TITLE: By The Light Of The Moon: A Story Of Redemption
SUMMARY: Ozai/Yue. Yeah, you read that right. Ozai doesn't have much more to do in his jail cell than stare out of his window at the moon.
AUTHOR'S NOTES: Purely out of curiosity I did a search to see if there were any Ozai/Yue stories. Given this fandom, I thought there was sure to be something. But zero hits. So, obviously, something had to be done, and the duty fell to me. Even though it's sort of a crack pairing, the tone of the story is serious. Please please please review. And thanks for checking it out.
DISCLAIMER: Avatar: The Last Airbender, its plot and characters, etc. belong to Nickelodeon and the shows creators Michael DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko.
Ozai didn't get many visitors.
If you didn't count the guards, then he didn't get any.
He preferred it this way – he'd rather not be reminded of a world outside of his cell.
His son kept him in the Royal Tower. It wasn't as secure as the Boiling Rock, and Ozai felt that the decision was an insult, rather than the respectful honor Fire Lord Zuko had intended. Only the most prominent of prisoners were held in the Royal Tower. It was near the palace, and it overlooked the ocean. But Ozai could only see his own helplessness, his inability to escape, and assumed that was what Zuko saw as well.
His indignation fizzled away, and he concluded that metal bars were metal bars, so it didn't really matter which institution his son had buried him in. He had no hope of liberating himself; he was just a man. He wasn't even strong anymore – the empty calories they fed him in equally meager portions left him fatigued, and his muscles atrophied as his spirit withered.
Azula was his only hope. His beautiful daughter. His deadly little princess.
Zuko had visited Ozai exactly twice: once to ask where his mother was, and once to rain furious outrage on his father for what had become of his sister. He spat vitriolic blame on Ozai for the monster Azula had been, and for the shattered mess she was now. "It's on you," his son had whispered in grave accusation as he left the room.
But Ozai took hope in this. His precious Azula would be well again, and she would free them, and she would vindicate them both. So he waited.
The days were long. He felt the sun's rays hit his arm as they poured in through the high, barred window in his cell. He hated it. He hated the memory of how the sun used to make him feel powerful. Now it barely made him feel warm through the thick concrete of the tower.
Ozai hated the sun. He hated the activity he heard outside his window and outside his cell. He saw in his mind's eye all of the people of the world living their free lives. All of the people that would have been his subjects. Waterbenders. Earthbenders. Maybe even airbenders before long.
So he slept through the day. He covered his eyes with his arm and he slept through the sun's hours. He woke up after dusk, when the world began to die. He lived when the world was dead.
His eyes were much more accustomed to the dark now.
He saw the world turn outside his window. He picked out constellations – ones he had learned, and ones he created himself. He saw them come and go. He thought of Sozin's Comet – how spectacular it had looked as it sped through the sky. Now it meant nothing to him, nothing but failure.
Ozai began to realize that an imprisoned man's life was only tolerable if it was spent in hopeful anticipation. It was constructed upon intervals of looking forward. He looked forward to his one daily meal. He looked forward to getting tired enough to fall asleep. He looked forward to visceral dreams of pleasant bygone days – days of power, and days of laughing children in the sand.
And he began to look forward to the moon.
It happened slowly. At first the white orb made him think only of his brother's betrayal, of his nation's failure to take the Northern Water Tribe City, of his daughter's defeat at the hands of a waterbender.
But then he began to see her beauty.
And he would wait for the moon.
His heart rose when he saw the first silvery hint hit the wall across from his window. He watched her rise, and then the sky would grow even darker as she disappeared across the other side. He watched her wax and wane. He missed her when she was new, and he reveled when she was full.
He felt full too. Full of light.
Her quiet glow made him feel warmer than the cruel and harsh light of the sun.
The moon was beautiful.
He hadn't felt such delight since the early days of his marriage with Ursa, when he would alternate between insatiable for her body and perfectly happy holding her hand. Nothing mattered as long as she was next to him. And then his joy at the births of his children. He felt echoes of that joy again as every night he saw the moon born once more.
He grew unsatisfied with the few minutes that he could spy her from where he lay. So he would quietly flip his cot vertical, and would perilously climb to the top so that he could see out of the high window at the horizon.
He felt the ocean breeze caress his face, and he saw the moon cast her long radiance over the water.
And he saw that it wasn't just the moon that was beautiful, but it was the stars, and the sky, and the sea. The waves on the sandy beach. The opossum-pelicans that landed on the ledge of the tower – their soft feathers, inquisitive eyes, and graceful wings when in flight. The proud Fire Nation architecture of the neighborhood around the palace, nestled in the old volcano.
He watched the lights in the houses go off as the families in them retired to bed. He thought of the families.
