Author's Note: This took forever for two reasons. One, this chapter is longer than every chapter written in 2009 (so, expect some stretches of time between updates)! And two, I was caught up in the next update of the realistic game, WolfQuest… Me big fan of WolfQuest! Oh, and I share my computer with a sister and a dad. That presents problems that go without explanation.

Also, a big thank you to my only two reviewers! I appreciate it!

I'm disheartened by the lack of encouragement I'm getting from others. Please, people, don't just fave and run –fave and review! And to all those who are obviously providing me with hits, don't just hit and run –hit and review! I want to know what I'm improving with this story, and what might be setting it back!

This chapter is quite different than its 2009 counterpart. Chan and Azula's conversation is not as harsh and "exaggerated" as it was in the original version of the story. I focused more on what needed to be said and I weighed my words heavily on Ozai's obligation for Azula and how it plays into her and Chan's imperative (and rather explicit) fling of romance. I also lengthened said love scene significantly and detailed it better. The reason for that being because I labeled the act in 2009 as a rape, but, realistically, how could I construe the act as such when Azula willingly allowed Chan to make love to her? So, in this one, I actually made the scene qualify as a rape.

Review, por favor!

Chapter One: A Visitor From the Past

Just as she had ceased to count the days that passed inside the institutional, Azula had stopped counting each and every night she had spent awake –each moonstruck night she had spent without so much as an hour of decent sleep, without so much as a minute of tired rest.

Her eyes were spider-veined and yellow with wakeful dread as the hushed sizzling of a petite spark of flame hit her ears and stirred her to all fours. A flickering ember burned slow upon the corner of a tattered burgundy blanket that was set just inches in front of her in an unfolded heap. Pouting with an unenergetic exhale, she shifted her wrist, and extinguished it.

A twist of tangled midnight black hair then fell between the princess' eyes as she lowered her hand to the rock-hard floor. She grumbled as she strenuously twirled the tress behind her earlobe, hoping it would stay put. It quickly came loose and dropped down her forehead. Its untrimmed, uneven tip tickled her nose as she contemplated leaving it there. Azula cursed herself. She recalled, three years ago, she had once had an envious head of hair so smooth that it glistened like silk under the sun. But after she had sent a fierce scissor blade through it in her spell of madness, all that it had to boast had cascaded down to the carpet below her feet.

Three years, it had been since that day. She had spent three years cloaked by this same consuming darkness. She had spent three years devoid of personal contact, aside from the abrasive warden, the white-masked nurses, and the helmeted guards. Never once in that span of time had a member of her own lineage come to visit her, to give her solace during her most crucial time of need.

She thought again of the events that took place during Sozin's Comet, how she had unthinkingly robbed Zuko of life, if only briefly. She had assumed he was doomed then, and it came to her now that Zuko himself had probably assumed the same for her before his unexpected drop-in. And it was presumably this assumption that he told to his allies, warning them too that it was useless for them to come see her in her wasted condition.

Pictures of Zuko ascending what was to be her throne danced in her mind. The crown that had once been suspended above her head was today sitting upon Zuko's. He probably reveled in his undeserved position, but perhaps he was dignified enough to not brag about to his sister.

That was, perhaps, the very reason why she had not seen a familiar face in three years, aside from those she saw in her haunting daydreams, which she still debated them as being. They seemed real, each and every one, so very realistic that this hypothetically most recent one was still mysterious to her. Had the Firelord actually been within the confines of this cell with her? She breathed inward, as if challenging herself to catch the scent of his presence, or, at least, his mother's –her mother's. She smelled nothing but dead, pumped-in air, which clung to the rising dust particles of her dirty chamber. She reached forward, and touched a rust-reddened bar that her mother had clutched in her attempts at reconciliation. It had a slight resonance of heat under her palm.

Yes, Azula thought at once, she was here. Here, speaking with me.

No, came the realization, it was my flame which caused this heat, not my mother's hand…

Ursa's visage came between the bars in a distorted form, and she placed a ghostly, gnarled hand where it had supposedly rested last.

