Author's Note: Hello Friends! After finishing Own Worst Enemy, I sort of swore off long fics as they tend to consume my life, haha. But this idea has been on my mind for about two years, so it is time to finally get it out there! This is only the prologue, but I have the whole story mapped out. This is my first AU, which makes things complicated, but also deliciously fun! Buckle up for some angst and intrigue. I hope you enjoy it!

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Prologue

As expected, my execution was a public display.

I would expect nothing less from Firelord Ozai, for attempting to corrupt his most prized pet. I'd heard of punishments as much as this for far less than I was guilty.

Ozai only allowed a small number to interact with the boy. (Although I suppose he is nearly a man now—even if he still looks so young to my old eyes.) Only those handpicked and vigilantly fed the same carefully measured lies the boy was nourished with daily were allowed near him.

Which was easy enough for his servants and slaves, the poor brutes who carried his palanquin and cleaned his chamber pots. Those who tailored his silk robes and brushed his hair into a royal topknot knew better than to speak to him, and his educators were all well versed in what deceits to serve.

(I don't know if his torturers knew anything at all beyond the whip they held at the ready if he was delivered to them for 're-education'.)

But such thought-clones were not quite so easy to find when Ozai finally decided it was time for his pet to learn to command Earth and Water. I had heard that one of his Earthbending teachers had been shot through the eye by a Yuyuan archer mid-lesson, on command of the Crown Princess. As far as I know, the Princess never accounted for her reasons. She didn't have to. Ozai trusted her implicitly. And her Word was Law, second only to the Firelord himself.

I was told this grisly tale on the first day I began teaching the young Avatar, no doubt to remind me of my place and what I stood to lose if I were to step out of line. I took the caution to heart, but perhaps not in the way Ozai's fools would have liked. My efforts with the boy were subsequently evermore subtle.

Command of water came easily to him; he learned quickly, too easily - his raw power unlike anything I had ever seen. Teaching him I walked the sharp edge of a sword, holding back but all the while needing something to show for our efforts. And I could see that he held back as well. Just as much as I did. There was no hurry to complete his training, when mastery only promised both of us ruin. I don't know if he knew that.

But I did.

For centuries, teaching the Avatar to bend was seen as a mark of honor, a way for one's own name to go down in history along with the Avatar he served. But now, for one from my nation, to teach the Avatar is a mark of submission, of surrender. Proof that all shame could be bought with the right kind of leverage. To teach the boy was to sell your mothers, your grandfathers and children to servitude, or flames.

And I, Master Pakku of the Northern Watertribe, had sold my soul to be his teacher. My name would be spat forever more among my tribe, a hiss and byword only to be uttered in derision.

But they don't know, that I taught him more than what the Ash-lovers knew.

I only pray he learned the lesson. And that one day he would use it to end this eternal inferno, this war without end. But who knows if he could discern my cryptic teachings? Or if he would even want to? He's been in the Firelord's pocket since he was a child, after all.

I guess now I will never know.

For now I am to pay for my secret lessons with my life. But I hold my head high as they roughly tie me to the stake in the square.

I can feel the execution drums bang deep within my chest, my skull full of the sound. I feel the sweat begin to drip down my back. As the torches are brought high and close, I think of my beloved home, longing with sudden potency for the chill of the ice and snow of the North. I am an old man now, but I am not beyond the fear that clutches in my stomach like a small child frightened and alone in the dark.

I fear. But I will not let them see my fear.

I lift my chin in pride. At the last moment I look up toward the palace, the very place I had committed the heinous crime of Truth that brought me to this moment. And there on the balcony, three figures emerge in royal glory to watch me die.

At the center is Firelord Ozai himself, as imposing and commanding as ever, the Golden Flame in his hair glinting viciously in the high-noon sunlight; On his right, the Crown Princess Azula stands, a smirk on her blood-red lips.

And there, standing on the Firelord's left and nearly as tall as the Firelord himself is The Reason I risked this infiltration. His long black hair is pulled up as always in a Fire-nation topknot, leaving only the end of the sky-blue arrow of his ancestry visible on his forehead. His face is carefully neutral, but I imagine that behind his dark eyes is something like sympathy. Sorrow? Repulsion?

Or maybe nothing at all. Perhaps I am just an old man wishing for my pyre not to have been for nothing at all.

The last thing I see is fire reflected, flickering brightly in those ancient and youthful gray eyes before I pinch my eyes tight in pain.

And against all my best efforts, I scream.

…..