Chapter 4: Rats

Zuko awoke that morning in his own chamber. He had slept surprisingly well after the nightmare he had at Mai's.

It was a beautiful day outside. The run was still rising, and it warmed Zuko to his core. He had the strangest feeling that something wonderful was going to happen soon.

Zuko had rarely felt this blissful before the war, and he didn't know how to deal with it now that it happened often. Usually, he would take these opportunities to do something unpleasant. That way, unpleasant things didn't sneak up on him.

It made sense to him, at least.

I suppose that it is as good a day as any to visit my sister. I should not keep putting this off. She mentioned that she knew something about mother… She was probably just taunting me... but what if she really knows something?

Zuko started on his way to the asylum after breakfast. It was more of a prison than a place of rehabilitation, but Azula needed the extra security that the prison environment offered. These prisons had been holding benders of all kinds for nearly a thousand years.

That reminds me, we need to install a metal-bending proof wing, thought Zuko. If Toph can figure it out, it will only be a matter of time before the technique spreads. We have to be prepared for advancing bending techniques.

Zuko made his way through security. Both guards and visitors parted before him and bowed respectfully as he passed.

Zuko knew the cell that his sister was confined to by reputation. It was floors beyond any other prisoner. Guards were told not to stand around here, and only to come to deliver food and make daily checks that the prisoner was secure. They had known from experiences with insane bloodbenders and firebenders alike that it was not safe to loiter in these halls. Although Zuko had never visited his sister in her cell these rooms were notorious and he did not need an escort to find his way. They pressured him to take a few guards to accompany him, but a forceful refusal from the Firelord had them standing aside as he went forward to enter the isolated lower stretch of cells that contained only her.

Azula looked less than human. Her hair was uneven, unclean, and sticking out at odd angles. She slumped in her straightjacket in the corner more like a pile of twisted limbs than a person. Her face was greasy and covered in scabs and cuts that looked as if she had been tearing at her face with her nails. Her sunken eyes stared straight at Zuko

Zuko tried to keep his composure, but his sister unnerved him. Why hadn't he been informed of her condition? Why didn't they allow her to at least stay clean? Were they even feeding her? He couldn't keep eye contact, and instead stared off into a different shadowy corner, where there appeared to be a pile of small bones .

The cell smelled terrible. Something was off even from the normal terrible prison conditions that he had almost grown accustomed to during his stay.

"I can't do this," he said softly to himself, and backed away from the cell and trying to hold his breath. He turned to leave.

"I'm sorry, you know," came a voice from the cell. It was so faint, and so small, that it took Zuko a few moments to register that it was more than a squeaking hinge or a scuffling rat.

"What?" answered Zuko, unsure of what he had heard. It was so unlike Azula that he looked to her once more to make sure it WAS her.

"I haven't been truly sorry about anything my entire life. But this time, I am." She bowed her head to him. "You did not deserve the way I treated you."

Zuko was only sure of one thing at that moment, and that was that he wanted to get out. She was scaring him. This was not his sister. He had expected an argument, insults, screaming. Anything but this. He was not prepared.

"I treated you like a common traitor, but I should have treated you much differently," she said, her voice still lacking the strength and bite that he associated with her words. "You were my brother, after all. There's supposed to be some kind of love and trust between siblings, or so I've heard."

Finding his voice, he replied, and was nearly shocked at its calmness. "This isn't a matter of trust."

"No?"

"No. If there's anything I do trust, its you. I trust without a doubt that everything you do is part of some sick game."

A smile tugged at the corner of her lips. "Well, I have made a habit of that, haven't I?

Zuko frowned at her.

"You've won, dear brother. The entire world is at your command now, and you have our father and myself in chains. You restored your honor by ripping ours away." She looked down at her bindings, and her disheveled dark hair fell across her face. "Not that honor ever meant that much to me, anyway. But it is a little lonely down here without it."

"Speaking of honor," she continued," I have a few things I've been meaning to tell you. Now that you've finally graced me with your presence, I can get them off my chest."

His stared pointingly at her in an unspoken request to get on with it.

"You'll need to make decisions that go farther than your honor. You'll need to make decisions for our people. Something that our father never thought you were capable of."

Although nothing in her words stood out, something in her composure was gaining lost strength, and it unnerved him. Without thinking, he started backing away

"You had the chance to come out for this either as a king, or as a fool. Since I hear that you're destroying everything that our family has worked for, I can't help feeling that your choices have been lacking."

As he backed into the far wall, he felt a sickening wet crunch under his boots. That shock caused him to inhale sharply, and he took in too much the putrid air that he had been avoiding.

The smell was terrible not because it was nothing he had ever smelled before, but because he finally realized that it was a smell he was all too familiar with. This was the smell that had haunted him years ago, when his father had burned the skin off of his face. It was the smell the accompanied the pain and the embarrassment. It was the smell of his honor and his life being ripped away.

It was the sickly sweet smell of burnt flesh.

"Did you get a chance to look over there at my collection?" she asked, nodding to the shadowy corner in which he stood. "I have been waiting for the day that my dear coward brother would come and face me, so I could finally treat him the way I should have done a long time ago."

Surprisingly, he felt slightly more collected than he had before. Anger, he understood. Anger, he could use. It was her apologies that confused him, and his confusion that crippled him.

"If you know me so well, then why aren't you running away?" inquired the now grinning captive. "Do you really think me capable of empty threats?"

"You have lost your touch, Azula. You have lost everything. I am not afraid of you anymore."

"Another bad decision."

At that moment, a pulse of electric shock wrecked through Zuko's body. He was unable to control his body, and his legs caved under him. If Zuko's brain would not process what was happening, and his heart started thudding out of his chest. Another wave hit him once he was on the ground, and every one of his muscles was twitching violently.

It stopped for a moment. He continued to twitch, but he could now think enough to realize that his mouth was full of blood. I must have bitten my tongue, but I cannot feel it. I can't feel anything. He didn't know how to fight this. His body wasn't responding the way it should. He couldn't get up. He opened his mouth to speak, and a bloodcurdling scream came out. He closed his mouth. He was still screaming against his closed lips. He gave up and opened them again. To hell with my pride.

"Honestly, your death is probably the best thing you could do at this point." With a smile, Azula let another pulse of electricity through the floor towards her brother. This time, there was a smell of singed flesh.

Girls are crazy, was the only thing that crossed the Firelord's mind before he lost consciousness.

A few moments later, Zuko's heart stopped.