Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“Bo Shing had a thing—” Zuko’s brow furrowed in shame and anger. He wished he could bite his tongue off, but that wouldn’t bring back the words that had already slipped from his lips. They sounded so alike—why did they sound so alike when he said them, hissing like a viper-rat, when they sounded so different coming from his father?

Zuko drew a deep breath, focused, and: “Bo Shing had a thing…”
His shoulders began to tremble, and he quickly pulled the quill away from the paper before his suppressed tears could smear the wet ink. His lips didn’t say what he wanted them to, and his fingers didn’t write what he wanted them to.

A shadow fell across his page, and Zuko lowered his head, already guiltily lifting his gaze to apologize to his father.

“Father, it’s difficult, the two characters are so the same.”
“Similar.” His father’s voice seemed to echo from every corner of the room, even though he had spoken normally. For him, normal.

“The characters are not the same, Zuko, they are similar. And that’s why you must not pronounce them the same. Do you not understand that?”

Zuko gasped for breath and began nodding before his father had even finished speaking. With a sigh, his father took the wooden ruler from the table, the same ruler Zuko had used to draw writing lines earlier, and with its edge began drawing the same characters in the air that Zuko had just struggled to put onto paper.

“And here”—his father jerked the ruler down sharply—“the character is clearly different from the other, isn’t it?”

The hairs on Zuko’s neck stood on end, like before a storm broke, and he nodded eagerly, even though he couldn’t see the supposed difference no matter how hard he tried. His father was angry because he was still so poor at reading and writing, and that made Zuko angry too, and anyway it was always better to agree with Father before he started shouting. When Father shouted, Zuko usually cried (even if he had gotten better at not crying). And that wouldn’t help him now at all.

Zuko dipped the quill back into the ink, carefully started a new line, and again read out loud while his small hands formed the characters. The wobbly lines on the paper seemed to dance and blur before his eyes, merging into one and becoming indistinguishable.

“Bo Shing had a thing—”

Zuko yanked his hands away with a scream as the paper in front of him suddenly went up in a bright flame.

“Are you really this stupid, or only pretending, Zuko? Azula is two years old and can pronounce it better than you!” his father snarled.

Zuko knew he was exhausting his father’s patience. The day before, his father had explained to him that he had much more important things to do than teach Zuko to read and write, because he should have understood it long ago.

The flame vanished as suddenly as it had come, and when Zuko dared look up, his father wasn’t even looking at him, but staring out of the tall window. Yet the ruler in his hand trembled, and his jaw twitched. He seemed truly angry now.

“Perhaps I overestimated you. If writing still eludes you, then at least try to pronounce the characters properly. Imagine the disgrace if the court learned that at four years old you speak worse than your little sister!”

Zuko nodded, but a lump in his throat stopped him from obeying at once. The painful words echoed in his head, each repetition pushing the tears closer to the surface. He drew a deep breath and glanced at his father, making sure he wasn’t taking too long. But Ozai didn’t seem to notice him, his gaze still fixed on the window. Zuko knew better than to believe his father wasn’t watching.

“Bo Shing had a thing—”

Zuko’s hand exploded in heat, and he froze. Time seemed to stop; his body refused to breathe, his eyes locked on his pale fingers, on which no red appeared. All he could think was: there was no fire. The fire was missing. Why was there burning and no fire?

Suddenly time surged back, and with it came pain. Zuko’s body still paralyzed in shock, the ruler slipped from his father’s hand and struck the table with a crack. By the time Zuko began to scream and cry, the door had already slammed shut behind his father.

The next day, though his fingers still hurt, Zuko spoke and wrote every single word perfectly. His father gave him a satisfied nod, and Zuko’s small body nearly burst with pride.

Chapter Text

Zuko stared in disbelief and wonder at the swirling, dancing flames as they spiraled into the air before him, like tiny hummingbird-dragonflies chasing one another in the mild summer breeze. The fire looked like it was having fun.

