A/N: The Following is rated H; for Heartbeat.

It takes place, chronologically, near the end of the series finale S3E18-21 "Sozin's Comet."

Reader discretion is advised.

Chapter 22: "The Last Agni Kai"

Summer, year 13 in the reign of Fire-Lord Ozai

She was sitting cross-legged in Appa's saddle, her arms tightly crossed over her chest, as Zuko clambered his way onto the sky-bison.

"Did you really, REALLY, think, even for one freezing second, that you could just up and LEAVE?" Katara asked, her grey-blue eyes narrowed in familiar fury.

"No," Zuko said, with a snort and a shake of his head. "I really didn't." Her glare bored into the back of his head like a pair of augers as he began stowing his gear in the compartment at the rear of Appa's saddle.

There really wasn't all that much. LEADERSHIP, a change of clothes, his armor and weapons, the unescapable tea and teapot, and enough food to get him to Otosan Uchi.

To get him there… and one more. Despite everything he had really hoped Katara would be coming with him.

"What really makes me mad," Katara continued, picking up steam as Zuko sat down in front of her, "is that, if I hadn't shown up here, you wouldn't have even said goodbye!"

"I wanted to give you the option," Zuko said placidly, scooting forward so that her knees just touched his.

"Oh, yeah, sure, like I could have chosen anything else," she snapped, leaning forward towards him in skeptical indignation, her arms still crossed tightly over her chest.

"You could have," Zuko said, doing his best not to raise his voice in the slightest. "You could have chosen a lot of different paths. You could have saved any number of lives by going with your father and the Third Fleet. The battle they will find will be deadly in the extreme. You could have chosen to go with Sokka and Toph. Our airships will very likely make contact with the enemy's over Chameleon Bay and your waterbending would be invaluable. There were any number of-"

Katara cut him off by leaning farther forward and poking him rather roughly in the chest. "Did you really think I'd have left you? Now? After all of this?"

"…I did," Zuko said quietly, his head bowed in shame. "I left you."

"This… this isn't about… Do you really think I'm that petty?" Katara asked, her voice losing its vitriol and going soft.

"No. I don't," Zuko said quickly still looking down at his hands. "But I wanted to give you the choice. I… did not want to assume that… There are so many lives at stake and…"

"And one of those lives is you, Zuko." Katara sighed and leaned forward, her forehead resting against his. "I know that going with you might not be the most… 'tactically advantageous' move, but…" she reached forward, gripping his hands in hers, "…I want to be selfish today. Even if it's only just this once. You are where I need to be, ok?"

"…Ok," Zuko said, an unbidden smile appearing on his face as she leaned in to kiss him.

"…But you are still upset with me," Zuko said after they parted a long moment later. After much trial and error, he was reasonably certain that he was able to tell the difference between her angry kisses and any of the others in the somewhat dizzying array of emotions that she was capable of having towards him in any given moment.

"Well," she said with a sniff as she leaned away from him, "I am still reasonably sure that all this 'choice' nonsense is just cover for you trying to keep me 'safe.' As though anywhere is safe anymore."

Damn, Zuko thought, a crooked smile reappearing on his face. I should have never introduced her to Mai.

"Also," Katara continued, "It would have been nice to be asked to come with you"

"…Shinjo Katara," Zuko said, taking a tone of mock-solemnity, "how would you like to help me do something really dangerous, and likely very stupid?"

"It would be my pleasure," Katara said, that beautiful dangerous smile appearing on her face.

-Ω-Ω-Ω-Ω-Ω-Ω-Ω-Ω-Ω-Ω-Ω-Ω-

The die, as they say, had been cast.

By all reports, from spies and scouts and deserters, Operation: Clean Sweep was still underway. While Zuko had subdued the airships meant to burn Kyoshi, the colonies, and the western Earth-Kingdom, the ones meant for Ba Sing Se and the east were still very much on course. Sokka, Mai, and Ty Lee, along with the remaining Kyoshi warriors, were headed that way with the many Water-Tribe and Fire-Nation soldiers still learning the ropes of their new airships. They had taken all of the air-assets, as well as half of the remaining land forces, with them in hopes of meeting the enemy over the water, to fight the battle there and limit the devastation to the Earth-Kingdom, Ba Sing Se, and the army of the White Lotus that was still besieging it.

