"I'm pregnant."

"Ooh, that's wonderful, Ursa!" Lady Dio stood to hug her, but Ursa kept her at a bit of a distance. Her chest was very tender, and chafing was not nice.

Ursa did not, in fact, think it was all that wonderful. She'd tried to ignore it as long as possible. It started with the sore nipples, and she'd just chalked it up to heat and chafing, maybe her moontime, but the tenderness continued, then she started feeling tired.

"Children are wonderful," Dio said, guiding Ursa to the chair behind her desk as if she were already too big to be on her feet. "I love my children."

"Dio, your children are monsters," Ursa said tiredly, rubbing her eyes. "You send them to school so you can get a break from them. They terrorize other children."

By the time she was throwing up on a regular basis and the smells of certain foods made her nauseaus, Sun all but demanded that she visit the doctor and confirm what Sun believed to be true.

"Have you sent a letter to your husband yet? Is he going to rush home?"

Ursa made a few noncommittal noises and accepted the tea offered. What she'd sent Ozai was more of a notice than a letter. Two words: I'm pregnant. Response, one word: Good. And that was all that needed to be said about that. There would be no rushing home from the front; while an heir was good for Ozai, he wouldn't dream of leaving conquest and immediate glory.

"When I'm done here, I'll tell Azulon. Lu Ten's excited. I think someone to play with will be good for him. He and the baby can wear each other out."

"How far along? Do you know?"

"The doctor says about four weeks."

Ursa tried to focus on her work, to arrange her piles neatly to be tackled in a timely manner, but she couldn't help thinking of Lu Ten and the baby, and holding the baby, and naming the baby, and cuddling her baby, and loving her baby, and teaching her baby to walk and talk, and seeing her smile for the first time, lovingly, at her mother.

"Ursa," Dio said, placing her hand on Ursa's, "you've been staring at that paper for the past ten minutes. Maybe you should just take a break."

So, she did. She walked through the palace, thinking about how Ozai would try to lay claim to the child and demand that it be brought up like a war mongering dog, and he would fight her. He would tell her that she's poisoning the child's mind. Ursa smiled to herself. He could try all he wanted. This was her little duckling.

.O.

The months went by quickly, in no small part because there didn't seem to be any concept of "I'm pregnant and tired, I'm not working today." In truth, Ursa wasn't sure she'd take a break if she could. It seemed that, as her belly grew, so did the war. One after the other, the reports came in. The dominant topic of conversation was which Earth Kingdom town fell in the past week, and this was spoken of with varying degrees of comfort and malice. Then the raids on the Southern Water Tribe began again. She'd had to attend several meetings in the throne room where Azulon treated them in much the same manner as the Air Nomads. Beaten and demoralized, thrown in jail, public executions. Ursa never stayed long at these; she told them the smell of blood made her sick. She didn't even show up for the executions.

Ozai had forgone his visit when she was three months pregnant, and his absence didn't bother her one bit. In his mind, there was little reason for him to vacate his comfy position at the head of a victorious army since she was already pregnant. Besides, he wrote, she would probably enjoy the quiet a bit more. She did enjoy the silence since all the loud noisemakers were either away at war or preparing for war. She enjoyed not being poked by him. Let him poke someone else.

"Oh, you don't really mean that," Uti had said when Ursa told her. "Give it a few months. You'll want him to poke you."

And she did. But she didn't say anything to anyone.

Lu Ten made the pregnancy fun. His favorite part was when the baby started moving.

"I can feel it," he said with eyes turned toward hers and his hands on the side of her stomach.

He smiled wide and expectant as if it were his own little sister that was going to be born. Because she had decided this would be a girl. Every morning, she and Lu Ten had breakfast together, and he would ask her if she slept well, whether she had any cravings, if she wanted something special to eat. He did for her all the things Ozai should have been there doing, and Ursa decided that Iroh had, at least, raised the boy right. He would make a good father someday because he was raised by one. This made her concerned for her own child. She knew the way Ozai would try to raise her. Women could be warmongers, too.

Ursa was also glad when Ozai didn't return during his scheduled stop while she was six months pregnant. The longer he was away, the more she felt that her little duck belonged to her. This was her baby. Hers, and at night, she wrapped her arms protectively around her stomach. Unfortunately, Ozai tried to exert some control over her and the child from far, far away. He sent orders about royal bithing protocol, who was allowed to see her when she went into labor, when the Fire Sages were to bless her and hope for a summer birth.

Sometimes, Ursa decided, men could be absolutely, ridiculously stupid. Their letters went like this:

The Sages can pray all they want. It's not happening. The baby will be born in winter.

Unacceptable. Winter is no time for a firebender to be born.

Tell that to my uterus.

Do not patronize me, woman. You planned this on purpose.

I did not decide the season you would come home for the sole purpose of getting me pregnant. It was your desire, and so it was done.

You would have denied me an heir? I could divorce you.

And yet you didn't.

That had been the end of his letters, and she hadn't heard from him since. When her due date was two weeks way, she received notice that his ship was due to dock in a few hours. When Sun came to tell her that Ozai was at the dock, Ursa didn't bother to get out of the bed. She'd been having contractions for the past few days, and the doctors all assured her this was normal. Her body was just practicing. They nearly banned Ursa from the infirmary when she wouldn't accept "this is normal" in the middle of the night while she was trying to sleep.

"Tell him that my feet and my ankles are swollen. I've barely left my room all day. If he wishes to visit me, he can come to my room," Ursa told Sun, snuggling deeper under her covers.

"Yes, princess." Sun bowed and left her to her nap.

