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Lu Ten is born into light.
The blinding rays of the noon-day sun caressed his smooth face the moment the midwife caught him, cradling his slight body in her wrinkled hands.
An auspicious sign, to be born under Agni’s gaze, the Head Sage announced.
At noon the sun is at its most potent. An heir born under such strength would surely embody that power. Agni shone on the royal babe as he shone on the Fire Nation.
Lu Ten took his first breaths–strong breaths, bender breaths–bathed in sunshine. He blinked open his gilded eyes to the sun, and his irises reflected back its rays until they appeared to be one and the same. The newborn glimmered, like flame, like gold, like the royal crown he was fated to inherit.
Or so Iroh was told in the letter he received five weeks after the birth. A squall had interrupted the messenger-hawk routes over the sea, and communication from the Capitol lagged. Iroh had found this mildly irritating, but no great burden. It would have made no difference if the letter came the day of the birth or three months after; Iroh was leading his nation’s army in glorious conquest. No word but the direct command of the Firelord would call him from his station. He was pursuing his duty, and his wife was pursuing hers.
Make no mistake, Iroh was pleased Reina was well. He was pleased he had a strong heir. Iroh recalls the fine texture of the bamboo scroll, the crack of the wax seal beneath the pads of his fingers. A crown prince in the Firelord’s favor only received information on the richest of materials, as befit his status. Reports from the front, orders from the Firelord, the daily luncheon menu, they all were meticulously written–or rewritten if the initial quality was in question–before they touched his royal skin.
He recalls the letter proclaiming Lu Ten’s birth to be of the same finery. Then again, he’d open many such missives each day. Perhaps he is actually reminiscing about opening a supply report or a dinner menu. Or a casualty list.
Iroh doesn’t recall what he did with the letter. Likely, he left it out on the desk in his tent for a few days, basking in abstract fondness and pride, before documents of war piled up over top of it. It had become habit when moving camp for Iroh to gather up all significant tactical documents and to order his lieutenants to burn the rest.
The mundane scrolls were purposeless clutter, and would be replaced soon enough. Obscured from view, it is reasonable to suppose Lu Ten’s letter went to the incineration pile. Even more, it is possible he knowingly ordered the letter to be burned. Despite the quality of the scroll, it was not an official document. The official record would have been filled out by the Head Fire Sage, secure in the Capitol. It would have been surrounded by the glory of war, its speeches and treasures of conquest, but far from its grisly realities. Like his infant son.
Unlike his twenty-one year old son.
Iroh could find that document, if he wished. Surely, the official declaration of birth resides in the archives detailing the royal lineage at the palace. It would be filed beside the declaration of Lu Ten’s death.
In recent years, when he recalls receiving the letter, Iroh has thought that the sun may be most potent at noon, but it is also the moment at which it begins to decline.
—-----------------------------------------------------
Memories are fragile things, Iroh finds.
They crunch like little shells beneath his feet, spiral carapaces fracturing into shards. Yet, their pale, jagged edges are sharp enough to pierce armor, to split open skin.
—-----------------------------------------------------
Iroh does not like tea.
Well, not for the first forty years of his life. He does not dislike it. It is regularly served, almost as often as water. One hardly goes around disliking water. One hardly goes around proclaiming a deep admiration of its taste, either. It was hot leaf juice, how many qualities could one discuss?
How could someone in my own family say that? Lu Ten had replied, his lips pulling up into a slight smile.
Even at sixteen he had been conscientious, cautious to seem too expressive, which would be unbecoming of the crown prince's heir.
He was daring, too, to tease his father, a general, the Crown Prince Iroh, in such a manner. Azulon would never have permitted such speech from either of his sons. Rather, in private, as the crown prince and favored son, Iroh was on occasion permitted to relate an amusing anecdote.
Azulon was distant and severe, and sometimes Iroh was surprised to be the favored son when Ozai was so much closer to their father in temperament. Yet, Iroh was fifteen years older and a stronger bender. He and Ozai were both impressive tacticians, but Ozai’s manipulations were rarely subtle as he never quite figured out how to convey sincerity.
