A/N: The Fire Nation royal family primarily uses Russian diminutives for nicknames. Azula is also called Zulya; Lu Ten is also called Tenya.
This is a two-shot. The first chapter is my submission for the Writers Anonymous Transition Challenge. The story will have two intended transitions, although only one will be completed in the first chapter.
For those who follow Moths to a Flame, this story (second chapter inclusive) was conceived as a point-of-divergence: What if Azula was convinced to forgo her love for the good of the realm? I sketched several endings before settling on the final one.
T/W: Past incest, incest subtext, death by childbirth, grief & mourning
Characters: Izumi (lead), Zuko, Azula, Iroh, Iroh II, Nazuna (Izumi's daughter), Lang, Kiyi, June
Pairings: Zuko/Azula, Azula/Lang (OC), minor Lu Ten/June, hinted Azulon/Ilah. Izumi, Iroh, Iroh II, and Nazuna (OC) all have/had spouses.
Fandom Knowledge for Chapter 1: Zuko and Azula are siblings. Iroh is their uncle, and the favoured elder son of Azulon. Lu Ten is Iroh's deceased son. Iroh II and Nazuna are Izumi's children.
I. The Father
21 July 113 AG
Fire Lord Zuko broke from his trance and, his cheeks wet and unbefitting of his royal status, glared with burning venom at his longtime lieutenant. Lang. A baby began to wail from the Fire Lord's arms, but her cries were miles away.
14 April 108 AG
In the Royal Portrait Gallery, the young Fire Lord Zuko looked wistfully at a portrait of a young man around his own age. When the bells pealed at midnight, Zuko would be 25, but his cousin never would.
Were you really going to give everything up to be with a baseborn bounty hunter? He wondered. Were you truly going to abandon your duties - your birthright - and willingly let Father ascend to the throne?
The late Prince Lu Ten's plans wound up immaterial when he died on the front lines, but Zuko would have given anything for his guidance.
Light footfalls approached Zuko. He was unfazed as Fire Lord Azula stopped beside him and laid her head against his chest. Without breaking eye contact with his cousin's portrait, Zuko gently kissed her hair and inhaled deeply. Tuberose and gardenia. Intoxicating.
"You're not Tenya." Her voice was soft.
"No, we're not," he agreed. Their beloved cousin was wholly his own man.
Still nestled against him, Azula said, "Lang has declared his love for me. I proposed. He's accepted."
Zuko's heart skipped a beat. He firmly grabbed Azula by the shoulders and spun her around to face him. He carefully studied her eyes, mirror images of his own. Blunt and guileless. Transparent. This was the Azula she showed only to him, not the mask she wore for the benefit of diplomats and courtiers. At long last, he drew the same conclusion he'd already known: "You don't love him."
The corners of her mouth wryly turned upward, but the torches did not light her eyes. "No. I am fond of him. I love you." As if there could have been any doubt, her tone seemed to say. "But that isn't what is best for the Fire Nation, and you will never stop fighting to marry me unless that is no longer an option."
"Don't…" Zuko's throat felt parched. "Don't do this, Zulya. I'll never love anyone else. I'll never mar - "
Azula cupped his face in both hands and gingerly gave him a lingering kiss. It was the last time she would do so.
"I was only thinking of the Fire Nation's best interest, convincing Azula to marry someone else!" The former Crown Prince Iroh defended. The ultimate goal was left unsaid: to force Zuko to make a strong political match by taking away the possibility of marrying for love.
Zuko returned, "If you are truly only concerned about the Fire Nation's best interest, Uncle, then you will stay in the Caldera to serve as my honoured advisor. Running a tea house abroad is not in the Fire Nation's best interest, nor the best use of your education. You alone know best, after all, how to lead the Fire Nation to prosperity, do you not?"
117 AG
Zuko held little Princess Izumi as he walked through the Royal Portrait Gallery, introducing her to her family. "This one is my cousin, Prince Lu Ten, Great-uncle Iroh's son. If the world had been kinder, he would be Fire Lord now."
Izumi smiled at the kind-faced stranger as they passed the portrait by. After a record fifteen seconds of silence, Izumi pointed at another portrait that caught her eye. "Who's that?"
Zuko paused. "This is Fire Lord Azula. She was my… younger sister. And my partner. We were Fire Lord together, two halves of the same whole. It should have been that way forever."
"What happened to her?"
"She died very young."
"Oh. She's pretty."
"Yes, she was."
"Was Mother pretty?"
"Very much so."
"I hope I'll be pretty, too."