He thought of his own family: his father murdered. His wife banished. His brother and son traitors. His daughter mad.
Something had clearly gone wrong.
He asked the moon why he was living now so sorry of a life.
"Suffer," she whispered. She commanded.
Did she curse him? Or was this a prescription for healing?
Either way: he suffered.
Pain made inroads in his heart. He felt anger. And jealousy. And regret. And he tasted the cold saltiness of his own tears.
He felt more, and more intensely, than he ever had before.
"Make it stop," he begged the moon.
He thought he saw her smile.
And then he began to see a face in the moon.
He worried he was growing as imbalanced as his daughter, but that's what he thought he saw.
And then he knew that it wasn't psychosis – it wasn't his loneliness, or a mind driven wild by regret – the moon was alive, and she was looking back at him.
She was at her fullest and she called out his name. Her tone was piercing, but he liked the sound of his name in her voice.
"Moon spirit," he responded, half-questioning.
"No," she laughed bitterly. "The spirits will not talk to you, Ozai. You are an abomination."
"Then what are you? Who are you?"
"You killed me, Ozai."
"That's impossible: I've killed no one," he argued confidently.
"And yet the blood is on your hands. So much blood. So much misery…"
He called out to her, but she said no more.
He was forced to think about what he had heard.
He had never questioned his grandfather's war. His wife, his brother, and his son had all interrogated him about it, but still he had never questioned it. It became more than a war to him. It was an utopist vision. He fought it for his ancestors, for his family, for his nation. For Fire.
But now fire meant so little to him. Without the ability to firebend, and a criminal in the Fire Nation, what value did identifying with that element have for him?
In fact it made him sick.
Had he really tried to take over the world?
And now he was the king of a frail cot, of a tiny metal room, and of a barred window not even as wide as his shoulders.
He thought of the thousands of people killed and imprisoned at his command. He now knew what it was to be a prisoner, what it felt like to lose the people in your life.
He suffered.
"Speak to me again," he pleaded to the celestial sphere.
For six full moons he pled with her to hear her voice once again, and for six full moons she ignored him. He felt her watching him, but she said nothing, she whispered nothing, not even another curse.
So on the seventh full moon he hid. He didn't climb up to his window. He didn't even let the reflected silver light touch his skin.
She sang his name to him. A haunting, taunting melody. Scornful. Afflicted.
He ignored it. He didn't yield.
The song grew frustrated, until she appeared before him in his cell, hovering.
Startled, he jumped backwards against the wall and watched the sparkling, translucent apparition with guarded excitement.
"You missed me," he guessed, and for the first time since his defeat at the hands of the Avatar he felt triumphant.
She looked away angrily, but didn't deny it.
"Do you know who I am now?" she asked.
He took in her curious white hair, her youth, the colors and style in which she was dressed. "You're the daughter of the king of the Northern Water Tribe."
"My name was Yue…" she embellished softly, the lamentation evident.
"You died in the siege."
"After your Commander Zhao killed the moon spirit, I gave my life to restore it. It was your brother, General Iroh, who advised me to do it."
"You gave your life for a spirit?" Ozai asked derisively.
She shook her lovely head, and her white tresses cascaded off her shoulders. "I gave my life for my people. You wouldn't understand," Yue enunciated pointedly.
She watched him with sadness in her eyes.
She was a princess. Exactly what a princess should be, Ozai thought with a heavy heart. Somewhere the king of the Northern Water Tribe was standing over an icy grave, mourning the loss of his beautiful daughter. But Ozai still had Azula. She still had a future.
"If you're dead, how can I see you?" he asked, turning his thoughts away from such painful subjects.
"I didn't die a natural death. And your family has always had a special connection to the spirit world. You've always been blind to that part of yourself."
He stared at her. "You hate me."
"Yes," she hissed. "I had a life. A family. A boy that I loved…" A boy who had nearly forgotten about her, who no longer looked up at the night sky and thought of her, or searched for her. A boy whose heart had healed, and who had moved on. All she had was this broken man – the greatest threat her world had ever known, now reduced to a faded, unkempt monkey-rat. But he looked up at the night sky and thought of her, he waited all day for her to appear, and spent all night watching her. She sighed: "But there is no place for hate where I dwell. How can I float in the sky if I have hate weighing me down?"
"Then you'll forgive me?"
"Perhaps." She looked him up and down. "Some day. You'll never deserve my forgiveness, you'll never be able to earn it, not after what you've done to our world. But you may get it."
She began to grow less bright.
Ozai stood suddenly and took a step towards her. "No. Please. Forgive me or don't – whatever you do, just don't go."
There was a hint of a smile on her lips before they turned down in sadness: "I have to go. I don't belong here."