However, Iroh took after Ilah in temperament: dutiful and charming. He even resembled her over his father, with wide shoulders and a short stature. Of the nobles presented for Azulon to marry, she had not been considered one of the most beautiful daughters. Yet, in a room of tall, fine-boned young ladies, all eager for the honor of being his wife, Azulon chose the short woman with broad shoulders. And he kept her, even when it took five years for an heir to be born and another fifteen for a spare.
He loved her, Iroh suspects. There was no other reason but to honor her, when Azulon chose a name for his first born son that was much closer in shape to hers than to his own.
Iroh, glad though he was that his father had chosen his mother, was never quite sure why Azulon had made her his choice. She had not been the most lovely option, nor had she been from the wealthiest of the noble families, or even one of the noble families most honored in military service. They had not grown up together; they had only met when Azulon was of the age to be betrothed.
Iroh had once proposed this conundrum to Reina, sometime within the first year or so of their own marriage. She was delicate and long-limbed, and Iroh supposed she would be similarly stymied by the fact that Azulon chose someone like Ilah over a ballroom full of women like her. But Reina answered immediately.
She would never tower above him, yet nor would she break beneath him. There could be no other match for such a Firelord, Reina had said.
It was a daring thing to say, skirting the edge of criticism. She took a sip of her tea. The wisps of steam framed her dainty face. Her beauty had been a large factor in Iroh’s choice to marry her. It was only later he saw the glimpses of her intellect. He never saw it in full, though, too often away on campaign, or in war meetings, or greeting nobles at court. She often obscured the strength of her mind, Iroh suspects.
Sometimes he wishes he had asked for her insight more often. Maybe, then, he would have made fewer mistakes.
—-----------------------------------------------------
Ozai’s son is not yours, Azulon wrote, or more aptly dictated to a scribe, in his last letter to Iroh.
He was still at the Fire Nation encampment outside the walls of Ba Sing Se when the messenger hawk swooped down from the clouds. The weather must have been fair for it to travel so swiftly from the Capitol. Iroh was listless in those days immediately following Lu Ten’s death. Everything was too bright and loud, or it was all too muted and hazy; there is little he remembers clearly between the rushed funeral held beside the battlefield where his son fell and the arrival of the messenger hawk bearing the Firelord’s missive.
Iroh cannot even recall who sent the notice of Lu Ten’s death. By rites, it should have been him, but he spent the first two weeks after the funeral shut away in his tent. He supposes one of his colonels must have written to the palace in his stead.
The boy is not suited to the throne. Your grief in response to the loss of your most worthy heir is natural, yet heed your duty. Within the year you must remarry and produce a new heir, Azulon ordered.
Iroh remembers that letter’s fate: he watched it burn to ash between his fingers. It was the first time he bent since Lu Ten’s death, the spark of rage ignited by his father’s words fueling the fire. It quickly snuffed out under the weight of his grief, though. It would be many months before he could produce so much as a candle’s flame.
When, a week later, the listlessness was replaced with an overwhelming restlessness, Iroh abandoned his post. He turned away from battle, from the soil churned with his son’s blood and ashes, from the walls of Ba Sing Se. He turned away from the conquest he was raised to achieve.
He turned away, too, from the western horizon and its promise of home. There would be no comfort there. Iroh could not bear to make any more sacrifices to duty.
—-----------------------------------------------------
It is difficult for Iroh to picture Lu Ten’s face as a newborn. He first saw his son four months after receiving the letter announcing his birth, and no portraits were crafted until Lu Ten was a year old.
He does not see Zuko, either, until the child is six months old or so. Though his descriptions come in pieces in Lu Ten’s letters.
His hair is like Aunt Ursa’s.
He fits in my arms like a parcel of rice.
When he sleeps, he snuffle-coos like a rabbitdove.
Once he wrote, We have the same eyes, like Grandmother Ilah.
