"Hello, mother."

The voice jerks you out of your reverie. You wish it hadn't, instantly, because all of the pain you're really in comes flooding back. Your arms ache and legs ache, your wrists and ankles are chafed, thanks in part to the chains that affix you to the wall to stop you from bending. Not that you can, anymore. She made sure of that. Just like she made sure you were in pain.

You raise your head to look at her, your hair – once so neatly confined into a topknot – falling into your face and obstructing your view. She laughs, then, an unpleasant sound that is so awfully familiar to you because you remember it once being yours. She carefully – too carefully – brushes the hair out of your eyes and puts it behind your ears, clucking as she does so. Almost as if there was something you could do about it, with your arms chained so far away from your face. It is yet another gesture that strikes you as too familiar, another gesture that makes your gut clench and your blood run cold.

But with your hair out of your face, you can finally get a good look at her. The first thing that catches your eye – it's always the same thing, and you both know it – it the five-pointed crown that rests in her topknot. It gleams ever so slightly in the dim light. But you've learned, oh you've learned, while you've been chained to this wall for Agni knows how long that the crown of the Fire Nation gleams everywhere and anywhere, even in complete darkness. It seems to fit there perfectly, as if somehow completing the child you always thought of as incomplete. Some part of you thinks it should be odd, as the topknot she wears – something she never wore before, even as a child – reminds you of that Water Tribe boy's 'warrior wolf tail' or even the hair of that Kiyoshi whore he wanted to marry. Perhaps they are married now, all of these years later. But that's not important. Her hair reminds you of him more than her just because you know your own child's delightfully mixed heritage.

You shift yourself slightly to look at her better. She's been a complete surprise, and some part of you is still shocked by what she's done. Not that long ago, you would have sworn that she could have never even touched you, let alone defeated you. You knew that she was never going to be Fire Lord; that Ozaila, her younger, firebending prodigy of a sister was going to succeed you.

It isn't a memory, it's something more. When you close your eyes, you can still feel the heat of the sun beating down on your shoulders, the hot fabric across them. The stone of the arena is warm, but not unbearably so. You chose noon, because it is the height of your power during the day, thinking that she would back down and shame herself. But she didn't. In that smoky, dark room, surrounded by your generals, she did not back down. She wasn't even afraid of you. You thought she was just foolish then, like your twice-banished brother, but now you know. She wasn't afraid. She knew you couldn't win.

At the sound of the gong, you rise regally at the fabric slips from your shoulders. You don't allow yourself to smile – not yet, and not with so many witnesses. Inside, you are smirking. You've caught your prey. You'll be rid of both of them today. You turn quickly, expecting her to be rushing you, but she isn't. She's standing, but the fabric has not yet slipped from her shoulders. Her back is to you. Again, you missed it. It was yet another warning sign, one that you couldn't read because you were so sure of her and her weaknesses. But she knew you better than you knew yourself. She, unlike that blind earthbender, could tell when you were lying.

You didn't know. You had walked into her trap – you were not the predator, you were her prey, and she had you. You decided lightning would be overkill (it's probably the reason your still alive, now), and went for a regular fireball. But as you were releasing it, your arm moved suddenly and it flew over her shoulder, completely harmless. It didn't matter; you could make another one –

It was completely different than when Ty Lee blocked your bending, because then your body was still yours. But not now. Now you are trapped in what should be your body, but it isn't. You can't feel any of it. Something is not right. And then she turns to regard you, the cloth finally slipping from her shoulders.

She draws close to you with measured, unhurried steps while the sweat trickles down your brow. She's cheating somehow, she's got help somehow, this child that can't bend an inch, neither fire nor water. It's not how it should be; it's not how it was supposed to happen. You're not afraid, as you should be; you're angry, angry that this untalented child could do something so dishonorable as to cheat during an Agni-Kai –

"It's just you and I mother," she says in a voice that is too perfect in its diction, but in a voice that sounds too much the other, a voice that doesn't belong to someone of the great Fire Nation, "There's no one else in this fight."

