We spread our first daughter's ashes in the turtle duck pond. Iroh lit her funeral pyre, but we told no one else of her existence.
Azula was a peaceful baby, at least in comparison to Zuko, and my connection to her was even stronger than I'd imagined it could be. From the very beginning, our eyes seemed to speak to each other, her smiles, her quiet responses, stirred everything in me. That's not to say I felt more with her than with Zuko, but I was surprised that none of the magic wore off. Azula had light, bubbly chuckles and piercing, feathery-lashed eyes to match Zuko's goofy giggles and google eyes. His happiness had been boisterous and bouncy, hers soft and stable.
With one exception.
Azula and Zuko's relationship was very normal for a very long time. Being the older brother, Zuko was more obedient and helpful while Azula fully exercised the influence that came from being the baby of the family and Daddy's little girl, but she looked up to Zuko too, trying to emulate him in so many ways, wanting to do everything he did.
I'd always feared raising a son, expecting it be much harder than a daughter, but Zuko seemed to be sweeter and more angelic with each passing day. Then again, I'd always feared the teenager stage more than anything else.
Azula differed from Ursa much more. There were aspects of her personality that were so identical to mine yet struck Ursa as so bizarre. She couldn't always recognize this reliving of our past, she didn't understand how alike young Azula was to young me. With all the experience and maturity she and I had gained, Ursa could either forget just how fierce I was or couldn't recognize it because it came out of her princess, her daughter, not me.
Sometimes I feared that my wife had grown too much to repeat with Azula same kind of unconditional love, mercy, and protectiveness she'd shown me when we were children. Sometimes I feared she was too wise to accept those mistakes and flaws, too able to identify when Azula failed too meet potential, too focused on helping our children meet her perfect ideals to remember how hard it was for us.
But that's what parenting was. That's why we strengthened and sharpened and softened each other. Ursa always blew my expectations out of the water, impressing me time and again with her tenderness for both Zuko and Azula, with her softness and grace even in disappointment. My fears rarely became real.
In the first few years.
Azula surprised me on a daily basis and rarely—never—fit the description of "girly girl." Once she learned how to walk, she refused to stay still for more than five seconds. Still, she really did want to please me and showed so much kindness, creativity, intelligence, strength, and spirit… She'd do anything to see me laugh, and I'd do anything to hear hers. I'd smother her in hugs and kisses, and she usually smothered me right back—at least until she felt too cool.
My favorite memories were when she let me brush her hair. It was the only time she'd sit still and be peaceful, and I drank in every moment. Those strands of lustrous obsidian matched Ozai's in every way, seemingly impenetrable to wind and weather alike, straighter than any hair had a right to be. She pretended that she was indulging me and didn't enjoy it, but I could tell she cherished the luxury. A servant could've brushed those locks anytime, but she craved my touch even if she never admitted it aloud.
Looking at Azula, I began to understand the beauty Ozai saw in me, though I'll swear to my grave that she's prettier than I've ever been. Our faces were alike, but she was clearly her father's daughter in just about everything else. Her willpower, confidence, and natural sense of regality were apparent from early on, as was her desire to continuously achieve and build, to perfect whatever she could in herself.
Zuko always strove to be good, to do the right, while Azula always strove to be the best, to please us in everything.
Parents want to encourage that. We want our children to be the best they can, to better themselves and change the world, but both Ozai and I were guilty of encouraging perfectionism too much, of not recognizing the insecurity it could be born from and the hidden pain it could cause. Azula especially tried to seem so strong, to never show that anything hurt her, to be resilient and independent above all else. Both were so sensitive. Zuko was more willing to take my comfort, to move on and not dwell in misery, but he struggled just as much as she did.
Perhaps more.
Our firebending prodigy flamed frequently before she was old enough to restrain it, which meant I could rarely be alone with Azula. It pained me to need a firebending bodyguard in order to be with my own daughter, but it pained me more to see the stark difference between the ways my prince looked at our children.
Most firebenders begin to blaze about the same time they begin to walk. Zuko didn't until after his sister was born—his sister who nearly burned something on a daily basis since birth.
This late development disturbed Ozai on a fundamental level, in a way I might never fully understand.
Zuko's first bending, in fact, was out of self-defense. One of the servants was changing Azula's diaper, which I'd allowed after changing almost all of Zuko's by myself, when the princess whined a fireball towards her brother. Before I or the bodyguard could move, Zuko bended it safely away into a water bowl.
This encouraged Ozai into assigning him a master, but the little prince refused to produce his own flame. He'd learn the forms when his father insisted, but he loathed actual fire.
Ozai didn't press him, seeing as how young he was, but I felt his disappointment to my core. Zuko must have felt it too, a little, and I tried to help him find another talent to develop.
He eventually selected swordplay, having fallen in love with it from the many stories he'd heard and performances he'd seen, and Piandao agreed to train him at my request. Ozai agreed that it would be best for him to master multiple arts, but I knew he still felt Zuko's lag to be a weight on his shoulders.
"Many of the greatest benders started late, didn't they?" Ursa asked me one day while the children napped. "Look at Iroh."
"Many of the greatest masters, yes, but the most powerful benders always begin young. In battle, mastery and skill and art means nothing against raw, overwhelming strength."
"I think this... late blooming is a good thing."
I struggled not to frown at her optimism.
