Wildfire

Chapter 4

A/N: So yeah, wow, been awhile. Incredibly sorry about how long it's taken me to update this, this chapter's been sitting around half finished in my files for ages. It's been a hard few months though, hard and stressful, I won't go into the details because I doubt you want to know but rest assured, things are better now. This chapter's more of a filler than anything else at the moment, plot starts picking up soon, I don't intend this fic to be overly long, but you never know. As always, I check my own work so I'm bound not to notice every mistake, sorry in advance, with that said, read and enjoy :)

Disclaimer: Anything you recognise isn't mine

She can still feel the imprint of his lips on hers many hours after they'd finished kissing: soft and insistent and burning like a brand. They had stood for an infinite forever in that darkened alcove of palace courtyard, lost in the waves of pure sensation, enjoying the feel of hands on skin and lips on flesh and feeling as the night melted away. She had kept control though, always in control, her own lust and desire chained and bound tight in the shadowy corners of her mind; deep and lost and walled away.

He had been an eager learner, quick to pick up the art of kissing, mastering the subtle changes involved. Hot and fierce or soft and gentle, the right way to feel your partner's responses and how to coax out delicious breathy moans that ignited in the dark. She shivers as she remembers the shuddering, whispery groans that had escaped him in the moments he was lost; the tortured growls as she'd sucked at the juncture between neck and shoulder and drew a path with her tongue to the sensitive skin by his ear.

The memories make her grin, a languid dark smirk, spreading slow and thick like honey; lighting her eyes as they flash with intent in the black.

The rest of the night had been…less satisfactory.

When Administrator Vathak had finally realised that none of the noble women were going to give him the time of day, he had remembered her and was angry upon noticing that she had disappeared. Of course, he could hardly say anything when he found her standing with the prince on the balcony, look stupid wouldn't he? If he couldn't even control a whore. And like the detestable, obsequious worm that he is, he'd promptly fallen over himself in servitude to the prince, bowing so low that she'd thought he might just roll over.

She'd been watching Ozai's reactions intently and was unsurprised, although disappointed, at the flicker of glee that passed through his golden eyes at Vathak's grovelling. That, she had thought to herself, would be the first thing to go. The prince's ridiculous desire to please and be noticed, his transparent delight at other people's deference, it was a weakness she would not allow or tolerate in her chosen champion.

Although she could empathise with his satisfaction at seeing others on their knees before him. Long had she dreamt, in the cradled and cherished corners of her darkest vengeance dreams, of the Fire Lord and his generals, the Earth King's court, bowed and begging on their knees before her, supine and bleeding fear as they pleaded for mercy that didn't exist.

She supposed then, that it would be highly hypocritical of her to try and erase that particular aspect of his personality, plus, a desire to see the world bent before him could be useful.

After the administrator had finished his snivelling, the prince had turned his golden eyes on her and she'd felt the breath catch in her throat at the look of dark, burning desire roiling in their molten depths. She'd almost smiled at that, how easy it had been to ensnare the boy, a few kisses in the dark and he'd already looked as though he could have devoured her right there.

But absence makes the heart grow fonder so she'd discretely dragged her sharp nails over the back of his hand as she'd sauntered back over the administrator and smirked in her mind as she'd felt his fingers twitch.

As she'd reached the administrator, she'd draped herself back over his fat, sweaty form once more and stroked a finger over the curve of his ear, "Did you miss me?" she'd whispered in his ear, drawing the words out into a hiss so her breath would blow softly over it.

She'd felt both satisfied and revolted as he'd shivered slightly at the sensation and had to hold back the bile rising in her throat as he'd wrapped one pudgy arm around her waist and pulled her into his side. She'd felt her skin crawl at the sensation of his clammy hand on her skin and her smoky, full-lipped smile became strained around the edges and cracked like glass.

But her mask had held, as it always did, through the aging politicians with their thin sagging skin and cruel, bright eyes to the vicious young boys with their entitled presumption and indoctrinated racism. Vathak was nothing in the scheme of things, the latest in a long line of pathetic meatsacks who thought her body was theirs by right, he was nothing she hadn't encountered a hundred times before. And he wasn't even the worst.

No, she'd thought, feeling that ever-present sense of poisoned in her veins, that honour goes to Lord Azar, may that sadistic fucker rot in hell and may the Yard of the Stone Mill crush his bones.

