Title: seven
Rating: K+
Summary: Iroh makes mistakes.
Disclaimer: A:TLA is not mine.
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(one: illusion)
Iroh was an older brother once.
He came home from war when he was twenty and he had a dead mother and a new baby brother waiting for him.
Ozai, they'd called him, and it was after no grandfathers or great-grandfathers, no relatives for twelve generations down the line. So he may make a name of himself, the Fire Sages said. But his father's eyes spoke the truth: so I may claim him as no son of mine.
Ozai had always been a precocious little thing, eyes too big and face too stiff, always caught between a frown and a grimace. He never cried.
So quiet and so small, Iroh had thought: I will protect him.
He'd thought that about the entire Fire Nation, once.
.
(three: fear)
It was the war's fault. Everything was the war's fault and a fault towards war, an endless cycle of destruction.
Jeong Jeong said that is our life, that is our Fire, and Iroh wondered how someone could hate their element so much, could hate their very being. (And then he met his nephew and his nephew was burned and his nephew was banished by his brother and he understood, he understood too well. But he still didn't know what to do about it.)
He thought: fire is life, and he would have had Jeong Jeong meet the dragons, but Jeong Jeong laughed a bitter thing and said, I will never go back to the Fire Nation again. Iroh worried that if he showed him, Jeong Jeong would hate all the elements indiscriminately.
Iroh never asked Zuko if he would like to meet the dragons.
.
(four: grief)
He met Lu Ten in the Spirit World.
Lu Ten told him: there are no right decisions, there are only decisions and the consequences which you have to accept.
Lu Ten did not tell him you had to live with them.
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(six: earthly attachment)
He did not think: Ozai was redeemable, once.
He did not think this, because that meant Ozai was redeemable no longer.
But there was a girl, once, whose smile was mild but whose eyes burned stars, and Iroh might have fallen in love with her, had he not already been in love. Had Ozai not already been in love.
He had almost seen Ozai smile, then.
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(two: lies)
The White Lotus found him in the desert, looking for a way into the Spirit World.
There was an arrogant captain whom he'd met on the seas, talking about a library owned by spirits. It wasn't the sort of thing Iroh would normally pay much mind, one way or another. The men were allowed their passions and the royals were allowed their war.
But still. But still.
The White Lotus spoke of truth when he was looking for an answer, and he did not care if he had to look for truth to find one. He would have just as easily have accepted a lie.
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(five: guilt)
Iroh came back from the war when he was sixty and he had a dead father and a newly crowned brother waiting for him.
The girl was gone. Ozai had gone with her.
He looked at his new Fire Lord and thought: I do not know you anymore, and looked at the new Fire heirs and thought: I never knew you at all.
He had been gone from home, for too long.
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(seven: shame)
He learned things. He realized things. He lost things, all the same.
He was unfit to rule the Fire Nation. Room in his heart for one relative, or for the entire world, but nothing in between. Too small, too large, his heart was not the right size for the Fire Nation.
Too wanting, too wrong, his heart was not the right one for his nephew. For his son.
I will protect you, he thought, and his lessons were selfish, because he had forgotten how to properly express I love you without it seeming like a lie.
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(always)
He still has not learned to accept it.