The enemy's backup plan for the colonies (because the Fire-Nation War-College ALWAYS had several layers of backup plans) was to assemble an armada out of the remaining navy and strafe the coastline, demolishing port cities before disembarking and burning their way to Yu Dao. The house guards of the Colonial Houses, reinforced by the Utaku Battle-Maidens and the forces of Lords Edo and Toritaka, would be standing guard between the enemy and the city. The Third Fleet, joined by the wooden Unicorn ships and all under the command of Shinjo Hakoda, would attempt a delaying action to prevent both the burning of the coastline and any eventual landfall.

And while all of this was happening, Zuko was going home.

He was just close enough to make the trip on Appa. Attempting to try and coordinate any type of attack on the city with either the Matsu or his other assets would only have the effect of turning the situation into a siege. A siege that would take time. Time that he did not have.

The Comet was coming. Their destinies were upon them all.

And Aang was still nowhere to be found.

It had taken a direct and actually shouted order to keep Mai off of Appa's back. While Zuko did not know the exact effects that his great-grandfather's comet would have on his bending, he knew that what he was planning would be an order of magnitude more dangerous for any non-bender. He had had to finally reveal the existence of his youngest sister to her, and select members of the war council, so that, in the event that he failed, they could continue the fight.

Kiyi would need Mai. Need someone paranoid and dedicated to make up for her youth and innocence. And so, he had made sure that she, and Sokka, understood that Mai would only be watching the fight from a war-balloon.

As Zuko piloted Appa north and west away from Suribachi he did his best to put the memory of his best friend, furious unshed tears in tawny eyes as she nodded in assent, somewhere safe in the back of his brain. He needed to remain calm. Confident. At peace.

He wasn't sure what exactly was waiting for him back in the capital. The Royal Guard would need to be evaded and possibly fought, his father might still be in the palace as well (although a part of Zuko was certain that the madman would be with either of the invading forces, his desire to burn things overriding his good sense.)

And then of course there was Azula.

She would need to be prevented from taking the throne. If Zuko could distract her until the Sun went down – the law required that the ritual take place in the light of Holy Sun – he might gain enough time to subdue her or…

Or to kill her.

That was the unfortunate conclusion that Zuko kept arriving at, his brain running over tactical considerations, circling around and away from this eventuality like a tongue around a bad tooth. Even disturbed as she was, she was still the woman who had managed a total coup in the Earth-King's palace after only a month. What could she manage in her own country if given the time and opportunity?

So, it followed that, if his sister could not be captured or made to surrender, two things that Zuko had a hard time imagining, she would need to be killed.

And, despite their history together, Zuko believed he had a reasonable chance of accomplishing the latter. He was in control of himself, his emotions, and a full firebending master, even by his own somewhat unreasonable standards. Azula was fast, but he was solid, and if it came down to a straight fight, Zuko believed that defense might win him the crown.

But… with Katara here, a strangely optimistic voice in his head whispered, it might just be possible.

If they could reach the capital before the comet took hold, whatever that entailed, perhaps the two of them working together could do what one alone could not. Katara had shown herself exceptionally skilled in dealing with unruly, partially psychotic, firebenders. Perhaps, spirits willing, everything would turn out alright.

At least that was what Katara and the little optimistic voice in his head kept telling him.

That everything would be alright in the end.

Zuko, in partnership with the vast majority of his brain however, had doubts. Nothing he ever did went smoothly.

And so, as he piloted his borrowed sky-bison through growing twilight, the ocean below him stretching in all directions, he did his best to remain calm and focused, and to harden his heart against what he might need to do.

He loved his sister. But if it came down to it, he would have to kill her. He mulled it over in his mind, trying to come to terms with it, the tiny optimist in his head still insisting that it would never come to that.

The whole of him did agree on one thing, however. That if he did go through with it, kill his sister for the throne…

Then, no matter that all the reasons were right, no matter that countless people were depending on him, no matter that it was the only way…

If he killed his sister then, really, he was no better than his father.

-Ω-Ω-Ω-Ω-Ω-Ω-Ω-Ω-Ω-Ω-Ω-Ω-

"Zuko? Zuko?! What's wrong?"

The words came at him from miles away, outside the tenuous stillness of his concentration, and he opened his eye a fraction to take in the sight of Katara, the image of her worried face seeming to waver as though through a heat-haze.

