Archive of Our Own ^beta

1—capture

the royal painter depicts a smile on her face where there is none, and nothing of the hand around her waist where too-warm fingers press her closer.

2—pacify

ursa never tells her husband that the poison used to kill azulon is simply a stronger dose of what she stirs into his tea every morning; he never comes to understand the real reason why he always felt stronger after she left.

3—silent

her footfalls are light as a spirit’s as she lifts herself from her husband’s bed and slips down the hall to zuko’s.

4—coo

ozai visits the turtleduck pond, after she leaves, and it sickens him how much they miss her.

5—silk

she often wonders what the point is, his buying her expensive things, when all he does with them is take them off of her again.

6—banish

ursa leaves the palace; isn’t that what she’d wanted all along?

7—shame

when zuko is born, she’s barely had time to hold him before ozai’s slammed her into the wall and ripped the nonbender son from her arms.

8—grateful

it was always the dream of every girl in the village, to be the emperor’s bride.

9—remake

ozai brings his wife to an onsen in the colonies, long since stripped of the earth kingdom remnants; ursa looks at her reflection in the water, and she looks nothing like herself.

10—infest

when the palace is quiet, ursa can sense spirits living in the palace’s walls, a graveyard for those unable to truly escape it.

11—jealous

ozai rejects the idea of sharing a resemblance with zuko, but smoke curls from the edges of his tongue all the same when he sees ursa coddle that kinder version of himself.

12—conquer

the firelord's marriage is much the same as his war.

13—compare

ursa fights the urge to vomit the first time their daughter bends, and she wonders if the girl sees it as hatred, when really, it’s only fear.

14—somber

the servants who dress ursa for her wedding do not say a word, but their eyes say they think themselves executioners.

15—blossom

ozai sears ursa’s name into the cherry tree while she skims her fingers through the petals floating in the pond; even at his tenderest, he is always violence, always always always.

16—motionless

oftentimes, ursa resembles more a porcelain doll than a woman.

17—scent

ozai always smells like juniper and something burning, and when he kisses ursa, her body wants to cough—it never does.

18—contradict

ursa swears her vows to her husband every morning, and she rambles out letters to home every night; he says duplicity suits her.

19—glossy

colony-brown spills out across the sheets as he slides the ribbon from her hair; she watches it turn to cinders in his hand, and she’s never felt more exposed.

20—dependent

he cannot kill her, not until she’s given him what only she can give, and in a way, he thinks she is more powerful than he, and he resents it.

21—spirit

when he asks her about the quiet, masked figure that the servants see at night, she tells him the palace must be haunted by the victims of his hunger; the best lies are by omission.

22—resemble

when he takes the face of roku’s descendant in his hands, it’s just yet another thing he has that sozin failed to take.

23—summer

in the hottest months, ursa is at her quietest, and ozai his most passionate; he takes her up against the hallway wall, and she does not make a sound.

24—vanish

when offered the chance to surrender her memories, the only face she hesitates to lose is her son’s.

25—meal

marrying the prince has made ursa a vegetarian, and it nauseates her when he’s passed his fourth plate of roast duck.

26—bless

ozai thinks ursa is wasting her time in the temples and the springs and the shrines, just as his brother did—he does not care for the spirits, only the things that are tangible.

27—eyes

ursa is not a bender, but most wouldn’t guess it at first sight—a white lie to the nobles is more favorable than the scandal of marrying vermin.

28—kiss

his armies savage villages and massacre forests, but when they are intimate, ozai is deceptively gentle.

29—auspicious

he tells her he wants his children born on the-great-comet-day, and she asks him what sozin’s wife wore to bed.

30—hushed

the rumors say ursa and iroh are closer than they should be, but any closeness at all is too much for the prince’s taste.

31—deplorable

poison is a dishonorable and cruel way to kill a man; for the first time, ursa thinks she’s just like her husband; her parting words to zuko are also to herself.

32—painstaking

ursa’s hair is thicker than a pure-breed fire citizen’s, and the tines of the comb tell her not good enough, not good enough, he’ll hurt you with every tangle and catch.

33—flower

he gives her stinging nettles on their wedding night, and when she calls him ikem by mistake, he whips them across her hip like a death sentence.

34—sugar

they split a plum cake and a bottle of sake at the comet festival, and ursa laughs for the first time since meeting the prince.

35—manifestation

he bends down to ursa’s womb, swollen as a peach close to splitting open, and he coos to what’s inside, as if he can feel the heat that’s nauseated her every day of the pregnancy; the child that comes out is his perfect replica in all ways but sex.

36—talk

elua does not realize the truth of the role she plays between them as the letter leaves her trembling hands—does not know that she’s the way a husband and wife speak to one-another without speaking.

37—bitter

a firebender’s appetite thuds like a kick drum in ozai’s chest, but he draws back from ursa’s neck with the taste of sedative herbs buzzing on his tongue; her eyes meet his, narrowed, and for the first time, he feels that this is what he wants from her.

38—rightful

the second time that ursa calls out ikem’s name, it isn’t an accident at all.

39—smile

the moment that the prince watches her fall to her knees in the garden, his mouth twitches up like a missed stitch; when that ant accosts them in the carriage, it nearly splits his face in two.

40—selfish

ursa lays awake and wishes that roku never married—she never learns that this is the only thought she’d ever share with her grandfather in-law.

41—electric

sometimes, ursa wakes to lightening flashing on a clear day, and sometimes her husband slips into their bed smelling of ozone, and sometimes she’s able to glimpse his veins, before his hand is tightening around her (wrist, waist, hair, throat); what does it make a man who brings even the heavens to screaming?

42—hungry

it makes him a monster.

43—secret

all of the fire nation will remember ursa’s name, all of them but a woman called noriko.

44—arrogance

their son would have been a powerful bender, surely, had she not downed a poison strong enough to nearly miscarriage; she tells ozai the spirits were making her sick, and the palace toxicologists keep their mouths tightly closed.

45—complete

the more ursa longs to escape her isolation, it only clamps her in tighter, a finger-trap.

46—crave

ozai wishes she were not so timid, but fighting back is it’s own complacency, and she grew tired of it as quick as she learned that he wanted it from her.

47—mark

ursa had never been proficient with salves before she moved to the palace; as she smooths cool, fragrant cream across her pink-blistered thigh, she wonders if she were meant to be born a waterbender.

48—kneel

as her robes pool around her on the floor, she looks up at him and feels more petitioner than princess.

49—contagion

ursa is no avatar, but sense memory tells her that the day her grandfather was announced one, sozin had kissed him like he could drink it right out of him.

50—body

when ursa returns to the palace, ozai is just as much a nonbender as her, and she hopes that when the sun was ripped out of him it hurt just as much as when he took her innocence from her.