Author's Note:
I've seen everyone else post these, so I guess I probably should as well. I don't own this magnificent show - A:TLA and the characters (and all other recognizable things, like dialogues from the show) belong to Bryke.
I've always been partial to the 'bad guys', and this is my attempt at understanding Ozai. I had to guess a bit with the ages, but I tried to make it as accurate as possible.
Also, this is my first ever fanfic, so I'd appreciate any reviews/comments/etc.
- A
Sometimes you wonder, because you can't help it, how it all came to be this way.
You wonder when it all began.
The obvious answer is, of course, that it began at the beginning, as most things tend to do.
For your story, that impossible knot of interwoven threads, the beginning was the Palace. You were born to a father that already had the perfect son, to a mother who was sickly even before you came along, with a brother whom you pushed away, even though he tried so hard to make you better, simply because he was better than you.
You remember the day Mother died. You weren't sure whether to cry or not, because you were not very sad. But your brother seemed to be, so you followed his lead and stood beside him (your head had just begun to reach his waist, and you were very proud of this feat) and mimicked his stoic expression.
You were seven years old.
You remember the day you first saw her. Your days were long blurs of training, meetings, bowing to your father, trying to keep up with your brother – she was like a breath of fresh air. She looked straight past your perfect brother and right at you, that day near the turtleduck pond.
Prior to this, people only stared at you because you were royalty, because of the little bit of luck Agni had given you in letting you be born into the most powerful family in all of the four nations.
She seemed to look past all that, past your fancy royal robes that you despised, past all the superficial nonsense you hated and saw you, for who you were, in a way that no one else ever had.
You decided, then and there, that you would marry her someday.
You were thirteen. You had been noticed for the first time in your life.
You remember the day your brother got married.
It was probably the most elaborate, lavish event you'd ever been to. (The 'wedding of the century', they'd called it.) The bride was dressed in traditional colours, red and gold, and even though she might not have been the most beautiful thing you had ever seen, she was stunning, you had to admit, but you couldn't, for the life of you, remember her name. Your brother wore his military uniform. Almost every one was drunk and laughing, including some of the Fire Sages, but Father stared down at the proceedings from his seat of honour with a look of pure distaste on his face. There was an underwhelming-ly life-changing moment of realization as your pure, unadulterated dislike for the man surfaced for the first time in your life.
You remember looking at your brother, an expression similar to the one he had on the day of Mother's funeral plastered onto his face. Not angry, or sad or afraid – just indifferent.
The only saving grace of that whole affair was the fact that she was around. You would have asked her to dance, if dancing was something that happened at weddings. Instead, you shared your wine with her. You took her to a secluded corner and the two of you talked your way into the early hours of the morning.
It occurred to you that the guards might have been searching for her (not for you – your brother was the one who was really worried about you, the one who would order them to look for you, but he should, ideally, have been busy at that time), but proper, royal conduct be damned, you thought. That was the happiest you had been in years.
As you watched her leave with her parents, you remember thinking to yourself that your wedding would be a thousand times better than Iroh's.
You were fifteen. You were infatuated.
You remember what it was like when you first saw his son.
There was a sense of pride in you, when you looked down at that little bundle and saw some of your own features on his face.
More importantly, you remember your brother's face. He was happy, happier than you had ever seen him in the last twelve years. He looked down at his son and there was a fire in his eyes, a fire stronger than what you'd seen when you managed to master the more advanced katas he had taught you when you were ten. But you were a master, none of that really mattered anymore – what mattered was that you would never again be accepted and welcomed the way you once were. What you had to accept was that he had his new life, an heir, a future Fire Lady at his side.
He would be happy and successful and his son would rule the world after him. He would win the war, he would drink his tea and he would be loved. He would be adored.
And you… you would, as per usual, struggle along, trying to keep up.
You went to the turtleduck pond that night, and she was waiting for you.
Her father had sought an audience with yours and she had invented an excuse to come along. You were unbearably grateful. You noticed her eyes, ignoring their traditional aristocratic golden colour, and noticed how kind they were.