At the time, Iroh couldn’t say one way or another if Lu Ten’s comparisons were accurate. Though, Iroh later realized, they didn’t have the same eyes. Lu Ten’s were golden as the center of a searing flame, just before it shifts to burning blue. Zuko’s were bronze, if one was kind. A deep sort of amber, more like a simmer than a blaze. If they resembled a layer of flame, it would be the cooler edges. There was a reason Zuko’s ability to bend was in question far before Azula, at five years old, started surpassing him in training.
The first time he held his nephew, Iroh looked down into the baby’s puzzled face as a pudgy little fist batted up at his beard, and he thought Zuko’s eyes a poor omen. Pitiable. Fire was gold, in the palm and in the spirit.
Now Iroh knows better; he knows the multitude of forms fire can take, the many traces it can leave of its presence other than shining flame.
Bronze is the product of fire. It is the result of a well-controlled flame. It is made stronger by it.
Perhaps Lu Ten’s claim of their resemblance was folly born of exuberance, his adoration of Zuko causing him to seek out similarities between them even where they didn’t exist. Then again, perhaps Lu Ten wasn’t talking about the hue of their irises. Perhaps it was the shape of their eyes. Perhaps it was how they regarded the world.
Perhaps he saw the war they had inherited at birth marching toward them, the spoils of glory and death that grew closer with every day.
Then again, Lu Ten was eleven years old. All he knew of war was propaganda, war prizes sent by his father as trinkets of affection, and the weight of the armor he wore in training. Surely he was trying to find in Zuko the sibling that had perished in Reina’s womb. He had no way to know what would become of himself and his cousin, only that they would be soldiers. Only that soldiers were obedient, and that obedience was the same as duty, the same as honor.
These ponderings which follow Iroh through the years, eddying around him in his still moments, are of little practical consequence. Iroh cannot confirm if Lu Ten was referring to the shape of Zuko’s eyes in that letter sent so long ago. Nor can he line Zuko up beside a portrait of Ilah and a portrait of Lu Ten and see an answer for himself. Ozai ordered that all the paintings of Lu Ten in the palace be destroyed after he ascended the throne.
It would reflect poorly on the might of the Fire Nation, Ozai said, to memorialize an Earth Kingdom victory over two princes.
The truth is, Iroh can only remember Lu Ten’s face as it is in the enlistment sketch he has carried with him through Zuko’s exile. In the image he is a stoic young soldier, a resolute prince and heir. Sometimes Iroh searches the lines, dear and deficient, seeking hints of who his son was beyond those titles. He grasps desperately for signs of who his son would have become.
He never finds anything below the ink, though, except his own grief.
—-----------------------------------------------------
Unlike your son, mine still lives, Ozai sneered.
Bragging or envy, Iroh could not discern which emotion lay beneath Ozai’s words. He does not recall if his little brother was always so callous. They were so far apart in age and demeanor, and Iroh’s duties as crown prince filled his time. As such, he recalls little of Ozai’s childhood, just that he seemed a reserved and temperamental child.
It was rare the brothers had occasion to speak to each other, and when they did speak it was never truly conversation. Rather, they exchanged perfunctory pleasantries.
At the confirmation of Zuko’s survival, grief and relief mixed in Iroh’s chest, feeling something like a stone with jagged edges pressed up under his lungs. There was anger there, too. Somewhere. There must have been. How could he not have regarded his brother with anger when Zuko lay, bandaged and breathing, in the healing rooms at Ozai’s very hand?
But how can Iroh hold anger for Ozai’s injury of Zuko, when Iroh led his own son to his death? When Iroh led Zuko into a war meeting the boy’s heart was too gentle to bear?
Ozai was a poor father, but so, too, was Azulon. So, too, was Iroh.
After the Agni Kai, Iroh remembers bowing to his Firelord, the usurper of his throne, the almost-murderer of his nephew, his little brother. Iroh pressed his face to the smooth tile of the throne room’s floor, to project humility and to conceal his resolve. He pleaded to accompany Zuko in his exile. Ozai granted him this boon.
