Chapter 14: The Visitor

Azula couldn't tell what time of day it was. There were no windows in her underground cell. She guessed it was evening when the wary Fire Sages brought her a dinner slightly more hearty than her earlier invalid's light meal.

She ate the bland food unenthusiastically. She had always preferred her food extra spicy, even by Fire Nation standards. It had been a joke, when she was younger, for her to show off by breathing fire after a particularly fiery item was served.

It didn't matter much, though, as her mind wasn't on food. She couldn't stop thinking about Roku's crown and the story her mother had told her of what it was and what it meant.

She had Avatar blood. Three generations back, true, but still there.

What exactly was she to make of that? Did it actually mean anything to her? The thought of being somehow related to the current Avatar was repellent. The story of Sozin's betrayal of Roku was somehow fascinating, though. It made strange echoes with her own nearly-successful attempt on the boy Avatar's life under Ba Sing Se, Sozin's descendant bringing down Roku's spiritual successor.

She suspected the story had had a more profound impact on Zuko than on her. He had always been a romantic dreamer. Finding out he was related, however distantly, to the Avatar would have fed his juvenile ideas of "destiny", a future somehow planned for him, in which he was a prominent figure. Azula believed only in the destiny she forged for herself, even though she had once told Long Feng differently, in order to undermine his self-confidence and his men's loyalty to his cause. The fact that they had believed her was the only thing that actually proved Long Feng's unsuitability to rule. A real ruler never doubted her own authority, nor allowed her underlings to doubt it. This was the way she had always acted toward Mai and Ty Lee, and it had worked.

Until it didn't any more.

Azula pushed that unwelcome thought aside. She didn't want to think about Mai and Ty Lee.

She reached out a hand to touch the crown. She seemed strangely unable to stop herself. Even stranger was the continued gentle warmth she could feel in the crown – as if the Avatar spirit, incarnated as Roku, knew what she had done and still somehow forgave her, and welcomed her as kin. Which wasn't possible.

It was also impossible that her bending had vanished.

It seemed that the impossible had become commonplace, though. Her fool of a brother ascending to the Fire Throne was more than enough proof of that.

Zuko had apparently had some similar kind of trouble with his firebending and had found a way around it. If he had found it, she was sure she could. Perhaps it would even come back naturally on its own, when her body and mind were at full strength again and ready for it to return. If not, she could find some way to trick Zuko or the boy Avatar into explaining how to undo the damage. Azula was sure of that much, at least.

But until that happened, she would have to find a way to take her fate into her own hands again without her bending.

She would manage, of course. She always had.

Even if she had to do it utterly alone, stripped of everything including the fire that had been her friend and companion for as long as she could remember.

Azula heard footsteps outside her door, and the murmuring of the Fire Sage guards posted outside. A moment later, a soft rap sounded at her cell door. Someone was polite enough to knock on a prison cell door, she thought with amusement.

She stood up and assumed the best regal bearing she could manage, despite the shapeless sack of a sickbed garment she was wearing and her own personal lack of decent grooming. "Come in."

The door opened, and someone who wasn't Zuko entered.

The stranger looked very much like Zuko, she had to admit, particularly dressed in her brother's peasant outfit of tunic and trousers, with a cloak thrown over the top. And the fake facial scar was well done. But this person was several inches taller than Zuzu, broader in the shoulders, and the scar didn't look quite right either. It looked fresher, somehow.

Just in case this was an assassination attempt, she settled into a battle stance. She might not be able to bend fire, but the moves of firebending could be quite deadly all on their own, if applied correctly. And she had the spoon they had given her to eat dinner with. It wasn't much, but it could gouge out an eye or be plunged into a soft throat if handled properly.

The imposter dropped a sack at her feet. "Please put these on," he said. His voice was similar to Zuko's as well, although she could tell he was consciously striving to make it sound higher than it truly was. Aside from the excellent job he'd done with the appearance, he clearly didn't know how to properly imitate someone. "I've decided to move you to different quarters, Azula."

She eyed him carefully. He didn't move like an assassin, but if he were a particularly clever one he might be able to hide his expertise behind a fake veneer of incompetence. Certainly Zuko – the real one – could afford to hire the very best to remove her, if he was so inclined. She knew his one and only other attempt in this area, the freakishly powerful Huo Hong, had not come cheap; she had had to triple his fee in order to ensure he would continue his hunt for the Avatar even after her brother fled the capital.

The other possibility was that the man was actually trying to help her, which she didn't find likely.

"I'm quite comfortable here," she told him. "The Fire Sages have taken good care of me." She nudged the sack with her foot, wondering what it really held. It was soft, like the clothing he had implied was inside.

"I'm sure they have," the stranger said. "But I thought you wanted to meet with your father."

Azula frowned slightly. This was unexpected. She lowered her voice so the guards couldn't overhear. "I do. But that's Zuko's decision to make. And we both know you aren't Zuko. Why don't you tell me who you really are, and what you want?"

The imposter looked startled, and then, to Azula's surprise, smiled. In an equally low voice, he replied, "Heh, I might have known I couldn't fool you, Zuli."

No one had called her that in many years, and Azula found she didn't like the familiarity. "No, you couldn't," she replied, her tone steely. "Now, tell me who you are and what you want, or I'll call the guards."

"You don't know? Didn't anyone tell you?"

Her eyes narrowed. "Tell me what?"

"It's me. Lu Ten."

"Try again. Lu Ten is dead."

"You try again, Runt Two. It's really me."

Azula blinked. "What…what did you call me?"