You kissed her underneath the fire blossoms and told her something you'd never told anyone before.
You were sixteen. You were in love.
You remember the day of your wedding. It was everything you had promised yourself – a thousand times better than Iroh's. It was better because she was a part of it. She was yours.
You remember the expression on your father's face. You remember the first time you realized you hated him. You remember your brother looking pleased for you. You remember him smiling at his wife, the way he hadn't on his own wedding day.
You remember realizing that things changed all the time, but that those moments would be eternal.
You remember the taste of the amber liquor the men chose to drink, and the way you silently preferred the wine that you two had shared both then and all those years before, the way you two danced in secret.
You even remember the wedding night.
You were twenty-one. You were the happiest you had ever been.
You remember the day things changed.
You were asleep, the two of you, or so you thought.
She woke you with her screams.
Five months, the child had been growing. It had stopped now, ended, ceased, and your wife was crying, weeping, sobbing, covered in blood from the waist down.
Things change, you remembered.
You called for healers, you were pushed out of your chambers, you were afraid.
You knew that none of it would do any good. Your child was dead.
You went back to the turtleduck pond and waited.
You thought about how fucking unfair it all was, about how your brother had the glory and the family and Father's approval and about how your marriage was slowly beginning to crumble.
You were twenty-two. You cried over your dead son.
You remember the time you spent at the beach.
You had retreated there, the two of you, waiting this pregnancy out. You had abandoned your seat in war council meetings, determined to make this one live. There had been scares, close calls, but eight moons had passed and the child still lived, unlike the previous three.
When he finally arrived, he was small, smaller than he should have been, with dark hair and gold eyes. He looked a lot more like you than Lu Ten ever had.
You remember feeling the same feeling Iroh had felt. You were certain it was the same fire you had seen in him that day.
Zuko was tiny, but Spirits, was he a fighter.
You were twenty-five. You had never been prouder.
You remember the day your second child was born. You stood outside for hours, from just after sunrise to just before sunset, when she arrived. She looked a lot like your wife. When you held her in your arms, you noticed her eyes were just like yours.
You looked at your wife, who smiled politely at you.
Your heart sank as you realized that the fire had dulled. You tried you find it in yourself, find that place where everything was the same, but all the times you had failed stood in the way.
You realized that the two of you would never be the same, simply because both of you blamed yourselves.
You hated yourself for thinking that you could be so indifferent to your daughter.
You were twenty-seven. Azula, though she was named for someone you despised, was the light in your life.
You remember seeing less of your family.
Iroh and his son, tea-loving fools, the both of them, had been sent to the Earth Kingdom, in an attempt to capture Ba Sing Se. You were confident that they would fail. You had seen the Outer Wall yourself – it truly was an impenetrable city.
Your father had long since abandoned his search for the Avatar, but stayed locked up in the throne room, regardless of whether there was to be a meeting or not. He was as much a mystery to you as he had ever been.
You stayed up all night working on strategies and planning out battles. You barely remembered what your wife looked like. You only remembered the way she avoided you, the way the tiniest thing she did would set you off.
Your son hid behind her skirts, even at his age, choosing to play around with knives rather than improve his firebending.
Your daughter, on the other hand, was a different story entirely. She was a genius, a prodigy. You often oversaw her lessons yourself, watching her learn and grow. She didn't try hard enough, that was the problem. She had the potential to be great, but she'd never achieve what she was capable of if she didn't strive for perfection.
You tried to make her realize that, and so what if you were a little harsh about it? She needed toughening up, or she'd end up like Zuko, who was soft like his mother.
It filled you with something you could not quite identify, whenever you thought about it.
All the times you had failed. All those dead sons.
It felt like you could never win, you could never care for them without hurting them, and so you had to remain indifferent.
It tore at your insides until there was nothing left.
You were thirty-four. You were numb inside.
You remembered last letter you received from him.
Your loving nephew, he had signed it. You vaguely wondered if he meant it. You doubted it.
The last time you told your wife you loved her was years ago. You two no longer shared a bed – you hadn't for over half a decade now.