But before she had any chance to say a word, a black shadow of Ozai swallowed her figure away. He slipped through the bars like the apparition that he was, his prophecy effortlessly repeating at the outline of his lips.

"I need a suitor… an heir to the throne," he whispered with slyness. "That's all I ask of you."

Azula challenged him, "You predict marriage for me, Father, and what just man would ever marry an imprisoned monster?"

He answered with the only words he could say.

"I would never stoop to the level of being dominated by a man," she loudly argued. "And never would I sink so low as to allow a man to inject his venom into me, just to conceive the heir you so desperately desire."

Ozai disintegrated into thin air as a low-ranked guard passed her door and intrusively knocked. He barked irately, "Hey, stop your yelling in there, you wretch!"

As soon as the words slipped from his lips, he headed back in the direction from which he came. The booming thud of his cascade of footsteps was stopped instantly by the echoing sound of a broadsword leaving its sheath. Sensing danger just along the hallway, Azula rose from her spot on the floor. The screams and cries of a brutal scuffle reverberated across her wing of the prison, but just as it began, it ended with the simple, audible act of slicing through armor and the precious flesh underneath. A body hit a wall –hard –as the victor made quick strides to Azula's cell.

Clanking keys fumbled at the door lock until the right one slipped through the bolt. It unlocked with a click, and the door burst open wide on still shrill hinges. Light filtered Azula's quarters; she sat down and looked away from it, feeling it burn at her closed eyelids, just as it did when Firelord Zuko visited her.

A familiar, gallant male voice spoke as the door closed behind him, "Well, well, look who it is. The princess of our nation in a lowly prison cell."

Azula blinked, focusing on the intruder before her. She remembered him quite well. He had been the first man that she had ever surrendered to (aside from her now-imprisoned father, of course), felt feelings for, and, for a brief time, loved. Kissed.

"Chan." She grimaced as she spat out the single syllable of his name, as if it were something detestable hitting her palate. Her grimed yellow teeth exposed themselves in a flash and she offered him a dark, repulsed stare.

"So, you remember me," he said, nodding and smiling affirmatively. "Good. I'm glad."

"Leave me. Now." It was the only comeback she could muster in her surprise at seeing him here in front of her.

"I will," Chan said with a sharp, dagger-like smile. This answer appeased the princess only slightly. She feared a lie from him, though; he was capable of deceit, as he had easily deceived her when she had kissed his lips and revealed her intentions for their relationship at a party he had held in his summer beach home on Ember Island. Good intentions as they were, she reflected.

"When I get what I want," he finished at last, his grin broadening.

Panic rustled then at Azula's fiery nerves. Her dirty fingers dug deeply into her palm as she hastily replied, distracting herself from Chan's sturdy gaze, "What do you want?"

His request was most likely a simple one: the yearning of something, Azula believed wholeheartedly, he did not deserve. Perhaps it was a sincere apology for trashing his party he craved, or genuine sorrow for obliterating whatever honor he had left for his father's good name and title. Both were unattainable desires; both, simply, were things she wished not to give.

"Why didn't you just tell me who you were on the night of my party?" Chan queried. "Why didn't you divulge your rank to me or anybody else there?"

"Why should I tell you anything?"

He shrugged, but then answered, "I just want to know why. I'm curious –is that enough for you?"

Azula seethed, a partial lie slipping off her tongue, "If you must know, I kept my identity a secret because my rank weighed heavily on my social existence then. I wanted, for once, some semblance of normality in my hectic life. I desired the opportunity to choose who I could love because my title bounded me to the ritual of my father finding me an unaffectionate, rich suitor who would ultimately overshadow me upon marriage."

The bold man before the princess crossed his arms at his chest. Azula peered up at his clothes. A gold-laced red vest coated his back, its front open and tied at the hip. His pants were darker than the vest, a burgundy shade, and were baggy and loose on his muscular legs.

