9. ozai and zuko
The boy had been born blue, not crying at all, he was told.
He had been sitting with his father and brother, talking politics, drinking tea, when a servant came rushing into the room, breathless from running, and stuttered something about birth complications and a baby that wasn't breathing.
Iroh urged him to go, no doubt thinking about his own wife, who had died nearly ten years ago in childbirth, and so he had gone, not in a hurry, to find his wife, still surrounded by doctors and a midwife, with the baby in her arms, relieve evident on her face.
She smiled a little, the careful, guarded smile she reserved only for him, before looking down at their firstborn once again.
"Why don't you take a look at him, Ozai?", she asked softly.
He stepped closer.
The boy wasn't crying, merely whimpering, mewling like a newborn kitten, and he was very pale, still more blue than pink, not like Lu Ten had been.
His amber eyes seemed tired, exhausted, really, and there was no spark in them, a spark he had expected, after what his father told him.
You recognized a firebender by their eyes as soon as they were born, the fire burning behind them, but there was no fire, no flame, not the tiniest spark in the baby's eyes.
Ursa stroked the little boy's cheek, unaware of his thoughts, lost in the very same eyes he already despised, thinking them more beautiful than anything else in the world.
"I thought of Zuko", she said cautiously. "It suits him, I think ..."
"Name him whatever you want. I do not care."
He furrowed his brow as the baby snuggled deeper into his mother's robes, sniffling a little.
