Salvation Lies Within
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Guards take Ozai out of his cell once a week for an hour of exercise. The Phoenix King spends that time with his face covering his hands, eyes watering behind clenched fingers. Once, a sun twinned to that in the heavens burned inside his breast. Now it hurts to look at a sunlight sky.
There is nothing but ashes inside him.
...
"Where is my mother?"
Bored, Ozai occupies himself with a handful of pebbles found in the corner of his cell.
"Answer me."
"Or what?" He flicks a pebble at his boy. The tiny stone ricochets off the Fire Lord's headpiece with a ting. "Find something to take from me first. I'd be surprised to see it."
...
Eventually Ozai forces himself to drag his hands down. Fresh air and open skies are a welcome reprieve from the hovel of his cell. He would not deny himself their pleasures.
If he doesn't look at the sun, he can still stand the blue skies.
...
Nightmarish memories of that battle consume him. Nothing Ozai does stops them. The Avatar evades and dodges, taking far longer than he'd anticipated to succumb, until the child drops his charade and smites Ozai.
He understands, now, why Azula had to face him four times before she almostsucceeded in killing him, why Sozin waited until the Comet came to slaughter pacifistic monks and nuns. His boyhood tutors were fools. Negative jing has a power all its own.
Fire Nation Avatars being reborn as airbenders no longer seems a farce.
...
The guards don't bother him in the exercise yard. He gives them no cause to. Ozai stands in the middle of the yard, hands and feet chained, staring up into a blue sky.
Wind once cooled honest sweat off his body, but muscles cultivated over a lifetime of keen training have wasted away from disuse. Yet the wind is still pleasurable. He wonders why.
Gradually, Ozai begins to understand.
...
"Where is mother?"
Second verse, same as the first. Or fiftieth. Ozai has lost count.
The boy sneers at the pathetic figure he now cuts, not understanding that big muscles are dead weight to one such as him. "I'll talk with the masons. I felt a draft on my way in. I wouldn't want you smelling more fresh air than necessary."
Ozai waits until the boy leaves to grin.
...
The exercise yard is for relaxing. His cell is for training.
He has no hope of replicating his older brother's achievement of smashing out of the Capital Prison. His firebending is gone. But there are other ways to fight, other paths to victory. The Avatar proved so, by punishment and by unthinking example.
Ozai occupies himself with a handful of pebbles. He stares at them and imagines fresh bread, ankles and wrists without sores, and an existence without iron bars.
Slowly, lazily, the pebbles resting on his palm begins to twirl on bent air.
Ozai smiles in the darkness. And why shouldn't he?
To a phoenix, ashes are merely the cradle for a new life.