You tried to find it in yourself, tried to find what had driven you all those years ago near the turtleduck pond, the day of your wedding, those nights on Ember Island.
It was gone.
And so was Lu Ten.
Your brother came back, shattered.
A failure, you thought. Weak.
And everyone always thought he was so much better – he'd had the city, had it in his grasp and let some miserable Earth Kingdom peasants steal it from him. The Dragon of the West, indeed.
You sought an audience with your father, asking him for what you now knew you deserved – the throne. Iroh was weak, incapable. Never mind if he was the first born, the rightful heir.
You were powerful. You were cleverer than he could ever dream of being.
Your father seemed to disagree.
Kill my son. He wants to kill my son. The thought should have caused you some distress, but it didn't.
The emptiness raged inside you, but not inside his mother.
She didn't tell you what she was going to do, but you knew.
You had known her for over half your life now, and you supposed that time had to count for something.
She returned that night with a knife dripping with blood.
The two of you conversed while she packed. It would have been frightening, if you weren't so damn apathetic.
You can never stop running.
Don't tell the children –
- I'm not an idiot.
No. You aren't.
You had stared at each other. There was no yearning for things to be the way they were. You weren't young and stupid any more. You knew you were past that.
Your coronation took place shortly after the funeral. Your Fire Lady should have been at your side.
You stood by the turtleduck pond, trying to think. Your son ran up to you.
Where is she?
Oh, if only you knew. You hadn't known for years.
You were thirty-six. You might as well have been a widower.
You remember the blind hatred with which you burned your son.
He was disrespectful.
He was soft.
He was sentimental.
He looked like his mother.
He begged and pleaded and snivelled at your feet.
It was his fault.
He looked like his mother.
But not after he got the scar, of course.
You were thirty-eight. You had lost a son, a father, a brother, and the love of your youth.
His screams sometimes haunted your dreams, but it was nothing that the juice of a few poppies could not cure.
You remembered the day you heard the Avatar had returned. You remembered that your son's banishment was the last thing on your mind.
You remember giving orders for the Avatar's capture, because you knew that your son would fail.
In fact, you secretly hoped that Zuko would not be the one to capture him. The last you'd heard of him was months before – he could have been dead, for all you knew.
The nothingness this thought brought washed over you.
An embarrassment.
A failure, like his uncle.
But your army was more than capable. You were sure of that.
You were thirty-nine and you were about to finish what your grandfather had started.
You remember the day your son failed. Zhao, useless as he was, had gotten himself killed, and Zuko, who had all but had the Avatar on his way to the Palace, had let him get away. A twelve-year-old boy. An Airbender. Clearly, Sozin's bloodlust had not been passed down to his great-grandson.
You sent your daughter to feed him some nonsensical story about catharsis and acceptance, to bring him back to the Palace, where he would no longer embarrass you.
She failed, of course. They usually did.
You were thirty-nine. It was going to be a long year.
You remember the day the Avatar died.
You remember thinking he was just a child, but he was a dangerous child.
You remember the look in your son's eyes.
You remember visiting your brother in his cell.
The look in his eyes was the same look of distaste your father had worn of the day of your weddings.
You only just refrained from blasting him with a bolt of lightning.
You were thirty-nine. You had always known that things would change.
You remember hiding like a coward on the day of Black Sun – something your council had advised you to do.
You remember the agitation, that awful feeling in the pit of your stomach, where the chi had built up and was threatening to explode.
You remember how you almost did when your son told you that he had failed again. You weren't really surprised, just angry. If the eclipse hadn't weakened you, he would have had a scar on more than just his eye. The eclipse was probably what saved him from having any skin left at all.
Get out of my sight.
I'm not taking orders from you anymore.
You will obey me, or this defiant breath will be your last.
Then he'd had the nerve to draw his swords.
You let him continue with his idiotic ramblings about honour and pride and love, something his mother had been foolish enough to believe in.
I was just trying to please you.
Oh, the foolish boy. If only he knew that the one person you had ever dared to love had seen the monster in you before you could see it in yourself.
You'd seen it since.