"You already are, buddy - prettiest girl I've ever seen. I bet you'll win the fire lily bouquet every year at the Summer Solstice Gala once you turn 16."
Izumi giggled.
134 AG
"I know what you're thinking, Fire Lord Zuko," Uncle Iroh said, with uncharacteristic solemnity. "Azula had particularly narrow hips. Izumi should be fine." But Iroh couldn't quite hide his own worry. Izumi was the sole heir to the Eternal Dawn and, as the summers passed by, it had become abundantly clear that Zuko would never marry - would never sire a child who could threaten Izumi, the last trace of Azula's, claim to the throne.
The two men fretted over Izumi months after the birth of the new prince, until finally she had threatened to burn their beards off their faces if they didn't stop infantilising her.
21 July 113 AG
"Am I going to die?"
Zuko's heart sank like lead. Azula was always self-assured, always knew what to do to achieve the desired result. Now, she sounded terrified and small.
"No, Zulya," Zuko assured her with false confidence, gently squeezing her hand.
"Don't let me die, Zuzu. Don't…"
141 AG
"I thought of naming her after Fire Lord Azula," Izumi said haltingly, as a midwife dabbed the sweat from her face. "You always said losing her young was the Fire Nation's greatest tragedy."
Zuko pulled his eyes away from the baby in his arms as he blinked back tears, smiling. "You don't know how happy you've made me. But… let's allow the little one to be her own person."
143 AG
Zuko braced his eyes against the sunlight as he stepped out from the House of Embers. He and Izumi had lingered in the royal crypt long after the Fire Sages had completed the service for former Crown Prince Iroh.
"Do you regret that Great-uncle never could dedicate himself to that tea shop?"
"He spent his later years as he spent his youth - in the service of his country. There was no greater honour for him."
"Indeed, Father." Izumi knew it to be true for any royal, but she couldn't keep the doubt from her voice.
"Uncle was born to be the Fire Lord. This was his duty. The Fire Nation needed him here."
"Yes."
Zuko glanced back at the House of Embers, where his primary father figure was now interred.
"It was for the best," Zuko whispered to no one in particular.
167 AG
The newly acceded Fire Lord stared down the cabinet of scrolls that had remained untouched for over half a century. Though she was apprehensive about her new role, she felt a sense of homecoming now that she had clearance to confidential material and could finally understand her family more. Before her bespectacled eyes lay every document pertaining to Fire Lord Azula - the person Izumi second-most desperately wanted to know about.
Izumi selected a scroll at random and chuckled upon seeing the familiar broken seal. The hydrangea emblem belonged to Izumi's alma mater, the Royal Fire Academy for Girls; she had pulled one of her late aunt's old academic transcripts. She unrolled it.
All 5's.
Of course. Her father never shied away from how bright and hardworking Fire Lord Azula had been. He always said the Fire Nation's greatest loss was Azula dying young.
Izumi set aside each scroll bearing the hydrangea emblem. She had a strong suspicion she didn't need to open them all to know her aunt likely had perfect marks every term.
The next scroll was a death certificate. Izumi's eyes lingered on the header, gathering the courage to continue. She inhaled deeply, then unfurled the parchment. Fire Lord Azula died in 113 AG - much later than Zuko had led Izumi to believe. Her heart stopped and she nearly chose not to lower her eyes to confirm the date.
The 21st of July.
Izumi's date of birth.
Further along in the document, Izumi found Fire Lord Azula's cause of death.
Childbirth complications.
It all made sense now: how pained her father's eyes were.
Izumi frowned. Fire Lord Azula had been born in September 85 AG; if this death certificate were true, she would have been nearly 28 at the time of her death. Tragically young, certainly, but hardly the child her father always made her out to be.
Why all the secrecy?
Was he still her father?
If he was, was the... union... by her choice?
Was Izumi's entire life a lie?
Only one person had answers.
"Are you my father?" Izumi asked Zuko point-blank.
"Of course I am, buddy." His tone was willfully cheerful, like a parent who has pepped himself up to speak to a child after a grueling day.
False merriment worked rather less well when the child was just shy of fifty-four.
"I thought Azula died in her teens." Izumi held the death certificate out toward Zuko. Though he did not reach for it, Izumi caught the flash of recognition in his eyes.
"Azula died much too young," he noncommittally repeated, hurriedly busying himself with the closest object on his desk: an updated manual on tax law. "Too young… Azula died too young..."
"Did you rape her, Father? Azula?"
"Wha…" Zuko blanched; the jerk of his hand knocked an inkstone to the floor. "N-no... No! Never. I would never."