Excited, he clapped his hands and, without meaning to, took another step toward the beautiful flames. Whooosh. The fire shot upward and vanished into the sunny sky, leaving behind only shimmering air quivering with heat.

“Zuzu, you idiot!”

Azula came running toward him, face twisted. But it wasn’t anger that distorted her expression—it was worry?

“Why did you stop, Azula? Your fire was so beautiful—”

“Because you dumb-dumb nearly ran straight into it!”

Oh. Zuko dropped his gaze to the ground in shame, praying his little sister wouldn’t notice his tears. He had forgotten again that he couldn’t bend. Not yet, his mother always assured him. Still not, his father ground out between his teeth. Zuko preferred it when his mother spoke. Unfortunately, she seemed to do so less and less lately—at least whenever Father was around.

“Will staring at the fire teach you the katas, Zuko?” his father hissed from the stone bench where he had been observing Azula’s training.

Zuko froze for a moment. He had already learned that there were some questions people asked to which no answer—or one different from the expected one—was “wrong.” But Zuko wasn’t good at recognizing those kinds of questions yet. He simply didn’t understand them. What he did understand was that his father liked to ask them. And Ozai’s narrowed eyes made it clear he expected an answer this time.

“No,” Zuko whispered. Ozai gave a curt nod but had already turned back to Azula.

“And you, Azula, why did you dismiss the flame spiral? Your control was good, you could have pushed it even higher.”

Azula’s eyes went wide. But instead of losing her voice, as Zuko would have, she snapped into a bow.

“I thought I might burn Zuzu. He ran toward the fire, and he can’t bend.”

To an adult, her words might have sounded like the innocent, factual statement of a four-year-old. But to Zuko they sounded like mockery.

“And?” Ozai still looked at her expectantly, as if her explanation was only half done and made no sense. To him, it probably didn’t.

Zuko already understood it would be his own fault if he got burned—after all, he was a non-bender at a firebending training session. (Never mind that Ozai demanded he learn the katas anyway, even without fire. He had to at least minimize the shame he brought on the family. Zuko understood that much already.) But Azula only looked back at their father in confusion, her small shoulders trembling with uncertainty.

“Well, it would have burned him. I thought…” She seemed to brace herself, then quoted smoothly from her lesson books. “Control is one of the cornerstones of firebending and what makes us superior to all others. And it is control to dismiss the fire at my will,” she finished.

Zuko doubted Azula even knew what a cornerstone was. He himself had only half understood it, after asking both Lu Ten and his mother.

Ozai drew a deep breath, and for a terrifying moment Zuko thought he might yell at Azula. He had never seen Father yell at her—let alone need to drill her harder in her lessons.

“And your control is wonderful, Azula. Take a break.”

Azula went to sit at the edge of the training ground. Relief shot through Zuko like a lightning bolt. He started to lower himself into seiza as well, but his father’s sharp voice froze him halfway.

“Not you, Zuko!”

Zuko froze where he was. Something in his father’s tone terrified him. Father rarely spoke with the calm, loving tones Mother used. But she reminded Zuko over and over that it was only because Ozai had so much stress as a prince. Of course he loved Zuko. Zuko didn’t really understand—it was one of those adult things.

But now his father’s tone alone made his small body quake, even before any further words were spoken. Zuko wanted to run. He wanted his mother.

“Show me the katas. You’ve been training them longer than Azula.”

Zuko gasped, but no words came. He wasn’t ready—he knew he couldn’t do them as well as his sister, and he had no fire. And the heavy knot in his stomach told him his father knew it too.

“Father, I…” Zuko searched desperately for words. But neither I know I can’t do them perfectly nor you know Azula is more advanced than me seemed right.

He glanced toward the edge of the training field, where Azula sat in the shade of a tree. Her expression was strange. It reminded Zuko of the face she made right before the maids trimmed her nails. Azula hated nail-cutting, but she knew it had to be done, and the result was unavoidable. The look only made Zuko more nervous.

