"You bitch," he growled from his prone position in the dank cell, stinking of his own putrid smells. He flipped his head in an effort to whip the stray, greased hairs out from his eyes. "Who said you could come back here?"

She smiled in response, a soft tilt to her lips that left him feeling as if he were smacked in the face. He grunted and swiveled around on his ass to face away from her, feeling a sort of odd emotion swirl through his body. Shame. For the first time Fire Lord – no, he inwardly spat. I was ripped from my title. – felt shame and despair, let it swallow him whole. All for being in the presence of her.

"Our son did, Ozai."

"You dare say my name." he challenged her, an unseen fire curling off his words.

"I do."

He released a sound from his mouth, a disgruntled and sarcastic sort of noise. A scoff. The last time he had done so was a few weeks back when his brother had visited him. And then two months prior when his bastard demanded information. Seems he had found his prize regardless of Ozai's silence. He had yet to see his daughter, his prized jewel. It hurt to know she apparently refused to visit him, but it was filed away with the other pangs that he had dulled with indifference.

"…you did that to him, didn't you?"

He heard the question as more of a soft-spoken statement. "I don't know what you mean." His tone lilted with the cruelty of his act, head swaying as his arm waved flippantly.

"He is our son, and you…brutalized – you maimed my poor child."

The prisoner cursed the dull throb that gained in intensity as he heard the pain in his wife's voice, the breathy horror of his tutelage. "He lacked respect, and I taught it to him. Besides," he circled his head to give her his profile. "You weren't here to stop it anyway."

Her body jumped, jolted on her haunches where she squatted at his level. Her tender face spasmed with lividity. "How dare you – how dare you – sit there and tell me that I wasn't – after what I did to further your… you forced my hand in killing your own father, just so I could protect a boy you scarred with your own hand and hatred."

"I did not force your hand; you did that of your own accord. You killed my father," for a moment, she thought that as he looked off in thought he was considering the regret he felt for his actions. But then he smirked maliciously and added, "Not that I cared much for the man."

Her delicate brows furrowed just the slightest, over her unreadable brown eyes. The silence was thick. It usually was whenever he had a visitor, but this time, he felt the need to penetrate the thick smog of hushed speech. "…what?" he quipped at the look she gave to him. He didn't need pity.

"You used to snap like that whenever you awoke from a nap on the wrong side of the bed," She laughed quietly to herself, reveling and lost to the memories of a past she could barely retain in the fogs of her mind. "Do you remember that?"

It took him a moment to speak. "…no." and they both knew that it was a lie, heavy and thick as his voice.

"Wake up," she kissed his cheek, pushing aside strands of his lengthy mane away with her plump limps. "Wake up, my prince."

Groaning, he rolled over on his side, and then proceeded to drowsily right himself into a seated position, legs spread out over the edge of the canopied bed. He grunted and dug his palm into his eye, rung red with the vicious rubbing. The crowned prince turned his head to the gentle hand that placed itself on his shoulder, massaging the kinks in his bulging muscles. The tension eased and he sighed with the release. Tender lips kissed their way along his back, the ridged flesh of each muscle to the dip in his shoulder blade.

"How are you feeling today, my prince?"

He rolled her voice around in his head as one would a sweet delicacy. Her words were the melody to his life, the chorus to his days, and the whispers that traveled with him everywhere. And yet, he couldn't help the agitation he felt at being awoken, a biting emotion that threatened to burst like the throbbing in his temple.

"Fine." He curtly replied.

"Well," she snuggled closer into his back, wrapping her arms around his waist to curl across the defined masses of his stomach, each rising plateau of flesh. "It certainly doesn't sound like it."

"Well it is." He growled back, upper lip curling into a snarl. He cried out in soft surprise as he felt a tugging at the back of his head.

"Hey," she warned playfully, releasing the tendril of silken ebony hair she curled around her finger. "No need to snap, I was merely wondering how the 'love of my life' was doing. You have been so stressed lately, sleeping at odd hours of the day – what plagues you, my love?"

He was about to answer her query when tinkling laughter burst from her lips and filled the room in an echo of beautiful sounds, running up the walls and whirling around within his heart.

"I'm sorry, I'm sorry. You just, oh dear, you look like a dragonviper!"

Shock registered on his face, head rotating slowly to stare at his gigging wife, hand covering her mouth cutely. A smirk toyed at his lips as he stalked closer to her.

I'll show you, dragonviper.

He crawled across the fiery silken bedspread, coiling beneath his palms in pools of red. Her face dropped, sprawling backward, trying her damndest to flee. But that was the wrong move. In a quick strike, he pounced atop her, attacking her neck with vehement kisses. She gasped aloud, body arcing to fit with his instinctually.

"Ozai – no!" he reared back immediately, holding her lax within the circle of his arms, hair curtaining the two off as the canopy did their bodies around the bed. He panted as he stared deep within her eyes, confusion portrayed in his amber depths. She took a number of steadying breaths, eyes boring straight into his. "The, the baby."