It is the last conversation he has with his brother. It may also have been the first.
—-----------------------------------------------------
Zuko is born into darkness.
Not even the stars, lesser torches though they be, shone down when the flushed, wrinkled infant drew in his first breath. He was born in the coldest part of the night, and with the sky obscured by clouds. Only the moon, bright in its fullness, pierced through the smothering darkness. Most in the royal family believed this to be an inauspicious sign, though the Head Sage was not so bold as to say this aloud about the newest member of the royal family.
Another son in the line of Sozin, he mumbled.
Or so Iroh assumes, based on the gossip he heard later. There was no letter written to him the night of Zuko’s birth. Ilah had passed of a fever three years earlier, and Azulon only sent letters regarding official matters when Iroh was away on campaign. Reina had passed the year before in childbirth, along with the child. Ozai and Iroh did not correspond.
Iroh had only met Ursa once, at the time, on the day of her wedding. She had been silent and solemn throughout the ceremony. The marriage had been only a few months after Reina’s death, and Lu Ten still grieved his lost mother and sibling. However, he was resolute in his commitment to being the perfect heir.
Congratulations on this joyful occasion, Lu Ten had said to Ursa at the banquet following the ceremony. He was polite and serious and sad.
Thank you, my prince, Ursa had replied, polite and serious and sad.
When Ozai’s attention was diverted elsewhere, she had turned to Lu Ten, seated between her and Iroh.
We don’t have to pretend to be joyful when we’re not, Ursa said quietly.
His son looked startled, then relieved.
Lu Ten was the first to inform Iroh of his nephew’s existence. The birth was not a surprise; Ozai and Ursa were performing their duties, but Lu Ten was ecstatic to have a little cousin.
Aunt Ursa welcomed her first born son last night. We were having tea after dinner when she asked me to tell a guard to call for the midwife. I sat for a time in the hallway by the window. The air was still and heavy, so I requested that the servants make sure to bring Aunt Ursa cool water from the deep well in the southern courtyard. Mother always said it was the best way to relieve the heat of midsummer nights. In the morning, I held the baby. He cannot hold up his head yet, which Aunt Ursa says is normal, but he has a determined spirit. Already when he is awake he casts his eyes around, trying to see everything. The Head Fire Sage informed Uncle Ozai of the child’s birth last night and asked for the new prince’s name, but Uncle Ozai said he had chosen no name. So, Aunt Ursa will pick the name. She asked for my assistance. I advised her to pick Zuko. He is a strong addition to the royal lineage.
Iroh suspects Lu Ten stayed up all night, in the hallway outside Ursa’s apartments. He didn’t mention the full moon or the words of the Head Sage. Perhaps he was unaware of them, or, as Iroh finds more probable, he didn’t care.
Lu Ten’s letters were usually formal and stoic and a little stilted, a child trying to imitate the writing of adult noblemen. After Zuko’s birth, Lu Ten’s letters remain formal in tone, but his deep fondness for his baby cousin seeped through.
He spent the first few lines of his letters dutifully inquiring after his father’s health, congratulating him on his victories, and relating his own progress in his lessons. But the rest of the letters increasingly described his visits to Ursa and Zuko. He and Ursa had started having tea together most days after Ursa joined the family. Yet, now, Lu Ten seemed to spend every spare moment he could with the baby. He wrote to Iroh about Zuko’s first smile, the first time he grabbed onto the cuff of Lu Ten’s robe, when he sat up, rolled over, crawled, walked, spoke.
At the time, Iroh had found Lu Ten’s dedication to chronicling Zuko’s growth amusing. He thought it sweet in a childish way, his son’s fascination with mundane infant milestones. Now, he thinks, Lu Ten knew more of parenthood at eleven than Iroh ever has. Sometimes Iroh dreams of first steps, first words, first smiles. For Zuko, he only has what he recalls of his son’s letters, which lacked detail. He had been trying to make his affection something formal and dignified to his distant father. For Lu Ten, Iroh knows nothing. He never asked Reina for this information. She would never have presumed to tell him something so trivial. The letters those first years after Lu Ten’s birth only assured him of his son’s health and strength.
