A/N: I truthfully would not be surprised if this chapter ends up getting, like, no feedback. The A:TLA community seems pretty...latent right now, and this fic has been dead for...three years. Yikes.

Sorry about that, everyone. I guess I just got busy with trying to balance 4 AP classes, keeping my GPA up, and applying for colleges between when I first posted this story and the following June. After that, I was caught up in college stuff. Keeping my GPA up, church, moving out, extracurriculars, volunteering, study abroad, a job - the works. Truthfully, I wasn't planning on ever touching this story again. It just happened by happy accident (as in, I haven't written down anything in forever, thought I needed a small writing exercise to try, and found I still really like this idea).

I've been writing basically nothing but essays and literature reviews for the past three years now, so I'm sorry if my writing here is not up to standard, and also if it doesn't match the tone of the last chapter. It's been a long time, it is currently almost 4 AM where I am, and I'm too tired to 100% hold myself to the same style challenges I did the first time around. I did the best I could to, but...

ALSO, VERY IMPORTANT: If you do, by some miracle, like this chapter, PLEASE TELL ME. Otherwise, I will end up cringing at it tomorrow morning and taking it down, because I'll think it's just trash that I only thought was decent because of sleep deprivation. If you want this chapter still up in the near-future, you need to review. I CANNOT STRESS HOW IMPORTANT THIS IS. Frankly, I may end up deleting it even if it does get reviews. Who knows? I can't speak for my much more coherent, future self.

EDIT (January 7th, 2018): By popular demand, this story will stay up. Thank you all for your reviews and encouragement! That being said, it is still listed as "Complete". This has nothing to do with narrative structure and everything to do with the fact that I rather not pressure myself to continue when I have, you know, real life to deal with.

This story has also been revised at the date listed above, because I found things I could improve upon. Seeing errors in my writing irks me.

EDIT (January 10th, 2018): This story has been revised again due to a mistake pointed out to me by RakshaDaemon. Thanks for catching that!

Iroh has not replied to their letters.

They both write to him. The Fire Lord is dead, and his descendants were attacked. The crown prince must return and restore order, soon. Nothing works. Not pleas, rebukes; sympathy. A string of couriers have bowed at their feet, each bashful and unsure. So sorry, Your Highnesses, but… Prince Iroh cannot be roused from grief; refuses to see anyone; is gone.

"I take no pleasure in replacing my brother," Ozai says, after the final courier departs and they're forced to accept it. His voice is heavy, his expression melancholy. Ursa finds it easier to believe him, now. He is a good showman—charismatic and grandiose. A demi-god for his people. But when the glass shattered, she was there. Hiding demons from her is pointless now.

She has no words to comfort him. "How far you've come, then."

o~O~o

Azula has nightmares.

Ursa never hears why, but she is no fool. Her daughter once basked in her father's small gestures: a pat on the head or a hand on her shoulder. Now, she flinches away. The intruders were bitter men, and her child—who now screams and wails at night—was, to them, an eight-year-old enemy princess.

Mother and Father know not how to help her. Azula was Ozai's child, but he knows little of comfort, and she won't let him offer what he does. Ursa has always hovered, always tried, but could never be what her daughter needed. Their prodigy's once brilliant flames now stutter and die.

Azula begs the sky for absolution one night, hair unbound and mussed, screaming and terror-stricken. Ursa feels like a spectator. Surely, this poor, haggard, nearly feral creature can't be her daughter. Surely—schoolbooks, candles, and a hairbrush sail through the air—her poised and canny Azu—

Crash!

The mirror. Shattered. The hairbrush lies among the shards. A thump! behind her, and Azula begins to sob. Ursa is with her in an instant—there's no time to hesitate anymore—cradling her and murmuring sweet nothings in her ear.

Oh, merciful Spirits, she's so small.

"…would you like me to sing to you, my love?" Ursa's own mother used to sing to her. She doesn't know what else to do.

The voice that responds is so fragile, so meek, that she can feel her heart seize. "Would you really?"

A rotting knot settles in her stomach, suffocating her with its fumes. Her eyes water; she looks heavenward. "Of course, darling."

She sings to a kaleidoscope of silhouettes.

o~O~o

"When's Azula gonna get better?"

Ursa sighs, "It may take a long time."

"Why?"

Unbidden, last night's hairbrush flashes through her mind, and the old lullaby filters in. Leaves from the vine, falling so slow… Why, indeed. Why had they not stopped it?

"Some wounds are in the inside, Zuko."

A long pause. Then, "…guess she's not that perfect, after all."

It's the way he says it. His words are laden down with smugness, and there is something alarmingly close to glee in Zuko's uninjured eye. Ursa can read it in the quirk of his lips, the stance: I fought like an honorable warrior and got this scar to prove it. She's just a pig chicken. She chokes at the sight of it. Are they both really so far gone?

The glee fades. "Mom?"

Oh, no. What was that he'd said? "Hey Mom, want to see how Azula feeds turtleducks?" She curses herself for not seeing this sooner.

"And why is that a good thing, young man?" Ursa's voice comes out shriller and more harshly than intended. She doesn't care.

"I—I—"

"Go to your room." She doesn't care much for explanations, either.

o~O~o

Ursa returns to her bedchamber that night exhausted and head spinning. How could she have not realized how willing both her children were to hurt each other? If this continued, they could end up despising each other because of her negligence.

"What's wrong." A truly concerned Ozai is rather blunt.

"The children's rivalry has gone too far," she replies wearily.

"I'm listening."

She stops. Oh, what she would have given to hear that at the start of their marriage. She tells him out of sheer relief alone. At last, they could bring up one household instead of two. Ozai doesn't immediately dismiss her claims as she expected. He even looks uneasy when he hears of Zuko's behavior. When she's said her piece, he leans his elbows into his knees and scrubs the heels of his hands into his face. "This is entirely my fault," he says.

"You can't take all the blame, Ozai."

"I think you'll find I can." He stands, restless, and stares at their wedding portrait. "You're not the only one with past infatuations."

Dear Ikem's face shutters behind her eyelids. He'd had one? Who?

"Lady Xiu Min,"—did I say that out loud?—"Lord Fu's wife. I was quite…involved with her, once. Truthfully, had my father not forced me to marry you, I would have married her."

And I would have married Ikem.

"I suppose…I wanted too badly to have a family with her to care much for any of you." A breathless, unsteady laugh, then. "Except Azula. I always imagined Xiu Min would bear me a child like her…." And now who knows what will become of her? goes unsaid.

Raw and helpless intensity paints her husband's face. There's a silent plea in his eyes. Ursa tucks her hands into her sleeves. She can feel them growing colder. "Why are you telling me this?"

Ozai's lips part, as if to speak, but then close again. He looks away. He busies himself with taking down the portrait, and extracting an unfamiliar, small, golden pin from behind the frame. He hands her a theater mask from its cache in the wall. "It's time we both let go of the past, Ursa." His eyes search her face with that same unsettling intensity, "If not for our own sakes, then for the children's."

Her hands are ice cold now. "But why are you telling me this?"

He stops, stares down at her billowing sleeves. The strange intensity recedes, and that grim, haunted look reemerges. "Because Lady Xiu Min killed the Fire Lord."

As always, constructive criticism is greatly appreciated (especially for something that is probably as illogical, choppy, and all around not very good as this...thing).

I'll see you in the morning. (Or afternoon.)