Breakfast is quiet. Azula is still basking in the glow of well-earned praise -- His daughter danced with Agni and mastered the blue flame. She's achieved in two days from the branch in history what had taken his sister another two months to accomplish. -- but Zuko seems to be distracted by something altogether more unpleasant.

"Zuko," he waits for the boy to meet his eyes, "What's on your mind?"

The prince hesitates before saying, "Uncle mentioned an evaluation, but there isn't anything on my schedule. Did I do something wrong?"

Of course, he should have thought about how that would sound to the children without the surrounding context. He feels a tension he hadn't realized was there ease.

"No," Ozai says as he relaxes back in his chair and uses his chopsticks to collect his next bite, "I told you I would speak to Iroh about your training. He wants to see for himself where you are before he agrees to anything."

"Oh."

That... had not sounded nearly as reassured as it should have. Ozai looks up from his breakfast again. "Is there something else bothering you?"

The prince hunches into himself and stares down at his plate.

"Zuko?"

The boy takes a slow breath before relenting. "'You will learn respect,'" his son recites as he tentatively meets his eyes, "'and suffering will be your teacher.'"

Azula lowers her chopsticks to her plate and frowns at her brother. "That's not what Father said."

Ozai isn't sure what face he's making. It's good that Azula's attention is elsewhere, though, because it wouldn't surprise him if his expression largely mirrored the prince's pale dawning horror. Even if it wasn't quite as obvious as that, his sharp-eyed daughter would doubtlessly still see more than she should.

Zuko breaks their uncomfortable staring contest almost as soon as he'd inadvertently started it, ducking his head once more. "You, you mentioned yesterday that Agni's grace saved me," he rambles anxiously, "Was that... Was that what you were going to say? During the Agni Kai? Were you really going to --" The boy reaches for the left side of his face before aborting the motion, hands fisting in his lap.

The Fire Lord groans and slumps back into the cushions behind him as he scrubs his own hands over his unscarred and too-angular face.

Focus on the here and now. Take it one step at a time. Remember to breathe. The situation isn't beyond repair. He can do this.

...Agni's favored or not, it appears his perpetual bad luck is as attentive a companion as it has always been.

Both of the children are watching him when he lowers his hands. "What else did Liukshi show you?" he asks. Better that he find out now than be surprised by it later.

Azula's eyes narrow as she glances back and forth between Fire Lord and prince. Zuko squirms.

"You didn't accept my forfeiture. The Agni Kai went to first burn." The prince's fists tighten in his lap. "You banished me for my cowardice and dishonor. I think Liukshi might have meant to show me more, but then I woke up, and there wasn't a green turtle-duck with a weird face in my room, so --"

"Turtle-duck?" the princess interrupts, "I know the eye-face is off-putting, Dum-Dum, but Liukshi is clearly a messenger hawk."

...And that answers the question of whether or not Liukshi had visited Azula's dreams as well.

Zuko scowls at his sister. "I know what I saw, Azula! The spirit looked just like a turtle-duck, except it was green, and glowing, and had a large eye instead of a face!"

"You're blind!" Azula snaps back, "Liukshi is a hawk!"

"Enough," Ozai breaks into the argument, and it's obvious by the children's caught expressions that they had forgotten he was there to witness their squabbling, "Agni told me Liukshi was shattered, and Tui said spirits can take on different forms. Liukshi was a lemur-bat when he visited me." He'd wanted to wait so he could be sure he didn't say anything that he'd later regret confirming about Liukshi and his visions, but he thinks he can afford to say a little to smooth the conversation and get it back on track. "He showed me things as they had happened and things as they might have happened in another life but did not in this one. That's all you saw, Zuko. It was a possibility that did not and will not happen. You'll be better off not dwelling on it."

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"Yes, sir," comes the prince's rigid reply.

Ozai sighs. He can't ask for more than that. "And what did Liukshi show you, Azula?"

"Nothing of consequence if all Liukshi deals in are mere possibilities, Father," the girl says breezily as she returns to her meal. The dismissive tone fools neither Ozai nor Zuko and they both watch her as she finishes the statement, "I saw myself coronated Fire Lord under the light of Sozin's Comet."

Zuko glares at his sister. "You're not the heir, Azula."

"Not yet," the girl quips, "but if you don't shape up soon, Father might decide you're not the nation's best option." She swirls a fistful of blue fire over her palm, as if there had been any doubt about the implications behind her words.

