Just in time for Mother's Day! Sorry about the long wait, but I'm in the home stretch now. Hopefully, it'll be worth it.

Still…

"Save my baby!"

The words were barely audible, lost on the breath stealing from Katara's lungs, mangled by agony and terror and the rushing of blood in everyone's ears.

Toph couldn't stop the tears pouring from her sightless eyes. Couldn't make her hands stop shaking. Couldn't say or do anything to help because for once in her short life, she was absolutely helpless against this. She let her friend dig her claws into her useless flesh, let her wrench her wrist around until it ached with bruises and deep, dark red welts.

"Save my baby…" Katara pleaded again, her breath shallow. Another sob bubbled up. "Oh, gods…"

Sokka bathed his sister's forehead. "It's okay, Katara, just try to breathe…Gran-Gran will be here soon…" It wasn't true. He didn't know where Gran-Gran was. The palace had emptied when Ozai had begun his rampage.

They were alone.

"Mom…" the Waterbender whimpered. "I want mom!" And then, as if she'd just remembered, she began to cry, her sobs mute, her face contorted with despair.

Ozai observed from his spot in the corner. By necessity, his mind had removed him from the scene, forcing him to be a witness to the event unfolding before him like an overripe onion hitting the ground, its squishy, fetid layers curling messily over the cold marble floor. But emotion had not yet deserted him—it railed like a microburst in his hard heart. "She needs to push," he said, keeping his voice monotone. "The baby needs to get out. He needs to breathe—"

"Shut up!" Sokka snarled. "What do you know about giving birth? What do you know about anything except death and destruction?"

Ozai stayed rooted, hands cuffed behind him by several straps of iron Toph had hastily bent around his arms. His eyes stayed anchored to Katara's face, a litany of emotions passing behind those keen yellow eyes. He refused to let his fear show through.

"The baby's coming," Katara gasped. "Oh gods, oh gods, oh gods…"

Toph didn't utter a sound when Katara broke her arm as she bore down.

"AUUUGHHHH!" The cry wrenched every soul in hearing range, and some beyond that. It was not the sound of giving birth—it was the anguished cry of death.

Sokka gingerly lifted the blankets from between his sister's legs, told himself not to faint at the blood, the feces, the ugly stretching things that he knew were involved in every being's existence. But this was Katara, his little sister, the girl who'd washed his socks and thrown snowballs and gone penguin sledding…

"AUUUUUUUGGGHHH!" Katara screamed again and doubled over sitting up. She sobbed. "It's not right. Something's not right."

"The baby's in distress," Ozai murmured. "The cord might be wrapped around its neck."

Sokka glanced at him. He looked down, prayed he knew what he was doing. He eased his fingers into the bloodied opening, imagining it was nothing more than a clogged sewer pipe, searching frantically for something that would tell him about the condition of his sister, of her baby…anything.

But all he could feel were hard and soft lumps and his sister's sticky, oozing lifeblood. He didn't know what he was looking for. And he couldn't deal with not knowing. He knew everything. Panic seeped into his heart, cold and sharp and suffocating.

"I can help," the Firebender said coolly. "Release me. Let me save my grandchild."

The Water Tribe warrior shook his head. "No."

Ozai's placid tone cracked. "Then let me save your sister. Sokka, look at her. She needs help."

"She doesn't need it from you!"

"AAAAUUUUUGGGHHHHH!"

Toph stood like a statue, letting her fractured bones twist and grind, letting the physical pain be the only thing she felt. Her heart couldn't bear anything more.

"AUUUUUUUUUUUUUGGGGGHH!"

"Sokka!" Ozai boomed. "You can't fix things this time! Let someone else try!"

He wanted to. Oh, he really, really wanted to turn things over, hand responsibility for two lives over to someone else. But this was his sister, his niece or nephew. And that man…that monster had been the one to cause this.

He turned away from the only other person who could help. "Katara, just…just keep doing what you're doing, okay? Breathe, just like you practiced, okay? Hoo-hoo, hee-hee…"

"I KNOW HOW TO BREATHE!" she shrieked.

But Sokka didn't let her faze him from his task. "Hoo-hoo, hee-hee…"

She started to follow along, but abandoned the practice at the next agonizing contraction.

And then Sokka could see the head. Wet and purple and—

Appa knew something was wrong. It was in the air. It was in his bones. And the Firebender straddling his neck radiated it out in stinking waves that made the bison itchy. So he flew fast, as fast as he could go despite his bruised and aching body, as if he could outrun time, outrun the storm clouds crowding him on all sides. Tongues of lightning lashed him on, taunting him, telling him and his passenger there was no way they'd make it in time.

At one point, Zuko, still focused on the land ahead, reached out and caught a white-hot bolt of energy jagging toward Appa's armored head as though it were nothing. He tossed it back into the sky with the carelessness of a man throwing his socks into the laundry hamper, glaring around with his bad eye and challenging the other clouds to try that again and see if they could slow his faithful mount's progress.

As soon as they got closer to the Fire Nation palace, Appa knew he'd done the right thing by pushing himself to exhaustion. Panting heavily though he was, his enormous heart thundering in his mammoth ribcage, he could smell the Waterbender girl's anguish.

Zuko leapt off before Appa even hit the ground and pounded toward the palace. He barely registered the stunned onlookers milling around.

"Zuko!" A figure kept pace with him, a flurry of maroon robes flapping out behind him. "Ozai's on the loose! You can't go in alone—"

"Where's my wife?" he turned and asked. He was surprised to find Iroh keeping pace with him. "What are you doing out here? Where's Katara?"

"Trapped inside with Toph and Sokka. They were trying to fight him off—"

"And why weren't you with them?" Zuko shouted. He blinked. "No, wait, why weren't you with me on Kyoshi?"