His eyes traced the line of her uptilted body until he reached the barely-there bump on her flawless figure. Gazing back up at her, he slowly brought his head down and, removing a hand to deftly sweep aside her nightdress, bent to kiss her soft stomach. His eyes were on her until he felt the kick, wrenching his head back in a swish of long hair. She smiled down at him, feeling the sensation as a foot or a hand pressed itself against the line of her stomach from inside her. Golden eyes, wide and unyielding, stared at his wife with an unbridled joy shimmering along the surface of his pupils. He pressed his face along her supple flesh, inhaling deeply and reaching his lips out to place another kiss.

"What was that?" she asked of her husband, muttering under his breath incoherently.

"I love you, Ursa."

A brilliant smile lit her face, pulling her husband back up to kiss him passionately, with all the intensity his love instilled within her. "Oh, Ozai – never change."

The memory flooded him without warning. He barely managed to contain the prickling, searing heat that threatened to gush from his eyes, leaking his sadness and pain before her. But where Ozai was cruel, and mean, and spitting, and biting, and terrible; he was not weak. And tears were signs of weakness he would never allow from himself.

"Well, I remember. I remember well," he was brought back to the present, his wife's voice coaxing him to the here and now. "That was when we were happy."

He remained silent. Happy. That was a joke and a lie and a façade. He was never happy. Not a moment in his life.

"You think that with the years it has been since I have seen you, I can not tell what you are thinking? You forget, Ozai, to me you are an open book."

"Don't act as if you know me," This time, she was the one to remain silent. He took the small triumphant for what it was. "When you clearly do not. And there is little else you can say for that." He tipped his head up in victory. Yet unlike the feeling that swelled within him when conquering other peoples and killing hope within the minds of those below him, he felt cold and hardened by this win.

"I still know you. Right now you are thinking that you were never happy. That I am a liar and that there was never a shining moment in your life, when even you know that to not be true."

Curse that witch. To know me better than myself. He bit his lip and silenced his tormenting thoughts.

"I've missed you, Ozai."

He snorted ungraciously, tossing his head away from her view, succumbing to the shadow that rested in his cell. "What, don't tell me you still love me – after all this time!" he laughed boisterously, mockingly.

"No, I do not love you."

His back stiffened. His arrogance had bested him for the last time. That cold sharp blow that hit him as if he were impacted by a fire spear chocked the breath from his lungs, throttled his clear mind to a muddled despair he still refused to allow. He coughed and shuffled away, deeper within that darkness that so easily called out to him. The cold, dark, that had become his home for so long. He heard a rustle of robes and felt a warmth at his bicep, shooting sparks along his spine and every nerve. His mouth fell agape as he closed his eyes to fight against the painful sensation of sniffling deep and leaning into that touch, so familiar even with the years gone by.

"I love the man you were. Where did he go?"

His frigid eyes snapped open, cautioned and narrowed. "Who?"

"My husband. The man who courted me all those years ago. The man I married. The one who promised me never to change over the newborn son he swore to protect."

A surge of color and sound filled his ear as he was lost again, under the adamant wash of memories decades old.

He grunted and exhaled in whooshes and groans. His wife's vice-like grip on his own hand was uncompromising and excruciating. He felt his fingers cracking and sliding over the others as she squeezed for dear life. He stomped his foot over the other to distract the pain, but nothing was worse.

"YOU DID THIS TO ME!" she screamed, glaring an artillery of weapons at him. Her face was strewn with sweat and pain as it scrunched in on itself, throwing up to the ceiling as she gutturally cried out her pain.

His mouth gaped open and closed like an uncultured pomp, as he attempted to voice his apologies – apologies? For what? – and pleaded for forgiveness, voice articulating nonsensical sounds instead.

She moaned in agony, head tossing to each side, chocolate hair stuck to the sides of her face with sleek perspiration. His fingers spasmed within her clutch, jerking as she crushed them with all her might. His face twitched. At least he contained the scream behind his caged teeth.

"Princess, you need to push—" a midwife tried, only to be screamed at by the addressed woman.

"I AM PUSHING!" she huffed and puffed, throwing her head back into the pillow.

"I shouldn't be here, I should be here!" Ozai unknowingly attempted to strut off, thinking of other important and princely tasks he could be attending to. He felt a sharp yank and found himself face to face with him wild wife. The scream nearly tore from his lips but was silenced by the sweltering look directed at him.

"Don't. you. dare. leave me, Ozai." To further her demand, he felt a pulse in his hand where it shouldn't be, the throbbing pain inciting demented reactions from his body.

He gulped and nodded, terribly frightened. He had never seen his wife act this way, ever. One who was always so demure and polite and ladylike, to have her this way was a truly terrifying sight for the prince.

And yet in the end, it was all worthwhile.

"I see the head – it's crowning!"

