A/n: The first prompt for this one was a little finicky but it's fine. This would be set after the last season of Avatar, but only like a year or so after so Zuko's in charge of the Fire Nation, but he's still pretty young. It's also been a hot minute since I've so much as looked at anything to do with Avatar, so apologies in advance for any potential mistakes with terms and timelines and stuff.

Also, very many artistic liberties taken with character's abilities, but go with it as best you can?

Zuko groaned, half-unconscious and completely out of it.

Where was he? Hadn't he just gone to bed mere moments ago? The day had been a relatively calm one, with not too much to do but he'd still been exhausted by the time he'd finally fell onto his sheets, falling asleep almost the second his head touched his pillow. He didn't remember getting up…

His head pounded and cracking his eyes open slightly, he realised he was moving. But not in a carriage or anything, but rather - if the sharp rocks digging into his back were any indication - he was being dragged by someone to somewhere. He tried to see who it was by tilting his head back, but it was dark, and the person seemed to be facing away from him anyway.

Normally, he would have been alarmed and immediately spring up and attack whoever it was, but a weird feeling stopped him from… well, feeling. Any concern he felt was oddly muted, and his powers seemed so far out of reach. Even blinking was an effort.

Suddenly he was aware of the fact that his whole body was hurting. He tried to remember what had happened, if anything had. Where were his guards?

Slowly but surely, flashes of things he hadn't remembered until then came up in his mind. He had been asleep, but then he'd woken up to shouting outside his door. He wished he could have said this was the first time this had happened, but he'd been in charge long enough to have lived through a good amount of assassination attempts and he knew almost immediately that this was one. Usually, he got up and would get ready to fight whoever came in through the door, if they even managed to.

This time was different though. The weird feeling that he had now had stopped him then from fighting back, his movements slow and painful as if he was moving through honey. He'd managed to get a fireball ready in his hand, but it had taken so much more out of him than it should have. He remembered the doors banging open, two hulking figures standing there, faces covered as they moved closer then… nothing.

Drugs! He must have been drugged. That was what this feeling was. How had he not identified it earlier? That and he probably had a concussion that was stopping him from thinking clearly. But how had someone managed to drug him? Who had drugged him?

A flash of a memory showed at least one of the figures using earthbending.

That explained a lot, but didn't change the fact that he was likely going to die.

He'd stopped moving. Murmured voices had started to speak, and he strained to listen to what the men were saying.

"So what do we do now?" One of them asked. "Do we just kill him?"

"You're not delivering a perfect body to the grave," a second replied, and he couldn't almost hear the sadistic sneer in the man's voice. He'd heard it enough with his father and sister to know it when he heard it.

"That's exactly what we're going to do," a third voice piped up, a female voice this time. He froze, flashbacks of Azula filling his mind, but he quieted them. This person was not Azula. She was in jail and this woman was here, talking to the two men who'd kidnapped him to do what, he didn't know, and he'd never know if he didn't pay attention and focus.

"What'dya mean?" The first man asked.

"Yeah," the other seconded. "Why don't we have a little fun with him first?"

"It's only a matter of time before the guards wake up and come after us. We don't want to get caught now, do we? But we do want them to know exactly who did this, so we're gonna kill him in a way that just says Earth Kingdom. Make a statement you know? So - how did you put it? - delivering a perfect body to the grave is exactly what we're going to do."

He barely had time to react before the ground underneath him swallowed him up.

Toph did not expect to be woken up in the middle of the night with the news that Lord Zuko had been taken by intruders in the palace, but that was exactly what had happened. She wasn't happy about it at all, but she couldn't complain until the worry and concern were proven to be stupid. Basically, she wouldn't complain until they'd found him, but then she'd be grouchy and complain as much as she wanted to.

For now, though, she was helping search for her missing friend along with her other, not-missing friends. She lifted her head up to where she could sense Sokka was examining the doorway and Katara tending to some of the wounded guards. They'd all come to visit Zuko, one of the times they could all get together - an occasion that seemed to be happening less frequently as time went on for some reason. Aang had been supposed to come too, but he got held up with a conflict somewhere on the way and had let them know he'd be there the next day.

Of course this had to have happened now, though. With their luck, she was surprised she hadn't expected it.

"I found something!" Sokka shouted, and Katara came over to take a look.

"A footprint?" Katara said, and Toph stomped her foot to see it through her mind's eye.

"There's a specific type of mud on it - " she started, only to be interrupted by another guard bursting in.

"The intruders have been spotted!"

Katara and Sokka looked at each other, then ran out the room, Toph following after. She hated running, much preferring to slide on a piece of rock, but she'd promised Zuko that she wouldn't ruin the palace grounds by doing so and she had a grudging respect for him so she usually complied. Thanks to her running though, she could see quite well, sensing the vibrations every time her feet hit the ground - which was quite often now - but something was off.

"Hey, guys?" She called out to the other two, slowing down and stomping again to check her theory. "That's the wrong way."