Vathak's eyes had stared down into hers with a hunger that she's all too familiar with, a possessive sort of thirst that chained all men and women eventually, and he'd whispered down to her in a manner that he'd probably considered alluring, "Indeed, but you can make it up to me later," he'd said with a dark smile.

Genuinely considering throwing him off the balcony, she'd laughed a throaty laugh full of intent and looked up at him from under her lashes, "Of course."

She'd chanced a look back over at the prince out of the corner of her eyes and was secretly delighted by what she saw. His eyes had been burning again, not with desire though, but with a heavy black fury that verged on madness, raging as he'd stared at the administrator, a jealous, possessive anger as he'd looked at where Vathak held her waist. His whole body had tensed up and his young face had turned hard as stone while his fists had clenched down by his sides.

Now hadn't that been satisfying reaction? She smiles in the dark and feels the phantom heat of his gaze roll over her body. It had appealed to her both as a manipulator and as a woman, knowing that she'd had so much influence over someone in such a short amount of time. He was merely a teenager sure, but he was a prince, he'd spent his life around people who used others for their own gain, it spoke volumes of how little his father cared for him that he hadn't see it in her. In her family, everyone had been trained in politics and manipulation, not just the heirs. It was irresponsible otherwise, a glaring chink in their collective armour just waiting to be exploited.

But Azulon, the old tyrant, had focused too much on his elder son and left the other to the wolves.

Well, foxes in her case.

She sighs internally and rolls over to stare up the at ceiling, hating again the darkened red that greets her eyes. Her cot is dark and cramped, a small space containing a thin mattress and a cheap blanket, cordoned off from the other whores by rough stretches of sunburnt orange. It is nothing, nothing compared to what she was used to and nothing like what she wants; she spits in the face of the pathetic attempts at privacy that the palace tries to provide them with and curses the forces that brought her here. What need do whores have of privacy anyway? Her body is nothing, a poisoned shell for her mind, and she doesn't care if they stare.

No, the cots in the harem are not private, not for her: small enough for the illusion of safety, confined enough to remind her it's a prison.

She had stumbled back sometime earlier, turns out that Vathak had been just as she'd predicted, all he'd wanted was a pretty girl and a quick fuck.

After leaving the prince and his smouldering eyes on the balcony, Vathak had dragged her back to the party, pulling her around like some disobedient child as he'd tried to play pompous nobles and their entitled spawn. Sometimes it'd worked, most often it hadn't, but the whole affair had left the administrator prancing like an overeager monkey-cat.

She'd listened to it all as she'd followed him around like some kind of vapid limpet; none of it had been quite as charged as that initial interaction with Prakash and his companions, but most of it had been incriminating in some shape or form.

Vathak's poorly veiled insinuations and badly handled threats had confirmed most of her suspicions about the man and she'd felt herself grow steadily more disgusted and coldly furious as the night wore on. He was the worst kind of scum, a filthy slaver and a steaming pile of worthless shit who'd paid for the vulgar embroidery on his robes with the screams of children torn from their parents and the dead eyes of women forced into her world.

She'd been forced to listen as he had laid out deals with some of the rich and powerful at the party: a girl for an old man's bed, a boy for another, a hundred men for one woman's mine and a hundred more sent to die in the factories.

It had been sickening to watch, horrifying to observe, as all that worthless Fire Nation trash hadbetted and traded and schemed with the lives and lands of her countrymen, their freedom and worth. And oh, how she had wanted to strangle them all with their own words, to wrap them in chains so tight it burned and watch as the life and hope left their eyes.

They were all useless pathetic scum as far as she was concerned, not an iota of decency among them. And as they'd plotted and bought and sold humans like llama-cows they'd stared at her with hungry eyes, drawing them over her body like starving creatures would a feast. Their faces smug and condemning as some of the more cocksure bastards had run their filthy hands over her arse and sunk tiny toxic needles into her skin.

But she had laughed. She had smirked and smiled and watched with heavy shredding eyes. She had made them stare at the curve of her hip, the glow of her flesh in the lanternlight and had seen as they'd salivated over it. She had buried her hate and her violence deep in the darkened abyss of her fractured psyche and made them focus on the desirability of her skin.

She had revelled in her beauty and the power it gave but hated herself for needing to.