Ozai was locked between a torrent of emotion; wanting to vomit, fainting, running away, or helping. He settled for standing as stock still as he could possibly manage, wishing for nothing more than to simply blend into the background. A whimper escaped him, thankfully overshadowed by the grueling scream of his wife as she tightened every muscle in her body. The midwife's eyes were wide and frantic, waving her hands as if the movements would coax the child out faster. He felt his breath coming in as fast and as sharply as his wife's as she panted and heaved with all her will. She cringed against the throes of her labor. After countless groans and grunts, screams and shouts, curses and fists, yanking and jerking, clawing and clinging, cries filled the infirmary. Overjoyed cries, and squealing, keening cries. The nurse, tear-brimmed, held up a gory bundle that Ozai's eyes shied away from, embarrassed and flushed. He nursed his injured and pulsing hand with the other as his wife relinquished her taloned grasp in the last force of her exertion depleted her. Wiping the squirming body, his eyes next caught the movement of something below him. A little bundle wrapped snugly in clean fire-colored sheets was hefted before his face, encouraging him to take it into his own hands. Eyes large, he stared at the nursemaid blankly. She smiled wearily and pushed the package to his chest, retaining the respect of one below him in stature. Raising his leaden arms, he held that bundle to him closely, afraid to let it go as it wriggled and writhed. But as soon as it was placed in the home of his arms, it stopped its incessant squirming and stilled, breath hushed as much as his own. Carefully settling the pack into the crook of his left arm, he brought his right to sweep aside the fold that covered the child, its face came into view and –

-and it was perfect. The most beautiful child he had ever seen, so handsome and so at peace, as it blinked blearily up at the man. Tufts of hair stuck out in a patch atop its head, as dark and lush as his when he himself was a boy. It continued to blink, wanting to get its creator into as much focus as possible, or so Ozai assumed.

"I'm your father." He whispered to the child, grip tightening around the infant. His eyes found their way to his wife as she was being tended to by an assortment of nursemaids and her midwife, wiping down her sweat with folded towels. The palace physician tended to her nether regions, checking to see that she was fine among the procedures that needed to be done after birthing. He turned his attention back to the bundle as it began to writhe once more, noticing the diverted attention itself. "I made you…you, you are a part of me – me!" he sighed wistfully, stepping to the bay window where sun filtered in golden hues, dousing the child with its light.

The baby sniveled and squinted at the light, painful to its new ability of sight. Then, it seemed to find the will to fight and struggle against its father's arms of bondage. It sneezed and with the suns help, a tiny spark flew from its lips. Joy and a surging pride filled the man as he saw that spark flutter feebly and dissipate into the air around it. His child would be a firebender. A firebender. And he would teach him everything he knew. Even though he himself never had his father teach him – Azulon only taught Iroh in person – Ozai would spend his time teaching this child, after it had its lesson with the royal tutor. A soft cough roused him from his daydreams, circling to face the subject of the noise.

"He's a boy, you know," Ursa, cleaned and so very tired looking, stood on wobbling legs, shifting between stances as she tried her hardest to stand. "We have a boy." She smiled weakly.

"Ursa, please – you shouldn't be up yet." His chide was soft, bouncing his son reflexively, a soothing rhythm the boy was quickly adjusted to.

Answering by sticking her arms out, contracting her fingers, he walked to place their son in her arms. She did the same bouncing movement and the child snuggled deeper into her embrace, yawning happily into her bosom. Running a hand through the mass of pitch hair, the crowned prince bent to nuzzle his son.

"What…" she yawned with the boy. "What did you just say to him?" she intoned as he raised himself and placed a chaste kiss to her still slightly damp forehead.

"I promised," he looked off sheepishly. "I promised I wouldn't do to him, what my father did to me."

Ursa swooned sadly, burrowing into the junction of her husbands shoulders and neck in support and concern for him. She knew of his father's neglect of him, able to have focused his attention to Iroh, but never so much as a sparse glance at Ozai; the man was old, decrepit and ancient by the time he sired his second son, too old and tired to be a part of Ozai's life. And it had hurt and wounded him deeply, that pang of neglect and loneliness that never eased. Until his wife came along. That had been the moment his loneliness had evaporated. She had mended most of the wounds with her love and care.

"I also vowed to protect him – no matter what," he stared off at a point far past either his wife or his child. "Because no son of mine will ever feel pain, so long as he is under my roof and my care."

"…this is why I love you as much as I do."

He smirked playfully. "And this," he nodded towards the boy. "Is why I love you."

He felt the air whoosh out from his lungs as if he were punched square in his receding gut, leaving him breathless and winded. A spark of what he once felt flared and ignited within him, flowering deep in his navel. He wanted nothing more than to squash that bud, coupled with his want to let his stinging tears flow. But he waited with slowly-gathered breaths and did neither – except growl at his previous thoughts of his treacherous little no good he spawned. He addressed the question she asked of him before that myriad of vile memories.

"…that man died the moment you left." And as soon as the words left his mouth, he cursed the spirits of fire above for his indiscretion. He bit down on his lip, drawing a thin prick of blood, hearing the near inaudible gasp.

"You know…I never blamed you," she started gently. "For my leaving – and the actions that preceded it – I mean."

"Oh?" his voice wry with sardonic sentiment. He flipped his hair once more.

"You were a good man – once."

