A/N: Hello! Hey, here's a rhetorical question for you. - What's the best way to procrastinate two multi-chapter fics you're working on? ... If you answered, 'write a random one-shot because you listened to a playlist too many times and wondered what would happen if Iroh hadn't been silent at Zuko's Agni Kai with his father' ... then you'd be correct! Here's a .. thing, I guess?
Had it really come to this?
The chamber was laid to light in shades of red. Innumerable braziers cast shadows to play half-sight with the innumerable lords and ladies of the Fire Nation. Politicians, aristocracy of the court, the upper echelons of the military and their sired heirs. An audience to a duel with a child.
How could he have known? By what measure of youthful pride and middling courage could he have agreed to such a ridiculous assessment and demand? Lord father or not - Fire Lord or not - there was no possible way to justify a duel with a child.
A child. A stark reminder of what he had already lost. His heart churned in his chest, the first rising embers to stoke his inner Fire. Yet control came from the breath, and his was contained, measured - held back. He ran his eyes over the chamber once again, noting the faces illuminated in blood and flame. Placid, dull sets of bronze and copper eyes as far as once could crane their neck. An audience idly murmuring and awaiting the inevitable - a show.
A duel with a child.
Deep in the belly of his spirit he professed to hope. He knew his nephew to be of purpose. A furious destiny lay before the boy - perhaps he knew on some level himself. He fought and trained and thought with a true Fire. A heat that grew only from the heart, unbidden to the concerns of violence and anger. It was a path, a lesson that he himself had only learned after decades, warfare, a dead son - and two mentors hidden in myth.
He professed, eyes scanning the chamber, to hope.
Perhaps a show of force, a willingness to fight - to at least try - would finally win his brother's respect. Or at the least, a bare sense of tolerance to banish the razor's edge of temper that had been leveraged to his nephew, seemingly, since the hour of his birth. It was a chance that rang beyond the illegible. It was possible that his brother, sodden of soul as he was, could be moved to at least tolerate his first born. Perhaps his nephew had learned more than he had first thought in the hollows of the Royal Palace. Perhaps he was playing the game as well, even so young.
His gaze ran sidelong for a moment to his niece. She had certainly picked it up early.
There was a groan of blood in his chest and through the warmth of his limbs as Ozai positioned himself on the far end of the dueling platform. A simple bridge of stonework that did not bear engraving or artistry. Why, indeed, play painted pleasure over something that was designed to shatter and scorch and break under the fury of a fire duel?
The art of the Agni Kai came from the combatants. - Yet one combatant was a child.
His stomach churned, rising up to buoy the blood that forced itself harder and harder in his chest and along the pathways of his limbs, stoking his Chi - stoking the inner Fire.
Led in by courtiers and a contingent of the royal guard, he saw his nephew enter the grand chamber. He walked with a purpose, shoulders set despite his youth and a solemnity to his features. There was no mistaking it, and he could not help but allow a small smile - his nephew's eyes burned as molten gold in the fire light. Bright, powerful, and with purpose. The dull copper and bronze of the now-silenced audience held no candle to it.
It took effort to quell the foam and froth and Fire in his veins. But he trusted his nephew. If this was the path laid before him, if so destiny demanded he face his own father in Agni Kai and bear harm for the earning of his respect - so be it. No true metal could be forged without great heat - and loss. A lesson it took him decades to learn. A stippling of pride began then, aiding the flow of his Fire to not quite calm, but to steady. His nephew would survive. He had to -
In an instant his jaw was taut, the last words of his own first-born echoing in his mind.
He had to. There was no other cause for his nephew to accept the gravity of Agni Kai against his own lord father, much less in front of the entirety of the court of the Fire Lord and -
Their shawls dropped, and Zuko turned to behold his father with naught but an overwhelming fear. The pools of molten gold cooled into bare rings around the dark of his pupils. His nephew was frozen in surprise, in fear, in mortification.
He didn't know. He didn't know. He didn't know. He didn't KNOW -
The Fire burned inside of him. An exhalation of breath bore smoke. None of the audience noticed, the courtiers and politicians and bare-lap militants all stuck with sick fascination at the sight ahead of them - a duel between the Fire Lord and his own first born child.
A child. A child.
Only, in the periphery of his vision, did his niece notice the draconic curl of smoke and heat that left the old General's nostrils.
He pleaded. He begged. He offered his fealty and his apology. His nephew did everything one could ask of a loyal son - of a first born son.
Yet Ozai advanced on him nonetheless, a rise of flame encircling his palms and forearms. The demand was clear. Fight or -
The letter was thin in his hand. His fingers were long-laden with burns and scars and rising callouses of worn flesh. Yet it made not difference. The letter was thin in his hand. Lu Ten was dead, his first born son was gone. A casualty of war.
No more.
With a gout of smoke pouring from his nostrils, he forced his way to the edge of the audience. There was no clear path, but by the fury and Fire inside his veins he made one. Some were thrown to the floor, others yielded to his advance. In five steps he was at the precipice of the arena, in nine he was upon the inartistic stonework. He stood between his nephew and the Fire Lord as a wall. As had rebuked him in his lowest moment, the impenetrable wall of the Earth Kingdom capital. He stood between his nephew and the wrongness of destiny.
Perhaps there were words, or threats, or calls to action or obedience. He faced Ozai with the Fire singing in his veins. Cries of confusion and treason echoed, as well, he was sure. But none of that was anything but smoldering embers to his ears. All he heard was the thin, terrified voice of a child in confusion and seeking safety.
"- Uncle?!"
And the Dragon of the West roared.