"My dad!" Sokka whispers excitedly as the prisoners in the gondola file somberly out. "He's here!"
Zuko and Suki exchange weary but very relieved glances behind Sokka's back. If they'd gambled on this for nothing, Zuko does not know what they would've done.
"I'll stay here and find out where they are going to put him," Sokka explains quickly, the words tumbling out too fast. "You two get back to the prison yard before anyone notices you're gone."
"Okay," Suki and Zuko say in unison, glancing at each other awkwardly and starting back. Sneaking surreptitiously back into the yard, they are quickly ushered into their cells, into imposing steel boxes that keep their spirits trapped inside. They don't say goodbye to each other, just break eye contact in a rather cold way.
Alone and silent in his cell once more, Zuko buries his head in his hands as the reality of his situation washes over him like waves, wearing him down repeatedly, unceasingly. How on earth will they get out of here? The prison is infested with merciless guards, proven to be inescapable, and the group can rely on no outside help.
"Zuko," hisses a voice after nearly two hours of sinking into self-pity. "You there?"
"Yeah, Sokka?"
"Listen, my father and I came up with a plan, its'-" He's interrupted by pair of guards demanding to be let in the cell.
"Can't I just rough him up a bit?" Zuko hears Sokka beg, and is astonished when they allow it. Sokka comes in alone with a sheepish grin, and pretends to punch a pillow while Zuko feigns pained groans.
"Okay, Zuko," Sokka whispers. "I'm short on time, so don't argue. We're going to escape on the gondola, so meet us in the prison yard in exactly in hour. That's when the distraction will take place, so don't be late." And without another word, he leaves the cell and is replaced by two sinister looking guards.
"Come on, you," the man says with a brutal smile, but what choice does Zuko have but to go with them and confront his fate, spiraling out of control?
Tied to a chair in a dank, dark cell, Zuko glances up as the crack of light beneath he door widens into a full-fledged rectangle of amber light. She slips in, the visitor, the certain bringer of Zuko's fate.
"Why am I here? I didn't do anything wrong!" he shouts.
"Come on, Zuko," the visitor says. "We all know that's a lie."
He recognizes the sound of her voice immediately, and then the outline of her profile, even in the shadows. The sharp angles of her face and body that still manage to be elegant and beautiful, the hair as dark as a crow's feathers but ten times as fine and silky, as well as the dark abyss of intriguing secrets known only to herself in her careful eyes. Mai. All of sudden, he is overwhelmed with pain and joy and utter disbelief.
"Zuko." she says bitterly, and every syllable, dripping with contempt, breaks him to delicate pieces, even if her face doesn't match it.
"How did you know I was here?" Her eyes narrow. "Because I know you so well." He stares at her for a second, and she relents slightly. "The warden's my uncle, you idiot. And the truth is, I guess I don't know you." She draws a scroll from her pocket, the letter he'd wrote to her, but she doesn't read out the words that ripped out her heart.
She says nothing else for a moment, but then, wounding him even more, cutting even deeper- "You're a traitor, Zuko, and you've hurt me. How could you? How could you turn on everyone you cared about? Can you even imagine what kind of pain you put me through, what scrutiny? They thought I knew where you went! At first, they even dared to think I went with you! As if I would follow your footsteps. You betrayed me, Zuko. And you betrayed your family, your country." And for a few moments, her mask of an unreadable expression slips to the floor in a heap, though this is just enough time for her to lash out and strike him across the good side of his face. Heartbreak, Zuko learns quickly, is five-fingered, and the proof blossoms across his face in a dangerous pink shadow.
"Did it hurt as much as that?" he inquires weakly, and she clenches her fists, her eyes wet with inexplicable tears, a feature he's seen on Mai only in his nightmares.
"You can't even imagine," she replies tightly, scratching the rivulets away angrily. "And to think, you couldn't even tell me in person. You left a letter for me. A letter. And you couldn't even give that to me in person. You gave it to Ty Lee, of all people. You could say goodbye to her, but not to me?" "I couldn't," Zuko tries to convince her, puts every ounce of care for her into his imploring. "I didn't want to say goodbye, Mai."
"Then why did you? Oh, right, let me guess. Destiny. Did you even consider that destiny is something you could shape, could choose for yourself?"
"I did do that" is all he can manage, and she steps back a foot as if she's been slapped herself, with a gasp that almost pains Zuko more than it does her.