Azula had to admit, as much as she detested him for his actions against her on the night of his secret bash, Chan was still the attractive man she remembered him being. Fawn-haired, dashing, remarkably eye-catching. Finely groomed, well-endowed. She cursed herself in silence for thinking these things. He was no more deserving of her compliments than Zuko was.

Chan replied daringly, "I think you're lying. You know why?"

"But I'm not," Azula snarled.

He disregarded her statement. "Because I know a lot about you. You're conceited, arrogant, self-obsessed. Proud too, of your lineage. If you were Firelord today, your husband, if you had one, would be shadowed by you, and you know it."

Azula's tense body lunged forward. She crossly snapped, "Who are you to presume what would become of my life if history had had a different outcome for me? I know you're here to hear me apologize for not obeying you at your party, for having my friends and the now-Firelord destroy your family's priceless heirlooms."

A confused glance etched at Chan's grayish eyes. "No, I'm not," he declared, "though you did destroy some valuable pieces of my family's heritage. But, listen, that's not why I'm here."

"Then why are you?" came the princess' bitter question.

A ceiling pipe screamed as a gush of stained gray water leaked into the corner to Chan's right. A dip in the flooring of Azula's cell had become the basin for the spilling liquid, and all that dripped from the pipelines flowed down to it. In response, Chan sarcastically whispered, "Boy, you'd think they'd find a less dank cell to place someone like you in."

"Just answer my question."

"Okay, fine," he surrendered emotionlessly. "It was just a considerate thought. But look, when you and I talked on the porch of my beach home, I could tell you liked me, and maybe I liked you too. You were beautiful and vibrant, but so unsure. I found myself, I guess, attracted to that side of you. But then you had to ruin the moment between us."

Closing her eyes, Azula winced at the painful memory of her tyrannical outburst upon his deck that night after the sun had set, though what she had said was nothing out of line. She plainly had revealed to him that he was the man she had wanted to conquer the sparring world with. That she had seen the potential of a strong and permanent relationship between them; she felt, reasonably, that her father would have approved of her choice in mate.

"Yes, I may have been intimidating," Azula admitted with a hint of satisfaction, "but my goal was to tell you of my plans for us. Would you have wanted to dominate the earth and win the war alongside me?"

"But you didn't win the war."

"Perhaps your lack of contribution to my cause played into that fact," Azula said in a solid tone. She adjusted herself back up against the farthest wall, and pulled her recently-burned blanket up to her lap. She smiled deviously.

Chan rolled his eyes. "You can't possibly blame me for your descent, Princess. Your failures are your own. And to tell you the truth…" he drifted off slightly, contemplating a wickeder way to finish his sentence, "my image of a good wife would be one who is willing to submit to the husband. And if you had wanted so badly for me to be at your side during your reign, you should have been obedient to me. Followed my orders when I gave them. Played the part of guest to my position as host. And if you had won the war and I had been your choice as husband, I would have had the Phoenix King label me as the designated Firelord."

"My father would have never agreed with it, and if you had proposed as much, he would have simply chosen another man for me."

Chan laughed, pressing the princess into a corner with her words. "I thought you didn't like the idea of your dad choosing who you'd marry."

"I would have had no choice in the matter," Azula commented gloomily.

A flicker of deviousness radiated from Chan's steely eyes as the expelled princess melted into a spell of sadness. His mouth curved slightly to unveil a cunning and domineering smile. Azula caught it.

"What?" she inquired demandingly.

"You're so easy to read, Princess," he mocked. "You've lost your potency, the influence you gained only by deceiving others. You may have fooled me three years ago, but you can't deceive me now. I can easily see the three years of struggle on your face, the worry lines that cross your brow."

Azula's façade of sullenness melted back to dread. How was it that Chan, a man whom she had met and interacted with but once in her life, could interpret her every word and action? How was he able to retort every comeback she had with ease? He seemed almost like her, in a way, before her descent. Calm, capable, clearly skilled at his craft. His personality was so very different than what it had been the day she had met him. Chan had been obnoxious, but easily bendable under her anger, easily prone to failure. Just, simply, a stupid teenager.

