It gets rough. Some people are really, really sick. You'll see when you read.
8:35 PM
They, all three of them, snuck off during the fireworks display, and made quick work of changing into comfortable flying clothes. Ironically, the speed of war no long being a factor for planning, they realized they were pressed for time. They had nine hours, tops, to get to the Boiling Rock, find Mai, and get back. And if the thing that was lurking in the back of their minds was true, they'd have to stop wherever Azula was (in the same prison where Iroh was detained). This aspect of the plan was certainly up to change if their worst fears were realized. They had to be back before the sun rose, and even before the sky started to lighten SIX AM the latest to come back.
They 'saddled up' with Sokka sitting in the front past of the saddle looking down towards Zuko would be sat. Of course, the Fire Lord took the reins, as he was the only one to know the lay of the land well enough to find the prison. Toph, the one who was so excited to have her 'Zuko Adventure', had her eyes shut the second she was in the saddle.
Zuko couldn't even contemplate sleep, his heart was racing. The worst thoughts kept gnawing at him. Where was she? Was she okay, or even alive? I'll kill Azula if she hurt a hair on her head.
He did not know how much time had passed as he looked into the sea and saw the whitecaps. They distracted him, hypnotized him.
"Zuko," he heard a voice whisper his name, "Zuko."
Zuko snapped out of it, "Oh, sorry, just— I was just, thinking."
"No, I'm sorry," Sokka said, "I heard that she confronted you."
"Who told—"
"She told Katara, and Katara told me. I'm sorry she did that."
"Why are you sorry?" He asked, confused. "You're not the one who interrogated me. I'm sorry for whatever I did that drove this wedge."
"Well, it wasn't you. I blame myself. She felt things that I didn't. She felt much closer than we actually were. She couldn't even tell me who she thought I was, except for the superficial things. I just failed at protecting every woman I had to. I couldn't protect my mother, I couldn't protect Yue, and I couldn't even protect what I had, or what I thought I had for Suki."
Zuko looked up from the saddle and saw Sokka, once again, his head bowed with drops falling from his face. This time he knew they were tears not sweat.
Sokka continued, his voice cracking "And now I'm terrified that," he said looking up, the tears evident in his eyes by the glistening, " In my absentmindedness, I forget two more. They risked their lives. Azula… I don't even want to think about it."
Something in Zuko was quite disturbed and upset to see Sokka distraught. What washed over Zuko was a strange feeling, indeed. There was something inherently wrong in seeing Sokka cry. It felt almost like being a witness to a great crime, a crime against humanity. Seeing Sokka cry was like adding two and two and getting five, like the sun rising in the west and setting in the east, like snow in the Fire Nation. It was just wrong. It rent Zuko's heart to see him cry, and something in him felt that his was his job to make Sokka feel better. It wasn't duty, in the sense that he felt forced, but it was responsibility. Zuko climbed up into the saddle (which is actually a bit dangerous mid-flight) and sat next to him.
"Sokka, it's not your fault." Zuko pleaded with him.
The true emotions came out of Sokka, "All my life I tried to be the perfect warrior. I wanted to be a man, now I am, and I don't know what I am."
"You are a warrior. Three people taking out a fleet, you're the smartest soldier I've ever seen. Three against thirty thousand men in those airships and you did it. You are a warrior.
"But, I—"
Zuko simply cut him off, "Shut up."
Sokka complied, out of shock and amazement that Zuko commanded him. He dabbed his eyes with the cloth of his shirt.
"Now, look Sokka." Zuko was looking deep into his eyes, and Sokka was compelled to obey, "You, Sokka of the Southern Water Tribe, are the bravest, smartest, kindest, person I know. Our first encounter was proof of your bravery. You were willing to risk your life so that they could be safe. Then you join the fugitive Zhao and I scoured the Earth for. You put yourself directly in the crosshairs of the baddest people on the planet, and didn't even blink. You slept out in the open in Spirits know where and for months only had a boomerang and a club for defense.
"You're smart too. Fixing the professor's hot air balloon design, coming up with the submarine. Designing armor for Appa, coming up with a schedule for the summer. You figured out the date of the Solar Eclipse and designed a master plan that breached the the gates of Azulon and got all the way into the Capital. Your forces got up that volcano, in what? Fifteen minutes. And just yesterday, you took my rambling ideas and wrote a speech for the Fire Lord. And I never would have thought up cake and ice cream together."