You glare at her, telling her with your eyes that she's lying. But then she smiles – she smirks, looking more like you than you ever thought possible, and you draw up, eye to eye, even though you haven't told any single part of your body to move. "You're right," she says in a silky tone, "I can't bend fire, nor can I bend water. But I'm not truly a child of either. I'm a child of both, mother, so what right do I have to either?" Her smirk grows darker, and her eyes narrow. "But I bend something else. I bend what you might call a compromise." Her smile grows secretive, and you realize – for the first time ever – that there is a ring of gold in her cerulean eyes, "No, mother," she says, in the same silky, almost comforting tone, "I bend blood."

And then she is forcing you to bow, your mind screaming at your unheeding body as the stone of the arena comes too close for comfort. But you can't resist. There is no fighting blood bending, even at the height of your daytime power. As if sensing your inner struggle, she laughs a laugh that you recognize as yours, and it's slightly disconcerting to hear it from another's mouth. But the important part isn't that she's laughing. The important part is that while she laughs, she removes the crown from your hair. She holds it in hands, looking at it as if trying to ascertain its worth while you stare up at her. It's only then that you notice that she's finally put her hair up in something resembling a topknot – the first time you've ever seen her do so since you denied her a crown and she refused to wear one– and then you watch, aghast, as she puts the Fire Lord's crown into it.

You – and everyone else in the arena – know your reign is over. She is Fire Lord now, and you are just a weak cast-off, a wash-up, a footnote in the history books. It is only then that it strikes you how much you are alike – she even looks like you, more than Ozaila does. But you never noticed because you never cared – not since she came out of the womb with blue eyes instead of gold.

Yet here she is, defeating you, destroying you and deposing you. It's actually quite funny, how the child you ignored and cast aside is the one who ended the most like you (you thought she would be like Zuko, but there isn't any similarity between them at all, she hates you, she doesn't want or need anything from you), and now that you think of it, Ozaila is very much like Katara. It seems so wrong, somehow, that the child you left for the waterbender (whom you broke and brutalized and destroyed) should raise the child that succeeded you, to raise the child that has that same dark glint in her eyes that you do.

Ah, but she hates you. You know that as she regards you through the bars of your cage, completely unafraid (not that she was ever really afraid of you, at one point she was afraid of what you could do, but she never truly feared you), her eyes glinting with something you can't identify. You know that you helped make and shape this child, mainly by ignoring her, and somehow you wish you could go back in time and tell yourself – before she was born, perhaps before she was conceived – of how strong she would be, and how perfect she would end up being, if only you had seen it. But you hadn't seen it, so she grew up keeping her great secret to herself, until it was too late for you to do anything to rectify the situation.

Since she's become Fire Lord, you've been expecting this moment, much like your own brother and father after your father was deposed. You've never thought of your daughter, your child, as being much like your brother recently, but she was unnaturally attached to the waterbender you decided to make your Fire Lady. You know she's going to ask, and your eyes flick to the necklace that used to grace the other's neck (before you put your own in its place, you thought it was gone until she defeated you wearing it) – the one thing that remained of her dead, lost mother. The same mother that she named their eldest child after.

You feel almost sad, until Kya opens her mouth to speak to you. "I've found her mother," Kya hisses at you, not caring about decorum anymore, just caring about telling you how badly you've lost. Lost your throne, lost your life, lost even the game of hide-and-go-seek you play with your consort and your successor.

And yet, as she walks away, the five-pointed crown again glittering, glittering, glittering, leaving you in that dark, awful prison she gave you, you feel so very, very proud of your daughter, of Fire Lord Kya, and it makes you smile.

How proud she makes you. So much better than Ozaila could ever be. Born to be Fire Lord.

In the darkness of your cell, you laugh, because even though Kya thought she has taken everything away from you, she has given you something you never thought you'd have. An heir like you.

Meh, I was bored. I think I could write an entire premise off of this story, if I tried hard enough. I think Kya could be a very interesting character, especially with her interactions with Azula, specifically an imprisoned Azula (which is seen here). I think in this storyline, there would be a Prince Ursan somewhere.

Yes, Kya's parents are Azula and Katara? Why? I thought it would be an interesting premise, and a Zutaran child like Kya wouldn't be angry, so a lot of what's interesting about Kya would be lost. The main point is that I couldn't find another pairing that could possibly make someone like Kya, so I went with this one. How did they reproduce? Not really important, just that they did.