(Beauty is a weapon, my darling Yusheng, use it and use it well)

The night had worn on steadily, grating her nerves with every passing minute. She had listened, as she always did, listened and watched but the rest of the talk had been useless. Empty platitudes had fallen from the painted lips of influential woman like venom while slippery small talk danced like a whore on the tongues of powerful men.

There had been nothing useful, as far as useable information went, and in her position information was key. With a few careful words to one of her clients, she could topple entire institutions and kill a dozen men.

But all tonight had done was serve to remind her of all the reasons she hated the Fire Nation and as the night had cooled around her like a frigid lover, her patience had worn thin.

After to seeing to his business Vathak had led her off, pulling her along close to his side as he'd waddled and swayed from his weight and the drink back into the main palace. He'd been even sweatier then, if that were possible, rivulets of salted liquid had beaded over his oily skin and collected into stained patches on his garish silk robes. The smell had been atrocious: musty and overtly scented perfume mixing with body odour in a cocktail revolting aromas.

But she had had to put up with it, for the night he was her master and her body was his.

He'd stumbled and jerked through the ever darker, more oppressive corridors of the palace, dragging her along as he'd muttered to himself and laughed with obscene giddiness at his own jokes. He'd pawed at her body with fat, clumsy hands and grabbed painfully with corpse-soft fingers at the tender skin of her breasts.

His touch had been like acid, his drunken smiles like a knife, corroding her being with his taint as his blurry eyes had sunk the self-disgust deeper into her mind. In the gloom of the palace halls, she had let her face grow flat at hard, her eyes flinty and sharp as her head was pressed up to Vathak's shoulder and the scent of his rubbery skin.

He had leant down to her then, leant down and trailed, thin cracked lips over her shoulder and neck in a parody of what she had done with the prince; a nauseating facsimile of a lovers' kiss that had decorated her skin with a trail of slime that had made her insides churn and her stomach revolt.

She shudders and digs sharp nails into her skin in remembrance, imagining that the fleshy part of her palm is the soft meat over Vathak's, and all the others who have dared touch her's, hearts as she rips them out still beating.

She hate, hate, hates this place and all it stands for. The blood red and burnt ash colours that sting in her eye and damp heat that swamps her lungs. She runs now on pure fury and malice alone now, her ambition and vengeance becoming the anchor against the deadness that always waits. She imagines that there is something broken in her now, something deep and important that fractured in the woods outside her burning home. She likes to believe that the continuing strength of her wrath is a sign from the heavens, from her ancestors and the spirits that she is on the right path. The thought makes her smile sometimes, a shattered sharp thing that bites at the edges.

(But inside her body is rotted and dying, each unwelcome touch poisons as the seed forced inside her kills her a little more each time)

As they'd made their way through the silent palace (silent, like a tomb or a grave) they had wandered into the quarters that housed the lesser of the Firelord's court when they were in attendance. Those who had money and skill but not the bloodline to back it up, little more than spoiled rats in the eyes of the upper echelons of Fire Nation society.

The walls had been the colour of cooling lava and fire spirits had howled from the top near the ceiling, glittering burnt-gold grotesque faces peering from behind iron suns. Sharply curved arches had lined the halls, each one covered with stark interlocking flames that reached towards the heavens and lanterns at regular intervals had made each one glow.

It had been as garish and ostentatious as the rest of the palace, the architecture and style somewhat older and more dated but flashy and expensive all the same. The walls had melted wealth as the sun melts butter: slow and thickly oozing like pus from wound and the imagery was bloody and dark. But it was the conspicuous lack of dragons though, there among the décor, that told of the stark lack of royal favour those that stayed here endured.

No wonder Vathak was so pathetic and submissive to Ozai, she had thought, taking the whole area in with calculating eyes, man's probably never been let within ten feet of the royal family, let alone spoken to a prince.

The administrator had clumsily led them to a door about halfway down the hall, hidden between two large edifices of burning women in rapture, their heads thrown back in pleasure/pain as above the door the many-armed Agni controlled the flames. Vathak had been fevered then, his drunken eyes devouring her form as he'd struggled with the door. "Let me," she'd whispered close to his ear, feeling that sinfully guilty satisfaction as his eyes had rolled back in pleasure.