"L- land," Zuko whispered, making his stuttering voice as calm as he could. "We n-need to l-land. Now." This last word was punctuated by a puff of flame from his lips that escaped his control.

He'd felt… something this morning when he'd woken up on one of the islands in the Bay of Flames just inside of the Great Wall of Azulon. A strange humming sensation in his stomach, a cottony lightness to his limbs, the vaguest impression that someone, somewhere, was speaking about him in a disrespectful manner that was worthy of violence. At the time he had chalked it up to nervousness, pre-battle spirits paying a visit before what was likely the most important day of his life. But those feelings had steadily intensified as the day had passed, Katara bending concealing clouds over them as they soared over patrol ships, the mountain that held Otosan Uchi growing larger and larger in his vision, and now…

Now the tunic under his armor was smoldering. He could smell it. His body temperature was barely under his control and he had let the reins go slack in his hands as he sat and fought for control, tried to meditate himself back to normalcy…

And tried to NOT burn a Zuko shaped hole in Appa's head.

His chi, always a thing vaguely present and sensed in his stomach, his breath, and along his veins, seemed now to be full to bursting. It had always taken some level of conscious effort to firebend before, to summon his will and breathe out fire from his body, but now as the sky slowly but surely began to turn an unnatural shade of red before him, it was only by focusing intensely that he could stop fire from springing out of him.

Katara, proving her mastery with every breath, grabbed Appa's reigns from his unresisting hands and, still bending cloud cover with a single upraised hand, drove the sky-bison into a steep dive towards the forest a few hours away from the capital. As soon as Appa grunted with the landing, Zuko leapt off the bison's head and, like a newborn ostrich-foal, collapsed on legs that seemed to have forgotten how they were supposed to work.

Or, perhaps more accurately, had not yet discovered exactly how strong they actually were.

When Zuko gained his feet and sighed in relief, a gout of flame, almost as large as his normal Dragon's Breath would have been, shot out of his mouth and set the tree in front of him ablaze.

His eye widened in shock and he heard Katara swear quietly as she climbed down from Appa and began to move toward him.

"Stop," Zuko barked, the words halting her in place even as his unconscious hand gesture kicked up a wave of fire that immolated the ground between him and another tree almost ten paces away.

Doing his best not to make any extraneous motions Zuko took a rooted stance and began running through the same exercises that he had done almost every morning since his uncle had become his sensei.

Mastering the basics.

Firebending comes from the breath. Control. Breathe in.

The flames licking up the tree in front of him subdued slightly.

It merges with the energy in your body. Extends beyond yourself. Becomes fire. Focus. Breathe out.

Instantly the fire exploded up and outward, red and furious as it engulfed much of the clearing around them. Appa lowed in fear as Zuko closed his eye again and concentrated.

The fire still moved, red mottled shadows behind his eyes, even the dead one.

The flames moved around him, inside him, moved through him in some ways.

The flames beckoned.

They were like the SONG in a way. A terrible siren's call that was always there, normally so faint as to be imperceptible, but now loud and growing more so, more pressing and insistent with each passing moment.

The flames spun.

They consumed the wood and air around them, sending swirling updrafts upwards and out, spreading their embers farther and farther, propagating like a thing alive.

The flame danced.

It danced like a thing truly alive. A bright and malicious child skipping through the world with spark-rocks in one hand and a cart full of blasting-jelly in the other, a glint in their eyes displaying an almost joyful love of destruction.

A glint in their bright yellow eyes.

Come with me, they seemed to say. Come and play. Imagine the FUN we will have together.

"Perhaps," Zuko said quietly, to himself as much as to the growing fire in front of him. "But we are not children anymore. We have to think of others, before we think of ourselves."

And with that, he reached out and pulled that child into an embrace.

The flames all around him turned red once again and leapt out of the forest, leaving behind charred and smoking trees and shrubs as they fell into a ring at Zuko's feet, still dancing and cavorting.

And so, Zuko danced as well.

The flames, deep red and leaping in time with his breath, rose from around him and took on the horned appearance of one of the ancient dragons. It roiled in the sky above him, enormous, as he worked through all the forms it needed to survive. Joy and love and rage and pride and mirth and sorrow.

The dragon roared as it dissipated at the end of the kata, and Zuko roared with him, finding a new balance between all the facets of life that lived inside him, all of them now much greater and bursting with the unearthly energy of the Comet.

