This is a kind or prologue I wrote for a Zutara AU I co-planned with a friend. We're not sure if we'll get to writing that, but I was really captivated by creating a history for Ozai, and decided to share this with interested folks.
"In me
are the bones
of a
better man
than this"
-Tyler Knott Gregson
The moon was his last sight before the creeping cloud of rat-viper poison.
When Ozai awoke he could taste sand in his mouth. The dying cries of the men haunted his skull like scattered wolfbats.
He struggled to rise when Fire Lord Azulon entered, but the poison commanded his blood and he couldn't even raise his throbbing head.
"I am stripping you of command of the Eastern fleets. When you return from the North Pole, see that I do not divest you of more."
His brother Iroh lingered, patting his shoulder, "Get some rest, it is a long journey north, but the healers will set you right."
The pity in Iroh's eyes burrowed deeper and darker than his father's scorn. He summoned his fading strength.
"Leave me."
The healing sessions sapped his strength, but with each day his blood flowed clearer, and slowly he could feel the fire rekindle in his veins.
Ozai swam through the dark of unconscious, drawn by the moon's halo. His eyes opened on her face.
"Your chi is strong, and the poison caused no lasting harm."
Her blue eyes were warm and cloudless like the skies on Ember Island. They reminded him of fleeting summers in a time when he was young and carefree and his mother's proud smile was all he knew of honor and glory.
The moon glistened in the hollow of her throat.
"My name is Kya. Welcome to the North Pole."
He would learn later that desire too was a poison, too strong for his chi, and too elusive for any healer's touch.
Ozai was no stranger to unquelled wanting. It was the sharp glint of the Fire-crown, the thunder of a hundred people cheering Iroh home from battle.
It was the empty moments before his father's eyes hardened.
The sages despaired of the younger Fire prince ever bending lightning. Weak. Restless. Overeager. They would cluck their dismissive words while he sweated through form after form until the blood ran from his nose and over his mouth.
But here in the North Pole, longing transformed itself anew, draped itself in hair dark as jungle rivers, blinked at him with lustrous eyes, tormented him with the scent of soapstone and the promise of skin soft as ocean sand.
Kya was reserved and solemn, but she smiled at her wards in the healing huts, even him, the Firebender whom the others beheld with distrust. It confused him, the quiet way she asked after his welfare, how she accepted his short replies with a smile and small nod.
If she was unnerved by his gaze, Ozai didn't care. It was well-known that Water Tribe women lacked the modesty and refinement so prized among women in his own nation. They needed no bridal canopies trellised in jasmine, but only rude furs upon which to spread their lascivious thighs.
It frustrated him, that she was attainable and yet not so. Whenever she took her leave, so self-contained and serene, lust inflamed his veins and he would remember the scorn of the Fire Sages.
In his dreams a dark worm slithered through caverns of memory, and he wore a pronged crown, and cackled lightning, and his pincers smelled of soapstone.
The old tales said: most frightening of all the faces of Koh was no demon or beast, but the shape of each man's desire.
Find this 'spirit oasis' they speak lies the key to conquering these Water tribals once and for all. Do not fail me again, Ozai.
He was fully healed and his time at the North Pole was drawing to a close, yet he was no closer to discovering the damned Oasis. No longer confined to the healing huts, he was free to roam the city of ice and sapphire, but few were willing to keep him company, much less divulge a cultural secret.
He cursed the pompous knowledge spirit Wan Shi Tong, whose library had both denied him and allured him.
Just like her.
The ancient words he'd glimpsed before the sand poured down haunted his sleepless mind.
Sun and Moon.
He was no closer to bending lightning here than in the Fire Nation. But some nights he would watch the moonlight across the dark ocean and imagine it dappling her thighs and wonder if he grasped this desire by the throat, would the energies cleave at his touch and yield the icy fire at last.
Fire and Water.
"Healing doesn't begin and end with the flesh," she said, in her shy, quiet way that maddened him with its restraint, "A healer can work your chi, but only you can cleanse it."