"Hmph, and what am I know?" his words twisted snidely, hands following his phrase and lilting in the air nonchalantly.

The words she next spoke caused a stir within him he forced not to crest, not to burden and plague his thoughts further than they already were with her presence. "You are just confused." She knew full well that his angry and demeaning façade was just that, a farce. He was scared and scarred in ways not so unlike her son.

The two sat in stilled silence, breath bated. Finally, she spoke again. "But there are things that I fault you for, things far too unforgivable and cruel."

"Oh, do tell." He rolled his cold eyes and puckered his lips sourly.

"You scared my son, for no purpose at all. You tormented and resented the boy you were meant – and vowed – to love. You disregarded his life and his being and sent him spiraling down a demented path you deigned for him. You caused so much grief and desolation for Zuko, he was so distraught. You tortured a thirteen year old boy with hatred, lies, deceit, and the scars of your cruelty – not just to his beautiful face, but to his heart and even his spiritual soul. There was a time you loved him, loved him more than me. You had caressed that cheek you had scarred."

"Hush now, my child, there is no need to cry? Your father is here." He waved his hand over the sobbing bundle of his son, careful to gently wipe away the tracks of small tears that slid down the pale, creamy face. The bundle hushed, sniffling pitifully, stretching and struggling against the robes that bound him in a tight swaddle.

Ozai sat shaded beneath the tendrils of a cherry blossom tree, the heat of the sun surrounding him and his son in a warm and intimate embrace. A gentle wind rustled through the vines strewn in pink buds, sending one to fall upon the cheek of the infant. Three settled atop his head, but with a swift shake they fluttered prettily to the ground. Another suckling sniffle. He smiled down at his child, whom he had created with a part of himself. This boy, was a part of him.

"My son…" he breathed on the wind's sigh, brushing his fingers delicately across the left side of his son's face.

I was probably marking which side he would better learn from, he thought with a lemon's wry and twisted sense of humor.

The ex-royal opened his mouth to spit some acerbic retaliation and derisive excuse, but was cut off by his wife. "And not only had you misshaped our poor, poor son – though mended now by your brother's care, his girlfriend's love, and now mine as well… you have put the strain of your insanity on our daughter as well."

Another wallop to his bowels. What did that mean? "What?" he tried to keep the anger in his voice, fought to cling to his hatred and loathing, but upon mention of his second born, his beloved daughter… he froze. Even the ice of his breath chilled to lower temperatures.

"Azula, our daughter…she – she is not well. You have driven her to insanity."

"You…you lie," but the demeaning and inciting words of guards that were meant to filter into his cell rang out in his mind, and suddenly the meaning behind them was illuminated. All those derogative comments, all those mocking phrases slipped between steel bars. The talk about how crazy his daughter had become, especially in comparison to Fire Lord Zuko. Ozai wanted to slam his head against his cage, ram hands over ears, and belt out his anger and humiliation. "You're lying!"

He heard the recognizable swish of her hair, as if it had spilled across his stomach like so many years ago, as she shook her head sadly. She tried to speak, but the thickness of her voice stopped her. "I had always thought she was strange – done so by the change in you, and your teaching. I thought she was a monster, my own daughter. And now, I will never be able to tell her otherwise. To tell her how much I've missed her. To tell her how much I wished I could have righted the wrongs you have put this family through. But now she sits, all alone, in a padded and rubbered cell so she will not electrocute herself or others. She sits in confinement, a girl of only fourteen, with no one to comfort her, because none are allowed. Not since the time Zuko had tried to visit, nearly dying from the magma she spewed in her madness." He heard the elastic slap of flesh as her hands met her face in her overpowering sadness. "My poor daughter…my little one…"

Unmitigated tears threatened to choke the bare remnants of his life from him, hearing of his daughter's fate, but still he held them back. Speaking past the lump he found lodged in his throat, like a cancerous tumor, he asked her why she was here. There was a lack of his chilling bite. His energy was being depleted each moment that woman stayed.

"I am here because I have come to teach you, something, Ozai," she stood in a rustle of fine cloth, imposing and proud as ever. "You are a man who has brought so much negativity, not just to our family, but the world. But you are also a man capable of a kindness and humanity far beyond what has been recently accredited to you. You need to know that you can change."

"And how exactly am I to do that?" the frustration began to steadily build up in him once more, rising in his words. The initial contact of the utterance stung.

"By remembering," she knelt again, staring at eye level though his head faced the opposite wall. "Just…remember, think back to who you were, Ozai."

"No."

"Why are you so afraid?" she despaired for him, for the life he was given and the one he forced on their children.

He stood in a flurry of rags and incensed rage, flying to the side walls of his captured settlement. "I AM NOT AFRAID!" he shouted at her, eyes wild and nostrils flared like some untamed beast.

He ran to that wall, slamming the top of his head against it, throwing himself to the will of his antagonism. Ursa winced and pleaded for him to stop, hand flung helplessly.

He breathed heavily, a trickle of red trailing down the line a stray lock of hair provided, a ridge between one plane of his face and another. His head throbbed in time with the pounding he felt. "I…am not…afraid."