He shut his eyes, thought of Azula, tried to picture her movements exactly… then threw his arms upward, jumped back on his left leg, pressed his right foot down, shoved his left arm behind him, his right arm to the side, right leg forward, left foot back, don’t bend the knees—he felt the exact moment he lost balance. The world tilted in slow motion, and he crashed down hard on his knees.

For a moment Zuko stayed where he was, breathing hard with his eyes closed. If he couldn’t see what was happening around him, maybe it wasn’t really happening.

“Don’t be so dramatic. Get up. And do it again. This time correctly!”

Suddenly his throat felt clogged as if filled with thick slime. It took him a moment to realize it was a sob threatening to escape. He swallowed hard and looked up at his father, who had in the meantime come to stand over him. But he didn’t extend a hand, like Mother would have. He didn’t smile encouragingly, like Lu Ten had. He looked at him as if Zuko were a stone, or a boring picture, or… something else unimportant.

Suddenly the rising sob dropped into Zuko’s stomach, where it became a knot of hot anger. He stared at Ozai’s face, though his vision blurred with tears.

“I can’t do it!”

Something must have moved, for in one moment Zuko was kneeling on the ground, and in the next he was lying on his side in the dirt. His left cheek went hard, numb—it was an absurd feeling. He couldn’t hear, couldn’t see. Then the pain exploded across his face.

“It’s not that you can’t — it’s that you won’t,” his father hissed, voice muffled as if through cotton. “Next week you will have mastered this. Is that clear?”

But Zuko’s body was too shocked from the slap to react. He trembled, he wanted to cry, wanted to scream, it hurt so much! But his body stayed frozen, staring silently at Ozai. Only when his father left the training ground, Azula at his heels, did the sobs finally burst out of Zuko.

Three days later he practiced the same katas as Azula, side by side, so perfectly that the only difference between them was the fire Zuko did not have.

Chapter Text

Like so many things in Zuko’s life, the first time he bent fire was a coincidence (his mother would have said), an accident (Azula would have said), a mistake (his father would have said).

It was a still-warm autumn morning, only a few weeks after his eighth birthday, and he was practicing his sword katas in one of the palace’s smaller gardens. The garden was thick with growth—never messy, never with weeds, but shielded from outside eyes better than most other places within the palace walls.

The warm air seemed to quiver where Zuko sliced it with his blades. His swords weren’t nearly as large as the ones he’d once seen hanging on Master Piandao’s walls, but surely they were still intimidating if even the air spirits gave them respect. Or was it fear? Were his swords frightening or awe-inspiring? Zuko still struggled to tell the difference between fear and respect.

The thought made him pause. He liked the spirits. The idea that they might be afraid of him—even out of respect—made him unexpectedly sad. He lowered the blades and watched the wind in the surrounding trees.

“Ahm…” He glanced around, but no one seemed near. “I didn’t mean to scare you. I’m sorry.” He bowed deeply.

His father always insisted that when Zuko apologized, he had to bow as well. Words could be tossed carelessly, but humility was shown in action, Ozai said. Zuko disagreed. He was terrible at lying but rather decent at acting. Still, he had long since learned never to contradict his father.

The wind traced lines through the rustling leaves. Most were still a deep, juicy green. Few trees shed their leaves here, and fewer winters in the Fire Nation were ever cold enough to force it. The leaves swayed gently, twisting left and right, and for a moment Zuko thought they looked like dark-green waves drawn through the branches. It looked funny, and beautiful. As if the wind was dancing with the trees.

An idea sparked in him, making his legs bounce with sudden energy. He could practice his katas without hurting the winds. He just had to move with them instead of cutting through them.

The thought sent him nearly up on his tiptoes as he lifted his blades again and prepared.
(Years later, long after he first saw a real airbender — but not long after the war ended — he would sit in this very patch of garden, watch Aang train, and suddenly remember this moment. He’d realize how much that lightness had made him move like an airbender. He would never know if it had come from inside him, or from the wind spirits themselves.)

His feet slid smoothly over the stone, as if the rough surface offered no resistance at all. The blades were one with each other, one with his body, his body one with the dancing winds around him.