How could you possibly justify a duel with a child?
It was to teach you respect.
It was cruel! And it was wrong.
Then you've learned nothing.
Your brother had gotten to him. You saw it in his failure. You saw it in his scarred eye.
The people of the world are terrified by the Fire Nation! They hate us!
You found it hard to believe that being loved was better than being respected.
Your uncle has gotten to you, hasn't he?
Yes. He has.
He's the one who's been a real father to me.
He had a sense of pride in his voice, the kind you wanted to stamp out with a bolt of lightning. Even destroyed and imprisoned, Iroh still managed to come out ahead.
That's just beautiful. Maybe he can pass down to you the ways of tea and failure.
Always, always. He was better than you.
I'm going to join the Avatar. And I'm going to help him defeat you.
You tried to see yourself in your son. The steely glare was familiar, but the spirit was next to non-existent. If your son had taught you anything in the sixteen years of his life, it was that he lacked the gumption to do what needed to be done.
Taking you down is the Avatar's destiny.
You, on the other hand, did not.
If you had any real courage, you'd stick around until the sun comes up.
That's when you played your final tile.
Don't you want to know what happened to your mother?
He turned. He was angry.
He looked like you. You smiled.
You told him of how you had almost killed him then, of how she had stopped it. You remembered the unbridled hatred in her eyes as she told you her plan.
For her treason, she was banished.
So… she's alive?
He had begun to cry. He looked so much unlike the fighter you'd first seen and more like the snivelling little child who'd begged at your feet.
Perhaps. You hadn't known for years.
Now I realize than banishment is far too merciful a penalty for treason. Your penalty will be far steeper.
The sun crawled out from under its shadow and you could feel the fire coursing through your veins.
You reacted immediately, flinging not one, but two bolts of lightning at the traitor who stood in front of you, a traitor, who, despite all your assumptions, was not quite as useless as you had thought. Fluidly, enraged, he stretched and twisted his arms and redirected the cold-blooded fire towards you.
Perhaps patricide runs in the family was the thought that you assumed would be your last.
But it wasn't – the blast at your feet sent you flying into the banner behind you. The carpet roared and sizzled. The fire rose.
You were thirty-nine. Your son turned his back on you and walked away.
You remember the days before the Comet.
You remember your daughter's eagerness to aid you. The way her eyes lit up when you named her Fire Lord.
You had seen potential in her. You wondered why.
You remember the bloody, dusty sky.
Everything the day of Black Sun had taken away, the Comet enriched, increased tenfold. You remember the heat rushing through your blood. You remember the roar of the airships, and of the Avatar.
You wondered why you ever thought of him as a child. His eyes and fists and forehead glowed white and angry. The echoes of the Avatars past rang in your ears.
You remember his thumb pressing down on your forehead. You remembered the blinding feeling as the one thing that had ever really held you in place was stolen from you.
You barely noticed the rocks crumbling away.
You tried the simplest form you knew; one you had learned thirty, thirty-five years ago. Nothing happened of course. The chi refused to flow. You couldn't even produce the tiniest puff of smoke.
You didn't notice those foolish children hurling their ridiculous insults at you.
You tried to clench your fists, but your hands had useless without the fire in your blood.
You were thirty-nine. You were a prisoner. The Phoenix King was broken.
You remember the day he first came to see you.
His new crown – your crown - glinted even in the dim light of the prison. Your prison.
His eyes were cold and hard. He looked like you.
You had been told of his coronation, of course, of how your brother had decided not to claim his birth right after all… of how your daughter was now trapped inside of her own mind, a danger to herself and others.
You were told of this new truce with the Earth King.
You wanted to tell him what a fool he was, and if he thought that decolonization would end in anything less than a war, he was an idiot. An idealistic idiot, like someone else you could name.
It didn't matter, anyway.
Apparently, the Fire Lord did not wish to discuss politics with his father.
Where is my mother?
You asked him for some tea. Agni, it was like you were turning into your brother.
Where is she?
Sit down, boy.
You would not bow to him.
Where is she?
Oh, if only you knew.