They met for the first time when they were 11. Her father was a sergeant with the NPA, a well known face on the force that drew people to him. His father had been one of them. Ozai saw an opportunity in Suki and her father. He knew that marriage, and more important, a child, would forever link the man to him, and that there were limitless possibilities in having a cop in his total control. Her father even wanted this. He was willing to give over his daughter to secure his position with Ozai, and with this family.

Ozia thought about taking Suki for himself. However in good conscious he couldn't touch the girl till she was at least 16. He was many things, but a child molester wasn't one of them. Then if you factor in all the time it would take for her to get pregnant, it would just take far too long. He needed something quicker. That was a large period of time that Suki and her father wouldn't be working for him.

So he turned to his son, who was only a few months older than Suki. He thought it would be a good way to make Zuko into a 'man' and get Suki where he wanted sooner.

Every day Suki would walk home after school, going to her neighbor's house while her mother and father were at work. This house was the same one that Zuko had been at all day, receiving his schooling.

In the beginning they studied together, playing after things were done. Their caretaker helped them, but mostly stayed out of the way, letting them do whatever they wanted. Over the next several years they grew together, and grew closer. When he'd received a severe burn on his face from his father as punishment, she helped take care of him. She helped nurse him back to health. And after so long they did what teenagers left alone do.

They were 14 the first time they had sex, tucked away in one of the upstairs bedrooms. They were in love after all, so this seemed like the next step in what they were.

Their fathers celebrated, toasted to their own personal success.

Suki eventually stopped going to school, getting her lessons along with Zuko, their alone time almost always spent together in private. It wasn't even sex to them, it was just expression of affection and love and the fact that they were bored. What better way to spend time together than like that.

Suki's belly started to grow one day and it didn't stop. She was three months shy of her 16th birthday. They told no one, treated it as their little secret. She'd strip, laying in bed with Zuko kissing and loving her changing body. She'd giggle as he kissed whispers of their future, away from the pain and the violence of the Yakuza to their baby.

Eventually Suki's mother Nori caught on, discovering the pregnancy. Suki'd never seen her so angry. Before this she'd been apathetic to the goings on with her daughter and the boy. Left it in the hands on her husband. The discovery changed everything though. She'd struck Suki several times, leaving her with a bruised face and bloody lip. Nori swore that she'd never see the boy again, that this baby would never be born.

Suki wanted the baby, the one that was bore out of her love for Zuko. And there was no way that Ozai or Suki's father would let anything happen to the child.

One morning her mother was gone from their apartment, and then the next day Zuko was there, and he stayed. They lived as husband and wife for the rest of the pregnancy, bickering and making up just like those twice their age would. It was the happiest times of their young lives.

She went into labor on a Monday morning, and by lunch there was a big, beautiful, healthy baby boy. They named him Ryo, after the baby that had died with Zuko's mother. They kept touching him, kissing him, thinking that there was nothing in this world as perfect as he was. If they thought the pregnancy was amazing, the first week of his small life was even better.

Nori came back one day, holding her grandson with a swelling pride in her eyes. Suki was so happy to have her back. So happy that she could be a mother, with her own mother's help.

One week after his birth Suki woke up sick, her entire body hurting with some new, totally unknown illness. She wanted to stay in bed, but knew that Ryo needed to be fed. She slowly sat up in bed, reaching out for Zuko who'd been sleeping in the same bed with her, asking him to get her something to drink. She looked over into Ryo's bassinet that sat by her bed, reaching out for the baby.

His skin was pale, lips purple. When she picked him up the warmth and comfort that his small body had produced gone. She didn't dare think it, but she knew he was dead. She screamed the boy's name, her entire body shutting off from panic and sorrow, leaving her in a puddle of a human being on the floor.

They said it was SIDS. That sometimes it simply happens, that babies just die in their sleep. This was of little to no comfort to his parents. Suki was a ghost of herself, she didn't speak for three days, sat alone staring off into space as everyone worked around her. Zuko and Nori took care of the arrangements, picking out the little outfit for the wake and funeral, the plot in the family cemetery where his ashes would be placed. He went next to his grandmother Ursa, and namesake uncle.

Suki seemed to get better after the burial. She was talking and responsive. She and Zuko would hold one another as they cried. It was also after this that Nori vanished. She was just gone one morning and Suki never saw her again. She didn't give it much thought. She felt as though she was maxed out on grief for one lifetime. It was so much for a 16 year old girl.

She wasn't the same. Something had shifted with her. She talked to Zuko about the things that'd happened when they were kids. About how they had had their innocence stolen by one another, how it wrong what happened to them. She said they were both 'victims and perpetrators' and that their fathers had done this to them both.

They had sex again five months after Ryo died. There was the same tenderness, the same love, but there was something different that neither of them could shake. It was while holding one another in bed afterwards that she told him they couldn't see one another again. That every time she looked at him she thought about what he'd taken from her, she hated herself for what she'd taken from him. She thought about their son. It was killing her. She needed space.

"What makes it worse, is that I love you with everything I am," she had whispered to him. "I always will. Your name is engraved onto my soul and I will never, ever shake it off. Which makes it so much harder to do this."

They cried together, holding and kissing one another. Then she packed her things and left. They didn't see one another for over a decade.

It was at her father's funeral that the familiar, asymmetrical face stuck out. He'd grown so much, and was a man now. Just like she was a woman. After the crowd had dispersed he went to her, saying how sorry he was for her loss. She heartily thanked him, making a comment about how he shouldn't be seen with her, how it was dangerous. He said he didn't care, he just wanted to see her. They embraced tightly, both of them knowing that they would never let go again.

Now they did it on their own terms, in their own way. They entered it thinking that it would be starting over, but it was actually starting again. They were still in love, and it quickly became just as wonderful, if not more so than the old days.