The midwives track rain-wet feet into the delivery room. Outside, the clouds are swirling so dark they blend into the night sky, thick and unforgiving, highlighted only in passing with the full moon.

These are not the proper conditions for a royal birth. Funny, how the heavens do not care about that.

(Or, perhaps, they do. Perhaps that is worse.)

It is nearly dawn by the time Ursa cradles her baby. She lies on a pillowed ledge by the round window, overlooking the gardens. Wind and water whip at the just-blooming flowers; scatter the fragile leaves. There is not a hint of thunder in the sky. No lightning cracking through the stars.

Zuko’s skin is cold as rain against hers.

The sun bursts over the horizon line just as Prince Ozai breaks into the room. Ursa holds Zuko tighter to her bare chest and privately wonders what it would be like to have a husband who she would hold her child out to. Who she would trust to cradle him.

Ozai barely glances at the boy before announcing, “The doctor will prepare a solution. The child will die peacefully.”

“No, please,” says Ursa, thinking she rarely says anything else these days.

Ozai considers, “Fine. Out of my mercy, he shall be left upon a cliff face. If the Spirits—“ here he raises a mocking brow, unimpressed as always in his wife’s belief in such things— “see fit, then the boy will be taken in by some other wretched soul.”

Ursa had not wanted the child, had not wanted the husband, had not wanted the marriage. This is a poorly-kept secret. But with Zuko pressed to her now, her heart speeds at the idea of leaving him (a feeling that will reoccur in her life, but thankfully she is no prophet and does not know this.) “What do the Fire Sages say?”

Ozai’s lip curls, “A reading, that’s what you want?” He gestures to the puddles in the grass, the overflowed pond, “Even I could spout that nonsense with omens like these. Clearly, he shall be no bender. He was not even born under the right stars.”

Here lies the center of the problem. Every member of the royal family has been born by the sign of the Dragon—Ursa had learned, upon her arrival at the palace, that the wedding time was very planned. It made her a little sick. Maybe it was this same sickness which had carried through her pregnancy, maybe that is why the child has been born a month too early. Maybe that is why he has been born a Rabbit—a sign of kindness. Of virtue. The same sign, incidentally, as his mother.

An embarrassment to the royal name.

“Let the Sages tell it,” Ursa begs, a choking sensation rising in her throat, “please, my dear. At least—consult the Firelord first.”

It sends a chill down her spine, the way Ozai’s eyes land on her, the gaze somewhere between wrath and disgust. But it unnerves her nowhere near as much as the way he looks at Zuko.

+++

“You must already know,” is what he says. The words are quiet, gentled by pity. He says them only to her, carefully lowered that her husband looming in the corner might not hear.

Ursa gulps, considering pulling her baby right to her heart and running fast from the Head Sage.

“Get on with it,” Ozai snaps.

The sage’s eyes flick between them, panicked, before he collects himself; before he focuses on Zuko, asleep in his mother’s arms, this child cursed by his very birth. This child born too early and too cold. This child born with clouds over his head; without sun; without spark. Without any great glory. This child whose only piece of luck, it seems, is in being born at all.

“The level of prowess he will reach with bending is… unclear,” he announces, and Ursa’s heart drops to her stomach.

“He’s a bender?” Ozai asks, too calmly.

The sage’s eyes flash, frown deepening, recognizing the awfulness of his own honesty when he replies, “…It is unclear.”

“Roku’s granddaughter,” Ozai scoffs, “the result is just as worthless as his bearer.”

Ursa does not sob. She holds an eruption behind her throat—kept at bay, lock and key. She holds herself inside herself. She holds her heart with hedge cutters.

“But,” the Sage puts in, “he may yet have other talents. I foresee the possibility of a… truly glorious future for him.”

Ozai snorts, “The mightiest non-bender is still a non-bender. It’s a stain upon the royal name.”

“What other talents?” Ursa asks, except it sounds more like begging.

“A special ability,” the Sage answers, “unlike anything the Royal family has seen before. It could be the difference between the Nation’s victory or defeat.”

It is an act of courage, however meek, that the man looks her husband right in the eye when he speaks. That he emphasizes the sentence with care.