But, in mind, he had grown. He was not the man she knew and, at one point, faintly loved.

Azula shook her head dejectedly, and asked, "How do you know so much?"

Chan decided to himself that the best way to answer the princess was to disclose what else he knew of her and her struggles of life. He stated, "Considering everything you've told me so far, I can tell it hurts you to mention your father. He expected so much from you and you failed him when Sozin's Comet arrived. Do you realize that you were his safety net? If you had been victorious, the Fire Nation would have still been under the same regime, even despite the Avatar defeating the Phoenix King. The war would have still gone on afterwards, and we would have found other ways of bringing Ba Sing Se to its knees. You let Ozai down, just as, if I recall, you let down your mom when you were a kid."

"What do you know of my mother?" Azula wondered, again sensing the same twinge of regret she felt at her bosom when she spoke with Ursa and Zuko not an hour or so before.

"Well," Chan pondered, "I know you hated her because she thought you were unruly. And that she left you to protect her favorite kid."

"How do you know so much, Chan?" she asked for a second time, evidently startled by the extent of his knowledge. In truth, she herself knew next to nothing about him, beyond who his famous father was and where he resided during the summer months, but he appeared to know just about everything about her. The secret she had kept from him on Ember Island –her own identity –it seemed, had been exposed.

Then, it came to her. Chan was an apparition too, a trick of her manipulative father's hand. The figment of a suitor he needed today in his paternal obligation to find her one. She presumed that Ozai's drive to fulfill the prophecy would assuredly lead him into choosing just about anyone to fill the shoes of matrimony, even someone like Chan.

"You're not even, real, are you?" Azula accused, waiting for Chan's reaction. She gazed uneasily at his eyes, searching for any sign of falsehood, any sign that what was inside them was of one dimension. She probed his shape for a full form, seeking an abrupt and airy vanishing act from him at the moment of her allegation.

Chan stayed put, and outstretched his hand, just as Ursa had done. Only his intentions were different.

"Yes, I'm real," he firmly explained. "I'm flesh and blood, Princess." His masculine hand slipped through the bars of her cell as he made an attempt to touch her skin, to show her that he was as real as she was. That he stood genuinely before her this night.

Though as far away as she had been from him, the flustered princess jerked at the gesture like a trapped beast. She shook her head, whipping her choppy black hair about her face as she tried in vain to erase Chan's sharp visage from her vision and mind. He remained crystal clear in her brain when she tightly shut her yellow eyes.

As Azula wallowed aimlessly in her discontent of Chan and all that he had proved and done in the few minutes he had spent speaking to her, Chan took it upon himself to enter her square premises, twisting the right key into the lock upon the bars. The princess reopened her eyes as the rusty metal burst open wide, and Chan hurriedly placed himself right in front of her. He turned then, and snapped the cell back shut. The bars locked with a resounding clack.

Once the reverberations ceased, the only audible sound was that of Azula's uneven, panic-stricken gasps. Her shelter had been breached without some semblance of conflict; Chan had penetrated her asylum without as much as a thought of being denied. Azula's pounding heart crashed inside her ribcage as she quickly realized that Chan had both the key to her mind as well as the key to her only home. That protective barrier between her and the outside world and all its dangers and foes was compromised.

"Get out," she commanded, catching her breath then and making a sincere effort to reestablish her composure. "Get out."

Chan, in response, crouched down, and sat himself upon the dusty floor just about a foot away from her. Azula backed her head against backmost wall and peered behind her, as if expecting the brick to suddenly erode away and allow her a decent chance of escaping this confrontation.

"I'm not going to let you leave here, Princess," Chan informed with an air of anger in his tone of voice. He scooted his body closer to her, their knees then touching. Azula retreated her legs at the unsettling contact, pressing her knees tightly to her breasts.

"Please leave," Azula pleaded, tears beginning to sting at her lashes. Whatever confidence she had had before was completely gone, and there was no summoning it back. Chan had her ensnared, the key to her freedom deep in his pocket.