"You didn't care at all, did you? How did that letter start again?" She reads the first words aloud: "Dear Mai. I'm sorry you have to find out this way, but I'm leaving. Hear that? Dear. As if I really mean that much to you." She rolls it up in a crinkled ball and chucks it into his flinching face.
"But you do!" Zuko objects. "You don't understand; that was the hardest decision I've ever had to make!"
"And you chose wrong!"Mai shrieks, unhinged for perhaps the second time in her life, the other time being that night on the shores of Ember Island. The deadly stiletto flies from her sleeve so quickly Zuko cannot even react, not that he'd be able to do much, tied up in this chair. The blade imbeds itself in the wall behind him, not even an inch from his scarred face. And the fact that she's missed is even more unbelievable than the fact that she's actually thrown it.
For a moment, they both struggle under the stunned silence before Mai walks over stiffly to retrieve the weapon from where it was thrown. She reaches over him, close enough for him to feel the warmth of her sweet-scented breath in his ear, the heat emanating from her pale skin, but still so unbearably far away. A strand of black hair has fallen out of place, obscuring her vision, and Zuko wants to swipe it gently back behind the pearly shell of her ear; the aloofness and the cold has stolen back into her eyes, and that lone strand of hair is the only thing that screams something is wrong with her, with Mai, master of control and steadiness.
"You missed me" is all he can think to say, even though she hasn't. The evidence is at his feet, the two halves of his heart, sliced cleanly in two.
Her lips are a fine line as she turns her back on him and walks to the door of the cell. But, right before she slips out the door again, it opens and a frantic guard enters. Beneath the creaking of the door, Zuko hears Mai utter four quiet, meaningful words beneath her breath.
"More than you know."
"Lady Mai," the guard says breathlessly, "a riot is taking place in the prison yard! I'm here to protect you."
"I don't need protecting," Mai protests, yanking her arm away from the guard.
"Trust me," Zuko tells the man, resisting the alien desire to laugh. "She doesn't."
But then the words register. Riot? Is that the distraction Sokka mentioned? Eyes wide and heart racing, he makes a desperate bid at escape, firebending the guard and forcing him heart racing, he makes a desperate bid at escape, firebending the guard and forcing him away from the door. Bursting into the dimly lit hallway, he slams the door on the guard and Mai, locking it with deepest reluctance.
"Zuko!" screams Mai, pounding on the steel.
"I'm sorry," he apologizes. "Spirits, Mai, I'm sorry." But before she can reply, he's gone.
"Zuko, where have you been?" Sokka scolds as Zuko locates him, Suki, Chit Sang, and Hakoda amongst the brawling prisoners and infuriated guards. "We almost left without you!"
"How are we going to take the gondola?" Zuko demands. "The warden would never pity a hostage."
"Not if the warden is the hostage!"
"But how are we going to get the warden?"
"Hey, guys," Chit Sang interrupts, pointing upward with raised eyebrows. "I think your girlfriend's taking care of it."
Zuko scans the overhead landings for Suki's slight figure and finds her scaling the wall expertly, a determined look marring her features. In stunned silence, he, Hakoda, Chit Sang, and Sokka watch her single-handedly overtake the warden and tie him up.
"Guys!" she calls down happily above the roar of the other prisoners. "Let's go!"
Hakoda exhales as they take off running, weaving clumsily through the crowd. "That's some girl," he tells his son approvingly.
Zuko notices Sokka smile, somehow, through all they are enduring. "Tell me about it."
"Which way is the gondola?" Zuko asks Suki as they approach her, and she points down the hall to their left.
"That way, I think."
So as a surging, hopeful stampede, they charge down the halls bellowing guttural battle cries to intimidate any pursuers; luckily, there are none until they reach the platform, Chit Sang with a struggling warden slung over his back. As soon as the seven guards catch sight of their leader bound and gagged and in peril, they let the prisoners pass. Zuko can feel a contemptuous tension in the thick air as they push past them, Zuko shoving the lever that controls the gondola's movements downward as he does so. One of the guards is the man who'd mocked him in the lounge, and the two stare each other down with malicious and vicious snarling stares.
The gondola sways slightly under their weight as the group steps uncertainly on, and begins to move in a steady, rocking fashion. The ground beneath Zuko's feet is replaced by a boiling lake nearly one hundred feet below, a greedy roaring chasm of deadly waters.
"We're going to make it!" Suki shouts cheerily, peeping out the side, the length of the cable between them and the prison growing by the second, as well as their relief.