"Yue!" he protested again, as she began to flicker.
She froze: her name, spoken after so long seeming forgotten, ricocheted through her. "Are you a changed man?" she demanded, turning back to him with intensity.
He raised his head proudly. "Why should I change?"
"You've lost everything through no one's fault but your own, and you don't think you should change?"
He swallowed. "I think I am-I…might be…beginning to change."
"Prove it three times and I'll come again," she promised, and then she disappeared.
The task felt impossible. He wasn't in a position to prove anything to anybody. All he did was sleep, and eat, and look out the window. He was never tested. He didn't face any decisions.
Ozai was forced to do exactly what he had always done: stare outside. He began to know every characteristic of everything he could see. How they looked in the winter, and the summer, and the spring, and the fall. How they looked in the rain, and the sun, and through the fog. He saw the boats at the marina rise and fall with the tides. He saw how the tides changed with the date. He learned to judge the time of night by the level of the water. He found the waves comforting, and he spent hours upon hours imagining them breaking against his ankles.
It was a cloudy night, and the sky was obscured. Ozai was lying on his cot, staring at the ceiling, and hoping for a storm.
At first he thought he imagined it. A whisper.
He sat up suddenly. "Yue? Yue?"
But then, illuminated in blue light, a small figure stepped in front of him. "Father?" she asked in a hushed tone. The blue flame in her hand flourished, and he saw her face. She was haggard, emaciated. Her golden eyes were dull.
"Azula? What are you doing here?" He rose and walked over to the barred edge of his cell.
She smiled. "I escaped, Father. I came straight for you."
She found the door and whipped out a key with which to unlock it.
It was all happening so fast; he didn't know what to think. "How? How did you escape?"
"I bided my time. I'll explain more later. We must hurry," she whispered urgently.
She had grown into a young woman. But the few years had not been kind to her.
Azula quietly opened the door and stood in front of him. "Quick, this way."
Ozai put his hands on his daughter's shoulders. "How are you?"
"Father, we have to hurry!"
He looked deep into her troubled eyes. "You are not well, Azula."
She turned her face away shamefully. "The guards will be here, soon. It won't be long before they realize that I have gotten away."
He sighed. He knew what this moment was. "I'm not going," Ozai declared.
Her eyes grew wide. "Daddy, no! You don't know what you're saying." She grabbed his hand and began to pull him.
He raised one hand and laid it on top of her head, gently caressing her hair. "Your brother loves you, and he wants to help you. You should let him help you get better."
She scoffed in cold and violent fury. "I hate him."
"No, you don't. And if you do, you shouldn't. He is stronger than all of us."
She took a frightened step away from him. "I have to go. Please, come with me."
"I love you, my daughter. It's time I did what was right for you. Guards! Guards!" He called for them as loudly as he could.
Azula ran.
Ozai sent word to his son through the guards that he wanted to see him.
Zuko made him wait. It was a month before he came.
"What?" the new Fire Lord asked without ceremony.
"Was your sister apprehended?"
"It took the entire standing army and most of the imperial firebenders, but yes." Zuko frowned, and then took a deep breath. "I heard about what you did. Why?"
"For Azula." And for Yue, he didn't say. And also because there was a part of him that was too proud to be fugitive, he had to admit to himself.
"You could have been free."
"I'll never be free," Ozai responded heavily. Even if he could roam about at will, he would always be a prisoner of his past.
"Why did you want to see me?" Zuko demanded.
"To make sure that you were still trying to heal your sister. You were right before when you said that she is how she is because of me. Help her, Zuko."
"Uncle never gave up on me. I'm not going to give up on Azula."
"I would like to see my brother. Will you ask him if he will come here to see me?"
"I will pass the word on," Zuko replied cautiously. His father seemed changed, but was it an act? What was he planning? "If that's all…" Zuko posed, turning towards the door.
"No, there is something else."
Zuko swiveled back. "What?"
"Have you found your mother yet?"
Zuko darkened. "No."
"I was telling the truth before, when I told you that I didn't know where she was. But it recently occurred to me that there was a place in the Earth Kingdom she often spoke of."
Zuko didn't believe in this "recent" thought, but Ozai had only remembered this detail about Ursa when he had begun to think more and more about his younger years, before he had set his ambition on the crown.
A few weeks later, Iroh came to visit.
They exchanged uncomfortable pleasantries.
"I should have come to see you earlier, Brother" Iroh said, guilt weighing down his tone.
"I would not expect you to treat me as a brother would," Ozai replied. "I have never treated you as a brother."
"I tried to be there for your son the way I was never there for you. You didn't know our mother as I did. You had only the influence of our father, and he was a hard man. But I was busy. I had a military career. I had a wife and a son."
