Chapter Text
They said that they killed his Uncle, had him executed only hours after his capture.
Zuko didn't believe them. The Dragon of the West was not that easy to catch and kill.
They said that the Avatar was dead, caught in a storm and drowned along with his bison.
Zuko didn't believe them. Aang would never had been so careless with Appa.
The memories seemed dark despite the blue skies they held. The days he turned his back on his homeland and joined Aang, his friend, the Avatar. The days that he and Aang had spent in league with the White Lotus, traveling and mastering fire bending. Trying to stop a war that was wrong in so many ways.
He could curse their foolishness. His witlessness and the sheer absurdity of his actions.
Uncle always said I never thought things through.
What was a small band of rogues and deserters against an army?
What was a group of idealists and starry-eyed visionaries against a nation bred on blood and propaganda? Who where they to think they could stop a genocide? To end an industrialized military complex that had made a small nation thrive? Yes, they were foolish indeed. Foolish to stand one soldier strong against an entire nation.
The Fire Nation had won. The war would continue. His death would be a single digit in the million deaths that would follow.
He pleaded with the spirits for Aang to survive, for the Avatar to weather out the storm and end the war.
A decade of war was long enough. What would happen to the world if the war lasted a century? Zuko trembled at the thought.
He shivered every humid night spent in the prison as he awaited his end.
He did his best to conceal the faint quiver in his hands, being dragged before the Imperial Council and his father, the Fire Lord, in chains. Only it was not the masses of eyes that bore into his back at his public trial that rattled his spine.
"We find the former Crown Prince guilty of all crimes brought forth today at this court. His crimes so heinous in their nature that his title and birthright are forsaken. Henceforth, he is disowned and his name removed from the Hall of Dragons. We sentence him to death at Ayumu bay, extinguished with the final light of the western sunset. As this royal household and council deem fit. Are there any last words from the former Prince?"
His own sister sneered at him as his sentence read, while his father's face looked like stone. But Zuko could make out a hint of a triumphant smirk amidst his father's composed mask.
Zuko clenched and unclenched his hands in his chains. He drew in a deep breath. He glanced at the council, his sister, and his father. Then spoke with all the fire he could muster.
"You may strip me of whatever hollow words you have given me and you may bury me in whatever ditch you find! Know there will come a day when you will be scorned for your crimes and heinous exploits of patriotism. You call me traitor but you are murderous parasitic scoundrels! And one day, like me, YOU will be buried and forgotten!"
The crowd was silent, save for a few quiet murmurs. Ozai stood from his seated platform above and behind the council. Thunder rumbled in the dark clouds on the horizon, the remnants of a great storm in the east. Zuko swallowed.
"You claim your actions have been committed out of honorable intentions. The right thing, per se. You have forgotten that as Prince your duty is to your country above all else. Honor and Duty, for ruler and country. Both of which you have failed in and will pay the ultimate price. Lets see if your brave words or your Avatar save you as you march to your execution."
Zuko's breath caught in his throat as Ozai reseated himself on the cushioned dais.
The crowd grew noisy and anxious behind him. Zuko swallowed. As one of council members stood to dictate the extent of his punishment.
"You will be shaven and branded as the traitor you are. Then taken to Ayumu Bay and drowned until the fire of your body and spirit are extinguished. May the spirits have mercy on your soul."
Weights landed in Zuko's stomach. The guards moved forward to escort him away. His cuffed feet scuffled across the stone ground. He tried to keep pace with the guards marching him through the red pavilion.
They led him through the crowd that wrestled with the sentries. The crowd bustled against the armored men just, riling and wild. Just to steal a brief glance at the condemned royal.
He scanned the crowd noticing the peasantry mixed in with the nobility. A rare sight.
He hoped to catch a glimpse of Mai's pale face and soft eyes in the sea of distorted faces. He did not. An unsure sense of relief came over him knowing that she wouldn't see her lover in such a humiliated state. He saw nothing. No one he would recognize, except for the sharp and hysterical voice of a woman screaming for her son.
Mom?!
Sunset neared.
They branded him as traitor, a feared mark placed on the right shoulder of the convicted. He didn't remember if he screamed when they pressed the bright branding iron into his skin. The block of wood shoved between his teeth kept him from biting his tongue as the iron made its mark. The same wood tasted like charcoal when the iron fell away, the fresh burn stinging in the open air. His eyes were red and watery. Smoke drifting out of his mouth.
He clung to consciousness as they shaved his head and the thin traces of a beard around his chin. The guards and Sages stepped back to look at their masterpiece. The former Prince, now bared and broken. His hands shaking in his chains and his scar an angry red comet on his pale, sickly face. No longer a royal, just a dead man in waiting.
They placed him in a cart with his fellow condemned. They all bore similar markings if not more and Zuko wondered if he looked just as terrified and broken as they did. Their hands shook in their chains, faces downcast, one bit his lip as if he meant to stifle tears or rage. The cart lurched forward, pulled by a Komodo-rhino, beginning their final journey.
