Turtle-Ducks

A/N: I know this is an awful story but I had to write something while I'm working on my longer, better fanfics...please review...I'm not that sensitive...

In a cool haze of violet-tinted golden sunlight, Ozai sat silently next to the murky brown water of a small man-made pond. Autumn was coming on; he could feel it in the crispness of the wind and emptiness of the world around him. Maybe it only felt empty to him. He wasn't sure.

Absent-mindedly, he glanced towards the setting sun. Just yesterday, seemingly endless floods of birds were soaring soundlessly past it. He had laughed. Every year, those birds left the warm, tropical Fire Nation with their families - families that were constantly growing - in search of an even warmer shelter from the mild island winters. Not that they would find one. In a week or two, they'd be back. They always came back.

Ozai looked back down at the lifeless pond. At one point, there had been noisy little turtle-ducks there. They'd left years ago when Ursa wasn't around to feed them anymore. Ozai had hated them; he was positive they were trying to drive him insane. The smallest movement would set them off quacking and once they started, it was nearly impossible to shut them up. For some reason, Ursa had loved those ducks. Every day she went out to see them and they were always happy to see her. Once, she'd convinced Ozai to come with her. Both of them agreed he was better off staying away from them, though, when a few ran away from him and nearly got hit by a cabbage cart.

Taking a deep breath, he smiled. Ursa could get him to do anything. She was so perfect; he was almost sure he'd never been able to go even ten minutes around her without staring or forgetting what he was doing. That was the affect she had on him, and it always had been. She mesmerized him and he let her. He loved her.

Angrily, Ozai picked up a rough gray rock and hurled it into the still water. What was wrong with him? He didn't love her. He couldn't. There was no room in his life for anyone. That's not to say everyone was unimportant to him, though. Azula was very important. He just didn't love her.

Glaring into the duck pond, Ozai wondered if he didn't miss the little animals. Even if they had been loud and annoying and stupid, they'd kept him so much more human. Although he wasn't about to do anything to change it, he knew he wasn't exactly a fun person to be around. People feared him. That was just how things were supposed to be, and it didn't really bother him. But it had bothered Ursa.

Every day - or at least most days - she'd needed to pull him out of the room they were in so that the kids wouldn't hear them arguing. He knew they always had heard, of course, and so did she, but she tried so hard to keep him calm and sociable. All she'd ever wanted was a normal, flawless family. A family where everyone got along and where there were never any problems. At first, he'd done everything he could to satisfy her. Although she never complained, he could tell when something was wrong and had always tried to fix whatever she was upset about. In the long run, though, it just hadn't been enough. At one point, he'd just stopped caring about having a stereotypical perfect life with a perfect home and a perfect family. He hated that he didn't care anymore. Maybe things would be different if he had cared longer.

Maybe it wasn't the ducks he missed, either. Maybe it was Ursa.

This thought infuriated him. She didn't love him. She loved Zuko. From the moment she first knew she was going to have a baby, Ozai had been forgotten and everything seemed to revolve around Zuko. If it hadn't been for that boy, Ozai might still be happily married to the most wonderful girl on earth. Stupid Zuko. Always ruining everything.

He was glad Zuko was gone. As long as he wasn't in the Fire Nation, he couldn't ruin anything else. Ozai could only imagine how angry Ursa would be if she were here now. She'd given everything for that child - her title, her home, and even her family - and Zuko had gotten himself thrown out of the country. So had Ursa, of course, but that was different. She'd at least had a good reason to do what she did. Or she'd thought it was a good reason, anyway.

It was getting dark outside. Cold, sharp wind tore at Ozai and rippled the foggy water in front of him incessantly, snapping him out of his day-dreaming state. Maybe it was time to go in. He couldn't remember why he'd come out here in the first place - thinking about Ursa made him forget. It always had.

As he walked toward the back door, he wondered what it would take to get the turtle-ducks back.

And what it would take to get Ursa back.