"And yet it is manifest that 'Azula' and 'my mother' are one and the same."
For decades, Izumi had shrewdly pierced the motivations of unsavoury courtiers who saw Zuko as a weak link in an unbroken lineage of power or who sought to cheaply curry favour with what appeared to be a young princess. But her political acumen failed her now. Whatever went on behind Zuko's eyes, Izumi could not read it at all.
At long last, Zuko, stubborn but worn with age, yielded.
"I… have raised you... as if you were my own."
Zuko knelt on the floor by his desk, suddenly very interested in cleaning the mess from the fallen inkstone with only his sleeves as rags.
"And…?" Izumi prompted. "Who is my father?"
He gazed up at Izumi from his place by her feet.
Izumi would have sworn before the Council of Fire Sages that she saw a flash of hurt in his eyes. But the next moment it was gone, his face inscrutable.
"... His name was Lang. He was a member of the Royal Procession."
Izumi used her new authority as Fire Lord to spend the following week going over all records pertaining to the Royal Procession with a fine-toothed comb, but found no record of any such man.
174 AG
Outside her father's chamber, Izumi inhaled deeply. Forget the potato blight. Forget the hurricane damage in Shu Jing. Forget that insufferable ambassador from Agna Quel'a. She exhaled and smiled warmly at the door; then entered.
While not feeble, Zuko was no longer tall and imposing. He wasn't bedridden, but he slept more and more. To Izumi, her father looked wizened by stress and age.
Izumi approached her father's bed, a tray with compounded medication carefully balanced in one hand as she gently stroked his face. Zuko recently took to agitation when others approached him.
Iroh II and Nazuna constantly checked the Dragonbone Catacombs because he would stay there for hours by Azula's crypt; he would beg them not to take his love away from him. The physicians believed he was struck with dementia. Perhaps, but Izumi suspected Zuko was lucid with regards to Azula.
Zuko stirred. "Izushka."
Izumi kept her demeanour open and sunny. "I'm here, Father."
170 AG
"I'm so sorry, Grandfather. I promise, we'll try again soon."
Zuko momentarily stopped stroking Nazuna's limp hair. "What is there to apologise for?"
"I'd like my future children to have a relationship with my doting grandfather."
"Don't worry about me. Your health is paramount. I am already blessed with everything and everyone I could possibly want."
174 AG
After taking his medication, Zuko was quiet for a few moments before sharply grabbing Izumi's wrist and staring intensely at her. "I'm so sorry, Izushka."
"Father, is every - "
"Losing the girl I loved… I could have moved past it eventually, if she hadn't died birthing another man's child. I have nearly everything except the future I had dreamed of with Azula, but I denied happiness to another man."
21 July 113 AG
Azula's clammy hand in his fingers was rapidly cooling. Her gold eyes were still pointed in his direction, but they no longer saw him.
Zuko was never close to his cold, distant grandfather, long passed. But he began to understand, now, exactly how the deceased Fire Lord must have felt the day his second son was born at the expense of his beloved Princess Consort's life - and the reason for his resentment toward said son for the one thing he could not actually be held accountable for.
"You treacherous snake."
Lang's eyes widened, and he protested, "Zuko, you can't - "
Smack.
Zuko smarted him across the face. "You have murdered the light of the Fire Nation."
"Please, Brother - "
"You are no brother of mine! You never were. You and your adoptive parents are banished. You have three hours to collect your belongings and depart the Caldera. I don't care where you go, so long as it isn't in the Fire Nation. The records will be purged of your service and achievements. You will cease to exist. No one will remember you. And Azula's daughter will never know any father besides me."
From within Zuko's arm, the jostled baby began to cry. He glanced down at the newborn and two sets of teary honey-coloured eyes met. "It's not your fault, little darling. Not your fault."
174 AG
"Search for him, Izushka. Make things right." Zuko finally relaxed his painfully-tight grip on Izumi's wrist in order to pull a key from a chain around his neck and open a locked compartment of his vanity-desk. From within, he pulled a thick file which he handed to Izumi with shaking hands. "Annul the exile. Reinstate his position. Welcome him back into the family, if he will have us. I forgive him - no, there is nothing to forgive. It was never Lang's fault that Azula died. Please, beg Lang for forgiveness. I am so sorry; my grief was no excuse for denying you two a lifetime as parent and child."
Izumi opened the file to see the first document was a graduation diploma for a man named Lang.
"I'm so sorry, Izumi."
A/N: All the italicised scenes are intentionally so. The transition for this chapter is Zuko's grief.