Author's Note: Once again, thank you for favoriting/following and reviewing this story! I really appreciate it, and I also appreciate your patience as I know I haven't been posting regularly. Hopefully I will get back on track. I have PLENTY of content, so please stay with the story! As always, thank you to my beta Agent544 (KataraFireLady on tumblr), and you guys should totally check out her stuff on here, especially this Zutara dance story s/11392488/1/Crystal-Dance-Studios.
Disclaimer: I own nothing except for my own characters, everything else belongs to Bryke and Nickelodeon.
When Zuko came to, the first thing he noticed was the dampness of the air hanging around him. It was suffocating. He felt the moisture on every inch of his body, pressing down on him like a physical weight. And it was cold, too. Like jumping into the sea again.
Roz. The boy's name hit Zuko like a wave, suddenly engulfing him. He doubled over, biting his lip, determined not to cry out. He had only known him for a short time, but he felt something for the boy. Protective of him. Roz shouldn't have stopped him. He should have saved him and gotten away somehow, despite the odds. Blast the mission.
Zuko's head fell into his hands. Now he had another reason to complete the mission. He was avenging two people he cared about. And he would not fail.
He took deep breaths, inhaling the grimy prison air, until he could breathe normally again. Finally, when he had control over his emotions, he looked at his surroundings. The prison was not made of ice, like he and his father had foolishly imagined. That would've been easy enough to break out of when the time arrived. No, he was cornered by three stone walls, a ceiling of rock and what looked like a steel gate. The floor was dirt-covered stone. There was no one else in his cell, but two people were curled up in a cell across from him. He recognized one of them sleeping on the ground; a man who had been in his tent the night before—or had it been longer? He couldn't remember anything after seeing Roz's face and feeling the hilt of the guard's sword come down on him.
"Hey," he whispered, crawling to hang on the steel bars. "Hey." The other man in the cell across the hall—the one he didn't recognize—pushed himself up to his elbows and wiped a hand over his groggy eyes.
"What do you want?" he hissed back.
"Where are we? How long have we been here?"
"We're in prison," the man said unhelpfully, and flopped back down to the floor.
"I know that." Zuko rolled his eyes and pulled himself to his knees. "Please. I don't know what's happened to us."
With a groan the man sat up and scooted over to the gate. He leaned a shoulder against it and looked at Zuko with a tiredness that was disheartening.
"That's right," he started, "I forgot you were unconscious. That's why you got out of all of it."
Zuko's eyebrows furrowed. "What are you talking about?"
The man's expression turned dark. "The torture. The pain. She told us they were gonna break us. Break our spirits." He scoffed. "I didn't believe 'em at first. None of us did. But then that boy came—the Prince—" he spit out the word, "—and we learned. Yeah, we did."
Zuko stared at him, speechless. He hadn't known what the Princess planned on doing with the prisoners once the trials were over, once she'd found the best of them. But torture? What good could come of it? He was filled with a venom that stirred his blood and fanned the fire in his veins, and all he wanted was to get his hands around her neck, to make her pay for every life she'd taken. And her brother, the Prince, would get his too. They all would pay.
"See these marks?" The man interrupted Zuko's thoughts when he turned around and pulled the back of his shirt up over his head. All across his back were long, red welts, some bright and others dark with dried blood. Zuko flinched.
"Those are two days old. Karu over there got it worse," the man pointed a thumb at Zuko's tent-mate lying in the corner, twitching with ragged breaths. "All the Fire Nation citizens did. Us Earth Kingdom people got a little break, but still a lot of us didn't make it past the first day. Being so weak already…" he trailed off, his eyes beginning to glaze over. No doubt he was seeing all the lost lives, the corpses of the dead and the innocent.
Although he hadn't been there, somehow Zuko could see them too.
"How long has it been?" he choked out.
"Five days," the man replied.
Zuko hit the floor with his fist, sending a blazing shot of pain up his arm, but he didn't care. How could he have been so weak? He should have been out there with these people, his fellow prisoners, getting the same punishment, trying to help them. Instead they'd let him stay here, sleeping. Even though he knew he couldn't have helped it, the guilt threatened to swallow him up. He felt dirty.
"I'm so sorry," he said, but it sounded more like a threat than a condolence. The man wasn't fazed.
"Not your fault. They tried to wake you, but you were out cold. I heard the guard who knocked you out got a right whippin'. Nothing you could'a done about it."
But there was! he wanted to scream at him. This was exactly why he'd come here in the first place—to save innocent people from the cruelties of the Water Empire! To make it worse, he'd been right there while they were hurting people, and he'd been asleep. It had been happening right under his nose and he was powerless to do anything about it.
Not anymore, he promised himself. Not anymore.
Zuko gripped the bars ferociously, as if he could tear them apart with sheer willpower. "What do they plan to do to us?"
The man shrugged. "I guess once they think we'll serve the Empire willingly they'll put us to work. On the fishing boats, in the capital, in the palace—"
"The palace?" Zuko blurted out. That was it! If he could just get into the palace, he could—
The man erupted in laughter. "Good luck, kid! Sure, we'd all like to live out the remainder of our lives in the lap of luxury, but I doubt many will get to work in the palace. Maybe a handful, and they'll probably be women and children." The man laughed again, throwing his head back, and Zuko just watched him coldly until he calmed down. "But really, kid." The man shifted so his head was resting against the wall. His eyes slid shut. "Good luck. I hope you get what you want. If you manage to make it out alive."