Chapter Text
Ozai learned early to keep his hands folded behind his back. It was easier that way — to look still, to look obedient, to look like you weren’t reaching for anything.
After all, Iroh was the one everyone reached for.
Their father, in the courtyard, clapping a hand to Iroh’s shoulder after a spar.
Their mother, pressing her palm fondly to Iroh’s cheek, smiling at the laughter he pulled so easily from the guards, the tutors, the visiting nobles.
Iroh was all light — open, laughing, generous.
Ozai was none of those things.
Ozai was careful.
~
In the evenings, when the fires burned low and the palace quieted, Ozai sat alone with scrolls, maps, bending forms written into old, sharp diagrams. He traced them until the shapes sank into his hands. He memorized the geography of the Earth Kingdom, the movement of supply lines, the brittle alliances around the Fire Nation’s borders.
He became precise.
A perfect firebender.
A brilliant tactician.
An impeccable prince.
And still, he was the spare.
~
It was the war that called to him.
Not because he loved it — no. Not because he craved violence, or glory, or conquest.
Because it was the only thing that didn’t turn its head toward Iroh first.
The war was older than them both. The war belonged to the Fire Nation, not to a single name.
And Ozai, at ten, at twelve, at fifteen, realized that if he could give himself to it completely — if he could be the mind behind it, the architect of its future — then maybe, finally, his life would have a purpose.
~
Ursa is careful.
Careful not to reveal how much she dreads his presence.
Careful not to speak with too much sharpness or too little grace.
Careful, always, to fulfill the role assigned to her — the mother of a bloodline, the bearer of a prophecy her father-in-law insists must come true.
She is not afraid of Ozai exactly. She is afraid of what proximity to him requires. Constant management. Constant silence. Constant forgetting.
They do not ask anything of each other beyond what duty demands.
Not warmth.
Not honesty.
Not the smallest flicker of affection.
There are no arguments. No reconciliations. No attempts at closeness.
Just a quiet, persistent effort to avoid giving the other person anything they could turn into leverage.
They are not lovers. They are not friends. They are obligations.
They are part of each other’s problem. And nothing real is safe between them. Nothing but the war.
But somedays... Ozai hopes that something else can feel just as real.