"You're kind, because when you could have taken me prisoner or killed me, you didn't. You stuck with me when I looked like death and felt worse. You didn't have to, but you did. You didn't hesitate to help me now. And now you're the only advisor I have where I don't have to worry about duplicity."
Sokka, still gobsmacked asked, "Why?"
"The Fire Lord's Advisory Council are just the Fire Sages in the Capital City. They are going to pledge their allegiances to me tomorrow. But for a century they've been dedicated to this idea of only one nation. Now that I've ripped that from under them, I can't be sure that they're truly loyal to me. You're the only one I can trust."
Sokka thought, "He just did a better job telling me what he thinks of me than the one I was supposed to be in love with."
"I didn't know you felt that way about me," Sokka vocalized, "I'm sorry I was so sulky. There are bigger issues, than me bitching about my girlfriend… my ex-girlfriend." a happier thought came to him, "And besides, now, I'm free. Let's see what the Fire Nation has to offer."
"Right," Zuko said, hollowly, becoming concerned about Mai again.
Now it was Sokka's turn to comfort Zuko, "I'm sure she's okay."
"Something's wrong. I feel it. Something's really, really wrong. When I think about it, I feel a burning." Zuko said looking out over the sea, forgetting that Sokka was there.
"Don't talk like that." Sokka said trying to catch Zuko's gaze and attention. It didn't work. Sokka sat there horrified, turned his head and looked to Toph for assurance or comfort. She was curled up in a ball under a blanket.
Zuko spoke in a catatonic stupor. "And all I left was a fucking note. I broke her heart with a fucking note. I left her in the middle of the night. The night she told me she loved me, and I left her. She was ready, she said. All I had to do was send for her and we could be together. We could be one. And I left her. All she wanted to know was why I left her and I couldn't answer. I locked her in that cel-"
Sokka grabbed him by the shoulders and started to shake him, trying to snap him out of it, "Get a grip, Zuko."
Zuko came back to reality, "I just want to know what happened."
"I do to. I feel culpable."
"You're not," Zuko said plainly, and turned around to see a motionless Toph, "Oh look at us. I'm glad she's asleep. We'd never live this down."
"Live what down?" Sokka asked jokingly, hoping to staunch the flow of those low emotions.
"Exactly."
"Sometimes I wish I could tell if someone was lying so easily." Sokka said, trying to change the mood.
"Oh no, I don't," Zuko proclaimed emphatically, "Being able to read someone's emotions perfectly, see and know their whole soul in a second, that's some scary stuff to me."
"Scary?"
"I rather get to know the person over time. What they like and dislike.. Their dreams and aspirations. I want to see their heart, show them mine, to love and be loved. I never know if I'll find that completely. Being the Fire Lord, again most of the people around me, including any future mates would be disingenuous at least and duplicitous ."
"Well I won't be."
"Thank goodness for that."
"And since when were you a philosopher? Talking about love like that."
"When you spend your whole life imprisoned by fire, with no one to talk too, it makes you think."
"When you spend your whole life imprisoned by ice, with no one to talk too, it makes you think too." Sokka was jarred that the similarity existed. Before he was theorizing, but now he appreciated that the theory was true. How many children out there had their childhoods taken away? How many had died?
"I had never seen a forest until I was banished."
"I had never seen a flower until spring. I remember it well. We were searching for Appa, before the Dai Li, stymied us. Toph and I were scouring the Lower Ring, putting up posters. By the third day, she stopped coming with me. And on that third day, a Sunday, in April, I walked in the cobbled streets and found myself on a narrow avenue. The cobbles were broken and between them, in the cracks, something had sprouted in the street. A flower, despite all odds, had broken through. I dropped everything I was doing. I had no business putting up posters as I saw the precarious, beautiful thing coming up through the concrete. I couldn't tell what color it was. I sat on the streets of the capital of the Earth Kingdom fondling with my fingers, the delicate petals that had blossomed, wondering if that's what all flowers looked , felt, smelled like.
