Azulon knew what laid beyond the door, but that didn't mean he had to like it. His grandson was a very driven busybody who dipped his little fingers into too many things at once. It was fine when he was still some mysterious benefactor known only to those within the inner court, but now that he was out in the open, the boy would draw himself too thin and break down sooner or later.

Iroh was right for calling that damned bean water for what it was: a mockery of the natural order. Every man needed his sleep, and children more so. The night was meant for rest and an escape from the chaos of the day, not more time for work that could—and should—be done later.

He knocked but didn't wait for an answer before coming in.

And saw his grandson, sitting by the window ledge with a steaming cup in hand. He was holding a thick but elegant tea cup, not the usual ugly, utilitarian thing he called a mug.

That was new.

"Her grandpa," he said, looking back. "I'll go to sleep soon."

Azulon raised a brow.

"I promise."

That was acceptable. If anything, at least the boy kept his word.

"Is that more of that bean water?"

Raizu shook his head. "It's something that seemed like a good idea and turned out pretty well." The boy pursed his lips. "But don't tell Uncle Iroh, I don't think he'll be able to accept it."

Azulon walked over and took the held-out cup. It had a fresh, grassy scent with a hint of milk. "You mixed matcha tea with milk?"

"I made matcha tea using milk. Care for a sip?"

It was considered rude to offer any food to the Fire Lord without any assurance of its safety, but that was a different time and a different life altogether. Sharing food and enjoying it with family and friends was not a luxury the royal line could so easily partake in.

If it could even be.

There was so much danger and hidden plots waiting in every corner just lying in ambush for a chance at the throne. And his grandson made many enemies when he proposed to seize all control of the Fire Nation's farmland. There was merit to the idea of the Crown having control of production distribution of all food, but it failed to account for the natural distrust of others for everyone else. Good intentions were fine, but how they are seen by others still mattered.

Still, if an old grandfather couldn't even humor his grandchild's generosity, then the royal family might as well be but slaves to the need of a Crown—a burden neither owned nor deserved, only taken. And if Azulon couldn't even trust the one person who had so far won the war and paved the way for the continued rule of the Fire Nation, then he couldn't even face himself as a man.

Azulon put his lips to the brim.

And regretted trying to act the wise old man.

"This is horrible."

His grandson frowned, then took a deep long draught. "This is amazing."

"You could at least add some sugar or honey to it."

"It's just not the same with them."

The boy then explained the surprisingly meticulous and unnecessarily complicated manner needed to heat milk without burning it and how fire bending was so crucial to the process of mixing the tea in stages. At the end of it all it distilled into a question whether a water bender could create steam to heat the milk with so it wouldn't burn like with direct heat.

"Don't you have water benders in your staff?"

Azulon still couldn't wrap his head around a prince so far from the line of succession having more people under his purse than his own father. Granted Ozai seemed to be enjoying his new post a little too well if the beaming pride in his reports were any less descriptive as they were gruesome.

"They're already working on their own projects; I can't take any more employees away from the teams for a whim."

His grandson awoke to the burden of the Crown too early when he should be playing theater and pining over girls his age. "And yet their superior is over here spending late nights almost every day while he worries about them?"

"That's different grandpa, we pay them to work."

"If that's the case then why do you work?"

"Because I can make a difference."

He ruffled the boy's hair. It was so easy to forget how his grandson was still a child—and in many respects wasn't really anymore. Too many in the court recognized him too useful to the Nation despite how dangerous his ideas were. They couldn't touch him because he was of royal blood, and treason was the least of their concerns against someone who could bend the inner fire of others.

Azulon had to admit, boarcupine felled with its inner fire bled out had a very distinct, and almost sinful flavor to it. And whether what happened all those years ago to his son was actually the fault of the boy no longer mattered. Time, had scabbed over the wound long ago.

Sending Ozai to roam the lands together with his band of misfits was his grandson's idea—to redirect his aggression towards more productive means while having him watch over the changes he was helping to protect. And the better for his boy to avoid the love his wife had found.

Raizu was also working on a decree for that, for a law to allow the dissolution of a vow of union made with Agni—because if there was no love left in the union then the vow was no longer a promise but a sentence, with the punishment being each other and with everyone else around them as collateral.

His grandson gave too much of himself and never truly took anything, all his whims always for someone else or for what he called the greater good of the Nation or even the world. Azulon knew the all-consuming focus that came with purpose. It was a thriving, burning, life that commanded a presence in the day to day, ever there, never quelled.

But if a small cup of disgusting bitter leaf froth could make him happy, then that was a start.

"You don't have to keep acting as if the world will end tomorrow Raizu, it's okay for you to simply live each day as it is."

His grandson showed him a smile he didn't quite expect on someone who wasn't even recognized as a man yet by law.

"I know grandpa, but time has a way of slipping past us when we least expect it."

The boy looked up to the stars and took a deep long breath.

Azulon knew he had been present for the entirety of his grandson's life, though he might not have been the most attentive grandparent, at the very least he was there. So why did he talk about things as if they were so long ago already?

"Are you sure you're really just ten years old?" he asked, not quite sure whether he'd like the answer.

Raizu shook his head with a small laugh. "Don't worry grandpa, Sephiroth had left long ago. I guess he was just lonely himself."

The great spirit—or an excuse, though that way laid madness—the one catalyst to the new golden age of the Fire Nation even beyond the time of Sozin and his start to a violent and bloody war, replaced by a new war fought behind the pretenses of diplomacy and fueled by technological supremacy, enforced through economic disparity and sustained by the growing identity of a people remade. Raizu helped end a war only to start another of his own design and making, and the Fire Nation was just that fortunate to still be on the side that started it.

A war that was no longer fought with bending and violence but with beliefs and ideologies in a scale much grander than just the world—but of the soul of humanity.

Azulon asked for the cup again and drank a braver draught.