He felt alive.

Then sparks flared at the edge of his vision. He whirled around, expecting someone, but where his right hand cut through the air with the blade, bright fire roared up. From somewhere far off came the quacking of turtle-ducks. Spirits! He wasn’t supposed to firebend — he couldn’t control it — what if he burned the turtle ducks? He wanted the fire gone! But every quick breath and every hammering heartbeat only made the flames swell higher.

Zuko did the only thing his childish mind found logical: he screamed.

“What’s going on?!” Father’s voice was sharp, angry.

But Father was the greatest firebender alive. Surely he could protect him from the flames.
But Father sounded so angry.

He would protect him. The fire vanished. With every panicked breath, cool air rushed into Zuko’s lungs.

“At last.” Father sounded… pleased? What?

It took his brain a few moments, once the danger of sudden flames had passed, to catch up.

He had bent.

A wide grin split his face. Zuko had finally bent! He was a firebender after all!

“Zuko, you’re two years behind your sister in training. Two years! Do you really think that’s worth grinning about?”

Zuko bowed deeply, mostly to hide his grin.
“No, Father.” He bit his tongue to keep from adding but. Father hated it when people said but to him. To him, it meant disrespect and defiance. Zuko was sure that was true. Just because he didn’t understand it didn’t mean it wasn’t.

“Tomorrow you’ll start the fire sages’ lessons. Today, with me.”

Heat bloomed in Zuko’s chest. That his father wanted to spend the afternoon training with him alone thrilled him almost more than discovering his fire.

He clapped his hands together, formed a hasty flame, and bowed, just like he had watched Azula do for years at the start of her lessons. His hands were steady, though inside his chest vibrated with energy and joy.

“Summon the fire again.”

Zuko drew a deep breath, thought of dancing leaves and playful wind spirits, and let his feet slide over the ground while his hands swayed like streamers in the wind. The fire followed his fingers as if it had been his all along.

He turned to his father with a proud smile. If he’d had trouble dismissing the flames again, Ozai’s icy stare would have extinguished them instantly.

“What was that? What was that supposed to be? That’s far too soft!” With every word, his father grew louder, and Zuko smaller. “With that you might manage to knock over a blade of grass, if you’re lucky.”

For one absurd moment, Zuko thought of the storm last year, during hurricane season, that had flattened an entire field. Miles of grass and flowers had been overturned or blown away. But he knew better than to tell his father he had been dancing with wind spirits instead of practicing fire katas.

So he tensed every muscle, stiffened his body, and began the harsh, well-drilled fire katas. With each sharp strike and quick kick he tried to recall the feel of the flickering flames that had lived in his hands only moments ago. Right arm down, left foot back, feet together. Zuko finished the kata exactly as he had practiced for a year. His hand stayed cold, his fingers empty.

“What is this supposed to be, Zuko? Are you trying to make a fool of me?”

He spun around, but a single glance at Ozai’s narrowed eyes dropped him instantly into a bow. He clenched his teeth and swallowed the tears threatening to overwhelm him.

For a moment there was silence until Zuko realized his father had meant the question seriously. How could he even think that?!

“Of course not! I’m sorry, Father. I don’t know, I don’t know why… I just bent, you saw, I don’t know why—”

“What I saw was you summoning your first flame with a soft, gentle… dance. I wouldn’t have thought it possible, but maybe you’d be less embarrassing if you weren’t a bender at all.”

Ozai’s roar knocked the breath from Zuko’s lungs, and he finally lost the fight against his tears. For one absurd moment he wished he wasn’t a firebender after all—he was already perfect at the sword katas. But that wasn’t important. That didn’t matter.

“I’m sorry, Father, I’m sorry…”

“Get up. Your feelings won’t help you with your katas. Get up, I said!”

Before Zuko could move, his father yanked him up by the arm and shoved him aside. He barely caught himself before falling. Above him, a lizard bird burst angrily from the trees, hissing as it took flight. For a moment Zuko thought it split in two—but no, there had just been two flying in line. An idea struck him.

