Chapter Text
The Consort
{Ursa}
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Death and solitude
Are all that can fill her days
In this crimson cage
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The hoofs of the ostrich-horses upon the beaten earth are like the clatter of raindrops on rooftops.
She sits in the carriage house as it rumbles over stone and dirt, a gilded cage that demonstrates her great power and her great lack of it.
Tears come at the thought, always and enduring, as constant as her prison stands upon the foundation of those draped in crimson robes. But then she peers down to her lap, to see the boy who looks so much like his father but inherits nothing of his nature.
To her, he is a miracle for that alone.
But the spirits know he is so much more.
He is her everything — love, her past, her future.
She studies the features of his face — curves of his cheeks, the bridge of his nose, the blanket of his lashes. Though closed now with slumber, his gilded eyes shine brighter and purer than all the gold that paints the palace. His face illuminates the darkness of the carriage and the depths of her own disparaging thoughts.
He murmurs slightly in his sleep, his crown of hair whispers against her palm like the rare wind.
“You will do so many great and magnificent things,” she mutters as her love and prophecy fill the chasm of her body, then overflow from her as she strokes his head. “You will be better than your betters. Stronger in ways the strong can never comprehend. You are everything I couldn’t be and everything your father should be. You are Zuko.”
She looks out into the streets, the world blanketed in grey and water, through the bars of the small window of the carriage — bars that will always be there.
So Zuko, inside, her world shall be.
⧍⧍⧍
The air is full of death.
But, then again, it always was.
Ursa breathed in death the moment she stepped into the Chambers of the Palace Interior, as the curtain rose for her most terrifying role — the silent pet of a power-hungry prince.
By now, she is trained — the perfect beautiful swallow-lark that sings when told, and is silent otherwise, beautiful and representative for every single moment until her own death.
Even now, when she mourns for her sister-in-law.
Iroh weeps mutely over her casket, his hair nearly as white as his robes. Lu Ten stands dutifully beside him, with a calm visage befit for a prince of stature. He too is dressed in snow and milk.
The one color that unites the players on this stage, of criminals who typically adorn themselves with black jade or gold against their scarlet costumes, is white.
Pure.
Untouched. Unadulterated.
The color of Death.
The only thing that makes all men and women equal.
“So ends the life of Lady Jai Hua, Royal Princess Consort of Crown Prince Iroh of the great Kasai Dynasty, mother of Prince Lu Ten,” the firesage announces, without emotion or regard, finishing the last of the rites. “May Agni guide her to meet with the spirits and our ancestors. May her flames forever burn.”
Every being in the chamber proclaims, “May her flames forever burn.”
Then they all bow their heads in reverence as their final farewell to her. Most do so out of obligation, but many do out of genuine grief.
Tears flow from her eyes as she lifts up to see the decorated coffin lifted up and carried into the furnace.
Ursa always found a friend in Jai Hua; now she has one less companion in this unique solitude cursed upon their station.
Crown Prince Iroh falls to his knees in a silent sob, stifling the wailing so adamantly shown on his features. Lu Ten kneels before the furnace and bows to the ground in the direction of his mother’s body.
“Mother,” Zuko mutters quietly from his height at her knees. “What are they doing to Auntie?”
The thousand things she can say in response float away in her consciousness. “They are sending her to the spirits,” her voice as soft as her soul.
“But why are they burning her?” he asks, anger and confusion coloring his tone.
“That’s how we meet them, my darling. Do not worry. She will be fine,” she lies smoothly and sweetly, bending down to his level and smoothing out his garments. Thankfully, they are in the back, away from could-be onlookers who would judge the turmoil of a child of four years.
The gongs sound as the body burns, reverberating their mournful note again and again until the ceremony ends.
When Iroh stands at the end of the hall to receive condolences, Zuko approaches without appropriate decorum and hugs his uncle at his knees. His tears streaming down his pinched face.
“He is too soft,” Ozai mutters to her as they advance forward, both of them watching. Behind them, the wetnurse holds the sleeping Azula. “How is he supposed to be a leader or lord when he constantly weeps.”