"Don't you remember? You were only about this high – " He waved a hand around knee height. "—when I left for Ba Sing Se. You've grown a little."

"I wasn't that short!" she snapped, then caught herself, surprised. That wasn't a controlled response. "…You're good, to know that. But I still don't believe you. What did I get my brother as a present on his ninth birthday?" The real Lu Ten had helped her pick it out.

"A reproduction of Huà Jiā's classic art book, The Flight of Dragons. It took us weeks of searching to locate a copy in good shape, remember?"

Azula stared at the man. There was no denying he looked like family. With that scar – was it real? – he really could pass as a slightly older Zuko. But it still didn't make sense. "The real Lu Ten died during the Siege of Ba Sing Se. Some earthbenders collapsed a wall on his squad, killing them all. It broke Uncle Iroh's spirit and he gave up on Ba Sing Se." Which I later took, she added to herself.

The man – Lu Ten? – shook his head. "That's one of the things I came here to tell you. It was all a ploy set up by Ozai to get my father and myself out of the way of his climb to power. Someone else died beneath that wall, wearing my clothes. I'd already been captured by Ozai's personal guard and taken away. He then let my father know I was alive and his prisoner. He used me to blackmail the great General Iroh into not opposing his power grab, you see. And it worked, for quite a while. Until last winter, I understand – when Father helped save the Moon Spirit, Ozai sent him a long detailed letter describing how he'd had me put to death. For whatever reason, he didn't actually do it, though. He kept me imprisoned in the same place your mother was, so when Zuko and the Avatar found Aunt Ursa, they found me too." He paused. "They tell me you're still very close to Ozai, Zuli. I'm sorry if learning this hurts your opinion of him, but it's a true story."

"Close?" Until her father had sent her to babysit the capital instead of helping him destroy the Avatar, that had been true. Now, she was no longer sure. Now, she wanted to look him in the face and see what, or who, she saw looking back at her. "I was my father's most trusted – " Subordinate? Underling? Tool? " – lieutenant. I did everything he ever asked of me." And he left me behind. "I conquered cities for him." And he tried to destroy them.

Lu Ten – if it really was him – looked taken aback. "And…are you still his most faithful servant, then? After everything he's done?"

Something compelled her to answer honestly. Maybe it was the word servant. "I don't know. That's part of why I need to speak to him. Alone."

"If I help you do that, will you promise to come back here with me when you're done?"

"What makes you think you can arrange a meeting for me?"

He shrugged. "I had no problem convincing the Fire Sages I was Zuko, especially with the hood pulled up. They see the scar, and that convinces them. I'm sure I can handle the prison guards the same way. It's not like I'm going to try to break Ozai out of there – I'm just taking you for a visit."

"How did you manage that scar, anyway?" Azula asked. "Don't tell me you just happened to have one like Zuzu's."

"No. A young friend of mind helped we with this, though he wasn't very happy about it." Lu Ten said. "It's part stage make-up, part…something else. Not anything you need to know about. Do you want to go see your father or not? They'll be changing his guard soon, which will be the best time to go in, when things are a little confused with the watch turnover."

Impossible as it seemed, all Azula's instincts were telling her that this man was who he said he was. Could he actually do what he was proposing? She could see no good reason not to try. At worst, they would be found out and she would be returned to this cell, or to another – she didn't particularly care about exactly which prison Zuko decided to keep her in.

Still wary, she knelt down and opened the sack. Inside was a set of plain but comfortable clothing: loose pants, a jacket, a cloak, soft shoes, and a set of underclothes. She decided not to ask Lu Ten where and how he'd gotten the underclothes. There didn't seem to be any traps in the bag – not even the classic poisonous snake-rat hidden in the shoes. "Turn around," she ordered.

"Why – oh, of course." He obediently faced the door while she quickly pulled on the new outfit. It made her feel more like herself to be properly dressed, even if they were peasant clothes. She put the cloak on, and then, after a moment, picked up Roku's crown and slipped it into one of the cloak's spacious pockets. "I'm ready to go."

Lu Ten turned back around and looked her over. "You look better in real clothes," he said. "Now, do I have your word of honor, on our shared blood, that you won't try to escape, and that you'll come right back here after your meeting?"

"My word?" He was willing to take her word as a promise? Had Zuko told him nothing?

"Yes. I'm willing to accept it if you give it to me, Zuli. The girl I knew was never one to break her word lightly."

But I'm not the girl you knew, Azula thought. She's long gone, and I haven't seen her in many years. "Of course. I give you my word then." She tugged the cloak's hood up over her short hair. "Let's go."

Chènyī Dān was a new guard, recently promoted to duty in the capital, and proud of his station. When he saw the two cloaked figures approaching the dungeon tower, he snapped to alert, rapping his spear butt sharply on the pavement. "Halt! Identify yourselves!"

The taller of the two figures twitched back the hood of his robe, and Chènyī saw two burning gold eyes, the left one narrowed by ridges of red scarring that stretched back toward the ear. "Oh! Sorry, sir. I didn't recognize you." Chènyī had heard of the new Fire Lord's tendency to run around in peasant garb at odd times. He didn't really know why Lord Zuko would want to come to the prison on foot like a commoner instead of in a royal palanquin, but it wasn't his place to question the Fire Lord. He got a brief look at the guest's face under the hood – pale, female, dull dark hair cut short in peasant style – and did not recognize her.

"We're here to see Ozai," the Fire Lord said quietly. "Let us in, please."

"Of course, sir." Chènyī unlocked the door and swung it open.

Together, Lu Ten and Azula entered the prison.

To Be Continued