If you want to avoid the sole incident of graphic violence in this story, skip Zuko's pov and read the short plot synopsis in the author's note at the end of the chapter.
(See the end of the chapter for more notes.)
Suki's eyes widened and Kumaro stiffened. He shouldered past her and climbed down the ladder. Suki and the others followed him. "Cho's lair!" Kumaro went around a corner, and suddenly sped up to a run. Then slowed at the sheer strangeness of the scene that met them.
Zuko was slumped forwards unmoving in a stone chair, with a burnt-faced and bloodied figure lying near him on the floor. The entire scene was lit by a green crystal lamp on a chain.
Zuko was wearing a pair of sleeping pants, with vomit around his mouth. His hands and feet were bound to the chair with stone cuffs, and there was blood. She moved next to him and pulled out one of her war fans.
"What are you doing?" demanded Mung, grabbing the fan from her. Grimacing, she didn't cut him with it.
"Checking he's breathing," she said.
Kumaro took the fan, and held it in front of Zuko's face, before holding it up to show the faint mist on the metal surface. "That's one mercy," said Kumaro. He looked from her to Mung, then to Kuzon. "Kuzon, go get doctor Chimon."
"Admiral Qin said he'd go find Doctor Kage when he sent me after the Fire Lord. They should be here any minute." said Mung. "We were afraid of this." He looked around with a puzzled expression that belied his words.
"Yes, Captain Kumaro," said Kuzon, bowing, turning on his heel, and heading for the ladder at a run.
They waited. Captain Kumaro checked Zuko over as best he could, while Mung went and poked at the other man. Suki stood back, and frowned at the entire scene. "Stone cuffs and chair, green glowing crystal lantern on a pendulum... a man who'd both been burned and had his throat cut. I don't see a knife."
"A third party must have killed the dead man," said Mung.
"And one of the kidnappers was an earthbender." She swallowed. "I guess you may be right about the Dai li. I know they used stone cuffs like that."
"This contraption," said Mung, pointing at the apparatus from which the lamp hung on a long chain. "I think..." he lowered his voice, "we are looking at mindbending equipment. This was probably the earthbender," he nudged the body with his toe, "otherwise why's the Fire Lord still stuck in the chair and this - " he gestured at the pendulum – "left lying about? Someone killed the earthbender, and fled. A firebender."
"Kumaro? Why is Zuko unconscious?" Suki asked.
"I don't know," said Kumaro. "He's got some cuts and bruises, but nothing likely to knock him out like this."
"Agni alone knows what this has done to his mind," said Mung.
"If Zuko burnt them, then surely that means he's not brainwashed," said Suki.
"Zuko can't have burnt the Dai li. His hands and feet are bound," said Mung. "If the Dai li was working with someone local, that ally probably had second thoughts about mindbending the Fire Lord and burnt the Dai li, finished him off with a knife, then ran off."
"Zuko can breathe fire," said Suki.
"Can he? He still can't have cut the Dai li," said Mung. "Someone else was here, and it's much more likely they were the one who burned the Dai li. We're looking for a firebender."
Footsteps sounded at the end of the hall. It looked like the War Minister that Zuko had just fired, plus a round bald fellow with a medical bag.
Suki frowned. She didn't want Qin anywhere near an unconscious Zuko, and she wasn't too sure about any doctor he'd picked, either. But with the troops upstairs she couldn't really stop them. And they needed a doctor.
"Admiral, Dr. Kage," said Mung. "Can you take a look at the Fire Lord? He's been mindbent and manhandled."
"That's why I'm here," said Kage. He set to work examining Zuko while Qin queried the others on events.
"Can't someone get him out of this chair?" asked Kage.
"We could, but not without risking hurting him. There's got to be a reasonably trustworthy earthbender somewhere in the capital, but it will probably take a couple of hours to get them here."
"Great," muttered Kage. He straightened up. "Physically, he's not too badly hurt. Mostly bruises and minor lacerations on his wrists. His breathing and body temperature are both somewhat depressed, but not dangerously so. There may be damage to his inner fire. You should go fetch a blanket." Mung's soldier nodded and headed back along the passage. "You say he was mindbent?"
"Yes," said Mung.
"No," said Suki.
They glared at each other as each explained their reasoning.
"His pupils are dilated," said Kage. "Mindbending victims show that symptom when the controls are triggered. Assuming the mindbending was interrupted, that might also show this effect. This should pass with time, but we have to assume he has been at least partially mindbent, given the situation," said Kage. "There isn't too much we can do until he wakes, apart from keep an eye on him and keep him warm."
"Can't a number of drugs cause dilated pupils?" said Kuzon. "I know some street drugs do."
"Yes," said Kage. "But I doubt the Fire Lord is a drug addict." He looked at Kumaro and raised an eyebrow.
