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Izumi was born, and Zuko held her like cradling a little light that meant everything to him.
“Izumi,” Mai whispered, her heart bursting.
They weren’t the Fire Lord and the Fire Lady, they weren’t the Avatar’s friend and the Fire Nation’s political genius. They were proud and full of love and holding a little girl who cried.
“We won’t be like our parents,” Mai and Zuko vowed.
Fountain. Izumi.
~~~
Long before, two children fell into a fountain. It was a prank from a cruel princess.
Girls are crazy, the boy complained.
~~~
Long before, a girl followed her princess to capture the boy she still loved. She stuffed her feelings up her sleeve like her knives, sharp and deadly.
Long before, the girl’s princess announced that her brother restored his honor, and the girl was allowed to be with him again. He fell into a fountain, but not the fountain of home. Izumi.
Now we’re even, she teased. Ba Sing Se fell to the Fire Nation and both of them had helped.
Long before, the boy she loved had changed. He was scarred, broken, angry. How could he open up to her when her best friend was the princess?
~~~
Long before, the boy ended a war. The girl with knives sat in prison, sent by the princess, her best friend. You miscalculated. I love Zuko more than I fear you.
Long before, two siblings fought with rage and hatred and burning-hot flame and a twisted, twisted childhood. Lightning shocked the boy, and water healed him.
Long before, the girl with knives went free and the princess never had been.
The girl and the young Fire Lord sat by the fountain, fingers intertwined. I don’t hate you. I don’t hate you too.
They fed the turtleducks with soft pieces of bread and kissed each other. The fountain sang. It was spring.
~~~
Izumi grew up. Izumi’s parents gave her everything their own parents had denied them: Freedom, knife-throwing lessons, and unconditional love.
Izumi helped her parents heal the scars the Fire Nation inflicted upon the world. Izumi knew her parents were scarred, too. Her mother’s scars weren’t on her skin, not on her face like her father’s, but they were there.
Izumi. Spring, fountain. Water.
Izumi of the Fire Nation. Fountain.
Izumi was the Fire Princess, but she was a fountain, a source of water.
Water heals.