postlude
At the Fire Nation palace on Sihnon
The Parliament was displeased to hear that their best Operative - and all of his men - had been tragically killed in the fight to take the Avatar from the fugitives who had gotten a hold of him, and were even more displeased that the princess herself had been injured by one of the Fire Nation's highest nobility who had become a traitor, but the fact that he was in their possession soothed most of their tempers. Azula smirked as two of her soldiers dragged the Avatar - chained, gagged, and bound - into the throne room where her father sat arrogantly on her throne, flanked by the entire Parliament.
"Princess Azula," the Prime Minister of Londinium said, "you have our gratitude in capturing this threat to our Alliance. The Fire Lord has requested that he be held in the cells beneath the palace here - does anyone object?"
Everyone nodded approvingly, and Azula bowed. Her father finally left the throne and joined her, and together, they walked the Avatar down into the palace. It had been built around the ship that had brought them from Earth That Was, and the catacombs were a picture of her ancestors' lives, some five hundred years ago - there had been some outcry to transform it into a monument, the way that Londinium had a monument to their ancestors from Earth That Was, but Azula found it more fitting as a graveyard.
What use were monuments to the dead? In the catacombs, her ancestors' bones were resting undisturbed, not gawked at by a hundred million tourists under the guise of history. But trust Londinium's citizens to misunderstand the concept of "respecting the dead" - they thought it was about abstract memory rather than tangible spirits, an antiseptic view of the world that only worked when the age and art of bending were swept neatly under the rug.
They needed someone to set them right.
The Parliament took the Avatar to the deepest cell, what had been the hold of the ship that had carried several generations of her ancestors - where they had placed their mutinies, their traitors, their thieves - and shackled him to the wall of the tiny, cramped room. He went without a struggle, staring blankly ahead, already absent from his situation: the last resort of the doomed.
She locked the door with a deliberate finality and held up the key so that everyone else could see it.
"This is the only key to this room," she said, for the benefit of non-Sihnon natives. "Without it, this door does not open, no matter how you tinker with the lock or play around with it - even that earthbender girl can't break this lock." She smiled, and slipped it into her pocket. "Ladies, Gentlemen, and Father," she said congenially, smiling. "The Avatar is officially subdued."
end of book two