Ozai lets out a low, exasperated growl. It is an act of begrudgement that he says, “The boy has six months to spark.”

It is only after the prince and the sage leave that Zuko starts to cry.

“Good job, Zuko,” Ursa mumbles, half-mad and half-asleep, “Good job, darling.”

***

In a month’s time, the Fire Sages will lie about the date of Prince Zuko’s birth. In a month’s time, the entire nation will celebrate Ozai’s heir. In a month’s time, no one outside of Caldera will know the truth surrounding the little prince’s birth.

In six month’s time, Ursa will feed her son a spoonful of ground fire-flower. She will hate herself as she brings him coughing ash to her husband, as he hums his approval of his firstborn bender.

She tries to call the waiter over, reflexively sitting straight up and simply ordering, “You.” It’s only a blink later when she realizes this is ridiculous—her server is long gone, off to another table the second her food was deposited, lost in this sweaty, crowded scene. The restaurant is open-air but it feels like choking. This whole, horrible place does.

Not for the first time tonight, Azula wonders how she ended up here. Her. In the Lower Ring. How out-of-it was she on the trainride? How much of her mind was lost in anger as she marched out of the Jasmine Dragon? She dismisses all of this quickly enough—she was right to leave and she was right to come here. She’s made a sound decision. If not by logic, then by the fact that she made it. It has to be correct.

Still. There’s a chip missing from the bowl in front of her, and she no longer has an appetite for noodles.

“Are you going to finish those?”

The girl from the other table, the table right beside her own, is leaning over completely inappropriately. What kind of animal is she, to butt into a stranger’s space, to ignore a wall just because it’s invisible and made of air and not real at all? Because everyone has walls around them, all the time, obviously. Unless—and this is the worst possibility—the girl’s actions are commonplace for this area. When Father had said the Earth Kingdom was run by peasants, she’d assumed he was exaggerating.

As Azula simply stares at her, the girl’s grin wavers, and she clarifies, “I’m joking. You only just got your food, duh.”

“I’m not going to finish it,” Azula replies belatedly and to the wrong part of the conversation. She should have kept her mouth shut, ignored her with a regal dignity. But now she’s chosen this, and it’s smart, because she ought to attempt fitting in. There are a million reasons why attracting attention would be… inopportune.

“Oh,” The girl’s brows furrow, her eyes darting down to Azula’s perfectly good noodles. (‘Perfectly good’ if you have zero standards, which seems likely for this restaurant.) “Did they bring you the wrong order? You wanna trade?“

She offers a plate filled with thin slices of beef, covered in sauce and scallions.

“No,” Azula answers sharply, but her stomach growls. Amazing, how even her own body is learning to betray her.

The girl’s smile returns, just like that, that easily. Like it’s easy to be care-free, happy. Like you can choose it at a moments notice. (Or pretend at it — Azula thinks of braids and pink and doe eyes, and her guard goes up yet further.)

“Right, uh-huh. We’re trading.”

Not a moment later, the dishes have been swapped. Azula eyes the meat warily, but the smell is, admittedly, not unpleasant. She takes a tentative bite.

“So, what’s your name?” the girl asks, making conversation. Small talk.

On Ember Island, it had been a passing fascination to see how the world would treat her as any other teen. To taste what a life without power was like. Now, she doesn’t have to taste it. It’s been kicked into her teeth like mud; she’s swimming in vulnerability and reliance. And who she is without power, it turns out, is herself.

Which is pretty wretched.

“I’m no one,” says Azula clichely, and then corrects, just for the hell of it, “you can call me Lee.”

The Chief was separated from the rest of the men, alone in his own cell. She caught only a glimpse of him, but from the corner of her eye she swore he bore some striking resemblance to his daughter. Or, rather, his daughter bore resemblance to him.

When they got to the office, Azula caught her own reflection across a shining sword hung upon the wall, and ignored how her father’s eyes flashed in place of hers.

“Have that taken down,” she demanded of the agent beside her, “I’m no non-bender. It’s tacky.”

“That’s an original Piandao,” commented Mai.