"You are," she persisted, glancing away and biting her lip in worry. "You are afraid to let yourself remember the time you were happy. You were whole."

He laughed humorlessly. "I am only happy in my memories." The truth, he noted was easier to have said this time. Never would he have admitted it to anyone else, at any other time. But now, he felt the release of his admonition and it felt as if a block of ice had been seared off his caged heart.

Strings of whispered love, streams of flooded color and fond memory, blasts of moments in his life when he walked the beaches hand in hand with his wife and one-and-a-half year old son, reveling in the way the sand crunched gratefully beneath his bare feet drowned him in a world so long ago lost.

"Look, Daddy," the little boy grabbed his attention, voice tinged with the accent of youth as he squatted in the sand. "Look! Look at this shell I found!"

"I see, I see it, my son." He wrangled the boy from his spot on the beach, swooping him up into his arms and on one shoulder. "And what a beautiful shell it is."

A young Zuko grinned toothily down at his father, clinging to the smooth shell in his small grasp, eyes creased in childhood delight. "It looks like the fire you can make, Daddy!" he giggled, bouncing atop his father's broad shoulders.

Cold water lapped at the Fire Prince's feet as he strolled along the edge where the tide swept up to greet the sand, forming a soft in-between where his feet could sink into the pliable ground. Zuko dropped the hand he cupped the delicate thing in, and his father gazed at it from the sharp line of his nose.

"So it does," he maneuvered the boy higher up by propping his shoulder, settling him into the dip where his neck met his shoulder. He pointed with his unused hand, the other at his boy's waist to hold him steady, at the shell and the different layers of red-imbued colors that dipped with each ridge to form a darker shade into the next. "And what color is this?"

Zuko chewed his lip in thought, then coming to the correct conclusion, shouted, "Red!"

Ozai slung his son off his shoulder, dipping the joint low so the boy could hop lightly into his waiting arms. He walked on, sun shimmering low into the horizon, orange meeting sapphire until the colors swirled around in a mix of pink, gray, red, and purple around the two. Zuko snuggled against his father's side, clutching to the opened vest his father wore in the heat of Ember Island. The Fire Prince continued his aimless path, simply placing one foot before the other and nodding to the heedless chatter his son continued to speak about – tales of stories with mommy, or various critters that crawled around the sandy beaches he could spot and now name – until he saw the welcome sight of a steep hill. At the foot of the hill stood an even more welcome sight.

"Ah, my two favorite princes." A smile touched her lips as she spoke the words, seeing the adorable sight of the only men in her life.

Ozai, astounded every moment he ever saw her, smiled simply as he took in the beautiful sight of his wife; her deep cherry and scarlet summer robes framed against a backdrop of lush grasses and daggerpalm trees. Upon hearing his mother's voice, Zuko's entire demeanor shifted. From curious and silent to delighted and overjoyed.

"Mommy!" he cried, bouncing against his father's hip, attempting to break free of the muscled bond that held him still.

Scooping him beneath the arms, he set the boy down to run towards his mother. Ozai ambled over behind his son, giving him enough room to race on his own, the man being far more distracted by the sight of his wife. The way her wavy chestnut hair flowed with the wind that carried it, the gloss that shined off her tender lips, the elegant arch of her brow, the cultured way she held herself, even kneeling to pick up her child. The father sucked in a breath as his son tripped over the weight and hassle of his own footing, falling to the ground on all fours. Ozai was there in a second, but Ursa shooed him away silently. He saw the tremble in the boy as the tears he would shed in a matter of seconds; knees reddened no doubt from the contact with the ground. Instead, the toddler struggled to his feet, wobbled, and then surged forward once more. The man blinked and a grin formed on his lips, stretching his cheeks wide as the boy collided into the arms and chest of his mother. This child was his, this child that fell and got back up, was all his. A lightness in his chest took the place of any other feeling he had within him. He stepped over as Ursa straightened, Zuko attached to her front as he played with the scarlet silk necklace that dangled and dipped down her collarbone, wrapping an arm protectively around his family. He kissed the top of her head and patted down the fluff of fine hair on Zuko's head.

"Ozai," his head darted to hers, away from their son's beaming and intrigued face as the boy continued to play with the sash around her neck. The cautious tone of her voice steeled her husband. "I'm…" the hand at her stomach was enough of an indication, and she saw that in his face, discontinuing from where she trailed off.

She also saw a growing fear on his face. His world had just took a tailspin around him. He was having a second child? But he never wanted that. Spirits knew he had begged for this sort of thing to not happen. Would he prove to be as reckless and neglectful as his own father. He couldn't let that happen. He wouldn't let that happen.

"There…there must be," he groped for a proper conclusion to this nightmarish news. "a, a mistake."

Ursa frowned, creases furrowed into her cleared brow. "No. There isn't a mistake."

His thoughts went tidal, rampant, and crazed. He raved within his own mind. When this new child came, he would have to devote all his time with it. Just so they would never have to feel the sting of solidarity he had felt in his youth.