11:19
After a couple hours of comfortable silence, yes, a couple of hours, a plume of steam, only illuminated by Yue's soft, persistent glow, entered their sight. As they drew nigh onto the the steam. Both of their nerves seemed to fray internally, though neither of them would let it show.
"I need to be strong for him." Sokka thought, not even letting his face show he was pondering.
"I need to be strong for him." Zuko thought, trying to spare Sokka's feelings. It was objectively altruistic of him to want to make Sokka feel even worse. Zuko felt deep down that his heart was going to broken. Sokka's day had already been absolutely demoralizing, he did not want to make it a complete loss.
"Toph." Sokka turned around and called loudly, "Wake up."
She stirred and unballed herself, "Are we there, yet?"
"Yes, we are."
The breeze pushed the steam towards the east, so Appa saw the island he was being guided to and approached it without hesitation. An alarm bell and siren started to blare and echo across the metal structure. Appa landed in the center of the coffin-shaped courtyard, and managed to remain calm despite the noise. They shone a spotlight on Appa, and several guards approached from each direction. They were all in offense mode as they came cautiously to the beast.
"Hands where we can see them!" They all commanded at once after their training.
Zuko climbed down. Upon recognition, they all dropped their weapons, stood down and bowed low. As Sokka and Toph worked their way down, the warden appeared out of the building. He was shouting, "What the hell is all of this."
He started stepping over the kowtowed guards, and saw Zuko. "Oh, it's you." He said disrespectfully, not showing due reverence. In the old days, the Fire Lord would have killed him on the spot for such defiance.
"Where is Mai?" Zuko asked with enmity dripping off his voice,
"Oh now he cares. All these weeks and now he cares." The warden remarked bitterly. Zuko could feel his fists clenching. Sokka saw that that flames were rising from his fists. They looked like knives in both of his hands. They were blades of fire. Sokka's jaw dropped as he watched the flame change from orange, to
"Subject," Zuko addressed him the way he never wanted to address anyone, "I asked you a question."
"She's in the infirmary, because of you. And Ty Lee is…" He trailed off, his toughness and vigor dissipating.
"What?" Zuko
"Ty Lee is dead because you wanted to fight a war."
"What the fuck did Azula do?" Zuko asked walking slowly towards the warden. The warden started to back away with any pretense of asserting defiance. "I said what did my sister do?"
Several weeks ago…
"The thing I don't understand is why. Why would you do it?" Azula asked with her crisp, pointed way of speaking.
"I guess you just don't know people as well as you think you do. You miscalculated. I love Zuko more than I fear you." Mai answered, plainly, though the answer frightened her just as much, if not more, than it angered Azula.
"NO. You miscalculated! You should have feared me more!" Azula said feeling a fury that she had never known before. She knew in that moment that Mai would have to die, for her treason. To personally betray the Princess was a capital offense after all. Azula was generate lightning. Mai took her stilettos from her sleeve.
Suddenly,ready Azula felt a tingling numbness in her body and collapsed to the ground with an audible thud, rendered paralyzed. She thought that she was going to die when she looked and saw the two of them, Mai and Ty Lee, above her, still some distance away.
"Come on," Ty Lee, sort of whined tugging at Mai's sleeves, "Let's get out of here.."
They could not have moved even five feet before some dozen or so guards had them trussed up. Azula, for once in her life, was grateful, but of course did not let that show. She resorted back to the imperious smirk she gave anytime she found herself in a difficult circumstance. Some guards came and lifted her up.
Back at eye level with the people who betrayed her, she felt a surge of power. And she thought more and more of the things she wanted to do to them. She felt a wave of powerlessness wash over her as she commanded her arm to move but it did not.
"What would you like us to do with them?"
There was a terrible silence that fell over them. The only sound they any of them heard was the gentle gurgling of boiling water around them and the annoying whirring of the gondola returning. As it neared the heared the warden struggling to free himself, his body thrashing on the metal floor.
She said the first thing that came to her head, "Take them somewhere I'll never see them again and let them rot."
The guards started to carry them away.
"No." Azula said, "Bring them back." The guards listened to their Royal Mistress and brought them back. "Treason cannot be met with mercy."
Ty Lee spoke harshly against Azula for the first time against Azula, "Azula, you were always an evil, vindictive, conniving bitch, who couldn't have a real friend if you tried. Since we were kids, you tormented us. You've lived your whole life threatening and manipulating people, and it's going to be over soon. Everything is going to unravel, everything is fixed. AND YOU CAN'T CHANGE IT!"