She'd pushed open the dark wood door and stepped inside the apartments languidly, pulling the stumbling man forward by one of his sickeningly clammy hands. The room had been dark and somewhat small for a palace room: a single, large black wood bed and some ornate expensive furniture. There had been some rather worn looking pieces of art though, a god, a spirit, a beautiful woman by a river, but nothing too fancy. Certainly nothing compared to the rooms of some of her more influential clients.

I bet that makes him practically seethe with jealously, she had thought with cold satisfaction, I bet it makes him rage and cry his petty little heart out.

He had tried to push her to the bed then, sloppily with eager hands and she had ripped them both off within her own mind and fed them to him. She had turned it around when he failed, taking control, experience having taught he was too drunk to know what he wanted. She couldn't count the number of times she'd done this before.

Feeling sickened and numb, she'd pushed him to the bed lazily and clambered over him with a seductive smile and dead eyes. She had wanted this done, and quickly. His drunkenness was a boon in that respect, he'd be quick to finish and probably fall asleep after, allowing her to slip away, her duties complete.

He'd gazed up at her then with lust drenched eyes and she'd wanted so badly to dig her nails into them as he'd drunkenly reached out to her form. She'd batted his hands away with a slow smile and a hidden furious snarl and instead straddled him to reach down and untie his robes.

She had been able to feel his growing desire for her pressing hard and insistent up against her core, and spared a moment to wonder at the fact his cock still worked underneath all that fat. She was good at compartmentalising in these situations, taking her brain back to observe as if it wasn't her, but somehow still the sensation of being intrinsically dirty remained.

She'd felt rotten and used and disgusting as she'd pulled apart his clothing to run her manicured hands over his bloated flesh, felt every inch the worthless slut as she'd looked up into his dilated pupils and smiled slow and coy. She'd lowered her head down to layer open mouthed kisses along his non-existent neck and drag her lips down his chest to his nipples, toying with them with her tongue and fingers and feeling his form shudder and arch underneath her. He tried to babble something at her, but she hadn't listened, he'd been too drunk to remember much of this come tomorrow and so playacting the complicit lover hadn't been necessary on her part.

He'd shivered and groaned and tried to reach for her as she'd run her other hand over his cock through his robes, clasping the firm length through the heavy fabric. Everywhere she'd touched had felt like a brand on her skin proclaiming 'whore' to the world and she'd stuffed her disgust as far down as it would go, where it festered in her stomach like a wound.

She'd undressed the rest of him quickly, wanting this over and done with as fast as possible and stroked her hands and mouth over his bloated cadaver skin as she did.

She never kissed him on the mouth though, wanting to keep the prince's passion there, if only in secret, and lock it away with all her cherished dreams and desires.

She'd toyed with him: his skin, his cock, an ugly bulbous thing, swollen and magenta like a bruise and left him panting and groaning to the heavens as she'd played his body like an art. He'd scrabbled at the crimson bedsheets beneath him like a dying man, ugly in his pleasure, and groaned and panted as she'd strung him taught.

When she'd been able to tell that he was close, she'd slipped off her shalwar kameez with practiced ease and lifted herself so her cunt was poised right over his straining length. He'd looked up at her, drunkenly fascinated by the sickening picture their almost joined bodies made, and she'd given him a false smile laden with insincere promise. He'd gasped as she'd gripped him, running the swollen head of his cock over her entrance in a vile tease that'd made her shrivel a little in the corners of her mind.

She'd been bone dry down there, completely and utterly unaroused and to be fair, she never was. She'd had more lovers than she cared to think about, more than she ever wanted to admit without feeling the parasitic claws sink in deeper, but not one had been taken willingly. Men and women, old and young, she had serviced them all: from sadists and submissives to those with more unusual tastes but not one had been her choice.

Sometimes she thought it sad, when she was feeling particularly self-pitying, that she had never felt the touch of a real lover. A man or woman whom she'd chosen, who touched her not for only their pleasure, but hers as well. But that was not for her, not in this life, not ever. It made her angry, furious, that the Fire Nation had robbed her of this too; even if she'd been trapped in a loveless marriage to an infantile Earth King, she still would've been able to have discrete affairs lovers of her choice. But the Fire Nation had taken that from her too.

She snarls in the dark and her face contorts. She thinks of hands that aren't poisoned and lips she wants to touch. She thinks of true pleasure and shared ecstasy.

