtfully, watching them spar together on the rare occasion he'd journeyed with his children northwards during one of the Water Tribe's delegations. You reflect each other well.

Aang thought maybe he was now starting to understand what that meant.

Hmm. Someone else had slipped out of the dorms. Aang extended his airbending as he sank low into the next stance, beckoning the wind to bring a sense of who they were. The smoky, peppery taste of a firebender, sharply tempered with bitter frost.

Todoroki .

Aang deliberately slowed his heartbeat back down to the calm, centered pace he had been practicing. It had stammered in his chest briefly from the unfamiliar gaze honing in on him, an instinctive response he also had never managed to quell. He didn't have a partner to hold the final lunge with, so he slid into the ending he'd adapted after too many mornings of doing it alone, much to Zuko's chagrin. His bare feet brushed lightly through the slight damp left behind by the dew beneath him as he straightened up once more, hands clasped in front to signal the end of a form. He breathed out deeply.

Aang let himself soak in the calming rays of the rising sun for a few moments before turning to catch the eye of his surprise onlooker.

"Good morning," he greeted. "Am I in your way?"

Todoroki simply blinked at him, expression carefully neutral. It appeared he had prepared for the morning temperatures with the jacket slung around his waist, underneath of which he was wearing dark, loose pants and a boxy white shirt. He shook his head slightly at Aang's inquiry. The movement prompted the early sunlight to glimmer in highlights against the stark burn surrounding his eye, so achingly familiar to Zuko's that it almost caught the breath in Aang's chest to see it.

Something in Zuko had broken when he'd received his. Aang wondered what it had done inside Todoroki.

There were differences, of course. Zuko's was raised and snarled in the manner that spoke of close, intense fire that scorched skin and flesh alike. Todoroki's didn't have the same depth to it, for all its vivid discoloration. Aang tilted his head curiously, thinking back to Katara's healing lessons on scarring and the tissues surrounding them. This was... scalding , that was the word. Water heated to boiling.