Azula wanted to kill Ty Lee right then, but she couldn't. Ty Lee had taken her bending away. Azula wasn't in control, and it killed her.
"You always wanted to be special, but you've done nothing but flattered yourself. You're just what now... A slut."
"Rather be a slut than a psychopath." Ty Lee answered.
" Kill the bitch." Azula said. The guards did not move and only looked at the Princess with a few looking puzzled, others looking disgusted, and the most dangerous the ones who looked into her eyes and saw that something in her was broken. They saw that something was not right with her, and kept a straight face. None of the faces showed approval. Azula commanded again, "You heard me. I said kill the bitch!"
"Madam, we do not know what…" One of the guards chimed in.
Before Azula could answer the tram with the tied up warden arrived back and the redundant guards went to free him. When he was untied he got up immediately and went to where the Princess was being propped up and where his niece was manacled.
"What's going on here?" He looked at everyone and was confused, he resorted to bowing to the royalty present.
"Your niece made a very bad choice and now she has to pay for it. Ty Lee has also shown treachery and must be punished." Azula turned her head towards him and looked deep into his eyes, domineering, "You are the warden of the prison with the hardest prisoners in the Fire Nation, you know what punishment is."
"Surely a stay in solitary confinement is punishment enough, Princess."
She wanted to kick him, but she still could not move, "They threatened to end my life and that is a Capital offense."
"Could they go to trial-"
"No. I will not have traitors live for a moment longer than I can stand." Something clicked in Azula's warped mind, "How hot is that water down there?"
"Your Highness, you're not suggesting-"
"Answer the question, subject."
"It's 215 degrees, Ma'am." The warden answered.
"Throw Ty Lee in." She said plainly. Ty Lee did not even have a reaction
"I cannot command any of my officers to do anything like that. I can't make them betray their consciences. They have to sleep at night." The warden, still on his knees, "Have mercy on them. They're young and dumb and full of stupid ideas."
"Take her away and do what I say."
A guard from the back of that rabble spoke up, "I'll do it." His voice was certain and had an imperious lilt to it that peaked the Princess' interest.
He stepped forward out of them and looked like an ordinary man of average build. But, upon deeper investigation into his eyes, the same thing that was amiss in Azula was not right with him. The place where his conscience was supposed to reside was never lived in or visited by true human emotion. Azula smiled at him, seeing a sort of kinship. "Now, this is what the Fire Nation needs," she boasted, "Men who know and act. Duty and drive. All of you are weak like the people we must defeat."
The guardsmen were still dumbfounded as the volunteer grabbed Ty Lee by her manacled hands.
"Let me go!" She shouted as the yanked her along. She struggled against his grip to no avail. As he dragged her to wherever he desired. She had a hopeful thought that maybe, just maybe, he was going to hide her someplace away from Azula. They walked into one of the guard towers, now empty, and stopped their progress.
He pulled Ty Lee into one of the rooms, more like a closet on the ground floor. "What is this?!" She asked. "Where am I?!"
He created a small flame in one hand for them to see. And with the other hand, he covered her mouth, with so much force it twisted her head and almost broke her neck.
He whispered in her ear, "I haven't seen my wife in four months. And Princess Azula wants you to suffer. I will do my duty."
All she could do was scream bloody murder into his hand as he extinguished his flame and as she felt a warm hand starting to rip off her clothing.
Outside no one could hear the screaming or the brutality taking place in that closet. Azula was in the middle of a tirade. "Your spinelessness and comity with the enemies of the state are the reason why the world is still partitioned. Regrettably, only one of you lot were actually patriotic enough to do your duty. You answer to the Royal Family and only the Royal Family, not your conscience or your values, but you do your duty. The curtain is about to fall in this war, the scene is set, the destinies are already unfolding. Do not die in the last act. I won't hesitate to end your existence permanently. Do I make myself clear?"
Before they could answer, they saw heard the loud clicked that they usually only heard in drills. The trebuchet atop the owner was being loaded and calibrated. Each click symbolized about a hundred feet of firing power. Four clicks meant four hundred feet, dead center of the hot water.
