A/N: This story picks up from just before Lu Ten has to go away to the war. Ozai is not the Fire Lord yet, and the Fire Royal Family is mostly happy and everything. The plot will continue throughout the war and Lu Ten's eventual not-death and the aftermath. Eventually, the timeline will meet up again with Zuko's story line, and more exciting things will happen. Apologies for the vagueness; I can't spoil my own story!

Title of the fic from "Somebody to Die For" by Hurts.

"Will you be Fire Lord one day, Lu Ten?"

The unexpected question catches him off guard, such that he nearly fails to block Zuko's next slash. He rights himself and goes on the offensive, pushing Zuko back several paces.

"I suppose, since my father will one day be Fire Lord, so I will too," he replies. It's crossed his mind before, but not in any great detail. The Fire Lord's throne room is a daunting place, unnecessarily dark and gloomy in spite of the ceiling-high flames. He can't imagine himself or his father sitting there.

"I think you would be a great one," Zuko says sincerely.

"Really? Why's that?" Not for the first time, Lu Ten feels a gaping wound in his heart stretch wider. His young cousin thinks the world of him, thinks he can do anything, and Lu Ten is about to betray his trust in a few weeks by leaving. For a really long time. Possibly forever.

"Because, you always take good care of me. You always listen when I complain about Azula. You're always nice to people even if they don't deserve it," Zuko lists, lips pursed in concentration. "You care about people."

"Mostly you."

The firelight from the lit torches around the chamber gleams in Zuko's eyes as he smiles.

"He was going to kill Zuko when he was born," Aunt Ursa had once said of her husband. Lu Ten was fourteen, had stopped by her quarters to return several scrolls. He'd found her staring at a portrait of their family. "He would have, he nearly did. Sometimes I think he still wants to."

Lu Ten had set the scrolls down, their words containing healing life and cloying death. What monster of a father could ever want to harm his child, his own flesh and blood?

Prince Ozai, it seems. How could he ever think Zuko was lackluster or anything but full of life and fire? It's better that such a man stays well away from the throne.

LLL

"Azula says that our dad would make a better Fire Lord than yours," Zuko says, his eyes somber now that it's time for them to part ways again.

Lu Ten frowns. Even though he's heard all about Azula's precociousness from Zuko, he doesn't think she was the first to come up with that idea. Could it be that Ozai has expressed some… treasonous ambitions?

"I would never have married him if he and your grandfather hadn't tracked my family down to our remote village. I'm the only grandchild of Avatar Roku. The Fire Sages foretold that the children of our mingled bloodlines would be immensely powerful."

Vaguely, Lu Ten tries to remember if the scrolls had contained any recipes for protractedly painful and fatal poisons. No, they'd all been quick and untraceable. Shame.

"You should go, Lu Ten," she says. "I've said too much."

"I won't tell anyone, Aunt Ursa," he promises.

"The palace has eyes and ears. Go quietly."

He's wondered, since, why Fire Lord Azulon betrothed Roku's granddaughter to Prince Ozai, his second born. The obvious answer is that his elder son already had a wife and family…but Lu Ten thinks it might not be too far-fetched to surmise an ulterior motive, one that involves Ozai inheriting the throne.

"Lu Ten?" Zuko's querying voice draws him out of his thoughts. Quite possibly he's becoming paranoid, what with the palace eyes and ears. "I didn't mean to upset you. Azula was making stuff up to mess with me. She would be the worst Fire Lord out of all of us. She always lies."

Oh, Zuko. What he doesn't know will end up hurting him all the more. He pats Zuko's shoulder, more to ground himself than his cousin. "I'm not upset," he lies.

LLL

He dreams of the night the bandits attacked them. The autumn air is cold, and their blood colder as Zuko's ebbs out of him from the gash in his throat. Lu Ten can't move to reach him, but what would he do? What could he do except drown himself in Zuko's blood and hope there isn't a life after this one where he might have to atone for his guilt?

He dreams of a bridge spanning a gorge between two cliffs high in the air. He's standing next to someone, but he cannot turn to look. A horn sounds, and suddenly with a great quaking of the earth, a vast blue dragon erupts from the mountainside, its scales gleaming like the ocean shimmering beneath the rising sun. Behind them, another dragon, this one copper-red, snakes its way out to twine with the other in an endless circle.

