Timeline throughout MES. Ursa tries (and fails) to make Azula respect the arts: flower arranging, tea ceremony, poetry, and painting.

There was a certain art to the arrangement of flowers. Often one tiny bouquet could center a huge room or set the tone for a massive party. Color, species, and arrangement could change the meaning and feng shui of a filled vase entirely. Or that was what all of Ursa's tutors told her. Honestly, flower arranging was the least interesting of all the arts, but it seemed like the best contrast the war and violence that her daughter seemed to revel in.

Until Ursa looked over and studied the vase Azula had arranged.

White on red, the entirety of it. The red was the fire lily, which could have several interpretations aside from the obvious one. There were also red carnithians, which could symbolize anything from life's blood to the body's heart. The white flowers were also lilies. Usually a cream colored hybrid was better for a paler contrast to the brilliancy of the fire lily. (The fire lily was not in any way related to the true lily. Ursa remembered because she had failed a flower arranging test in her youth based upon that single question.) The fire lilies completely overshadowed them, and they were scattered throughout in a swirling pattern, arranged high enough to show their brilliant orange sides. The carnithians were buried deep in the white lilies in pools of brilliant red.

"What does that mean?" Ursa asked.

Azula looked at her vase with a slow smile. "It's the conquest of the Air Nomads."

White for air, the true lily for peace. Red for fire and war…and the carnithians were red blood spilt by that fire and war. Ursa looked at the arrangement again. It was gruesome. She didn't know what to say, especially with Azula's expression so smug.

Maybe they would try tea ceremony next.

When Ursa sat down across from Azula, Azula didn't offer her a cup, as was custom. Instead, she kept the entire set on her side. Instead of a liquid tea, she removed a whisk and frothed up one of the Fire Nation's bitterest teas into foul foam that Ursa had always hated. Iroh enjoyed it, but Iroh had never met a tea he didn't like.

That particularly tea preparation was attached to darker events. It was usually made during funerals, sometimes prepared for a grieving mother that had miscarried. Why was Azula preparing it for Ursa now?

Azula carefully portioned out the frothy tea. She spun the cup to Ursa's right inward first, which was wrong for several reasons. The cup to Ursa's right should have been her own. The preparer always prepared his own cup first to symbolize safety from poison, as the preparer would drink first as well. The cups should be turned laterally, not inward. When the cup was turned completely, Ursa saw the brilliant red vertical stripe on it. When Azula turned the other cup inward, it had a stark white stripe on it, the color of death. The cup to Ursa's left, the side of death.

From Ursa's perspective, the right tea cup that should have been her own was Azula's, marked with the stripe of the bringer of death. The left tea cup, Ursa's cup, was presented to Ursa's weak side, marked with the color of the dead.

This was a tea ceremony that marked the beginning of a ceremonial suicide, which involved cutting out one's own diaphragm and giving one's head to their opponent. Ursa was in the position of the individual who would end their own life. Ursa shot her daughter an outraged stare, but Azula continued each careful gesture with sober concentration.

Why was it a surprise that her daughter had studied this ceremony extensively? She'd probably practiced the appropriate beheading technique too: leaving a strip of skin at the throat so the head wouldn't fall off and roll away. Ursa let Azula continue to the end, but she didn't reach for her cup. In the real ceremony, the person committing suicide would drink before death. The beheader would drink after the suicide.

Maybe poetry writing next… But Ursa was already anticipating an odyssey marked by war, murder, and death.

"Look at this."

Ursa handed Iroh a long, carefully inked scroll. He set down his book and rolled the scroll out to its full length. Azula's handwriting wasn't beautiful if only for its perfection, but she could fit a lot on a page.

Iroh ticked his head with each line, and his lips twitched into a smile then a frown. He probably only read one stanza before he set the scroll down. "May I keep this?"

"Why would you want to?" she asked him, remembering the awful tragedy inscribed on it.

"It's actually a rather clever retelling of that legend." He picked up the scroll again. "The rhythm in the meter is flawless, at least for the first stanza."

"It's about war," Ursa pointed out.

"Azula grew up on war."

"Zuko doesn't think about it all the time!"

"Zuko is much different than Azula," Iroh said. The only reason Ursa didn't get angry at his audacity to dare tell her something she obvious already knew was because he was downcast as he said it.

He wanted to tell Azula the truth. Ursa didn't think it was a good idea, not yet, but she did understand his desire. It mirrored her own quiet wish to come to him at night, slide into his bed, and find comfort in his arms again. That wouldn't do. It wasn't the right time, and Ursa admitted to herself that the time might never be right for them.

"What am I going to do with her?" she asked weakly. "She's so unhappy."

"We can only help Azula as much as she wishes us to. The fact she's here, living with us…" Iroh trailed off and touched the scroll. "In time, she'll find her happiness, but I don't think we'll have much to do with it."

Maybe it was true, but Ursa would do everything she could to distract Azula from her training and her constant research. Maybe she would try painting next.

Of all the things Ursa expected from her daughter, she didn't expect Azula to simply leave the palace. The only reason she hadn't gone after her was because Azula took her servants with her. She was going to live on Ember Island, away from them. This wasn't what Ursa wanted, and she thought she could kill Iroh for telling Azula the way he had.

But when she returned to her quarters, she found him waiting for her with tears on his face.

She hadn't factored in his hurt. Ursa reached out to him, and he yanked her against his body. He was muscular still, but his body had softened with age. It still amused her that she was a bit taller than he; her first memory was of him larger than life. Iroh's beard scratched her cheek, and his tears were cold against her skin.

Azula was his daughter, and she had never trusted him enough to tell him the truth. "I love you," she told him, as she had never told him before. She'd been too afraid to trust, too afraid to let go, too afraid to rely on him to protect her and her children. So she'd thrown him aside, kept Azula a secret from him, and never gave him a chance to be the father to Azula that he could have been, the father she deserved.

"Why didn't you tell me?" he asked her. His hands tightened on her back. "Why? I could have protected you. I would have married you. We could have been a family."

"I'm sorry. I'm so sorry." It was the only answer she could offer.

-ten years later-

"Good morning."

Ursa looked up in surprise to see Azula standing beside her table. She was shockingly pregnant, which was so strange in conjunction with her tight topknot and Fire Lord crest.

"Good morning, sweetie. How are you feeling?"

"Like a waddling turtle duck."

"You look like a cantaloupe on an arrow."

"Thank you. I think." How rare that Azula teased so easily. "I wanted to give you something." She handed Ursa a scroll. It was a thick paper used mostly for water paintings. Was this a little piece of art Ana had crafted?

Ursa untied the scroll and opened it.

It was a dragon painting…of Rakka eating an ostrich horse. Ursa supposed she should be thankful that Azula hadn't crafted an imaginary scene of her dragon eating a person. This truly came as no surprise. Ursa and Iroh had a little bet going on how long it would take Azula to paint one for Ursa since she'd danced her dragon into submission. Iroh had just won that bet.

All in all, it was a pretty little water painting that emphasized Rakka's brilliant blue coils. There was fluidity in the serpentine body that so often liked to cut off all of the garden paths by her apartment. Unfortunately, the red of the ostrich horse and its blood was a particularly brilliant contrast to the cool blue of Rakka's scales.

She lifted her eyes to her daughter in a dower gaze. "How lovely."

Azula smiled, but the expression was oddly gentle. Then she leaned over and kissed Ursa gently on the forehead. She was instantaneously forgiven. Azula had both remained exactly the same and changed so much. Ursa would never trade one for the other.