'Yes. Yes. Every minute would be spent with that child.' He had thought, already dredging up thoughts of the future so much further away. 'But…but what of…'

He stared down at his son who bubbled spittle from his lips. In his clouded haze the tap he directed to the boy's mouth to stop the improper action was far too harsh, the young child's head snapping back and flinching, eyes wide with appalled shock as the shimmering gold pools asked, "why?"

Ursa's face was much more livid as she exclaimed his name. "Ozai!"

He shook himself out, seeing the quiver of his son's lip, the anger in his wife's eyes and the tightness around her mouth. "I, I…" he reached for his son, but the boy was pulled away as she ducked around his grasp, glaring up at him spitefully. He dropped his hands and sagged his head in an uncharacteristic manner. "I'm sorry."

A warm hand reached for his shoulder, touching the bare skin the folds of his vest uncovered. He stared up with sad eyes to see his son leaned out in his mother's arms, hand flat against his father's flesh. His mouth curved upward gently. "Tha's okay, Daddy."

The words did little to console him. In fact, they had held the opposite effect. His son's kindness, inherited most definitely from his mother, was like a blow to the left of his chest.

Later that night, when all had fallen still, the Fire Prince remained locked away in his study, stooped in the misery of the news and actions he had received earlier. Ursa had warned him that there would be a strong argument and punishment for his action taken wrongfully against their son, so he kept himself trapped within the paper walls of his office at the island manor. It was far late into the night, the moon nearly at its zenith with twinkling stars that sparkled like jewels across the navy night, when he heard the soft sigh of redwood planks giving way under careful feet. The man sighed and dropped his head further into his hands.

"Daddy?" another few creaks. "Daddy, are you okay?"

Ozai turned his face, forehead still buried against his palms, and saw through the diminishing candlelight the figure of his wary son, stepping around the corner he clung to and into the pooled, artificial light. He beckoned the boy with his fingers, grasping at the air around him with his extended arm. The boy toddled over, waddling slightly in his half-sleep. He rubbed his eyes with the back of his fleshy wrists and gazed up at his father.

"Yes, yes, I am fine, my son," he patted the boys shoulder tenderly. He exhaled for a few beats then told him. "You know, child, you are about to become an older brother?"

Zuko, wide-eyed and alert now, stared up at the man mouth opened in an 'o' of surprise. "I'm…gonna be a big brother?"

'Just like Iroh…' Ozai thought with chagrin, never having the greatest of bonds with the man as there was a nineteen year difference between the two. The thought hardened his heart about his son.

"Yes," he rubbed between his brows with two fingers, eyes closed with his sleep-deprived and racing mind. "And I want you to – I need you to – promise me one thing, son," the boy looked on intently, nodding. "You will play with your new sibling when they come. You will love your new sibling, just as I will. Can you promise me that?"

Zuko grinned. "Oh, Daddy – I already do love them."

Nodding tiredly, he patted his son's shoulder once more, and then sent him back on his way for bed.

"Daddy?" Ozai turned to face the boy as he peeked out from the doorway again. "Can I sleep with you and Mommy tonight?"

Cringing unnoticeably, he shook his head. "Not…not tonight, son…"

The boy pouted but gave no other indication of disappointment, stumbling off to his bed mat. Ozai sighed.

'Spirits,' he thought, raising his head high and rubbing the back of his neck with one hand. 'Please give me the strength to be a father to my firstborn, and to never forget that I will have a secondborn…'

A slap resounded, palm meeting cracked stone. He coughed, a sputtering sound of discontent. "If anything, memories have just soured me and stoked the loathing I feel towards that boy."

"Then you are not remembering the right memories."

He scoffed and swiveled his head to face her more fully. "Oh really? And who are you to say? Maybe I have always hated that spawn." He turned his head to the other side, spitting out some of the blood that had trickled down to his lips, no intention of taking care of the rest of the trail.

"I remember a man who was always kind. I remember a man who doted on his child as much as he had on me. I remember a man who was always so conflicted, but never in the presence of that child he helped create. I remember a man who taught me how to properly feed the turtleducks and who was the first to allow them to feed off of our son's hands. He then gave the task to me as he steadily became busier until he all but forgot that fact," she stared at him as his eyes widened with the onslaught of those memories prevailed over his vision. She addressed him next, knowingly. "Didn't he?"

"I may not have my…have my bending anymore, but my mind is still sharp. I have forgotten nothing."

Her lips curled downward, breath escaping in a silent huff. "Then you are simply choosing to abolish those memories." Her scowl deepened as his smirk grew.

"Perhaps."

"Then let me refresh your memory of the day I left."

His body went still. His pulse froze, just as it had on that day. His breathing became non-existent, his mind as clean a slate as ever. He wanted to cry out, bark out a strong, "No!" but no words came forth to his call. It was like his bending, he was no longer able to speak just as he was no longer able to conjure up a fire above his palm. The warmth of his energy and chi had fled him just as she had.

