Chapter Text
Ten-year-old Prince Zuko was not the top student in the Royal Academy for boys. He wasn't even in the top three. His grades put him solidly at number four in his class, which meant he had to take his studies very seriously.
The teacher had the entire class on a silent reading exercise. Zuko stared at the scroll laid out in front of him, feet swinging idly under his desk. It wasn't working. He couldn't cram the words inside his head and make them stick.
Covertly, he glanced at the boys sitting in the same row. They had their heads down, studying intently. They had no problems concentrating.
Zuko, though, wanted to be outside. There was a breeze drifting in through the open window, and birds were calling—high and sweet. From his spot in the middle of the room, could see a sliver of pure blue sky.
He sighed, but quietly. The next break was more than an hour away, which was forever. Maybe if he said he needed to use the restroom—
There was no warning.
His stomach dropped and a sense of dread washed over him. Shock and horror swamped him like a wave. A pending grief so large and visceral—he couldn't process it all. It was too much.
He knew, he knew that his mother has dead. The invaders had killed her.
Katara wanted to run back into their hut, but through his tears he could see some of what was left of their mother inside. His little sister didn’t need to see this. So he just held onto her... trying to process everything, trying to understand… And the sound their father made didn't even seem to be human anymore and…
Something was forced between his teeth. The terrible taste of medicine flooded his mouth. Zuko swallowed, even though his mind wasn't in the classroom, wailing his grief on the floor--he was curled around his sister listening to their father's terrible broken sounds...
He didn't realize he was drifting away until he was gone.
****
Zuko woke and found Azula by his bedside.
This was usually a cause for alarm. To get up and take a defensive position. But his body felt weirdly heavy, like he had weights attached to his limbs. His eyes were sore as if he had been crying.
What happened?... Had he been sick?
Of course Azula noticed the second he came awake.
"Hi, Zuzu," she said. "Are you still crazy? Everyone says you're crazy now."
"I... what?" The words came out mushy. He licked his dry lips and found the residual taste of a medicinal herb. Was that why everything felt thick and slow? Had someone drugged him?
"You had a breakdown," Azula said with relish. "At school. In front of everyone.”
Horror washed through him. And with it, the memories.
"Mom!" he yelped, and the shock burned away enough of the herb so that he could sit up. "Azula, where's Mom? She's okay, right?"
Azula only grinned.
“Everyone saw you carried out screaming and crying like a baby. That must be so embarrassing. I don't think I could bring myself to go back to school, if it was me. I'd rather die."
"Azula!" he snapped, heart racing. “Where is Mom?”
"What is going on in here?" Ursa poked her head into the room and frowned. "Azula, you were supposed to get me when your brother woke up."
Zuko should have been furious at Azula, but at that moment he didn't care. His mom was alive and well. Why was so so sure something bad had happened to her?
... Black soot falling from the sky, the smell of charred flesh, his father's awful gasping howls...
Ursa must have seen the look on his face, because she crossed the room in an instant. (And she was looking at him as if he were real and here. He must be really sick.)
"I couldn’t just leave poor Zuzu alone,” Azula was saying, ignored by mother and brother. "He looked so scared and so weak. Look, he’s gone all pale. He might be having a relapse." She sounded absolutely gleeful about it.
"Mom..." Zuko let himself be folded into Ursa’s arms, closing his eyes and trying to shut out the terrible memory that was his and yet wasn't. He focused on the scent of flowers from her robes. It didn’t smell like burned bone at all.
Ursa stroked her hand through his hair which was both weird and nice. She never did stuff like this.
“Azula, I need to have a talk with your brother, alone.”
She pouted. “But Mom—”
“Now, young lady. And if I find you’ve been listening by the door you will be in deep trouble.”
On any other day, Zuko would have laughed at the shocked look on Azula’s face. Mother was never so firm with her. With either of them. She barely spoke to them at all.
Azula stomped her foot but turned and left. The door slammed behind her.
Zuko made himself pull away. “Mom?"
For once Ursa actually looked right at him. Not as if he were a distant stranger, or an actor in a play she was watching. As if they were in the same room. As if she actually cared about her son.
"What happened?" he blurted. "What's wrong with me?"
"The official story is that you had a fit.”
“A… fit?”
“A seizure,” she corrected. “Sometimes that can happen to children when they are ill and feverish.” She favored him with a hard look. “But we both know that isn’t what happened, is it?"
"I don't understand! It hurt so much, and I knew you… you were dead. And Dad..." His throat threatened to close and he couldn't finish. It was too horrible.
"Oh Zuko," Ursa said. "That wasn't your pain. That was your soulmate's."
There was a beat, and then Zuko whispered, "I have a soulmate?"
Everyone knew about soulmates. They were really rare, really special. The fiercest Fire Nation soldiers had soulmates because they could draw strength and wisdom from their other half. They healed quicker, lived longer lives.