She ran down the side hallway, not stopping to explain or check that they were behind her. She passed a doorway and almost slipped.

The door had led outside, and it seemed storm had started up in the few hours they'd been up, leaving the ground as mud. Two sets of splashing footsteps and two curses - one from her, one from Sokka with Katara scolding them both - came up behind her.

"Where to now, Toph?"

She tried to see where she was, but only managed to splash herself with cold mud. "Ugh!" She shouted in frustration. "I don't know! I can't see in this stupid mud!"

"Maybe we can just ask the guards where they saw the guys then - "

"No, I felt something weird and that's why I came out here!"

"What did you feel?" Katara asked softly.

"I… thought I felt Zuko - or someone like Zuko - under the ground."

There was silence for a few seconds.

"So, like underground tunnels?" Sokka asked.

"No, like… ugh! I don't know."

"Hey, Toph, it's okay. Zuko could be in danger, anything you see could help."

"But I can't see anything in this rain!"

"Hey," Sokka started. "Rain is just water, right? And you can't do your usual seeing-through-the-earth-thing because it's muddy and not hard ground?"

"Yeah, it makes things look weird."

"Katara, why don't you just stop the water?"

"What?" Katara said.

"You heard me. Just, I don't know, take the water out of the mud so Toph can stomp on it."

"That's so - "

He couldn't breathe. He couldn't see. He couldn't move. He couldn't do anything but lay there, earth below him, above him, all around.

He was going to die here and this would be his tomb. They wouldn't even need to bury his body because he was already buried. How considerate of them.

If he could have sighed, he would have. Of course this had to happen the day he was going to spend time with his friends. He hadn't seen them for weeks, and now he would never see them again. He was oddly calm for someone knowing they'd die, and that only made him sadder. The stupid drugs or whatever they'd given him couldn't even let him feel anything in his last moments.

And they were his last moments. There was no way he'd survive this. He'd already been under for who knew how long, and his vision was going dark from lack of oxygen already, even if the darkness didn't change much. There was no way he'd be found in time. No one even knew where he was - he didn't even know himself where he was - and maybe no one would ever find out even after he died.

Always the forgotten one.

He was running out of air. His vision was black, and he couldn't even tell if it was from lack of oxygen, or just the lack of light. And even if he had the energy to move, he wouldn't be able to.

His tomb was earth above him, below him, and all around, surrounding a soon to be corpse.

Surrounding a -

"He's over there!"

As ridiculous as Sokka's idea had sounded, desperation had convinced Katara to try it and surprisingly, it worked. She'd temporarily lifted the water from the earth and Toph had been able to lift up a dry platform of earth to stand on and see through. Just as she'd done so, she'd tensed up, likely seeing something but not telling Sokka and Katara. A determined look had come on her face and she'd propelled the piece of earth forward until she'd shouted out that she'd found their missing friend.

The Water Tribe siblings had looked around through the rain but couldn't see Zuko anywhere, too distracted to notice Toph turn paler than usual and get into a stance.

"Where - " Sokka had started to ask, but his unsaid question was answered moments later when Toph brought up another column of earth in front of them, a limp figure barely visible on it, but they all knew who it was.

"Zuko!" Katara cried out, jumping to the other platform of earth.

"He's not breathing," Toph said softly, having sensed the slowing heartbeat long ago and racing to get here before it was gone completely. There'd been something wrong with it when it had still been there, but it had been there at least. Now, she only sensed a body on the ground next to where Katara had fallen to her knees, hands frantically ghosting over Zuko's body.

Because that was what it was. A body. They were too late.

She was too late.

"Toph, get us back to the palace, quick!"

She nodded silently, and hopped onto the other platform where Zuko lay, Sokka barely making it on before she was racing to get them back even if she knew there was little they could do. Maybe if Aang was here, he could do something, but he wasn't.

Something above them blocked the moon, but Toph didn't know anything was there until she felt familiar light footsteps on the platform with them.

"Aang!"

Katara's voice. When the Avatar responded, his voice was worried.

"What happened to Zuko?"

Katara hurried to explain while Toph kept them going back in the direction of the palace, Sokka helping guide her just to have something to do. She could hear Katara's voice cracking, even as she held in her emotions for the sake of possibly saving Zuko, and Aang's alarmed voice turned hard with determination.

She felt Aang's stance change and she knew what he was about to try. Katara stood up too, on standby. Sokka stayed by her side as she slowed the platform, stopping close to the palace.

She heard the air being manipulated by Aang, felt it go into Zuko's body, only to be let out almost immediately. Over and over they tried, Toph able to feel every attempt fail, until finally -

A/n: Cliffhanger! Sorry, not sorry. There will be no second chapter and I'll leave the rest to your imagination even if that's just getting you to do my job for me, but I got a million other things to do, so… sorry again? If you really want a second chapter, though, then feel free to comment that, but you are going to have to wait until Whumptober is over. Not long to go, but yeah.

Anyway, stay safe and see ya soon.

- CrowofArcadiaOaks