"I got left behind. And I wasn't in the palace at the time of the attack." The elderly general pointed to the remnants of fiery carnage and they followed the path of destruction. "I'm sorry, Zuko, this is my fault—"

"There'll be time for inquisitions later," he growled. He was concerned with only one thing right now, and that was the safety of his wife and unborn child.

They skidded down one hallway, turned left at another, seeing the scorched and molten evidence of a fierce fight between Toph and Ozai. The structure here was shaky—so much marble and stone had been displaced that parts of the roof had collapsed in, allowing shafts of sunlight to pierce the smoke- and dust-filled corridors.

"This way," Iroh uttered. "I can smell him." He sniffed the air and moaned, "My brandy!"

"Katara!" The Fire Lord scanned the area, poking his head into one room after another. The doors had all been kicked off their hinges. Tapestries burned, soot marred everything. But he refused to allow himself to worry. When he faced his father, he would end him, and he'd need all his strength to do it. He couldn't waste his energy on fear.

He knew he was getting closer. The thick air closed his throat as he burst into what used to be a dining room.

The tableau awaiting him was burned into his mind for the rest of his life.

Katara, sobbing helplessly, limply, in an armchair stained crimson with her blood that seemed to gush like a waterfall from between her legs. She gripped Toph's mangled left arm, the bone jutting unnaturally in odd angles. The Earthbender had gone catatonic.

And Sokka, clutching a bundle wrapped in his own shirt, frowning down at the unmoving thing, anguish twisting his face grotesquely as he dandled the limp—

Zuko's heart was ripped from his chest.

Iroh watched it all unfold in slow motion, his hearing tuned right out as he imagined Toph's had. He couldn't hear his nephew's heart-wrenching sobs as he lurched to his wife's side, couldn't hear Katara beg him for forgiveness, couldn't hear their renewed cries for mercy to the spirits as Sokka handed their still-born child over, its tiny body wrapped in a bloodied, sweat-stained Water Tribe warrior's tunic.

The old general had seen much loss in his life, had buried his own son before his time. But this…this was more profound than anything else he'd ever imagined.

He collapsed onto his knees. His heart had given up. So much tragedy. So much pain.

How could he stand when the world was tumbling down?

How could he protect the things he cherished when fate conspired against them all?

How could he not have noticed the intent look on his brother's face as Ozai heated his makeshift manacles and melted them off?

The searing agony of molten metal o his flesh was worth it, Ozai told himself later. It took away from the ache in his chest, gave him something else to focus on.

And then he was free. And no one was looking at him, despite the smell of burned flesh, of blood and iron vapors, of the sickening sizzle of his destroyed forearms.

He didn't have any other choice. The Earthbender's arm was broken, and she wouldn't be able to unbend his cuffs in her state of shock.

Ozai quietly rose from his place. This next part would be tricky.

"Zuko."

His son—oh, gods, his son—looked up, eyes overflowing with tears, red and sick and angry, not unlike that day he'd burned him in the Agni Kai arena. Ozai hadn't shown mercy then.

"Why?" the young Fire Lord rasped. He got shakily to his feet, but his wife clung to him, and their combined grief staggered them both. Katara howled as Zuko collapsed onto his knees, unable to stand under the weight of his sorrow. Katara scooted away from Ozai as he approached, babbling, fevered, weak.

Just like Ursa had been.

Silvery eyes flashed in his mind, the vow he'd made reflected in their mirror depths.

"No!" Sokka launched himself up. He swung a wild fist out. Ozai caught his hand, closed long, damaged fingers over it, and crossed the warrior's arms over his chest gently, as if he were simply folding Sokka into his own embrace.

"Stop, Sokka." His voice was so smooth, so free of guilt, that it only enraged Sokka further. He thrashed, throwing the meanest insults and accusations and threats at him. And Ozai let him for about three seconds before he slipped around him and put him in a sleeper hold.

Down went Sokka.

"Are you going to kill us, too?" Zuko asked, gathering his rage, his hate, all the feelings that had ever driven him to become like his father, the ones he had never allowed to consume him. If he thought vengeance would soothe some of the pain away, he'd kill him right now, massacre his body and then savage the corpse. If it would take any of the pain away, he'd torture Ozai until he was nothing. Anything to get rid of this abyss…

"Give me the baby." Ozai said it so quietly, Zuko thought he hadn't heard right. "Please."

Katara keened.

"You will not defile my child," Zuko growled as he slowly got to his feet, mustering up the last of his strength.

"Give me my grandchild. Please, son."

"Get away from us!"

Impatient, Ozai was there in a flash. He didn't have a choice. He was running out of time. He scooped up the grandson who had yet to take his first breath; tuned out the outrage, the screams of terror, the approach of at least two men bent on destroying him before he finished his task.

He focused down on the muted little life, the prunish, underdeveloped child that had been too eager to escape his mother's womb to meet his big, bad grandfather.

Grandson. Ozai had a grandson.

The ex-Fire Lord breathed a shallow little breath, barely a hiccough. He felt for those threads of energy dancing through the air around tiny baby, separated tiny filaments of life and death, positive and negative, with nothing but the strength of his lusty will.

One heartbeat…

His angry red palm stretched open, the flesh oozing and shining with cooled, molten metal. A little arc of blue-white light stretched between his thumb and index finger, snapping and sizzling like a teeny viper. The stings against his flesh reverberated through the metal rivulets tattooing his arm, shot bolts of sheer agony through the wrists he would slit with his own teeth if he did not accomplish his task.

Two heartbeat…

How much time did he have before his brother struck him down? Before his son ended him for good? A second? Two?

Just enough.

He plunged the mini lightning bolt into the baby's chest.

The tiny body shuddered in his arms. Something wet expelled out of his mouth.

He inhaled.

And he cried.

Loudly.