It takes him five weeks to realize that his brother went through the exact same ordeal. The cold walls that contained all his fluttering, useless thoughts…the flat bed that smelled of brokenness and despair and something resembling mildew…the glances the guards would throw him when they thought he wasn't looking. He would ignore them with his eyes—but his mind was continually focused on their expressions, their movements. He could feel their pity without even having to see it.
Pity. Waves of it, striking him again and again like a blasted ocean. He despised the feeling with a red-hot passion, a passion that nearly made him feel like he could roar fire again—it certainly made him want to.
Pity was seeping into his bones, now. He was submerged in it. It just kept building within those damned stone walls like water, slowly drowning him, slowly making him submit to it. He could not escape it. It was all around him, letting him breathe only for so long. How long would it take for the pity to claim its new patron saint?
He despised those walls. Those cold, unforgiving walls that simply watched him with blank eyes, watched him fall. Unless he'd already fallen. They didn't care—they were just there for the view, for the scene. For the play to play out, the actors all dull and hidden. Hidden glances from the guards, hidden hate from the Saint of Pity. Dull voices from the guards, dull eyes from the broken Lord. But the walls were entertained. At least, he liked to think so.
I hope I'm giving you a good show.
It takes him seven weeks to realize that he only truly, honestly misses one person. It takes him another week to realize he's missed her all along, and only another moment later to wonder why he didn't realize this before.
The loneliness is vaguely familiar, in a dreamlike sense. He is alone in a cage of metal and stone. Before, in that time before the world was his: he was alone in a cage of forced smiles and laughs that are too loud, fancy dresses that swirl and vanish and sparkle, beautiful days spent trying to escape it all the while wishing desperately to be in it. Her smile, her laugh, her beautiful black hair in the sun as she ran. He was never alone when he was with her—at least, not then. Never then. She was always there to stroke his cheek, cup his face in her palms, take him by the hand when he least expected it. The cage was no longer. The bird was free, and she became his wings.
Then the children.
He blamed the children. He blamed them for the new loneliness. The kind that was nights spent in complete silence between them, that was her eyes casting down to the ground as she whispered 'yes, my lord', that was her apparently-involuntary shifting of position to protect her son from his presence. Azula gave him hope; he thought she would become his new wings, to take him away from his solitude.
But she was a foolish child, all cruelty and brilliance and prodigy. She wasn't her, all smiles and sparkling eyes that he wished he could drown in, smooth and flawless face leaning against his hand and kissing it, soft neck that he could bury himself in when the world just became too damn much. No, she was a child. And he was still alone.
Just like he was now, watched by an audience of stones, mocked by a company of guards that never once looked him straight in the eye or spoke louder than a distracted and disconcerted mutter, supported by a filthy once-white pad that only barely allowed him sleep. Yes—he missed her. He missed his wife. He wanted her to run a finger down the side of his face with affection while whispering, "Why do you want so much, Ozai? You're enough for me."
The door creaks open with a shriek that seems to echo in his head. He does not look up—no more guards with their eyes downcast. No more sons demanding where their mothers are, only to find out their own fathers don't know. (Don't care? He doesn't know that either.) So he stares at a stone. A cold, damp stone that only watches him back without a smile, without a disconcerted expression, without uncomfortable words or covert, curious glances. Yes, he decides he likes these stones. They watch him—but they cannot judge him. And perhaps that is the most important thing of all.
The door to his cage opens, and now he looks up, eyes dulled by weeks of wishing and wanting and hating and missing. And all of the sudden, everything stops.
Everything stops.
The stones stop watching, he stops hating. The flat bed stops smelling. The pity stops drowning. All he can see is her, kneeling on the dirty floor in that beautiful dress, staring at him with those beautiful eyes, eyes—
--that are wide with pity. But he can't find it in himself to hate her for it—the missing, the wanting has taken it all away.
"Ursa," he croaks, his voice no longer commanding and noble and everything she deserved. Deserves.
"Ozai," she whispers. It is a wistful sort of whisper, the sort of whisper one breathes when they meet a dream. When they don't think it's real.
And he has a sudden urge to prove to her how real he is.
