Rating: Teen/Mature

Genre: Tragedy

Summary: Jet knows what's coming is wrong. That doesn't make it stop. (Mentions of psychological torture)

The walls are red.

The walls are red and so is he and Li and the knives girl (Zuko and Mai, you know this, don't lie to yourself) and all the servants that go rushing away when he tries to make them people. He's not supposed to be red, not without blue, but they took the blue from him and gave him all red and black and gold and he doesn't know what to do with that. Li and–Zuko and Mai have their hands on him. They're dragging him somewhere, he doesn't know where, but they're weirdly gentle about it (heh, gentle ashmakers, who knew).

He should run, right? That's what prisoners are supposed to do when they get captured and then an opportunity.

(He's no prisoner anymore. The Fire Lord made that clear enough).

(He wants to be a prisoner again.)

He doesn't run. His destination is not a cell, but somewhere warm and muggy with a pool in the middle. A bathing room. This crazy family's serious about this, aren't they?

The warm water feels good on his skin and the cool water in an artificial puddle to the side feels good on his scalp and the steam feels good in his lungs so there's little to protest as the Prince and his betrothed stroke the dirt off his body with easy motions, rub soap into his hair, massage some sort of lotion into his body. Before, he'd stretch out and enjoy it, make idle chatter. Or he'd fight it at every turn. But now he's quiet, barely registering their touches, too busy being all broken and weary inside to do anything more than lift his limbs as he is lifted.

(Long hours or days or weeks inside a brown box with a locked door and no one to talk to. Exhausting sessions of sudden opulence and overwhelming sensation and the Fire Lord himself deconstructing and destroying every argument he had, every statement he made.

Worst of all, knowing there is no way out.)

He barely notices when they stand him up again and start stringing on the fancy change of clothes they took with them. A servant who won't let themself be a person scurries over and takes the old robe from the Prince's hands, then scurries away when he shakes his head to tell them they won't be needed. He should be awake for this, at least a little, but he's been in this state of shock since he was let out of his cell for the last time, since he first heard the title, the curse, Ozai had put on him. The red halls blur past him again, and he walks a little, so that the dragging is turned to mere guiding. There's daylight at the end of the hall, and the sound of cheering.

He knows what's up ahead, and for the first time he tugs himself back in fear. Zuko and Mai don't let him go far.

The light comes closer, and so does the sound, a wall of inappropriately happy noise that only makes him tremble at the memory of what he has done. Ozai is there. He waits and smiles, like he always does, lording over Jet the fact that he is better, sharper, quicker, more ruthless without ever letting anyone else know. Jet and Zuko and Mai wait in the entrance, not quite in sight of the crowd below, which quiets as the Fire Lord speaks.

"Today is a special day. Today, we celebrate the return of those who were lost to us." Zuko and Jet step forward at that, to the edge of the balcony. They've rehearsed this. "Today, we welcome home not one, but two lost Princes." Neither smile as Ozai puts a too-gentle hand on Zuko's shoulder and announces: "Our Crown Prince, who, after so many painful months away, has come back to us." Massive cheers sound. "And a young man, the product of a soldier and a savage–" Here, he put his heavy hand on Jet's, but now there is whispering, gossip spreading from person to person at the speed of sound. "–yet one of Agni's chosen, powerful enough to be claimed as Royal!"

As they rehearsed, he lifts his hand, red in his hair and on his robes, and shoots the wrong blue to the sky.

His delusion is over. He is, and has always been, one of them.

*maniacal laughter*