Fire Court

My life was lived in the Fire Court. Anything outside it was foreign and inferior, from the architecture to the mechanics to the people. It went beyond the royal and high-class noble's general distaste for the commoners: the nobility of the Earth Kingdom were as stupid and spoiled as the rest. More even, to actually believe that they were safe from the inevitable Fire Nation victory, that we would spare them simply because of their "noble standing." Those that spared were used as puppets to glove our iron fist. Why waste man-power on controlling the Earth Kingdom when their own misguided trust in their incompetent leaders will let us achieve the same thing?

Such was the mantra I learned from birth: "I am Fire Nation. I am superior." –all of our citizens have had this notion instilled in them, but mine was more important than theirs. There is the Fire Nation thought-process again; mine is superior to theirs; but it was, in a way. I am – was – the heir to the throne. The first-born male of my father's line, and I was proud of this fact.

Now I stand outside the Fire Court, first silently disgraced, then later, publicly denounced and labeled as a traitor and a criminal. Could it be that refusing Agni Kai was the beginning of my reign, instead of the end of it? That I have moved this far from my past?

I remember Azula tormenting me. Iroh's quiet explanation of her psychosis and her thirst for power. When I look at my sister, she looks just like my mother, but for her eyes and the jut of her jaw – those two features along with her ambition and her ruthlessness are my father's alone. Does he know that she was the one who drove my mother to her suicide? She was scared of Azula, who conspired and plotted so insidiously at the age of 12. I sometimes wonder if Azula contributing to my mother's death wasn't quite as indirect as suicide. It is common knowledge that blood doesn't wash out of limestone tiling in the Fire Court very well; but which of the bloodstains is hers?

She offers me her hand.

"Well, Zuzu?"

I miss the Fire Court, but when I am back in it, will I miss my freedom and my honor even more?

All eyes are on me, so I do what is instinctual.

I fight.