Ozai, for his part, feels decidedly less conflicted about Agni sending Liukshi far, far away from the Fire Nation. Azula puts on a good show, but he remembers all-too-well what state his sister had been in after everyone she'd ever trusted had left her side. Liukshi has shown both of his children the lowest points of the lives Agni had spared them from. The pain, trauma, and knowledge of those experiences should never have touched them, not in any form, however mild.

"I'm not having Zuko removed from the line of succession," Ozai says, breaking the siblings' second argument in a single degree, "and it's time that this rivalry end. You are both my children. You will each have a role to play in the nation's future, but they will, by necessity, be different roles."

To Zuko, he says, "You are my heir and I have no intention to see that changed. Once you become Fire Lord, Azula will either be among your greatest assets or hindrances during your reign. I recommend ensuring she is always aware of how much you value her continued support."

To Azula, he adds, "For you to be Fire Lord would require two deaths or abdications." Both children wince at the blunt words. "There is no scenario under which that happens that is good for the Fire Nation. However, unlike your brother, you have a choice in what role you wish to take on to serve the nation. If you really want to spend your every day pouring over paperwork or stuck in council meetings, you'd make a good advisor to help balance your brother's idealism, but you've other options as well and the time to consider them."

To both children he says, "Yours will be the first generation in almost a century to grow up in a world at peace rather than war, but that peace will remain fragile long after the first handful of treaties establishing it are signed. If the two of you can't figure out how to form a lasting peace between yourselves, then neither of you will be able to continue the work I am beginning now."

The rest of the meal is a quiet affair, like an uneasy mirroring of its start, full of Zuko and Azula leveling frowns and scowls and considering squints at each other. If some of his son's and daughter's most confused and contemplative glances are occasionally cast in his direction instead of at each other, Ozai pretends not to notice.

----------------------------------------

Iroh worries his lotus tile between three fingers, carefully hidden behind his other hand and the sleeves of his best robes. This feels like a trap.

He has trained for his whole life to one day take the throne. He has not wanted it since the disaster of the Ba Sing Se Siege had turned personal and he had lost his son. How could he possibly lead his nation knowing he had led his own son to his death and his troops to a slaughter? After the siege had broken, he had abandoned his post and wandered the length of the Eastern Continent by foot. His aimless traveling had left him to confront the ruin his nation had left in the wake of its conquest, not the least of which were large swathes of land that bore the scars of his own past campaigns. How could a man so blind to the consequences of his own actions be trusted to guide an entire nation of men? And then, most damning of all, when news had finally reached him of his father's death and Ozai's ascension -- not as regent during Iroh's absence from the Mother Islands, but as the next Fire Lord -- all Iroh had felt was relief. In that moment, he had known by his own reaction that he was unfit for the throne and too weak for the crown.

But then...

Destiny is a funny thing.

And it might just have a vicious sense of humor all its own.

Iroh runs his thumb over the raised petals of the lotus tile and considers the eponymous throne of the room in which he now stands. A regent typically rules from the throne just as a true Fire Lord would, however, during the last meeting held within these walls, Ozai had cast aside centuries of tradition and sat at the table among the generals and sages of his council. It had only been a single meeting, but a long and important one during a time of change. Had his brother meant to set a new precedent? Or had Ozai only intended the aberration to last for the evening? Dozens of careful notes from his discussion with the Fire Lord this morning, but not one had been spared to address the expected seating arrangements.

Iroh flips the Pai Sho tile end-over-end as he weighs his options. It almost feels like being a general at the front again.

...He will not be holding an audience with any of the war council while he is acting as regent. That meeting is scheduled for later in the day, after Ozai's return. That leaves only the servants who might know there is anything to question, depending on how many of them also witnessed the last meeting. On the other hand, it would be preferable to avoid further wrong-footing or otherwise antagonizing the parties expecting an audience with the Fire Lord who will instead have to settle for speaking to a disgraced 'once-prince,' as the Sun Spirit is prone to phrasing it.

His fingers still as he reaches a decision.

While patience is a powerful weapon in the hands of the shrewd and caution is among the greatest tools of the prudent, hesitance is the folly born of a weak will.

Iroh settles into the cushions of the throne, slips the lotus tile back into its usual pocket, and hopes he has not already committed his first unwise action as regent. The curtain of flame flares upward from its bed of coals as he brings it under his control.

"I believe we are ready to begin," he addresses the waiting roomful of servants, "Let us allow our first guests to join us. Please, open the doors."