He grimaced and snarled, "I already told you, I'll leave when I get what I want."

"And I already gave you what you asked for," hissed Azula, "my reason for holding back my identity."

From Chan's throat came an astounded cackle. "Do you honestly think I came here, wasted my precious time tonight and took the life of a guardsman, just to talk to you? I would have opted to do that during visiting hours if that had been my only reason to see you."

Taken aback by his brazen admission, a dejected Azula questioned, "What else could you possibly want from me tonight that you haven't already taken?" Her blood was boiling inside her as the words cascaded from her lips.

"Well," Chan confessed, "there is one thing I have yet to take from you." The statement escaped him without so much as an insinuation of constraint. He seemed almost proud in his admittance that there was more of her to steal away. "But, be assured, Princess, I'll take it in time."

Chan lunged forward and took Azula to his lips before she had the opportunity to contradict what he had told her. With domineering force, he reached behind her and grabbed the nape of her neck, drawing her head closer to him and deepening the kiss. Strands of Azula's black tousled hair coiled around the fingers of his other hand as he brought it to her skeletal back.

The princess, now bewildered, recoiled. Her lips tingled –she detested the sensation –and she struggled and pried herself out of his grip, wriggling beneath him. Once free, she took hold of her sheet and shielded her body with it. She spat, "Don't you dare touch me like that!"

Her minuscule threat fell on deaf ears; Chan easily pulled the blanket off of her and tossed it behind him. Azula caught his hungry eyes roaming over her clothed form. Her mind raced. How could Chan possibly think lustfully of her after what he had said and done? After what she had told him? Then, she grasped his motives: he aspired only to prove his earlier point –that he would, indeed, overshadow her if a relationship ensued between them.

Chan passionately kissed her again, and his strong hands slithered down to her covered chest. Azula's felt her nipples harden as his thumbs circled over the fabric above them. Without thought, she emitted a pleasured moan when he then delicately traced the contour of one of her breasts with an index finger.

"I thought you didn't want me to touch you," he teased, chuckling quietly, and glided his hands under her raggedy top. He tugged it up off her head and flung it over his shoulder. It landed atop her blanket, forgotten.

Azula's eyes followed Chan's as they fell to her exposed bosom. Goose bumps spread across her skin as the coldness of her cell caught up with her. Salvaging back her rage, she, with her own hands, disgustedly shielded her nipples from his unrelenting stare.

"If you lay a hand on me again," she meanly warned, "I'll…"

"You'll what?" Chan challenged. "Scream? No one will hear you. The only guard assigned to watching you is dead."

"There are more," Azula argued.

"Not on this floor, there aren't."

"How many did you have to kill to get to me?"

Chan whispered, "Just the one."

He gently seized her frail wrists and raised them away from her chest. Giving in to his strength, Azula's bare body slowly fell to the hard floor as he pressed her arms to the ground.

Chan had her pinned, and she was powerless against him. He had brute strength to boot. She had nothing at all but the weakness that coincided with her condition as a once-senseless inmate. All her days she had spent insisting on remaining silent and subdued were regrettably flushing through her tangled head. Those three years of torture to her mind and body left her unprepared for this encounter with Chan, for he had caught her unawares on this night, drained of willpower and devoid of strength.

He enveloped his brawny arms around her and pushed his muscled abdomen against hers, his nails digging into her spine. His hungry, open mouth found her gorgeous left breast, and his tongue swilled over her erected nipple. He sucked at it briefly, causing Azula to again, against her will and mind, release an amorous moan. Upon hearing the sound of her pleased voice, Chan let go of the breast and began mouthing the right one.

But Azula herself was far from pleased. Although she was unable to hammer him with physical might, she had something she knew without a doubt that he did not. At her resting palm, she summoned a small cerulean flame and jerked her arm, discharging it. Without even lifting his head from her exquisite chest, Chan deflected the blast, and clutched her wrist. He gave it a tight squeeze, and reluctantly pulled himself off her breast.

