Prompt ; #49 - Nurture

Title ; Never Enough
Rating ; K+
Word Count ; 646
Summary ; Leiko angst (Leiko = Zuko and his daughter with Katara, Lei), plus Ursa for good measure. There's Zutara in there, I promise.


He had never wanted children. Certainly not when he was a young boy, groomed to be king and told that the fate of his country rested on his ability to produce an heir. Even less when he was a disowned prince sailing the seas in search of a figment of the imagination, and less still when he was a newly-crowned teenage Fire Lord—the first in centuries.

And least of all at twenty-three, with the Senate and Clergy breathing down his neck, with his mother taking inventory of how life went on without her, with his sister on the loose and the world coming down around him.

( But she'd been so pretty that night by the lake, and he'd been so lonely—too lonely to admit it to himself until he had her soft and warm beneath him and her gentle moans in his ear. )

Even now, standing at the edge of the crib looking down at the subtle rise and fall of that fragile chest, he didn't want children. Didn't want the responsibility, didn't want the change. Change had rarely been good for him.

He didn't want that little girl to ever grow up and call him father—the name that still burned like poison in his memories. He didn't want her to grow up and ask why her grandfather's portrait had been taken down, or why her grandmother looked sad sometimes, or why he never smiled.

He didn't want to have to tell her that their great and beautiful nation was built on the graves of the innocent, or that peace was bought with blood, or that once upon a time he believed what they still said about her mother—that she was a peasant, inferior.

( And he didn't want to explain why every time her great-grandmother looked at him he felt the need to say he was sorry, so sorry, and it wasn't just for the war his people had brought to their icy home. )

Most of all, he didn't want anyone to know what he didn't want. That was why he only visited under the cover of darkness, when the whole world seemed to be asleep—save him.

"So this is where you've been," startled him as a result. His mother, her hair down, a simple robe tied snug around her, a smile on her face.

It had never been like this before. Her elegance, he remembered that well over the years, but not her ease. It was the ease that made her seem real.

( No one would ever know how often he wanted to hug her in those first days, to hug her so tightly she couldn't be taken away from him again. )

"Hiding in the dark." There was no point in denying it, his jaw barely flexing in acknowledgment of his guilt. "What are you afraid of?"

When he finally spoke, it was little more than a raspy, "Disappointing her—them."

( He barely remembers slender fingers in his hair, the fuzzy warmth spread by a few feather-light kisses along his jaw, and the power of three little words whispered just the night before. )

As if on cue, his worst fear was realized; with a sigh and a stir, bright blue eyes peeked open and trapped him in their sight. He was frozen in fear, waiting for the inevitable—a keening wail or cry that would alert the whole wing to his presence.

Instead, he got a smile – a gummy grin – before his mother stepped forward to gather that little blanketed bundle and deposit it in his arms. "You won't," was all she said, her hand on his shoulder almost more reassuring than anything he'd ever felt in his life.

Almost—because the way his daughter stared up at him with that smile on her face was the most reassuring thing of all.