Fire Lord Zuko had lived a life defined by duty-first to his nation, then to his family. With peace restored and his throne secure, it was time for the next step: marriage and heirs. The need to tie his personal life to his responsibilities weighed...
I couldn't hear his voice, but the weight of it pressed against me—cold, distant, like the bitter wind that sweeps across the frozen sea.
Anzan, my brother, stood before me, yet he felt like a stranger wrapped in the skin of someone I once loved. The boy I had grown up beside—the boy with the easy smile and laughter that could thaw the iciest day—was gone. In his place was a man whose eyes no longer softened when they met mine, whose presence carried a hollowness I could feel more than see. I'd never heard him speak in such coldness.
And I never will.
His lips moved, shaping words that felt heavy with caution but empty of affection.
Be careful tonight. Keep your distance. Stay close to Mother.
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The warning was clear, though his voice remained lost to me, as it had been for almost five years now. His gaze barely lingered on me before shifting elsewhere, as if I were just another task to be managed.
Tonight, I would meet Fire Lord Zuko for the first time.
He had visited the Northern Tribe twice before, but I had been too young, too small to matter in such grand affairs. Back then, the world beyond our icy walls seemed vast and unreachable, a place meant for the powerful, for those like my brother, not for me. My family had always kept me at arm's length from anything dangerous, anything that could shatter my sheltered world.
But after that night—after Yue's death—everything changed. The icy walls around me no longer felt like protection, but like the bars of a cage.
No one had prepared me for the life I was about to step into, a life that didn't feel like my own. It was as if the world I had known had cracked open, and instead of freedom, I found myself staring into the abyss of something darker, something that felt more like a prison than a future.
Zuko
"Welcome, Fire Lord Zuko. The North is happy to have you here again."
Happy my ass.
None of them were happy. They tolerated me—barely. Their smiles were thin, stretched over old wounds they refused to let heal. They respected the title, not the man wearing it. The grudges they held against me were as thick as the ice that surrounded their city. The weight of it pressed on me from every glance, every handshake, every word of forced politeness.
This visit would be hard without Inara. She always knew how to smooth the edges, how to ease the tension in a room. But I couldn't push her to come, not after everything she'd been through. I'd never seen her struggle like this—whatever had happened between her and Aang had changed her, and she wasn't ready to face the world yet. I wasn't about to ask her to.
