Originally written for a ficlet contest on LiveJournal.
Of Earth and Ashes
Iroh had been nearly grown when his mother died. His brother Ozai, still very young, had stood by him as a priest of Agni lit the funeral pyre.
"What happens to her now?" Ozai had asked plaintively.
"Our mother's soul is with the stars now," Iroh had answered. "She will watch out for us." He wasn't really certain of that himself. His own thoughts on the afterlife of human beings ranged from the traditional rebirth of souls to a disturbing nothingness, but he had thought it would reassure Ozai.
After the funeral was over Ozai seemed less concerned with his mother's soul than with what remained of her body -- the ashes which were piled into a golden urn and set in the family shrine. When they visited on holidays Ozai would sometimes look at the urn as if he believed it still held his mother, while Iroh would gaze at the eternal flame and contemplate the idea of nothingness.
When Iroh's wife Chi passed away it was his own small son Lu Ten who stood beside him asking questions. Iroh had no better answer for his son than he had given to Ozai. He could only kneel to put an arm around his son's shoulders and tell him that his mother would always love him.
Iroh placed Chi's ashes in a porcelain urn and hid them in a back room at the palace, preferring to remember her singing voice, the sight of her standing straight as she practiced blocking his lightning, and the look in her eyes as she held their infant son.
And now it was Lu Ten himself who was gone forever. Iroh had returned to the Fire Nation after his defeat at Ba Sing Se caring not for his disgrace and the loss of the throne, but for him alone. And though he went through mourning rituals for his father, it was his dead son he thought of.
If Ozai had expected anger from his brother over his betrayal, perhaps a secret counter-plot or a blatant challenge to an agni kai, he received neither. Rather than confront what remained of his family, Iroh spent his time at a palace window drinking tea and speaking little.
"What happened to my nephew's body?" Ozai asked him a few days after his return.
"Lu Ten was killed behind enemy lines," replied Iroh. "I could not retrieve his remains."
"Do you know what Earthbenders do to their dead? They throw them back into the earth. He deserves an urn in the shrine, but because of you he is rotting underground with the corpses of those barbarians. And you did not even try to get him back."
Iroh sat for a moment contemplating his son's bones, cradled in the earth among the dead of Ba Sing Se, and considering the worth of a handful of ashes.
"Lu Ten will rest where he is," he replied.
"Sometimes I wonder why our father ever thought you could be the Fire Lord."
As Ozai left the room, Iroh murmured into his teacup. "So do I."