As the rain fell harder, the gathered mourners began to disperse. Fire Lord Zuko stood beside the funeral pyre, the hot flames sizzling against the downpour. As his topknot fell to pieces, loose strands of hair dangling around his face, he tried not to think to hard about what exactly was burning.

General Iroh, having returned from his retirement in Ba-Sing-Se, reached out from beneath his umbrella to grasp his nephew's shoulder. Zuko's unblinking eyes stared into the inferno unwaveringly. When Iroh spoke, his voice was solemn with empathy. His family was too accustomed to loss. "I am deeply sorry nephew. This was not meant to happen."

Zuko responded without turning. "There either is fate, or there is not. Don't bother me with paradoxes, Uncle."

Tears began to fall from Zuko's good eye, mixing with the rain drops already streaming down his face. Iroh lifted his umbrella to shelter his nephew from the unsympathetic elements, but the young man walked away from him, retreating into the now empty royal chambers.

The old general stared down into the flames with a sigh, and dropped a single moon lily into the blaze. The white petals blackened as the flower fell, crinkling and shriveling into unrecognizable ash. He bowed his head in prayer as the fire sages finished the last of their chanting.

Zuko had found her lying in the garden, propped against the cherry tree beside the turtleduck pond. Though he had initially mistaken her stillness for sleep, his wartime experiences told him otherwise. A body looks one way alive, and another dead, and he had seen far too many of the latter to remain ignorant.

Upon further inspection, it seemed she'd been bitten by a scorpion-snake on her way across the garden and had fallen beside the pond in her final moments. The venom had been mercifully quick, of that much he was certain.

It was quite a way to end a honeymoon, but with his luck, Zuko had to wonder how he could have hoped for anything else.

He'd spent much of the last few weeks as drunk as possible, ceding more and more of his duties to various ministers and civil servants. He moved from his room less and less.

Finally Iroh could take no more of it, and burst into his nephew's room, to find the Fire Lord passed out on his bedroom floor, his late wife's dress clutched in one hand, a bottle in the other.

Lifting his surrogate child into bed took much effort for his aging body, but he couldn't think of what else to do.

"Uncle?"

Zuko's voice was small and weak from disuse. There was a hollow quality to it that had never been there before.

"Yes, Lord Zuko?"

His nephew looked at him with blank eyes, as if he were staring at something far off in the distance.

"Tell me about the spirit world."

A/N-

I'm trying something new here: tragedy and short, impressionistic chapters. I have an idea that's been brewing in my head for awhile now, and I want to see it through. Please review and let me know what you think.

Jabberwocker