Chapter Text
As much as he hates to admit it, the Fire Lord’s throne room holds an awe-inspiring gravity to it. The high ceilings, unadorned but somehow dominating (all-encompasing, claustrophobic) walls, the still and mute curtains that no-doubt block floor-to-ceiling windows. An embroidered tapestry depicting the Fire Nation’s insignia, massive in its symbolism and in its proportions. The way it doesn’t dare to graze against the thing it watches over; a high-backed throne, protected from onlookers by the weak, spitting, barely-there wall of flame. The throne does not overlook a round-table Sokka would expect to see in a throne room. Instead, he realises, stomach sick with adrenaline and exhaustion, it doesn’t overlook any form of seating at all.
It overlooks a sparse expanse of room, forcing those who are brave enough (or unlucky enough) to disturb the Fire Lord to stand, necks arched in a painful attempt to view the throne, if they wish to see it at all.
Beside him, shaking and shaken, clear skin marred with fresh injuries and dried blood, child-sized robes plastered to his skinny frame with sweet-smelling sweat, Aang sighs. Sokka jumps as the sound reverberates throughout the room, bouncing from wall-to-wall with hollow defiance of its trespassers. They’d been fighting for so long, the sun had set hours ago, and though his muscles cried for rest and his leg burned in pain, their day had barely begun.
Aang seemed to hold a similar sentiment. “I can’t believe we did it,” he said, voice soft beside him. Despite the tone, Aang’s words were caught and thrown about the room before dying at the throne’s feet.
The wheelchair creaks from under him, the raised foot-hold cradling his broken leg vibrating as Suki shifts her body weight behind him. He grunts in discomfort as she does so, and she whispers a small apology in his ear before raising her voice. “We know there’s still plenty to do, but I don’t think we’ll succeed in anything right after all of…” she hesitates, and he knows she’s grasping for a word to describe the battle they’d just fought (the war they’d just won.) “That,” she says, after a long moment, “Iroh, is there anywhere in the palace we can rest? Just for the night?”
Uncle Iroh, abdicated prince of the Fire Nation, Dragon of the West, only remaining (and sane) member of the royal family, sighs heavily. It’s an uncharacteristic sound coming from such a kind-hearted, wise old man, but Sokka’s not feeling up to cracking jokes and smiling, either.
“Yes, warrior Suki. I’ll show you the guest quarters. I’m sure you all wish to sleep in the same room, yes?”
Through the corner of his eye, he sees Katara nod. She and Toph have been uncharacteristically silent since Ozai and Azula’s imprisonment, no doubt processing the day’s (months, years, decades, centuries’) events.
Uncle Iroh smiles tiredly. “Follow me,” he says, before turning to lead them out of the room and down a hallway.
Suki and Sokka are the last to exit; Sokka busy drinking in the weight of the room, Suki standing guard behind him. After the fight, Katara had attempted to heal him, but she’s exhausted , and he waved her off. Sokka’s just survived the hardest day of his life, and had been responsible for the continuation and completion of so many lives. He needed to do something unquestionably good. He needed to allow Katara to rest, rebuild her strength. So, being the clever sister she is, Katara had found him a wheelchair, and Suki had immediately offered to maneuver him around. (They’d been apart for so long, they just needed to be together again, be sure the other is breathing, even if they’re no longer dating.)
The throne room holds a kind of gravity to it, like the Southern Air Temple, like Hama’s home. It’s seen the destruction of generations, of cultures, of people and property and locations and hope .
And now, the throne sits, bare and waiting for a person who does not exist. Uncle Iroh cannot take the throne without challenging Ozai as he was formally abdicated months ago. Ozai is too weak to fight. His challenge to the throne will have to wait, but he also has no living relatives, no sons or daughters or step-children to continue the royal line. He’s too old to produce children. Sokka doesn’t know whether Uncle Iroh will ascend to the throne. He doesn’t know if he respects this choice, or if it’s a weakness.
The throne is bare. There’s a very real possibility that this is how it will remain.
Sokka and Suki turn their backs to the room, and they slowly catch up with the rest of their group.