Ozai smirked, and teased her, and watched the confused pink dusking her cheeks before an older woman ushered her away with some haste. He'd noticed the elder healers circled her with quiet watchfulness, years and years of secrets around a precious oasis.
Power and Absolution.
He found her alone by the quays his last night there. The ships were white and austere as bone in the moonlight, all the snowy city lamp-lit and as untouchable as a starry sky. Ozai cleared his throat and asked her for a walk in his authoritative way. Kya blinked, her mouth tightening.
"You would deny a prince of the Fire Nation?"
"Do princes of your nation lack companionship so much that they must command it?" cerulean eyes flashed like moonlight through water.
Ozai was taken aback.
"Being commanded so by a prince is regarded an honor among my people."
"And courtesy is valued even higher among mine."
Something in her eyes made bile rise to his throat. A green of poisonous memory. Iroh, smiling, indulgent. The old Fire Sage shaking his head.
Pity.
Iroh warned him before he left for the Great Desert.
Be careful brother. The words of the Spirits are like illusions of water in a desert. A man might chase them his whole life, and die thirsting.
His brother was always spouting vague sentiments over jasmine tea. Ozai wondered how Iroh had mastered lightning when the cold fire eluded him.
He realized Kya was silent, staring.
A man may run forever.
"Ozai?"
Die thirsting.
It was her doing. It was the way she folded his name beneath her tongue. His body pinned her easily against the wall. He was saying things, breathing her soapy skin and roaming his hands across supple curves and swallowing her startled cries. With a groan he tore at her furs, leaving the scent of char in his wake. Her small hands pushed at his chest, rain against the sudden steel of his purpose.
Is this what lightning feels like, this taut certainty.
He could see it all clear as a storm-flash: the secret oasis, Ozai the Moon Conqueror, gold glittering on his shoulders and her body bending beneath his own like helpless shore-sand beneath the waves, again and again.
Then it was gone. The lightning fled as it always did and he tasted blood amid the distant sound of crying.
Ozai cursed the fists that pushed him down, cursed the secrets of the Spirits, the burning moon at her throat.
Ozai no longer trained with the Fire Sages. Lightning eluded him, but his firebending grew in both power and ferocity. Away from the sages' interminable admonishments, he could reach inside himself and channel his anger into molten fury.
When he wasn't bending he spent hours in the archives, reading, compiling, preparing. Azulon was pleased and the War Council impressed.
Sunfire can drown the moon, cloak it with brightness so the world forgets.
"She is of Roku's bloodline, and her family ties are substantial."
"As you wish, Father."
He vaguely remembered Ursa from his time in the Academy. Beneath the flowers and beads of a bridal headdress, her immaculate face was young and quiet, and her slim hand disappeared in his.
In the wedding chamber aflame with golden red silk, Ozai glanced at his new wife and saw a damp sheen on her skin. Her cherry-blossom mouth trembled.
But when he stripped the soft bridal robes from her body she stood unbowed. If she cried when he laid her face down on the lush pillows, he could not see. Her flesh was smooth as moon-peaches. Only the tight curl of her fingers on the spun-silk bedspread gave her away.
Ozai moved aside the black curtain of her hair, and found her eyes squeezed shut. He traced the flawless curve of her cheek, and burned away the memory of soapstone.
She barely made a sound when he took her, and something like admiration flickered at his edges.
The moon was a sliver of light when he stepped out. He stared it down.
I will conquer. Someday.
Behind him a curtain rustled and Ursa stood there, robed only in her hair. Before he could recover from surprise, she huddled close and brushed her lips on his shoulder. He wrapped an arm around her hips.
Soft golden eyes looked up at him. He felt desire begin to flare against the warm nakedness of her body. She clasped his hand, entwining their fingers. Her voice was throatier than he'd realized, husky yet elegant, like the perfume of the fire-lily.
"Come inside."
Azulon had plans to invade Ba Sing Se. The mighty heart of the Earth Kingdom was the main bulwark against Fire Nation dominance.
Ozai neglected his bending practice for months, scouring the archives for every drop of information about the Earthbenders.
