Disclaimer: No way is this mine.
A/N: Contains VERY DARK, ADULT MATERIAL. Proceed only if you're okay with that. Don't say I didn't warn you.
Bitter Straw
His first night in prison, Ozai smelled it. Damp leaves and fresh soil, like a forest in springtime. His bending gone and his crown removed, he worried slightly that his mind was going next. After all, there were no leaves or soil in this dungeon.
The second night, he tasted it, waking up to the distinct sensation that he'd been chewing on grass. This was, of course, not only impossible but also ridiculous. He was the Phoenix King, and he didn't chew on grass like some kind of hippo-cow. He spat and rubbed his mouth, but the taste didn't go away. When his prison gruel was served, he actually enjoyed replacing the dusty taste of hay with something else.
The third night, he heard it, and now he knew he was going mad.
"Hey. Ozai."
The former Fire Lord was incredibly disappointed that it had only taken a few days in confinement to break his mind, but he guessed that the loss of his bending might have something to do with it.
"Yeah you, you piece of shit. I'm talking to you."
Ozai growled and looked around. Nothing, only blackness, and he couldn't summon even the smallest light. Apparently, this hallucination was auditory only.
"You oughtta be dead, you know that? Aang should have splattered your brains on the ground."
Aang? That was the Avatar's name, wasn't it?
"Are you grateful? You better be fucking grateful."
The next words came so close to Ozai's ear that he flinched, but there was no warm breath on his cheek. "Well ARE YOU?"
Ozai didn't answer the hallucination, but squeezed his eyes shut tightly in the dark and breathed in the scent of burning houses.
The fourth night, he saw it. A young man, possibly around Zuko's age, sitting in his cell across from him. Ozai had never seen the boy before. Tall and lanky, with a mop of brown hair and bronze skin. The boy's clothes were a misbegotten patchwork of ill-fitting rags. He was weirdly illuminated in the dark, like he was emitting a cold light.
"Nice cell you've got here. Nicer than mine was."
Ozai glared at the hallucination. It was the same voice from the other night.
"I see you've got a blanket. Nice of them to give it to you." The boy shook his head, and a look of grief passed across his face. "You… are lucky."
Ozai scowled. Only a nonbender with no ambition would find his situation at all fortunate. Keeping in mind, of course, that this boy was not real and rather was a figment of Ozai's bending-deprived mind.
"You don't know who I am. You wouldn't. But your people destroyed mine." The boy snarled, his look of grief turning quickly into rage. "Say something!"
Ozai didn't, and the boy shot to his feet and took a threatening step forward. "Say something! Say you're sorry! Say you're not sorry! Say you wish you were dead!"
Ozai closed his eyes against the hallucination, but the cold light seemed to shine through his eyelids. He could smell dampness and mold.
Feeling a sudden chill, Ozai opened his eyes again, and found the boy's hand around his neck. There was no sensation of pressure or pain. Still, Ozai swung his arm to bat the boy's limb aside, and his hand went right through the boy like he was a sunbeam.
The boy looked surprised for a moment, then removed his incorporeal hand. "I can't…" The expression went back into the familiar anger. "Doesn't matter. I'll be back."
He left, then, and took the smell of the lake with him.
The fifth night, Ozai was not at all surprised to find that he felt it. The boy was carrying twin tiger hook swords, and waking to the feeling of one of them pressed to the back of his neck was all-too-real.
Ozai breathed, and felt the empty gap where nothing flickered.
"You stay there. You stay there." The boy was shaking. "You stay right there, you scum."
Ozai could have overpowered him normally, bending or no. The boy was a coward, sneaking up on him as he slept. He was going to be killed by a coward. A hallucination of a coward.
"I was thinking," said the boy, and swallowed. "You… you took everything from me. Everything. And now you've lost everything. Almost everything. You still have your life."
"Then take it," spat Ozai. He was tired of this, and he wanted the idiot child to stop skirting the point.
"I want to. Don't get me wrong, I really want to. But I can't. It's part of… I just can't." The boy scowled, then sneered. "But there's something else you have. Your dignity."
"I have no title, boy."
"I didn't say title, I said dignity. Don't think I can't tell! The way you sit there and look at me. You think you're so much better, don't you? But you're not. You're shit."
Then the boy undid his pants, and with his one hook sword sliced open Ozai's prison uniform. All the while, the other hook lay against Ozai's neck, its curve against his skin almost like a caress.
Ozai grit his teeth and tensed. He knew what was happening. But he would not submit easily. He lashed out with a leg, and even without bending it should have swept the boy's feet out from under him.
But his foot contacted nothing. It was like the boy was made of mist.
"Sorry, Fire Lord," the boy laughed nastily, and Ozai felt his weight on his back. "You can't fight a ghost." Then, without so much as a missed beat, the boy drove into him.
By breathing the right way, a firebender could make their skin as hot as a burning iron, could make touching it unbearable. A firebender could never be violated like this.
The air smelled like blood and flame, and Ozai knew he was not a firebender.
"Hui, my uncle," said the boy, between grunts. "Sato the butcher. San the tailor. Dae the carpenter. Wu and Jung, who grew the best peaches in the Earth Kingdom. Eun my grandmother. My mother, Fen. Gu, my father. Chung, my older brother. My classmate, Min..."
He continued to list names, and Ozai tried to ignore him, tried to imagine that he, like the previous hallucinations, was just a dream. But the pain, that was real. Pain meant it was real. Agni, it was real.
Ozai could see the flames. He could smell the smoke, and feel the heat of the burning village. The screams of the dying still rang in his ears.
Then the boy leaned down and half-snarled, half-screamed in Ozai's ear: "And me, Jet!"
Then the boy got up, and the cell was empty and dark again. "Huh. Your son was better." He looked at Ozai contemptuously, and removed the sword from the former Fire Lord's neck. "I'll see you tomorrow, Ozai."
Ozai sat up and watched as the boy faded into nothing, and gathered the rags of his prison uniform around him.
It was cold.