Rating: M

Warnings: violence, blood & gore, various sensitive topics

All characters, settings etc associated with Avatar: the Last Airbender are not owned by me. I merely own the plot and unfamiliar characters/organizations and am not making any profit off this fiction venture.

Synopsis: Ilah always figured that she had won. Oneshot.

The Merciless and the Unstoppable, Ilah

From birth, Ilah had been taught that to be the best you had to be intelligent, ruthless, harsh, subtle, and an expert in every possible sphere you may wind up involved in. Politics, economics, military, you name it and if there was a chance that she would wind up involved in it, she studied it.

She had three older sisters and one younger brother. She learned quickly how to take advantage of her status as the youngest daughter.

It was easy to get her parents to hire instructors when the Royal Fire Academy for Girls was deemed unacceptable in furthering her knowledge of the military. That was before women were permitted in the military so, naturally, the Royal Fire Academy for Girls did not see fit to educate its girls on the military. Politics, certainly. Economics, undoubtedly. History, naturally. Military? Of course not.

Ilah was 15 when she finished her formal schooling. She did her duty afterwards, making the rounds of the nobility, further educating herself on everything she could, and engaged in a courtship with a remarkably open-minded idiot of a man who agreed to instruct her on the finer points of combat firebending like the idiot he was. When she was 17 she promptly ended the courtship, pretended she was heading to the Fire Sages to further educate herself in their archives, left her parents' house, chopped off her waist-length hair, took the ridiculously common name Lee, and joined the navy disguised as a man.

As always, her movements were efficient, quick, and always a part of a larger plan. If she was anything, she was strategic.

Unsurprisingly – Fire Nation women were notorious for being unwilling to adhere to rules set out for them by society, their families, or anyone and anything else, much like Fire Nation men – she encountered another woman disguised as a man in the navy. Ping-Ying turned Gao was no firebender but it was beneficial to have someone aboard the ship who knew her secret and could assist during precarious moments. On a ship filled to the brim with men in close quarters for long periods of time those moments occurred more often than Ilah would have liked.

She served for 4 years before her identity was discovered.

Azulon, Prince at the time, had been given her unit to command for the next 3 years. The 17-year-old was little more than a well-trained child and she found herself looking down on him when he strode onto her ship and began giving orders. She followed them, of course, unwilling to draw more attention to herself than necessary, and the first year passed without incident. During the second year they wound up attacking an Earth Kingdom coast city. She burned homes, killed plenty, and then the enemies were suddenly able to fight back well.

Through a series of events that she often brought up in the future to irritate Azulon, she wound up exposing herself, literally, nearly single-handedly obliterated the entire village and most of the Earth Kingdom soldiers, and, when finishing up, disemboweled the Earth Kingdom Commander – who was still alive at the time – then burned his intestines in front of him, tied him to the back of his own ostrich-horse, and dragged his nearly-dead pathetic self through the city's main road for everyone to see.

Suffice to say, they took the city thanks to her and her reputation became legendary.

Azulon exploded.

He insulted her relentlessly and then attempted to burn her. She promptly chucked him into the nearest barely-standing house.

He then yelled at her for daring to lay a hand on the Crown Prince of the Fire Nation.

She broke his nose in response.

Surprisingly, Azulon's father didn't bother punishing her publicly. Instead, he merely blackmailed her into marrying Azulon. Neither man nor woman was happy with that arrangement, to put it lightly.

Ping-Ying was never discovered, at least. And a few years later the military was actually opened to women so Ilah, all-in-all, counted it as a win.

By her count it was Ilah – 4, Azulon – 0.

They spent the rest of their marriage trying to outdo one another.

When Ilah was pregnant – pregnancy did not agree with her – Azulon promptly attempted to outdo everything she had ever managed to do before the pregnancy.

He never stopped hating the fact that she managed to give birth to two firebending sons.

She got Iroh in a courtship with a noble woman who was, despite her non-bender status, far from a pushover and had a fondness for tea that she knew Iroh would appreciate.

Ozai had been 6 at the time.

A week later – she saw it coming and had done all she could to prevent it but Azulon knew all of her moves – Azulon faced her. She was half-drugged, unintentionally thanks to her youngest son, firebending feverishly, and Azulon fought her effortlessly while Ozai watched, obedient to a fault, his eyes wide. Ozai jumped when the flames engulfed his mother's face and a blade slammed into her chest, burning her flesh, but he never made a sound.

"She deserved it," Azulon smirked as he explained to Ozai, the boy favoured by his mother.

The room burned. Iroh searched for a logical cause for his mother's death, but never found one. Ozai kept his mouth shut, his young mind devouring the journals his mother kept that described her unashamed loathing for Azulon, her merciless pride, and her unwavering faith in the Fire Nation's supremacy, while he watched as his father continued to justify his every act of cruelty and violence as deserved and a by-product of his glorious power. Which, no matter how Azulon spun it, Ozai could see he had inherited.

Glorious power indeed.

Ilah figured, watching from death as Iroh married the noble woman she picked out, as her granddaughter – the girl's style of combat so similar to her own – accomplished what no individual before her had, and as her favoured son did the same, that she won the competition.

Beside her in death, Azulon just grumbled and attempted to beat her in a spar.

She never lost.

A/N: Wooo, headcanon time for Fire Lady Ilah. Basically, she is, in my mind, The Boss. The sociopathic completely-insane-oh-my-god-why-would-you-do-that-there-is-something-seriously-wrong-with-you Boss, but The Boss nonetheless.

Also, Azulon is not a very nice guy. At all. Much like his wife.

R&R