The moon rose and fell, his eyes burned, his mind was desert sand drinking drinking drinking.
"You've proven yourself a commendable prince of our nation, my son. I will need your counsel against the Earth Kingdom."
That night he shared moon-peach wine with Ursa. She was unused to the drink and giddy with his shared exhilaration.
"I knew it," she wrapped her slender arms about his neck, face flushed and glowing, "You were meant for great things, my love."
In that moment she was more beautiful than ever before, or ever after. The light of her eyes was softer than sunlight, more brilliant than lightning. He tasted wine and sweetness on her lips.
Ozai took his time undressing her, ran the black eddies of her hair through his fingers like water. When he kissed her belly she shivered, and there between her thighs he felt her dewy and trembling. She moaned her pleasure into his neck and he allowed himself the smell of jasmine.
That was the night they made their son.
Zuko.
"Enough, Ozai. I've indulged your insolence already. Iroh will lead the campaign to Ba Sing Se."
He remembered the tug of poison in his veins. "But you said I'd proven -,"
"That you know how to use the royal archives," Azulon frowned, "Need I remind you of your reckless failure in the Great Desert? Or how your lust for a filthy peasant clouded your purpose-,"
His father's face grew suddenly tight with anger, and Ozai followed his gaze to his wrists, and saw the fire engulfing them.
Too weak. Angry. Overeager.
"Leave my sight."
He ignored Ursa and the gurgling child bouncing for his attention. In the garden he repeated every firebending form he knew, over and over until his limbs were knotted in pain. The flames consumed an insatiable anger, a dragon swallowing its tail. They blazed but would not become the scythe he needed to summon lightning.
The moon rose full and jewel-cold.
A man might run forever.
Thirst was ashes in his throat. Would she have led him to the oasis, he wondered. Put the moon from her neck and undone her black hair, given herself to him in a garden as mysterious as the shadows of her skin?
He swore at the cold marble light and sought his room. Ursa slipped in, hair tumbling over her maroon robes. She grew pale at the sight of the blood smeared across his chest and face.
"Ozai...,"
His name on her mouth name irked him.
"Everything I've done, everything I've worked for, is useless to him. He'll never honor me the way I deserve, not until I command lightning."
"Oh, my love," she swept closer, sleek and soft as jasmine, and the candle-flames flickered in the wake of her movement. "You're a better man than him."
Her eyes were warm, shining.
Full of pity.
Ozai grasped her face, tilting in the light, until her smile began to fade.
"I'll remember this moment, Ursa."
"Why?"
"The last time you'll look at me that way."
He was no longer Ozai, the man who'd plucked the bridal jasmine from her hair with careful tenderness, who'd kissed her bare throat while their son nursed at her breast. He was the second Fire prince, alone by a shore of ice and bone, inches from a promised oasis, and this time nothing on Earth or the Spirit realm would deny him.
Ursa, of the line of Avatar Roku, didn't scream, even though terror flooded her eyes when he held his flaming knuckles a whisper from her face.
"Please," she whispered, when he tore the silk from her body, when he shoved her face-down on the floor, when he pried her thighs apart and thrust with savage precision. "Please."
Ozai put aside rage. He reached for purpose. He wrapped her long hair about the slender throat and tightened until she didn't have enough breath to form Please
The silence in which her flesh struggled was exhilarating like cool water in desert heat. His release came sharp, protracted and pure.
And Ozai finally understood.
Back in the garden the moon waited for him. He shut his eyes, imagined closing his fist over the perfect orb, precise and deliberate. Imagined its soft fluttering protest against his unyielding skin.
The form came fluid and easy. The lightning was more beautiful than anything he'd beheld, it's brilliance sharper than the moon.
Though Ursa never told him, he knew that was the night he made Azula.
I really like the idea of exploring Ozai/Kya, mainly because it's like a dark, inverted Zutara. I'm considering writing more with these two characters, especially since the show gave us such little backstory for Ozai.
Anyways, hope you enjoyed, and please leave a review!