"Don't even bother," came his annoyed advice. "Resisting me will do you no good."

His free hand weaved its way down her taut stomach and stopped at the knot of her slacks, stained and bled of much of their crimson color. Chan fumbled with the string, and, without hurry, untied it. With her pants now loose around her emaciated waist, he dragged them down her legs, the whole time enjoying the soft sensation of her slender curves on his skin. Her figure was jaw-dropping to him, even under the horrid circumstances in which she existed. Thin, starved was her shape, but still attractive.

"Spirits, you're stunning," he complimented when her pants were finally extracted. They too joined the blanket and Azula's shirt. "How on Agni's earth are you still pure?"

Azula's wide and fear-stricken gold eyes met his. Yes, it was her purity he craved to steal: the last claimable part of her. Her mind and heart had been stolen years ago, her sanity and rank too, but it was her innocence that had lasted. She clenched her legs together. "Don't do this to me," she begged. "Chan… Please, don't take my –"

"Relax," Chan purred and skimmed his hand over the bright red lace at the top of her silk panties. He traced his finger down her pubic bone, and gripped her legs, spreading them apart. Bringing his firm hand between them, he rubbed her through her panties.

Azula stiffened, her teeth gritting. A single tear fell down the protrusion of her cheek, dropping to her clavicle. Even while her legs were held, she attempted frantically to tighten them, to close them on his hand so he would withdraw it.

But there was no resisting him, though; he had said this himself. There was no reversing what was to come.

"Relax, Princess," Chan repeated, stroking her harder. Her heaving chest rose and fell in an uneven rhythm, and her jaw bit down into her lips. She felt no desire at all to comply with his solid command, but he would not budge.

"Chan, no…" Azula cried out. "Don't do this to me, please…"

Chan's fondling ceased at her words, and he stared longingly into Azula's tear-glistened eyes. Without breaking the gaze, he promptly caught her off guard and removed her panties from her hips.

He chuckled, "Gods, Princess, you're so easy to fool."

"Chan, you don't need to do this…"

No reply came from Chan, for his attention was fixed on Azula's bare beauty before his eyes. Her slender, quite conquerable figure, a figure easily breakable like glass under the weight of his authority. Her porcelain white skin, plush like velveteen to his touch though drawn against her skeleton. Her fiery eyes, wild with anxiety, yet penetrating and hypnotic. Her innocence, unclaimed but within his reach for the taking.

Chan shifted his shoulders and peeled his thin, gold-laced vest off his back, his muscles flexing and protruding with his movements. In a hasty motion, it found its way to the floor as a sharp, splitting ring commenced upon its landing. Azula lifted her head to the sound. Hidden within the pocket of Chan's vest, were the keys to the prison.

And one of them, she considered to herself, contemplating a plan of action, is the key to my freedom. And there is only one way to get to it.

Azula rose from the floor and, after flashing Chan a confident grin, pushed her body against his chest, her lips locking with his. She almost sensed the warmth of their previous kisses upon him, and she took in that heat when she planted her tongue into his mouth. Her kisses then traveled the contour of his neck, her hands brushing his build as she finally pressed her nose to his chin, nuzzling him lovingly. He smelt fresh. Scents of grass and clean air and spring blooms filtered through her nostrils, and she recognized that Chan had most certainly traveled in his time before his strange visit here. The tantalizing aromas attached to his skin were like keepsakes to the places he had been, and she wished she could come to know them all…

Chan was astonished by her change in attitude, but decided within himself not to fight it. He cupped a breast and eyed her hands as they passed down each ripple on his torso, but then remarked guardedly, "Why the sudden change of heart, Princess?"

Azula smiled a devious, seductive smile and lifted her index finger to his lips, shushing him. Lowering it slowly, she kissed him again, her palms caressing his cheeks. Her fingernails, though short and jagged from her pitiable existence in the Boiling Rock, tickled his skin as she held tight to the kiss. A hand managed to find its way to the back of his head, and she massaged his fawn hair, light and feathery between her tender fingers. His tresses were so well-groomed, so soft and silken. There was so much of him that she secretly loved; she almost detested the fact that she was outsmarting him here, playing into his lusts.