(She thinks of Fire Nation oaths and how this place has stolen what others willingly pledge)

My life for the Fire Lord, my body and soul to His cause. May I devote my entirety to His glory, or may Agni strike me down.

(Her name and her legacy, her pleasure and her pain, lest the Spirits condemn her and her shen rot)

She'd given Vathak once last intense look, the hatred and disgust in it hidden deep in the dark, before lining him up at the entrance to her cunt and taking him in.

It hurt as it always did, both physically and deep in her soul, splitting and souring every time. She'd felt her muscles clench around him at the unwelcome intrusion and he'd thrown his head back in a groan of ecstasy as his body arched, pushing him deeper.

She could've killed him then, so defenceless and lost in his own ill-gotten pleasure, she could've lent over and wrung his fat neck; watched in glee as the life left his piggy eyes. But she hadn't. Instead she'd arched her own neck and exhaled her own lengthy groan, practised and perfected over the course of many clients. She'd felt him inside her, his foul flesh enveloped by her own tainted body and felt the contradictory urge to both laugh and cry. The spirits had been cruel when they'd sentenced her to this life.

But she had long ago lost faith in the Spirits.

The only good thing about her encounter with the administrator had been that she'd been in control, she'd had him flat on his back and yearning while she'd ridden him like an ostrich-horse. It had been uncomfortable, yes, uncomfortable and painful and repulsive to her very core, but at least it had been her on him.

Not like others, others who'd pushed her down and used their strength and her inability to refuse against her. Who'd shoved her to the mattress and taken, ripped her insides in two as she'd held back screams of pain and cries of horror.

(Men with whom the mattress had turned to dirt, the sheets beneath her fingers to the biting texture of rocks and twigs. With whom the scent of incense and perfumed skin became that burning flesh and ash on the wind as heavy armour had pressed down on her and ohSpiritsGETOFFME!)

Those men she hated most, men who'd forced her to weakness, who'd stripped her down to the crying child who'd watched her family burn and brought back the hungry nothingness at the edge of her mind.

The administrator had moaned beneath her, a strangled, whining noise -more akin to a dying walrus-yak than a man- and arched and flexed his bloated form as much as he'd been able to manage. She'd panted above him as she'd bounced on his cock, breathy, whispered gasps of fake pleasure with rolled back eyes and fluttering muscles; called out his name in affirmation and encouraged him with lying sighs.

She'd felt both sick and detached the entire time, it hadn't been her and yet it had. Her every action had been methodical, calculated to bring him to his end in the least time possible: every noise, every move, every grind of her body around his and every clamp of her inner muscles. It hadn't been hard to tell what set him off the most, it never was with men, such idiotic, obvious creatures, slaves to their bodies and their urges.

It hadn't taken long before his body had tensed up, his muscles stringing tight like a bow, and he'd shouted out wordless cry of bliss as he'd thrust up inside her. She'd felt his seed rush to fill her: hot, hateful, rotten filth that forced bile up her throat and her nails to dig crevices into her palms.

She'd blinked a few times, stared up to the ceiling with a cold, numb placidness and toxic hate burning in her heart as she'd felt the evidence of his pleasure slosh inside her.

After his orgasm, Vathak had flopped back to the bed with drunken exhaustion and fallen asleep, his ugly face flat in rest. After counting to ten in her head, she'd numbly climbed off of him and felt his flaccid cock slip from her and a single trail of cum run down her thigh. She'd calmly used the edge of the scarlet sheet to clean herself up before pulling her trousers back on and slipping from the room like a ghost.

Inside she'd burned. Burned with a cold, hard fury that was only half chained and wanted for a wild second to go back inside and screech as she pounded and scratched at his flesh, to rid the world of his filth and watch as his blood dripped like sour wine to the wooden floor.

But she'd left, she had been under no obligation to stay and hadn't. Her anger was tightly controlled and the administrator hadn't been nearly important enough to warrant a whole night's service, nor useful enough for her to endure post-coital snuggling with the fat lump. She'd left the moment their fucking had ended and walked calmly back to the tiny cage that served as her space with her face empty and her green eyes flashing and cold.