He turned sideways so his father could see only his left profile. He drew a deep breath—not to stoke his inner fire like the fire sages had taught, but to call back the game with the wind spirits, the one his new fire had interrupted. Fire needed air to burn, didn’t it?

He went through the sharp fire katas again, but this time let his right hand dance, let his fingers stir the wind, prayed silently that the spirits might let his fire dance again.

He was ready this time, and still astonished when flames leapt from his palms. They were so beautiful.

“Your form is sloppy! It was better before! Do you really want to start all over, Zuko?”

Zuko flinched, all joy vanishing. How could he feel proud when he was so bad?
“No, Father!” He bowed hastily, though he knew that wasn’t what Ozai wanted. His father wanted perfect katas, not deep bows or useless apologies. Zuko swallowed his panic and fear, afraid his words would sound like defiance instead of the honest explanation they were.
“It’s just… different, with fire.”

He braced for a blow, but his father only sighed.
“Do it again.”

Zuko shifted his weight back, drew his right foot forward—
“Your leg should be straighter! Again!”

He obeyed quickly. He stretched his leg until his calves quivered, pulled it up, left hand out, and a tiny flame curled around his fingers. Wow. He really was—

“Higher, boy!”

Before he could drop back into position, his father grabbed his ankle and yanked it higher. Pain seared through his thigh, but Zuko clenched his teeth.
“That’s how it should be. Again!”

The burning in his leg didn’t fade even after he set his foot down. He glanced at the palace windows, hoping to catch a glimpse of his mother. He didn’t even know what he was hoping for. He should be grateful that Father was training him personally. But in that moment, he wanted nothing more than for her to come, to hold him, to make the pain go away.

The only reflection he saw was his father’s in the glass, before Ozai grabbed him roughly by the arm and spun him back. Zuko rushed to obey, but his focus lingered too much on the flame flickering just beside him, so his leg kicked up only half-heartedly.

Again his father’s large hand seized his ankle, yanking it into position.
“Stay there. This is a basic stance. You should have mastered it long ago.”

Zuko gasped at the sharp pain shooting through his thigh. The little flame wavered with his breath, trembling as he trembled.
“Father, how much longer?”

“If you still can’t do the form properly after all this time, then maybe you’ll learn this way.”

Zuko tried to breathe into the pain, a trick Lu Ten had once taught him. He loved when Lu Ten shared little secrets from his military training. The thought that next time he came home Zuko could finally show him his fire gave him new strength. His breathing steadied, his stance grew firm, the little flame on his hands flared brighter.

Zuko breathed, and held, and endured. Soon there were only the four of them: pain, stance, flame, breath.

The weak autumn sun slid behind thick clouds, cooling the air even with the small flames at his sides. Zuko frowned. High in the sky? When had it become midday?

But Zuko breathed and waited.

Suddenly sharp pain ripped through his leg, the muscles locked like stone, and Zuko cried out as his leg dropped, only for his father to catch his foot and yank it back up.
“I told you to stay!”

“Father, it hurts, something’s wrong with my leg, it’s… hard… please—”
“That’s just a cramp, Zuko. Stop being dramatic.”

Zuko didn’t know what a cramp was. But if his father said so, it must be true. Still, the constant throbbing pain drove tears down his cheeks.

He wanted to ask, wanted only to know how much longer, but when his eyes met his father’s, he fell silent. Ozai’s gaze was cold. Zuko had no other word for it. There was no feeling in his eyes at all.

So Zuko focused on the pain, on his stance, on the small flame at his side. Soon, again only the four of them existed.

A week later his fire strike was strong enough to burn down an entire bed of fresh fire lilies. His father’s smile made it almost easy to ignore the gardener’s desperate wailing.

Chapter Text

Zuko had never gotten the chance to show Lu Ten his fire.

He never saw Lu Ten again.

Zuko crept on tiptoe across the dark wooden floorboards. He knew it wouldn’t matter if someone heard him; he wasn’t technically forbidden from entering the old tea room of the palace. Still, he felt like he was intruding, stepping into a space that wasn’t his.