Aroused, Chan kneaded at the breast in his hand and begged her on with his own elated moans. At his urge, Azula advanced along to his loose-fitting pants and wriggled her right hand down into them. She carved a smile across her lips upon the moment her skin came into contact with his penis, and she gracefully rubbed its shaft, feeling the intensity of her strokes cause it to gain rigidity.

Before she had a chance to stimulate him further, Azula released Chan's erect penis and her hand slithered out of his pants. She fondled at the hip of his slacks, and speedily pulled them from his legs. His underwear quickly followed. Both garments found themselves atop his shirt, separate from Azula's clothes. She took her opportunity and again grabbed hold of his penis in her right hand, stroking it from shaft to tip. Her other hand, however, snaked around him, and quickly made its way to his pile of clothes. All the while digging for his keys somewhere in the mound and caressing his member, Azula's eyes of molten gold never left Chan's, and she distracted his gaze by offering another kiss to his lips, a kiss sweet and tender and somehow meaningful. She seemed to almost be falling for his charms, somehow willing to love him again and somehow unwilling to fool him. Chan returned the kiss with equal measure, their lips melding together in a way that it seemed they were molded from Agni and created for one another.

A need for air overtook them, and the kiss broke. Remaining within centimeters apart, the two of them allowed their lips to brush against each other. Azula nuzzled noses with Chan, his pleasant smell hitting her again, when, finally, her left hand seized the prison keys, and she extracted them out of his vest pocket. The rattling noise from them, of course, immediately betrayed her intentions. Chan's eyes caught the glimmering gold in his peripheral vision, his enjoyment crumbling to utter rage at her for betraying him. The swill of elated feelings Azula herself had encountered dissolved too in a period of seconds, and her face turned from a rosy red blush to a ghostly pale.

She had made a costly mistake.

Chan shoved Azula back down on the floor, and swiped the jingling set of keys from her. He threw them back into his bundle of clothes behind him.

"I warned you about defying me, you whore," he spat, furiously grabbing her off the floor by her hair and recklessly forcing her back against the right-side wall. Azula screamed viciously at him, writhing painfully as he jostled her head about. She made a valiant effort to kick him in the groin, but he merely clutched the leg she raised and promptly hoisted it up to his hip. Brutally, he thrust his hard penis into her entrance. Azula, overwhelmed and ultimately conquered again, yelped at his admission, her insides intruded and her innocence swiftly taken without warning.

"Oh, gods, Chan, please," Azula sobbed, her body and her words bobbing with his vigorous motions. She blinked back tears, but still, she surrendered many, allowing them to fall from her face. "Stop this. I didn't mean to –"

Chan growled back, "You didn't mean to fuck me over? I'm finishing what you started, Princess." His powerful thrusts grew in speed, and his breath began to leave him as he came closer to climaxing.

Desperate, undeniably desperate, Azula swirled a licking sapphire flame, but, just as before, Chan warded it off, this time interlocking his fingers with hers, sandwiching the fire between their unified palms.

"Stop with the firebending, Princess," he ordered heatedly, moaning. Punishing her, he bit at her breast, teasing her nipple between his teeth. Azula yipped, which summoned him to do the same to the other breast. Her torment was rapture to him, just as double-crossing him had been, at one time, he recalled, rapture to her.

"Chan, no!" she cried as an unsettling warmth from Chan's abrupt orgasm tingled between her legs. He withdrew his dripping member. Hot semen wetted Azula's thighs upon his emission, and it gave the impression to her that it was scorching her skin. But she felt something else oozing out of her. Perplexed, she brought a hand to her entrance and, in doing so, coated her fingertips with bright red blood.

Her heart dipped. Her knees gave out. She collapsed to the ground with a thud, immersing herself in a flood of tears. This was what the punishment for adulteration was; this was what the punishment was for challenging her fanatical father. This was the price for silence and for disobedience.