Your son, the prince, shines like the sun at his zenith, Iroh was repeatedly assured.
—-----------------------------------------------------
Memories are fluid things, Iroh finds.
They are resistant and persistent by turns. Surging forward when he wants them least, retreating when he longs most dearly to hold onto them. They drift, ebbing and rising, compelled by a power not his own. Or if it is his own power, then it is one over which he has little control.
—-----------------------------------------------------
Reina adored tea.
So, too, did Lu Ten. After Reina passed, Lu Ten continued their daily ritual of morning tea, which his mother had done for his entire life. Iroh had attended these gatherings irregularly. He enjoyed the time with his wife and son, but he was often away on campaign. When he was home, he had other duties to attend to as the crown prince most days.
He recalls one morning, Lu Ten was sitting at the table with two cups of steaming tea before him. The thin wisps of vapor curved through the air like the brush strokes of a master calligrapher. He recalls Lu Ten looking up and seeing Iroh in the doorway.
Though time has eroded the exact proportions of his son’s face from his mind, he recalls certain features, certain impressions in wrenching clarity. Lu Ten’s jaw was rounded, heart-breakingly youthful, yet beginning to sharpen into that of a man. His lips were in a neutral line, somber yet serene. He had Ilah's graceful bearing, and the royal family's flashing eyes. He was exactly what an heir to the Fire Nation should be.
Iroh thinks he had been proud of what Lu Ten would be, and completely ignorant to who Lu Ten was.
Then all Lu Ten was was a sketch, a song, a symbol, a sad story. For a long time after that last battle of Ba Sing Se, Lu Ten was mostly a mistake.
When Iroh abandoned the campaign and traveled the world, he found answers he had not been seeking. In truth, he had not sought answers at all; he had not yet even formulated any questions. He had been trying to outpace a foe far greater than the Earth Kingdom’s armies.
Sometimes he wishes it was Lu Ten haunting him, instead of his own guilt. It would be soothing to see his son’s face, more exact than fallible memory or the insufficient mimicry of ink can produce.
—-----------------------------------------------------
He’s not Lu Ten, Ursa chided gently.
Zuko was five years old and had yet to begin firebending training. Iroh, home for a few months, was sitting with his sister-in-law in the palace gardens.
Zuko had yet to create any sparks, and Iroh suggested that perhaps beginning training might help. Ursa had been resistant. Ozai had been distant, already believing Zuko a non-bender.
Learning some katas would at least help the child fall over less, Iroh pointed out as the boy tumbled in the grass.
It may have been adorable, but it was undignified of a prince. Lu Ten had begun learning to bend at four years old.
Azula, only three, was asleep, curled up in her mother’s lap. Ursa watched Zuko crouch unsteadily beside the pond, murmuring to the turtleducks as they swam lazy circles in the water. After a few minutes, he looked over his shoulder and called back to his mother, asking if he could bring one inside. He assured her that the creature could share his room, and he’d take good care of it. Ursa’s lips twitched upward, but she kept her expression serious as she shook her head. Zuko frowned, but soon his attention was back on the pond as he poked at the gently rippling water.
He’s not a crown prince. He doesn’t need to be perfect. He can just be a boy, falling over nothing and dreaming of turtleducks, Ursa insisted.
—-----------------------------------------------------
When Lu Ten died, Iroh sat down.
When the smoke of the funeral pyre faded, Iroh fled.
Let Ozai have it all, he thought.
Then he met two dragons.
Then he played Pai Sho.
Then he thought, Oh. Oh, no.
Then he went home.
‐—----------------------------------------------------
That long past morning, Lu Ten met his eye, fingers loosely cradling the cup nearest him, and tilted his head toward the second cup of tea.
Iroh had smiled slightly and shook his head.
