AN: (08/31/2019) This story is now up for adoption. See the author's note at the end of chapter 12 for info.
(09/01/2019) This story has been adopted by Prince_Zukos_honor on Ao3.

The night of his birth is not at all peaceful. It is her first child, and labour stretches for hours and she is alone, with midwives and doctors, but alone all the same. She didn't expect any different, but when when the pain drowns into the unbearable, she does wish it were.

Then he is in her arms, and she is not sure that anything else ever mattered. It is short lived. He enters the room before she had time to do anything but rest and stare enraptured at her son's face.

"Leave. All of you." He says.

Light winks on and off as the group shambles away, then blinks out completely. Her husband steps nearer. With her child cooing in her arms, Ursa can see only through a lens of euphoria, and beckons the man forward.

"Look at him, Ozai. He's perfect."

He looms down, a cloud over her joy, ready to rain or snow or throw down lightning. A hand reaches out coldly, the child leans away, blinks, nestles back into her arms. Ozai's eyes look as if he could burn them both, and her lens starts to fog.

It's barely a whisper. "He doesn't have the spark."

What that means, she's not sure of, but Ursa pulls the child closer.

"Ozai?"

His eyes glow too brightly in the dark. "We can drown him. We can say he was stillborn."

Bile rises in her throat and she almost retches right there. The image of her child struggling, dead, is enough to make her want to claw her heart out, but it is overshadowed by an animalistic urge to protect. She pulls him closer still, the pain of labour now reborn as fire in her eyes.

"No. No, no! Don't say that! How could you even think of it!"

"Look at him. There is no spark in his eyes; there is no fire in him. I cannot have a non-bender as my firstborn." He spits back.

"He's your son."

"That is no son of mine." Rage rolled off him as smoke. He stretched a hand towards them. "Give him to me."

Anger burns away, reason is but ashes. She has left only a frenzy of self preservation, for she knows that if her child dies, she will not survive. She doubts she would have the will.

"There's fire in him, I know there is. He'll be a firebender one day, I promise you. Please."

"Give him to me now, Ursa."

"You're wrong!"

They are still, frozen in place by the outburst. Despite the bravado, Ursa trembles.

"Give him time, Ozai, please. Please." She holds him close to her breast and the child whines, sweet and clear like a canary's song before the mine smoke kisses her to sleep.

Smoke's eyes bore down on them and she can do nothing else but hold him closer. If he takes him, she will fight, she will not win, but she will fight as all mother's must when their children are in danger.

Then Ozai breaks his gaze, and the smoke retreats back down the mine.

"Pray you are right, Ursa." Light reaches for her bed as the door opens and closes.

She is alone now, as she always is in this house of wolves, but it is different. She has her son now, her beautiful son whose amber eyes stare up at her like waning candles in the dark, warm and blameless and all too fragile. There is no spark in them. She is not at all sure what a spark resembles, but it is not there. His eyes are her's, this child is her child, in birth, in body, in ability; and they are alone. Two turtleducks as hawks scream above them.

Light brushes at the floor again as the door is thrown open.

"Ursa." His voice washes tenderly over the silence. "You've gifted me with a nephew."

Tears prick at the sight of a friendly face. Her brother-in-law may be a dragon in battle, but he has a kind heart and a love of peace that is only outweighed by his love of tea. She thinks him two-faced sometimes, but they all have their pitfalls and Ursa will do with any kindred spirit that she finds.

"Iroh." Her arms relax and firelight brushes at her son's face. "Come see him."

He settled by her bedside and hovered over the child.

"Much more peaceful than Lu Ten was, I can tell you that." He chuckled. "Come look at your Uncle Iroh, little one. Lovely. Look at those eyes. So bright and full of… life."

A hand caresses the child's face, Iroh stealing glimpses of the amber behind the heavy-lidded eyes. He looks too long, too intently, and she knows that her brother is searching for something that he will never find, as non-existent as stars at noon. Searching, then waiting, as if gauging her.

Then finally, he says. "He will grow into a fine, honorable man. You have nothing to worry about."

He lays a hand over her trembling one, and the tears that had sprung from relief now fall from despair. The child cries again, and she can't get the image out of her mind of the canary singing to its own death.

He consoles her. "Agni blesses his gift for strange reasons. And sometimes, he withholds it for even stranger."

"He's a lamb in a dragon's den. I've brought him a life of suffering."

"Those are no lamb's eyes." He says. "And you have not brought him suffering. You have brought him life and love, my dear."

"But my husband… Oh, Iroh. He wanted to kill him."

Barely a whisper, but already it felt as if bile were rising from her throat. Her son… so close to death from his own father's hands and still no farther from it.

"I… can believe it. Has he no shame? To say that to you and your child… It's a wretched thing."

"But would he do it?" She asks. An answer is already with her, but she can live only to hope.

"I don't know, dear." He mutters. "But do not fear. I am here for him, and so are you. You have always brought out the better side of my brother, Ursa."

A warm smile plays on his lips, calms her mind, and for once she realizes how badly she shakes. The night's terrors had taxed her body, but that rest can fix. Shocks riddle her mind, but those too will fade. The fate she has given her son though, that will be what haunts her.

"Do you have name for him yet?" Iroh asks.

She allows herself another glimpse of the child swathed in her arms. Skin as thin as rice paper and barely hours old, yet he already has so many enemies; just looking at him makes fresh tears spring in the corners of her eyes.

She cups a shaking hand over his face. "Zuko."

He gives another smile. "A beautiful name for a beautiful child. Rest now. I will be close by. Call for me if you need anything."

Light peaks and ebbs from the hall. They are alone again.

It is her first moment of relative calm, and she rock back and forth on the bed, perhaps to soothe the child, perhaps just a result of fear.

That is no son of mine. His words linger over her mind like buzzard-wasps over the starved. She must protect her son, her Zuko, by whatever way she must.

His eyes blink and she searches the amber orbs again.

He doesn't have the spark.

The amber glimmers and shines and flickers like a dying candle, and she begs to the heavens that that is enough. There is fire in her son. There must be. And she prays to the spirits above, not for an easy life for her son because she knows already that that is out of their grasp, but for the ability to endure it. The chance of ability; that is all that protects him.

She stares down with her golden eyes shining with tears.

"I'm sorry, Zuko."

Little amber eyes stare back.

AN: So that was fun. Non-bender!Zuko wouldn't leave me alone until I wrote this.

Anyway, this idea is in very, very early stages of development. I only have one or two chapters left in me. I just wanted to see the interest in it and wanted to know where you think this story can go. I want this story to be very reader driven and collaborative. So drop a review if you'd like to see more and tell me where you think this could head. Send me a PM and we can share notes. Thanks for reading!