"You alright?" Katara asked eventually, her voice seeming hesitant and, to Zuko's mild dismay, a touch fearful.

"Yes," Zuko said, opening his eye and turning to her. He grinned at her like a man seeing the Sun again after a lifetime spent underground, the feeling of fire inside him beyond explanation. "You are going to have to drive the rest of the way though. I will need to maintain my focus."

"I… I don't know if I can drive and keep the cloud cover up for the rest of the day," Katara admitted.

"Then don't," Zuko said, grin intensifying in excited ferocity. "Let them see us. Let them see me come!"

He began laughing, the loud malevolent laughter of Akodo, at the very idea that anything could stop him now.

Katara just rolled her eyes and, with an exasperated shake of her head, gave him a little shove back towards Appa.

-Ω-Ω-Ω-Ω-Ω-Ω-Ω-Ω-Ω-Ω-Ω-Ω-

When the mountain that held his home had swelled to take up most of their vision Zuko had stood up next to Katara and taken a rooted defensive stance. He had been prepared to defend them all against what he now knew would be a previously unimaginable amount of fire. While he had had concerns and doubts about how to proceed not only a day ago, the power that was currently ringing inside him made the idea that he could be stopped seem, at best, a poorly thought out joke.

And yet there had been nothing. No fire had bloomed from the mountainside below them in an attempt at interdiction.

Zuko, his comet-born confidence now slightly tinged with disquiet, maintained his stance. He was certain that, as soon as they crested the caldera itself, those benders on watch, Royal Guard most likely, would seek to overwhelm him from all sides. He might even have to redirect some enormous version of his father's twin lightning bolts, streaking out of the Palace like death herself, and he tensed in anticipation as Appa rocketed over the raised edge of the dead volcano.

There was nothing.

The enormous city below them was still and silent. Guard stations unmanned, houses seeming empty, the streets clear and quiet.

There weren't even guards present at the outer gate of the palace as Appa touched down.

"Where is everybody?" Katara asked, voice flat and echoing as she looked around the seemingly empty streets and up the malignant red sky.

"I do not know," Zuko said, still more confused than suspicious. The roiling pool of chi in his stomach still giving him an unconscious sense of invincibility as they both dismounted from Appa.

Perhaps they went into the shelters? Zuko thought. Why would they…

So… this is your house," Katara said, breaking through his thoughts as she stared up at the enormous black and red edifice that dominated the center of the city.

"The Royal Apartments are farther in but, in a way, yes, this is my house." Zuko narrowed his eyes and, his shoulders set in determination, he started moving forward towards the large and strangely unguarded front gates. "My flaming house," he snarled as he threw them open.

Revealing the enormous Hall of Greeting, empty, and the torch sconces on the walls cold and unlit.

"Something is wrong," Zuko said, his worry now finally overcoming his confidence. "Something is very wrong."

He broke into a trot, his boots ringing on stone and echoing through the cavernous hall as unintentional puffs of flame flared in the semi-dark. He reached a torch sconce that looked like any of the others and gave it a pull, revealing a small room where servants could hide in the event of an attack.

It was empty.

What if they abandoned the whole city? Zuko thought, a flare of panic making his eye go wide. If Azula isn't here…

He cursed himself for a fool. While law and custom dictated that the Fire-Lord needed to be crowned under the light of Holy Sun in the palace itself, his father had already decided to break with custom so badly with his own mad ascension. If he had simply decreed otherwise…

Suddenly the sound of an enormous gong rang out in the distance putting a halt to his increasingly frenzied thoughts. If they were ringing the gong at the Temple of the Ancestors…

"They've begun the coronation," Zuko said, leaving the empty shelter behind him and moving into a full jog.

"Where will that be?" Katara asked, keeping pace.

Zuko's grin fell away fully for the first time in several hours and was replaced with a severe version of his more usual scowl.

"The Agni Kai arena," he snarled, and with a roar and a bend he burst through another set of bronze doors.

-Ω-Ω-Ω-Ω-Ω-Ω-Ω-Ω-Ω-Ω-Ω-Ω-

Zuko had not seen his sister for some time, not since his excursion to the Boiling Rock, which was a thing he had thus far been grateful for. Seeing her now, kneeling before the Shugenja of Fire, a look of absolute fury on her face, sent waves of shock rippling through him.