-
His only acquaintance is the dark. There is no light in his grave, a coffin measuring ten paces by ten paces, its only decorations a dirty mattress, threadbare blanket, and a rusting chain-link leash attached thirty hand paces high on the eastern wall. His eyes had adjusted to the dark long ago, but his mind has not.
He’d dragged the mattress to the corner furthest from the entrance at some point during his most recent period of wakefullness; he’d long ago lost the ability to sense the sun’s rise and set, and his sleeping schedule had quickly fallen into subjective insanity afterwards. This is where he lays now, curled into a ball with his knees cradled tight against his chest, imagining another life. One where he sees more than one person in a lifetime, where his fingernails aren’t cracked and bloody from clawing at cobblestone, where his ribs aren’t quickly identifiable. One where he isn’t afraid of fire and water for hauntingly similar reasons. One where he hadn’t dishonored his father, his family, his people.
Deliriously, instead, he pretends to feel the wind in his hair, the smell of trees, the warmth of the sun on his skin. He can almost feel its warmth now, the way it loosens muscles and energises the mind, but he’s no fool. There’s no way of escape, he’s tried every option, and not for the first time, he settles into the knowledge that he will die and this ten-by-ten cage will be his resting place.
He shivers, distantly, not feeling the bite of cold but understanding in a far-off way that his body has grown uncomfortably chilly again. He moves his arms to hug his knees to his chest, and barely feels the way that the iron handcuffs nip into his skin, reopening cuts and pressing on bruises that will never heal.
As he moves, the kyokatabira his father had recently provided him scratches at his bare skin. His father doesn’t come to his gravesite often, but when he does, it’s with fury in his eyes and heat under his skin. When had he last come? Surely, it wasn’t too long ago, his body still aches from where his father had hurt him, but he’d fallen asleep after, so it was too hard to tell… Regardless, his body ached at the remembrance of his burial clothes, as it suggested that he was going to be dead soon, if he wasn't already. The white hemp cloth had quickly grown dirty, serving as another reason for his mind to dampen his feelings and thoughts.
Afterall, his father must have succeeded by now. Though he had no concept of time, his father had boasted about a successful siege on some Earth Kingdom city, had mentioned a comet coming that evening, and he’s not stupid. He knows what a comet does to Fire Bending.
He rolls over again, uncomfortable and alone. Truthfully, Zuko no longer wishes for freedom. He just wishes for a faster death. He pulls his limbs to his chest closer, squeezing his eyes shut. Sometimes, he can’t tell whether he’s dreaming or alive. Either way, he counts his breaths, wondering which will be his last.
-
At some point, he finds himself sitting outside, grass scratching at his thighs and a cool wind caressing his face. The air smells like fire-lily flowers, freshly baked ginger biscuits, and the faint scent of campfire smoke. When he blinks, his face doesn't pull in pain, and when he shifts his weight, his tailbone doesn't ache. It’s the absence of pain, hunger, and thirst that tells him that he’s dead.
He should be afraid, but nothing can penetrate the shell he’s grown into. If the afterlife smells of freedom, lets Agni warm his skin, then maybe he’s lucky to finally be gone.
His mother wavers into existence beside him, a pond full of turtleducks emerging from the ground ahead of him. He blinks, and her fingers are in his hair, lending a warmth and comfort he so rarely borrows. A song whistles through the trees, harmonises with the noises the turtleducks make, and it lands just short of his ears. His mind grasps to make sense of the noises, but even in his unconsciousness he receives no respite from the impacts of imprisonment.
The afterlife is pleasant, if disconcerting, and he grips at it like a blanket.
-
He wakes with a start to the sounds of distant thuds. A wave of annoyance washes over him, pooling heavily in his gut, the tips of his fingers, the side of his head. He wants to scream, to claw at the ceiling, to throw something at a wall or bang his head against the floor. His father can reach him anywhere, apparently even in death.
He’s not sure where his tomb lies. He remembers being thirteen, begging for his father’s mercy, the smell of burning hair and cooking flesh, screams echoing for an audience to bare witness to. And then he was here. In the dark. With his father’s hands on his hips, burning and bruising despite the sweet scent of infection permeating the cell.