"Do your duty my most loyal subject!" Azula shouted up loud enough for him to hear. She sounded out of breath with pleasure. And the sensation that she was feeling inside her was the same tingling ecstasy she got when pleasured herself. Only this time it felt ten times better. She must have been shaking as the guards who were still holding her up were starting to struggle.
He saluted his Princess with a look of stern deference painting his features.
And she came so hard that she thought she could die right there. She didn't make any noises because it gave her another level of pleasure to conceal it.
He released the tension on the sling and she went flying out. Her hands were bound so all the guards only saw her feet kicking and heard screaming. The faint echo of a splash resounded and a loud shriek that died away after about fifteen seconds and then silence. Mai's face was the picture of horror.
"What an artist!" Azula shouted.
All the guards realized what the rest of the world had known since the beginning of the war: people were dying at the whim insane people.
From his elevated position he saluted her again and disappeared into the tower again.
"And what shall I do with you?" Azula asked no one, "No takers?"
"Have mercy on her," said the warden, crying, still prostrate at her feet.
"Fine, I shall have mercy on her. She won't die."
"Thank you, Your Highness," he groveled.
"Tar the bitch." Azula ordered, "but don't waste any feathers."
In the present…
"You let Azula tar your niece?" Zuko spat the indictment at the warden, as he continued to walk towards him.
"What was I going to do?" The warden asked quickly and loudly, fearing the wrath of his Fire Lord as he felt his back hit the wall. The warden had nowhere to go and deep within himself accepted the reality that his life would be over soon. He was surprised how readily that resignation had settled on his soul. "Please don't." The warden cowered.
Zuko saw the fear in the warden's face and relented, "Where is she?"
"Do you want me to come in with you, Zuko?" Sokka asked as they stood in front with of the metal door of the infirmary.
"No." Zuko said quietly before walking into the room alone and shut the door behind him
Toph, who had remained silent the whole trip, spoke. "Her heartbeat is faint, Sokka. Just like Jet's was."
There was a lantern in the room and Zuko lit it.
He staggered back when he saw what was before him. She was covered in blackness and it covered her face too. Her eyes were sealed shut and some of it must have gone into her nose and mouth and maybe some went into her lungs, Zuko supposed. It must have been impossible for her to eat, and drinking must have been a chore. Ninety percent of her body must have been covered and he saw that they stripped her clothes off. As he saw the curves he had dreamt off covered and defiled by violence. Her left hand somehow was not touched when the poured the tar.
He pulled up a chair and sat next to her. Whispering, he said out loud to no one. "I shouldn't have left you. I thought that I, I knew that I was doing the right thing. I wanted peace for the world. I wanted a life that would not gnaw at my conscience. The war is over and now I have nothing to love. Destroyed. I destroyed the one who looked past my faults and still smiled at me."
She must have been asleep and feeling a presence woke her up. "Who's there?" she asked, her voice small, hoarse with the grating death rattle coloring a usually fresh voice.
"It's Zuko," he said.
"Zuko," even in this grave situation, her voice soared, she never thought that she would hear his voice again.
"I'm so sorry." He started crying, full on bubbering.
"Listen," her voice was weak and her breathing slowed, "The case is through with me, but you survived. I needed to tell you some things before I die."
"Don't talk like that." He said.
She ignored him, feeling a heaviness in her bones. "I love you, Zuko. I always did and I always will. Be a good Fire Lord and don't let me stop you from loving whoever loves you for who you are."
"Mai, I'm sorry."
"I forgive you for everything. Do you forgive me?" She asked feeling a sharp urgency that she never knew before.
"Yes, for everything." Zuko answered also feeling that time was swiftly running out.
"Do you love me Zuko?"
"Yes, more than you can ever know." He bent down and kissed her hand.
"I love you, Zuko." she said. He rose from her hand and put his hand into hers.
"I love you, Mai." he responded.
Then there was a deep exhalation, and her hand went limp, completely limp.
"Fuck," was all he could manage to say as he let her hand go.
He probably stayed in the room for another ten minutes, pacing, thinking, fuming, ready to kill his sister. He opened the door and saw Sokka and crumpled into his embrace.
"She's dead," Zuko gasped, his muscles totally giving up.
"Let's get outta here," Sokka said.
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