She was sleeping peacefully when Ozai woke her up. Had he bothered to visit at any point in her pregnancy, he would have realized that pregnant Ursa's naptime was sacred time and no one disturbed her. Not even Azulon.

"I was waiting for you at—"

"No," Ursa yelled, an accusatory finger in his face. "You do not get to stroll in here and toss a few dirty looks around and interrupt me."

"I told him," Lu Ten muttered to Chem.

"Indeed you did, my prince."

"You weren't doing anything," Ozai said, ignoring the commentary going on behind him. He sat on the bed and reached out to her.

"Back off," she barked, and Ozai recoiled.

"Then go back to sleep if you're so cranky."

"I can't now! You ruined it!" She flopped back against the pillows and immediately regretted it.

"You're just hormonal right now—"

Lu Ten and Chem cringed as Ursa's fist crashed into Ozai's jaw. She was about to light into him and let him know just what her hormones thought of him, but she started feeling wet. Like a little tinkling, and the sheets were wet. But she hadn't had to go to the bathroom. Which meant… And they'd all told her that her body was just practicing.

She looked at Ozai like this was his fault. Because, in essence, it was.

"Get my nurse," Ursa said to Lu Ten.

.O.

Labor made you hate the world, and perhaps with good reason.

When she was ten, she'd laughed at her mother and said, "That's coming out of where? Yeah, right." Her mother only smiled knowingly.

Yes, Ursa was realizing, baby does come out of there.

Ursa tried to bear the pain with some amount of dignity. It helped that mostly everyone was forbidden from entering the birthing room. When she couldn't take the pain anymore, she gave Sun a laundry list of herbs she wanted, then concocted herself a numbing tea. After that, a little loopy and giddy, labor went not half bad. She walked when the doctors told her to walk, drank water when they told her to. She was agreeable.

She was agreeable for the first ten hours, then she started pleading with the baby to make up her mind whether she was coming or going. Little duck could have waited the two weeks, but maybe she was tired of being in the dark, and that was ok, just hurry up. The baby responded with a very strong contraction, and Ursa said she was glad they had this conversation.

Twenty hours in, and she was finally able to start pushing. Twenty hours, the sun had gone down, the moon had come up, the sages had shown up and Ozai was furious. This would not bode well for a firebender, and he was lucky Ursa herself wasn't a firebender, because she would have shot a bolt of lightning right through his heart and gloated over his smouldering body.

The false dawn hadn't even started when they handed the screaming infant to her.

"Congratulations princess! It's a boy!" the nurse squealed happily.

Ursa looked at the pink wriggling thing. No wonder the baby came early. It was a boy, and boys had no concept of time. He was so tiny. She inspected his little fists and his tiny feet, paying no mind to the people poking and prodding her. So her little duck was a boy instead of a girl. He screamed loud, piercing screams, and the nurses cooed and said these were healthy screams, and they washed him, and they washed her.

.O.

Ozai held his son, and he smiled, and there was undisguised love for the baby in his face. He looked at the little red bundle like he'd never looked at Ursa, and that was ok. She would rather the baby have his love. Perhaps he wouldn't be such a terrible father after all.

"I've thought of a few names—"

"He will be named Zuko."

Ursa blinked at Ozai, but he didn't look up from the sleeping bundle. Ozai pulled out the baby's hands and inspected them, measured them against his own.

"It was nice of you to tell me." She lay back against the pillows. "I hadn't thought—"

"He is big. Perhaps he will overcome this accident of his birth."

It was noon, and already Ozai had received a parade of visitors congratulating him on the birth of his son as if he'd done anything other than sit outside the birthing room and drink tea with Lu Ten and the Fire Sages. Ursa crossed her arms under her chest.

"It wasn't an accident, Ozai. It was timing. If you wanted a baby born in the summer, perhaps you should have timed your visits better."

He waved this away, easily keeping the baby safe in one arm. "It doesn't matter. I have the sages checking his charts now, and hopefully they will bring some good news. He must be a bender—"

"I'm not," Ursa challenged, one eyebrow raised.

"It is acceptable for you to not be a bender," Ozai said, as if to one who wasn't quite sane.

"Give me my baby back." She held her arms out, and Ozai obliged.

"I've got to inform the sages of his name, anyway."

He gently ran his hand over the tuft of black hair on little Zuko's head and kissed him on his forehead. He would never love Zuko as much as he loved him in that one moment ever again, when he was nothing more than a gently snoozing bundle of potential and possibilities.

A/N: First, let me say that I have finally, finally, finished writing this damn story! This is a cause for much celebration, because it would not let me end it! Gah! Anywhoo, this chapter contains some of my favorite moments: Ursa and Ozai's letters, Ursa's "baby comes outta where?", Lu Ten and pregnant Ursa, and Ursa punching Ozai in the jaw because he ruined her nap. Ursa and Ozai are good with each other when they're not actually near each other. So unfortunate.

I also think that Ozai would never love Zuko more than in the moment he was born. He would, in his mind, have the idea of The Perfect Child, and no child could ever live up to that standard. As Zuko grew and became his own person, something completely different from what Ozai wanted, he'd care for him less and less, and probably hate him a little more. Here, I hesitate to say hate, because I think Ozai doesn't get to the hate level until Zuko becomes Fire Lord and undoes everything Ozai's ever worked for. In my head canon, as Zuko gets older (after being Fire Lord), that hate begins to lessen. I think that the more Zuko begins to physically resemble his father, the more Ozai might get weirded out. For both father and son, I think it could be like looking into a mirror and seeing who they could have become under different circumstances. But it's unfortunate. Zuko never had a chance at living up to Ozai's standards.