"In an attempt to further your career, you dishonored your brother and in turn you disrespected your father. You had dealt him a backhanded insult by suggesting to take the place of his firstborn's right to the throne, his birthright – Iroh's."

"Stop it."

"Azulon grew angry, so I heard. Zuko had told me that he and Azula had witnessed your speech, your petty excuses that you set before your own father."

"You know nothing." He cursed beneath his breath, his inhales becoming sharper, taking in less and less air with each sentence she spoke.

"For your dishonor, the suitable punishment was sacrificing your own firstborn to understand the pain of losing and giving up one of your own. Those were the words you told me."

"Shut up. Shut up!"

"You swirled around me as I began to weep. You ran your fingers through me hair, and I was too distraught to do anything against you. And then you graced me with the preposition you had no doubt thought of much earlier than just that moment. 'Kill my father, and I would have succeed his throne. Then there will be no one to harm young prince Zuko. No one but I to guard him. But only if my father is not here, for if he is, he expects the body of my firstborn. Our little, precious, Zuko.'"

"You shut your mouth!"

"Those were your words. And for the safety of my son, I followed them. I killed your father. I snuck into the kitchens and slipped a vial of scorpiansnake venom into his honorary tea pot. The venom did the job quick enough – I held nothing against the man, unlike yourself, who held everything against him. And then I fled into the night, where you couldn't stop me. Because I knew that a part of you did not want me to do it. And not for the fact that you wanted to burn your own son – though you did. No. You did not want me to do it because you did not want me to leave."

"You know nothing of what you are saying!"

"Admit it, Ozai. A part of you, you – the hardened Fire Prince, so cold and cruel – still loved me. There is no need to deny it, I know. Zuko told me how much more distant you were that day. How when he came to demand where I was, you ignored him and just brooded and sulked, staring at the spot by the turtledock pond where I usually sat. You loved me, and you hated that I was gone. Hated that for once, you weren't there to control something, have someone squeezed under your palm of fear and deceit. You—"

"You know nothing of how I felt that day! That boy knows nothing of how I felt!" emotions frothed like ale, picking up speed in the tsunami of feeling and hurt, pain and suffering he was re-enduring. "To have you gone… to have you, that one constant in my life vanish without a trace..." he turned hateful eyes to her, bracing steel and venom into every word. "I never thought you to be capable of murder. But as soon as I heard of my father's death, I knew that when you weren't there that morning, you would be gone forever. I had told you that you were to be banished. I thought you would pick your country over that pup, but you didn't – you picked him."

Outraged, she cried out, "He was our son! What choice did I have?"

"TO STAY WITH ME!" he screamed, fists pounding crevices into the stone out of brute strength and forged from the deepest pits of anger. "You left and you never even said goodbye."

Dumbstruck, Ursa blinked slowly. "Good…goodbye…?" she tilted her head curiously, all the anger flushed out from her as invisible smoke poured from his nostrils under the heaving of his shoulders.

"I was…I was your husband – for over a decade, we had been as one…and you didn't even say goodbye…" his voice creaked under the weight of his statement, under the pain of a day years ago. A day avoided so easily had it not been for his cocky, low-brow state of mind. A time that he still would never admit openly was all his fault.

"There had once been a time, where you promised me to protect our son. There was another where you swore he meant everything to you. There was even a moment when you said that the only thing that made you happy were myself and Zuko. Do you not remember this?" her voice had grown soft as she bowed her head, hands loosely touching before her.

Arms wrapped around a small child already enveloped in the circle of his mother's warm embrace, he hugged the two most precious beings in his life close to him, never wanting the moment and the heat that emanated from the two to ever leave.

"I love you both so much." He whispered against the boy's temple, still molding under the modification of growth, though nearly there. Such a small head, such a fragile creature of almost two years.

He brought the two closer into the walls of his arms, cording his muscles and molding himself to them. He cherished them more than anything. More than the title that should have been his by right but belonged to a brother much older. More than a legion of men under his provision and direct control. More than the fire within his body that curled and smoked with delight as his heart flared visions of his two most prized possessions.

Placing his arm around the swelled stomach of his wife, he massaged the mass gently, running his fingers like a wave over where his second child grew. "And I promise to love and protect this child as I will with Zuko."

"Because I loved you all more than my own life…" he whispered in defeat, unable to resist the tide of emotion and memory that had drowned him on that day. His head pounded unbearably at this point, but he managed to create the signal to his muddled and exhausted brain that he needed to wipe the blood from his face. He found it all too symbolic to be washing his face clean after having his soul cleansed, if only on both accounts by just a sheer amount.

Ursa held no response to this. There was no smile, there was no cheer, and there were no jeers either at his response. She simply allowed him to turn back to face his feet, forehead still against the wall. Knowing that she finally was able to push through to him, if only to pave the way for more thought and betterment, she nodded to herself lightly and began to walk off. But something called her back. Something in the way his hoarse voice sounded, tone betraying a husky quality of realized spirits.