Perhaps I'll have time to dine with you at dinner. I must attend to my duties, Iroh said.
Lu Ten nodded, unperturbed. Somber and serene, he turned his gaze back to the empty seat across from him. He did not touch the unclaimed cup. Iroh walked out of their chambers, mind already back on battle. Iroh had once been a good heir. He’d been a good son, a good general.
He had thought nothing more of the interaction. It was mundane, routine. One day in a hundred days just like it. Utterly forgettable. It only came back to him in the months following Lu Ten’s death.
Would it have remained forgotten had Lu Ten lived? Lu Ten’s death spawned a multitude of regrets that would otherwise never have existed. His death brought back mundane moments from years previous and made them into lingering specters.
In his grief Iroh tries too hard to resurrect Lu Ten, to remember the best days with him. What he gets in return for his efforts are fragments, regrets. Shards that hurt to hold, but that he cannot let go.
—--------‐—-----------------------------------------
Zuzu isn’t Cousin Lu Ten, Azula, nine years old and utterly certain of herself, declared.
Iroh had returned from battle for a few weeks. Zuko had come to see him and thank him for the Earth Kingdom dagger Iroh had claimed as a war prize and then sent to his nephew. The boy had earnestly thanked him, and then rushed off down the corridor in search of his cousin.
It occurs to Iroh that this trip to the palace had been the last time Lu Ten would ever set foot in his homeland.
Azula had trailed into the room behind her brother, pace sedate, back straight, and chin high.
You shouldn’t send him Earth peasant weapons, she continued imperiously.
Did he not enjoy the dagger? Iroh replied, bemusedly.
It’s not like he’d ever use it. He just likes to recite the inscription. A prince of the Fire Nation going around quoting Earth Kingdom drivel, it’s a disgrace, she scoffed.
Even our adversaries hold wisdom we might learn from, Iroh calmly replied.
His niece rolled her eyes. Her nose and chin reminded him of Ursa, her eyes of Ozai.
Did you like the doll? Iroh inquired.
She was very flammable, Azula said.
With that, she turned and exited the room. Iroh doubted she would follow after her brother this time. Azula was distant to Lu Ten.
Iroh remembers the day of Azula’s birth. He happened to be home when Ursa’s labor began. Lu Ten had been visiting Iroh in his office, reporting his progress in his lessons, when a palace guard arrived with Zuko. The toddler appeared rather disgruntled, until Lu Ten scooped him up. Then, he looked delighted.
The birth lasted through the night. Iroh had suggested they call a maid to care for Zuko once it was clear that Ursa would be unable to care for her son for the next several hours. Lu Ten refused. He fed Zuko dinner and put him to bed in his own room.
Mid-morning on the summer solstice, the Sages announced the birth of the Fire Nation’s new princess. She was blessed, they said, with eyes of shifting gold that flickered like fire itself. A wide smile came to Lu Ten’s face, and, balancing Zuko on his hip, he left behind his half-finished breakfast.
Let’s go meet your sister, Little Cousin, Lu Ten said, swiftly walking to the corridor.
Iroh had waited to see the new baby. He had duties to attend to.
Though Lu Ten had been as excited at Azula’s birth as he had been at Zuko’s, Azula didn’t care to spend much time with him. As an infant, she seemed to like him well enough, but as she grew she tended to dismiss his company.
Azula’s treatment of her mother followed a similar trend. Iroh suspects that Azula had decided Lu Ten, like Ursa, was too fond of Zuko to be worth her time. Ozai may well have filled her head with jealousy over Lu Ten’s inheritance as well.
She was a territorial and mercurial child. Iroh has never understood Azula. He always expected her to be a little girl, but instead she was Ozai’s perfect heir.
—-----------------------------------------------------
Zuko’s favorite tea is jasmine.
He never says so, but he drinks it slowly, savoring it. He never throws it in his rages. It is sometimes hard to come by in their exile, so Iroh buys extra whenever he can.