When he reached his destination, he let out a sigh and dropped into the cushions of a large sofa.

A storm of dust swallowed him at once.

Coughing and waving his arms for air, Zuko jumped back up. Instead of escaping the dust, the movement only kicked up more of it. Still coughing, he hurried to the other end of the room, his light steps raising even more dust from the floor, and threw open the windows.

Fresh air.

Zuko leaned far out of the window until his chest hung over the frame and drew in a deep breath. Two parrot-swallow birds chased each other playfully around the palace towers, calling and laughing as they flew. Below stretched the gardens, lush and green. Zuko could even see the dense bush where he had hidden from Azula during hide-and-seek a few weeks ago. She hadn’t found him, which had given him a short sense of triumph before she took revenge by burning his new storybook and throwing it into the turtle-duck pond to put it out. But from up here, he could see everything in the gardens clearly, even his old hiding spot. He had to remember this place for their next game; he would always win. He could already imagine Lu Ten’s face when he—

A sharp pain shot through Zuko’s chest before his thoughts caught up with reality.

Lu Ten was dead.

He would never play with him again.

With one last deep breath, Zuko closed the window and sank down against the wall onto the dusty floor. His father would be angry if his clothes got dirty, but that was a problem for future Zuko. He pulled his legs close, wrapped his arms around them, and rested his head on his knees.

From that angle, the swirling dust looked almost like fine rain. Through the floating particles, his cousin suddenly smiled at him. Zuko’s heart skipped before he realized Lu Ten was looking at him from behind the veil of dust, from an old portrait on the wall. It was the portrait from Lu Ten’s military oath, the most recent picture of him. And it would always stay that way.

Zuko swallowed hard, still fighting the tears. He hadn’t paid attention to which room he’d wandered into, only that he wanted some quiet. Now he realized this wasn’t just any old tearoom but his uncle’s favourite. Once, they had spent long rainy afternoons here together, with Lu Ten, Uncle Iroh, Mother, Azula, and sometimes even Father.

Now the sunlight broke painfully through the dust.

Next to the portrait hung another painting, probably made on Ember Island, though Zuko didn’t remember it. He was very young in it, maybe a year and a half or almost two. Azula wasn’t born yet. He couldn’t say if she had already been in Mother’s belly. Father would never have allowed the artist to paint that. Lu Ten’s medium-length hair moved in the wind and a wide grin spread across his freckled face. The freckles had faded as he grew older, but that warm smile had always stayed, especially for Zuko.

It had been only a few weeks since they had received the terrible news, yet the palace already looked as if Lu Ten had been gone for years, long enough to be forgotten. But Zuko couldn’t forget. He didn’t want to.

It was so unfair. He missed Lu Ten so much.

The realization that he would never again be smiled at by his cousin, that Lu Ten would never again come home on leave, that Zuko would never see him again, hit him like a punch to the stomach. He bent forward in pain and grief. His breath came wet and uneven, and it took him a moment to notice the tears running down his face. Breathing became harder and harder until each new breath turned into a sob.

Why? It was so unfair.

Zuko barely noticed the door opening beside him, or the large hand that turned him by the shoulder. He was still crouched on the floor, arms wrapped around his stomach, as if he could hold the sobs in with his bare hands.

“Zuko, what’s wrong? Were you attacked?” It was more the strangeness of hearing his father’s voice sound worried, almost tense, than the question itself that made Zuko shake his head quickly.

“Father…” he sobbed and gasped for breath before he could continue. “I miss Lu Ten so much.” He kept his eyes on Lu Ten’s picture. He didn’t want to see his father’s face. He knew that expression would be disappointment. Just last week Ozai had told him several times that it was time to end the mourning period. Lu Ten had already been dead for weeks.

Zuko knew he couldn’t show weakness, especially not to Father. As if to confirm it, Ozai suddenly grabbed his arm. But instead of closing his strong hand around Zuko’s thin upper arm, he pinched the soft skin on the inside between his thumb and forefinger. Zuko cried out as Ozai twisted and pulled him across the room by that single point of pain.