"You've done no wrong by me," Ozai said sternly. "Except the obvious, of course" he added. He was uncomfortable with Iroh's regret and with Iroh's emotion. "I didn't ask to see you to speak of our family."
"No?"
Ozai wetted his dry lips. "I wanted to ask you about the princess of the Northern Water Tribe."
Iroh raised his eyebrows. "You called me here to ask me about Princess Yue?"
"She died to save the moon spirit?"
"Yes. She was invested with life from the moon spirit when she was born. She was able to give it back in turn. What is your interest?"
Ozai ignored the question. "What was she like?" he asked in almost a whisper.
Iroh didn't answer at first, trying to gauge his brother's motive. He couldn't decipher Ozai's stoic face. "She was quiet, but dignified. Incredibly selfless. Incredibly brave."
Ozai reacted, but Iroh didn't know what the reaction meant.
"She was beautiful?"
"Like a delicate snowflake."
"I've never seen snow…" Ozai mused.
"You wouldn't like it," his brother replied confidently.
"I might." He took a deep breath. "And when she died?"
"The moon spirit reanimated as the life left her body. Princess Yue's spirit floated up into the sky and became one with the moon before my very eyes."
Ozai's brow was creased. "You convinced her to do it. It's your fault that she's dead."
"She knew what she had to do," Iroh responded calmly, his head hung in grief for the poor girl.
"And do you know who the boy was that she loved?"
"What is this all about?"
"Please, if you know, tell me."
"It was the boy from the Southern Water Tribe, I believe. Sokka."
Ozai growled. Yes, he knew the one. The boy who had mocked him. Of course it would be him.
In the months after Iroh's visit, Ozai grew hungry for more company. The long hours seemed far lonelier than they had before. Seeing his brother and his children had ignited something in him.
But no one was coming.
Least of all Yue. He could never prove that he had changed – he could never be good enough for her to visit him once again. Hearing an account of her death only reinforced his sense of responsibility. What he had done to her could never be undone.
He was too proud to ask his family to visit him. He didn't want them to see him as pathetic. He didn't want to give Zuko the satisfaction.
And he was afraid. He was afraid to apologize. He didn't know how.
He turned again to his window. To his bird friends. To his beautiful moon. To watching the tides.
He saw Yue's face. She didn't smile, but she was no longer angry at him.
He reached his arm out through the bars to feel the brilliance of the moon on his skin, but it was nothing like the touch of another human.
He knew that he could never have another chance with his family. But he felt like Yue could give him something new. Everything in his life was burnt and stale, but she was fresh and new. Even though she was dead, she was life in him.
He called out to her, cried out to her as he felt tears running down his cheeks.
Sometimes she would whisper his name in response.
He felt empowered by her. He longed to see Yue again, but even her moon self gave him strength.
He tried to tap into the spiritual side of himself. If he could enter the spirit world, then he might be able to see her.
He failed. Time and again.
But he felt something, inside.
A few years passed. When he was ready, he invited Yue to come see him. "I have something to show you," he promised. "This is it."
He was speechless at her beauty when she finally did reappear to him. "How I have longed to see you again."
"I know," she said softly, a hint of a smile on her face.
He stared at her so long and so hard that she would have blushed if she had still been alive. "What did you want to show me?" she asked, trying not to let herself get swept away by flattery and attention.
Ozai pointed at his tin cup.
She didn't understand, until a column of water began to rise out of the cup, following the motions of his hands.
Yue's eyes grew wide. "Wh-you're-you're waterbending!"
He nodded. "I've learned waterbending from watching the moon and the ocean. I can do little more than this," he added modestly. Ozai let the water fall back into the cup, and he regarded his hands with pride and affection. He looked up at her: "It's because of you."
She flowed closer to him. "You're right: this is it. The final proof. You have changed. You stayed in prison instead of fleeing, you tried to help Zuko with Azula and his mother, and you've learned waterbending. Goodness has invaded your heart. You would never have done those things before." She grew brighter. "I will speak to the Avatar on your behalf."
He reached out to her, but his hand slipped right through. "I want you, Yue."
She began to cry. Neither one knew that ghosts could cry, but if they couldn't, they did a fair imitation.
She shook her head. "I'm dead, Ozai. That cannot be undone." She reached out her hand for his, and even though she passed right through his flesh, they both felt something. "That cannot be fixed. But you must fix what you can: your relationships with your family, your daughter's fragile mind, your disoriented nation, and our broken world. And your marriage."
He looked up at Yue sharply. "Ursa will never forgive me. And what about you? You saved me. I-I love you."
Yue was too sad to reply at first. Her large, pure eyes were anguished as she looked at him. "You must now turn your eyes to life."