Hello everyone! This is just something that I wanted to get out before we see what really happened to Zuko's mother later tonight! Hope you like it!

Oh, and I don't own Avatar.

Taking a Life Already Gone

Fire Lord Ozai was never really a very pleasant man to be around. One wrong word and he would make sure that the people of the city would get a very good look at your entrails at the next public execution.

If one word could get you killed on normal nights it would get you set ablaze on the spot on the night of the full moon. On these nights it was best to avoid the Fire Lord at all costs, but the few unfortunate guards who had no choice in the matter had the privilege of seeing Ozai at his worst.

The crystalline light of the moon would shine upon his blood-shot eyes, making his outer appearance look every bit the demon that the world knew he truly was. His breathing would become erratic, the air wheezing out of him along with thick coils of black smoke that would rise up towards the heavens, never able to block out the moon but trying all the same. He would sit, not speaking, until it reached it's zenith in the sky at which point a massive spasm would rip through his body, pushing streams of fire out of his limbs as he completely lost control of his bending.

Even in this moment of total weakness the Fire Lord would not make a sound. He knew that as bad as the night of the full moon was every month it could be worse, much worse.

And that was why he kept her alive.

No one but him knew that his first wife still lived. She was kept locked in a room deep inside the palace that he had forced captured earthbenders to build in secret. Those soldiers were the only souls, besides his own and that of this wife's, who knew of the small room. He wasn't going to tell anybody and he doubted that the bones of the benders that still littered the cold stone staircase would either.

As for his wife, well, she was on longer even capable of speech.

From the moment that he had first laid eyes on her during their official engagement dinner he had hated her. He could tell from just the way that she held herself that she wasn't just going to sit back, have children, and let him rule on his own.

And he was right; she had wanted to get involved. Pathetic really, she was not fit to make decisions. She was too nice, too soft, to hold any sort of power. She had wanted to end the fighting, raise their children to embrace peace and to recognize the balance of the world. Sickening.

It was a feat that she had even had children because he hadn't wanted to even touch her. She had birthed two offspring, one for each of the times that he got angry enough at her ramblings about harmony to brutally rape her. He thought to show her that this world is filled with only two types of people; those who gave pain and those who received it.

It hadn't worked, and as the years went by she became bolder in her defiant actions against the nation. It had been an oversight when he left her the job of taking care of her son. By the time he realized that she was trying to instill her "values" in him it was too late, the boy was ruined. He did not make the same mistake with his daughter who he had taken from his wife the instant she was born.

The last straw had come when he caught her sending detailed messages to generals in the Earth Kingdom and Water Tribes that were full of his future battle plans. He never did find out exactly how she got hold of such vital information, but he suspected that his brother might have had something to do with it; they had been close friends after all.

Normally he would have just had her killed, either by his own hands or from the blade of an assassin's, but he held back, knowing full-well that if her life ended so did his. They were connected through an ancient magic that the royal family was cursed with since one of the Fire Nation's earliest leaders had taken and married the Avatar's love interest. The water-bending Avatar had taken it surprisingly well and as a wedding gift had used his powers to bond their souls together forever. At the time it was a delightful present, but the there was a second half to the gift and it was only after the Avatar had passed on that the full curse was found written in his memoirs. It seemed that if the nation was in war then the Fire Lord could not out-live his wife. This was proven to be true when Ozai's father died at the same moment his wife finally gave into the poison flowing through her body.

So Ozai was forced to keep his first wife alive. He didn't have to worry about others wondering how he was still living because only heirs to the thrown were allowed to read the scroll that the curse was written on, which meant the only other person who knew was Zuko. Needing a way to get around his own son he had devised a plan with his daughter about how to get rid of him without suspicion. It had been Azula who had put the idea of going into the war chamber into Zuko's head and he had fallen right into their trap. Ozai was able to banish the young prince and had even gotten rid of his pesky brother as an unexpected bonus.

After Zuko was gone there was no one left to stop him from faking his wife's death and moving her permanently into her own hidden little room. He brought her a little water and rice once a day and then left her in the dark, alone with only her own thoughts. She had been there for three years now and if he didn't already know it was her he wouldn't have been able to recognize the shell she had become.

Lately he had been feeding her more because he could tell she was slowly dieing and the nights of the full moon, which had always been his weakest time, had started to become even more painful and out of control. On those nights it was as if their connection opened up completely and he received all of the pain she had endured in the past month in just one, excruciating moment.

And so it went for many months. After a while Ozai started to notice that big events tended to happen during full moons. The pain had come the night he found out about the Avatars return. It had come the night his son had been seen, and briefly captured, in Fire Nation waters. He had gotten some relief the night Zhao had killed the Moon Spirit, but the pain had come back tenfold after it had been revived. It was also a full moon the night the comet arrived and it was that night that Zuko, along with the Avatar and his friends, had come to try and stop him from harnessing its power.

They failed, and as Ozai fought the Avatar, becoming stronger and stronger by the second, Zuko ran off looking for the one thing he knew would stop his father from destroying the world.

As he ran down the staircase he had found in the wall of his fathers chamber his heart pounded in fear of what kind of state he would find his mother in. When he reached the bottom he stopped, staring at the small women chained to the wall.

This is not my mother. This cannot be my mother.

But as he walked closer to the frail women she lifted her head, her eyes locking onto his, and he understood what she wanted him to do.

"I've missed you, Mother." Then, kissing her forehead, he whispered the words she had been waiting to hear for years. "I'll set you free."

And with tears streaming down his face he plunged his dagger through her heart. She let out a shaky breath, and looking up into his eyes once more she offered him one last loving smile before her soul left to collect her husbands and bring it into the sprit world where it could do no more harm.

Any good? This isn't how I originally thought it would turn out, not at all, and I'm not sure I like it outside my head. Maybe I'll type up the original idea sometime.

Anyway, thanks for reading!

Raika