"How so? He'll be perceived as weak. A prince of the fire nation—"
"He will have to stand and fight for himself in a way neither you nor Iroh ever have. Everything comes so easily to you, my love." I began to protest this, but she silenced me with a soft finger to the lips and a bright smile. Neither tactic had lost any effectivity over time. "Everything you have, everything you are, you think it's your right. Our son will find more strength and wisdom by having to earn his right, prove his worth, and reveal his honor. How long did it take you to mature out of your pride and selfishness? Zuko struggles, but those struggles will make him—very rapidly—into a man and leader people can believe in. He will rise, like you. He'll just rise from different ashes."
"For his sake, I hope you're right," I grumbled, not knowing how ironic our words were.
My cousins and their family moved into the capital shortly after Azula's birth, allowing our children to grow up alongside each other. Zuko and the girls were all friends, but Azula and Ty Lee had a particular bond, being so close in age.
When Azula took her first steps, we were half-convinced it was to beat Ty Lee to the milestone. The two were inseparable when together. Ty Lee fawned over my princess, and my princess protected her in fierce loyalty even while bossing her around. The little acrobat was the only one of Maylin's children that Ozai could identify with any accuracy, and she posed no threat to Azula, never taking attention away from her and never trying to be smarter or wiser than her, and Ty Lee absolutely adored being fee of her status as the middle child. Maylin had a tendency to dress up her already identical girls in matching outfits, and it was easy to lose a sense of individuality in such a family.
Lu Ten thought his sole purpose in life was to teach his cousins everything about being royal, and he carried out this purpose very sweetly, even if his speeches and snippets of advice made me feel drowsy and made Ozai roll his eyes half out of his head.
Ozai viewed his nephew with an even more critical eye than his own children, silently protesting and seething at either how Iroh chose to raise him or how he was failing in areas Ozai deemed most crucial for a Fire Lord. He never made these concerns, or flat out insults, known to anyone—even I only knew because I could read his supposedly inscrutable face like a beginning reader's scroll. Instead, he avoided his poor nephew as much as was acceptable and as much as he could before I scolded him, focusing all his attention on supporting his own children.
When Azula was old enough, Lo and Li agreed to be her firebending mentors. Ozai and I knew her temper and sensitive pride meant she would tear herself apart comparing herself to a master bender who was also critiquing her, but Lo and Li offered a way for her to receive the same level of flawless advice, correction, and education without jealousy clouding her judgment. They were such amazing, strong women with so much wisdom, I couldn't have been more grateful that they agreed.
That was the same time she began to bend blue fire and blue fire alone.
"Why blue fire?" I asked Ozai once. "What does it mean?"
"It's an intense, purified form of bending, not unlike lightning generation. It requires constant focus and certainty but has little benefit. It's a way to show off more than anything else. Using only the hottest of flames increases the likelihood that you yourself will be burned, and once you reach a certain level of heat, there's no reason to increase it. Your enemy can't melt that much faster, and they're typically dead well before you reach that temperature. It would be a unique component in bending for the sake of art, though."
"Why do you think she favors it so much then?"
"Her name does mean blue. Besides, if Azula can bend it, she's going to."
I couldn't help but smile at how true that was. There seemed to be nothing our princess couldn't do once she set her mind to it.
Every summer, Ursa and I would spend the summer at our house on Ember Island. It was just our kids, Maylin and the gang visiting other relatives, and every second was sacred. Iroh and Lu Ten would come when they could also, and every day on the island seemed to be paradise. They were days we could devote all our time to just being the best parents we could be, loving our children, teaching, guiding, and playing with them. Just existing with them. We were always swimming or dancing, throwing kids up into the air, building and destroying sand sculptures, collecting seashells… There were almost no negative memories, save one day when Zuko nearly drowned.
Azula had been just a few months old, so Ursa could do nothing but cling to her for dear life while I dove after our son, more terrified than I'd been in years, my blood pounding louder than the crashing waves as I pulled him out. Once we'd made it back to shore, Ursa passed Azula to me, holding a tearful Zuko for the rest of the day, and I tried to make the world still again, refusing to let either child out of my sight for the next week.
And then, of course, there were Azula's birthdays.
The anniversary of Azula's birth was another anniversary that I could never say aloud and that I could never forget. To make up for my invariable inner feelings about the day, I poured all energy into making it extra positive, into seeming wildly excited and beyond happy, to a level I didn't on any other day of the year. It felt so fake, like such a lie, and I was terrified my perceptive princess would one day dismiss me as such, would spurn my attention and special plans, but I didn't know what else to do. I couldn't be anyway else. If Ozai disapproved of it, he never said anything. Everything he did, on that day especially, was to support and encourage me to share some of the weight that threatened to eradicate my painted smiles.
Ember Island was the refuge it had always been, a safe haven as strong as our ever-burning-brighter love. Whenever we went, Ursa—and I—would draw sketch after sketch of us all on the shore, in the house, at the theatre for the thousandth performance of Love Amongst the Dragons.
After Zuko turned one, the Ember Island Players actually began to perform well again. The play was worth all the praise Ursa poured on it, for once, and it delighted her infinitely more that I could actually agree with honesty. It delighted me as well. She was still my life itself, my purpose for breathing and living. Whatever pleased her enchanted me.
By the time Zuko turned five, however, the production quality slipped back down. Ursa, of course, would never admit this and found ways to persuade us there again and again.
Nostaliga blinded her to the reality of her crumbling ideal, her memories were so bright she didn't notice the encroaching darkness. She never did, until it was too late. Perceptive as she was, her heart was too full of love unconditional to heed what her mind screamed.
Everything changed when Ozai left.