Zuko does not admit to liking tea. Zuko does not admit to liking anything. As such, he would never buy tea for himself.
So Iroh tells Zuko he loves tea and jasmine is his favorite. It’s not quite a lie. Iroh still can’t taste the difference between one cup of hot leaf juice and the next, but jasmine makes Zuko almost content. The muscles of his face relax, and his scowl melts away.
Iroh makes sure to inform Zuko whenever their supply is running low. Zuko will grumble, but, when they have the money, he’ll buy tea as a gift for Iroh. Iroh always shares.
When they drink tea, Iroh doesn’t speak of Lu Ten. Neither does Zuko.
When the boy spits Iroh’s own words about hot leaf juice at him, Iroh is astonished. Did his son share that memory with his nephew? Iroh can think of nothing to say, except the words his own son replied with years ago. He can’t tell if Zuko recognizes them.
That night, Iroh dreams of steam curling up from a cup of tea. Lu Ten’s face is blurry and indistinct behind the veil of fog. There is no scent. Iroh does not know what kind of tea Lu Ten had favored.
In dreams, he revisits moments that slide from his grasp even as he tries to cradle them, leaving behind nothing but drying salt water. When it evaporates, salt water is invisible, gone as though it was never there. Except, he can still feel the residue left behind, the traces of what was once there.
—-----------------------------------------------------
The new prince was born under the shadow of the moon, Iroh heard whispered among the courtiers when he first returned to the palace after Zuko’s arrival.
Later, Iroh thinks, what many people in the Fire Nation don't remember is that the moon reflects the sun. Her light is Agni's light, and Agni's light is hers.
Another truth the people of the Fire Nation do not know is this: it is harder to stop fire than to start it.
Later, Iroh realizes, thinking back to the gossip and Lu Ten’s letter, when Zuko is born that bright, starless night, the candles blew out upon his first exhalation. When the healers note the sudden darkness, they blame a gust of wind from the open windows.
But, on the night that Zuko was born, Lu Ten had written to Iroh that the air had been still.
—-----------------------------------------------------
When Iroh allowed Zuko to step into the council chambers, he knew that there could be severe consequences.
He knew that the other generals were ruthless strategists. He knew that war requires the deaths of their soldiers (Agni, he knew). He knew Ozai was displeased with Zuko as his heir. He knew that Zuko has a gentle heart. He knew that Zuko cannot stay silent, no matter the warnings he is given or the promises he makes.
When Zuko insulted the general and accepted the challenge of an Agni Kai, Iroh knew he would face his father. Iroh knew that Zuko did not realize this. Iroh knew thirteen-year-old Zuko could not defeat his father. He knew Ozai would struggle to justify the murder of his son to the nation. He knew Zuko would face exile.
Iroh knew that sometimes it is better to control the defeat and wait for a better day. He learned this, watching the smoke of his son’s funeral pyre disappear into the sky. The sun shone through the smoke as if it were clouds.
He didn’t know that Ozai would burn away half of the boy’s face. When it happened, Iroh looked away. He doesn’t know what Lu Ten would have done.
—-----------------------------------------------------
He’s not like me, Lu Ten told him.
His voice was soft, but resolute. He was very pensive, even at twenty years old. In a few months he would go to battle for the first time. He had been sitting for a portrait, dressed in full soldier’s uniform, when Zuko burst into the room. The boy’s clothing was soaked in pond water, and slight wisps of steam were wafting off his shoulders and arms. For a ten-year-old bender in such an ill temper, the lack of sparks was notable.
Informing the painter that he would be taking a brief respite, Lu Ten listened intently to Zuko’s rambling tirade about his sister and his sister's friend and a burning apple. Iroh was seated in the far side of the room, reviewing documents for the next war council meeting. He paid the story much less attention than his son did, so he does not recall exactly what the issue between the siblings had been.
Still, whatever the childish squabble was about, Lu Ten was able to calm Zuko. By that point, Zuko’s temper had dried out his clothes quite well. His indignation seemed to have taken most of his energy, and Lu Ten convinced him to sit beside him and gave him a cup of tea.
