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"You're pathetic. A waste of my time and energy."
"I don't care," he spat.
"I think you do." The Fire Lord's hand burst into flames, illuminating the freezing cell.
"Fuck you." He choked out the words, sneering even after coughing up blood. "Fuck you and everything you stand for."
"I try," the boy (barely seventeen, not an adult in the slightest) murmured. "I will never be like you."
"Oh, you will. You'll screw up everything just like your father and your father before him, and when you look death in the face? Maybe you'll see where it all fell apart for me."
"I'll do better than you! On my honour!" the boy finally screamed. "And nobody will ever be hurt by you. Ever! Do you hear me? Never again."
The door slammed behind him.
"Oh, I hear you alright."
But that doesn't mean I'll listen.
The girl who came giggling down the staircase couldn't have been older than, what, five? Six? It was impossible to judge when he hadn't seen a child's face in... how long?
He couldn't remember.
But she was here anyway, laughing and dancing and just wait 'til she spots me, that'll scare her.
He jerked up and rapped on the prison bars when she passed him. Damn. That hurts.
"Hello?" The girl looked spooked, and yet still surprisingly calm. "Who said that?"
A beat.
"I'm not afraid of you!"
He rapped on the bars again. "So I've got visitors."
The girl's hand lit up, and he hid a long-suffering sigh.
Fucking firebending.
"Show yourself! In the name of-"
He cut the child off before she could make the petulant boasts of a child. "I'm right here."
At that point, she caught on. "Oh. Hi, Mr... What's your name?"
Now there's a question. "None of your business." He smirked. "What brings a child like you down here? You couldn't have possibly just come here to visit the most dangerous prisoner in the nation for no reason."
"You're dangerous? That's so cool!"
"No." He sighed. "Not anymore, anyway. Even the guards gave up on me."
The girl had the audacity to laugh at him. "You're nothing like my papi, then!"
"And what would he be like?"
"The most important man in the world!" Her chest puffed with pride, and the self-importance of youth. No doubt she thought her father was the supreme ruler of the world.
(In roughly fifteen years' time, he would look back on this observation and groan about irony or something like that.)
The girl came and went, as with all things. There was never anyone else with her, but she regaled him with stories of my mami and papi, the best perfectest people in the world! (He went on to point out perfectest was not, in fact, a word, and nearly got his hair burnt off for the fifth time since he'd been locked up in this awful cell.) And then there was my aunts! One of them's mean but she loves me and she loves my other aunt too! And my nana and my grandma and yada yada yada blah blah blah. From the way she talked about her grandma she didn't seem to like the woman much. (Which he would've commented on, but it felt a little too hypocritical, and left a slightly sour taste in his mouth.)
And of course her insufferable uncle, who seemed of a much more sensible disposition to her aunt (or at least one of them, anyway) and isn't really my uncle but I love him anyway! So there! He wasn't entirely sure where to go with this, as nobody, not once, had ever looked at him and decided he was worthy of unconditional love.
Being a terrible person probably hadn't helped, of course.
But still.
"My mami got me a present, Mr. Prisoner!"
He was really beginning to resent not giving her his name. "That's nice, I think."
She pouted. "Don't you want to know what it is?"
"I..." He blinked. "I guess?" She wasn't scared.
That's new.
"Don't you think it's pretty?" She gleefully shoved something into his hands, completely nonchalant about the fucking prison bars between them.
To be fair, she was seven.
Also it was a knife.
He was holding a knife.
Which had been given as a gift to a seven-year-old.
Who the hell was her mother, anyway?
(He chose to ignore the fact that he'd been exactly the same with his children, and so had his father before him. Although this child didn't flinch when he growled, and knew how to show her emotions. She was quite the something, really.)
The girl was really quite clever, but she spoke a different dialect to the one he'd grown up with and the guards used. The Fire Nation under Azulon's reign was like a whole other world now, and though he wasn't exactly fond of being stuck in jail with only this child who spoke faster than he could think to contact, it was still... something? That Azulon would never again walk this Earth gave him some small, desperate shred of comfort when the nights got too cold for his nonbending body to handle.
"How old are you?" she ashed him, after several hours of staring at a wall again. "I'm nine!"
She got older with every passing moment, it seemed. He could swear just yesterday the girl had been five. (And he still didn't know her name.)
"I think-" He paused, despairing. "I-"
"Are you alright?" The girl frowned. "I didn't mean to upset you..."
"It's not you, child." It's just been so long, so fucking long.
I don't even know how old I am.
"Let's just say I did not age with grace." He tugged his greying beard (spirits, when had he started greying?), still frowning. "When you're my age, well," he smiled wryly, "you were born into an era of peace, so I doubt you'll ever understand, but with great age comes great atrocities."