Azula tearfully glared up at Chan, who was sneering above her. He showed her no sympathy for her loss. He felt in his heart no sympathy for it. Bending over, he lifted her back up against the stone wall, his conniving smile never breaking. He took hold of her glistening orbs with his, and raised a quizzical eyebrow. Azula's face was drawn with questions, accusations.

"W –why, Chan?" she asked, her head dipping and her bronze eyes sealing shut behind damp eyelids. "Why would you do this to me? Why?"

"This," Chan replied, sneakiness still bleeding off of him, "this was your father's wish, Azula. Not mine."

"I need a suitor… an heir to the throne," Ozai's apparition whispered in Azula's ear, tickling it with a forked tongue. "That's all I ask of you."

"Are you my father's…" the words drifted away as she pulled Chan close. If this was what her father wanted of her, then it was her longing to have it be out of love rather than obligation. She wanted Chan's forgiveness, though; she wanted compassion from him, even after what he had stolen from her. She tenderly attempted to kiss him, but he rejected her advance, and turned his head away.

"I don't understand," she declared solemnly. "Don't you… aren't you in –"

"No, I'm not," Chan said. "You really thought I fucked you out of love? I'm not in love with you, Princess, nor am I committed to you after tonight. Your father commanded me to do this, and I did it. Simple as that."

"Why?"

He scoffed, rolling his eyes. "Why do you think? For sweet vengeance, for the sex –honestly, it doesn't matter why!"

Azula's face bled with hurt. "It matters to me, Chan," she said, choking back a sob. She pitifully sniffled in spite of herself.

"Well, forget it."

With that, Chan turned around and assumed redressing himself. In a matter of a few wordless minutes –which, to the princess, at least, dragged on in the frame of hours in her agitated mind –his clothes were on him once again. And, in a quick stroke, Chan pocketed the prison keys.

He gave her a disdainful look. "Remember, I'm not obligated to you after I leave here tonight. Any decisions you make or accidents that follow are not mine to deal with. Your chances at escaping this prison are yours to take. Don't assume your freedom on me, and, for your own sake, you should protect my name. Maybe in time you'll figure out why."

One word caught Azula's attention, and the oddity of it made it effortlessly spill from her. "Accidents?"

Chan left her hanging on it and unlocked the prison doors. He stepped outside, holding the main door open a few seconds. "Keep in mind what I said, Princess."

This was his farewell to her, his goodbye; it was yet another order for her to comply with.

"Please," she pleaded in a low whimper, "don't leave me here."

He locked her back up and left her alone and in stunned silence, walking out along the corridor of the floor. Listening with sharp ears, she heard his footfalls lighten as his distance grew. Eventually, the noise died out to nothing at all, and was replaced by the old gagging pipelines. Azula had drowned the constant noise out during Chan's stay, and she shuddered the moment the cacophony of dripping and groaning commenced again.

She hugged her frail nude body, her matted, uneven bangs falling into her view, and shivered. Much too startled to grab her blanket, she stayed in place, and rocked herself. Pondering the previous events of the night, she wondered if, perhaps, this was just a horrific reverie, and that she would wake, cuddling beneath her cover, in the coming moments. But the thought was dashed when she peered down to the floor. A blackish red puddle of blood lay between her raised legs, flowing down into the heavy cracks on the aged stone like olden wounds resurfaced and left to bleed out.

A soreness claimed Azula's insides and she rapidly responded to it by retching the acrid bile stinging in the pool of her stomach. Wiping her vomit-riddled mouth with her forearm, she surrendered a cough or two. The burn the liquid left on her throat caused her voice to go raw, and her coughing fit seemed scratchy as it exited her. The murky stench steamed at her nostrils then, and she promptly rose from the floor. Stopping just behind the bars of her cell, she outstretched her arm, and touched at the place her mother had handled not so long before.

The corroded cage beneath the princess' palm let off only the impression of the unforgiving cold, as if it had never been touched at all…