“Quiet. Zuko, how long is the official mourning period after the death of a member of the royal family?”

They stopped in front of Lu Ten’s portrait.

“Twenty-one days, until the spirit is guided to the Spirit World, Father,” Zuko answered obediently.

“How long has Lu Ten been dead?” Ozai’s flat tone tore another sob from him.

“Twenty-seven days. But--ah!”

Pain shot into his shoulder as Ozai twisted the skin harder, leaving Zuko without any strength to resist.

“Don’t you dare contradict me, boy.”

“I’m sorry, Father, I’m sorry.” Zuko clutched at his father’s hand still gripping his arm, unsure if he wanted comfort or release.

“Take them down.”

Silent tears rolled down his face as he was shoved toward the wall. He knew better than to argue. He swallowed hard, focusing on the relief when Ozai finally let go, and began removing the pictures of Lu Ten one by one.

When he turned back, he held five wooden frames in his arms. His left arm throbbed.

His father, of course, was right. By tradition, the mourning period was over, and maybe it was an appropriate lesson that he had to take the pictures down himself. Until—

“Burn them.”

Zuko wanted to say no, to protest, but the shock left him speechless. He shook his head again and again. He couldn’t. He wouldn’t burn the last photos of his cousin. He couldn’t.

Ozai’s fingers found the same spot on his arm again. The pain returned threefold.

“Father, it hurts, please, it hurts.”

“It hurts? Do you know how much it hurts to have such a weak son as my heir?”

Zuko sobbed, thick tears rolling freely down his cheeks. It hurt so much.

His breath came in sharp, ragged gasps. Half a year ago, he wouldn’t have had the breath to summon his fire. Now, through a blur of tears, he watched Lu Ten’s face vanish as the flames devoured it.

The next day, when Zuko changed clothes, he saw a long mark of purple and blue on the inside of his arm.

Two days later, when he passed the old tearoom and thought about how there were no pictures of Lu Ten there anymore, he tensed his arm. The sharp pain that ran through it kept the tears from falling.

Three days later, when Azula proudly told him she had helped clear out Lu Ten’s room, the pain in his arm kept him from crying.

It didn’t even take a month before Zuko spoke of his cousin as if his absence were something to be proud of. He still cried sometimes, more out of shame than grief, but he was never caught doing so again.

The guilt of burning the pictures never faded.

Chapter Text

Only a few weeks passed after Lu Ten’s death before either Azula’s lying tongue or Ozai’s terribly honest request turned Zuko’s life from a dull grey into complete darkness. It would take many years, until a fateful solar eclipse, before he would learn the truth about that night. But what he knew for certain, at nine years old, was that one evening his mother kissed him goodnight as always, then half-woke him in the middle of the pitch-black night, and the next day she was gone forever. Just like that. One day she was there, the next she was gone.

Zuko woke up tense, as if caught between sleep and dark dreams he could not remember. He had put on his clothes inside out twice before he was presentable enough to leave his room. It was not unusual for him to have breakfast alone. His father was often already working, Azula was at training, and his mother was usually still in bed, since as a non-bender she was not awakened by Agni’s first rays.

As if it were a sign of the day to come, breakfast tasted bland and wrong. Yet as much as Azula loved to send perfectly good food back to the kitchen, Zuko never liked to complain to the servants - whether waiters or cooks - even when the food truly did taste bad for once. Perhaps he was ill. He certainly felt strange that morning, and he knew that some illnesses could dull or alter taste.

Suddenly a servant entered the room, bowed deeply, and said, “Fire Lord Azulon, son of Fire Lord Sozin, your honoured grandfather, passed away during the night, my prince. His last will declares that…” Zuko did not hear the rest. As fast as he could, he ran to his mother’s chambers.

He did not know it yet, but this moment was the beginning of one of the darkest times in his life.

