Rating: PG, probably; some vaguely violent imagery, but nothing especially explicit.
Characters/Pairing: This is the Lady Ilah chapter. Her name is the only thing we ever learn about her in canon, but she is technically a canonical minor character; really, she might as well be an OC, but I thrive on technicalities. Anyway, obviously there are mentions of Ilah/Azulon, but this isn't really pairing fic.
Summary: Some of the missing and/or dead mothers of Avatar: who they might have been, and things they might have done or never did. Each chapter will be sort of its own five-things fic.
Disclaimer: Places and people you recognize from canon are not mine.
Acknowledgements: GIANT THANK-YOU to my sister, for the beautiful art (unfortunately, I can't embed it here!) and the constant nagging. And, of course, to the ladiesbigbang challenge on Dreamwidth, for leading me to actually get off my butt and post fic.
Other Notes: This was another really fun, self-indulgent chapter for me. Obviously this whole project sprang from my vexation at the lack of details about various characters' mothers and their fates, but Ilah was a really big source of irritation for me - I was so excited when I saw a link to her article on the Avatar wiki, and then I clicked over, and it was like, "Her name was Ilah. She was married to Azulon, and had some babies, and then presumably died." :P So!
(Five things Iroh and Ozai's mother never did.)
One:
Ilah waits the traditional forty days before naming the child, and insults her roundly whenever she speaks aloud, to keep the spirits from being tempted to snatch the girl away. But the baby is still there, still well, when the sun sets on the fortieth day; and as soon as the last light fades, Ilah puts her hands on the girl's plump cheeks, and says, "My little Ming Yun."
.*.
Ming Yun grows up strong and clever, already walking and talking readily after barely a year. She doesn't seem to quite know what to make of it, when little Iroh comes along, but after a few months she apparently decides that she is meant to be her brother's constant guardian. She always goes to bed in her room at night, but in the morning, Ilah keeps finding her fast asleep on the cushions next to the baby's bed.
.*.
Azulon is always harsh with her, and Ming Yun is not yet hard enough to bear it, so Ilah is not surprised when the day comes that she finds her daughter tucked behind a column, sniffling into her sleeve.
"Oh, Ming Yun," Ilah says, and gathers her close. Ming Yun is almost thirteen now, and only irritated to be treated like a child when she is angry; when she is hurt, she doesn't mind so much.
"I did my best," Ming Yun whispers.
"I know you did," Ilah tells her, smoothing a hand over her hair. "I know you did - and next time you'll do better, as long as you keep practicing your bending. You're the Crown Princess, my dear; and one day, you will be Fire Lady."
Two:
"I am not a general, but I have some experience in battle, and I will be a visible reminder of your authority," Ilah tells Azulon. She is careful to keep her gaze down; he will like that small nod toward deference, and it will make him more likely to agree. "Send me with them, my lord, and the Southern Waterbenders will never trouble us again. And let me take Iroh - it will be a good experience for him."
.*.
They sail south for weeks, through terrible storms and long dark days where the ice lies so thick on the deck that even Firebenders cannot clear it off entirely; but at last their fleet reaches the great white expanse of the South Pole.
Ilah sends scouts off in all directions; on good days, two-thirds of them return. But they know the southern city is here somewhere, so she keeps trying.
Finally, one scout is rushed into the bridge with blankets still wrapped around her shoulders, the tip of her nose red and white with frostbite.
"You have found the city?" Ilah asks, and the scout nods in answer; she still hasn't quite caught her breath.
Ilah smiles.
.*.
"Well, this is unprecedented," the Water Tribe chief says, when Ilah is close enough. "Usually it's not the invading army that raises the flag of truce."
"Unprecedented measures, in unprecedented times," Ilah says.
He leads her into the large igloo in the middle of the city - beautiful, the way the ice gleams, and it is blissfully warm inside, particularly compared to the freezing wind outside.
She allows for a short round of introductions, and then gets right to the point. "I do not speak for the Fire Nation," she says, "only for myself and the battalions I have brought with me. My husband has lost his mind-"
"So you noticed that, too," Chief Toshota says dryly.
"Indeed," Ilah says. "I have no problem with war; but he is not warring with you, he is trying to exterminate you, and that, I will not condone."
"And you came all this way just to tell us that?" the chief's wife, Kanna, asks. "How will your disapproval help us?"