“Understanding one’s emotions does not make one weak,” Ursa replies in a tight whisper, looking at her feet instead of her husband.
“Is that a remark towards me, my dear?” Ozai asks, his tone goading, testing.
“Of course not, my lord,” she utters, her instinctive response to his verbal engineering. “Merely an observation.”
At this point, her lord husband remains silent, as they approach his honorable brother and pay their respects. Without feeling but with appropriate courtesy, Ozai gave his brother a few words of consolation.
Early on in her tenure as the Princess Consort, Ursa took notice of how her husband valued relationships.
To him, all persons in his periphery were a means to an end, and so he crafts his attachments to them with meticulous coordination.
And that end has always been more power.
He views Iroh as a gilded stepping stone, and so treats him with dignity until he is no longer of use.
He views Lu Ten as a threat, the one to inherit the title and reign that he so desires, therefore treating him with caution and disdain.
He views her, his wife, as a brace beneath his foundation with her blood and lineage. He treats her with a cold control.
He views all — from the highest-ranking minister to the lowest servant girl — as pawns in his game. Though Iroh might be the great champion of Pai Sho, Ozai plays the game of politics with terrifying acumen.
Ursa observes her good-brother, holding his wife’s ashes in an alabaster urn, receiving sympathies with a tight bow. She watches it all.
She can only watch.
But she also knows.
She knows the whole day is an omen, a foreboding portent for all consorts in this family of treachery and stratagems.
So Ursa sighs and wonders when Death will come for her too, her only escape from the pillars of the palace.
⧍⧍⧍
Like a jealous saber-tooth lion, the Imperial Queen Iylah has taken a great interest in Azula. It frightens Ursa, but everything about the Queen frightens Ursa.
Then, there are times Azula frightens Ursa, too.
The girl is only four herself, now, when the Queen beckons her to the Primary Chambers, the quarters designated for the Imperial Queen, for tea.
But the Queen having tea with her granddaughter is not innocuous. It is a statement, a singular move part of a greater strategy, a declaration of preference.
The Imperial Queen is of the Hono faction, a descendant of an earlier royal line that had cousins with Firelord Sozin, and has sought to maintain their power over the Palace. She is the birth mother of Ozai.
Iroh was born of Azulon’s favorite concubine, the first male born of their father, then adopted by the Queen to establish him as the heir to the throne. Even with the birth of Ozai fifteen years later, Azulon would not be swayed to revoke Iroh’s birthright.
So Queen Iylah’s unmissable favor towards the daughter of her trueborn son, truly speaks of her intentions in the politics of the Interior, to the extent where even a child understands.
Though, Azula is no mere child.
When the girl returns to their family apartments in the Primary Chambers, Ursa asks her how tea was, and noting a wooden toy in her hands. No doubt a gift and ploy.
“Grandma is a snake,” Azula notes, matter-of-fact. “She says things but they’re not true. And her eyes are ugly.”
Ursa cannot help but smile a bit at this, knowing Azula probably meant something else and just did not know the right expression. She will need to talk to Ozai about finding Azula a rhetoric tutor.
She presents her daughter with a porcelain bowl for the toy to be held in. “You didn’t like the toy?”
“No,” Azula scoffs. “It’s stupid.” Then she sets it on fire in the palm of her small hand and tosses its burning mass inside.
Watching the wooden plaything burn away into dust and ash, Ursa prevents herself from flinching and showing her fear, so states, “You shouldn’t call things stupid, Azula.”
“Well, not outside, but here’s fine, isn’t it?” the girl retorts, dusting her hands off in the bowl with a sharp smile.
The Interior of the Palace is an ornamental prison and Ursa has always foreseen her little ones thrashing in its choking grip.
But, Azula is sharp and Zuko honorable.
So perhaps, they will break free of the gilded bars that bind them.
And that would be her only and greatest song.
A melody of freedom, love, and hope.
Her cage does not feel as solitary as it used to since she shares it with her children and they are picking at the locks.