Something was wrong. Something was very, very, wrong with her.

Before he had left it had been a subtle thing, her somewhat erratic behavior had been apparent to him and Mai because they had known her all their lives. Azula was his blood after all, and he had known what she had been like long ago, when they both had been young and the world had not yet descended into war and madness.

Now however it was anything but subtle. Now it was apparent in the very first instant that he had come running through the doors into the Agni Kai arena. The very same one where he had once lost half of his face and the use of an eye.

She knelt on the raised dais at the far end of the empty arena, face a twitching spasming rictus of fury and her robes in utter disarray. The shugenja, crown of the Fire-Lord held high in blessing, stopped speaking at Zuko's appearance and took a measured step back.

Strangely, the thing that made the wrongness so instantly clear to Zuko was his sister's hair.

She had always taken such pride in her hair, in her appearance in general. She had always been the very picture of elegant discipline, from her manner of dress, to the way she carried herself, to the way her bangs hung, just so, framing her face.

Now that picture was in disarray, her hair ragged and hacked off in the front, her topknot hanging loose and off-kilter, barely even bound together. The formal robes she wore were ill-fit and poorly tied, hanging in places and askew in others. And her face…

She looked like she had been crying, normally delicate eyeliner running down a face now bent in fury.

Zuko had had a speech prepared for this eventuality. Something he'd written out and practiced with Katara, condemning his father, enumerating his crimes and dishonor. He'd expected a crowd here today, the full spectacle of court as was dictated by custom, but the arena was empty except for his sister, the shugenja, and the crown. The bare minimum the law required.

The speech he'd made, along with every effort to harden his heart, was forgotten as he took in his younger sister, far more gone than he could have ever imagined.

"Azula? Are you… alright?" Zuko asked.

She began to laugh. Not Akodo laughter, just the bitter spiky laughter of a girl on the cusp of madness, blue flames puffing wild at her mouth.

"Am I 'alright?'" she giggled as the shugenja backed away from the blue flames that began to rise around her. "Oh, I'm just lovely, Zuzu. How are YOU!?" She ended with a snarl, flames bursting up and out even farther as she rose to her feet.

Zuko knew that the likelihood that she would listen to reason was almost nothing now and, with a restrained snarl of his own, he tried to silence the last flare of hope that he might end this without having to kill his sister.

"I have come for the throne, Azula. Stand aside."

She made a rude noise with her lips as she rolled her eyes. "Oh, so now you want to be Fire-Lord you… fucking LIAR!" She went from mirth to flame-spitting rage in an instant, flickers of blue flaring all around her in jagged bursts.

"I really don't," Zuko said, drawing himself up as he started slowly moving towards her. "But, Uncle won't, Father shouldn't be, and you… Azi, you can't." He hadn't managed to kill all hope it seemed and, as he continued moving forward, he made one last attempt for his sister. "Azi… you know that… you must know you're… unwell… it's… it's ok. It will all be alright. Just… just stand down. Stand down and we can find someone to help you. It doesn't have to be this wa-"

"I have had enough of your insubordination!" Azula barked, now the very picture of prideful determination. "I AM the FIRE-LORD! Kneel or be destroyed!"

"Azula… please don't make me do this."

Azula suddenly went pale, confidence drained away in an instant as an unfocused hollowness appeared behind her eyes. "So like father… I used to 'make' him too…" She shook her head as though shaking off the thoughts. "'Almost' isn't good enough… nothing is ever good enough," she muttered.

She… "made" him? Zuko thought, briefly confused before his eye sprung wide in shock. Oh. Oh no.

"I will KILL him!" Zuko roared, flames now appearing at his lips as well as roaring out from his feet in a hissing ring. "Azi, I will KILL that bastard and then… it will be fine. Everything will be all-"

"You hear that?" Azula chuckled, almost seeming like her old self again in an instant as she glanced over her shoulder. "He's going to murder your husband. Still want to defend him now, mother?"

Zuko's eye flicked over her shoulder as well, shocked that his mother might actually have come here. But there was no one there that Zuko could see.

Oh, spirits… is that who she's been…

"Azula?" Zuko said, trying for gentle as his flames diminished but did not entirely disappear. "Please. Please just stop this and I… I can bring her home. Mom wants to see you, and-"

"Enough games, Zuko," Azula snapped, her eyes in the next instant wide and terrible as she looked down at him. "You want the throne? Then come and TAKE IT." She raised her hands to her sides, an insane grin appearing on her face as blue flames rose all around her in response. "An Agni Kai, brother! The showdown that was always meant to be."

