Title: silkscreen
Rating: T
Summary: They love in twisted ways, if you could call it love at all. The madness of the Fire royalty, the night before Ursa leaves. Ozai/Ursa, Zuko.

Disclaimer: A:TLA is not mine.

He finds her with her hands wrapped in silk, strangling their son in his sleep.

A clean death. A painless death. Their son will never even know who killed him.

(The death you'd planned for him had been a much crueler death than this.)

She does not turn to look at him, though she must know that he's there. Her hands loosen until the silk is firm and taut over her fingers, but only that.

"There is madness," she says, deep and sorrowful, "biting deep into our dreams."

"There is madness," she says, wise and terrible, "dividing you and me."

"Ursa– "

"Your father is dead. You will be named Fire Lord."

And my son?

(It is strange. You used to call him "your son".)

"I don't want to lose him to the madness."

He hadn't even realized he'd spoken out loud. Little things, he does without realizing, in her presence.

(Brother elbowing you in the ribcage, which hurt you scowl, conspiratorially asking why you've been blinking so dazedly.

A girl. A girl with wildfire eyes.)

"You would have killed us too," he says, and he makes it not a question. Kill them or be killed by them, like there isn't another option.

She looks at him, then, with wildfire eyes. The slant of them says yes, I do not want to lose you either. Her lips say nothing at all.

The shape of her eyes and the quirk of her lips, things he never bothered to notice in anyone other than her.

(After tonight, you will never be able to look at your children's faces again.)

She is a murderer. She has murdered the Fire Lord.

He wonders how long she has been mad. He wonders how long he has been mad.

(This is treason.)

"Leave," he says, and it makes her hands go taut. Their son gives a strangled gasped, but doesn't drift from sleep. She must have slipped something into his dinner.

(It is good you didn't eat with them tonight, too busy planning his death.)

"Take your clothes. Your jewelry. Anything you want, except the children."

There are trinkets. One-of-a-kind courtship presents that he never wants to see again.

"You have until midnight to leave."

He doesn't watch her go. He doesn't want to look in her eyes.

He spends the night mourning, watching his son breathing in his sleep.

(She would have been a beautiful Fire Lady.)

( vicious, treasonous things )

A/N: "During the period of the Ottoman Empire, strangling with silk rope was a form of capital punishment specified for members of the royal family, who by Ottoman rule could not have their blood spilled." It seemed a fitting concept.

(Written because Zuko was entirely too woozy when he woke up, I don't think blood-relation is a good indication of anything nor do I think Roku was pure good, Ursa, why aren't you trying to continue protecting your child[ren]? otherwise, Azula's mental condition, and I like thinking that everyone in Zuko's immediate family is "…complicated". *cough prone-to-fits-of-insanity cough*

Also for the irony, which prevents Ozai from being quick to kill Zuko, the fact Ozai didn't have to be telling the complete truth, and the fact that Iroh had to be an older brother at some point. Yay brother Iroh!)