I'm loving all of these, so how about another Zuko adoption - menu item 33? Or whichever number is *Ozai* (you've actually inspired me to start drafting my own version of this, although a bit angstier than your ficlets)
You have placed an order for adoption number 30. Ozai adopts Zuko. (Happy to inspire you! And I love angst! Tag me when you do this because I would love to see it!)
Lee found himself standing in a strange forest, as the Mother of Faces watched him curiously.
“Do you like your new face, your new life, child?”
Lee furrowed his brow and glanced down into the water in the pool seeing his face starring back at him. Dark brown eyes looked back at him. He didn’t know what she was talking about.
But he knew to respect the spirits, so he thanked her.
“I did this once before for a woman, I would advise you to return to the town and find her.”
Lee agreed that he would and then he left.
He had been searching the forest for wild game, and he wasn’t sure how he had come to stand in front of the spirit. But he supposed that he should do as the spirit had instructed.
He stayed the night at a kind couple’s home, and after they told him the story of Love Amongst the Dragons, he had gone to sleep. In the morning he started his search, but he couldn’t find the woman that the spirit had told him to find.
Lee wondered if he told someone what the spirit had told him then maybe he would have more success, but he thought better of it.
A month passed like this, and he decided the woman must have left the city.
So he went to the Caldera hoping the Fire Sages would have an answer for him.
Instead, they brought him to the Fire Lord and after a brief discussion, he was told that with Prince Zuko missing for a little more than a month now, they needed someone to pose as the Prince, until the boy could be found.
It was wrong, but Lee was hungry and even though he should be searching for the woman that the Mother of Faces had told him about, he agreed. The Fire Sages assuring him that once the true prince was located, they would ask the spirits to guide him to the woman.
So Lee joined the Royal Family and became the Fire Lord’s son.
He quickly regretted it. If he had thought that Fire Lord Ozai would be a kind father, he had been wrong.
Ozai was cruel and while Lee was a better fire bender than the real Prince Zuko according to his teachers Lee was terrified and understood why Zuko had run away.
He tried to run away only once.
His adoptive father burned him for it, telling him the tale of what exactly made Zuko run away.
He did make friends with Azula though. She liked how resourceful he was, and so she taught him some of the advanced fire bending she was learning. Azula was the one who explained that her uncle had been banished for helping her brother run away.
General Iroh had been caught during the escape, and no one knew where Zuko had gone. Though Iroh was out searching for the Avatar, Zhao being assigned to keep tabs on the man, so he could not betray them.
Lee wondered if maybe Ozai didn’t want the real Zuko to return.
He didn’t want to think about that.
Years passed like this. And Lee wanted whatever life he must have traded with the Mother of Faces back. It made sense when he thought about it. She had asked him at the time if he liked the new life and face she’d given him.
He and Azula talked at length about what it was that he may have been running away from. At one point she joked, almost hopeful sounding, that maybe he had been Zuko. Lee rolled his eyes and told her that he doubted that, but then he admitted that he did like the idea of Azula being his real sister, even if it would mean that he had run away only to find himself right back where he started.
“You know Father gave the real Zuko the same scar he gave you.”
Lee had been pretending to be Zuko for three years now.
And Ozai summoned him and Azula to him.
Apparently, Iroh had betrayed them, and he wanted the two of them to go capture the man.
After they left the throne room, Azula turned to Lee and said, “This is your chance to getaway. If the Mother of Faces gives you back your old face, Father won’t be able to find you. You could be free.”
“But I would be leaving you alone here with Father, and I can’t do that.” Lee sighed. She and their friends had been his only allies for the past few years and he didn’t want to leave the girl he had come to think of as his sister behind in this hell.
“She gave you a new face, she can do the same for me, stupid.”
But they went to the Mother of Faces, and she told them she would only give one of them a different face. Azula told the spirit to give Lee back his old life and face. She would just have to come back next year.
Zuko stood in front of the Mother of Faces. It was a different lake, but he did so with the same face only three years older.
There would be no escape. Not unless they went to find Uncle.
Not to capture him, but to join him.
They would find no safety otherwise.