Prologue - The Girl in the Photograph
"God, she's ravishing," comments the man.
His eyes are fixated on the photograph on Ozai's wall. They had drifted past the other beauties, and other signed posters or expensive decorations. No, that photograph is not placed in the center of the wall, but it sure is the center of attention. The fancy back rooms of the casino tend to get the same compliments, and that photograph always is one of them.
"She'd look better if she were smiling though," he adds without a care as he tosses the weathered dice in the palm of his hand.
He looks away, but the still eyes of the lifeless girl remain looking downwards. She is beautiful, with chestnut hair that is mussed from being twisted too frequently and buttermilk skin. Her lips are this bright pink that clashes too much with the Technicolor surroundings, and her eyes are a little too big for her face.
Maybe it is the dress, the black dress that hugs her perfect body, with the opaque black but the sheer bosom. The cute little bow that was clearly ripped from another, pink dress that looks as discordant as everything else in the frame.
Oh, and how somber she is. Somber but sexual with her lips open and her posture even more open.
It is a photograph that would not sell well, and would not earn above a C in a photography class. It's ugly.
But God, she is ravishing is every single person's response as they stare at it for a few minutes, and maybe wonder about who she is, because she isn't the wife, or the daughter, and none of them want her to just be some stripper or plastic, interchangeable model.
People want her to be special.
And they would be right. Because the girl in the photograph is very special.
Chapter One / Hour One - Antebellum
Ty Lee opened her lips and closed them again. She was not going to stand for that. Not for her boyfriend, the beautiful boy who took her on his motorcycle and promised her the world to have just gambled her away to some stranger. That was not how the world worked, because slavery was abolished in some year she forgot because she was always texting under her skirt in history class.
"How interesting," the young woman commented as if this was not so crazy.
Well, right now Ty Lee had two options. The first was to act perfectly kind and polite, sweet as usual, until all of this blew over, and logical people let her go because she was clearly a bystander and did not deserve this. The second was to let hell break loose from herself, which was viable, but she was not so sure about when she was so shocked and a little worried that this was going to turn out like some low budget horror movie on Netflix.
Sweetness. Yeah, she decided to start out with the sugar because nobody could hurt her like that, and nobody was really crazy enough to be serious about this.
She had just been gambled away and she knew it was illegal.
How interesting.
Oh god, because that girl was walking towards her and Ty Lee was trying to think about what to say or where to go and coming up short.
An hour before the chain of events that ended up with an interesting prize began, a nineteen year old girl was sitting at a desk that was much too large for her. She might as well have been just as small as she was in the picture tucked away on it of herself sitting there, grinning with her dad. And she was holding a conversation in place of Ozai.
"So, Mr. Hiroaki finally bit the dust, huh?" the young woman asked and the much older man with the disheveled suit on in front of her nodded.
He was uncertain why exactly she was taking messages for her father, but she was quite good at it, with her hands clasped on the waxed hardwood table.
"Yes. It was a really bad accident," he said as he rubbed his nose and she could see the thousand juvenile movements. It made her wonder just why anyone would have him doing the talking when clearly he and his friends were capable enough to do the killing without getting caught.
"He was such a dear friend of my family. How unfortunate," Azula said disinterestedly and the man in front of her bit his lower lip in discomfort. More tells; she almost wanted to gag. Azula glanced up at the actual secretary behind her and purred, "Send my condolences. And maybe a gift to his wife? She probably likes jewelry."
The messenger licked his lower lip and Azula could tell he was thinking about the jewelry portion of her sentence, but it took her exactly one glance to make him realize that it would be best if he did not mention the fee. She was contemplated pushing things a bit further when the door opened and the messenger flinched.
"Are you Ichiro?" asked the man in his early twenties who looked more suited for that chair than the girl who could not help but swivel in it with gentle pushes of her toes.
"He is, and he is just leaving," Azula said and Ichiro did not question that, not having a single desire to get caught up in anybody else's business. "Mr. Hiroaki has had an unfortunate accident this evening. Jin is taking care of our suitably timed and coldly caring gift."
Zuko squinted at her for a moment. Despite his height and muscular build, none of them fit that chair very well, but he thought he had just fucked up two jobs at the same time.
"You were supposed to be waiting at the restaurant for me and Katara," Zuko said with a loose gesture towards the unimpressed girl beside him.
Azula leaned back and she no longer was laughably small for her father's seat. "I have absolutely no need for a babysitter. Because I am an adult, and, as you can see, I just took care of that very well."