"Ursa." He spoke her name aloud for the first time in seven years. So many words he wanted to say to her, declare what a fool he had been, how he wished with all that remained of his heart that things were different. That they could go back to that time on Ember Island, when they were truly a family. Back to that time, all those nights spent, just relishing in each other's presence and arms. Wanted to tell her how if he could he would change all that happened. How much pain he felt, like continuous blows as the days passed with her absence, her lack of touch leaving cold bruises along his skin. But all that was locked behind his pride and gnashed teeth. Instead, he placed his palm to the bars, head cringed the opposite direction. The press of flesh marred by singular poles was his undoing.

The first of his tears slipped past his shut eyes while shoulders heaved under the weight of a life gone wrong.

"I love you, Ozai."

"I love you, too, Ursa."

"I love you, Daddy."

"I love you, too, Daddy."

Wrapping an arm around each child, he brought them closer. "I love you both so much." Kissing the top of each head, he noticed one of his children's stoic features. He turned the child around in his arms and faced them, scooting closer on the steps. "I," he stared purposefully into the gold eyes so alike to his. "Love you," he hugged his son close to his chest. "Zuko."

"Lady Ursa!" a guard pelted down the corridor, hearing sobs and cries echo through the halls. "Is everything all right?"

Seeing the woman to be fine, standing coolly and staring down at the ground blankly, he followed her trained gaze—

-and saw the ex-Fire Lord cringed on the ground, sobbing and clutching his own shoulder, curled into as tight a ball as he could muster.

The cell's guard's upper lip curled into a snarl. "I hope he's in pain." Remembering his place and the presence of who he was with, the man immediately stammered his apology, and was brusquely waved off.

The woman stared down at her husband evenly and said, "No. For once in his life, I don't think he is in pain anymore."

A/N: Alright. This one was a doozy to write, but it is also my most treasured piece as of yet. Flamers – don't you start with me. I have canonical proof that there was good in Ozai. So, let me begin with the proof:

There was indication of Ozai once being good. During the Book 3 finale, when Katara was like, "I know what'll cheer us up – BABY ZUKO!" And it was Ozai's picture instead of that ADORABLE CHILD (which definitely isn't my picture on my email account, whaaaaaaaaaaaaaaat?) That cute little happy baby was indication of the fact that Ozai was not BORN inherently evil. He was normal at a point. Or at least not…crazy Phoenix King…

And another point, had it not been for the brainwashing of Azulon, Ozai would probably been normal too.

A MAJOR POINT: Azulon had Ozai when he was 82 years old. That is ANCIENT. At least when he had Iroh, he was 19 years younger… but at HIS AGE, that's crazy. He couldn't have raised Ozai at all. And coming from a kid who's known neglect from a father figure, it really messes you up. Also in the "Zuko Alone" episode, perhaps it was just the disrespect of having his firstborn slandered, but I see Azulon caring more for Iroh – if only for him being his firstborn son. That would make any child, or son period, angry.

My view on why Zuko was hated and Azula revered (aside from her obvious skill) in Ozai's eyes was because of how Ozai felt with his father. Ozai was the jilted second born, the first born being the best and the one with all the titles and claim just because they were bred before the second borns. Well Ozai hated that for himself, hated Iroh for being first, so he took it out on his own children.

I had a point where I was going to say "Why would sweet, wonderful Ursa marry a cruel man like Ozai? She WOULDN'T! He had to be sweet and awesome at one point to in order for them to marry!" But that got thrown out the window when I found out that it was apparently an arranged marriage? I read it on the avatar wiki, so I can't be sure. I don't remember ever hearing about their marriage in the story really, so I don't know. Methinks I like sticking with a once-awesome Ozai.

Still, it's evident he really did love her. As he stared off all gloomily and broodingly when she was banished. And that scene from Zuko Alone also showed that at some point, he and Ozai had a relationship. Did you hear the way he demanded his father? That tone? Had Ozai been the EVIL PHOENIX KING guy at that time, he would have scarred the bejesus out of Zuko. I totally would have. Now Zuko could have just been demanding and talking that way out of fear for his mother, but I like my way better ;D

Another point, I think Ursa kind of pushed Ozai into his craziness. Not the driving force, but the last straw. It goes back to the whole jilted secondborn. She DOTED upon Zuko, but thought of Azula as a monster. Azula is secondborn so I think a part of Ozai was just trying to overcompensate for the fact that Zuko the firstborn got all the love and Azula got all the hate from Ursa. Yay parents playing favorites =='

But he also favored Azula because he became power hungry and she had power where baby-momma's boy Zuko didn't.

Proof time done – but only because I forgot my last piece of proof…

A quick little shoutout to Lady-voldything on dA, I got the whole "Zuko feeding turtleducks first" bit from her AMAZINGLY drawn – and very cute – picture of Ozai feeding a turtleduck. It's adorable.

Anyway, I REALLY ENJOY SUPPORT IN THE FORM OF REVIEWS. So, if you read to this point (very doubtful) I thank you but also wish for you to click that little review button. Yeah, yeah! Your mouse, the cursor, it's on – YES THAT ONE! Great! Click it…go on…cliiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiick it~

Good :3