“Mum?” Zuko crawled on all fours beneath the thick hedge that hid a small secret part of the royal gardens. He doubted that his mother, with her beautiful dresses, would have come through here, and he knew he would hear about it later from his father once he saw the state of Zuko’s silk trousers. But he had already searched everywhere else three times.

The midday sun burned mercilessly. Sweat ran down his forehead, down his back, even along his legs. Zuko blinked several times to clear the salt from his eyes. Yet even this pain was better than the growing certainty that his mother was gone. He had asked everyone, the librarian, the cook, the servers, the attendants, but no one had an answer. Azula had only shrugged and said it did not matter where their mother was. But Azula always lied. Except, what if she had not lied the night before, when she had said Father was going to kill him?

Damp earth clung to his hands as he finally pushed through to the other side of the hedge. The small “clearing,” as he called it, hidden deep within the royal gardens, was empty. Only a fat humming-bee circled the wildflowers that grew there. Nowhere else in the garden did these flowers exist. Supposedly they were weeds, and the gardeners uprooted them as soon as they saw the first leaves. But here, the despised beauties grew freely. Zuko did not care about the flowers now, though; he turned around as soon as he saw that his mother was not there. As he pushed back through the thorns, he did not yet know that this secret, sheltered place would become one of his most sacred retreats in the years to come.

Zuko ran again. He had searched everywhere, he had asked everyone. There was only one person left, and he had hoped he would not have to ask him. He did not even have to leave the gardens to find him. His father stood with his back turned, before one of the many shallow fountains that filled the air with their soft trickling sound.

Zuko stopped a few steps behind him, waited a moment so he would not sound out of breath when he spoke, and bowed deeply. It did not matter that his father could not possibly see whether Zuko bowed correctly or not. Somehow Ozai always knew when he did not.

“Father, do you know where Mum is? And, one of the servants said Grandfather is,” Zuko swallowed a lump in his throat, “he said Grandfather is dead. Is that true?”

From far away, as if outside his own head, Zuko scolded himself for sounding so indifferent about his grandfather’s death. But the icy panic that his mother might be gone drowned out everything else.

Zuko waited.

Ozai said nothing.

“Father?” Maybe he had not heard him, maybe—

“She is gone. Azulon is dead. My coronation is at noon. Make sure you are more than presentable. You are Crown Prince now.”

Each word fell from Ozai’s lips cold and precise. Zuko could hear no emotion in his voice. Then he could hear nothing at all, except the steady rushing sound that filled his ears and his entire head.

Gone?

“Dad? When is Mum coming back?”

Silence.

“Where is she?”

His father did not turn around.

“Dad?”

Zuko stepped forward, closing the distance between them, and grabbed Ozai’s sleeve. He wanted his mother, he wanted comfort, he wanted his father.

At last, his father turned around. With strong arms he lifted him by the hips. The hope of finally being pulled into an embrace and comforted was so overwhelming that Zuko did not even realise, at first, that his father was not drawing him close.

He still did not understand, saw everything slowly, distorted, and then everything froze. The next moment he hit the hard tiled floor. From far away, he thought absurdly how grateful he was that Piandao had once taught him how to fall properly after too many reckless sword moves. It saved him from the worst of the impact.

Still, it hurt.

His father stepped over him. Without thinking, Zuko reached out and grabbed the hem of his robe.

“Dad?” he whispered. His father hated it when he whispered, especially when he did not speak properly. In the next moment Ozai grabbed his wrist and pulled him to his feet.

“She is gone. She is not important. She does not matter, and you will stop asking about her. Understood?”

His father was angry. Zuko could feel it in the tremor of his hand around his wrist, in the drops of spit that hit his face as he shouted.

But this time, bruises, scrapes, and a sprained wrist did not stop Zuko from asking again and again about his mother. It took nearly a year and many more such lessons before he never mentioned her again in his father’s presence.

When his uncle finally returned to the palace after many moons – grey, round, and soft – and quietly asked Zuko about Ursa one evening, Zuko made sure the icy glare he gave him matched his father’s. Then he turned silently and walked away, his head held high.