She lies there panting among the bustling maids (and who knew that child birth could hurt so fucking much?), her newborn son clutched too tightly to her chest even as he wails.
"I'm sorry." She whispers into his black curls. "I'm sorry for everything you will go through for just being born. I'm sorry for not killing you when I could."
Is this love? She thinks to herself, before her body begins to tremble and cough blood, failing her for the first time in her memory.
As the maids scream and work frantically around her, doctors pouring through the door too late, she slips into death even as her son cries for the mother he will never know.
When the Firelord looks down at his new grandchild, the palace doctors hasten to assure him that all babies are born with blue eyes; that does not explain why one year later the giggling toddler's eyes are still blue and his skin a dusky brown.
When Sokka first sees his son, he cries-and somehow the dying Firelord knows that that's what Azula always wanted.