Fuck.

Zuko glanced at the shugenja who had been moments away from crowning Azula. His eyes flicked to Azula and then to him and gave him a nod. Madness or no, she had challenged him, and the law was clear in that regard.

"…Alright, Azula."

"What are you DOING?" Katara hissed in his ear. Zuko jumped, he had practically forgotten that she was here in trying to deal with his sister. "She's trying to separate us."

"Maybe, but I can't turn down a duel," Zuko said as he stalked past her towards the far end of the arena, loosening straps and shedding armor pieces as he went. He nodded suddenly, to Katara and to himself. "I can beat her though. She's out of control. Unbalanced. Ash, I think there are some parts of her that don't even want to fight me."

"NONE of you wants to fight her," Katara retorted.

"I know. But… I can beat her, and… death… death can be a mercy sometimes. Maybe the only mercy that's left for her."

Katara's eyes narrowed. "So you're going to stand there and tell me that this has nothing to do with trying to keep me safe?"

"The thought had occurred to me," Zuko said dryly. He rose from where he had stacked his armor and weapons and took a step to Katara, cupping the sides of her face as he bent slightly to kiss her.

"I will make it up to you," he said eventually, a crooked half-smile revealing itself amongst the beard and scars.

"And… how do you imagine you'll do that?" she asked, a touch breathlessly in spite of herself.

"I am sure you will think of something."

"If you are quite done dishonoring us all by consorting with the enemy, Zuzu?" Azula called from the opposite end of the arena.

Zuko exhaled sharply, restraining fire as his eye grew hard again. "Remember. As we discussed. You are a spectator. You only watch. In either outcome you will be allowed to leave. If this goes wrong, you get on Appa, you go get Kiyi, and you finish this thing however you can." He turned to walk away but was caught up short by Katara's hand on the back of his tunic.

"I love you, Grumpy-Bear," she said quietly.

"I love you too," Zuko said, without turning around.

And then he moved forward to the smooth black tiles surrounded by white that indicated his starting position. He knelt there, waiting, to face his sister under the awful light of Sozin's Comet.

-Ω-Ω-Ω-Ω-Ω-Ω-Ω-Ω-Ω-Ω-Ω-Ω-

The gong rang. The duel started. The WORLD caught fire.

The Comet's power still sang through Zuko's blood, every breath was a firebend, every movement sent heat rolling off him in waves. He reigned it in, danced with the power, controlling the red flames and his emotions, not allowing either power or emotion to control him as he stood his ground against his younger sister.

Azula, by contrast, was wild. Blue flames disjointed and sporadic, chaos in form and mind as she spasmed with malignant glee through kata after kata, seemingly pulled from one to the next without balance or consent.

Zuko could see it now.

Her emotions were a tempest, flitting back and forth, unrestrained, unfettered, out of control and ungrounded. Zuko could see them now, see the searing rage in the blue of her kicks, the boundless sorrow in her strikes, wild joy in her lunges, and blackest despair in her infrequent blocks. What he, and the whole of the nation, had once thought was genius was now revealed to be abomination, emotions wild and shuddering from one sickening extreme to another, rooted in nothing.

Zuko saw it all and knew, knew, that he could win the fight, saw the inevitability of it, and saw for the first time that he might be able to do it without killing her. He had not managed to kill that small insistent voice that was certain of the best outcome. Azula would tire eventually, even with the Comet overhead her own stamina was not limitless, and without any semblance of her normal control she likely wouldn't even notice until she was unable to rise. Certainly it was more risky, it would require almost perfect defense, but it was doable.

And because, above all else, Zuko did not want to be the same sort of monster that his father was, he would have to try.

As red flames met blue in roaring clashes of concussive force Zuko noted the emotions that made up his own defense. There was rage in his strikes too, rage that it had come to this, that his father had tortured his sister into insanity and nearly brought the world to ruin. There was grief in his kicks, grief for a young girl with yellow eyes laughing in youthful exuberance. There was a fierce stubborn love in his blocks, love for the girl in front of him, love for the girl sheltering from their joined fires behind him.