He’s fairly sure he’s underground. The moments before his father’s visits were punctuated by thuds coming from above, a rough scraping sound, the clack-clack- clack of heeled shoes on cobblestone. His father liked him to stand at the entrance, hands behind his back and head bowed. But spirits don’t follow orders, and he’s so very tired, so he pulls the blanket over his head and lets his eyes open. He aches too deeply to look around, he knows what he’ll see, so he keeps his gaze fixed on a particularly sharp stone buried into the wall. From his fetal position, the rock is eye-level; If his father is determined to defile his corpse after everything else, he’s certain he can gain the strength (the courage ) he needs to pierce his own skull upon the stone. He’s tried before, and runs out of energy quickly, but it’s that or… or…
He doesn’t want to think about what the alternative is. He hates how he’s already been polluted and poisoned. It will not happen again.
He flinches at the noise of feet upon stairs, and he breathes as there’s a knock on the heavy wooden door. Father has the key, he’s got no idea why his father is requesting entrance. He keeps his eyes on the pointed tip of the stone, unblinking even through the rattle of a key in a lock. He doesn’t move when his father grumbles in annoyance at his state.
A voice cuts through the silence.
“Right, Prince Zuko,” Says a voice that does not belong to his father. “I have to get you out of here. Do you need help to stand?”
He shrugs, unsure what to say. Is this a test? Is he dead? Has his mind finally caved in, bringing the voice of his childhood sword-fighting master to him in his final moments? He’s not sure he can speak, but surely checking to see if the spirit holds the correct face is forgivable.
He twists his head to look behind him, and lit by torch-light, flames flickering to his own racing heart, stands a man he looked up to for years. The man he used to hope would come and save him. The man who had always seemed so untouchable, so unbreakable, even by his father’s fury.
“I’m sure you have many questions, young Prince Zuko, but now is not the time. Please, I must insist we get you to safety.”
And with that, Master Piandao takes one long stride towards him. Zuko sits up, not knowing what to say, not knowing what to think, not knowing what to believe, and Master Piandao slowly crouches infront of him, the hand not holding the torch stretched out towards him. His face is pulled into an unreadable expression, the wrinkles around his eyes pulled longer and deeper than he remembers. But there’s a hand extended towards him, patient and unshaking, and his old master never did lie to him.
He lowers his gaze again, eyes focused on the torch in Master Piandao’s other hand as he gingerly places his own right hand on his master’s.
“I’m going to pull you up now, and if you can’t walk independently, you can lean on me for support.”
Zuko nods and lets himself be pulled into a standing position. The sleeves of his graveclothes pool past his fingertips, the collar itching at his neck as he moves; it’s folded in the opposite direction, he distantly recalls, which explains why it’s uncomfortable and unsettling. He doesn’t move to fix it. Instead, he feels Master Piandao’s eyes on him, no doubt cataloging every injury he’s earned. He pulls at a stray thread, feeling his face flush in embarrassment. He vaguely feels some sort of way about being seen like this; a ghost, a corpse, defiled and robbed and now stolen away. He can only wonder at what Master Piandao must think. He has to be displeased with Zuko for atrophying in such a way.
But Master Piandao does not admonish him, or tut, or sigh. He just pulls him close to his side, and leads ( almost drags ) Zuko up a staircase he’s never seen. It takes them moments to breach the tomb, and Zuko almost collapses at the resulting assault of heat and light that burrows into his skin and tattoos his bones. It’s so much. The world is so white, so loud , and behind him is a man-made cave forged with boulders and slabs of rock, unimpressive in its size and unnoticeable in its gravity.
The weight of the world settles onto his shoulders, and the world spins around him. His mouth runs dry, his eyes water, and his body shakes. He takes a step, leaning heavily on Master Piandao as he does so, and the blood rushes from his head.
Zuko’s eyes land on a lone fire-lily flower, its stalk pushed through a crack between two of the boulders that make up his grave. It’s grown horizontally, petals a colour he no longer has a name for facing upwards toward the sun.
He feels a smile pull at his mouth, cracking the dry and broken skin. Orange , he thinks, and promptly passes out.