But suddenly, two figures appear near the guards, and Zuko knows them immediately, for they are two of the most renowned phantoms from the memories he'd rather forget. His sister, Azula, and childhood friend, Ty Lee. The latter jumps atop the opposite cable wire and darts agilely across it in their direction, gaining dangerously on the escapees in their much-too-slow gondola, while the former has blue jets of flame erupt from her feet to propel her forward, a stupendous grin plastered to her face.
"Don't jinx us," Zuko says to Suki, and the group prepares for the hazardous challenge that swiftly approaches. The two lean and lithe opponents land with dull thuds on the roof, and four of the five fugitives climb up to meet them, while Chit Sang is left to handle the warden.
"Hello, brother," taunts Azula as Zuko and Sokka, unsheathing his unique sword, prepare to face her. Somewhere on the other side of the gondola, Suki and Hakoda have already engaged in combat with Ty Lee, and it hurts Zuko to think that any of the three may get injured.
"You are no sister of mine," he replies darkly, and, quick as the lightning that is the source of her infamy, she launches a full-scale attack on the two boys. The world around Zuko is set ablaze with the blue flames spurting from his sister's fingertips, by the ambitious fire in her eyes that burns and consumes without remorse. Sokka's blade clangs emptily against the air and sometimes against armor, while firebending is consumed by the sibling's firebending. The footwork is nimble and a deadly dance, and the fourteen-year-old with the swirling black hair and cruel eyes, as well as the boy wielding a sharpened sword, are all Zuko can see; the hatred for his opponent courses through his veins, but all the while their conversations as innocent children, as a not yet broken family, replay endlessly through his preoccupied mind.
A deep and final shout sounds from beneath his feet, from the warden, and suddenly everyone on the gondola freezes in their deadly endeavors as Ty Lee, terror etched onto her pretty face, screams what is now obvious. "They're going to cut the line!"
Azula and Ty Lee leap backward onto the incoming gondola on the opposite cable, a chance for their escape, too good to be true. "This isn't over, brother!" Azula screeches, but something passes over her face as she glances down at the boiling water beneath them. "Or... maybe it is." A vengeful smile.
The last thing he can make out on their watching faces as the gondola takes them in the opposite direction is the regret emanating from Ty Lee, and the satisfaction in his sister's eyes, both at the realization Zuko is about to plummet to his end. The guards are already halfway through sawing the cable clean in two on the warden's final orders, and there is nothing Zuko nor anyone else can do to stop it. At least that's what he thinks, until the girl clad in black and dark red erupts from the prison, stilettos flying from her sleeves and glinting in the light as they pin the guards to the ground. She is almost impossible to distinguish to anyone else, but Zuko would know her anywhere.
"What are you doing?" he hears one dejected guard wail.
"Saving the jerk who dumped me" is Mai's loud reply, but the grateful silence afterwards is broken up by Azula's frustrated bellow as she and Ty Lee step onto the platform again, mere dots in the distance. Suddenly Zuko is paralyzed with fear. Azula wouldn't stand for this- her and Ty Lee would destroy Mai; as her best friends, they know her weaknesses, her strengths. Though she was a perilous tornado against anyone else, against his sister she does not stand a chance.
"Mai," he whispers, but Sokka and Hakoda are dragging him off the gondola, which has finally reach the other shore. His view of the scene becomes obscured, but he is almost glad- he does not want to see Mai die for him.
"Come on, Zuko," Sokka pleads, and he allows himself to be led away from the prison and towards Azula's ride, an airship, looming ominously above them. He doesn't feel any emotion at first as they stumble up the boarding plank, beginning to hijack it; he supposes Mai still has his heart, broken and bloody, after all, and the thought of her resembling it is almost too much for him to take. All of a sudden the numbness breaks like a broken dam.
"No, no, no!" he murmurs despairingly, burying his face in his shaking hands.
"It's okay, look, she'll be fine." Sokka promises the impossible clumsily and unconvincingly, patting his friend's back, not knowing what else to do. Zuko just shrugs him off. They've escaped, but a part of him will always be kept captive in that jail. Sokka looks up at his father, who stands at the controls of the airship. "Set our course for the Western Air Temple. For home."
However, if this request for home would be made true for Zuko, he'd have to trek all the way back to the Boiling Rock and fall disbelievingly at the still feet of a girl surely killed by his own sister's fire, the flames that were just no match for the ones in Mai and Zuko that refused to be extinguished. Until. The. Very. End.