Joined fires so great that the very stones of the Agni Kai arena began to crack and warp around them as blue circled red, crashing against one another with earth-shaking power. The iron grates on the sides of the arena, coverings for the channels of water that had been pumped from the reservoir deep within the mountain began to glow and steam. Even the stone columns that supported the roof over the spectator stands began to melt like badly made candles in places as the Akodos reached the crescendo of the fight.

Bursts of blue flame at her hands and feet, Azula began throwing herself bodily at her brother, circling him like a rabid wolf-bat around a platypus-bear, her face wild and feral, her ragged hair loose now and streaming behind her like some mutilated battle-standard in a last desperate cavalry charge.

Zuko maintained his defensive stance, face flat and scowling with concentration as he slapped her strikes aside like errant insects, parted her blasts like a ship's prow through water, and drawing the loose flames that fell away from her erratic gouts to him, like a man picking up after an unruly child, doing his best to keep the fire contained and as far away from Katara as he could.

Finally, after a seeming eternity, as Azula gasped for breath, Zuko bent spiraling waves of fire out from his feet in his first real attack.

She dodged the first, she parried the second, but was blown off of her feet by the third. She let out something that was half cry of rage, half wail, as she tumbled end over end, most of the heat, if not the force, of the blow dissipated. She struggled to rise, exhaustion plain in her trembling limbs.

"Azula! Stop this. Please! You are NOT well," Zuko shouted, back in guard stance, his face still flat despite the sensation of his heart breaking, again and again, as the image of the young woman in front of him merged with the memory of a crying seven-year-old, hands trembling as she fought back tears. "Think, Azi! You are unbalanced, unstable. Father has done this to you. End this and let me HELP you!"

"I'll show YOU unbalanced!" Azula screamed as she finally lurched her way to her feet. She began to rock back and forth, arms circling, sparks coalescing at her fingertips.

I can do this, Zuko thought with another scowl. He exhaled and re-centered himself as he prepared to redirect lightning into the sky. This is the end. She won't be able to manage much after this. In one arm, down into the-

But then, Zuko saw it.

Saw it before she even reached the crescendo of the kata…

Saw it in her stance even before her eyes flicked from his to her left…

Saw the mad feral attention skitter off of him and latch on to-

CRACK-A-

"NO!" He leapt. Left arm reaching out desperately across his body. Straining to catch-

Lightning.

Pain.

Lightning.

PAIN.

Lightning.

The world was suddenly screaming. In his blood, his heart, throughout the entirety of himself, and echoed by twin voices. High and shrill in front of him, anguished and furious behind him.

Lightning.

He managed to channel some of it. Down through the stomach, out the other arm, sending it roaring up into the red sky above.

Lightning.

Only some of it.

Lightning.

The rest of it went through his chest.

-BOOOM!

…and the world began to fade in and out, in time with his now broken heart.

THA-THUMP

"…your fault you…"

"…you evil…"

THA-THUMP

More screaming. Mindless, wordless, screaming.

THA-THUMP

It was like his insides were liquid, sloshing around painfully as he tried and failed to get back to his feet.

THA-THUMP

Fire roared. Ice crackled.

THA-THUMP

Laughter, mad cackling laughter.

THA-THUMP

It was a nightmare. The worst possible outcome. Frozen, unable to do anything as two of the people he cared most about in this world tried to kill one another.

THA-THUMP

Thought fled as his body mindlessly continued doing what it had been trained to do for his entire life; to pull him back to his feet.

THA-THUMP

It failed. He fell.

THA-THUMP

He lay on his back, his single eye taking in the fading light of the day and the unearthly glow of the Comet now streaking overhead. He reached into his scorched tunic, unconsciously grabbing for the one thing that had supported him when times were toughest.

THA-THUMP

I love you, Shinjo Katar-

THA-Thu…

The last breath escaped his lungs, carrying the name of the woman he loved up and out, towards that burning red sky.

Silence

Akodo Zuko was dead.

A/N:…

.

A tumble-weed rolls by. There is nothing but silence in the dusty empty space where the author's notes usually reside.

.

Nothing but a sign hammered into the ground, left as an explanation and a warning.

.

"I regret nothing," it reads.

.

.

NEXT WEEK on a very special "Avatar: The Last Dragon"...

Katara tries to pick up the broken pieces.

TUNE IN. Same Zuko time, New Katara channel

Original post date: 18 July 2020