"You're nineteen. That's not an adult," Katara snipped.
"You're not part of this discussion, or this family," Azula replied with a somewhat murderous smile.
Zuko rubbed his face. "Thirteen hours. Our father's flight arrives in thirteen hours. Can you not die and stay within my line of sight for eight hours?"
Azula shrugged and he groaned.
"Oh, come on, thirteen hours is a very long time, and a very unlucky number," Azula said sweetly and Katara crossed her arms. "So much could happen, and well, we have a wonderful family saying about luck that you just may recall..."
Zuko could feel the migraine. He really could.
"Father has gotten you tickets for Cirque du Soleil, and Katara and I will also being going. We can pretend not to know you."
"Oh, how impressive. It will be like when I'm twelve and go to the movies with my friend for the first time," Azula remarked, rolling her golden eyes. "That isn't even a sexy show. If he wanted to keep me busy he would send me somewhere with more half-dressed women."
Zuko turned his palms up at his girlfriend and she had nothing to offer. It was the best they were going to get.
It was a cheap matinee to a cheap show and Ty Lee was pretending to be impressed.
Her boyfriend had just taken her to Las Vegas for the first time and she was thrilled beyond belief. It was the kind of place that some people really dream about, and others look down on, but everybody knows about, and Ty Lee has lived in a place that nobody has ever heard of for her entire life.
She looked pretty out place with her braid held tight against the back of her head by a nicked pink hair clip, and straggling strands of hair in her face, but she was beautiful. Ty Lee knew that, but she also was uncomfortably aware of the fact that everybody around her was pretty beautiful too.
They had not been dating for very long, but he told her that he wanted to go on a trip, and it was not really that far. She always wanted to see the city, and he was handsome and charming and she was so easily dazzled.
So easily dazzled that she made him watch three sessions of the dancing fountains outside of the Bellagio with the Paris hotel jutting up behind them as he twitched nervously with his hands in his pockets and waited for her to be done, telling her they were all really the same. But they were not.
The show was two hours long and Ty Lee had rarely sat still for that long. She liked to move, liked her freedom. But she also had always wanted to see those performers, and even though no one was on the stage, she was gazing at it and thinking of the pictures of people hanging upside down in beautiful costumes, contorting, twisting.
Her boyfriend cleared his throat again uneasily.
"Are you okay?" Ty Lee asked and she crossed her fingers. She did not want to miss the show, not for the world.
"I'm fine," he said in his gravelly voice that made her knees a little weak, and so she let herself breathe easily, and allowed the show to begin.
It was brilliant.
Azula disappeared exactly half an hour into the show. Because apparently she was under the impression that this dangerous city was a playground for her.
So, yes, it was exactly like when she went to the movies with her friend for the first time. Zuko was always baffled by the fact that she was the perfect kid. Perfect grades, every extracurricular without time travel, sweet and polite, more popular than him; they went to boarding school together. But she had an insatiable itch to taste life that he also had.
But Zuko had less slack. So he knew he would be facing more repercussions for irresponsibility, even though she should be responsible for this as well.
"Where would she go?" Katara asked as they stood in the lobby of the Aria, dabbing her wrists with the ice from her cold drink. "You know her."
"Not anywhere gross or dangerous. She's awful but she's also a snob."
"So that actually cuts off a lot of places. Good," Katara said, uncertain if she's being honest or not.
He was wrong that time. Because Azula had made plans that night.
Ty Lee thought she was just getting drinks at intermission, laughing, happy, her same, vibrant self, and she was floating on such a high that she did not fully pick up on the fact that her boyfriend was now leading her somewhere quite unsettling with some important but sleazy looking people.
"What's happening?" she asked as she watched the quiet conversation of the men and the two blond women.
"I came here to play a private poker game. It's uh, some of the stakes can't be monitored and..."
"Some of the stakes like Jigsaw stakes, or..." Okay, Ty Lee did not know enough about this. "I'm so..."
"Don't worry. I'll win. I'm great at it," he said and Ty Lee was not going to be flowery and submissive.
"If you're so great at it, why are you in debt?" she hissed with her nostrils flared.
"Because I was so great at it that I played against really good people," he replied and Ty Lee looked at the door.
"I gotta go, okay? I don't want to miss it. I don't want to miss the show." She glanced towards the door and saw a labyrinthine hallway that she did not remember walking down.
This was not good. This was very not good.