"My disapproval comes with Fire Nation legions attached," Ilah says.
Three:
It's only logical; Ilah is an accomplished Firebender, and the walls of Ba Sing Se will not be crumbled by anything less than all the strength the Fire Nation can muster. She is highly ranked, but not a full general, and military structure must be maintained.
But it's still strange, to let her son give her orders. At least, she thinks, her grandson still has to answer to her.
.*.
Ilah's battalions are rushing the gap in the wall when it happens. Casualties have been high all along, because the Earthbenders are not hesitant when it comes to crushing Fire Nation troops with waves of stone, and the chaos is ridiculous, so Ilah can't say exactly what it is that draws her eye to the bender crouching on the rubble.
He claps his hands together, and an enormous chunk of masonry trembles; he stamps his foot, and the boulder flies into the air; he punches out with one fist, and the stone whips outward, away from the wall.
Ilah leaps into the air and flings out her palm, letting a fireball fly with a crackle of heat - it doesn't strike the piece of rock quite on-center, but it's enough, enough that the boulder misses Lu Ten's head by an armslength.
Four:
Ilah can tell it's coming as soon as the messenger comes with the news that Lu Ten has been killed; Ozai gets that look in his eye, that expression of violent satisfaction that always makes Ilah uneasy.
She loves her younger son - of course she does - but he takes after his father in frightening ways, and Ilah suspects there's nothing to be done about it. She loves her younger son, but she has only rarely liked him; and if he becomes the Fire Lord, if he is handed that kind of power, even the brief flickers of kindness he now displays will vanish.
.*.
She lets it be known that she is riding out with a large contingent of guards to meet Iroh, who is traveling in from the east of the Nation; the obvious but unspoken assumption that they will return to the capital city together does the rest of the work for her. Most people have no imagination.
It takes only a few days to arrive; Iroh's guards usher her into his tent, and let the flap fall closed behind her.
"What are you doing here, Mother?" Iroh asks tiredly.
Ilah pauses a moment just to look at him: he is obviously grieving, but beyond that, he seems strangely exhausted somewhere even deeper. When his wife died, he still had Lu Ten; but now Lu Ten has died, and he has no one.
Except her, she thinks, and ignores every piece of royal protocol she knows in favor of climbing the temporary dais and curving comforting hands over Iroh's shoulders. "I'm sorry," she says quietly; "I loved him, too," and she lets her son cry into her sleeves.
.*.
She tells Iroh the bare minimum and lets him infer the rest; it seems like a bad time to go into all the details of just how readily his younger brother will turn on him. Even that minimum is almost too much, as hard-pressed as Iroh is to care about anything right now. But Ilah knows he will care later - that's why she is doing this, because she knows Iroh wants to see Ozai crowned about as much as she does.
There are some curious looks, but no one questions it when she orders that they turn back and travel away from the capital again, and head for Jashian. It is a large city, far from the capital; and her mother was from Jashian. If she is going to start a civil war, she'll do it in a place where the people are already inclined to like her.
Five:
"It was Ursa," Azulon rasps, "she must be punished; and Ozai-"
"Yes?" Ilah murmurs, still clasping his hand.
Azulon coughs out a laugh. "Ozai should be crowned," he says. "An impressive feat of assassination, using his wife instead of doing it himself - and he was right about Iroh."
Ilah stares down at his drawn face, grey with the strain the poison is placing on his body, and thinks that Ursa has never in her life been used by anybody to do anything that wasn't originally her idea; that Ozai has never in his life been right in the things he thinks and says about Iroh; that Ozai would not in a thousand years have moved against Azulon himself, and certainly not over so small a thing as Zuko's life; and that Azulon is an idiot if he can't see any of these truths.
But she doesn't tell him any of that. "I will make sure that it is done," she says instead. It is a lie, but Azulon will not live long enough to know it.
.*.
"What did he say?" Ozai asks, and the hunger in his face is poorly concealed.
Ilah looks at him impassively, and then beyond him, to where Ursa is standing, pale but composed. "He did not know who poisoned him," she says, looking Ursa in the eye. "Before he passed, he bade me take the throne."
"You?" Ozai says.
Ilah can't help it; she lets herself smile, just a little bit, and behind Ozai, Ursa slowly mirrors the expression. "Yes," she says.