He lunges forward with a strength he didn't realize he had, she gasps and flinches, he's kneeling in front of her all of the sudden and less than a foot from her face, and craving her in a way he never realized he could have craved her. Not in bed, not close to him and his…it's a sort of craving that just wants her. Just her. Just Ursa, the beautiful woman who stole the heart he hadn't yet found and never gave it back. He's still taller than her, even kneeling, and he finds himself looking down into her aged, flawless face. Her skin has wrinkles, marks of smiles he hadn't shared beside her slightly-withered lips and ever-bright eyes. Bright eyes staring into his own, dulled ones with a nostalgia and regret and sadness that tears him apart.
"You came back," he says softly. A quiet, hidden smile comes over her face.
"Zuko found me."
"Obviously." He feels a bit of his old self coming back: the Fire Lord everyone thought was gone. "I meant—" His audience of stones is waiting with baited breath, on the edges of their seats. He can feel it. "—I meant you came back…to me."
It's hard for him to say those words. He was never really a romantic, as much as Ursa was. And his emotions were never a part of his actions, they never made their way to his behavior. They were always hidden, separate, locked away like they weren't a part of him at all. Foreign intruders in his body. A sickness he could not cure. She knew this. She had always known this. And so her soft smile only grew wider, still weak with insecurity and worry. Worry about what? he wondered. Worry about me? She was always worried about him. Worried about his reputation, worried about his time with his family, worried about his children, his work ethic, his decisions, his sleeping, his eating, his health, his heart. The heart that she knew she held, and could do nothing about. She couldn't give it back, she knew—he would never take it. It was a burden she would carry for eternity.
"I couldn't just walk around the palace—around our courtyards—without thinking of you," she says. She does not say how she had been thinking of him the whole way there, that long ride from the Earth Kingdom, how she had asked about him within minutes of her arrival, how she had left to go see him in the dead of night after her first dinner back home, when no one could see her go. She does not say how her unsure heart fluttered with worry and worry and worry as she half-ran to the prison, how it wondered what it would find, and wondered what, Dear Agni, she should expect.
He finds that it is getting hard to breathe. The stone walls are dead silent around them. The cage door is open, the cell door is open, and the freedom of the hallway is beyond to let the flickering firelight cast over them all—but he does not even think of leaving her. Not now. He cannot. He would never be free anyway: not without his wings.
She lifts a hand to his dirty face, hidden in shadow beneath his long black hair. He feels her soft skin, more callused than he remembers it, but warm and welcome all the same. And all of the sudden, he can breathe again. And he does.
"What has happened to you?" she breathes, and that beautiful face is sad in a way he has never seen before. "You nearly conquered the whole world, Ozai."
He turns away—into her hand. "I know I failed," he whispers. "I'm sorry, Ursa."
She shakes her head vehemently, now clasping his face in both her hands and moving closer imperceptibly. "No, no, no, Ozai. You were never meant to conquer the world." He glances up, opens his mouth to protest—but a single pale finger is placed to his lips, and he is silenced instantly by the only woman who ever could. "You were meant for better things, if only you could have seen them," she whispers with tears gathering in her eyes. "If only you could have seen them."
He does not understand (he never did) but he knows that she means well for him, and that means more that she could ever know.
He knows that.
"Ursa," he says quietly, brushing hair away from her eyes with a hand so gentle it almost feels like it is not his own. Tears run down those smooth, pale cheeks. "My flower. Stay with me."
Suddenly, with a rush that feels suspiciously like desperation, she kisses him sweetly (Agni, so sweetly) on the lips. He melts in her hands; but it is over too quickly, and she is already behind the closed cage door.
"I cannot," she murmurs into his dark, cold, lonely corner. "There are others who will wonder where I am. But I will bring you anything you wish, if you wish for anything."
"I wish for you," he says immediately. Later, his mind would wonder if he was going mad—for that was something he had said so sincerely, it felt strangely foreign and colorful on his tongue. "You're enough for me."
She turns to face him, one hand on the door, illuminated in the flickering firelight of the freedom of the hall beyond. And for one moment, he sees the bright smile, so alive in its light, that he had handed his heart to so many years ago.
"And you are enough for me."
Then the door closes, Ozai is once more left to drown in pity and hatred and the polite applause of his audience of cold, heartless stone walls.