"Really?" Her eyes were wide, and her head tilted to the side.
She reminded him of his own daughter.
"What the hell are you doing? Get away from her!" He was older now, and scary. He loomed right over the pathetic man in the corner.
"Nothing that you don't do."
"What, manipulating and twisting children into my plaything and then ruining them?"
"No. Teaching her the ways of the world."
"You couldn't teach a child anything! Shut up!"
"You can't stop me."
He screamed, and hurled fire across the room.
The girl didn't show up for five years.
"I know who you are."
"Come here to declare your eternal hatred of me?"
"No."
"You should hate me."
"I do." Her hands grip the bars of his cell. "How fucked up, how screwed, how ruthless do you have to be to- to-"
"You can't even say it."
"Truly, your crimes are unspeakable."
He sighed. "It was the way of the Fire Nation."
"Torture? Murder? Abuse. Pointless cruelty. How could anyone justify that?"
"It was normal."
"Scarring your own child permanently? That was normal?"
"Yes. Agni Kais have a long history of blood and violence. Too far? Yes, I see that now. But it was normal."
"I still don't forgive you."
"Nobody said you had to."
"There was a revolution held in your name."
"Was there?" He didn't meet her eyes.
"The New Ozai Society. That's ridiculous."
"I didn't sign up for that shit."
"Liar. You were the main orchestrator! I have the letters between you and Ukano."
"Ukano? He's a petty fool. I can do better than him."
"But you're still here, rotting away in a cell. So clearly it's more like the other way round."
"Mm." He didn't look up from filing his nails.
"You're a disgrace."
"Heard that one before. Come back when you have something new to say."
She turned on her heels and left.
She came back in several years' time, wielding a knife an a dislocated shoulder.
"What the hell did you do?"
"Assassination attempt."
He scoffed. "Assassination? What are you, my father?"
"Far from it. I am Crown Prince Izumi, daughter of Fire Lord Zuko and Fire Lady Mai, and you are my grandfather."
"Not your 'bastard of a grandfather?'" he hummed.
"Ukano was just as bad."
"Of course he was."
"You're not shocked that you've been talking to the Crown Prince of the Fire Nation for twelve years?"
"I spent my entire life talking to the Crown Prince of the Fire Nation. You're not special."
"I don't want to be special. I want to be a good leader."
"Then why the hell are you talking to me?"
"I... didn't know who you were. And, to be honest, I wanted to know more about you. What made you so..." Izumi trailed off.
"I have no answers."
"You never had." Izumi winced, leaning back on her injured shoulder. "It was nice meeting you, but I should be going now." She screwed her eyes shut, trying not to cry. "There's nothing more you can tell me."
There couldn't be much longer left of this body. He was so cold, so damned cold. The chill never left his bones.
The door swung open with a slight creak on the uppermost hinge, as it always had when Izumi entered.
"Crown Prince Izumi. An honour, truly."
Izumi couldn't tell if he was being sarcastic, but his lip quirked upwards slightly.
"Fire Lord Izumi, actually."
He looked so frail. So weak and so old, and suddenly she realised that he must be at least sixty now, and in prison for a good third of his life.
That had to sting.
"Fire Lord to Fire Lord, at last."
"Far from equal ground."
Ozai laughed. "You think I care?"
"I wish you would." She chewed her fingernails. "It's just so strange. I always thought you'd be a terrifying force of evil, but... Look at you. You're-"
"Dying?"
"Are you?"
He nodded.
"It's-"
"If you hit me with that 'going to be okay' bullshit, I promise you you will not leave this room alive."
"I was planning on saying you've changed, but you don't seem at all different."
Ozai tried and failed to shrug.
Spirits.
He doesn't have long left.
Izumi unlocked the cell for the first time in years. "There's nothing I can do for you."
"I don't care."
"I'm sorry nobody checked up on you sooner." She lifted Ozai up.
"Your arm's healed now, huh?"
"It's been three years since I last saw you, Ozai."
"Fire Lord Ozai," he said, delirious.
"No, I- Never mind. Fire Lord Ozai, please stay still."
"Do me one last favour?"
"I promise."
"Tie my hair up in a topknot."
Izumi raked a hand through his hair, as gently as possible. She had nothing to pin it up with, so she pulled her own crown out and threaded it through his hair. His breathing stilled, reaching closer and closer to nothing as time ticked by.
"I..." he began, but didn't finish.
His body collapsed, and he gave one last huff.
"Goodbye," Izumi whispered, picking up her crown again.
"It's going to be okay."