"Yes." Ursa's eyes took on the distant gaze he was used to seeing. Like she wasn't really talking to him, but someone else. "Sometimes one half of a pair is hurt or very scared, they are able to reach across distance for help."
"I have a soulmate," he breathed, and something warm seemed to unfurl within his chest.
"She will someday be your very best friend in everything,” Ursa said distantly. “She is the other half of your heart."
He could have a friend. A very best friend. Someone who understood and actually liked him.
Zuko didn't have any friends, not even at school. Azula liked to play games, and no one could say no to her. Now, the only parents who would let their children visit were Mai and Ty Lee, and Zuko had heard whispers about their parent’s ambition. Whatever that was supposed to mean.
Even the boys at school stopped talking to him. If the princess found out he had a friend… unpleasant things happened to the boy. Zuko was usually blamed because Azula made it clear worse would happen if someone told on her.
But if I had a soulmate, he would believe me when I told him about Azula... We’d be stronger together than Azula could ever be alone.
Suddenly Ursa's hand clamped down over his wrist. Hard.
"Think about your soulmate, Zuko. She was in so much distress today that she reached out to you for help.”
That was true, but… “I didn't know what was going on. I didn't know I could have helped!" Had he made things worse for his soulmate? He had just shared the pain without trying to heal or share wisdom or whatever soulmates did for one another. Did that make him a bad person? Had his soulmate been disappointed in him?
No, it had just been… pain. He didn’t realize Zuko was with him at all. That was almost worse.
And under that growing distress, Zuko realized there was something wrong with Ursa's statement. He didn't know his soulmate's name, but he knew as sure as he knew up from down that his soulmate was not a girl.
"Zuko, listen to me," his mother said urgently. "A part of you loves your soulmate already—”
“Yes, but—”
“—which is why you need to protect her."
His mouth was half-open, ready to correct his mother about his soulmate's gender. He snapped it shut again. "What do you mean?"
"You are a prince, which makes you special. It means that if anyone who wants to hurt or control you, all they have to do is get to her."
Horror flooded through Zuko's veins, like deep sea-ice. "What? But... But..."
"There was an Air Assassin attack on the outer islands this morning." Ursa's grip tightened. "You were screaming in class. She lost her mother, isn't that right?"
He stared at her, tears forming in his eyes at the remembered grief and sorrow. The pain his soulmate must be feeling right now without him to help. "Yes."
"Think about how bad you would feel if she was hurt because of you."
"But, won't the Fire Lord protect—“
Her grip around his wrist tightened into a steel-hard band. He flinched, but for one of the few times in his life, Ursa stared straight at him.
"Listen to me," she hissed. "The Fire Lord has already making preparations to bring families of children who have lost mothers recently. If you love your soulmate, you will lie and point to someone else. Do you understand me, Zuko? No matter how wrong it feels, no matter how much it hurts."
"Mom?" he quavered.
Finally, the grip relaxed. From the ache, he knew he would have a wring of bruises around his wrist. It didn't matter. He stared up at his mother with wide eyes.
She looked away, as if ashamed. "Being part of the royal family requires personal sacrifice, Zuko. I should know."
Zuko knew he wasn't the smartest. He didn't even have friends to distract him and talk to him in class, and he still didn't make top grades. But at that moment, seeing the fresh pain on his mother's face... He knew.
"You have a soulmate, too, don't you?"
"Yes," she said, turning to look off in the distance. "And he isn't your father."
What? Zuko thought, dumbfounded. He had known he had a soulmate for all of fifteen minutes, but already that thought marrying someone else made him squeamish and it felt WrongWrongWrong….
Abruptly, Ursa seemed to snap into herself. She blinked. "Remember what I said. If you love her, protect her." With that last, curt warning, she rose and walked to the door.
"Mom?" Zuko had so many questions—about his mother, what it all meant, and if there was any way he could reach out and help his soulmate...
But Ursa didn't look back once. The door closed with a click behind her.
****
The candidates for Zuko's soulmate were brought to the place three days later.
Zuko had been kept isolated in his room. The only ones allowed to visit were the servants and his mother. Father, of course, never appeared. But even Azula was kept out. Zuko could hear her raging from down the hall, but for once his mother was firm.
He tried to talk to Ursa about soulmates, but his mother would pretend not to hear him. The one time he tried to speak of it when there was a maid in the room, she pinched him so hard that he stopped.
All he knew for sure was that he wasn’t bonded. That would come later, when they met and were grown up. He wasn’t entirely sure what bonded meant, exactly, only that for now they were… apart.
In quiet moments, he tried to reach inward to find his soulmate. If only he could help or warn him not to come to the palace… but there was nothing. Just his own heart, beating for someone he still had to find.
With his new insight, he wondered if his mother's distant nature was because she was listening for her own soulmate, too.
