Part One: Turtle Duck and Fire Lily
Walking through the fields and picking wildflowers, Ursa remembered again a moment that had run through her head thousands of times. She was kneeling before her son, whose tired eyes were still so young and untainted to cruelty and whose face bore no scar.
She told him: "Everything I've done, I've done to protect you. Remember this, Zuko. No matter how things may seem to change, never forget who you are." She pulled him close, held his small body to her as long as she could before pulling away, covering herself with the cloak, and walking into the shadows, away from her boy for the last time.
The moment which left her heart forever broken. The moment when she threw away a life of luxury and of motherhood in order to save the life of her child. The moment she knew she would hate herself for leaving her fire baby and bless the spirits for granting her boy a second chance.
The cost of that second chance left her just outside a farming village in the Earth Kingdom, hidden where no one would think to look. No wife of a Fire Lord would ever be in such a place, many would think, but in a secure and isolated prison. Yet there she was, practically alone, in a humble place where she lived off of simple agriculture. She also learned to carve wood into figures to make some spare change. Her favorite form was a turtle duck, like the one Zuko had shied away from so many years ago.
Upon banishment she was stripped of her garments and felt bare without any pendant around her neck. She soon fashioned a tiny wooden turtle duck into a necklace, to replace the Fire Nation emblem with a connection to what left she had to live for. She reached for it as the memories rushed back to her, like they often did.
"Ah, I see the murderer has taken a stroll. A bit late to be this close to the shore, traitor."
She turned around to see a guard approaching. Disguised as a member of the Earth Kingdom, he often paid visits to ensure her banishment left her as empty she had felt on the first day.
"I am sorry. I must have wandered off as I picked flowers." Her face bore no expression. She would not give him the pleasure of thinking her weak.
"Yes, well, let's see that you remain more focused on your little outings. I should escort you back into town, to see that you… make it safely."
"Of course."
Ursa picked up the basket of flowers and walked by his side, looking firmly ahead.
"You can't have heard, all the way over here in the middle of nowhere, that your Fire Lord has taken Ba Sing Se. It's only a matter of time until there is only one nation under Phoenix King Ozai."
She gave him no response. How could she speak of Ozai without betraying her feelings of contempt and sorrow?
Her silence bothered the guard and he continued to goad her.
"And that son of yours has disappeared. So tragic. After all that time, he returned to the Fire Nation only to leave once more. Some say he has been killed. Others believe he continues his hunt for the Avatar. No matter. If he still lives, soon-to-be-Firelord Azula will seal his fate."
Ursa again refrained from a single utterance but her brows furrowed slightly.
"Treachery seems to run in your blood, Fire Lady. I hear you still speak kindly of your scar-ridden offspring. Are you so foolish to assume he will survive this war and come to you?"
His biting tone was made quite clear at the title of Fire Lady. A title she had never earned.
They arrived at the entrance to the tiny village and they stopped. Ursa spoke, her speech deprived of emotion.
"No. No, I won't ever see my son again."
He chuckled.
"There now, at least banishment has not left you completely brainless."
She bowed, her blank expression not once changing.
"Very well, return to your hut."
Ursa entered the small village. She purchased a few herbs from a merchant and handed him a flower. "For your wife." He thanked her and she walked up the rough street toward her hut. She could hear the whispers behind her but paid no mind. They could do no more to break an already broken woman.
She arrived at her shelter where a young woman was waiting. For the past several weeks, the girl had taken it upon herself to care for Ursa, in spite of her banishment. She greeted Ursa and prepared tea. A thick silence sat between them until she handed Ursa a cup.
"Come, what it is?" Ursa invited the girl to sit with her.
"I was just wondering…" The girl sat next to her. "….about your banishment. What you did to get here. You have spoken of it before, but I cannot imagine it done at your hands."
Ursa looked into her tea and for a moment she caught a glimpse of Azulon. The father-in-law she had killed.
"To threaten my child is to welcome my wrath. I had no choice."
"Do you ever regret what you have done?"
"Not for a moment," Ursa says, without hesitation. "I did what must be done to save him. No price is too high for that. And because of it, Zuko lives and I may see him again one day."
"One day," the girl said, "the lie will be true, my lady. The lie you tell yourself, the lie you tell the guards. One day you will no longer believe in your son."
"That can never be. I will be with my son again. If the war does not take him, he will find me. He keeps fighting even when the odds are against him. If the war takes my boy, we will be reunited in the Spirit World. I will see him again. No war, no man, could ever take my child from me."
The girl nodded and returned the tea kettle to its shelf, and prepared the bed.
As she was about to leave, she stopped.
"And your daughter, my lady?" Ursa looked up. "What of your daughter?"
"Azula. I… I can only pray she can learn from the mistakes of her father." She began to cry. "No mother should be so afraid for her daughter. But she could not see reason, right or wrong. She could not see beyond hate, only who she hated more and who she hated less. Had I the chance to help her… I would want her to find it in herself to love who she is without falling prey to her title. To come to remember her mother, without hating me." She choked on tears.
The girl stepped forward as if to come to Ursa's side but stopped.
"Forgive me for asking, but can you still love her after all she has done?"
Ursa's eyes were still filled with tears but there was a bite of anger behind them as she looked up at the girl.
"She has been torn apart. There is very little left of my daughter, of the little girl I loved, but she is still my child. I cannot love her for what she has done, or what she has become, but I will love her as my daughter. And I will love her as long as she lives, and I will wait as long as I must to see her be well again." She gasped through sobs, clinging desperately to the image in her mind of her son and her daughter playing together. "My turtle duck and my fire lily."
At this point the girl had come to her side and tried to comfort her, stroking her hair and rubbing her back. She took a flower from the basket and slipped it behind Ursa's ear, carefully weaving it into her hair.
"I am sorry to make you cry. But even through your tears, and even through this banishment, you are beautiful, and kind." She smiled and whispered, "So long as I breathe, you will be my Fire Lady."
Ursa managed a faint smile.
"Thank you, child."
The girl left and Ursa took her tea to the small table by her bed. She took a sip and then took a piece of parchment from a drawer and a pen and began to write, as she did every night in captivity.
"Azula, my fire lily,
I wish you could see in yourself the promise I once saw behind your eyes. Behind the doubt and the hatred and the rage. I believed in you. I saw it in yourself to make the right choice. One day you will be faced with an opportunity to make a decision that could change the world. You are the princess of the Fire Nation, and you are my daughter. I believe you can be both, though I know you must think me a traitor to you and to our people. My crime was worthy of this punishment. But you have to know, I simply did what must be done to protect my family. I loved your father, and your brother, and you, and I did not want anything to change us. I should have known such a fantasy would not last. But that is in the past.
What I wish to impart to you is this:
You have power, and the desire to achieve it. But to deserve that power you must also be strong, of the body and the mind; you must seek peace, and you must laugh and love; you must be open to change, and to the thoughts of the people. Fire is not your only ally. Fear is not your only tool. You must find within yourself greater power to see this truth, and to become the strong woman I know you can be. Not just as the princess of a nation, but as a person capable of great things.
I love you, Azula. If you must abandon me, do me the honor of not abandoning yourself.
Your mother,
Ursa"
She dropped the pen and held her face in her hands. Tears spilled out between her fingers as she wept and wept, with only the sound of her son's tearful goodbye and the image of her daughter's hateful eyes for company.