The stranger wears a scabbard slung across his back, and the swords it bears are… impossibly similar to his own. What can this mean? He steps forward even as the other man turns to face him, and Lu Ten almost recoils. It's Zuko, but older, his face terribly scarred, from something or someone Lu Ten couldn't protect him from.

The blue dragon speaks with the voice of Fire Lord Azulon. "Accept your charge, Prince Lu Ten. Accept that your future lies in protecting your nation. Accept that your duty is to more than one lonely child."

"You cannot save him," the red dragon says, its voice the silver-tongued echo of Prince Ozai's. "Even if you return from the war that does not sleep, there will be nothing left of him to save."

Dragon fire surrounds them, burning white-hot like ribbons of lightning, hell-bent on ending them. The scene empties, and he dreams again.

He is surrounded by death. Soldiers of the Earth Kingdom and Fire Nation lie scattered around him. There is blood on his swords, blood on his hands, blood in his mouth, blood in his throat as he dislodges his blade from the chest of another dead man. He lifts the visor of the man's helmet—Zuko's young, unlined face stares up at him.

Finally, mercifully, he wakes up with an aborted scream in his throat. It feels like dried blood, like it was all real. He breathes hard, lights a candle to dispel the shadows of creeping bandits and souls cut short too soon. Dawn's grey shimmer through the windows is light enough to keep him awake. No rest awaits him in sleep, anyhow.

If he closes his eyes, he can still see Zuko's lifeless face, so he doesn't. Staring blankly out the window, he starts to see his dreams superimposed on the sky outside. It's hopeless. He turns back to his desk, wonders if killing gets easier with time, and whether it's a good thing if it does. Before that, though, there's got to be a first time.

The sun is rising when a knock sounds on the door. It's a courtesy only; the servants know he's usually awake by now. "Come in."

His valet, Riku, enters, bearing a finely wrought metal chest. "Sir, this was delivered to the palace in the night with the instructions that it be brought directly to you."

"Who was the sender?" Lu Ten eyes the chest curiously. It's engraved with gold lion turtle carvings on a cobalt blue background.

"The messenger would not identify himself but only left one line that he said you would understand: All is one—"

"And one is all," Lu Ten finishes. The white lotus carved on the side of the box where a keyhole would normally be confirms it.

"What does it mean?" Riku asks. He frowns at Lu Ten, notices the dark circles under his eyes and the slight tremor of fingers tracing the white lotus. "Sir, are you all right?"

"No, but it's nothing a new day won't fix."

Riku bows and leaves. Lu Ten looks more closely at the white lotus carving. It seems to function like a knob that rotates both ways, but no matter how he turns it, he can't open the box. He rattles it slightly to try and figure out what's inside. The light, hollow tap of wood against metal rings inside, cushioned by something more like parchment or cloth—scrolls? Perhaps they'll tell him how to survive this war.

LLL

"Have you told Zuko yet?"

He sighs. "No, I… every time I try, I can't."

Ursa regards him softly, her eyes wistful but firm. A gentle breeze tickles the branches above them, the shadows of the leaves dappling her face. Spring is awakening; soon there will be apple blossoms dropping in the grass at their feet, but inside, he feels only the lingering chill of winter gone too soon.

"You must tell him soon. It's barely a week before you leave. You can't protect him forever."

Her words uncannily remind him of last night's nightmares, the voice of Ozai infiltrating his heart like early autumn frost, unexpected and deadly. He sits down at her feet, feeling small for a moment, and stares at the wind rippling the water on the pond.

"He'll be devastated. He's so young, it's not fair that I have to leave when he needs me so much."

She laughs, a hushed sound with a kind of choked mirth that is painful to hear. "What?" he demands.

"If you could hear yourself, child. You sound ancient."

"Not a child. I'm seventeen," he mutters grumpily, aware that that makes him sound exactly like one.

"All the same, Lu Ten—have you ever thought that perhaps you need Zuko as much as he needs you?"

"I have," he says, suddenly very tired of this all. "Yes, I have, Aunt Ursa."

LLL

He tells Zuko. It nearly breaks him, breaks them both.

A/N: I will still be publishing writing notes (it's going to get confusing, but I've done my best to label chapters so as not to misguide you), and they are located at this link: archiveofourown dot org /works/7019827/chapters/18822329