Why wouldn't his mother's very best friend, the other half of her heart, not be in the palace either? He didn't think she had any grown-up friends among the noble ladies. She didn’t even speak to her own maids, and she was very formal with Father.
Was she trying to protect her soulmate, too?
On the morning of the third day, Zuko was visited by the palace physician and proclaimed to be fit and healthy. He was then dressed by the servants in his best clothing and led down the hall to the royal receiving room.
Mother and Father were there, also dressed in fine robes. Azula stood to their father's side, quiet and watchful, though there was smoldering resentment in her eyes. He didn't know why. He was the one who had been locked in his room for three days whole days while she got to be outside and play.
Then Fire Lord Azulon made his entrance. He strode across the hall, not acknowledging the low bows, and stopped in front of Zuko, studying him. After a moment, he snorted.
"Well, since you are recovered, let's get this over with." Azulon turned towards his guards. "Bring them in."
The wide double doors opened and the guards ushered little huddles of families forward. All had female children within a few years of Zuko's age and were either chaperoned by a father or someone old enough to be a grandparent. All were dressed in clothing indicating they were of fine or noble birth, and every one of them looked scared.
Oh no, Zuko thought, stomach sinking. These were girls who had lost their mothers recently, maybe even during the recent Air assassin attack.
Of course, the Fire Lord had brought the noble-bred and rich merchants first. Who else would have the soulmate of a prince?
"Look them over, Zuko," Ozai said impatiently. "Tell us who she is."
Inwardly, he cringed. He knew without having to study them that none were his soulmate.
But his mother's warning echoed in his heart, and he knew what he had to do.
Without waiting to consider, he pointed to a girl on the end who looked to be his age. She was unremarkable. A little on the chubby side with glasses. The old man standing with her wore the military rank uniform of a navy admiral.
"Her. That's her. I'm sure."
The Fire Lord flicked his fingers and the guards ushered the other families away, leaving the one belonging to the girl he'd picked out. The girl clutched her grandfather's hand and stared at Zuko in confusion.
"You're certain about this, Prince Zuko?” Azulon asked.
Zuko took a deep breath. "Yes."
Then Azulon gestured again. One of the guards withdrew a sword and stepped towards the girl.
"Wait!" Zuko yelled and would have rushed forward, but found his arm grabbed by Ozai, stopping him. "No! What are you doing?"
The girl screamed and tried to hide behind her grandfather, who made to shield her. But three more guards had unsheathed weapons and were coming at them from all directions.
"No, no, no, please! Fire Lord, stop! Please!" Zuko yelled.
No one listened. The guards raised their swords and the girl shrieked in mortal fear and threw sparks—too panicked for a real firebending move.
A moment before the swords fell, Fire Lord Azulon barked out, "Halt!"
The guards froze, still as statues.
Zuko could have collapsed from relief. He was openly crying again, tugging against his father's grip. Fear had him babbling. “She's not my soulmate. I'm sorry—Don't kill her. I lied. Please…”
"That's enough!" Grabbing Zuko by the shoulders, Ozai shook him so hard he almost lost his balance.
Even Azula looked upset, clinging to Ursa's side. Ursa simply watched on, distant, as if it were a particularly interesting play.
The Fire Lord, meanwhile, studied Zuko with cold amber eyes. "You are not a good liar, boy. Your reactions speak true, and I had to know for certain."
Then the girl's grandfather spoke, his voice quavering. "Fire Lord, whatever we have done to insult you, I beg that I take the punishment. Not my granddaughter."
Azulon turned. "There is no insult, Admiral... Chu, isn't it?"
The man nodded, one arm around his shaking granddaughter. "Yes, Fire Lord. Retired."
The Fire Lord smiled. It was an ugly, skeletal expression. “This is a wondrous day. Your granddaughter is the soulmate of Prince Zuko." Azulon's false smile faded. "Of course, they could never be allowed to bond. The risk to the prince is far too great.“
He gestured again and a covey of red robed Fire Sages melted out of the shadows.
The grandfather seemed to understand before Zuko did. "Please," he said, falling to his knees. "She is my only grandchild."
"And she will be well kept… very well protected. It is good she is a firebender. She will live a useful and productive life, serving within a temple with the Fire Sages. Of course," Azulon added, "she will never leave. She and Prince Zuko will never be allowed to meet again. It is for the good of the Fire Nation."
"No!" the grandfather cried.
The girl wailed and tried to hide behind him, but the Fire Sages closed ranks and pulled her away.
"No, don't do this!" Zuko yelled again, but no one listened to him. They acted as if his reactions were totally normal. He was only begging for his soulmate, of course. This was why such things were done in the Fire Nation when children were young.
He was forced to watch as the girl was torn away from the only family she had left. A girl he had doomed without even knowing her name.
"I'm sorry!" Zuko yelled, knowing it would mean nothing to her. "I'm sorry!"