It had taken years to achieve that level of apathy though, when she'd been younger, after leaving whatever disgusting shit she'd had to service that night she'd always found somewhere to hide. The palace had enough empty alcoves in hidden corners if you knew where to look. Tiny dark spaces closeted away in amongst the suffocating crimson, the remnants of ancient passageways and lost safeguards. Places where she'd been able to fall to the ground when her legs had given out in horror and uncontrolled shivers had wracked her adolescent body. The shadows in these corners had concealed her for years when she'd bled soundless tears from a blank face and clenched her muscles so tight she'd felt numb. Sometimes she'd thrown up, sometimes she'd cut herself, scratched herself until the scarlet of her veins had joined the scarlet in the halls of the palace in an attempt to rid herself of the deepening rot.

But she'd grown up since then. She'd learnt to cope out of necessity and grown strong from the trials she'd faced. Her heart was a heavy frozen thing now, more diamond than stone: hard and sharp and locked up inside an impenetrable vault. She still felt the anger, her constant companion and only friend, sharpened and poised like knives to the throat, and despair was always just around the corner, but she never allowed them to affect her visibly.

To do so would open her up, leave parts of her soul visible to be tainted and claimed like everything else she was and she couldn't allow that. Her rage was hers, her fury was hers and the deep, yawing abyss of anguish was hers more than anything. Her private grief and pain.

So she'd sauntered, head held high and hips swaying back to the harem. She'd paid little attention to the silent, lustful gazes of the guards, or the lowered condemning eyes of servants. Only giving them lingering hungry looks here and there to unnerve.

She was a Liu at heart and she was better than these stupid, ignorant people. Her pedigree was impeccable and her lineage contained a dozen kings. They had no right to look at her as if she were scum, no right stare at her body as if it were meat, in days gone by she could've had them all beaten bloody on a whim.

The harem had been dark and silent when she'd returned, a few women still awake lazing on cushions with dazed eyes for those who visited late into the night, but otherwise empty. She'd swiftly made her way through the smoky air of the entrance chamber to the baths out the back where she'd stripped off and jumped into the warm water.

The harem was connected to a natural hot spring that ran under the palace, making it possible for warm baths at any point of day. It was the one luxury her and her fellow whores and mistresses were afforded and she'd sneered at it when she'd first seen it, as if cleanliness made all this any better.

She'd scrubbed herself all over, drowning the urge to rub her skin raw in the scented waters. She'd needed to get the brand of the administrator's touch of her skin, to wash the proof of her sin and curse from between her legs. She'd sunk under the waters, held her breath until her lungs burned and her vision darkened and contemplated in those soundless moments how easy it would be to just take a breath of the perfumed water and just let go. But as always, she'd risen back up and felt disgusted at her own weakness.

She'd left the bath in silence, dried herself and headed naked to her bed, stepping as a ghost through the bland, dark halls.

Which led her to now, staring at the blank red ceiling, the hate and wrath pulsing through her veins with every beat of her heart.

She lies there, in the heavy darkness, with wide cold eyes and her hair splayed out around her like spilled ink and snarls. Every night like the one she had breaks a piece of her off a little more, chips a shred of her soul off with every poisoned touch. The prince had been a reprieve: innocent and earnest, genuine in his desire for her but it was not enough.

She wants out and she wants it now. She wants the world burning around her and screams like symphonies in her ears, she wants blood under her nails that isn't hers and to laugh at someone's pain until she cries. She wants blood and justice and vengeance and she is tired of sitting stagnant in this fucking place.

Seeing the prince that first time with his burning innocently mad eyes had woken dead parts of her that didn't want to go back to sleep. She feels now, more than she has in years and there's a crazy hunger in her that wants to devour the world.

The prince is the first step, so young and angry and trusting, a gateway to all the power she could ever dream of and she had him now, of that she was sure. He was a teenaged boy and she a beautiful woman, a beautiful woman who had listened to him when he talked, looked to him in crowded rooms and kissed his petal-soft virgin lips with a hunger that had surprised her.

There was a passion in him, something intangible and real and for some reason when he looked at her she wanted him to see. Yes she was using him, probably always would, but there was a part of her that saw the burning in his eyes and wanted to grab on and burn too. He'd made her feel alive, after years of slowly dying and taking childish satisfaction wherever she could.

And it was glorious.

She closes her eyes then and takes a deep breath, tomorrow is a new day with new opportunities and she has taken her first step towards her ultimate goal. She allows herself the satisfaction of winning something after so long, and falls asleep with Ozai's kiss on her lips and his eyes blazing in her mind.