Kumaro looked down his nose at Dr. Kage. "No. Definitely not."
"I don't know if drugs that cause pupillary dilation are used in mindbending, or if it is an effect of the mindbending itself. We never did manage to get the Dai li to tell us all their secrets." Kage looked put out for a moment.
"We need to get the Fire Lord somewhere safe," said Qin. A faint clanging came as someone clambered down the ladder. "Which does not currently include the royal chambers."
Kumaro winced.
"How did the royal guards come to fail in their trust?" demanded Qin.
"No one was supposed to know about the secret passage. It can't be easily spotted from the side that faces the tunnels, and it takes skilled firebending to open from the outside."
"Or an earthbender bending the wall away," said Qin. He sighed, but his eyes glittered. "Under the current circumstances, I am forced to take the security of the Fire Lord into my own hands."
"You can't do this," said Kuzon angrily. "We can guard the tunnel."
"Oh, I'll think you'll find I can," said Qin. Behind him, a group of soldiers came into view. One of them carried a blanket, another couple had a stretcher. But all of them bore the colors of Mung's command.
"You will accept Qin as your regent because you need him. You are a sick, exhausted child. You will not remember me or this session." Zuko tried to focus on his inner flame, but fear made his control poor, and he could hear the voice droning on and eating away at him. He was pretty pathetic, he couldn't help thinking. Otherwise, how did he end up in this situation? Everything he tried, it just fell apart. He was so tired, so tired of all this. Why did he keep trying?
"...Qin as your regent." Qin. That was who was behind this! No way would he ever be Qin's puppet-king! And it wasn't like him to give up without fighting to the bitter end. The flame inside him came hotter. Zuko stoked it, burning away the cobwebs growing in his mind.
"Open your eyes and look at the light," the man demanded in a significantly less soothing voice. Zuko's eyes sprang open without him intending it, then he snapped them shut, focusing on his fire. If he could just... He felt a hand grip his chin, forcing his head up, and felt the man's breath on his face.
Zuko's eyes opened, to see the man's eyes a mere few inches from his own.
Zuko opened his mouth wide, and breathed the fire out. He could see nothing but the fire. The hands holding him released.
The Dai li stumbled backward and fell to the floor, gasping and wheezing and clutching his face, his hair on fire and the stench of burned flesh filling the air. Zuko stared in horror, then his own face was on fire and his father was standing over him in the Agni Kai arena... no, no that was wrong. Not here, not now, where was he again?
Zuko blinked, back in the green whirling dimness. The Dai li was on the floor, silent and unmoving, with the thin man kneeling next to him, doing things Zuko couldn't really see.
"Well, you've just made a fine hash of my grand plan," said the thin man as he stood and turned to Zuko. "Didn't think you had it in you. Too bad for you that I was wrong. You won't like my plan B."
Zuko could just see part of the agent's face past the thin man. The man had stopped gasping, and there was blood on the thin man's knife. Zuko threw up.
His remaining kidnapper looked at Zuko, who glared back.
"Don't tell me you're feeling sorry for the Dai li agent you just charred," said the thin man, rummaging in his pocket and coming out with something small.
He moved over to Zuko, who flinched away but kept glaring. He knew he looked a frightful mess, his hair every which way, vomit on his face and lap, and wearing nothing but a pair of sleeping pants. He still refused to let them win without a fight.
The thin man snorted. "Glare all you like, little Fire Lord, for all the good it will do."
The man pinched Zuko's nose closed, careful not to put his wrist in front of Zuko's mouth. Not that Zuko could firebend when he couldn't breathe. Zuko attempted to struggle, but it was as weak as the rest of his efforts, and his mouth opened for air. The thin man forced some noxious liquid down his throat. It tasted a lot like last night's medicinal tea, only stronger. Zuko coughed and spluttered, but almost all of it stayed down. The thin man let go of him.
As Zuko stopped coughing, the man sat back and looked thoughtfully at him. He examined Zuko's wrists, then carefully pulled out the padding. Then he pulled them, hard, against the edge of the stone cuffs. Zuko hissed in pain. "I thought you didn't want me marked up," he said.
"I told you you wouldn't like my new plan," said the man, doing the same with Zuko's ankles.
He laughed quietly as he stood back up. "Nighty-night, little Fire Lord," the man said as he walked away towards where the secret passage fed into the rest of the system. Behind him, Zuko slowly slid into unconciousness, still bound to a chair and with the body of the Dai li on the floor, green lamp still shining on a pendulum now still.
Notes: Plot synopsis of Zuko's pov: Zuko hears Qin's name and realizes what the mindbending is supposed to do. Manages to use breath of fire to mortally wound dai li. Other man kills Dai li, drugs Zuko, and leaves everything there for Mung to find a few hours later.