The execution grounds of Ayumu Bay were just as intimidating as he remembered when he was a boy. His father had brought him along to watch an execution despite his mother's protests. He remembered trying hard not to cry or to scream watching men die in their watery graves.
They marched him and the other men up the stairs to the raised platform. They stood on aged and watered wooden beams over the deep waters of the bay. He gazed out at the ocean's horizon. Engraining the sunset into his fleeting memory.
He thought of Mai, her cool gaze and pale beauty and the sunsets they watched together in a more peaceful time. The last time he'd seen her he was promising her he'd come back.
He did, just not the way he expected.
He ached for her then, wishing he was with her. He loved Mai. The guilt nagged and stabbed when he dreamt of a dark beauty with bright azure eyes. The bright cobalt blue that pierced his soul in his dreamed state. He had seen the natives of both water tribes and knew that this mysterious feminine muse came from them. Yet not one rivaled her beauty.
How? He didn't know. He glanced at the face of every water tribesman and woman, not one rivaled her beauty. Having spent countless quiet, lonely nights fantasizing about her touch and her voice. Only to be occassionally misplaced, when his Mai was lying next to him.
They placed heavy weights on the chains around his feet. The wood of the trap door creaking nervously under the leadened balls. Zuko shuddered, the manacles on his wrists fastened to a larger apparatus far above his head. A pulley system, now lax, to retrieve the corpses from the bay's depths.
The Sages chanted their songs of death and mourning from the rocky beachside. Onlookers from the nearby slums gazed at them in a mixture of fear and curiosity. Some murmured and pointed fingers at him, recognizing their Prince.
A small girl with raven-colored hair danced in the reeds, singing sweetly. She ran up the hillside, looking at Zuko over her shoulder.
A woman in rags wept and screamed furiously, knee deep in the bays' waters.
"Don't cry for me Lysha," the man beside him protested. "I'll be at peace, waiting for you."
The man's words did not hinder her sobs, nor did they impede the few quiet tears from streaming down his cheeks. Glossy orbs gazing up at the sky in a silent plea for mercy.
Soft footsteps whispered against wood as the mechanical apparatus creaked and ticked in anxiousness. The flip of a switch set off the inevitable reaction. Metal turned against metal, grinding loudly like sharp screech emerging from the void's silence. The gears loosened in a red breath of salt and rust. The condemned breathed their last. Breathes in shallow, sharp inhales of terror, realizing there was no floor to stand on.
The trap door fell out from underneath him and the water made impact in a single sharp frozen punch. The weights on his feet sunk quick. His body stretched by the manacles around his wrists. He wanted to scream, his eyes wide with horror despite the sting of the saltwater. He strained his muscles to lift upward, to climb up the chain towards the surface and to freedom. Desperate and dying and trying to shake free.
His lungs burned, aching for air. Bubbles filtered out of his nose leaving his lungs vacant of precious oxygen. His mouth tasted only saltwater, choking. His chest heaved. Saltwater creeping into his lungs and throat, pulling him under. Black dots swirled before his vision. Above the sky seemed distant, the sunset a flickering haze of flames, dying out.
The burning terror in his lungs gave way to numbness. The fast encroaching saltwater in his lungs shook and jerked his manacles body violently.
So much pain. Why couldn't death claim him quicker?
Do not be afraid, my love.
Then she was there, the indisputable presence of the water maiden. Never banished her from his thoughts and dreams, constant and remaining like the moon and stars and the sun.
How could she? She wasn't even real.
He heard her voice, soft and soothing in the watery depths. Whispered like a lover's words into his good ear. Warm water currents encircled him, comforting him and tracing his lips in what felt like a kiss. Her touch was indisputable, foreign yet familiar, and leaving him in longing.
Then he felt as peace, the need for air gone. Willing himself to open his eyes and expecting the bright light to blind him. Yet, he saw the bay's waters, still and clear. The silhouettes of onlookers in the sunset above watched him and the other condemned drown. The sages chanted in the distance. Eyes numb to the saltwater's sting.
He saw her, a faint outline in the waters around him that. More defined and darker as the sky traded colors in the sunset. Her bright eyes were piercing, and her face soft and lovely.
Just like he had dreamed.
I wish you could remember a time when I was yours and you were mine. But we will see each other again and I'll be there waiting for you.
"Who are you?" he wanted to say, but no sound came from his mouth. Just a silent air bubble.
She willed his eyes to close and they did, feeling exhausted.
Be at peace and fight another day.
The ocean around him faded, replaced by a white mist that sang ancient songs in its mystic, quiet shadows. He couldn't remember if he wore chains when he saw the girl dancing through the reeds of the bayside. Her bare toes balanced on the smooth stones as she led him up the hillside. Her small white dress brushing against the high grasses. Silent wind bristled her hair when she looked over her shoulder, beckoning him to follow. Her face was round and child-like, eyes big and bright of a color he would never remember. He felt compelled to follow and he did, up the hillside, not feeling the grass and dirt underneath his soles.
She disappeared over the crest of the hill, fading into the sunlight and into silence. Still he followed, not sure if he was falling or flying. But there was no pain, nothing, just peace, and he knew that he was dead.
Or so he thought.