Chapter Text
Ursa for the first time cursed the cold, she had always enjoyed the comfortable cool that chased away the humidity of the fire islands, especially when she was confined to the bowl of caldera where no timid breeze could reach her skin. But she cursed it nonetheless, not for her own sake… but her sons. A brand new squalling babe swaddled in her arms, brought into this world a little too soon, without the eyes of Agni to oversee and bless his birth. He was warm, but he wasn’t the kind of warm that came with Agni’s gift, he was warm like she was, no internal blaze pulsing from him like it did with his father, his uncle, his grandfather. No spark, not as far as she could tell. And that terrified her. She was exhausted, but she felt this nagging sense of anxiety that forced her eyelids open, and her mind to be aware of every single sound that passed by the door. The nurses had left a few hours prior, being unable to coax her child from her grasp, Ozai had been in here… once, for merely a look at his heir, his son. He had left almost as soon as he had entered, an unreadable and deeply disturbing look on his face. That could be why Ursa cringed the way she did every time something like the sound of angry footsteps approached her quarters. The babe squalled again, Zuko was the name she had given him. She soothed him, and surprisingly he quieted, finally exhausted from his tantrums. She sighed in relief and held him close to her breast, she leaned back and let her head thunk against the bed frame, maybe just a moment of rest she thought, letting her eyes flutter closed.
“No fire.” A voice said and she jolted awake, looking around frantically when she felt that the weight of her son was no longer making its place on her chest, she felt oddly cold without it. She saw him then, a stiff-backed Ozai awkwardly cradling their burbling son in his arms pressing two fingers against his chest, a look of…disgust crossing his face.
“Not a single ember.” he said, a dark tone entering his voice, like the smoke that billowed up from the wreckage of a burned home.
“You can’t know that for certain.” She protests, her voice rising in pitch as fear suddenly claws at her, scraping at her throat begging for release. He almost looks as if he were going to cast the child away from him, she reaches out wanting to be in control of her son’s safety again, feeling that it was suddenly in dire question.
He retracts away from her reach a little, bringing the baby a little closer to his chest, in any other situation Ursa knew that this action would likely be endearing, but not with him, not with that look on his face. She choked on her whimper of abject terror on her son’s behalf.
“I can.” He drags those two fingers to her baby's chest again, warm red streaks in the wake of his prodding.
“There is nothing.” He growls. “A nonbender.” he says it like it was a disease, a plague that needed to be burnt away, and she supposed, when the genetic line of firebenders said to be blessed by the sun itself was broken… Well, she supposed he would see it as just that.
“Give me my son.” She said, matching his tone as best she could, she didn’t trust this, not a single bit.
“He is your son.” he said, with the tonal implication that he had already rejected the boy as his own. “But I will not give him to you.” Bile rose in her throat.
“Ozai-” She wasn’t above begging.
“You have dishonored me.”
“Ho-”
“You have born me a flameless heir.” She choked on her next words.
“I will not stand for it.”
“Please.” She said, She really was begging now, she didn’t care if she was indecent, the sweat from her labors of last night dried on her body, her clothing askew in a way that it should never be, but this was her son, and she had the distinct idea that she was bargaining for his life.
He looked down at her, from where she had fallen to her knees from her bed, hands raised placatingly, as if that would save this thing from its fate. He gladly thrust the non bending child that couldn’t be his into the waiting arms of its whore mother.
“Enjoy the time you have with your welp, it won’t be long.” He left her room, disgust rolling off of him in waves.
Ursa clung to her child body shaking with fear, no fear was too mild a word for this terror that boiled through her. She wouldn’t let this be the end for him; she had to keep him safe. She placed him inside of a basket and held it to her chest, hoping that someone would think it contained the fruits of a nearby stand or a gift for a friend, not a prince that if his father got his way would soon be a corpse.
She placed a cloak around her shoulders and ran, ran and ran until she made it out of caldera and to the docks, she then picked a direction and tore off down the beach, she ran and kept running until civilization was a far thing behind her. She wasn’t stupid, she knew that she would be found and if this baby wasn’t far away by the time that happened, he wouldn’t live past the end of this week. She found a cave, sitting near a copse of trees, an inviting place, temporarily safe. Not safe enough as it turned out. The baying of a lizard hound could be heard in the distance, she panicked. She opened the basket, gave her son a soft kiss on the forehead, wrapped him inside her cloak and set him back inside. He grabbed at her hair playfully and she smiled wanly in return and shut the basket. She placed the basket containing her babe into the rapidly receding tide, watched as her son began to float away on the tide, watched until it disappeared over the horizon. She sent a prayer up to Agni as the guards rounded the corner ready to drag her back before her husband and the royal court.
Agni watched as one of his children floated on the back of La, away from where the rest of his children lived their lives, the prayer of a single desperate voice ringing in his ears. He turned to his sister and whispered to her the plea, asking for a favor that he promised he would repay this time. Tui, ever reflecting of his own light smiled brightly from where she watched over the southern pole of the world and obligingly had a talk with her husband, who really couldn’t refuse anything Tui asked even if he tried. La allowed a small swift and relatively safe current to catch hold of a strange little basket bobbing in his waves, pushing it south towards the grasp of his wife, where she would keep her nephew safe until the eyes of her brother could shine down upon him once again.