notes: i guess we're back to our usual angst and family dysfunction— with a nice helping of depressing au.


You aren't sleeping when your father pushes the door open, bathing your bed in dim light. You haven't slept well since you learned about assassins who lurk in the shadows, waiting for princes to let down their guards. Since you learned about the crew of assassins that is your so-called family.

He sits down next to you, and you sit up as well, shoving aside your covers. Heart in your throat. You don't think your father has ever entered your room— has ever wanted to be so close to you.

"Do you know what I did tonight, Zuko?" he whispers feverishly. Even through the dark, you can see the feral gleam in his eyes, the bloodlust— his grip on your wrist is burning hot. You do not flinch or look away. That was never an option.

"No," you say, swallowing hard.

"I got rid of my own father— for you," he adds, perhaps as an afterthought. "All I do is for you. Your future." He jerks your head back by your topknot so suddenly that you tear up, made to look straight into his face (as blinding, to you, as the sun). "Everything you touch seems to die, doesn't it?"

It now occurs to you that he might move his huge fist down to your neck and squeeze. There is absolutely nobody in the palace who could stop him.

"But what choice did I have?" he continues, slackening his grip and letting your head loll forward. "He ordered me to slay you, my only son, so that Iroh and I would be equals— and then I slayed him like the miserable wolf-dog he is. It's the mandate of heaven; the most fit must rule."

"And we are the most fit," you parrot, so very hoarsely. "The strongest and the fiercest. The ones who will yoke the earth."

His smile is devoid of mirth. "If your mother had lived— she was such a weak, stupid bitch, Zuko, you can't imagine. Thank Agni you killed her, or else I would have done it myself. Forever prattling on about hope and peace and mercy, and she would have ruined you with it."

You really can't imagine. You've never spoken to a woman except the female servants, only to bark orders in their direction. From what your father tells you, you're better off— and your father is always right. He's all you have. He has to be right.

Sometimes, you can almost believe that he loves you, like when he shoves you back down and pulls the covers over your stiff frame. For a moment, his hand rests on your shoulderblade; lightly, gently.

"Never forget who you are, my son," he says with a low laugh. "Born lucky. It could have been so much worse."

You miss your bright, foolish, idealistic cousin, Lu Ten, who taught you how to read and swim and use dao swords— you were two of a kind, motherless boys without an anchor. Maybe in a different life, you would have wept for him.

In this one, the expectation of your once-uncle's crown weighs heavy on your head, and you shut your eyes and you don't cry. Because men don't, and you think you've been a man ever since you were born, and because there is (should be) no difference between your father's happiness and yours.