By the time the painter returned, Zuko was soundly asleep, head burrowed into his cousin’s side. At the painter’s inquiring look, Lu Ten simply told him to carry on with his work. The painting was of his face and only the uppermost portion of his shoulders; Zuko was hardly in the way. When the portrait was finished and the painter had made his exit, Lu Ten addressed Iroh. His gaze was on his slumbering cousin as he spoke.
His heart is too gentle for war. He’ll live in a world at peace. I’ll make sure of it, Lu Ten promised.
A noble goal, Iroh remarked. But remember, my son, battle is the way to earn honor and glory. Would you deny him that? He is young. His gentleness will lessen as he grows.
Iroh had laughed then, indulgent at the fancies of youth. Lu Ten had remained silent. Or, if he had replied, Iroh cannot recall his words. Iroh knows, in those days he had been just as dismissive of Lu Ten’s insight as he had been of Reina’s.
—----------------------------------------------------
Iroh knows Zuko isn’t Lu Ten.
Zuko prefers jasmine tea. His favorite animals are turtleducks. He doesn’t want to be Firelord. When he’s feverish, the only way to calm his restless muttering is to sing him lullabies.
Even if Lu Ten and Zuko had all these things in common, it causes no confusion for Iroh: he never knew any of this about his son.
Which tea did Lu Ten like best? Which animal did he beg Reina to let him keep as a pet? Who did he want to be? What calmed his restless mind?
No, Zuko and Lu Ten are distinct in his mind.
All he knows of his son is that Lu Ten mastered firebending at age nineteen. He enjoyed some variety of tea. He was a dutiful heir. He was a soldier. He was little more than a boy when he died.
Iroh knows only what the entire Fire Nation knows. He knows what an heir apparent knows about their successor. It never occurred to him that there was a difference between being a father and being a ruler until much, much later.
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Now, Iroh often returns to that morning when he declined the offer to share a cup of tea with his son. Did he really not have time for a single cup? Was Reina’s memory so easily forgotten? Was Lu Ten's grief so little Iroh’s concern?
What would he have said if he'd sat down? What would Lu Ten have said? Would he have seen Lu Ten's youth more than his growth? Would he have seen his son’s death before he ordered him to it? Would Lu Ten have said, I want to be an innkeeper, not a soldier? Would Iroh have listened? Would he have seen his son as just a boy instead of a legacy? Or would they have sat in silence, knowing no more about each other than they had before?
Iroh doesn't know what would have happened if he had sat down with Lu Ten that day. What he does know is he wasn't a man who would spare ten minutes to share a cup of tea with his son. He wouldn't be that man until he'd lost the thing he'd loved most, and protected least.
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Iroh raised his son to die, and he did it proudly. He watched his brother’s son burn, and he did it willingly.
Iroh cannot kill his little brother. But his little brother very nearly killed his own son.
Then, only then, did Iroh take Zuko away. He begged for the boy’s banishment. He sat beside him for the days, months, years Zuko tried to heal. He watched as his nephew jumped into the freezing Northern sea. He sat by as Zuko burned and burned and burned.
Iroh, after years and loss, still doesn’t quite know how to be a father. A handful of years is not so much time to change when one has reached Iroh’s age. There is still so much wisdom he lacks.
But he has come to know a few important things. He knows that, for all its beauty, dragon fire can give nothing back but a defiant warmth, a wavering hope, and a vague dizziness. Iroh wishes he had saved his son. But losing Lu Ten was what made Iroh into the man who knows Lu Ten needed saving. It made him into the man who knows Zuko needs saving, but who doesn’t quite know how to do it.
Iroh was raised to conquer, not to comfort. So, he sits beside his nephew and cradles a cup of jasmine tea. He carries a sketch of his son’s face near his heart and a Pai Sho tile etched with the blossom of a white lotus in his pocket.
He’ll start with saving the world, and he hopes saving Zuko goes along with it.